Robert was next. I didn’t even talk to him for a couple of days because I figured, What’s the point? He didn’t need me to talk anyway. He talked enough on his own, which was remarkable because he had a terrible stutter, beginning every sentence with “I mean I mean I mean, um, um, um . . .” He would say the same thing in the middle and again at the end. The simplest idea would take him five minutes to express. This did not stop him from talking, nor did the perpetual piece of E. Z. Digby’s butterscotch candy he’d keep in his mouth, rattling like a rock tumbler. I don’t know what was worse: having to wait through the stuttering, or all that wet smacking on the E. Z. Digby’s.
I kept expecting him to disappear—his stuff, his bedding, the box full of Bic pens he used to write to his six women. I kept expecting him to be gone when I got back from lunch, or work, even a shower. But he stayed. On his bulletin board he put up pictures of women he said were old and current girlfriends: thin, blond, angelic-looking women, and then their polar opposites—dark-haired stripper types flashing black panties from atop custom Harleys. In the middle of this lineup of sluts and angels were the pictures of his house and Hummer.
“That’s, I mean I mean I mean, um, um, um, my house,” he said. It was a perfectly landscaped, red-brick ranch—a charming suburban dream home. There were a couple of interior pictures, like the big, beautiful fireplace, with a line of twenty Hummel figurines on the mahogany mantel. They looked like actual German children, frozen, shrunk, and set in radiant porcelain, more human than actual flesh. The fire crackled below them and made the brown leather furniture glisten so brightly I could smell it.
Then the garage, with a tall cabinet of Snap-on tools behind that brand-new champagne-colored Hummer. Altogether the pictures must have depicted about eight hundred grand worth of home, property, and vehicle. Altogether it was a horrible lie. Unbelievable to the utmost.
Robert was tattooed in twenty years’ worth of fading prison ink that represented the iconic logos and designer names of a millionaire’s lifestyle: Mercedes, Gucci, Armani, Ferrari, Rolex, and about twenty more. He thought he had expensive taste, but he had never actually owned anything represented by these names. He wouldn’t know Dom Pérignon from Dom DeLuise. He had never been on the inside of a Hummer; he didn’t know any of those women and probably hadn’t even seen any like them in real life. He had names for them, sure, but that was it—if pressed, he would know nothing about them. Robert was an amateur. He assumed that just because he desired something, that made it real enough. What he didn’t know was that even in here, you have to work for it.
I studied Robert for a full month, writing down all the lies that made it around that little piece of E. Z. Digby’s. It seemed the less I talked, the more he tried to impress me. I think the only word I said to him that entire month was “Really?”
After thirty days I had a list of 152 lies. Here’s a partial list, edited to take out the stuttering and the wet smacks on his butterscotch:
He punched a female warden twice.
His ex-wife was once a centerfold in Penthouse.
His father was a submarine captain who was lost at sea.
Geronimo was a relative (also: Timothy McVeigh, Babe Ruth, Abraham Lincoln, and many more, usually whoever was on the History Channel recently).
Julia Roberts was a pen pal.
A famous director (he couldn’t remember his name) almost made a movie about him. I suggested some possible names, and he thought Robert Altman sounded right.
His brother is seven three.
His brother is an attorney who has never lost a case.
He owned four tattoo parlors—which is actually somewhat believable because he did decent tattoos. Still, I kept it on my list. I mean, four?
He used to make heroin from an acre of homegrown poppies and a recipe handed down from Genghis Khan (recently featured on the History Channel).
He died twice and met God both times.
He’s bungee-jumped, parachuted, hot-air-ballooned, and flown an F-15 (plus the stories of near-fatal mishaps involving all of them).
There was a gorgeous call girl who used to pay him for sex.
He made a prison bomb out of his color TV, which is why we could only have black-and-white sets.
He murdered a pedophile bunkie, disposing of his body with a Bic razor and his cell’s toilet.
He used law-enforcement-grade pepper spray to spice up his pizza.
He was in a coma for a year and a half. He woke up with a nurse humping him.
You get the idea. Whatever Robert wanted to have done, whomever he wanted to have been, whomever he wanted to have known, screwed, or been a relative of, it all suddenly was. He knew nothing of the restraint it took to stay believable, or the care required to make something real. He simply floated from one idea to the next, completely unmoored, chomping on his yellow, fragrant candy.
* * *
The woman I fell in love with, the woman in the neighborhood on the outskirts of Portland, Oregon, had a collection of more than fifty Hummel figurines worth around $18,000. They were kept behind glass doors on four rows of recessed shelves above her dining room table. They were so bright and clean that their reflections shone off the dark polished wood like photographed images of ghosts. Having seen real Hummels, I could spot them anywhere, even in a picture of someone’s make-believe fireplace mantel.
I spent a long time staring at them, imagining their perfect, stationary lives. They were Alpine youth happily engaged in chores and games from a simpler time: a girl jumping rope (the “rope” held the girl aloft, forever defying gravity); a boy in lederhosen led a sheep with his staff; another boy aimed a slingshot skyward; a girl with long, blond pigtails kicked a yellow ball. Each of them seemed frozen with personalities as unique as living beings. My favorite was a mischievous little girl lighting the fuse of a waist-high bottle rocket.
I loved the woman, of course, but when I think of her now, I think just as much of the twenty-eight boys and thirty little girls in soothing rows on the wall of her dining room. It even takes a moment for me to remember her name, Mary, but I can picture the fifty-eight little faces with no trouble at all.
* * *
Like a pro taking pity on a hopeless amateur, I decided I would teach Robert some lessons of the lie. He was writing letters, and every five minutes or so he’d look through the horizontal bars out the window. The weather was changing, and the first official day of spring was only a few days away. There were melting piles of snow outside, shrinking a little bit every day like distant, white mountains diminishing in a time-lapse video.
Robert was going to get back into shape pretty soon, he said. He was going to get back into weight lifting, and then he told me what good shape he used to be in. “I mean I mean I mean, I could do like a hundred um, um, um, push-ups. Um, without breathing.”
“My boxing coach told us push-ups were the best exercise you can ever do,” I told him. “Especially when you hold them at the bottom and count to twenty. My coach was an old black guy. You know anything about boxing, Robert?”
“Um um um, yeah.”
“Then maybe you’ve heard of him: ‘Coffee Machine’ Mitchell. He fought Thomas ‘The Hit Man’ Hearns once in Detroit. Coffee Machine was pro for a few years.”
“I mean I mean I mean, yeah, I saw that fight. Um um um, I remember that fight.”
“No you don’t, Robert. No you didn’t.”
He looked at me blankly and then down at his faded, tattooed arms, as if there were some answer there. I felt sorry for him, but he had to learn. And learning is often a painful process.
“I made all of that up. There’s no Coffee Machine Mitchell, and I’ve done about fifty push-ups in my entire life. I think you’ve probably done about the same.”
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried in that moment. Robert was bigger than me, and I didn’t know anything about fighting. It was risky. It was a gamble. The door was shut and if he wanted to, he could lay down a serious beating on me befo
re a guard could come with a key.
What I’d done was called him a liar, which was serious. Once you become a number, all you are is the words you use. If your words aren’t real, then neither are you. Being called a liar to your face was just a notch above “snitch.” But I had learned enough about criminals to know someone who regularly advertised how bad he was at something subconsciously wanted to get caught. Robert wanted my help, I could tell.
He didn’t say anything for a while after that. It was the quietest he’d been since he had moved in. It was entirely possible that he couldn’t speak. Finally, after about ten minutes, when it was obvious I was out of physical danger, I broke the silence. “Do you know what made that a good lie?”
“Um um um,” he said, “I believed it. I mean I mean I mean, I never thought it was a lie.”
“If I had said Muhammad Ali coached me, or Sugar Ray Leonard or something, it isn’t believable. It’s too much, Robert. Though one time I did almost sell Sugar Ray Leonard an alarm system for his new garage. But his wife said they didn’t need another alarm because the perimeter was guarded. And his daughter, talk about a knockout.”
“Um um um, that’s pretty cool. Leonard, huh?” He opened up another butterscotch, and as he handed one to me I saw the spark in his eyes die again. “Um um um, you just made that up, didn’t you?”
“I like you, Robert. And if you want help, I’ll help you.” I lit up a cigarette and pointed at his bulletin board. “That’s not your house, those aren’t your ex’s Hummels, that’s not your Hummer, and none of those women are your girlfriends. I’ve got to tell you—no one here believes a word you say. So let’s start over. Let’s reset things. How about you don’t say another word for twenty-four hours.”
He started to say something, then stopped himself. He was probably going to defend his wall of pictures, his world of lies. But he didn’t. He looked out the window at the vanishing piles of snow.
* * *
Mary already had an alarm system. I think it was ADT, maybe Brinks, but I stopped by anyway because I always made a point to meet every person in the neighborhood I was working. She invited me in, coffee already brewing. She’d heard of me through the neighborhood grapevine. She had pastel Easter basket earrings dangling from her ears, though it was September.
“I see you’re all set on alarms. You haven’t been broken into recently, I’ll bet.” Of course I knew she hadn’t—it was good business to steer clear of alarmed houses. It only strengthened my sales at unalarmed places.
“No, I haven’t,” she said. “But that’s okay. I’ll get you some coffee.” She went into the kitchen. I heard coffee cups rattle and the closing of cabinet doors. “I’ve had an alarm for a long time. Come in here and I’ll show you.”
I figured she was going to show me the activation sequence pad, which meant I’d have to say something like “Yeah, the 143-Z, that’s a good system.” You always compliment the competition. But she led me into the dining room instead, where she flipped on the track lights over her shelves.
“I had to protect these,” she said, handing me a full cup. “They’re Hummels.”
“They’re beautiful,” I said. And they were. I could smell the mountains where they lived. I could hear their small, innocent voices telling me to stay awhile, telling me Mary would make a very nice companion.
I sat with her in the dining room, looking out of a picture window at three soft volcanoes the color of orange sherbet from the setting sun. We talked mostly about the Hummels, how some were her grandmother’s from sixty years ago. She said it was almost like adopting children—the effort that went into deciding which one to buy next.
Every half hour the snow on the volcanoes changed colors. They were purple when she told me she was a set designer. “You mean like plays?” I asked, and she said only occasionally. She mostly built sets for Portland State University’s forensics department. She spent weeks outfitting rooms or entire houses, only to have professional arson investigators come up with creative ways to set them on fire. Burn units, she called them. One was “going up” tomorrow. “They’re burning it,” she said. “You busy?”
I told her I wasn’t.
She was pretty, bright, and animated talking about her job. She was fairly old though that hardly matters. It made her more attractive somehow—she knew exactly who she was. She didn’t try to cover up her thin face with makeup, which revealed a pale smartness about her eyes that made up for anything she might have lacked. She wore white painter’s pants splattered with colorful drips and a Western button-down shirt with vertical strands of silver thread that sparkled when light hit it a certain way. Her long, brown hair wasn’t styled so much as restrained in a complex arrangement of bobby pins and elastic ponytail holders.
I looked up at the shelves of Hummels. I didn’t know what the word meant, but I thought maybe it was German for “frozen happiness.” Not all of them were smiling, but you could tell they were very content, if only for that moment.
“So you gonna show me your goods?” she asked me.
“My what?”
“Your goods. Your systems. I want to take a look. I’ve been thinking about something more advanced.”
We looked through the brochures for about five minutes. “I’ll take plan A,” she said. “It’s got the carbon-monoxide sensor. I like that.”
Plan A was the most comprehensive of my made-up plans, not to mention expensive. “Usually homeowners with children get that one. You know, ‘the silent killer’ fear.”
“Well I don’t have any children, but that doesn’t mean I deserve to die in my sleep.”
“Of course not,” I said, handing her my Montblanc.
“Nice pen,” she said. She signed the check and the eyes of all those happy children looked past me, as if to look directly on my guilt was impossible.
“Good coffee,” I said.
I liked Mary from the start. Maybe I loved her from the start. I don’t know—it’s a tough call. But I know it wasn’t Mary that made me want to live an honest life. It was the Hummels. It was those beautiful, honest little lives under the bright lights in that dining room. My deceitful ways were no match for their purity.
* * *
Robert didn’t say one word for an entire twenty-four hours. Then he didn’t say another word the next day. After the third day, it became pretty obvious he was making a statement.
People started coming up to me, people who used to gather around Robert just for entertainment. His silence, apparently, was less amusing. “Look,” I told four or five of them smoking outside our unit’s door, “I told him the truth.”
“What do you mean you told him the truth?”
“I told him he was a horrible liar.”
“Fuck that,” said the spokesman of the Robert fan club. “That wasn’t your place, man. It may be bad for both of you if he stays quiet. A person can only go about forty days without talking and then they die.”
I knew he had talking and eating mixed up, but I was outnumbered. And I understood what he meant by missing the old Robert. His silence was unnerving, and in the company of others, his lies were pretty entertaining. Lies are a drug here; prisoners are addicts and as any addict sinks deeper and deeper into their sickness, they seek out people who are worse off than them so they don’t feel so bad about themselves.
* * *
When I was extradited from Oregon, then Ohio, then to West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Alabama, New Jersey, then finally here to Michigan to serve a twenty-year concurrent sentence, I found a present waiting for me under my gangrene-colored plastic mattress: a book with the front and back covers ripped off, a retrospective history of The Beverly Hillbillies.
In my new home behind bars, I always looked for signs, things I thought of as anchors—sent from the universe to let me know I wasn’t forgotten. In a county jail in West Virginia I had found a penny, heads-up, on the floor outside my cell. Some inmates go thirty years without seeing actual money. I took the penny as a good sign an
d rubbed it with my thumb to a new brightness before flipping it into the wishing well of the toilet the day I headed to Pennsylvania.
In Michigan, I took the book as a similar good sign, and if you had a mind like I did to study that book, you could come away knowing more about that show—which ran from September 26, 1962, until March 23, 1971—than its creator, Paul Henning.
I landed here and latched on to a new life. I could forget about my dismal home by focusing on a fictional one, the real people who made that world. Granny, for example—Irene Ryan—who loved to bet on the ponies and drink Scotch. She sounded like a perfect grandmother.
Donna Douglas, who played Elly May, fell in love with Elvis after working with him on the movie Frankie and Ricky. I was touched and drawn to her heartbreak and depression after he rebuffed her. Donna’s fictional father, Buddy Ebsen, was born in Belleville, Illinois, just east of St. Louis—which seemed as good a place as any to pretend to be from if I needed to. The book even had recipes for his favorite dishes, Deviled Hawk Eggs, Coot Cobbler, and Hog Jowls Melba.
I didn’t know when, where, or how I was going to use the information in that book, but I absorbed it with the belief that it would one day be important to a new life. I hadn’t planned on sharing the book with anyone, but after Robert hadn’t said a word for a week and a half, I was desperate. I had been in that Michigan cell for several months, reading about that decades-old TV show in the midnight quiet by the light spilling through the vertical window of our cell door from the hallway.
Robert had begun carving figurines from bars of Irish Spring for a “girlfriend” on the outside. He used an array of hollow Bic barrels with customized tips, laid out on his desk on a green washcloth like surgical instruments. The results—angels, from what I could tell—looked pretty good in that green-marbled medium. As he carved I would read aloud from the book I kept hidden under my mattress, where I had found it. I suggested he could pass himself off as the son of Max Baer, Jr. (Jethro), the grandson of the former boxing heavyweight champion of the world, Max Baer, Sr. He swept a snowy, fragrant pile of soap shavings into our trash can, then began a new angel, or whatever they were.
The Graybar Hotel Page 13