Afterburn

by Colin Harrison

  SOME OF THE OTHER WOMEN knew what she had planned and watched from afar as she stalked toward the administration building. Dolores, a Dominican girl raking grass clippings, cried, "You get it?"

  Christina nodded.

  "You go, girl," she called.

  Christina walked into the administration building. "I want to talk to the Dep," she told the guard, a man known as Rings because he sported at least five on each hand.

  "Why?"

  "Something important."

  "He busy."

  "I heard something about one of the girls having some strong stuff inside."

  Rings looked at her with suspicion, having listened to all manner of requests, lies, and outrageous assertions over the years. But, Christina knew, he had to let her through. Heroin was coming out of Mexico these days, cheap and strong. The snortable stuff sometimes got inside. If one of the women died, then it was his ass on the end of a string. The deputy warden, a tight bantam of a man with a salt-and-pepper crew cut, was known to be smart, tough, and completely unfair. He also wanted to be a warden at one of the state's men's prisons, an inherently political position, and so he had to appear to have a record of running as clean an operation as possible. Female inmates dying of heroin overdoses were not in the plan.

  "You tell me what it is," said Rings.

  "No." Christina shook her head. "You gotta give me the Dep."

  The guard picked up his keys and clipboard, unlocked the barred door, disappeared behind it, and locked it again. In a minute he was back, a look of surprise on his face. "All right."

  She proceeded through the bars and down the cement-block hallway to the deputy warden's office, feeling the air conditioning touch her face. The deputy warden stood at his desk, a little man in a bad suit, and waved his hand in front of his chair. "Miss Welles, you—"

  "I got something to talk about, but not what I told Rings."

  The deputy warden lifted his hand to interrupt.

  "No, wait, wait, Dep, let me talk," she said. "Soft T has been terrorizing the women."

  "Mr. Thomas?"

  "Mr. Thomas. He's using the clipboard to get sexual favors for himself."

  The deputy warden sat down. "That's a very serious charge."

  "I know it's a very serious charge." She could guess what he was thinking, because the wiring inside the prison was plain to anyone who had been there a few months: The prison generally let the guards get away with as much as they could, but a guard who was proven to have forced sex onto a female prisoner subjected the prison to the sensationalistic and synergizing effects of news reports, watchdog agency press conferences, civil lawsuits, and TV-movie deals. And then he had to be removed, which, the union correctly pointed out, deprived the man of his livelihood, guards being generally unqualified to do much else—the job required subservience to a military chain of command, tolerance for extreme boredom, a masked but present desire to abuse weaker human beings, and last but by no means least, the ability to attack and, if necessary, beat a woman.

  The deputy warden saw that Christina was resolute. "Go on," he said.

  "He's forcing women to give him blow jobs."

  "You?"

  She held his gaze. "Me."

  "When?"

  "About five minutes ago."

  He nodded noncommittally and whisked his hands across his desk, as if sweeping away grains of irritation. The gesture carried an entire mindset—two decades of professional tedium, a thousand forgotten memos, a hundred remembered alimony payments, beer cans in an otherwise empty refrigerator, dead flies on the windowsill. "You know my problem, Miss Welles, it's his word against yours."

  She waited until he seemed sure that she had no response. And then longer, creating enough silence to break his certainty.

  "I've got proof."

  The deputy warden folded his arms. He'd heard everything in his time. Christina slipped her hand into her pocket. "Here. Don't take my word for it." She put the little paper cup on the warden's desk. "That's his—his ejaculate. You have that tested, get the DNA or whatever they do, and then test him, Dep. He just shot that all over my face five minutes ago. You go ask him how I got that, okay? I didn't steal it from him, you know what I mean?"

  The deputy warden picked up the little paper cup. He tore the tape off, looked inside, and nodded. Then he raised his eyes to Christina. "That's it, then," he said.

  She didn't understand his tone. "What? You're not going to do anything?"

  "I am going to do something, as a matter of fact." The deputy-warden pushed the cup to one side on his desk. "But when and in what manner is not your business. However"—he glanced at a couple of papers on his desk—"we have something else much more important to talk about."

  She couldn't believe it. He wasn't going to do anything about Soft T. "What?" she spat, thinking bitterly of what she had just put herself through. "What do we have to talk about that is more important than what I just told you, Dep?"

  "This." He was holding a piece of paper. "You're due to appear in court tomorrow, Miss Welles."

  "Court?"

  "State Supreme Court."

  "I don't get it."

  "Your lawyer never contacted you, I see."

  "Nobody told me anything," she breathed, afraid now. "They can't be adding on to my sentence, they aren't—"

  "No, no," the deputy warden interrupted, his voice both disgusted and amused. He handed the heavy stationery to Christina. The letter was from the Manhattan District Attorney's Office:

  You are hereby directed to produce Christina Welles, inmate number 95G1139-112D, in State Supreme Court, New York County, Part 47, for a 440.10 motion request. It is anticipated by this office that the motion to vacate the inmate's conviction and sentence will be signed by the Court.

  We have been unable to contact the inmate's family members. Please advise the inmate of her anticipated change in status and prepare her for her imminent release.

  She looked up at the deputy warden. He nodded silently, his mouth shut. The air conditioner in the window battered out a hum. She glanced back at the letter. Signed by her own prosecutor, whom she'd last seen at the sentencing hearing, where she'd received her seven years, no thanks due to her attorney, Mrs. Bertoli, a meat-faced hack lawyer who worked out of a castle of hack lawyers on lower Broadway. Why had the prosecutor written the letter? She barely remembered him, a faceless man in his late twenties who wanted to know everything about her life before she'd been arrested, wanted to understand how a young woman like her had become a felon—unlike Mrs. Bertoli, who was just putting in the time for a fee, the fee Rick had so magnanimously agreed to pay using money Christina had earned for him. But Christina had not been cooperative with the prosecutor, and he had marched through the charges relentlessly. She had accepted her conviction, breathed it in like a mountain, seen it as the logical result of a life out of control. Too many wrong choices in a row, and you ended up in the bad place.

  "I'm getting out?" she said now, trying to keep her voice even.

  "Yes," the deputy warden replied, face tight.

  She blinked. "Wait, this never happens."

  "Never, usually."

  "I can't believe it."

  The deputy warden's eyes were cold. "I can."

  THAT NIGHT she stood under the cell's single lightbulb and packed her things in a black plastic trash bag. Not much. A few books, her music tapes. Five pairs of panties, two pairs of pants, three T-shirts, one ugly dress, and a pair of sneakers. A mail-order bra. Her hairbrush, her toothbrush, dental floss, Tampax, a small bottle of aspirin. She didn't own any makeup. Among her papers were photos of her mother and dead father and an out-of-date address book. Everyone from her former life had moved on or died or married or otherwise departed. She hadn't kept up with people. She'd wanted to forget them and for them to forget her.

  Mazy stood watching, crying quietly, the wetness catching in the asymmetrical grooves in her cheeks. "Maybe you come back visit me."

  "I can't, Mazy," said Ch
ristina. "I'm going to miss you, but I can't ever come back here."

  Mazy handed her a small bottle of perfume. "I don't have anything else to give you."

  Christina kept packing. "You don't need to give me anything."

  "I ain't ever known anyone like you. You're not like the rest of us here."

  "I'm like everybody, Mazy."

  "Everyone going remember what you did today. Everyone already talking about it. They dragged old Soft T right out of here this afternoon. Took his keys away."

  Mazy glanced down the hallway, then back at Christina, eyes soft, smiling sweetly.

  Christina shook her head. "I can't, Mazy."

  "It's our last time."

  "I can't. My mind is already out of here." She looked at the ceiling. She knew every crack, every flake of paint waiting to fall. One more night and she'd never see the cell again.

  Mazy stepped near but did not touch her. "You don't want come be close one last time?"

  I'll cry about Mazy later, she told herself. "I'm sorry, Mazy. I've got so much to think about now."

  Mazy sighed. "You going go back to men?"

  "That's not what I'm thinking about right now."

  "I know, but I was just wondering."

  "I haven't been thinking about it, Mazy, I really haven't."

  She turned. Mazy's big calm eyes were fixed on her. "I'm pretty sure you going do that," Mazy said, her voice affectionate. "That's who you are, baby."

  "We'll see."

  "No, I'm pretty sure."

  Maybe it was true. It was definitely true. It was so true that she felt something in her knees just thinking about it.

  "I miss men," Mazy said. "I miss my Robbie, he my youngest's daddy, he one of the biggest men I ever seen."

  "Yeah, I knew a guy who was full of muscles," Christina replied, if only to talk the remaining time away.

  "Who was he, baby?"

  "He was the asshole who got me into this place."

  "You never talked about it."

  "I told you things, Mazy. I told you what I could."

  "I know that girl Katisha? She went out of here after four years, and then she called up one of the gals and she had something like ten men that first week she was out."

  Christina nodded, remembering. "That's truly insane."

  "You going call your sweet mother down Florida?"

  She wanted to, but it might be a bad idea. "I'm not sure."

  "She'll miss you so much."

  Christina dropped the bag to the floor. "I might let her think I'm still here."

  Mazy frowned with incomprehension. "That's hard."

  She tightened. Yes, it was.

  HER PAROLE had been so far off that she hadn't allowed herself to think about what it would be like to live in Manhattan again. But now, after only a few hours, all kinds of things crowded her mind. She'd need money, that was certain. She had just over three hundred dollars in her prison account, and if she could somehow live on that for a couple of weeks, she'd be okay. She'd get a job and rent a room downtown, near First or Second Avenue. Start all over. No flashy moves. Be careful what she said to people. You could live on almost nothing if you had to. You spent every dollar carefully, that's all. She wanted to walk along the streets, look at the store windows. She'd buy a small radio and lie on her bed and listen to WCBS-FM, the oldies station. She'd read magazines in the bookstore. She missed all the magazines, even the trashy ones. She'd go to the movies, just sink into one of those seats with a Coke and some popcorn. She wanted to see a Jack Nicholson movie. Anything he was in. Yes. She would take a bath, her first in four years. Watch the water go down the drain and fill it up again, hot as she could stand it. She'd watch the beautiful little babies in the park and think, Where has the time gone? She would try to find the next version of herself. Woman in the city. Woman being careful. Woman in a long dark coat, one of those third-hand wool ones with deep pockets you could get in the Village for forty bucks. Big enough to hide in. She'd pet dogs. She'd buy a broom! Sweep her floor. Sweep her floor over and over. Maybe she'd get a place where she could paint the floorboards. A rose or light green, perhaps. Then one table. A simple oak table. A small one, with a chair. She'd buy a nice bra when she could afford it. A pretty one. So many things to think about. She'd get a cat, she'd buy good lipstick, she'd disagree with the op-ed pages. She'd marry a millionaire. Ha. She'd light a candle, watch the flame. She would watch her ass, too. Not talk to too many people. Not tell them much. Maybe cut her hair, buy some sunglasses. She had to assume that Tony Verducci's people would be looking for her. Watching to see what she did. She would find a place and tell the landlord she had to have good heat. The prison was so cold, the walls started getting icy in December; half the women caught pneumonia each winter, coughing and spitting up gunk in the bathrooms, especially the women with AIDS. What else? Well, there was wine. She'd sit somewhere and just sip it and let it hit her head. Nothing to drink for four years. That first glass, maybe with a piece of lamb or chicken. Could you drink red wine with chicken? She didn't remember. It didn't matter. To be drunk, that was the thing. And some good coffee. Not too much, just a couple of cups, to help her think. Cigarettes, too. As many as she wanted. But no more than five a day. She'd go to the Strand bookstore and look at the old titles. Peruse the history section. She used to do that, she used to feel safe doing that. She was going to find the latest biography of Charles Dickens. She was going to get a little shit job and survive on nothing. Lay low, live well. She was going to buy only good stuff and put it in the refrigerator. Vegetables and fruit and skim milk. Good bread. Maybe a little cheese. Fresh carrots. Grapefruit. She had missed onions and decent Mexican food and hummus and garlic and Granny Smith apples and the smell of the dry cleaner's shop and the feeling of a newspaper that had never been read by anyone else and good shampoo and getting a smoked turkey sandwich at the deli and watching the limousines outside the Plaza Hotel and having her own telephone and real butter and the feeling of a man's big hand running lightly up and down her neck—yes, that, too. And the moment when he was fully inside of you, when you didn't have to think about anything. Anything but. And riding in elevators and watching the traffic light turn green and the ticking of a bicycle. So much she'd missed, so much to think about, including the things she didn't want to think about—the things that worried her, the worst one being why in God's name the Manhattan District Attorney's Office had decided to let her go. She was guilty, after all.

  | Go to Contents |

  Orient Point, Long Island, New York

  September 7, 1999

  HE LIKED TO IMAGINE his own death, oh yes he did—because it would never happen the way you imagined—and that is what he did now. The water was still warm enough to swim in, and he pressed toward the huge rocking red buoy and the three iron chains that held it fast, each hung with clusters of blue-black mussels and veils of seaweed. The sea pulled at his beard and rose against his lips; every few seconds he spat out salt water. Although he was thirty-seven, his torso remained thickly muscular from cutting firewood and working on the boat, so much so that his arms got heavy as he swam. If he were to have trouble, no one would hear his cries—for no one else knew where he was. It would be some time before his bloated, naked corpse was found bumping against the rocks. The gulls would have a time of it, Rick thought, not to mention the crabs. Hey, eat me up, you little fuckers. Eat my eyes out. Eat my balls. Chew off my tattoos. I won't feel a thing. A lobsterman pulling his pots near shore at high tide might spot him and that would be that. Rick Bocca, dead man.

  On the map, Orient Point lay at the easternmost tip of Long Island's North Fork, a relatively unknown forty-mile stretch of flat, fertile soil that once supported hundreds of truck farms. Now people were planting vineyards, building vacation homes. But you could still see the green farm tractors rumble along the lanes pulling a load of cabbages or potatoes, you could still buy fish off the boat in the docks of Greenport, and the fork still sheltered forested tracts that hid abandone
d and forgotten buildings where a man, if he wanted, could live out of sight of others. The place where Rick swam now was like that, off a rocky spit that tapered to a pebbled cove that rested below the small, wind-battered cottage that he rented for three hundred dollars a month. The red buoy clanged mournfully, and as he neared it, a gull flapped up and away. He avoided the huge dripping chains and grabbed the slimy metal edge. All you fucking sharks and garbage-fish can just leave me alone, he thought, don't bite my dick. A green skirt of plant growth floated out from the barnacle-encrusted can. The shoreline was lost in fog. His chest heaved, nipples stinging from the salt. It was sixteen minutes out and, carried by the waves, nine back. The buoy creaked against its chains, as if signaling displeasure with his presence. He took a breath deep into his lungs and then pushed off, stroking into the gloom.

  Soon he waded out of the water, toes pressing the sandy bottom, eelgrass against his shins, and retrieved his eyeglasses from a slab of stone, making habitual adjustments to get the fit right, yet no longer really noticing that the lenses were scratched and speckled with paint, the broken frame taped at the bridge. He could see well enough with them, and after he climbed the high scaffold of wooden steps up the sea cliff, he could certainly see the blue-and-white police car parked next to his old shingled cottage, the car's windshield opaque with dust, a small maple branch caught under the wiper. He hunched in surprise, as if jabbed. A New York City police car, more than one hundred miles out of its jurisdiction. They never leave you alone, he thought, they never do. Everybody should have forgotten me by now.