He replays this over and over in his head, his penis pulsating through his thin pants. It’s come out of the slit in his boxers. He hurries over to the storage closet and stands over the floor sink, beginning to masturbate. Quickly, as if the semen had been waiting at the tip, he comes into the drain. Another first for work.
The excitement is expelled down the drain. In its place, he feels jealous of the men. He makes a round. He looks in each cell and wonders if someone had seen him or pieced together what just happened, but they all look like they’ve been asleep for a while.
He’d never fantasized about Tammy before. She looked loose and athletic, like she wanted what was happening. They’re both forty-six and sex shouldn’t be dead for them but it is. Your heart, Tony, she’d say, you can’t die on top of me. But now, Tony wonders if he’d missed something. The way she bounced on Jeffries’s (or was it Nielsen’s?) dick, squatting like a catcher, well, she’d never done that with Tony. And anal. Both men almost got inside her at once. How come he never ventured back there? He starts to feel hard again so he makes an unscheduled round.
“What’s on the menu tonight, chief?” Nielsen asks, rolling an egg, gently cracking it, ensuring the inside stayed intact.
Tony looks in his Tupperware that he’s yet to heat. Vegan carbonara. White noodles, dirt-colored mushrooms, and a sprinkle of withered peas.
“I don’t think I’m going to eat this,” Tony says. “I don’t think I can do a round two.”
“I just submitted my vacay request form,” Nielsen says. “Beach house. Hampton in August.”
“You enjoy that,” Tony says and puts the lid back on the Tupperware.
Jeffries laughs at a video on his phone. Tony can’t guess now who is behind the gazette. You just have to let these things go, Tony. What are you going to do, alienate yourself from everyone your whole life? But he just wants to shake the author’s hand.
“Hey,” Nielsen says, “you going to toss that? Emily has been up and down with Nora and she hasn’t made me a dinner in weeks. I’ll take some home loving off your hands.”
Tony slides the food to Nielsen. “It’ll just go to waste.”
Nielsen eats the food cold. Beach house. Poor bastard. The kid will fry. Oh, vacations—he wants to orate to Nielsen—at their core, are getaways from reality. But really, what is a vacation? It’s a tease, that’s what it is. You get to see how others live. The well-off, the ones lucky enough to be born on a tropical island. All it does is show you an existence out of your reach. He remembers a local man on the beach at St. Thomas recently, carving faces into coconuts. Happy as shit. And the owner of the sailboat that took them from one Carolina to the other, drinking wine the entire time, wearing fabric Tony’d never seen before. Dick. Nothing about him felt real.
“The beach,” Tony says. “You guys will love that.”
He’s getting to the end of the detective novel. The hero has solved the case but doesn’t know if he can forgive his daughter. He thinks he can’t but when he goes to her apartment and she opens the door, he is filled with relief and love and all is forgiven. Cheesy fucking ending. What happened to betrayal? Or betrayal seeded in love. Lenny, you’re not for this world, Lenny. But, Tony, you have to think of the audience. Women might like quiet endings. It’s always about what you want, Tony, but the world isn’t yours.
He gets that, and that’s why he isn’t irate with the ending, just not happy with it. He makes a round but stops halfway. He feels a pain in his chest and panics. He swallows a few times but his mouth still fills with saliva. He braces himself on a cell door. The door is cold and feels good on his forehead. He traces a long scratch on the door with his finger, up and down, up and down. The pain subsides and he arches his back, stretches his chest, and finishes the round.
He picks up the clipboard and looks at the vacation packages: Napa Valley, Grand Canyon, Key West, and Virginia Beach. He wants to sigh but no one would hear. He wants someone to complain to but everyone’s asleep. He gets a pain in his chest again but doesn’t panic. When it leaves, he puts the package back under the clipboard.
This odd young officer, Mankins, who, first thing each morning, opens the rec yard door to let the cold air in, relieves him. He gets why he does it, Mankins’s way of terrorizing the inmates. It’s only caused a ruckus once so far, but it’ll happen again. Tony figures he’ll let Mankins learn the hard way. All it takes is a shiv to the jugular to change your thinking.
He punches out without talking to any of the other officers and leaves the building. The morning sky is becoming bright, the air chilly. He sucks it in, lights a cigarette, and thinks about how many mornings he has left. Don’t condemn yourself, Henna would say. If you’re going to be like that, Tony, then what’s the point of it all? He feels the three-inch scar on his neck, but it’s almost flush with the rest of his skin now. Ashley is an early riser, he knows, because she opens the coffee shop six days a week. She’d be up, he thinks, for sure. Or, maybe with the time difference, it’s too early. Could be. He watches the sun rise over Barker House, Lt. Hobson raise the flag and salute it, the highway crew pile into the county vans, the new academy cadets jog laps around the parking lot, and smokes three more cigarettes. There’s one left in the pack and he lights it. He decides to try Ashley.
He pulls his flip phone—the one he swore he’d only use for emergencies—out of the glove box. After plugging it into the light outlet, then turning it on, he calls the only number he has of Ashley’s. Tammy had programmed it in shortly after the heart attack. Make amends, Tony, if not for Ashley, for Ethan. It rings for a while and Ashley answers.
“Hi,” he says, his voice surprising him. “It’s me. Tony.”
There is silence. And then, “What do you want, Tony?”
Tony can hear a child’s voice in the background, a loud TV. He takes a drag of the cigarette. “Is that him?” he asks. “Is that my grandson?”
“Put it down,” she says, but not to Tony. “I’m busy.”
And then he hears, “Who’s Tony?” He hears it in his blood, his soul.
“Can I talk to the little man?”
“He doesn’t know you.”
Tony stares at the passenger seat in his truck, tries to remember Ashley there, a father-daughter ride they shared, a memory to rattle her, but can’t. He wants to tell her there was no other way. Once he sought this route it was his to finish. Life doesn’t have to be traumatizing or insulting. For God’s sake, Ashley, you had it damn good compared to most. Instead, he sees the vacation papers.
“Your mother and I were thinking of vacationing out there,” he says. “Near you.”
“Don’t.”
He hears the small voice ask again who Tony is before there’s no one on the line. He holds the phone to his ear. “Ethan,” he says.
Tony flings the phone into the glove box and slams it shut. As the sun rises behind the jail, as the air from the truck’s vents turn from cold to warm, Tony closes his eyes. He shuffles the printouts and lays them on the passenger seat. At random, he points to their next vacation destination.
Part IV
UNDERHAND
“Just get over here,” Tully says over his shoulder, as if O’Brien were right behind him. He yells into the speakerphone and his free hands grip the bat. O’Brien doesn’t answer and Tully takes a healthy hack in the center of the garage. He collects himself. “I have beers.”
“No getting weird,” O’Brien says. “Big day tomorrow.”
Tully twists his palms over the rubbery handle. “We’ll do what we gotta do.”
Tully rarely visits the garage. It doesn’t have many tools. It holds just lacrosse sticks, a cobwebby three-piece luggage set missing the carry-on, bags of bark mulch, and kids’ bicycles. Tully’s kids have outgrown them but his nostalgia for the two-wheelers outweigh his need for free space. The garage smells distinctly of motor oil, caused by a spilt bottle of Pennzoil behind the sagging boxes of Christmas lights in the rear of the garage, the lights similar to t
he Pennzoil and filter purchase made by Tully. He’s a father, a homeowner, yet the things he imagines he is supposed to enjoy are only enjoyable in the conceptual stage. The lawn gets cut and the leaves raked, the roof doesn’t leak. Anything beyond is, well, beyond. He does enjoy the manly smell of the oil, and since he can’t necessarily see the spill, he doesn’t feel the need to clean it.
As he waits for O’Brien, he heads up the wooden steps and into the house. He takes a beer from the fridge and drinks half of it in the quiet kitchen. Outside, it is windy and cold, but not yet pitch-black. The autumn moon is fat and white, giving off a hazy light through the window over the sink. Tully hasn’t eaten all day. He searches the fridge and finds a bagged-up rotisserie chicken he’s already picked the skin off. As he eats the rest with his fingers in between sips of beer, he feels O’Brien come into the kitchen behind him. It’s a skill he picked up at the House. Never have your back to a doorway. If you do, learn to feel when someone is behind you. He continues to eat as he stands at the island.
“Turn a light on,” O’Brien says. “You depress the shit out of me.” Tully squeezes his eyes shut when O’Brien flicks on the ceiling fan light above him. He blinks and chews.
“You bring the attachment?”
“It’s a cylinder hone,” O’Brien answers, feeling knowledgeable. “And yes, I brought it.” O’Brien puts the metal tool on the island. “You talk to Kathy at all lately?”
He wipes his greasy cheek on his shoulder, then touches it with his dry hand to inspect for food juice. There isn’t any. “Pierce is in the garage. Grab a beer.” Tully cleans his oily hands on his sweatpants and heads for the garage. “Grab a few,” he says, and turns the light off on the way out of the kitchen.
In the garage, O’Brien tries the light. It doesn’t work. He’s concerned for Tully but tries not to be because Tully wears on him. Tully can sulk all he wants but it’s his own fault. Kathy—who, O’Brien always thought, is a great woman—left him and is not going to return. But Tully used to give him rides to work after his DUI. He’d headed to Murphy’s Taproom after work and hit dollar draft night hard. It was an icy night and O’Brien drove home. A college kid in a beat-up Taurus slid into O’Brien at a red light. Damage was minimal, but the kid insisted on calling the police. It wasn’t uncommon to carry a DUI or two at the House, as long as you didn’t get the third one. Since the gossipy rides, Tully has invited him to his kid’s birthday parties and cookouts. It is a forced friendship, one that O’Brien feels is on its last legs.
They both still play in the Fallen Officers annual softball tournament. Had that not been the case, O’Brien wouldn’t be here, trailing Tully into his depression den of a garage. Captain Dixon would reach out to them both, cordially, as if they’d left the House on good terms. But they are the two best hitters, and Tully plays a mean shortstop—a difficult position to lock down on ragtag softball squads. And this year has a different meaning: the Barker House squad is playing in honor of Eric Menser, a sad sack O’Brien had a soft spot for, who, one night, dressed in his pressed uniform, drove out to a Gold’s Gym parking lot in the wee morning hours and shot himself through his mouth. No one has ever been killed while working at the House. But they’ve had plenty of officers kill themselves. Menser hit them softer than when Sam Knudsen offed himself. No one could pinpoint a reason why Sam would do it.
O’Brien sits on the garage steps and sips his beer while Tully stands on a milk crate and changes the bulb. The garage is colder than the outside, enough so O’Brien regrets wearing gym shorts. Tully switches his attention to the bat, Pierce Brosnan. Tully slides his hand up the barrel and cups the top and tries to twist the end cap off like opening a beer bottle.
“You can’t get it off like that.”
“I feel it moving,” Tully says. He has thick forearms, as, O’Brien thinks, a laborer should. Tully lugs bricks and rocks now. O’Brien also has a more suitable job since he left the House. He began substituting and went back to school, studying math. And this past semester, he landed a long-term sub position. O’Brien won’t tell Tully about his job at the school, because doing that would mean he might accidentally summon thoughts of Keely, the seventeen-year-old junior on whom he has a grotesquely boyish crush. Even now, he’s thinking of her smooth, round face, her volleyball thighs, and the mysterious flower she smells like each day. It kills O’Brien, in a way he’s not proud of, not knowing what that flower is. Some days when school lets out he goes to Walmart and smell-tests body sprays and hand lotions, tells the clerk he’s browsing for the wife he doesn’t have. Vanilla Orchid, Cherry Blossom, Cucumber Melon, White Musk. Closest he’s come is a hand cream named Pacific Ocean, which makes no fucking sense. But it smells like a counterfeit flower, a synthetic jasmine that bears no resemblance to its natural scent, just a familiar name to put on the bottle. Even so, he now drinks jasmine tea at night, tells himself it isn’t lust for Keely, he just wants to fall asleep with his face in her hair, his chin against her soft neck.
“You really want to ruin Pierce?” O’Brien asks. At last year’s tournament, Markowski mistakenly gave the bat the Irish actor’s name after he deemed the bat of French descent. The bat has a blue, white, and red pattern, in that order, and Markowski’s best defense was “Isn’t Pierce a French name, assholes?”
“We can always buy a new bat.”
Tully continues to try and pry the cap off with his bare hands. The garage is too quiet for O’Brien. Keely’s essence follows him, lingers in his throat as if he’d walked through her delicate mist. O’Brien swishes the beer in his mouth in an attempt to quell the phantom taste of jasmine. He feels embarrassed about the constant thinking of Keely. She has a dark freckle on the left side of her neck, just under her jawline. Her hair is so blonde he thinks it’s colored, but he’s never seen dark roots. She squints to see the whiteboard. She rides horses. He feels Keely is the most American girl he’s ever met.
He needs a moment alone. O’Brien goes inside the house and into the kitchen that smells of pasta sauce and greasy chicken. The kitchen is clean, the centered island free of clutter, the refrigerator free of magnets and obituaries and children’s sports schedules. The only light on is the one above the sink that barely reaches the far end of the kitchen. O’Brien finds the pots and pans cabinet, pulls out a speckled lobster pot, fills it halfway with water in the sink, and puts it on the stove.
Just before it comes to a boil, O’Brien carries the pot cautiously into the garage. Steam from the boiling water hits his face and he can feel the moisture collect in his beard. Tully is on a little girl’s bike, stroking the rainbow-colored streamers that dangle from the tiny handlebars. O’Brien wonders if he is inspecting it for defects. But he seems to just be sitting on it. O’Brien sets the pot down in the center of the cement floor.
“Dunk Pierce in this for a minute.”
Tully, still on the bike and holding the bat, rolls across the garage. Without hesitation, he sticks the barrel into the hot water. They both stare into the pot as if the water were capable of transforming the bat, as if it were some property-enhancing cauldron in which Pierce will emerge magically infused. But they aren’t trying to enhance it through addition; they are taking away a part of it to make Pierce dangerously effective.
“That’s long enough,” O’Brien says, as if he were some authority on appropriate heat. Tully listens and out comes the glistening wet bat. There are tiny strings of steam dancing off the barrel in the garage’s white light. Tully slides the bat through the handlebars of the girl’s bike, secures the knob end between his knees, and easily pops the cap off with a flathead. O’Brien leans in to inspect the end of the bat for scuff marks, anything an ump or opposing player could see to accuse them of doctoring it. But he also wants to get a look inside the bat. Their foreheads nearly touch as they peer into the business end of Pierce.
“Doesn’t look like much,” O’Brien says.
“What the hell were you expecting?”
“It’s a three-hundred-doll
ar bat.”
“Get the thing.”
“It’s a cylinder hone.”
Tully ditches the bike against some luggage. He stands in the center of the now humid garage, the pot of water evaporating in the closed-off space. Tully puts the knob end between his knees again and double-fists the barrel tightly.
“Feed her in.”
O’Brien puts the attachment on the power drill he brought. He had remembered to juice the battery before he left for school so he could be in and out, get this over with. Tully could make any night an all-nighter, maybe try to talk O’Brien into sneaking off to Peddler’s Daughter or the Garden. He is a dog. They’d gone out for beers a few times in the last year or so but Tully always took the night too far, wanting to linger in the bar until the women loosened. Piggies, he called them. He ran around on Kathy and wasn’t shy about it, even had a short fling with CO Brenner. After a few rounds, Tully was apt to go to the bathroom and come out wedding-ring-less. But if he’d struck out, he’d start talking about Brenner. She was much younger and O’Brien thought maybe he could bring up Keely; he so wants to confess to someone about his thoughts of her, but he hasn’t yet.
The cylinder hone looks like a grappling hook with a foot-long hose. As O’Brien feeds it into the bat, the tool compresses.
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