Back in my bedroom, I see the bulletin board with: theater tickets, postage rates, a postcard from the board of elections indicating the electoral district, along with a small photograph of a man doing situps in profile advertising a brand of polyesterless clothing. Under the paper are subway tokens and quarters and dimes. Where are the keys? I change from school clothes to play clothes, find something appropriate to read so the train won’t get stuck in a tunnel, and leave.
Driven to Tears
I go past the oppressive sign flashing GET RIGHT WITH GOD on one side and SIN WILL FIND YOU OUT on the other, and then the Adonis (Flagship Male Theater of the Nation) and go down to the subway. By the token booth, there is a little sign: Courtesy is contagious, let’s start an epidemic. I imagine that everywhere people’s faces are being replaced by life-size have-a-nice-day yellow smile buttons, like in Rhinoceros where all the characters turned into rhinoceroses. I catch the train uneventfully at 50th Street. I get off at West Fourth Street and cross to the uptown exit because it always smells of piss on the downtown Seventh Street exit. I have to call from the comer. I pace back and forth from phone booth to phone booth. A Puerto Rican woman about forty is speaking Spanish rapidly into the working phone; the other has its coin drop stopped. Richard tells me he will be down in a minute.
Jessica is in the window, looking out, in the planter. She ignores me. Richard and I sit down. I cannot look him in the eye. “Well,” I say in a quiet even voice, so small it amazes me that it is coming from my mouth. “I hope you know what you’re doing. It’s rough moving to a totally new place without friends.”
“I’ve thought this through,” says Richard in his oddly sane voice. “I know it will be difficult at first, but it’s time for a change.”
“Are you doing anything about the TV set?” It was rented from Granada TV rentals.
“That’s not that important. William downstairs will look after things. If things don’t work out, I can always come back. You know, nothing is irrevocable.”
“What about your mail? Are you going to have it forwarded?”
“It’s just bills. No. I want to start from scratch. BJ, you’re not being totally honest with me now. I want you to look me in the eye and tell me how you FEEL.”
Why are you doing this to me? I think. Why are you trying to drive me to tears? You know how I feel. Do you want me to beg you to stay? Will that make any difference? If it does, does it only prove that you are incapable of making decisions on your own? Are you trying to humiliate me? Why are you doing this to me?
There are a thousand and one reasons why you shouldn’t go. I want to be calm, rational. I don’t want to start crying. The last time I cried was at a phone booth after another prospective boyfriend jilted me because he was disease conscious and I had just gotten another herpes outbreak because I was so upset when I came home to discover the apartment in utter disarray, they had installed new windows and not bothered to clean up afterwards and somehow managed to cut my phone wire in the process and of course it was on a Friday so I wouldn’t get repair service over until Monday, I was buying the New York Daily News and saving the quarters for phone calls so I could call people and get their machines from the phone booth around the comer and I had called up Lloyd to tell him that we could have dinner that night but we couldn’t fool around because my face had broken out and he had said well maybe we shouldn’t be seeing each other anymore because he was unable to give me what I wanted which was to be boyfriends because that required a time commitment he couldn’t really afford because he had this new job that he had to work sixty hours a week and he was learning the piano and in therapy and working out at the gym and he really didn’t have time for a relationship and I knew that his job was more important than me and the times that I slept over at his apartment he forgot to set the alarm clock to get me to work on time because subconsciously he wanted the extra hour of sleep and of course he wouldn’t sleep at my apartment so this said to me in effect that he was more important than my job which I suppose totally negated my existence when you put the two together and I kept on getting these little illnesses and he was spooked, he had had several friends die of AIDS so maybe it would be the best thing to not see each other anymore, and I paused, and I kept my voice calm and even and said “Sure” and then he said those same six words that Richard said, “But how do you really feel?” and I don’t think I will ever forgive him for making me break down in tears at a phone booth in public, I mean he was crying too after a while but at least he was home in his apartment, the spineless bastard, the least he could have done was break up face-to-face, and here my phone was out of order and I had gone out of my way to please, I had even bought a bottle of Rose’s Lime Juice for his infernal vodka gimlets, which I decided to mail to him, although there was the question of whether I should shatter the bottle before sending it or rely on the United States Postal Service to do my dirty work for me. Three years ago Richard and I had broke up in the very same apartment, leaving me with the ignoble task of returning home by SUBWAY, and here I am again, I sobbed to Richard.
“I worry about you all of the time.”
“You wouldn’t know it from that exterior.”
“You’re my best friend … OF COURSE I DON’T WANT YOU TO GO! I want you to do what’s best for you. You know that. But why will telling you this make any difference?” Richard held me, sobbing. He was crying too.
“Emotions are all that matter in the end,” he said.
“But don’t you see, I CAN’T GET UPSET. Now when I have … HERPES!”
Richard laughed. “I can see you in a cork-lined room, far from the world, insulated, like Marcel Proust, taking sustenance from weak tea.” Richard mad as a hatter, yet perfectly sane.
About a year ago Richard invented the “WAAAAAAH” response. When you just feel like crying you say “WAAAAH.” Richard said it was like a doll, Baby-Crybaby, that you would squeeze and tears would squirt from its eyes, hot, salty tears. Not to be outdone, I invented the compassionate response. When Richard was depressed and I was low on compassion, I would hold his hand and pat it, murmuring, “there, there.” Out at Jones Beach the rest rooms are called comfort stations. I imagine they have an eighty-year-old Jewish grandmother in an overstuffed chair, patting the hands of strangers and murmuring, “there, there.”
Richard and I sat there, screaming “WAAAAAAH, WAAAAAAH” and patting each other on the back of the hand, murmuring, “there, there, there.”
We had a terrible farewell dinner at Tiffany’s and said goodbye. I went back to the subway to face the lights of the approaching train.
JUNGLE DOVE
Joseph Pintauro
REMY LOMBARDI HAD TWO PAPERBACKS in his pocket when he was released from the prison infirmary: Dear Theo, the letters of Vincent Van Gogh, and Halfway to Heaven, a book about Carthusian monks. Remy’s eyes were swollen and bloodshot from the beatings the night before. He was led to a small room where he waited in a chair as his guard, Diaz, dipped a buttered roll into a Styrofoam cup.
For Remy, it was sweet to be in a soundless place. His head had become a bell, reverberating with sharp echoes: men shouting, steel doors clanging, keys jangling, but this room was soundproof and the walls were covered with a dark green vinyl which soothed his eyes.
Diaz’s sparse hair was spun into a black, acrylic-looking cloud, which floated over his balding head. His mustache was so thick it stuck out horizontally. He caught dripping coffee and melted butter with oversized lips. Little explosions would occur in his mouth when his gold teeth caught the glare of the overhead light. The man ate with pinky finger up, shined shoes apart, yet he attacked his roll like a shark. Remy closed his eyes to enjoy the silence, but Diaz, resenting it, spoke out.
“Know why you’re getting this here cell change, Lombardi?”
Remy shrugged, keeping his eyes down.
“You’re going to a two-man cell, the honeymoon suite.” Diaz laughed. “You lucked out, man.” Remy focused on the coffee droplets on th
e floor. Diaz erased them with his shoe. “A pretty man is no good in prison. We gotta keep your dago ass safe, man.” Remy tried to reunite with the silence. “But you gotta help yourself. You get what I’m tryin’ to say to you? You gotta make your cellmate a soulmate is what I’m trying to say. You cooperate with him,” Diaz laughed, mockingly, “and your ass won’t be public pussy no more.”
“Nobody got me yet.”
“Guards don’t always break things up that are happenin’, you know. Sometimes they like a good show.” Diaz smiled. “You don’t get lucky every time around here, you know.”
The door opened and a tall crew-cutted guard entered the room. His name tag read “Washburn.” He had the face of an Olympic swimmer, red-eyed, tired, waterlogged. Dark skin surrounded the man’s eyes, giving him a panda-like countenance, but the tips of his yellow hair caught light and glowed. He wore the sad expression of the condemned angels in the fresco at Our Lady of Pompeii Church near Remy’s apartment in Greenwich Village. It was obvious that Diaz didn’t like this man.
“Are you Lombardi?”
“Yeah,” Diaz answered for Remy, throwing his cup toward the basket. “Let’s go, dago. Up to top ramp.” Washburn eyed Remy with sorrowful curiosity.
“Hold it a second here.” The guard took a yellow paper from his shirt pocket. “This guy originates in this building? Right, Diaz?”
“That’s right.” Diaz let his impatience show.
“What’s the sense transferring him just to another ramp when the same bastards who jumped him are still in this building?”
Diaz’s face flushed.
“He’s going to a different cell …” Diaz answered, picking his teeth.
“How’s a different cell gonna protect him?” Washburn’s eyelid fluttered. “On top of it you got him bunkin’ with Coco here.”
“Oh cut out this shit, man,” Diaz spit out.
“You tryin’ to tell me the warden approved of this?”
“That’s correct,” Diaz said, now growing pale. “Check out the signature.”
“What’s happening here?” Remy asked softly.
“This is so full of shit,” Washburn said, dashing the paper against his thigh. Remy’s mouth had become dry.
“I’m jus’ gonna get another guard to assist me then,” Diaz said, reaching for the doorknob.
“Oh fuck you, Diaz.” Washburn stopped him.
“Fuck yourself, man. I don’t like you mouthin’ off in front of my prisoner, that’s number one, man. Two, this dago’s in deep shit wherever we put him so you gonna assist me or do I call the warden?”
Washburn blinked then grabbed Remy’s arm with a trembling hand. Diaz pulled the door open and the three men marched softly down the corridor, past the noisy cafeteria. One inmate on the breakfast line, knowing the situation, let go a sexy whistle. When Remy, Diaz, and Washburn started up the stairwell, other inmates made kiss sounds.
“Tonight’s the Night,” one inmate sang out. Others made it a chorus. “Tooooonaaaahts da naaaaaht,” they sang. Remy’s eyes darted to Washburn for help.
“You know why you were jumped last night?” Washburn whispered.
“No.”
“The donut incident. You hear about it?”
“What donut incident?”
“Some wise guys in an Italian neighborhood jumped a carload of blacks who stopped to buy donuts on their way home from work. One was killed. So there’s revenge attacks going on in prisons all over.”
“But I had nothing to do with it.”
“They’re just looking for dago virgins.”
“So what does this mean? Where you taking me?”
“Don’t listen to that creep. Shut up Washburn, okay?” Diaz spoke gently to Remy. “You know what they call this tier we’re takin’ you to? Heaven. We’re makin’ you safe, man. What can I tell you? Trust me.”
“Don’t,” Washburn whispered.
The three climbed to the top tier, so high, Remy was afraid to look down.
“Good-bye and take care of yourself,” Washburn said, unlocking the walkway gate. “Things could be worse.” He winked at Remy. “Really.”
DIAZ PUSHED REMY ONTO the narrow ramp that ran for a hundred yards alongside open cells. Washburn locked the gate behind them.
“Walk in front,” Diaz ordered. Remy walked dizzily, fearful of looking down. But if any place in the prison could be called heaven, this was certainly it. The master gate was open and all cells were empty, beds made. It was warmer up there. “Walk to the end,” Diaz ordered. Privacy was the main feature of the cells on that level. They all seemed to float on air looking out to a chasm of light, then to the blue, cement-block wall opposite. Fancy bedspreads, radios, and rugs were in the cells. When they reached the end of the ramp, Diaz pointed.
“Top bunk.”
Remy’s new cell was partially constructed of old black stone. One wall was concave. Obviously, the new wing was joined to the old building at that point. The stone wall was clearly the interior of an old tower because Remy could make out marks along the wall where a stone staircase had been. The cell had ceiling bars to prevent anyone from scaling the stone wall. Beyond the ceiling bars, some ninety feet up, were lighthouse windows that shone with an exciting burst of light. Looking up soothed Remy’s eyes. The light at the top of the tower was unlike anything he had seen in that prison. It cascaded downward into a cloud-like asparagus fem which hung from the ceiling bars. A guitar lay on the bed, and a tape deck was set up with small speakers attached to the wall. A philodendron plant inside a bamboo bird cage was climbing up through the ceiling bars, falling back over and over, giving the cell a partial roof of leaves. The strange light unshackled his nerves. If his eyes were birds, Remy thought, he’d set them loose to fly up, out the tower windows, across the East River, home to Greenwich Village and Little Italy.
“Why am I being put here?”
“How come you got to jail in the first place?” Diaz smirked.
“I’m clean.”
“Innocence don’t mean shit here.”
“Aren’t you afraid I’ll hang myself from these ceiling bars?”
“Hang yourself. If your cellmate don’t like you, your ass is back in the bullpen anyway. You heard those guys on the breakfast line.” Diaz stepped out to the walkway. “We got a good morgue, man. Only you can’t breathe in them refrigerators. It sucks.”
Diaz pulled the master gate, which rolled quietly, then he turned, walking away, softly whistling. Remy listened, staring up at the cloud-like fem till the clamor of footsteps died on the ramp way. Then he lay back on the bunk and blinked at the light. The cell was as quiet as a church. The light at the top of the tower was changing, as if clouds were passing the sun. “God please, lift me up with your almighty hand and put me back in your good world. Why’d you let this happen to me? You want me to hate you? Don’t force me to hate you.” He felt tears coming. He wiped his eyes and mouth with his shirtsleeves and the brightness of Coney Island appeared in his mind, the sand, the ocean and sky, and behind the horizon, the peachy light of heaven. He remembered a priest at Power Memorial High School describing how those who commit suicide are turned into birds in the ninth circle of hell with their feet frozen in ice, and the constant batting of their wings to free themselves only makes the ice colder and this is their eternal punishment. He thought of Maria Goretti who was attacked and raped but who forgave her attacker before she died, and was beatified, canonized and given a Saint’s place in heaven. Remy belonged to the Dominic Savio Club in grade school. He wondered what happened to his lapel pin. He didn’t want to become angry with the saints. He uttered a short prayer to St. Theresa Little Flower:
“Save me from this shit. ”
A loud buzzer rang, the master gate rolled open and hundreds of footsteps began tramping up the steel stairs, drumming on the ramps of each tier. The sound became lighter as the inmates dropped into their cells, softer and softer, until it was just the shuffle of two feet before him.
A light-skinned black man stood looking down at Remy. His hair was all finger waves like old Cab Calloway and his eyes were green. His beard was red and kinky.
“I’m Coco. This is my cell. Here’s your breakfast.” He spoke with a New York City accent.
The black man kept to his bunk the rest of the day, moving his long body only when necessary, his eyes avoiding Remy completely. There was a slow grace to his movements, which appeared to be a learned discipline, a way of undermining the confinement.
At dinner in the mess hall, the two sat together. No one dared to speak to Coco. He ate as if alone, like a king in a private chamber. For the first time Remy felt the pleasure of having no one looking at him. The inmates neither stared, nor winked, nor grinned as usual. Remy ate calmly, not even tasting what he put in his mouth, just savoring the dignity.
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