Coco told Remy how as a kid, he ran away from Alabama to Harlem when his mother died, and lived with his aunt, and how he witnessed the murder of Malcolm X and put a finger into Malcolm’s blood, then touched it to his tongue. He described Bonita as a beauty, a French woman with high morals. He said he was ashamed of his green eyes because some people thought he had white in him.
The men talked nervously, in whispers, till three A.M., putting forth one little story after another, like little gifts that they could unwrap. Still, not until Coco was snoring did Remy climb into his bunk and lay there, gazing at the moonlit windows, glad to be awake, floating above the black man, imagining those Harlem brownstones and the old black ladies leaning on pillows as they looked out their windows, and beautiful black girls humming the blues from fire escapes. Coco slept, but Remy stayed awake till the light of dawn appeared at the windows at the top of the tower. He lay there interpreting sounds, isolating faraway noises, turning them into something else. Cars on the highway became the swish of a woman’s stockings as she crossed her legs. Guards running the stairs became high heels drumming on steel stairways. He imagined Valetta in the building, wandering past cells in her black coat, carrying her big black fur muff.
BUT THE NEXT DAY, Coco acted as if he despised Remy. The black man’s actions confused Remy. Remy could only assume that Coco felt manipulated by the friendly talk and decided to become hostile again. Still there was no transfer to any other cell and after lights out Remy managed to speak up.
“Hey, Coco? What about this Duane?” Coco didn’t answer. He just took a pill, jumped into his bunk and went to sleep.
Remy used the toilet as quietly as possible. He brushed his teeth, wiping his mouth and hands with a little towel, then read for an hour, but when he looked up, Coco was sitting up in his bunk, masturbating openly, unashamedly pinning Remy’s eyes. Remy walked self-consciously to the gate bars, glancing over the walkway. Diaz’s shadow wasn’t on the ramp. All kinds of things went through Remy’s mind of what could happen. He figured that Coco’s actions were a dangerous sign, a test or an ultimatum, but he knew he couldn’t bring himself to perform anything sexual with the black man. He couldn’t even imagine the words to speak of it with Coco.
“Turn around, Lombardi,” Coco said softly. “Look here.”
“I thought you said Duane …” Remy looked down.
“The biggest joke in prison is a man holding out when he ain’t got a nickel’s worth of leverage. You just look silly, man. You think you can win soft-soapin’ me? Why should I let you do that, man? You dagos would kill a black man for buying a donut. Why should I let you play the fuckin’ stag when you ain’t got a pot to piss in, turkey? You’re just a jail bum, struttin’ in rags on my turf. You don’t own shit. You’re my property. I bought you, Lombardi.”
“C’mon, brother, you don’t mean that stuff,” Remy said softly.
“Don’t brother me.”
“What did I have to do with the donut murder? Shit, I never even got a traffic ticket and I’m in here takin’ shit from you.”
“My black brother never got a traffic ticket. He was bustin’ his hump to feed his kids and he stopped for a lousy donut.”
“I’m innocent. I don’t go by color.”
“I ain’t payin’ Diaz so you can keep your pride. You tell yourself I’m a crazy nigger …”
“No …”
“You look down on me, but you gonna feel this yourself …”
“I don’t look down on you. I listen to you breathe.”
“Don’t give me no bullshit,” Coco shouted.
“I listen to you,” Remy topped his shout, then quieted. “I watch over you when you sleep. I’m grateful to be in here with you. I know the score. I just can’t give you warm skin, man. Don’t you see you’re killin’ me? You want me to turn queer? I’m trying to be a friend, you want me to be a piece of meat. Don’t you believe in God?”
The black man looked at Remy embarrassed, but not hiding it. He leaned forward.
“You turn to meat or die.”
“Duane is out now?”
“He’ll be my cellmate tomorrow.”
“C’mon, man, you been away from Bonita too long,” Remy said.
Coco sprang up and came face-to-face with him, grabbing him by the shirt, bringing his mouth close.
“I know I been away from Bonita.”
Remy ignored Coco’s intense breath and tried to eyeball the man with strength of his own. Suddenly Valetta’s letter came to mind, eviction in two weeks, and that thought became a stepping stone. He wasn’t sure he wanted to take the step, but he summoned up a daring that made the skin on his arms tingle.
“I’ll make you a deal,” he said pushing Coco back uncertainly.
“What’s the deal?”
“Send one pack of Luckies to Valetta, and we got us a deal. Take it or leave it.” Remy shocked himself. Coco’s mouth shaped itself into a hurt little smile.
“And what do I get?”
“You can go down on me.”
Coco’s face turned dark red. His eyes peered deep into Remy’s. “There’s a little hustlin’ whore in you, isn’t there, Lombardi?” Remy swallowed, as if he had opened a door on hell.
“I ain’t got long to live in here. They’ll find me hanging. But my old lady—she’s having a kid and we need the rent.” Remy found himself crying without understanding why. “We need the rent,” he kept repeating. “We need the rent.” The black man understood what he was seeing somehow. He went back to his bunk, the gears of his mind obviously spinning, his eyes stalking. “If you weren’t in this cell with me, you’d be gettin’ your cheeks crowbarred apart by a dozen crazy inmates a night. You know that?”
“I do.”
“I already bought your ass from Diaz and you want me to send money to your old lady?”
“If I had money, I’d have Diaz in here kickin’ your ass all over this cell. If I had money I’d be buy in’ my body back from you.” Remy let tears show.
“It’s not just your body, Lombardi.”
Remy swallowed. “What the hell do you want from me? Out with it.”
The green eyes disappeared under their lids. In a deep and shameful voice the black man said: “I need to balance the pain. You know? The pain my brothers feel. I need to balance the pain so that wisdom can return to the world.” Remy blinked, trying to understand, hoping the statement meant something good. Then Coco opened a box under his bunk and took out two packs of Lucky Strikes. He placed them in a padded envelope, then grabbed a marker.
“Write:” Coco demanded, handing Remy the envelope and the marker. “ ‘Do not smoke. This is money. Slice open the cigarettes.’ Now, put her name and address on the envelope.” When Remy finished, Coco grabbed the envelope, sealed it and gave out a loud whistle, throwing the envelope out between the bars. It fell on the ramp. Diaz appeared and took the envelope. “I want a post office receipt. I want a delivery receipt for this.” As if it were routine Diaz walked away with the small package. Coco faced Remy once again. “My part is done. Now pay up.”
A sharp pain hit Remy in the stomach. Sweat was coming on. He thought: “This is an ulcer or a heart attack, this pain in my chest.” He pushed Coco away gently, just a few inches, in order to put his hand into his shirt, to touch his chest where the awful pain was. Beads of water streamed down Remy’s forehead. He felt drips running down the line of his belly hair. He pressed a finger over his left breast. These pains always went away in a minute, he reminded himself. He forced thoughts of Van Gogh, of dying and going to the stars, but that all seemed ridiculous now. He belched the pain away. The next wave of feeling was shame. He couldn’t hold back the tears. He was afraid of Coco; he was afraid of sodomy and AIDS and he was afraid of wanting to kill himself.
Coco unbuttoned the top of Remy’s pants. Remy blinked away sweat as he looked up. How had he lost himself? His life was over now whether he lived or died. No matter how good the lawyer was, no matter how clear his frame-up, i
t was already too late. The worst had already happened. The bad luck was staring him in the face, biting his face, chewing on him, consuming him. He was a criminal, though he committed no crime. And beyond the screwed-up judicial system, beyond crazed and angry Coco, beyond the poor black carpenter who’d been killed, beyond Valetta and the dead old woman and her crazy killer freely roaming the streets, there existed one stubborn truth: that Remy was just the unluckiest sonofabitch ever to be born on the face of the fucking earth. He cursed God and his grandmother’s saints. He cursed Our Lady of Pompeii and Saint Theresa Little Flower. But he cursed Valetta more bitterly for sending him up those creaky stairs with that old woman’s dinner.
Coco, with trembling hands, was pulling down Remy’s zipper. Long fingers hooked into his belt loops, pulling down trousers and underwear in one motion, over thighs, past his knees. Diaz’s shadow reappeared, stopped, and froze where it was.
“Don’t ask me for no help,” Remy said. “I can’t help you, man.”
“Don’t worry, baby,” Coco said with a strange smile. Suddenly, there was Diaz outside the cell and he had another man with him.
“Hey! Duaaane!” Coco’s voice sailed. Remy reached for his trousers. “Keep your pants where they are. Get Duane in here,” Coco ordered.
The master gate rolled quietly as Diaz pushed the man into the cell. Duane was taller than Coco, a pale, white man of about forty-five with pale eyes like Remy’s grandmother’s, gas-flame blue, fiery blue, eyes that darted nervously between Remy and Coco. His white shirt was fluorescent, as if it had absorbed light elsewhere.
“Go down on him.” Coco pushed Duane toward Remy.
The man had very large hands and a craggy, wise face like the face of a bishop or a monk. His tall crew cut was pure white, fine as feathers, fanning out, catching the blue light from above and glowing over black eyebrows. The man’s eyes offered sympathy as they descended, going down lower and lower until the crop of white hair was below Remy’s waist. When Duane’s large hands grabbed on to Remy’s thighs, Remy threw back his head and sent his eyes up to the blue light, to the God beyond the God who betrayed him, unable to forgive, hating the world and all the creatures in it for failing him. Coco pushed in closer, offering Remy the strawberry lip ice, but Remy turned away from it, gripping the bars behind his back with both hands, trying to imagine it all being over, not just the moment, but the year, the next thousand years, when the other side of the stars would be discovered, the other side of life, the other side of death.
The moment Duane’s mouth contacted Remy’s penis, a shock of pain went through his groin and a weakness in the legs started coming over him. There was a moment of dizziness and then the sensation became erotic and Remy lifted on his toes. The feeling in his body was a momentary power of some sort, an assurance, not from his mind, but from his body’s own hidden wisdom. He wasn’t sure of what to compare it to. He didn’t want to accept it for what it was. So he summoned up Valetta washing her feet again, lifting her legs so high that he could see under them, opening for him a little wider, wider still, and he let his body yield in a sort of kiss. Then suddenly he was aware only of Duane’s mouth working. He blinked, unbelieving, up at the blue light, grateful for an unexpected assurance which seemed to come from beyond them all, grinding gently with it, while his thighs were swelling in Duane’s hands. And then he groaned fearfully, as if his very life were about to leak out. His skin tightened, as if touched by ice, followed by that sensation he never understood, the silent eruption inside, the release, the weakness in the knees, the illusion that his parts were flying outward in all directions, as if pins had fallen from his joints, arms coming off, legs floating away, his head rising up like a balloon, so high he had to reach and grab it by the hair and pull it back down to his shoulders, to hold it down there, hold it . . . safe. And that’s where his hands wound up, screwing his head back on, holding his forehead, running his hands through his hair.
Remy opened his eyes to Coco’s strange smile.
“I’ve had enough. Get rid of this guy,” Remy panted. No one moved. Duane stood up glancing expectantly toward Coco.
Suddenly Coco’s fist crashed blindingly into Remy’s face.
“Ohhh. Ohhhhh …” Remy groaned.
“Christ, what’re ya doin?” Duane protested.
“Ugh. Uggghh.” Remy heard his own groans as if they were coming from someone else. His nose and eyes, glowed in one massive pain. He tasted blood in his mouth. Stunned, Remy felt his body being turned so that he was looking through the bars now, face-to-face with Diaz who reached in and pulled Remy’s arms through the bars, handcuffing them above the elbow. Before he could utter another sound, a six-inch elastic bandage was stretched over Remy’s mouth and nose, making it impossible to breath. Diaz tore the bandage to below his nostrils, and Remy gratefully sucked in air. As his knees and ankles were being strapped to the bars, Coco’s fingers pushed drug-soaked cotton up one of Remy’s nostrils. As he sucked air through one free nostril, his heart began to clang, the veins of his head to swell. He was losing vision, barely aware of a cold hand slapping grease between his buttocks. He felt the penetration of a thumb, then the thumb pulled out. Coco’s hands gripped the bars at either side of him and unbelieving, Remy felt the pressure of a cock between his ass cheeks, finding his rectum, then sliding inside. Remy’s muscles were powerless to prevent the invasion. Coco entered him with sharp, cruel speed, upward as far as he could go. Remy screamed with the sudden pain but the sound reentered his lungs, hurting his chest. Coco savagely grabbed at pleasure, panting into Remy’s ear: “When you go back to your people, tell them this is what happens. And I don’t just mean you dagos. I mean the white man, the white man all over the world. Tell ’em you got this because you’re white… . White. White. White. That’s right. Open that ass. Open it. Here I come, baby. Here I come …”
Diaz was looking into Remy’s eyes, smiling. “Trust me,” he whispered, making kiss lips.
Coco removed himself from Remy’s body with suddenness, then walked to the toilet. There was a moment of silence then the noise of his pissing echoed across the ramp. “Help yourself, Duane,” Coco said. “Have your fun with him.”
Remy felt Duane’s hands wiping sweat from his forehead.
“Take off the cuffs, Diaz,” Duane ordered in a whisper. When Remy’s knees and arms were free he fell backward into Duane’s arms. Duane’s lips touched Remy’s ear. “Easy, son. Easy now.” Duane’s breath smelled like tree bark. The man stuck a small pill in Remy’s fist. “Take this. You’ll sleep.” In a matter of seconds, Diaz and Duane were gone.
The pain in Remy’s body was overshadowed by the pain of his mind. All civilization was slipping, being sucked into its own asshole. All history, Christ, all the art, the Woody Allen movies, TV evangelists, Power Memorial, his life, all was fake, all shallow, all waste, all sucked out through a tiny donut hole in his mind. He was worse than dead. Who he was, was gone. What little was left, he was afraid of. There could be no funeral, no mourning, for no one would notice the death except himself.
Coco stared with stunned, moist eyes from out the shadow of his bunk, until he fell asleep. Remy stood frozen against the bars for an hour before discovering Duane’s pill in his hand. He gratefully swallowed the thing and climbed into the top bunk where he fell asleep numbly, without hope and without fear, unable to forget the scent of Duane’s whispers.
THAT NIGHT REMY DREAMED he was hosing down the grape arbor behind his grandmother’s record store on Sullivan Street, where wide cheesecloth lay across the arbor beams to protect the fruit from soot. Stained purple and rose, the cheesecloth lifted like long translucent curtains frightening the pigeons upward through tiers of clotheslines, until the birds burst into a clean sky. A soprano sang Puccini’s “Un bel di” from one of the upper windows. Her voice wavered down through the clotheslines. There were flies where the beer had spilled the night before when the grape crushers had celebrated, playing poker and smoking DeNobili cigars. Remy zapped
the flies with the hose, making rainbows, letting the icy wetness spray back into his face. The sun snaked down through pink and orange sheets and towels, turning the yard into a bowl of color. Dahlia and zinnia plants were still in bloom in his grandmother’s beds, tired after a long summer, so he put a finger over the nozzle, baptizing the plants with a fine spray. Then the cellar door sprang open and the odor of wooden barrels rushed into the yard. Saint Francis of Assisi climbed out, with birds and rats clinging to his frock. The saint brushed himself off and a swallow fluttered out of his sleeve, zooming up into the flapping clothes, and the saint laughed in an effeminate voice.
“Summer is over, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Remy answered politely, not looking into his eyes. But the odor of the cellar was growing too intense to ignore. Remy looked down, into the dark mouth of the cellar, and suddenly: “Salvatore … Salvatore” his grandmother’s voice called out from the depths. Salvatore was Remy’s real name. He twisted the hoze nozzle, dropped it and stepped cautiously down the cellar steps, squinting in the darkness.
“Veni ca. Com’ere,” a woman’s voice called in dialect from within. He walked blindly toward the voice.
“Gran’ma?” Feeling his way around the pumping oil burner, he reached the steps to the sub-cellar where the wine was kept. On his way down a hand touched his face, as fragile as a moth wing. He reached to it. He knew it was his grandmother. He knew by the smell of her apron. He kissed her palm.
“Che sucese?” he asked in a friendly whisper. What’s up?
“Beve” she said. Drink. He felt a glass touch his lips. He tasted. It was her wine.
“Buono?” the old woman asked.
“Si. Saporito.”
“Allora, beve ancora.” Again, she poured.
“No. Basta.” He pulled the glass back, but she kept pouring, spilling wine on his shirt, trousers, and his shoes.
“Geez, Grandma.” He was annoyed with her.
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