Читать книгу The Graybar Hotel - Curtis Dawkins - Страница 9

A HUMAN NUMBER

The first person I talked to was Kitty-Kat. Kitty-Kat didn’t sound like a Kitty-Kat though, he sounded old and gruff, as if he’d drunk whiskey like water for fifty years. I wrote his number near the dozens of others on the wall next to the phone, but when I woke from a nap the walls were covered with a fresh layer of paint, a pale green over the original orange—like an old bruise or gangrenous flesh.

After Kitty-Kat it was a week before I could get anyone else. I started writing down the numbers in the phone book, on a big ad in the yellow pages for Ritter’s Family Photos. There was no family in the ad, just a house in a valley and a windmill on a hill and a sheep grazing in the front pasture. I wrote the numbers in the open sky above the windmill.

Who is this?

Hey, it’s me, I say. You’re supposed to record your name, so when the person picks up, the generic computer operator asks if you will accept a call from so-and-so from jail. Mine says, Hey, it’s me. Just something I came up with. Not many people know someone with my name, but everyone knows a me.

Heyitsme could be anyone. Some long-missing son, a forgotten uncle, your addict cousin written off as hopeless.

Who is this?

Who is this?

They have to press 1 to accept the charges, spending $2.40 for the first minute, and $0.27 every minute after that, up to fifteen minutes total. Six eighteen is just enough money that during a dead stretch, I worry that no one might answer again.

She read for a long time from Revelation, an old lady with a soft, slow voice: Then I looked, and behold, a Lamb . . . And I heard a voice from heaven . . . These are the ones who were not defiled with women . . . And I saw another angel flying in the midst of heaven . . . And the smoke of their torment ascends forever and ever . . . Whoever receives the mark of his name . . . and behold, a white cloud . . . And something like a sea of glass mingled with fire . . . Let him who hath understanding reckon the number of the beast, for it is a human number . . . I stood on the sand of the sea and saw a beast rising up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns . . . The beast I saw was . . .

I could barely hear her over the two men at our stainless-steel table talking about the inventions that would make them rich when they got out:

1. A desire-transfusion machine that trades an imminent suicide’s wish to die with a terminally ill person’s desire to live. They believed it might be as easy as switching the two people’s blood.

2. Home simple-surgery kits.

3. Anti-tornado bombs.

Little D said from the shower, Thems the dumbest ideas I ever heard.

But I don’t know.

Who is this?

Hey, it’s me.

I don’t know nobody in prison.

I’m not in prison yet. I’m in jail. The two are very different, but people think they’re the same.

Why’d you call?

I’m bored.

So am I. I don’t know what to do with myself since I retired.

What did you retire from?

Had my own auto body shop. Insurance work. Paint and detailing. Or I’d buy totaled cars real cheap and then go and straighten the frame, rebuild it from scratch, basically—pretty good money in that, taking them to the auction. But I had a heart attack and a bypass, so I sold it. Now my wife and me breed these fancy chickens that lay blue eggs.

That sounds nice.

I guess. We’re starting to hate each other. My wife and me. About as much as I hate those friggin’ chickens. I told her, if I can’t work no more then she’s gonna have to get a job, get out of the house during the day. Or I might end up right there with you.

He went on like that for the length of the call, as if we were old friends and he was catching me up on the things I’d missed. He confided that he was thinking about taking up smoking again, despite, or because of, his heart. Either that, or grow roses. Before the line disconnected, I heard his wife enter the room.

Who you talking to? she said.

I have no idear, he said. You want to talk to him? Tell him about your goddamn designer chickens?

I heard the phone move away from his mouth and the silence as he held it out to his wife, just before our time was up and the line clicked dead.

People love to talk—that’s why they answer. I try to listen past their voice and into their home, to the world around them. What TV show is playing? What pets are running around? I once heard a parakeet squawking, “He’s buried in the sandbox.” I listen for the traffic outside, a neighbor playing piano. Once, in a senior assisted-living building, I heard a xylophone being hammered in expert scales. Countless layers of sound make up the world, and I hear it all: voices; vacuuming; traffic through an open window; the hum of washers, dryers, refrigerators, all so slight the sound is barely perceptible.

Kitty-Kat had a busted knee. He said he answered my call because he’d once spent a weekend right where I was—he was drunk and took a swing at his brother-in-law, missed him and coldcocked his sister. What was I there for? he wondered, but never asked me outright. Mostly, he just went on about the right way to roof a house since energy costs were skyrocketing.

He was on Vicodin for the knee, which he hadn’t busted on a roofing job like everyone assumed, but getting out of his Dodge Ram outside his house. He just stepped off the curb and twisted his ankle, which ended up internally screwing up that shit knee. He kept calling it that—that shit knee, like a foreign word he’d learned at war.

He didn’t know the name of the surgery he’d had on that shit knee, but it was done with wires thinner than human hair. And under the local anesthetic he could hear the lasers hum and watch them flicker red, like police strobes glinting off the polished silver of the surgical light. He wondered if he should have been wearing some sort of welder’s goggles, or at least sunglasses or something, you know, for eye protection. Well guess what, he said, he was going to keep an eye out (ha ha) for any future problems with his sight, and then sue those big-shot bastards into the Stone Age.

Had I ever seen The Six Million Dollar Man? You know, with Lee Majors? He’d told people that with all the lasers and the tiny titanium additions, and the round of cortico-what-have-you-steroids, he was part bionic. Not six million dollars bionic, but about ten grand bionic.

He’d said to call back anytime. But his number was gone under that sickly green. This was before I got my pen, a jail-approved ballpoint given to us by the Gideons. The pen was a slender, ink-filled insert wrapped in a thin tube, flexible, so you couldn’t stab anyone with it. We called them “broke dicks.”

I’ve always felt guilty for not calling Kitty-Kat again, like I’ve hurt his feelings. I try it every day, 349-something.

349-1234: The person at the number you dialed did not accept, or the call was received by an automated answering device.

349-1235: The person at the number you dialed did not . . .

349-1236: The number you dialed is a nonworking number.

I don’t have certain numbers to call, you see. I have every number.

349-1238: The number you dialed is a nonworking number.

349-1239: The number you dialed is a nonworking number.

Tomorrow I’ll start with 1240.

Oh, I’m so glad you called. I was just thinking of you. Now where were we—After these things I looked, and behold the temple of the tabernacle of the testimony was opened in heaven . . . and she did not repent . . . I will kill her children with death . . . I will give to each one of you according to your works—Oh, wait just a minute, son, my pie is done.

She put the phone down, I imagined, on the kitchen table, and I heard the oven door open and heard her praising the pie’s flakiness and aroma, the simple perfection of it. And through the phone I could smell the hot, sticky blackberries and the golden crust. I heard the song of a grandfather clock and a semi rumbling past. I closed my eyes and sat at the table in the kitchen of this old lady who loved to tell me about the end of the world in her sweet old-lady voice.

I think she forgot about me, which was perfect. I listened to her hum some tunes I didn’t recognize, and she talked to her blackberry pie as if it was a small child or a puppy: “Oh, you are a nice little yummy thing, aren’t you. You are just perfect . . .”

The computer-voiced operator cut in—you have one minute remaining. Sometimes that minute seems long and drawn-out, and sometimes it is over much too quickly. “You are a little golden circle of sunshine, aren’t you—” and the connection ended.

I hung up just as a skinny, black, effeminate man called Peanut came into the cell, looked around, then fell to the floor and had a seizure. The deputies rolled him in a wheelchair down to the nurse. He returned about an hour later and we were all nervous, thinking every noise was Peanut falling to the floor again. Little D said we were all seizure-shy, like a nervous dog forever jumping at loud noises. I took my seat at the phone.

This call is from Heyitsme at the Kalamazoo County Jail. It is subject to monitoring and recording. Thank you for using Global Tel Link.

Who is this? Fuck it—never mind. Lone Ranger’s on. You ever watch this shit? This geezer channel shows ’em every goddamn afternoon. The original one. The black-and-white one, not the later bullshit ones. You know those ones where he wasn’t allowed to wear his goddamned mask? He had to wear sunglasses because the mask is trademarked or some shit. You believe that fucking political correctness nowadays? Everybody’s feelings—turning us into a nation of pussies.

It’s probably a legal issue, I said. Trademarks and stuff.

No, it’s all bullshit, man. We’re a nation of pussies, mired in bullshit.

A lot of people here watch that station, if that tells you anything.

Who does? The police or the jailbirds? Fuck that anyway. Listen—I’m going to my niece’s first communion at Saint Jude’s this weekend, even though they didn’t invite me. Bunch of bastards. Body of Christ. That priest has always had it out for me. She’s in the second grade, my niece.

What’s your phone number there?

Why? You’re the one who called me.

I know, but I keep forgetting to write down the numbers. Most of these numbers don’t work, and when they do work I get wrapped up in talking, then forget.

Fine. 349-1302. Did you write it down? Just don’t call me all the time, dude. But call sometimes. Next time I’ll tell you how I knew Lance Armstrong was doping because he had cancer in his balls. Just common sense, man.

I will.

Now listen—I’ve been waiting to tell this to someone and you called right on time. I’m at the mall, right? I’m at the bus stop outside Ruby Tuesday’s at Crossroads mall and this fat, old, bearded guy sits next to me, making small talk about what brought me to the mall, the gorgeous weather, the Tigers’ prospects, and the high cost of gas and whatever. So, what do you do for fun? he says.

And I tell him, I like to hunt.

Oh, wonderful, he says. What do you hunt—dove, rabbit, deer?

And I look right at him and say: Fat, white, bearded bastards.

Peanut walked around our cell in a sort of daze that one of the deputies said was malingering with the intent of getting sent to the hospital. He would Malinger With Intent around our four-man cell saying what people say when they answer a call from the county jail. Who is this? he would say. Who is this?

I was jealous that Peanut was said to be Malingering With Intent. It really sounded like something to be.

For the time is at hand! He who is unjust, let him be unjust still; he who is filthy, let him be filthy still; he who is righteous, let him be righteous still; he who is holy . . . I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last . . . The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen. And that, my friend, is the end of the Bible. It’s like the whole thing is a very long prayer, how it ends with Amen. You get that?

I did. But how does it begin?

It’s a fucking assault on the Second Amendment, is what it is. If they can take away the Lone Ranger’s mask, they can, and will, take our guns. That doesn’t mean shit to you, but you might want to know what’s going on out here. I know a couple of militia types, and they are crazy. But Timothy McVeigh, he was framed, you know. A patsy.

There was silence between us for a minute. I could hear a television commercial in the background: Drive a Ferrari like the rich and famous . . .

And then he changed, like a station on TV.

I’m going to come and get you, kid. I fucking swear to God. You’re in there thinking, How’s he going to do that? He don’t know where I lock, he don’t know my name. But I got ways. It’s easier than hell to get in there—you know that already. It’s getting out that’s hard.

Here’s what I’ll do: at my niece’s fancy fucking communion, I’m going to punch the priest and get put in a cell with you, and then I’m going to eat you up like a greasy soup. And while I’m gobbling you up, I’ll tell you how I found you, Mr. Heyitsme. Just kidding, I won’t tell you shit. But I’ll be there next week. Or tomorrow. Body of Christ and all that. Body of you. Amen.

Who is this?

Who is this?

They took Peanut to the nurse again. When he came back there was a cotton ball taped into the crook of his left arm. The next morning the cotton ball lay on the floor, a drop of blackened blood staring up like a pupil in a big white eye. No one picked it up—we didn’t want to catch what he had, whatever it was.

Peanut started gagging and gurgling in between his whispering. Who is this? Who is this? And I figured out he probably wasn’t saying Who is this, but something like Do his bit, or Knew this shit, or, You missed it. After a while it started to infect my head, and to combat Peanut’s refrain, I would say to myself: malingering with intent, malingering with intent, malingering with intent.

Peanut walked two or three circles around the table, then flopped to the floor and someone hit the panic button above the wall-mounted phone. The nurses came in blue scrubs and carried equipment in tackle boxes, looking as if they were on their way to a costume party at a fishing pond. Peanut held his stomach and lurched into and out of a fetal position. He stared vacantly at the wall while the nurses took his blood pressure, pulse rate, et cetera.

I sat at the table watching. You never know when you might need malingering skills, and if Peanut was only malingering, he was really good at it. I was an understudy apprenticed to a master. They wheeled him away, leaving a quarter-size puddle of shiny drool on the floor, which I swept away with a swipe of my flip-flop. Before the streak was completely dry, Peanut walked in again.

I was on the phone trying to find Kitty-Kat when I heard the commercial on TV: Avoid disappointment and future regret—call today. I listened to the info, hung up, and dialed the toll-free number. It was some sort of gold commemorative buffalo coin.

It rang twice, then stopped. American Majesty Keepsakes, she said, How can I help you?

I’m in jail, I said.

Yeah, I heard the machine. My brother’s in jail. I get this call pretty often, though not at work.

I would like to see about getting the coin that prevents disappointment and future regret.

It’s $19.95, payable by credit card or electronic check. Sorry, no CODs.

That’s a pretty good deal for all it promises.

The $19.95 includes shipping and handling. You can get a free one—actually, I’ll be honest, you have to get the free one—for extra shipping and handling. It ends up coming to about forty dollars.

Forty? I can’t really afford that.

Well, you can’t really order anything from jail, anyway. You might as well be on the moon.

For a few days, Peanut moaned and held his stomach. He told the deputy he was pregnant. The deputy walked away, talking on her noisy walkie-talkie, which squeaked and chirped at all hours like a caged monkey. Peanut sat at the table and rocked back and forth. He said he was having a miscarriage or something.

Probably gas, Little D said, hopefully, as if by diagnosing the problem Peanut’s troubles would end and he would shut up and we could all quit wondering what sort of malingering nonsense we were going to have to listen to next.

But in the corner of the cell, Little D confided quietly to me: He might really have something. Like rabies, or AIDS, or syphilis. You better think fast if he tries to bite you.

I gave him a look of disbelief.

I’m just saying, he said. Just kick at him—psychos don’t like to be kicked.

I hit a cold streak on the phone. Several days without a connection. I’d been desperate before and called lawyers—not lawyers exactly, but the receptionists—all of them cynically polite at first, until they determine whether or not you are going to make the firm any money. Usually I hear typing and voices in the background, the busy sounds of a bustling office. Once I said I was the victim of a drug company’s negligence, in jail because corporate goons had framed me.

What medication were you on?

Viagra, I said, which got me fast-tracked to a phone interview with an attorney.

So, what happened with the Viagra? a male voice said.

I got an erection, I said.

That’s what’s supposed to happen.

I hesitated a moment, and heard him sigh before hanging up.

The bail bondsmen you can actually talk to. Or their secretaries if they have one. But more often than not bondsmen are depressing, one-man operations. They’ll listen awhile because technically I could be bailed out, if I had collateral or someone to put collateral up. Or maybe they listen because bail bondspeople are low down on the justice system totem pole, one step above security guards. They never aspired to get accused criminals out on bail. Life didn’t work out somehow, and the failure translates to a willingness to listen a few minutes, even chat a little. They’ll ask where you’re locked, how long you’ve been there, how it’s going. They pretend to care long after it’s obvious there’s no money to be had in you.

Who is this?

Retired men are the most likely to answer, followed by elderly widows. Followed by former inmates, then their family members.

Do I know you? they sometimes ask. I know you, don’t I?

I tell them, It depends on what you mean by know.

A voice came over the intercom—not unlike the generic, computer-voiced, Global Tel Link operator: I had a visitor. Who? I said. Marvin Newhouse, she said.

I didn’t know any Marvin, but I was thinking maybe Kitty-Kat found me, or the guy crashing his niece’s first communion. I buttoned up my orange jumpsuit. I combed my hair. Peanut was on the toilet, moaning. Little D said he was pooping out his baby. I left the cell and followed the deputy to the visitation room, six partitioned windows with phones where you stand to talk.

It’s a long, narrow room that’s always hot from the previous inmates’ body heat, and it smells like a rotting garden hose. I stood at the far window and cleaned the black phone receiver with the front of my jumpsuit. The visitors filed in: middle-aged women with breasts bulging from their button-up shirts like dough rising; a man with a Bible; two younger ladies with the same rising loaves, this time over the sides of their jeans.

Marvin, whoever he was, never showed. I stood there in my own chest-high cubicle with the phone up to my ear wondering who was supposed to be standing in front of me. Whoever it was, at that moment, was walking across the parking lot to their car, putting the key in the ignition, driving away with one last look, like the place was a national monument.

I listened to the mingled hum of the voices on my side of the room and studied my partial reflection in the smudged glass. I could see cloudy outlines of hands and lips, all getting smaller in size farther down the window. I was looking at myself, of course, a transparent portrait brushstroked in greasy smears, but I imagined my friend, Kitty-Kat.

I laughed a good laugh, glad to see him. His knee was doing a lot better, he said, but now he thought he might be addicted to Vicodin.

I laughed again, then apologized, because addiction’s nothing to laugh at. I told him about the madman who was going to crash his niece’s communion, how I had been watching the local news expecting to hear about some dustup at a Catholic church.

I laughed it off, but Kitty-Kat grew worried. He said he would talk to a deputy, an old high school buddy of his, and maybe get some extra protection for me. I was a worthwhile person, he said. I wasn’t damaged, or diminished or anything just for the mistakes I’d made, and seemed to keep making. What would happen is this: in certain people, failure could turn into an asset. Failure could make you a better person. It could turn into success.

We stared in silence a moment through the bulletproof glass. I brought up a new subject to wipe away the silence: Peanut, and his constant antics, about him on the toilet getting rid of his baby. I talked about the inventions those guys at the table had come up with. He said I would really have some stories to tell someday, and all I needed was a stable home and steady job like roofing to really flourish. I felt like he was going to ask me to come and live with him when I got out, help him around the house while his knee healed. But the deputy came in and said time was up, we had to head back. I laughed one last time before following the others out of the hot, narrow room, adding my echoes to the millions already there—thicker and thicker with each new gangrened layer.

On my way back, I had a number in my mind. I could see it as clearly as if it had appeared in the smudged window, written in dull, oily numerals, as if Kitty-Kat had said it out loud, and I repeated it over and over, making sure not to forget it before I could write it down.

I got that broke dick pen and wrote down the number on my mattress, in a little space on the end that my sheet didn’t cover. 349-1568. I mumbled it to myself even afterward, hoping I would never forget it again.

Little D said, You gonna start with that psycho shit now that he’s gone?

What?

You notice anything different?

I looked around the cell.

Peanut’s gone, I said. What happened?

I told you he had something, didn’t I?

It hadn’t been rabies, or anything like that. Peanut really had been pregnant. She was a woman impersonating a man. She was wanted, as a woman, for a long list of nationwide financial crimes involving an Internet charity kidney transplant scam. The nurse told Little D that the pregnancy was probably an echo-something, something where the egg gets caught in the Philippine tube.

Can you fucking believe that? said Little D.

I bet those deputies feel like idiots.

They’re used to it by now.

It was all too much. Too much at once, I thought. I had to tell someone. I picked up the receiver and put it to my ear, still warm from the visiting room. Press 0 for a collect call, the operator said. I pressed 0, then the number I had visualized. I waited.

I was going to tell him about Marvin Newhouse, how I knew it was him. I would tell him about Peanut, and I’d tell him that this time I had saved the number on the end of my mattress, and tomorrow when I called, he wouldn’t ask Who is it? He’d say, Hey, I know you.

I know you, he’ll say, and we’ll talk about Vicodin and roofing. We’ll talk about shit knees and madmen, first communions and the end of the world. I have a lot to say. But first he has to answer.

Answer, I whispered into the phone. Answer.