by Susan Swan
John nods. Aldo, the ignoramus, shakes his head.
In our handicapping system, she’ll get a hundred points minus her age. If she were a hundred years old, she’d get nothing. And if she were over a hundred, she’d lose a point for every year after.
Age determines handicap? Looking skeptical, John unwraps a cake pop.
Age and health. I’m taking off ten points for an illness or a serious injury. Or a drug addiction. I make a church steeple with the fingers of my left hand, the gesture I use while calculating risk. In a doleful voice, I intone Zsa Zsa’s ailments: partial paralysis, the result of a car accident; strokes two years in a row; and a year later a fractured hip followed by a hip replacement; not to mention a hospital stay for high blood pressure.
She’s ninety-five. So what’s her handicap, good sirs?
The light of understanding breaks across my comrades’ faces. The lady is a freaking zombie, right-right? the gangster asks.
John, you catch on fast. Now here’s the gist. I hand him a typed sheet with a breakdown of what a celebrity handicap sheet looks like, and I go over it slowly so even a sloth head like Aldo can follow along.
Name:
Occupation:
Age:
Conditions:
Deductions:
Scoring:
Handicap:
Leonard Nimoy
American actor
81
chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
(COPD)
-20 (illness)
100-81=19-20
-1
Zsa Zsa Gabor
Hollywood actress
95
partially paralyzed, 2 strokes, broken hip
etc.
–50 (multiple conditions)
100-95=5-50
- 45
Mickey Rooney
American actor
92
alcohol and sleeping pill addictions
-20 (for 2 addictions)
100-92=8-20
-12
John eats his cake pop as he rattles off the handicaps in correct order: minus one for the actor from Star Trek who is a known smoker along with minus forty-five for Zsa Zsa and minus twelve for Rooney.
I press on: we’ll print up paper called c-coins with the ten celebrity names, and the men can use them to trade for prison services, like haircuts or tattoos or sessions with a trainee. Clearly, the oldest and sickest celebrity is a potential winner, but there will be surprises on our deathbed ten.
The deathbed ten! He grins in delight. You didn’t get your reputation for nothing, Dale Paul! How are the boys going to pay us?
I was hoping your customers could pay.
So we run two bets? One at Essex, and one at my policy banks?
The inmates will bet for coffee, and your clients outside the prison will pay cash to play. If your people are willing to collect the funds, good sir.
He thinks for a moment. Ever hear about Bitcoin?
As it happens, Bip, my assistant, wanted me to invest in Bitcoin, a new digital currency. I turned him down, even though I admire how Bitcoin works. Imagine that you design a currency; you put it online and give it a name; next you set an initial price for it and talk your friends and family into using it. Soon you are working with an online network that moves money around the world without using the banks. It’s as if one thousand small accounting firms have joined forces to compete against Deloitte.
Dale Paul, you’re going to love Bitcoin John says. The guys who record the transactions don’t post the identity of the people making the deposits.
The account holder is anonymous?
Yeah, nobody knows their name, right-right? That’s why you get a Bitcoin account.
What if Bitcoin drops in value?
We pay the difference. But, hey, do I look worried? The value of Bitcoin keeps going up. You know how much it’s worth today? Twelve dollars and forty cents. I’m betting it’ll hit five hundred — maybe a thousand for a coin. And that means our jackpot could be huge.
I’ll need to sleep on it, good sir.
Take your time. He winks knowingly. Make sure it feels right.
18
THE NEXT AFTERNOON at the pool, I tell John I’m in favour of Bitcoin, and he does a jig on his hollow legs. Aldo, the slimy yobbo, has had a brain wave.
There’s these fuckin’ categories, see? The Selena if your celebrity is capped by a fan. Not nice. But death is death, yeah?
Who on earth is Selena? I ask.
The Puerto Rican singer who got clipped, John says in his gentlemanly voice. Go on, Aldo.
There’s the Sid Vicious category. Yeah? He fuckin’ cut up his girlfriend and let her bleed out in a New York hotel room.
Ugh. How gruesome, I exclaim.
Yeah, brutal. John catches my eye and winks. Some of us older guys remember Sid Vicious. What else, Aldo?
Well, there’s the Owen Hart category. You know who he is, right?
We shake our heads.
He was a wrestler. They put him in a block and tackle and flew him over the ring. He was going to drop down on his opponent, yeah? But the block and tackle broke and he got popped.
Ouch, John says. The Owen Hart. Well, what else?
The JFK. Aldo smirks. You guys know it already. Then there’s Bruce Lee’s kid. You know Brandon? He was shot on a film set. Some goof didn’t know the gun was loaded.
What is it about Aldo? Even when he tries his best, he is loathsome.
19
DEATH IS A USELESS state. Aside from the fortunes that undertakers have made for centuries, death is not productive in any shape or form. It is a wasteful business. A pointless predicament that’s rarely fruitful, no matter how you look at it. Or so I tell myself as I sit in the computer studio compiling the list of celebrities for our deathbed ten.
We are considering a deadbeat hockey player from the Detroit Red Wings, a crippled British physicist, as well as Leonard Nimoy and Queen Elizabeth, whose coronation Meredith and I watched on television. Mother bought us hats designed like the Union Jack, so we resembled the thousands of other cheering schoolchildren we saw on the screen. We liked the ermine-lined capes worn by the lords and the shiny, black-tasselled helmets of the horsemen guarding the Queen, whose gilded coach crawled through the crowded London streets like a giant golden spider with spindly legs.
With some reluctance, I am voting for Queen Elizabeth, along with Leonard Nimoy and my old boarding school friend Earl Lindquist. Yes, Earl, who used to come home with me on Sunday afternoons when none of the other boys at Munson Hall would invite him to their houses; Earl, who gulped down Irene’s delectable turkey with chestnut stuffing while Mother and Pater watched in alarm; Earl, who wouldn’t stop swilling our Portuguese rosé like a veritable drunkard. Earl, the grubby Brooklyn schoolboy who won’t return my phone calls; that Earl belongs on my dead pool, too.
Someone calls my name. Derek is heading my way with John Giaccone.
Hey, guy, John says. What about Tony Gandolfini, I hear he has a bad ticker.
Are you sure about your information, good sir?
Hell, yeah.
Mmm … May I suggest instead the Duchess of Alba? They look baffled, so I explain that the Spanish duchess is distantly related to English kings and quee
ns. Point being, Dona Maria del Rosario Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart de Silva whined to me once too often about being ignored by the American media. The last time Caroline and I suffered through one of her stilted dinner parties, the duchess wouldn’t shut up about it.
If you want a spic, let’s go with our guys. John looks thoughtful. There’s Rita Moreno, right-right?
When I shake my head, he confers with Derek, and then John exclaims, looking hopeful: Hey, guy. Here’s the solution. What about a mystery celebrity? Derek will come up with the celebrity’s name. He won’t tell us who it is. He’ll put the name in an envelope, and the warden will keep it under lock and key. John stretches out his muscled arms, palms up. Maybe some suckers will get lucky.
What a good idea! I reply and they grin boyishly.
Ah, the joys of c-coin! At the door, more men are coming in, brushing snow off their army parkas and waving at me. It’s the third week of October. Winter comes early in the mountains.
Ordinarily, we aren’t allowed to use the Internet, let alone gamble, but help has come unexpectedly from Trish Bales, the English woman doing a bop study on my workshop. She is a timid creature with a moon-shaped face and discoloured teeth. (Why do well-to-do Limeys like Trish avoid the dentist? The state of their choppers is a national disgrace.)
To my surprise, she agreed with me that a teaching tool with references to popular culture would keep the prisoners interested. Her view convinced Nathan Rickard, who has let us use the names of real celebrities in our dead pool. And thanks to Ms. Bales, the men can go online for one hour every day and work on our private website, the one with a flashing daisy logo and cartoon image of feet pushing up daisies.
In a back corner of the room, Trish Bales sits bent over some questionnaires while Martino and a new C.O. named Bowles walk up and down, inspecting the men’s screens to make sure they aren’t watching porn.
Outside the prison window, snow is falling chastely, as if the world has been rinsed of dark motives. As if I, too, am rinsed of dark motives. There you have it: The falling snow. The scofflaws in wet boots and parkas. The handicaps. The spreadsheets. There is a word for what I feel, but damned if I can bring myself to say it.
20
WORD ABOUT THE dead pool spreads through the prison, and the scofflaws pester me with questions about the deathbed ten whether I am in the chow line or playing cards in the Rec Centre. Their excitement matches mine, and I am having trouble sleeping at night so Derek has talked me into joining his yoga sessions. He says the yoga will calm me, and now here I am at five-thirty in the morning, heading out of our dorm with the prayer pillow he has so kindly given me. He nods at me and smiles his grin distorting his facial tattoos so he appears ludicrously sinister.
I follow him down the stairs of our dorm. It is the only time of day when the prison is free from the macho posturing of the scofflaws and their noisy bickering over nugatory trifles.
Another snowstorm is expected. In the mountains, winter is already a dead white fact. This morning, wind screeches about the prison building while inside one of its depressing hallways, three inmates are placidly mopping the floors; the sharp odour of freshly applied cleaning fluid hangs in the air.
The men engage me in animated chatter about c-coin until Derek waves them off, and we stride purposefully on to the common room where John sits on the floor with the other men, his eyes closed, his lips moving in some private incantation. In the darkened light of the room, he, too, appears unfamiliar, like a rough-looking boover boy lacking any sign of his gentlemanly charm. Perhaps I am foolish to trust someone like him. But all of us have moments when we notice the avarice and deceit in other people, and there is nothing to be done except acknowledge what you have seen and move on. Point being, I am a betting man.
What is John doing here? I whisper to Derek.
It helps his back pain, Derek whispers. He gestures for me to sit on the floor, and that’s how I find myself sitting cross-legged on my pillow with the other scofflaws, my fingers cupped awkwardly on my knees. In a rumbling voice, Derek intones Om and so begins his spiritual intercession with the Grand Panjandrum of the Spiritual World, whomever he, or for that matter she, happens to be.
The earth turns, the seasons change, and we follow our breath, Derek murmurs. Feel the sensation of air striking the skin inside of your nostrils …
Oh Lordie. The sensation of air striking the skin of my nostrils. Why did I agree to listen to such gobbledygook? Me, of all people, who hates rising early?
Now Derek is leading us through a sequence of exercises involving flailing arms and legs. And then we are back sitting on our pillows, trying to meditate. It is difficult to concentrate; from the television room comes the syrupy babble of Robin Meade’s voice on Morning Express. Today she is ridiculing the high school principal who won’t let girls wear winter leg-gings. Robin’s comments are followed by explosive giggles from another female newscaster.
Fine. All right. Ignore Robin and her coquettish friend. As I sit there trying to concentrate, a door creaks open and Martino comes tiptoeing toward us, his flashlight throwing beams about the darkened room. The C.O. bends down and whispers something to Derek.
Derek mumbles a thank you and the correctional officer walks off, the halo from his flashlight once again bouncing up and down. All well and good. Then I blink. And blink again. Miniature waterfalls of golden light froth in the air by Derek’s chest and the chests of John and the other men, and before I know what is happening, passages from the New Testament fly into my head, and I hear my Anglican Sunday school teacher whispering in my ear: And these shall go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into life eternal.
Is this a trick? The men sit motionless on their pillows, their eyes closed. Perhaps the tiny shimmers of light come from Martino’s flashlight, although the C.O. has left the common room.
Then, as suddenly as it began, the air stops sparkling like someone has short-circuited the electrical system, and my bunkmate leaps off his pillow, flexing and un-flexing his tattooed arms. He is a veritable rubber man lacking spinal vertebra. Feeling somewhat discombobulated, I haul myself to my feet. The lights have come on and outside the window the blizzard has started. Snow is falling in long, whirling veils of white, shutting out the forest near the prison.
John wheels his chair over to Derek and me. How did it go, guy?
I’m at a loss for words.
Ha ha. Well, that’s a good sign, isn’t it, Derek? Okay, sauna time. Last man there gets to buy me some cake pops. John smiles broadly and heads for the exit, beckoning for me to follow.
21
THE SAUNA IS a nightmare. John and Aldo compete over who can withstand the hottest temperature and throw bucket upon bucket of water on the crib holding the sauna rocks. Martino has come to supervise, and the scene in the wide L-shaped room resembles a tableau from the infernal regions. Other men sit on the wooden benches or stand nearby, while pinkish chunks of arms and heads appear and reappear in the steaming clouds.
Back in our dorm, as we sip Derek’s morning brew of spicy ginger tea, I tell him what happened.
You won’t believe this, Derek, but I saw — uh, some lights in the air.
He gives me a maternal look as he sits turning the cracked prison mug round and round in his tattooed hands.
Maybe you can read human energy, mate, he says finally. Some people have the gift. When things are in balance, it can happen.
When things are in balance. Leave it to Derek to spout spiritual bafflegab, although I know he is only trying to make me feel better. I have wracked my memory for a scientific explanation and come up with zilch.
22
SNOW LIMNS THE roofs of the prison buildings and the warden’s frail chestnut saplings; it clings to the links in the cyclone fences and rises like pale hats from the tops of the guard towers down the road.
By the door of the admin building, the tacky prison
fountain is still tinkling away. To my delight, the broken ice by its bubbling spout has formed itself into the shape of the letter C. Good for c-coin. Good for me. I am nature’s golden boy.
I dust the snow from my jacket and rush through the door. On the black-board a scofflaw has scribbled the quote for the wintry November day: Money is the root of all evil. 1 Timothy 6:10. The accurate quote is, For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. Fine. All right. Let the scofflaws blame the evil of the world on an abstraction like money — if that is their inclination.
The visitors’ lounge is packed, and the screeching male voices convey their excitement. Bailey and Derek are sitting with Aldo and John Giaccone. On their laps, they balance cartons of c-coin. To showcase the idea, the warden has allowed Derek to print a limited run of five hundred c-coins from a copy shop in the town. These c-coins have been reproduced in full glossy colour on a 2.5-x-6-inch lightweight card stock that feels more substantial than regular paper; these are the thickness of a paper bookmark. The other two thousand and five hundred c-coins have been rubber-stamped on the paper surface of our old commissary receipts. We would have printed all the c-coin in the same fashion but for the warden’s restricted budget.
I follow the diagonal of yellow tape directing me to a dais at the front of the room and sit down next to Nathan Rickard.
As soon as the men are quiet, he rises to his feet. Today, you are getting the chance to learn money skills from our resident expert. He looks startled when the men shout my name, clapping enthusiastically.
And now I’d like to introduce the nice lady who is doing the study on our financial literacy program. Ms. Bales will ask you to sign consent forms, okay? She’ll be handing out questionnaires too, so please, no bullshit answers.
Ignoring the hungry stares, Trish Bales gets out of her chair. She is not eye candy exactly, but inside a men’s prison every woman is a goddess. Silence descends on the feverish room; the men shift restlessly in their chairs, their eyes fixed on her breasts beneath her shapeless blouse while she nervously explains what she’s done to get her study approved. As far as I can make out, the ethics of her work had to be approved by dolts at something called the Institutional Review Board.
