by Susan Swan
Tim smiles at the emoticon she uses to sign off: Alexis :). If only she knew what hard work the book has turned out to be! He’s too proud to tell her. Not yet, anyhow. He will let it go a few more weeks.
What he has been dealing with is something unexpected: Dale Paul is convinced a prisoner wants to kill him. Tim has weighed the possibilities without coming to a conclusion. There’s no doubt that Dale Paul antagonizes people, and his old friend hasn’t been behind bars long enough to be aware of all the inmate protocols. Or maybe Dale Paul knows and doesn’t think their rules apply to him.
Tim has read about murders in prison, although these crimes usually happen in maximum security, so the best solution is to wait and see. However, Dale Paul’s paranoia has left Tim unsettled. His old friend recently smuggled out two letters to Tim rather than trust the prison’s internal email system. That tells him something.
2
Dale Paul
Monday, April 29, 2013
Dear Tim:
I am well aware this may sound melodramatic, but every morning I awake to the horrifying thought: someone wants me dead. I no longer rush through my duties with the same zesty élan, exhibiting the combination of persistence and mental acuity that compels the scofflaws to sit up and listen. And the situation with the dead celebrities bet depresses me too. It’s been over six months, and not one of our deathbed ten has gone to eternal rest.
One small victory — my doodles have become freer. My aim is always to achieve the cartoony look of a comic book, but these days I feel less constrained by rules. In short, I have discovered the un-mined joys of the amateur, a role that imbues those of us who doodle with hidden power. Into my sketches go all my old familiar executive pleasures, like the satisfaction that comes with problem solving. What’s more, I’m under no obligation to charm sloth heads like Ted Rigby and his military troika. No more second-guessing how I’m going over when I’m making my pitch.
Recently, I’ve started making magician’s handkerchiefs, and on some of these drawings I write arcane messages, the meanings known only to me. Thoughts on how logic drifts to the place where it is no longer logic. Secret, private thoughts that remind me of the daydreaming I used to do as a boy. And hand on heart, gratitude overwhelms me when I think of people like Derek taking the time to view my drawings and say they like what they see. Derek is particularly fond of the sheep with halos.
He often asks what the images mean, but there is no obvious rhyme or reason to the doodles, and that’s what I like about them.
Alas, my stalker has taken to following me down the ancient staircase outside our dorm. The stairs are leftovers from the days when this part of the prison was a sanitarium. The door to the stairs is kept locked because the stairs are unsafe, but it’s easy enough to unhook the latches on a screen window overlooking the landing, and that is what we do in warm weather when we we’re in a hurry to get to Chow Hall. Last week, when I took the shortcut, someone’s long shadow on the stairs behind me seemed to merge with mine before separating again. Perhaps it was a trick of the light, but I hurried down the steps as fast as I could.
And now I always take that route in the hopes of catching him. The stairs are wooden and rickety, and I do my best to hold tightly to the railing, also wooden and also rickety. The slant of the late-afternoon sun through the pines creates frightening patterns around four o’clock, the time of day when the cold mountain air stings your cheek.
It’s then that I glimpse the shadow of my follower on the steps behind me, and my bad, old heart begins beating crazily. It is all I can do to stop myself from toppling over in a faint. I don’t turn around. Instead, I rush to the bottom before my follower has the chance to exercise his nefarious purpose and throw me over the railing.
I know what you’re thinking. So why use those stairs? There are other ways to the Chow Hall. All right. Here is the answer. I am determined to find out who is following me. But each time I am possessed by a wild fear that turning around is exactly what he wants, and that if I stop long enough to see him, he will strike me dead with the lethal tube sock he used in the sauna.
Of course, it is absurd to choose to go down the stairs and then not to turn around and face whoever it is behind me, and each afternoon when I climb through the window onto the stairs, I think, This time you will catch him, Dale Paul! Yes, this time you will stop and see who it is and dare them to strike you. Yet that isn’t what I do. My courage fails at the very moment I need to be brave, and I flee down the last wooden steps as if the hounds of hell are pursuing me. It would be mortifying if it weren’t so preposterous.
Derek, my bunkmate, laughed when I told him about my stalker.
Even paranoids have enemies, mate, he said. But that sounds loony-tunes.
I suppose Derek is right, although I know what I saw with my own eyes.
Yours,
Dale Paul
Wednesday, May 7, 2013
Dear Tim:
My lawyer, Malcolm de Vries, has gone AWOL, so thank you for investigating the possibility of a transfer to another prison. I would prefer Butner, where the Ponzi King is locked up. Or Otisville or even Morgantown, which Derek says is fairly decent. As a last resort you could try Pensacola, an old and ugly prison where the prisoners work at low-paying government jobs on a nearby naval base. Butner doesn’t offer government jobs like Pensacola. Or the cushy perks of a prison like the Milton Hilton in New Zealand, which supplies everything from rugby fields to heated floors in the winter months. As we used to say at school, beggars can’t be choosers, and I will be grateful for anything you can do.
In fact, knowing you are looking into a transfer has been extremely calming. Derek and his yoga sessions are helpful too. He and I have been spending a great deal of time together, hashing over problems with the deathbed ten.
When the singer Richie Havens died of a heart attack last month, my friend Mr. Jack (the gangster) berated me for leaving Havens off our dead pool until Derek had to tell John to stop.
Few of the younger men remember Richie Havens. Nevertheless, “Here Comes the Sun” boomed out of radios in some of the dorms, and a group of older prisoners lit votive candles on the quad. Then they traipsed back inside and traded c-coin like there was no tomorrow.
Now Zsa Zsa Gabor has been suffering respiratory problems. In his latest bulletin on the health of the deathbed ten, Derek noted that she is experiencing the type of heart congestion that only women get. Despite our need for a celebrity death, the news made my spirits sink.
Zsa Zsa possesses the same cat-like eyes as Googie, and I associate her with more innocent times, when I spied on Mother at her makeup table applying her crimson lipstick and gooey mascara. Tilting her head this way or that, she would blot her moist red mouth with Kleenex. Then, administering a quick pat to her blond curls, she would spring to her feet and swish out the door, making it clear to us that her real lover was the heavenly reflection she saw in the mirror.
Tim, I have written the aging actress a letter and sent it off to her agent. (I fear what my interest in her suggests about my psychological state.)
These days, she is rarely seen outside her Los Angeles home. Derek has heard gossip that her younger husband, Frédéric Prinz von Ahalt, is abusing her. I wrote how distressed I felt to learn of her marital troubles and begged her to look after herself.
Not long afterwards a note arrived with a copy of her last memoir, One Lifetime Is Not Enough.
Dear Dale Paul:
You are a darling to write an older actress like me. Frédéric is a difficult man but the report in the Hollywood Reporter was wildly exaggerated. We are the epitome of conjugal bliss.
Yours, Zsa Zsa
In the Chow Hall lineup, I was thinking about Zsa Zsa and her health troubles when someone rudely sucked his teeth in my ear. Who else but Aldo is capable of singing a do-re-mi of human spittle?
Hey, man! Zsa Zsa G
abor is fucked. Aldo winked at me with his drooping eye. Somehow, he has found out that I am a fan of the Hungarian actress.
The husband must be glad, yeah? No more poking that dried-up old pussy. He jabbed me with his elbow.
I, too, have sometimes wondered about Zsa Zsa’s sex life. In their wedding photograph, she wears a pink brocade dress and a matching pink bow has been strategically placed in her munificent blond curls. The groom stands behind Zsa Zsa’s chair, his large, muscled hands resting chastely on the chair’s back, a hair’s breadth from her aged body. Possibly, Frédéric possesses the ardent inventiveness of Casanova, who made love to an aged countess while a fetching young prostitute exposed herself behind the bedroom curtain.
I had no intention of giving Aldo the satisfaction of sharing his concern. I turned my back on him and walked over to the cafeteria tables, where the men sat chattering in excited voices, all the while trading furiously to get rid of c-coin with her name. They haven’t seen her in the sly satirical gem Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood. Nor did they watch her remarkable star turn in The Beverly Hillbillies film.
Well, that is my news for now, Tim. Waiting eagerly to hear how you fare on getting me out of here.
3
NUGENT IS WAITING for me in the visitors’ lounge. He tells me he has heard from the admin at Butner and they have refused to accept my transfer to their prison. Before I can protest, he gives me an old novel about the murder of a girl in the Adirondacks, although I have no interest in reading such a depressing tome, especially one recommended by him. Now, with a little smile, Nugent directs my gaze to a table where a young man in a blue beret sits reading. How did this happen? Am I seeing a mirage? I try the usual clichéd ploys, pinching myself and rubbing my eyes, and there is not a scintilla of doubt. Davie. Here in the flesh. It feels for all the world as if I’ve come back from the dead, although it is Davie who has undergone resurrection. I lurch to where he sits, my bad, old heart beating in double time.
My god! I cry, welling up.
Hey, you’re crying, he said. I don’t believe it.
Do you think I’m inhuman, son?
He makes a downward patting motion with his hand. Not so loud. My name is Asher Shapiro. Ash for short, okay? I told the warden I’m your nephew.
I should wring your neck! But I’m too relieved. Do you understand how sad I’ve been. How sad we have all been.
I get that, but, hey, I had to take charge of my situation. Meredith agreed.
Meredith knows you’re alive? I ask, feeling uneasy.
Yes. Meredith and Tim are pretty happy about it. An old friend of Meredith’s ran into me in France. It was pretty rad. Anyway, when Meredith heard where I was, she persuaded me to come home, and she told me I had to come here and tell you myself.
Thank god! I exclaim. And thank god she has kept her mouth shut about the trust.
Mom says you’re teaching the men in here about money? She was impressed.
Esther knows you’re alive too?
Yup. He takes off his beret and rubs his scalp, and for the first time I notice the way his blond hair is receding from his forehead. My young son is starting to go bald. I take an anxious breath. Davie … The look on his face stops me.
It’s Ash, okay? You can call me by my real name when nobody is around.
Okay, Ash, I had some problems with what Nugent wrote in the New York Times Magazine. He insinuated I was guilty.
And you don’t think you are? He regards me with Esther’s unfathomable blue eyes.
Of course not. I am a victim of prosecutorial zeal.
I don’t know. We’re all guilty of something, aren’t we? he says gravely. I mean, is being guilty so bad?
I’m sorry I cannot do a better job of explaining the delicate equation I carry around in my head. I have my own personal scale of justice, and it balances what I did with what other people think I should have done. Are you with me?
No, I don’t get it. Didn’t you realize what your fraud did to us? How could you be so cruel? His face turns dark and threatening, as if he wants to strike me. Then he composes himself. Let’s talk about it another time, okay? Because there’s something you should know. Surf Song’s been sold, and Janie Tablow, the real estate lady, said I could stay there until the new owner takes possession.
You’re at our beach house on Paradise Island?
Janie said I could live in one of the staff cabins if I did some work on the grounds. Maybe it’s a dumb idea. But Janie is cool with it, and Caroline’s brother is down the beach so I have company. Anyway, I found some textbooks under one of the beds. They’re yours, right?
I read those books years ago, when Pater wanted me to be an academic.
I think back. To please my father, I studied Schopenhauer (gloomy but convincing), Hegel (a thinker with an unforgettable idea), Toynbee (rolling waves of magisterial thought), and Marx (well, enough said). But I liked the course in European literature best.
I can see you as a prof, Davie says. The way you talk. The florid expressions … He pauses when he sees the look on my face. He wrote the word florid in his note asking me to stop phoning him.
Hey, sorry, he says softly. I wonder if you remember this novel? He holds up the book he’s been reading, and I recognize my edition of The Great Gatsby. There’s a lot of underlining, like somebody thought the story was killer.
Davie and his hipster jargon. I clear my throat self-consciously. I have always admired Gatsby. How did Fitzgerald describe him? There was something gorgeous about Gatsby, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life.
Yeah, I can see that. You admiring Gatsby, I mean. What about Roquentin in Nausea by Sartre? I’m reading that novel too.
I prefer Albert Camus to Jean-Paul Sartre. The lugubrious tone of Nausea makes me laugh.
Cool. There’s this crazy section I can’t get out of my head … you know, where a guy feels like he wants to vomit when he looks at a chestnut tree and says that everything is filling up with gelatinous slither. I mean, gelatinous slither? Weird right?
Sartre saw the life force as irrational. And therefore meaningless.
He gives me a strange look, and I wonder if he is thinking how bizarre it feels for the two of us to be chatting about literature, considering he has virtually returned from the dead. Of course, the conversation offers a way back for us both, a method of normalizing our situation.
Your aunt disliked Sartre. She used to say he resented women because men can’t create life.
Yeah, Kis would say something like that. So you’re not upset that I’m staying in one of the old cabins at Surf Song?
I mumble some vacuous reply, my thoughts drifting back to my beach house, with its winding paths through the hibiscus bushes. Obviously, the new owner hasn’t had the chance to pull down the decrepit staff bungalows. Against my better judgment, I let Caroline persuade me to keep those graceless shacks. I demolished the old clapboard house, though, and built a four-storey version of my Hôtel de Ville on Long Island, right down to the Lutron lighting. Caroline holds the bulldozing of the main house against me. It is one of her grievances, like my refusal to give to her fund for the congenitally blind and deaf Great Danes.
When I get out of here, I hope to get Surf Song back. I nod at the vending machines. Would you mind buying me a cappuccino?
He looks shocked. Oh shit. I forgot you can’t have money in here. He walks over to the machine, bouncing up and down on his toes with what appears to be his old pep. Ah, he’s proud of himself. He’s pulled off a public vanishing act with no help from me. My boy is resourceful. Neither Meredith nor his mother give him enough credit.
When he returns with my coffee, he puts a finger to his lips and scribbles some words on the Styrofoam cup: Look under the first garbage bin by the warehouse.
I keep a straight face in case the C.O. standing by the vending machine glance
s our way.
Check under the floorboards, he hisses. Let’s put in some family time online, okay?
The word “yes” comes out in a whisper. Davie is asking for family time with me. My boy, who has been lost to the world, is saying he wants to be close again. My eyes devour his bright, smiling face. If only somebody wasn’t trying to kill me. Oh, Lordy, whoever you are, stop. Grant me the chance to know my son again, and if you deliver this favour, I promise to give you whatever you seek.
4
I AM AT a loss as to what to do about the cellphone until I remember Derek is helping out at the food warehouse. The next day my trusty bunkmate comes back with Davie’s present hidden inside his pants. It took Derek only a few minutes to find the small Styrofoam package tucked under the floor of the industrial garbage bin. Davie-Ash has left a note with the smart phone nestled inside: Have fun with it, Dad. His iPhone comes with something called Gchat. Sequestered in a washroom stall, I follow Derek’s instructions and summon my boy; seconds later, he appears as a blank silhouette.
Good man! You got it working! I’d really like to connect with you Dad! Email works on the cell too but it can’t phone long distance.
Thanks … Ash. How did you get your new name?
Hey, you don’t need to call me Ash here. I found a dead boy with no social security number.
You hacked into social security?
Yup. Stay chill, okay? And hey, I flew back to the Bahamas yesterday. Caroline is flying in from London tomorrow to stay with Charles, and I’m going to surprise her. She doesn’t know yet that I’m not dead. Too bad you won’t be with us. I want to know what you think about The Stranger. Charles says the guy in the Camus novel reminds him of you. The way he goes to his execution, looking forward to everyone hating him: I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the universe … For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate …
