And West Is West

by Ron Childress

  Ethan is shivering now. The blowing air vent is chilling him and he gets out from under it. Standing, he can see that the line-busy indicator on Ann’s phone is lit—Wagner’s call. After a minute, Wagner is still talking and Ethan is still hovering. Ann looks up from her keyboard though her fingers keep typing. “It shouldn’t be long. He does know you’re out here. You can have a seat.”

  Ethan gives Ann a resigned smile while thinking of his ex-supervisor, Dwayne Hoke. One of Dwayne’s power plays was to make his subordinates wait. “I’ll just stand a while. Unless you mind.”

  “Suit yourself,” Ann says, assailing her keyboard. She must type 120 words per minute, like a computer coder on amphetamines.

  Ethan puts down Zoe’s cremation urn and leans left and right to loosen his spine. His vertebrae crack and he stays standing to burn off his anxiety. By the time the light blinks out on Ann’s phone, his back is stiffening again. Wagner and whoever Daugherty is have had a lengthy talk—most likely, Ethan thinks irritably, so Wagner could demonstrate how irrelevant Ethan’s time was compared to someone of importance.

  Ann’s intercom buzzes.

  “Yes, sir,” Ann tells the handset, her manner militarily precise. Upon hanging up she offers Ethan an apologetic expression. “Warden Wagner says he can’t authorize an inmate visit on an hour’s notice. You’ll have to come back tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  Ann’s face tightens. “Mr. Winter, the rules say you need to apply for a prisoner visit a month in advance.”

  “The problem is”—Ethan leans over her desk—“I’m here about a death in the inmate’s family that took place three weeks ago. So how could I have applied for a visit four weeks ago?” While Ann absorbs Ethan’s logic he realizes that he’s being a Hoke, an unnecessarily aggressive asshole.

  “You know,” Ann says, “the warden is already giving you VIP treatment. Usually special visits like yours have to take place on visiting days—on a Saturday or Sunday. The warden is allowing you to come on a Friday.”

  “All right,” Ethan says, capitulating to her reasonableness. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”

  “Nine on the dot,” Ann says. Then she studies the ash urn that Ethan has placed on the corner of her desk. “That’s not for Donald Aldridge, is it?”

  “Is that a problem?”

  “The only items you’re allowed to give prisoners are food from our vending machines or nonpicture books. You know, like Bibles.”

  “Oh,” Ethan says. “But—”

  “No, sir. There’s no way you can leave behind anything like that.” Ann begins to square the papers on her desk. “And about tomorrow,” she says, looking uncomfortable. “We have your New York address, but the warden wants to know where you’re staying in Florida. I mean, you know, just in case.”

  “In case? Of what?”

  “In case of . . . gosh, I don’t know. I mean, the warden . . . he’s in charge of three hundred staff and sixteen hundred prisoners. That’s a lot of responsibility.”

  Ann would make a lousy poker player. “I still don’t understand,” Ethan says.

  “Warden Wagner,” she says, eyes averted, “has his ways is all.”

  “I guess I’ll find out what they are tomorrow.” Ethan gives her his hotel and goes to the door.

  “Mr. Winter!” Ann says.

  Turning back to Ann’s desk Ethan sees that, somehow, he’s forgotten Zoe’s urn.

  CHAPTER 49

  Pompano Beach

  By midafternoon Jessica has been called back to Phantom Diner for an interview with the boss. One eyed, crop haired, and ramrod straight, Wilton Sheeler admits to having piloted Phantom jets in Vietnam, hence the name of his restaurant. Then he asks Jessica what it’s like to drive a bird remotely—irrelevant though it was, she had included her drone flight experience on the job application.

  “Sometimes you feel like you’re right up there,” Jessica answers. “But not usually. Mostly you’re sitting in a chilly trailer watching nothing happen on the monitors.”

  “Even so,” Sheeler says, his good eye squinted, “don’t you think waiting tables is going to be too much of a come down for you, Sergeant?”

  “More likely it’ll be a comeback,” Jessica says.

  Sheeler seems sympathetic. “I’m not even going to ask you what you’ve been doing the past year. We’re short handed. How about can you start tomorrow night?”

  “I can, sir,” Jessica says, just managing to restrain a salute.

  On the bus ride home, she finally reaches Miss Shelly.

  “Seems like the reaper works both ways,” Shelly says. “When your time is up he’s going to take you out no matter what. But try to hurry him along before then and you’ll just grow old waiting. What the hell. I’m even going to put myself back on the kidney wait list. Might as well try to live all I can.”

  “Me, too,” Jessica says.

  “You have a home here if you ever come back.”

  “Thanks. Thanks for everything you gave me.”

  “You kidding me? More like thank you for all you gave us. Newt, he really loved you.”

  “Oh, Shelly . . . ,” Jessica says, wondering if Newt might have tried harder to live if he knew that Shelly would end up alone. That Jessica wouldn’t be there for her.

  “I’m still here,” Shelly says into Jessica’s long pause.

  “I’m glad you are.”

  CHAPTER 50

  South Beach

  After returning from Seminole City and settling Zoe by the window in his hotel room so that she could look out over Collins Avenue, Ethan fully reconnects with his phone.

  “Dude. Let’s talk,” reads his latest email alert. It’s from Alex.

  Alex’s dude takes him back to their college days. The term was anachronistic even then, so, of course, Alex used it ironically. These days, though, Alex employs his dudes mostly when he wishes to remind Ethan of their long friendship.

  Abandoning Zoe by her window, Ethan finds his way to a beachside restaurant. The hostess seats him under an umbrella on the sidewalk, and after the waiter takes his order, Ethan looks at his email. Saving but not reading Alex’s messages, he begins deleting the dating, diet, and Cialis spam when he stops at a curious subject line—“Yo! Homie!” It’s John Guan.

  His food arrives and Ethan puts his phone face up on the table. He takes a bite of the burger, and then uses a clean pinky to tap open the email.

  Buddy,

  Sergei’s putting on the pressure. Wants you to sign ASAP. Told me to get you hard. So let me tell you what we just got in. Fucking quantum mainframes. Bitches come out of Canada. I don’t know if these boxes are really doing quantum whatever at the atomic level, but they scream like thousand-dollar whores. Combined, we are talking a hypothetical twenty petaflops at six gig, you hear. Give me a break. Get your ass out here and let’s have some fun.

  Smell ya later,

  The Guanman

  Ethan deletes the message and scrolls to Alex’s email. Alex is sorry for talking shit. He respects Ethan more than anyone he knows. He feels guilty about not coming home for the funeral. He says that Ethan should take Sergei’s job offer. That Sergei is okay. Except that he might have slept with Juliette. Though this was before he and Juliette met. He thinks. He doesn’t know. “Skype me, dude,” he closes. “Anytime, day or night.”

  Alex’s operatic, egocentric life is too much for Ethan right now. There are things to finish here in Florida before he can refocus on his old life. Or does he mean his new life? Will it be Sagaponack after all? Ethan taps Reply and thumbs an excuse. “Dude, trashed my laptop. Back in city soon. Talk then.”

  Ethan takes another bite of his burger and watches a cruise ship depart from the Port of Miami. He thinks of Walter and Elizabeth Leston traveling the world one last time on such a vessel. And this brings him back to Zoe’s father, a convicted murderer, Don Aldridge stuck in a cell and going nowhere. What good can it do for Ethan to visit such a man?

  CHAPTER 51


  Pompano Beach

  “Don’t you look nice,” Kelso says as Jessica walks up. Kelso is giving his yard its usual late-afternoon watering.

  “Job interview,” Jessica explains.

  “Did you get it?”

  “I did.”

  “Congrats,” Kelso says. Then he takes something from his back pocket. An unopened letter. “This just came. It’s got your apartment number. Ain’t anyone you know, is it?”

  The handwriting on the envelope is unfamiliar, almost a printed calligraphy. It does contain her apartment number. But it’s addressed to an Arturo Ramirez in care of Kathleen Baker. Jessica doesn’t know an Arturo Ramirez; Kathleen Baker, however, is her aunt in Ocala. The return address says Hector Ramirez, Seminole City Correctional Institution.

  The letter is what Jessica has been waiting for. She had sent a “Wish You Were Here” postcard to her father’s cellmate, writing on it only “Don’t worry” and a nameless return address, her current address. Hector, the professor, had figured it out, or shown it to Don, who recognized her handwriting. A line of secret communication to her father is open.

  “It’s mine,” Jessica admits.

  Kelso gives her a look. “You know, I never did a tenant screening to make sure you were who you said you were. You’re not going to disappoint me, Miss Aldridge? Or is it Miss Baker?”

  Jessica holds Kelso’s gaze. She is not a good liar, but the fib she invents is close to the truth. “Baker is my aunt’s name. My dad isn’t supposed to write to me from prison so we send letters through his cellmate and disguise things.”

  “Uh-huh,” Kelso says a little skeptically. “And what did your dad do?”

  Jessica doesn’t speak for a few seconds. “He’s jailed for murder.”

  That the offense is extreme seems to relax Kelso’s suspicions, as if a liar would have downgraded the crime to a lesser felony. “Shame about that.”

  “Yes. He’s all I have now.”

  “What about your aunt?”

  “She’s too religious for me,” Jessica says, easing herself toward the staircase to her efficiency.

  “I hear you on that,” Kelso says. “Your aunt and my wife’s family, both.”

  “Yeah,” says Jessica, pausing on the stairs as though she’s not trying to escape further interrogation. Then she starts climbing again. “Sorry, Skittles must be dying for a walk by now.”

  When she reaches her landing, Kelso calls up. “That reminds me, there’s one more thing I was thinking.”

  “Oh?” Jessica says. Putting her key into the door lock, she is just able to stop herself from rushing inside to peace.

  Kelso, large bellied in his cabana shirt, is smiling up at her. “Oh, it’s just about Skittles. Why don’t you leave her with me when you go to work?”

  “I’ll be doing a night shift.”

  “That’s no problem. Me and the wife can use the company.”

  Closing the door behind her, Jessica is too tense to read the letter right away. She peeks from a window to make sure that Kelso is no longer outside and then escapes with Skittles for a walk. They go all the way to the public pier, the old fishing pier she liked visiting as a girl. But it’s a dollar for sightseers now and no pets are allowed. So she and Skittles stick to the sidewalk, which is separated from the beach by a coral-embedded knee wall and a barrier of sea grape. When the trees’ twisted trunks thin and Jessica can see down to the surf, she steps over the wall and has Skittles jump it, too. Settling themselves on the sand, the dog props her head on her paws and Jessica leans back against the wall. In the late-afternoon light, breakers shimmer a hundred feet offshore and Jessica watches the ocean. Then she takes out Hector’s letter and reads.

  Dear Nephew,

  Your father tells me that you have a new love in your life and no longer stay at home. Thus I take it upon myself to write directly to your new abode in care of your girlfriend. Hello, Miss Kathleen Baker. I hope you do not mind my contacting my nephew through you. I’m afraid that you are the only trustworthy means of reaching him that I can think of, if you take my meaning.

  Nephew, we have much to discuss. Yet I feel as though I can best sum up my thoughts by recounting a tragic event in the life of another. A man whom I shall refer to as don Malagueña—thus to honor a gift of music given to him by his deeply loved daughter, a child for whom his heart, like King Lear’s, aches, so many tribulations has he caused her.

  One moment, please. This don Malagueña, standing here by my shoulder, is complaining that this letter sounds convoluted. Gobbledygook is what he calls my sentences!—a criticism heard by many professors. But the don should know that I cannot communicate in a mode less baroque. If I did, then some unwanted eye, that panoptic reviewer of our prison missives perhaps, might suspect these words to be not my own. For the sake of a necessary obfuscation, please bear with the lingo.

  As I was saying, Nephew of mine, before my amigo don Malagueña interrupted, he has experienced much upheaval of late. Principally, he has received a visit from an unexpected pair, a Mutt and Jeff wearing serious black suits and badges, who roughly interviewed the don in connection with an absent person—the very daughter for whom he pines.

  Thus unfolds the tragedy, Nephew. The tragedy of an enforced separation. For despite our Lear’s despair, despite “his wish to pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh at gilded butterflies with his lost Cordelia,” despite all this, if our don Malagueña could utter direct words to his child, he would ask her to harden her will. He would advise her against any closer approach. He would warn that she cannot visit him without consequence. He would counsel a retreat into the shadows. He would assert a desire that she remain aloof from the cavaliers known here as Mutt and Jeff, dangerous men who would take her from her life to destinations unknown, to a cell perhaps akin to his own. Such a tragedy, the don declares, would be far more lethal to his spirits than even the miserable lacuna of his Cordelia’s absence. In brief, “follow him not, stay yourself” are the sad words he would paraphrase to her.

  Now, in humble fashion, dear Nephew, I end my letter. I trust that there is in don Malagueña’s circumstance a lesson for you. What this may be, I cannot judge. I am merely a presenter of particulars. I leave their unraveling to others. And so, from our cell, we send out a wish for your well-being—the don and I.

  Your adopted uncle,

  Hector Cabrera Domingo Ramirez

  CHAPTER 52

  Seminole City

  “The rules are simple,” Ann says. “Though this is a special visit, you’re to have no direct contact with the inmate. You’ll be talking through a glass barrier on a phone. Keep in mind that everything you say will be monitored, so no jokes about saws in cakes or anything.”

  It is 9 a.m. on this Friday morning. Ethan Winter has returned to Seminole City Correctional despite a brief reconsideration yesterday. If he doesn’t owe it to himself, he owes it to Zoe to finish what he’s started here—whatever this may be.

  “If you’ve no questions, we’ll be on our way,” Ann says.

  “No questions,” Ethan says.

  Ann picks up her phone and presses one of its function buttons. “I’m taking Mr. Winter over now, Warden.” Ann listens for a second and then hangs up.

  “I’m really getting the VIP treatment,” Ethan says.

  Ann gets up from her desk but is not looking at him when she replies. “We try to be sensitive when an inmate’s suffered a death in the family.” Then she leads Ethan into the corridor.

  Watching her slightly ahead of him, Ethan fixates on the woman’s rust-colored hair—he can smell its fresh dye. Other random details imprint on his senses. A dent in the exterior exit door. The swelter of the outside heat. The raucous buzz of cicadas. They follow a concrete sidewalk and go completely around the building until they reach a door marked VISITATION CENTER. There must be a direct route through the building, Ethan notes, and why they didn’t take it seems strange—maybe this has to do with the inscrutable methods of Warden W
agner. Ann leads him into a steamy entry hall that smells of sour laundry.

  “Hi, Todd,” Ann says to the sweating, cannonball-shaped guard who’s intercepted them.

  “Ma’am,” Todd replies. Then he turns to Ethan. “Assume the position,” he says in a bored voice.

  “Pardon?” Ethan says.

  “Pat-downs are standard procedure,” Ann says. “Just like at the airport.”

  Ethan spreads his feet modestly and puts out his arms. The guard frisks his upper torso then goes down on one knee and slides his hands up and down a pants leg, which makes Ethan feel like he’s crossing a divide. What’s next—a strip search, a delousing shower, incarceration in a cell? The thought of being stuck in here makes his bladder go weak and he must count out the seconds until the guard is done with his other leg. Fortunately there’s a men’s room a step away.

  “Okay,” says Todd. As the guard backs off, he eyes Ethan critically.

  “Excuse me,” says Ethan and steps toward the lavatory.

  “Hold up, pal,” says the guard.

  But Ethan is already pushing into the restroom . . . where a linebacker-size man in a black suit blocks his rush to the urinal. The man’s small eyes pretend not to see Ethan as they maneuver around each other. Oh, hello, Ethan is about to say, thinking he might have seen him before—wait, was it last night in the hotel lobby? But the man is out the door.

  “Sorry,” Ethan tells Ann upon exiting the bathroom. “It was an emergency.”

  “Inside this institution,” Ann interrupts, not happy at all, “you will need to pay attention to the rules. When somebody orders you to halt, you halt.”

  “Oh. Okay,” Ethan says.

  “Let’s go.”

  Ann brings Ethan into what could be a college seminar room set up with tables and chairs. There’s even a blackboard, though Ethan imagines that it’s for announcements not lessons. The only classroom anomaly is the steel mesh shielding the windows on the inside.