“Stand around in the yard? It’s your call, Mrs. Bliss, but not all these guys are as civil as yours truly. Not everyone here is in for a victimless crime. Ain’t all of us forgers, what I’m saying.” He winked. “Some of these characters ain’t seen a woman in a long time.” Quite suddenly Mrs. Ted Bliss was alarmed. She was well into her seventies and what he said seemed one of the cruelest, most patronizing things anyone had ever said to her. So much for men’s bravery and nerve. Mrs. Bliss felt quite ill and turned to enter the building. The driver touched her arm as if to stop her. “Hey, no, I’m kidding,” he said. “It’s like they say in the papers. The place is a country club. You see anybody with his back on a bench lifting weights? You see a single tattoo, or some bull con make eye contact with some cow con? No, Mother, you stay outside and enjoy the fine weather, I’ll go tell Señor Chitral you’re here.”
Before she could object the man had disappeared. Terms, things, conditions, had certainly changed, but Mrs. Bliss could not have said what or how. Of course she felt odd standing by herself out in the prison yard—she was sure that’s what it was; dozens of men dressed in what, despite the neat, neutral appearance of their cheap, open white dress shirts, tan slacks, and inexpensive loafers, could only have been uniforms, loitered or strolled about the quadlike yard like students at a university between classes—but not in the least vulnerable, as safe, really, as she would have felt at the Towers. (And it was a fine day. It seemed strange to Mrs. Bliss that they could have stepped into a car three hours ago and stepped out again three hours later into the same fine weather. This was a penitentiary at the edge of a swamp. How could it have the same climate as the world?) She hardly believed she was in a prison among desperados and villains. People conducted themselves in perfectly ordinary, orderly, civilized ways. They might indeed have been scholars discussing the issues and topics, illuminating for one another the ramifications and fine points. Dorothy wondered if the inmates had “quiet” or “free times” imposed on them like children at summer camp, say, or if this was the way they walked off their lunches. There couldn’t have been more than forty-five or fifty of them about, perambulating what were more like kempt grounds than anything as sordid as a prison yard. She wondered if the rest of the population might not voluntarily have gone back to their cells—rooms?—to nap or write letters. It certainly wasn’t what she expected, or like anything she’d seen in the movies. Yet it was a prison yard. She saw guards with rifles, with guns in holsters, and all the rest of power’s lead and leather paraphernalia. They weren’t on the tops of walls in little tollbooths on watchtowers, though, but walked about, almost mingling with their prisoners. If anything should happen, thought Mrs. Ted Bliss, the guards would be in one another’s way. Everybody would be in everybody else’s line of fire. Yet neither guards nor inmates seemed particularly wary. Individuals greeted each other easily, indifferent as old acquaintances, almost, she thought, the way residents of one Towers high rise might say good morning and ask after someone else’s health who lived in a different building. What they didn’t show you in the movies was how ordinary it all was, the simple, edgeless decency of people who had been arbitrarily thrown together. Or was this simply the cream of the crop, the best a place like this had to offer?
They greeted Dorothy, too, some of them, inmates as well as guards, and inquired, solicitous as clerks in department stores, if they could help her.
“Oh, no,” Dorothy told them, “thank you, I’m just waiting for somebody.”
They were charming, charming. Of course, Chitral had been charming, too.
A guard came up to her.
“Excuse me,” he said, “I understand you’re here to see someone. It could be a while. Bob Gorham’s fixing to practice his touch-and-go’s in a few minutes. He’s got a beautiful day for it. Why don’t you come watch? Rodge’ll let you know when your party shows up.”
“Rodge?” Mrs. Bliss said.
“It’s Roger. Rodge is just what they call me,” a second guard said.
“Come on,” the first guard said, “runway’s round the side of this building.”
Mrs. Bliss went with him. Most of the convicts were headed in the same direction. It wasn’t a long walk and the guard was careful to set his pace to Mrs. Bliss’s. In minutes they were within sight of the runway. “We can stop now,” the man said. “We’ll be able to see just fine from right here. Plus this way, when your party comes, you won’t have so far to walk back.”
“That wasn’t far,” Mrs. Bliss said.
“Well, I know it,” the guard said, “but…I’ll be honest with you. You promise not to tell?”
“Tell what? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Bob’s a square shooter. Well, for someone of the criminal classes, I mean. But the true facts of the case is that this is the first time he done this without his flight instructor riding shotgun. There’s always the possibility that him and fate could run afoul. From here you get a good enough first-rate view, but you’re still standing far enough back and to the side of the airstrip that if he loses control or his engine stalls and his plane, God forbid, drops out of the sky you’ll be protected.”
“This happens?”
“Could happen, could happen, but it won’t. One-in-a-million,” he said dismissively.
Mrs. Bliss was reminded of Hector Camerando and his talk of long shots and locks and fixes. What, did most people live beneath such heavy protection? Mrs. Bliss couldn’t remember when she hadn’t played cards. Poker, bridge, the rummy variations. But for her, for all of them, the stakes had always been the coffee and coffee cake, the sweets and kibitzing and gossip and conversation. She couldn’t remember the size of the biggest pot she’d ever taken or even, over the years, whether she’d won, lost, or broken even. Perhaps she was foolish, she thought, not to keep better records.
But then, about fifty yards away, she saw a man in an inmate’s vaguely preppy uniform, wearing goggles and a tight, old-fashioned cloth aviator’s cap on his head, climb into the cockpit of a small, single-engine plane. A moment later Mrs. Bliss heard him start up the engine.
“But isn’t he a prisoner?” Dorothy said.
“Bob Gorham? Five to ten years’ worth. He’s got but months to serve before he’s up for parole, but shoot, I guess he was bored.”
“You mean it’s only a few months until he gets out and he’s taken up flying?”
“Got a beautiful day for it. Beautiful day.”
“The government pays a professional instructor to teach him to fly?”
“Heck no,” the guard said. “Taxpayers’d never stand for nothing like that. No, ma’am, there ain’t no professional instructors. We had a guy here used to drop dope on the beaches. Flew his own plane. That con taught another con and that con taught the next. And so on and so forth. It’s a wonderful program.”
“Where do the planes come from?” Mrs. Bliss said, although she knew the answer before she asked the question.
“Government confiscates them,” the guard said levelly, and looked the woman straight in the eye.
He knows about the LeSabre, Mrs. Bliss thought, shuddering in the perfect weather.
Then the plane, gathering speed, started to move down the runway. Soon it was in the sky. She watched it turn in a wide arc, bank, and come in for a landing. It touched down and immediately took off again. Mrs. Bliss’s stomach tightened. Her throat burned with bile. Far off, the convicts cheered each time Gorham took off and touched down.
“What if he tries to escape?”
“Escape?” the guard said. “Escape? Lordy ma’am, his tank ain’t filled with but fifteen minutes’ worth of gas.”
She was thinking locks, fixes, and long shots. She was thinking fifteen minutes of gas in the tank and that there couldn’t be more than seven minutes’ worth left. She was thinking about the guard’s one-in-a-million and, for a moment, hoped against hope that if it had to happen, she’d still be standing there when it did.
Rodge was
not with him when Chitral came up to her.
It had been years since she’d seen him but it might have been only a few months ago. That’s how little he’d changed. If anything, he looked not youthful but as if age had refined his best features. His skin, once ruddy, was tan, and his white wavy hair had lost some of its coiffed character and now looked faintly roiled, roughed up. Even his black, bushy eyebrows didn’t seem faded or thinned out but culled, less a suggestive Latin caricature. Though still a large man, he seemed sparer, healthier. Dorothy had forgotten how white his teeth were when he smiled. He still had the Cesar Romero good looks but they seemed, against the adjusted colors of his fresh adaptations, somehow more trustworthy.
Of course, Mrs. Bliss thought, I already sold him the car and don’t have to bargain with him now.
“Dorothy,” he addressed her when he spoke, not “Señora” or “My dear Mrs. Bliss.” This seemed appropriate, thought Mrs. Ted Bliss. My testimony helped put him away for a hundred years. That ought to set up at least something of a bond between us.
“I apologize for making you wait,” he said, “but as you may well imagine”—his arm took in the prison yard and its buildings, the cadre of armed guards and their wards, even the small plane just now touching down to the accompaniment of applause and a cheerful, unfeigned approval for Bob Gorham’s perfect three-point landing—“we don’t set our own schedules or march to our own drummer here.”
“That’s all right,” Dorothy said, “I didn’t wait long. Sometimes I have to wait more than forty minutes for a bus. Those schedules aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on.”
“At least you have a nice day to be outside,” Alcibiades Chitral said.
“Yeah,” said Mrs. Bliss, “by us, too.”
Chitral nodded solemnly. Dorothy solemnly smiled.
“Well,” said Alcibiades.
“Well,” said Mrs. Ted Bliss.
Why, he’s as embarrassed as I am, she thought, and felt this small nausea of disappointment. He’d sent a car to pick her up and bring her all this way. He’d written her the most fluent letter she’d ever received. He’d spoken of the genius of the law and said things she barely understood. He wanted to see her, he wrote, and suggested that a visit between them was not out of the question but merely inadvisable. He’d mentioned mysterious roses. So Hector Camerando or no Hector Camerando—after all, Dorothy thought, Chitral was the one in jail for a hundred years and had nothing to fear from a free Camerando, unless the dog track and jai alai were even stronger medicines than actual drugs—she’d supposed he had things to tell her. Long ago, through Manny, if he even ever passed it on, she’d made a promise that, if he ever wanted her to, she’d visit him, so why wouldn’t she assume there were certain things he wanted to get off his chest? Because as God was her witness she’d been having plenty of second thoughts about why she had wanted to come in the first place.
“Hey,” said the guard who’d taken charge of Mrs. Bliss, “look at me horning in on your visit. I’ll just get out of your way.”
“Thanks for looking after her, Bill.”
“No problem, Alcibiades,” he said, and fell in with a group of prisoners just then passing by. In their white shirts, tan slacks, and loafers, they reminded Dorothy of college glee clubs she’d seen on the television. A couple of convicts had clapped their arms around Bob Gorham’s shoulders. He was still wearing his aviator’s cap.
“Hell of a landing there, Bob,” Chitral called out.
“Thanks, pardner,” Bob Gorham said, “glad you could come.”
“You have a couple of letters waiting for you,” Alcibiades said. “I left them on your bunk.”
The prisoners passed on, leaving Chitral and Mrs. Bliss by themselves. It was a little awkward. Then Chitral asked Mrs. Bliss if she’d eaten.
“Oh, no,” she said, “I’m not very hungry.”
“Because there’s a cafeteria.”
“Oh, no,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Are you sure?” Chitral asked. “They do a swell bread and water.”
Mrs. Bliss stared at him. “Look,” she said, “they subpoenaed me. I was subpoenaed.”
“Of course,” Chitral said. “Of course you were, Dorothy.”
“So long as you understand that.”
“Oh, I do.”
“Well,” said Dorothy.
“Well,” said Chitral.
Mrs. Bliss, conceding still more than what she had already conceded, let him in on something. “I have,” she said, lowering her voice even though no one was about, “to go to the washroom.”
“You didn’t go?”
“No.”
“Not since you got here?”
“No.”
“Not since you stopped for coffee?”
“We didn’t stop for coffee.”
“You never pulled into a gas station?”
“No,” she said.
“Not since you left the Towers this morning?”
“I already told you,” Mrs. Ted Bliss said, “I was subpoenaed by the government.”
“Oh,” said Alcibiades Chitral, “you think you were subpoenaed!”
“Never mind,” said Mrs. Bliss. “There’s a cafeteria? They must have a rest room. I’ll find it myself.”
“No, wait,” he said, “I’m sorry.”
Maybe she shouldn’t have, but she stopped dead in her tracks. They moved about the yard dressed like announcers at a golf tournament, they learned to pilot airplanes on maybe two dollars’ worth of gas, and the guards seemed more like park rangers than policemen, but this was still a federal penitentiary where they could lock men up for a hundred years. There was no telling what such men might do to you when they knew they had nothing to lose. And if she could find the ladies’ on her own that didn’t mean she didn’t need someone to stand just outside the door like a lookout even if she was an old woman because, after all, everybody knew, didn’t they, that rape and perversion had more to do with violence and control than ever they had to do with sex, and if she had to depend on Alcibiades Chitral, a man, she now realized, who evidently still begrudged her the testimony that helped send him into the swamp for another ninety-some-odd years, he was still, or at least had once been, a neighbor, and who else could you turn to in a time of need if not to a neighbor? He would be her Manny from the building in the Everglades, and she stopped dead in her tracks while she waited for him to catch up.
Mrs. Bliss was satisfied that whoever cleaned the place didn’t do a bad job, and if the pervasive smell of Pinesol bounced off the tile like the odors in a high school—the room smelled exactly like the lavatory in Maxine’s old high school back in Chicago—at least the toilet seats were clean, and there was plenty of toilet paper, even extra rolls if it should happen to run out, and Mrs. Bliss had the place to herself. She locked herself into a stall and quite comfortably peed. She even managed to move her bowels, and felt a certain pride in the civilized ways the government used her tax dollars. When she was done she washed up at one of the sinks and stepped outside.
Chitral was talking to an extremely well-groomed prisoner dressed in clean, just-pressed pants, a fresh white shirt, and loafers that practically sparkled. He introduced Mrs. Bliss.
“You’re Mrs. Ted Bliss? Really? I’m pleased to meet you. Al speaks of you often.”
The prisoner moved off.
“You’re sure you don’t want to grab something in the cafeteria? It’s right here,” Chitral said. “It’s a good place to talk.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Bliss, “if I’m not keeping you.”
“No, of course not,” he said, “I’m one of the prison mailmen. I’ve already done my rounds. There’s nothing on my plate until lockup, and that’s not for another seven hours.”
She selected fruit salad in Jell-O, some buttered toast, and a tall glass of iced coffee. Abashed, Chitral admitted that it was the end of the month and that he hadn’t much money left in his account and permitted her to pay for both of their snacks.
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br /> “I feel just awful about this,” he said, “but, to tell you the truth, those roses I sent set me back.”
“I never got roses.”
“What, you never…Are you certain?”
“I’m sent so many flowers I can’t keep track?”
“Not all red this time,” he explained, “a mixed assortment. Yellow roses, white, purple, blue.”
“No. No roses.”
Chitral seemed crestfallen, anguished, but when he spoke, it was in the spare, furious, explosive gasps and outrage of someone who could no longer hold his breath. “Cheats! Liars! Crooks!” Though he was not shouting, Mrs. Bliss touched the controls of her hearing aid. “Now listen to me,” he said, calming down, “were you home when the messenger delivered my note?”
“I was at home but he left it with the girl.”
“The security guard? Louise?”
“You know Louise?”
“I’ve seen her and I know her mother. She’s a very strange girl.”
Mrs. Bliss remembered how frightened she’d made her. “I asked her about the roses. She started to cry. Really,” Mrs. Bliss said, “she’s very honest. She wouldn’t steal the roses.”
“No,” Chitral said, all anger gone out of him, “you’re probably right. This place,” he said suddenly, “this place with its civility, with all its spic-and-span toilets and you-could-eat-off-the-floor amenities, with all its flying lessons, music rooms, and bridge tournaments, you forget where you are, you really do. You forget where you are and who you’re with. Of course you never got my roses. After passing through the hands of all the brokers, go-betweens, skimmers, and middlemen around this place, what’d be left? The stems and thorns? Jesus,” he moaned, “seventy-five bucks! Who’d I think I was dealing with? Some greenhouse established 1857? Everyone takes out his percentage of the roses. I’m sick about it. Just sick.”
Later, when she had time to think about it, Dorothy had to wonder (though she knew she’d never know) if he’d gone to all this trouble and shlepped her all that way just to get her to buy him lunch and take her for the hundred dollars she’d insisted on pressing on him.
Mrs. Ted Bliss Page 19
