by Lewis Shiner
“You got change for the phone?” the woman said. She sold Alex a dollar’s worth of quarters and, hands shaking, he dialed his parents’ number.
His mother answered and Alex said, “It’s me. I’ve been arrested.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
Her voice was calm. “Tell me what happened.”
“The charges are possession of marijuana.” The cops were not even pretending not to listen. “We’re at the Northeast Station, out by White Rock, but I think they’re taking us downtown to the courthouse to be arraigned.”
“Okay, m’ijo, I’ll call Mac now.”
“There won’t be anything he can do until they set bail,” he said, repeating what the cops had told him. “Which will be at the arraignment, which probably won’t happen until tomorrow morning.”
“Okay. What else can I do? You want me to call Callie?”
Oh, God, he thought. “Yes, please.”
“Does Cole want me to call his parents?”
“No, please don’t. There’s nothing they can do.” He felt 6 years old. Tears ran down his face. “I’m so scared.”
“Be brave, sweetie, we’ll take care of this. You’ll be okay.”
“I love you.”
“You, too.”
He hung up, not wanting to turn around and let the cops see him crying.
“Come on, Frito,” the second cop said. “Finger-painting time.”
*
They took Alex to a cell. Cole was already there, along with a large, drunk, black man who lay on the only bunk and snored, and an old, barefoot white man in ragged clothes who smelled like ripe garbage and hit them up for spare change. An hour later they brought in a white guy in Bermuda shorts and a polo shirt and a visor who paced back and forth all afternoon.
At six a woman came around and handed plastic-wrapped ham sandwiches and cans of Coke through the bars. Alex felt a flicker of animal pleasure at the sight of food. Cole, however, looked at his and said, “I’m a vegetarian. Is there any chance I could get a plain cheese sandwich?”
“No,” she said.
Cole handed Alex his sandwich and sat in a corner.
Around eight pm, a pair of guards put them in leg irons and herded them into a van. Nobody came running out with a reprieve. The van took them to the courthouse where they were herded from room to room and finally put in a heavily crowded cell filled, from the looks of things, with dwis. One of them threw up in the middle of the floor shortly after arriving, and in the hour before a custodian came to clean it up, the smell made three others vomit as well.
Wall space for leaning was at a premium, so Alex and Cole curled up on the hard tile floor. Alex withdrew into a mindless state from fear and exhaustion and ended up with maybe a couple of hours’ sleep. At seven am they got sweet rolls and cups of lukewarm coffee and lined up to use the seatless toilet in one corner of the cell.
At eight a bailiff called the first set of names and at 9:15 Alex and Cole got paraded past the judge. The charges were read, Mac McKinney, his father’s lawyer, stepped up to settle the bail, and they were processed out. Their belongings had been transferred down with them, so they got their wallets back. There was no sign of the guitar.
Mac, who was six foot four, whose hair generally stuck up in one or two oddball places, whose suits never quite fit, looked unusually rumpled, having spent a few early morning hours passing the word to anyone he could get hold of that he expected Alex and Cole to be treated well. Alex’s father claimed the bumpkin look was part of an act designed to get Mac’s adversaries to underestimate him. That morning he’d made it clear that he was not to be fucked with.
Mac drove them past the lot where the bust had gone down, on the off chance that Alex’s car was still there. Apparently it had been impounded. Before he let them off at Alex’s house, he said he’d find out what had happened to the guitar and the car, but not to expect to hear anything until after the holiday on Monday. He asked Cole to stick around for a few days so as not to look like a flight risk, and Cole agreed.
Callie and Gwyn were watching The Rescuers on videotape when they walked in. Callie looked at Alex with a neutral expression and said, “Are you all right? All things considered?”
“All things considered,” Alex said.
“Good,” she said, and turned back to the tv. Alex knew that worse would follow, once they were alone. At the moment all he could think about was his love for Gwyn. He knelt and scooped her up in a hug. She squirmed so that she could see the tv and said, “Daddy, you stink.”
“Both of you,” Callie said.
Alex kissed Gwyn on the top of the head and let her go.
*
Though Cole had been intellectually prepared for Alex’s new life, he’d still been shocked by the four-bedroom house in the exclusive neighborhood, the expensive cars, Callie’s designer wardrobe, the weight Alex had gained around the middle. Like a double exposure of the Alex he knew with Alex’s father.
He hadn’t realized how bad he himself looked until he saw it in Alex’s eyes. And yet, none of it mattered once they started telling each other the truth. Maybe it took both their lives being in the toilet to bring them back together. Whatever the reason, Cole was glad for it.
Until the inconceivable happened and two would-be comedians came out of nowhere to destroy their lives.
Cole got through the afternoon and night of the bust by dreaming of heroin. He played out the whole sequence in his mind, from scoring in the parking lot to the sour smell of cooking the dose over a candle flame, the bite of the needle, the slow warmth spreading through his body, so sweet that it made him lick his lips, even as he lay on the hot tile floor of the county jail.
Back at Alex’s place, bathed and in his guest bed, Cole found he still couldn’t get to sleep. He wanted a shot more than life itself. Without heroin, his skin felt like poorly fitting woolen underwear and he couldn’t get away from the voices of fear in his head.
He got dressed and went into the living room. The tv was off and Callie and Gwyn were playing War on the carpeted floor. Cole watched for a while, remembering playing with his mother when he was Gwyn’s age, wondering how he was going to tell her what had happened. “Can I have a beer?” he asked.
“If we have any,” Callie said.
They had Bohemia. Cole drank one in the kitchen and took a second one to the living room. “I’m tired,” Gwyn announced. It was two in the afternoon. Maybe it was nap time. She looked at Cole. “Can you do Matty-Tutcheys?”
“Mariachis?” Cole said. “I can’t. I lost my guitar.”
“You can use my daddy’s.”
“What’s this about?” Callie said.
“We sang her to sleep Friday night with some mariachi songs. It worked pretty well.”
“Infecting her with the music virus?”
“It’s not like she hasn’t already been exposed.”
Callie abruptly walked out. One good thing about prison, Cole thought, is it will get Alex out of this marriage. He asked Gwyn, “Do you have a favorite song?”
Gwyn sang, in a clear voice, “This old man, he played one, he played knick-knack on my drum…”
“I know that man,” Cole said. “But he played knick-knack on my thumb.”
“Too easy,” Gwyn said. “Everybody plays knick-knack on their thumb.”
Callie came back, carrying Alex’s guitar by the neck, like a skillet, and held it out to Cole. Cole checked the tuning while Callie sat down and Gwyn crawled into her lap. “Allá en el rancho grande,” he sang quietly, “allá donde vivía…” He held the note a ridiculously long time, finally poking himself in the nose to move on to the next line. Gwyn laughed, so he continued to ham it up whenever the chorus came around. He saw she was getting wound up, so he slowed it down with “Perfidia,” achingly slow. Infidelity was probably not the best topic, considering Alex’s ongoing aventura, but then Callie didn’t speak any Spanish as far as Cole knew. Gwyn was yawning by the end, and out
cold by the time he played “Siboney.”
Cole put the guitar down. Playing made him think about La Pelirroja, which made him feel enraged and helpless. Callie continued to sit with Gwyn in her lap, gently rocking, so Cole asked, “Are you still painting?”
“Something like that,” Callie said.
Cole didn’t know how to respond. The silence stretched, and then Callie said, “It’s so hard to find anything new. It’s all been done. And you can’t just make something, you have to have a concept and a manifesto.”
She rocked Gwyn for a while and then said, “I knew I was an artist before I was old enough to read. I was always drawing. Sometimes I wish I’d been born a man in the Renaissance. I could have joined the Guild of St. Luke by the time I hit puberty and been signing my canvases by twenty. No identity crises, no agonizing over form, just paint and more paint. Did you always know you were a musician?”
“Alex knew it before I did. My whole career was his idea.”
“Too bad he didn’t think it through.” Cole couldn’t help but laugh, and Callie finally cracked a smile. “At least you and I know what we want,” she said. “Alex is still in search of his métier.”
For the first time Cole understood what Alex saw in her. She brought her passion to everything. He could see how that could get maddening on a daily basis, yet it was also compelling in a way that reminded him of Madelyn. The women Cole had been involved with since might have had any number of qualities, but that kind of white-hot intensity was not one of them.
“I have to tell you,” Callie said. “If you guys go to prison, Gwyn and I won’t be here when you get back.”
*
Cole and Alex had dinner that night with Alex’s parents. Cole hadn’t seen them since Alex’s wedding. The mood was somber and the small talk died without ever taking wing. Susan was in Fort Worth, Jimmy in Austin, and Callie had stayed home with Gwyn.
After dinner Cole and Alex and Montoya played poker at the dining room table, using imaginary money. As well as he knew Montoya, Cole was still amazed that he didn’t offer a word of reproach, or ask whose dope it was. The only time he directly addressed the subject was to say, “If worse comes to worst, there’s always Mexico. Alex could work out of the Monterrey office, and we could get you a job there too.”
“We could never come back to the US,” Cole said.
“No,” Montoya said. “But you wouldn’t be in prison.”
On Tuesday, Mac called to say that the prosecutor had sent a complaint to the grand jury, who would respond on Thursday. “There’s always the possibility that they might no-bill you, that is, refuse to indict. That possibility is small. They’ve got evidence, they’ve got the two officers, there’s no pressure on them not to indict. I wouldn’t look to anything there.”
Wednesday they stayed up drinking at Alex’s house. Alex had flushed all his dope on Sunday afternoon.
“Are you thinking about it?” Cole asked. “Mexico?”
“No way Callie would come. So I would never see Gwyn again. I can’t do that. You?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know if I could make a living playing music down there, not the kind of music I want to play. If it meant working a day job for your father… well, that’s just another kind of prison sentence, isn’t it?”
“Tell me about it.”
They drank for a while and then Cole said, “Remember all those flag decals they used to give away, back around sixty-nine, seventy?”
“Yeah, what bullshit that was. I hate flags. A flag is inherently divisive. It says, ‘we are us, and fuck you.’”
“I put one on the windshield of the bus we had at the commune. Took a lot of shit for it, too.”
“I can see why.”
“Yeah, well, there was a part of me that didn’t see why the rednecks should get to own patriotism. What with the time I spent overseas—”
“Armpits, was I believe the word you used.”
“I remember how good it felt to come home. I used to love this country.”
“Used to?”
“It doesn’t feel the same anymore. Not after Nixon and now Reagan’s campaign, all the backlash against, I don’t know, against you and me, is what it feels like. It’s like Reagan has disowned us.”
“For me it was Kent State. It was never the same after that. I think I could live in France and never look back. Maybe I could talk Callie into that.”
“Maybe they’ll let me have a guitar in prison. Maybe I’ll write the next ‘Folsom Prison Blues.’”
“Maybe Iran will start a world war and we’ll all die.”
Cole saluted him with his beer bottle. “We can only hope.”
*
The phone rang Thursday at noon. Cole was sitting on the couch, flipping through the channels. Callie and Gwyn were out and Alex had shut himself in his office.
Cole answered on the third ring when Alex didn’t pick up. It was Montoya, sounding grim. “Mac called and said for you and Alex to come over here.”
“Now?”
“If you can.”
“It’s bad news, right? Can’t you just tell us over the phone?”
“Mac wanted you here.”
Cole hung up and had a moment of panic. What if Alex had killed himself? He walked down the long hallway and tried the door. The knob turned in his hand and the door opened. The lights were off and the blinds were closed. Cole needed a few seconds to see Alex lying on the day bed, eyes closed, loud music leaking from the headphones over his ears.
Cole shook him gently by the foot. Alex’s eyes slowly opened and he took the headphones off.
“Come on,” Cole said. “We’re going to your folks’ house.”
Mac’s Sedan de Ville was in the driveway when they arrived. “If we don’t go in there,” Alex said, “we don’t have to hear the news.”
“Schrodinger’s Indictment. Good plan. We can still turn this thing around and head for Mexico.” Even as he said the words, Cole parked next to the de Ville and turned the engine off.
“Let’s do it,” Alex said.
“Go in, or run for it?”
“Run for it,” Alex said, and opened the door.
Mac and Montoya sat at the dinner table. No papers lay on the table, no briefcase, no books or pens. They sat down next to each other, facing Mac. Cole had to remind himself to breathe.
“You lucked out,” Mac said. His expression was so grimly at odds with his words that Cole wasn’t sure he’d heard right. “Lucked out?” he said.
“You were no-billed.”
“No shit?” Alex said. “For real?”
Cole didn’t know how tense he’d been until it went away. He slid down in his chair and leaned his head back and closed his eyes. “Thank god,” he said. “Thank god.”
“And,” Mac said to Alex, “you can pick up your car at the auto pound in West Dallas. You got lucky there, too. The burden of proof for forfeiture is significantly lower than for criminal charges. They could have legally gotten away with it.”
“Oh man,” Alex said. “Thank you.”
“What about my guitar?” Cole said.
“No guitar.”
“What do you mean, ‘no guitar’? That fucking cop stole it. He did it right in front of us, put it in the trunk of the cop car.”
“There’s no official record of the guitar, so there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“Have him arrested,” Cole said. All of his relief had turned to righteous indignation. “That guitar is one of a kind, irreplaceable. It was a gift from the Montoya family, handmade by Alex’s uncle.”
“Cole,” Mac said, “listen to me. Let it go.”
“I’m not going to let it go,” Cole said. “I’ll get my own lawyer and sue his ass.”
Mac stood up. “Let’s take a walk.”
“Fine,” Cole said.
They walked toward the grade school in the suffocating heat. “I had hoped to keep this from you,” Mac said. “Since you won’t back down, here it is. It was
not luck that got you the no-bill.”
“What are you saying?”
“The cop who took your guitar is named Ralston. In fact, it was because he took the guitar that I knew I could approach him. A discreet offer was made, which he chose to cut his partner in on. Money changed hands. The evidence bag got misfiled. Their testimony before the grand jury was confused and unconvincing. Am I making myself clear here? The guitar, it turned out, was a non-negotiable item. Compared to hard time in prison, it seemed an easy choice. Even if you don’t agree, it’s too late now. It’s gone too far. Too many people are involved. Do you understand?”
“Does Alex’s father know?”
“The specifics? No. But he told me that the two of you—and he was very specific that it had to be both of you—were to be kept out of prison, and I quote, ‘at any cost.’”
It was one shock too many. Cole couldn’t take it in.
“This is how the world works,” Mac said, his voice gentler now. “Where there’s enough money, pretty much anything is possible. I know that’s not the world you guys had in mind when you were in college. I’m sorry I had to be the one to tell you.”
They started back toward the house. “Are you going to tell Alex?” Cole asked.
“No. Are you?”
“I guess not. Not if I can help it. I’m not going to lie, but… I’m not going to volunteer anything either.”
“That would be wise,” Mac said. “The fewer people that know about this, the safer everyone will be.”
*
The next night, Alex took down close to four hundred dollars at the poker game. “Gentlemen,” he said, as he raked in his third hundred-dollar-plus pot of the evening, “when you’re hot, you’re hot.”
*
Cole started back to Austin on Saturday morning. Alex had offered to buy him a new guitar from his poker winnings and Cole had refused. “Let it be a lesson to me,” he’d said. He felt fifteen years older than Alex.
The no-bill had, if anything, made his craving for heroin stronger. He could already taste the drug on the back of his tongue as he pulled out of Alex’s driveway. He couldn’t concentrate on the highway and he kept speeding up and slowing down.
