“Who’s Enriquez?”
“In A-block,” said Taneesha. “Likes to jerk off in front of female COs. Catch you unawares, like it’s some game.”
“Is that why you’re locked down?”
Taneesha laughed, spewing a few droplets of beer. “We locked down for little things like that, we’d be locked down till the end of time.” Then she said, “Little things,” and laughed again.
Ivy laughed, too. “So what was the cause of the lockdown?” she said.
“The usual,” Taneesha said. “Inmate in B-block got his throat slit.”
“He’s dead?”
“Ear to ear,” said Taneesha. “Bled out before anyone got there.” She stubbed out her cigarette, paused. “In fact, he might have been in that class of yours.”
“Oh my God,” said Ivy. “Who?”
“Hey, Ernie,” Taneesha called over to the bar. “Who was the guy in B-block?”
The guard who’d made the no-smoking joke said, “Wasn’t it that little Felix dude?”
“Felix Balaban?” said Ivy.
The guards had a quick discussion, all agreed that the dead inmate was Felix Balaban.
“What happened?” Ivy said. “Who did it?”
Taneesha shrugged. “That’s what the lockdown’s about, trying to find out.”
“But he was so harmless,” Ivy said. “The crime was some kind of financial swindle.”
“Yeah?” said Taneesha. “His writing any good?”
“Why would anyone hurt someone like him?” Ivy said.
“Maybe he sneezed the wrong way,” said Taneesha.
“I don’t understand.”
“Or whistled a song somebody didn’t like, or sat at the wrong table, or took his shower out of turn. Have to understand what you’re dealing with, Ivy.”
Scum of the earth, according to Sergeant Tocco. But Perkins had been moved by Shakespeare and could memorize it practically on first hearing, and Morales and El-Hassam had written poems with some real poetry in them.
“Smoke?” said Taneesha.
“No, thanks.”
Taneesha poured more beer. “You coming back next week?”
Outside, the sun went over the wall even though it was only early afternoon, and it got dark in Lulu’s by the Gate.
Five
“Yes,” said Ivy, rolling over to check the time. “I heard.”
Danny was on the phone. Six A.M., but he was calling from work: Ivy could hear someone in the background talking about the Fed.
“It’s so horrible,” Danny said. “No one seems to know what happened.”
“Someone killed him.”
“Who?”
“They’re trying to find out.”
“Who’s they?” said Danny. “Some goons upstate?”
“They’re not all goons,” Ivy said.
Danny’s voice rose. “No? The judge was a goon, the jury were goons, the D.A. was a goon. They gave him five and a half years for moving paper around in ways that were perfectly legal and now—” She heard him pound his fist on a desk.
“But the sixty million dollars,” Ivy said.
“What about it?”
“Did he steal it or not?”
“What kind of a question is that?” Danny said. “Not at your usual level, Ivy.”
Ivy was silent. She got the feeling that this relationship of theirs, not even really begun, was about to hit its denouement without going through any of the intermediary stages, a record for her.
“The point is he’s dead for no reason,” Danny said. His voice got choked up.
“Sorry,” Ivy said. “I guess you knew him pretty well.”
“I told you I didn’t.” Danny took a deep breath. “He was a client, that’s all. Of my boss, actually. But I was in meetings with him, and we went out a few times.”
“Went out?”
“We took him to Bermuda for a weekend, things like that.”
“And then you visited him upstate.”
“I felt bad for him.”
Ivy remembered the way Morales forced—maybe not forced, but somehow got—Felix to say he’d graduated from Harvard instead of Cornell. Then it occurred to her that Danny was a Harvard man, also had an MBA from the business school. She had a weird thought.
“This idea of Felix’s,” she said. “The one that got him in trouble—did you advise him on that?”
“My boss did,” said Danny. “In general terms.”
“The counterderivative thing.”
“Right,” Danny said.
A brilliant idea that maybe three people in the world understood.
“Tell me about it,” Ivy said.
“The idea? Why?”
“I’m curious.”
“You understand packaging debt?” Danny said. “This is similar in the sense that hedging—” And he went on for a minute or two, but Ivy, with no understanding of packaging debt or hedging, didn’t follow.
“Who came up with the idea in the first place?” she said.
“Felix. I told you.”
“But the germ of it,” she said. “The seed.”
Silence. Then, his voice colder than she would have thought possible, Danny said, “I’ve got to go.”
“See you.”
“Yeah.”
On Monday, Ivy called Sergeant Tocco.
“Still in lockdown?” she said.
“Nope.”
“Did you find out who did it?”
“Nope.”
“But class is on?”
“Yup.”
“Plan on doing this car-rental thing every week?” said Bruce Verlaine.
“There’s supposed to be a bus from the Port Authority,” Ivy said.
“Sure,” said Bruce. “And when that gets old you can walk on broken glass.” Bruce’s eyes, narrow to begin with, narrowed more as a wine salesman he didn’t like came in. “Tell you what, Ivy. I’ll sell you the Saab.”
Bruce had an old, maybe twenty years old, red Saab sedan. “How much?” Ivy said.
“Call it five hundred.”
Ivy had $732 in her checking account, plus $200 or so in the drawer by her bathroom sink.
“Where would I keep it?” she said.
“I know a guy,” Bruce said.
Bruce had never done anything like this before. Maybe he saw some reaction on her face, because he said, “Just mention me in the acknowledgments.”
“Acknowledgments?”
“Of your first book,” Bruce said. “This Dannemora thing is all about gathering material, right?”
The wine salesman approached, uncorking a magnum of rosé on the fly—Bruce despised rosé—an optimistic smile spreading across his face.
The red Saab was the second car Ivy had owned. The first was a Honda Civic her father had given her when she turned seventeen, a few months after the divorce. He’d left Cincinnati for Seattle and a new start later that year. Ivy’s grades, verbal SAT and soccer had gotten her into Williams the year after that. By junior year, her mom had remarried, the new husband, a past president of the chamber of commerce, unbearable to Ivy after five minutes’ exposure. Her mom, on the other hand, had never been happier. The Civic had gone up in flames Ivy’s senior year, when she’d lent it to her boyfriend for a ski trip and he’d forgotten to check the oil despite her having told him about the leak maybe fifty times.
The red Saab was better in every way, paid for with her own money, for one thing. And it didn’t leak oil: Bruce was a stickler for maintenance, a stickler about everything. Ivy drove with the windows wide open, even though this Tuesday was much cooler, with a cloudy sky and the foliage past its peak, the brightness knob turned down on all the colors. She cranked up the radio and sang along.
Taneesha was one of the two guards working the underground gate between administration and the prison. “Good as her word,” she said.
“Huh?” said the other guard.
“Ivy, here. The writing teacher. She’s back.”
�
�Published anything?” said the other guard, holding out the tray.
“No,” Ivy said, depositing license and keys. She had no pens this time and had left her cell phone in the car.
“My cousin sold a cartoon,” said the guard. “Paid him a hundred and fifty bucks.”
“Who did?” said Ivy.
“Can’t remember,” said the guard. “One of those Hustler imitators.”
Taneesha stamped the back of Ivy’s hand with the invisible VISITOR and she stepped through the metal detector—beltless and in sneakers today—without a hitch. The great domed space beyond was empty except for an inmate pushing a laundry hamper. Ivy crossed it, followed the wide hall on the other side to the library. Moffitt was in his chair.
“Hi,” Ivy said.
He nodded.
She went in.
Three men sat around the table, all in their previous places: Morales on the left, El-Hassam at the far end, Perkins on the right.
“Hi, everybody,” she said.
They looked up, faces impassive.
Ivy sat at the near end of the table, started to open her folder, paused.
“I was shocked to hear about Felix,” she said, kind of crazy, as though she were expressing condolences to his family.
But maybe it was the right thing to do, because Perkins made a rumbling in his throat that might have been friendly and El-Hassam nodded in a way that might have been grave. Morales’s face stayed the way it was.
“I can’t think why anyone would want to…to do that to him,” Ivy said. “He seemed so harmless.”
“Maybe he did it to himself,” Morales said.
Perkins laughed, a deep chuckle.
“That’s not possible, is it?” said Ivy.
“Oh yes,” said El-Hassam. “Very possible.”
“But not in this case,” Ivy said, “or they wouldn’t have gone into lockdown.”
No one said anything. The vein in Morales’s arm gave a little spasm; for some reason reminding Ivy of a baby kicking in the womb.
She reached into her folder, her hands shaking a little, suddenly conscious of something that should have been obvious from the start, fact number one: how big they were—especially Perkins and Morales—and how small she was. But now came a paradox: maybe that disproportion helped make this teaching job right.
“Here are some pencils,” she said. “And I typed up the poem you wrote.” She passed out copies, her hands steady.
The men studied their work.
“Looks nice, all typed up,” said Perkins. “Professional.”
Morales smacked the table. “‘Bright orange Camaro!’” he said, his voice filled with delight, as though the line was brand-new to him. He read his poem to himself, face rapt, lips moving.
“This your title?” said El-Hassam.
“Just an idea,” said Ivy. At the top she’d written: Cause and Effect.
“‘Cause and Effect’?” said Perkins.
Morales looked up. “What’s that spose to mean?”
“I thought it connected to the poem,” Ivy said.
“Cause?” said Morales. “Effect?”
“But I’m sure we can come up with something better,” Ivy said. “Any suggestions?”
“‘Bright Orange Camaro,’” said Morales.
“What about the Shakespeare part?” said Perkins.
“Shit,” said Morales. “That’s not even original.”
“It doesn’t have to—” Ivy began, then heard footsteps behind her. She turned, saw an inmate coming through the door, Sergeant Tocco behind him.
“This here’s Harrow,” said Sergeant Tocco. “New student I mentioned.”
“Ivy Seidel,” said Ivy, rising and holding out her hand. “Welcome to the class.”
Harrow shook her hand, quick, impersonal, exerting no force. He wasn’t as tall as Perkins and Morales, nor was he bulked up; instead he looked fit in the manner of a rock climber or mountaineer.
“Sit anywhere,” Ivy said.
Harrow glanced around the room. There was an empty seat beside Perkins—Felix’s old seat—and another beside Morales, but Harrow took neither. Instead El-Hassam rose and moved over to Morales’s side. Harrow sat where El-Hassam had been.
Sergeant Tocco hadn’t left. He leaned over Morales and picked up his copy of the chain poem.
“‘Cause and Effect,’” he said. He looked slowly around the prison library. Then he read the poem to himself; everyone else just sat there.
“My brother-in-law had one of those 427 Camaros,” Sergeant Tocco said, gaze rising from the page and settling on Morales. “Cool car.”
“Yeah,” said Morales.
“But how come you left out what happened to the two girls in that wreck? When you got hit by the eighteen-wheeler off of Exit 79?”
Morales didn’t speak.
The sergeant glanced down at the page. “‘Carmen and the one with the tits.’ What happened to them?”
Morales stared, a hard stare with real physical force that Ivy could feel, even though it was directed at nothing.
Sergeant Tocco let go of the poem. It glided down in front of Morales.
“Nice title,” said Sergeant Tocco. “Write good, gentlemen.” He left the room.
It was quiet. Ivy had a plan for today’s class, but her belief in it was weakening. She passed out the pencils, plus blank sheets of paper for everyone. Morales crumpled his in a ball. Ivy almost flinched; maybe she did, a little.
“I thought,” she said, “we’d pick something to write about, then each read our work aloud at the end. Any ideas?”
A long silence. Morales and El-Hassam were sitting very still, El-Hassam with his eyes closed, Morales with his hands balled into fists. Perkins was cleaning under his nails with the point of the pencil.
Harrow spoke. He had a quiet voice, quiet but not at all soft. “Car wrecks,” he said.
Morales’s head snapped around. “What you say?”
“She asked for ideas,” Harrow said, his voice still quiet. “Car wrecks is an idea.”
Ivy could hear Morales’s feet shift under the table. For a moment, she imagined he was about to spring up.
“Unless someone’s got a better one,” Harrow said.
Silence.
“Time runs out,” said El-Hassam. He leaned forward, wrote in capitals at the top of his page: CAR REX.
“Everyone agreed?” Ivy said.
No one said anything.
“Anyone disagree?”
Silence.
“Then car wrecks it is,” she said. She took out a pencil and sheet of paper for herself.
“Hey,” said Perkins. “You writing, too?”
“Sure,” said Ivy. “Didn’t Joel?”
“No,” said El-Hassam.
“Oh.”
“But we’ve forgotten all about him,” said El-Hassam.
“A fag,” said Morales, referring to Joel of course, but looking at Harrow.
Ivy thought about car wrecks. It really was a pretty good idea. Supposing, for example, you and someone you had to make a big decision about were driving somewhere, and just at the crucial moment you passed a horrible wreck and made up your mind. You could go either way. The wreck wrecks the relationship or else reveals its necessity. Ivy knew she’d have to compress everything to get it done in class, but maybe she could expand it later. She glanced around. Except for Morales, the men were bent over their papers, Perkins already writing.
The bridesmaids were all a little drunk, Ivy wrote. The honeymooners were on the plane to Cancún and most of the guests—Ivy raised her head. Morales was on his feet, moving toward the bookshelves behind Harrow. Everyone else was writing. Morales saw her and smiled.
“Check a word,” he whispered, reaching up for a big dictionary. He moved very smoothly for such a heavily muscled man.
Ivy gave him an encouraging nod, went back to work.
—most of the guests had gone home. And it’s one of the guests who dies in the wreck? How would tha
t work? Sentence number two and already the story was shifting under her feet, in that maddening way stories had. Well, why not try it? The mother of the bride was a little drunk, too. She sat in the car, shoes off, waiting for her husband. As he came across the parking lot, she saw that one of the bridesmaids, the pretty one with the—
Something made her glance up. Not a sound, not a movement, something much less obvious, like a change in barometric pressure. And what Ivy saw, her mind had trouble taking in, first because it was so far outside anything she’d seen before, second because it happened so fast, and third because of the expression on Morales’s face, an expression that brought a word to life: murderous.
Morales was no longer at the shelves, but standing right behind Harrow. He held the heavy dictionary—Webster’s Third New International, unabridged, Ivy noticed—high over Harrow’s head. Harrow, busy writing, the pencil wriggling fast, almost a full page already covered, was completely unaware. Then, just as Morales plunged the dictionary down with tremendous force, his chest muscles bulging with the effort, Harrow moved. He must have, because the dictionary struck the table with a heavy imploding sound like a hand clapping hard over a human ear, and Harrow was no longer in the chair. Instead, he and Morales were somehow on the floor, out of sight. Then came a crack that reminded Ivy of wishbones on Thanksgiving Day but routed through an amp turned up all the way, and Morales, in a voice that wasn’t his at all, more like a woman’s high-pitched shriek, screamed something in Spanish she didn’t catch. The next moment, Harrow was back in his chair, fastening a button that had come undone. The moment after that, Moffitt was rushing into the room, reaching for things on his belt.
“What the hell’s going on?” he said.
Except for Morales, they were all in their places, pencils in hand. Perkins was actually writing. Ivy closed her mouth.
Harrow looked down at Morales. “I think Morales hurt himself,” he said.
Moffitt circled the table, eyed Morales. “How?” he said.
“He was checking a word in the dictionary,” Harrow said. “Must have tripped.”
El-Hassam got up, picked the dictionary off the floor, unwrinkled the pages, laid it on the table. “Heavy,” he said.
End of Story Page 4
