The Anchorman Says
Eugene Marten
The anchorman says, “A public employee.” Then there is no sound. There is a woman on a corner, wearing white boots and waving at traffic. A station wagon pulls over. We don’t know what color it is but can tell by the front plate it is property of the city, state, or federal government. We can’t see his face. The woman leans in the window, moving her mouth.
There is no color, there is no sound. Then the anchorman says, “Trying to buy sex with your tax dollars.” She slaps the top twice and steps back. A light flashes down the street. Because the lens through which we are looking is of the kind that compresses space, the unmarked car barreling toward us seems to get bigger without getting closer. (We don’t know the light is blue.) Two men get out in a hurry, approach the wagon from either side. One of them talks to the driver. He opens the door and hauls the driver out by his shirt, forces him facedown onto the street and kneels on his back while his partner applies the handcuffs, helps himself to a wallet.
His lips move—the reading of the rights, we assume.
We don’t know where the woman went but the driver’s face is bloody. We don’t know his name. We don’t know that the unmarked car is green, that inside it smelled like fast food, that when they shoved Jelonnek into the ridiculous plaid of the backseat there was a metal bucket on the floor by his feet. That the cop pressing down on the top of his head said, “You spill em you swallow every last one,” and the other cop said, “Like it matters,” and the one pressing down said, “Like you know,” and the other one said, “I know if they don’t shine you can’t see em,” and his partner said, “They don’t see em they smell em. I kill with those little black bastards.” Then they got back up front and ate their lunch.
When they were done they wrote him a ticket for impeding the flow of traffic. A tow truck came for the station wagon. The one who was going fishing jerked the gearshift, water sloshed in the bucket. They ran a light and turned, drove past a boarded-up gas station with weeds sprouting where the pumps had been, a check-cashing store (ten percent off the top), a modest brick building purporting to be the Refuge of Last Days, pulled up in the driveway of an old warehouse housing nothing now but dust in the dark. A paddy wagon like a black metal box on wheels, half-hidden in weed trees. Jelonnek was extracted gently from the backseat. One of the cops put his wallet back in his pocket. On his way to the back of the truck he looked into the lens of a camera perched on a man’s shoulder like a weapon. He was still too numb to turn away or duck and his eyes bulge into your living room in living color, hands behind his back like he’s got a terrible surprise for us.
In the wagon there were metal ledges on either side to sit on and only a couple of spaces left. It reminded Jelonnek of his paper route, of the truck that had brought the bundles—except for the partitions on the sides like stalls in a public lavatory. All you saw were everyone’s knees. When you sat you had to bend over while they took off one of the cuffs, looped it through a shackle and put it back on your wrist. Then they rolled down the dark and the only light came through two small windows in the back.
“Why did the john cross the road?” someone asked him. The punchline had something to do with a social disease; Jelonnek was barely listening. Someone else laughed but the laugh was tired and it was an old joke the first time you heard it. Everything was: the way they called each other John, the fart you kept not hearing, the guy who would once in a while bang his head against the inside of the wagon. He would bang the back of his head against the metal and at the same time mutter, “Shit” or “Fuck” or “God” in some kind of hierarchic order. The claustrophobe was even worse.
They’d written him a ticket for impeding the flow, for not wearing a seatbelt. He still felt the street on his face.
You got used to the dimness and when they opened the door the light started everything over again. The new guy looked like some sort of businessman, had silver hair and wore a nice suit.
“Put this man in first class. Why did the pimp cross the road?”
Two or three guys said everything. You could feel someone’s knees shaking. If you kept your back straight your arms didn’t hurt as much.
“I wanna say no contest,” a voice said, addressing the matter of pleas. The speaker sat across from Jelonnek. You couldn’t quite make out his face but he was apparently something of an old hand, someone with a working knowledge of local jurisprudence, familiar with the statutes, the degree of misdemeanor, the names and temperaments of judges. The maximum penalties and alternative sentences.
“I wanna say diversion,” he said.
“Da virgin.”
“John school.” You spent eight hours in a classroom, getting lectured by former
hookers, watching footage of AIDS patients sloughing off their skin like snakes.
“And you got to pay for that?” someone said.
“There’s such thing as an ex-whore?”
The engine idled. “The laws were made for kings and merchants.”
Jelonnek felt himself nodding. He wanted to say something clever or useful, contribute—it seemed to provide a sort of immunity—but nothing occurred to him and then the claustrophobe started up again. He told whoever was listening how he’d spent an afternoon trapped in an elevator, how his rescuers had found him soiled, naked, curled into the fetal position.
“Well don’t pull that shit here,” one of them said and Jelonnek said, “You should carry a card or something.”
Another burst of quiet. The guy who’d been banging his head had stopped banging it and started worrying about his wife. Laid up in a maternity ward with an eight-pound boy. They loaded up one more john before they left. You could see what a mess his face was in just before they rolled down the door again. There was no more room to sit so he lay on the floor between the ledges and said, “I thought this was America.”
“Ah damn,” the voice across the dark said.
“Always room for one more.”
“This is entrapment,” the man on the floor said, his voice muffled, injured.
“Why did the john cross the road?” They lurched forward. Everyone swayed and banged their shoulders and someone swore. The old hand hummed “The Ride of the Valkyrie.” Someone farted again and Jelonnek giggled. Time had resumed like the play clock in a sporting event and he was giddy with it. You were moving on to something new and next, even if it meant being swallowed. Tree branches scraping the sides of the wagon.
_____
At the booking window they took his wallet again and didn’t give it back. They took his watch, his shoelaces, keys, comb, and change, and itemized all denominations. The cop who stood him there was the one who wasn’t going fishing. He seemed different now, bored and distant, and didn’t call him John anymore. The fun part must have been over. The woman in the window asked Jelonnek for the information that wasn’t on his driver’s license. She didn’t look at him till she took his picture. She kept having trouble with the computer, a support guy would have to come and help her. There was always trouble with the computer, it seemed, whenever you went some place that used them.
“Now press Enter,” the support guy said.
“Jell-O neck?” the woman in the window said.
Someone laughed in the holding cell. Behind him. A guy in the holding cell had kept pacing, though there was hardly room for it. He was short and stocky and had red hair. He would get too close. He would almost brush Jelonnek’s chest, almost step on his feet, though not quite. If they hadn’t come and got him Jelonnek was sure he would have said something. There must have been fifteen of them in there.
“Jelonnek,” Jelonnek said.
“Mother’s maiden name,” the woman said. “Influenza. Diabetes. Venereal disease.” She said it like a single word.
There was a booking fee of twenty-five dollars. If you didn’t have it on you they would bill you.
He wore his cuffs in front now. The cop next to him held his hand like a manicurist and told him to relax, rolled his thumb off the card. The woman in the window said, “Look up” and a Polaroid camera flashed in his face. He signed a form that absolved the city of all blame, though for what he wasn’t sure. “Forever hold harmless,” it said. Blue spots in front of his eyes. A red sticker meant suicide watch. The woman in the window looked up the bail schedule. If he couldn’t make bail, they would hold him till his arraignment in the morning, or the morning after that. The word triggered a voltage of panic. Serious criminals were arraigned, murderers and molesters. He asked if he could make a phone call.
“You can make as many as you want for ten minutes,” she said. “Collect.”
They locked him in the phone cell. The phone was metal and looked indestructible but not for lack of effort. It was still warm. Jelonnek dialed O. A man asked if he could help him and Jelonnek gave him the number of the bank, her three-digit extension. She picked up halfway through the second ring and said, “Can you hold, please?” It happened sometimes. Jelonnek heard music, a popular song. He didn’t like it but was suddenly aware of nuances in it he’d never noticed before and didn’t want to notice; Jelonnek thought of himself as a rock-and-roller.
The song ended and a new one came on, one he’d never heard before. The operator said, “She doesn’t seem to be answering, sir. Would you like to try again later?” Jelonnek said it was an emergency. He would have liked to have heard the rest of the song, but the operator hung up. He hadn’t heard it before, and he would have liked to have heard it till he came to like it, till it became the only thing he’d called for. It would be like remembering what you never knew.
The guy at the booking window was explaining his tattoos in Spanish.
Jelonnek dialed the bank again direct. Another operator came on and offered assistance. Jelonnek recited the extension again but when he heard her voice it was recorded. This happened sometimes as well. She invited him to leave a message but the operator wouldn’t let him.
“It’s chargeable,” she said. “You can try again later.” He heard a dial tone. The dial tone was replaced by another recording. It advised Jelonnek to hang up and try again. Or, it suggested, he could call the operator.
The phone smelled like spit.
The recording repeated itself. The line went dead. They were bringing someone else to the phone cell. Jelonnek recognized the last guy they’d brought to the paddy wagon. His eyes were swollen shut and as big as plums.
“Hello,” he said into the void. “It’s me.” He pressed the receiver to his ear as if the silence might leak out. “I’m at the Justice Center.”
The phone made a harsh sound, a loud broken buzzing.
Someone was always shouting something. On the way to his cell some kind of Muslim called Jelonnek an Amorite. He said the Amorites had pale skin because their father, Canaan, was cursed with leprosy. He said they had sexual intercourse with dogs and jackals in the mountains of the Caucasus. Dogs became man’s best friend, he said, because they would lick his leprous sores.
“He say that to all y’all,” the IG said.
The cell was empty. One of the IG’s dropped his mattress on the bed, a metal plank fastened to the wall with angle iron. Then they slid the gate shut and took his cuffs off through the food slot. His arms floated, the best thing that had happened to him all day. His left hand was slightly purple. He tried to pee. The toilet had no seat and jutted low from the wall like a stainless steel jaw. For some reason he couldn’t pee and tried to wash the ink off his fingers in the stainless steel sink. The water was cold, there was no soap. He sat on the middle of the bed and cleared his throat. A terse echo like the twang of a recoiling spring; he wondered what the walls were made of. They were smooth and painted and one had a piece of toilet paper stuck to it. Someone had drawn a window.
There was always shouting. At first all you could make out were the same two or
three words. From the bed all you could see was the polished beige cinderblock across the hall. Part of a fire extinguisher. Jelonnek thought about counting the bricks but decided he could save that for later.
“Everything is everything,” someone shouted.
If she’d been the wrong color he would never have pulled over.
They’d taken the businessman’s tie but let him keep his jacket. He looked like some kind of vice-president or maybe a corporate lawyer. He kicked his mattress to the wall opposite the toilet and said, “I’d flip you for the bunk but I won’t be here long.” He washed his hands, then paced in front of the gate for a while. Every time someone came down the hall he stopped and faced the bars as if at the approach of his liberators. Finally, he sat down on his mattress and said, “So what do you do?”
Jelonnek didn’t like being asked this. He was bad at summing things up, but he tried anyway.
“I’d go crazy,” the businessman said.
“That’s what they say,” Jelonnek said. “What about you?”
“Consulting.” The businessman went into his breastpocket like he was reaching for his card.
“Married?” he said.
Jelonnek shook his head. “You?”
“Thirty years.”
“What do you think she’ll say?”
“About what?”
“About...”
“I was just asking directions.” The businessman looked where his watch had been. “Forty minutes, an hour tops.” He went to the bars and demanded soap. He went back to the sink and washed his hands again, scraping the ink with his nails.
The young ones called each other out from their cells. Set to set, block to block, nation to nation. Six pop, five drop, nines and gats and gauges. Greetings and threats indistinguishable in the voices of monster children.
The IG’s let them talk. The IG’s were little more than civilians in uniform—pale blue shirts and dark blue pants. They had no weapons, just keys and radios. Some engaged the inmates freely in conversation, and even if you could make out these exchanges it was hard to tell on which side of the gate the confabulators stood.
They rolled it down the hall on a cart and passed it through the slot in plastic trays,
still warm. You got a paper towel and a spork. If the sporks weren’t returned each inmate in
the cell would be subject to a strip search.
“Any excuse!” someone yelled, and someone else in falsetto, “Me first!”
Meatloaf, mashed potatoes and gravy, peas and carrots, fruit cocktail. Someone down the row asked if they had to eat their vegetables.
“Beats airline food,” the businessman said.
Jelonnek drank his apple juice.
Jelonnek didn’t like the businessman but in a way was sorry to see him go. When he left you’d have thought he was looking around for his briefcase. He didn’t say goodbye. Someone down the row said, “Thanks for the head.” Any time anyone left, that was what he said.
Jelonnek stood over the toilet and pissed for forty seconds. He’d barely finished when he heard them opening the gate. He didn’t turn around.
“Can you throw me some scraps? Damn.” Jelonnek pushed the button on the wall with his toe. The water vortexed weakly but didn’t go all the way down. Then he turned around. The new arrival had his arms in the food slot. His flesh was a calendar of scars.
“Let me smoke with you one time,” he said to the IG, and the IG handed him a cigarette through the bars. He left his mattress on the floor and sat on the bed.
“I’m there,” Jelonnek said.
The man on the bed tore the filter off and put the rest in his pocket. “You look like you over there to me.”
“I mean I have the bed.”
“I mean you did. Looks like I got it now—unless you plan to get it back.”
Jelonnek looked at the toilet, then at the mattress in the corner.
“You look a little light in the ass to me,” the man on the bed said, “but we can work.” He stretched out to take a nap.
“We straight then,” he decided with his eyes closed.
Jelonnek sat on the mattress and tried to convey strong silence. A movement caught his eye, something scurrying out of sight in the hall, but he wasn’t sure. He heard the new guy’s stomach rumble.
“Three years ain’t shit,” he said in his sleep.
There were seventeen bricks from floor to ceiling.
“Tried to play me—big as I am.”
“Is you big?”
“Bigger than you.”
“You fat but you ain’t big.”
“Yeah I’m fat. You wanna hurt me call me skinny.”
“They keep women here?”
“First District.”
“I want to kick it over there.”
“That figures—I thought I smelled pussy.”
“That’s just Puerto Rican.” And everyone laughed who was in a position to.
Apparently they’d run out of mattresses but the new guy said the floor was fine. His
t-shirt said Kill ‘Em All And Let God Sort ‘Em Out, but he was friendly in his way. As soon as they closed the gate he started doing one-handed push-ups. Then he did sit-ups, squats, lunges, touch-your-toes. By the hundred. “You need to break off with that,” the guy on the bunk said. “Ain’t no room here for all that.” But he didn’t make a move to stop it, and Jelonnek kept silent. The guy with the t-shirt switched hands.
He was friendly in his way. He sat on the toilet and defecated noisily while conversing as though sitting on a barstool. Jelonnek was repulsed and only a little envious.
The guy who’d stolen the bunk rolled over to the wall, muttering into his hand.
“It’ll be better in Corrections,” the new guy assured Jelonnek. He sat knock-kneed, his ass blaring like a brass section. “After you get arraigned. They got dorms, no bars—this sheet of plastic just comes down from the ceiling. In the pods you get your own cell. If someone comes after your ass you can lock yourself in and only the guard can open it.”
Basketball, TV, a dentist. Like they were going to summer camp. He kept winking but Jelonnek didn’t know if it was a nervous tic or We Have To .
“I think I can make bail,” Jelonnek said. The new guy rapped the wall with his knuckles.
“Steel plate,” he said. He rapped his skull, then wiped his ass and inspected the darkened swatch intently like a seer reading entrails. He pushed the button and stood and watched the contents of the toilet whirl slowly without going down.
“We should’ve told you,” Jelonnek said.
The Muslim or whatever he was who’d called Jelonnek an Amorite was shouting over everyone. “A trillion years ago the human race was all niggers living on the moon,” he shouted. “The tribe of the Shabazz.” He continued with how they’d come down to earth, built the city of Mecca and wrote the Koran. Among them was a mad scientist who was eventually banished to a remote island along with 59,999 of his followers. In exile he plotted revenge, performing genetic experiments on his disciples with a view toward creating a race of super-warriors. As his work progressed so did the aptitude of his subjects for violence and cruelty develop, so did their eyes turn blue and their skin become paler. Accompanied by this devilish new race, the mad scientist eventually escaped exile and conquered the world.
“We the last descendants of the ancient Shabazz!” the Muslim yelled.
“You here that, Superman?” someone said.
“Public nuisance,” the guy on the bunk said.
The new guy shook his head.
“Domestic violence,” Jelonnek said.
The new guy shook his head again and got up. He stood over the toilet and unzipped his pants. Jelonnek felt another one coming on, too, but he thought he’d wait. See if the new guy ever went to sleep.
The new guy finished and said, “They say I shot my neighbor’s dog.” He kicked the button. “I shouldn’t have done that,” he said, and they watched it overflow.
When he started karate-punching the walls the IG’s came and got him. They told him he had a visitor. They had backup.
“What about his mess on the floor?” the guy on the bunk demanded, not for the first time.
“We put in a work order,” the IG said.
“It stank.”
“Breathe through your mouth.”
The gate clanked shut. “He ain’t comin back,” the guy on the bunk said. He stood on it
and pissed in the sink. A knuckle-shaped patch of red on the wall.
“Where’s he going?”
“Safety cell, probably. Got a hole in the floor with a grate like. Take all your clothes
off, too.” He lay back down on the bunk.
“You ever been in one?”
“You see me tryin to sleep?”
The next new guy was small and slender and had a ponytail. He was dressed all in denim.
“That ain’t no janitor,” the guy on the bunk said.
“Watch where you step,” the IG advised. He sprayed air freshener through the bars.
“Now it smell like strawberry shit,” the guy on the bunk said.
The new guy asked Jelonnek if he could sit on the mattress with him. Jelonnek thought about it. Then he pointed to a spot by the bars and said, “It’s almost dry over there.”
_____
Seventeen bricks from floor to ceiling. Thirty-five bars: eleven in the gate, twelve each in the stationary panels.
The guy on the bunk snored. The kid with the ponytail didn’t say much, just squatted on the damp floor with his back to the bars, deflected Jelonnek’s only attempt at conversation. He seemed to be singing to himself. Jelonnek had to piss again but he could wait till the kid with the ponytail was asleep; he didn’t want to have to carry his mattress to the sink, didn’t want to go near the toilet. He could wait for the janitor.
The lights in the ceiling were recessed and covered with wire screens. The screens were divided into little squares, fourteen by fourteen. It was still Monday.
A rat crawled into the cell and nibbled on a turd. Jelonnek put down his six and carried the one. He lost his place and started over.
The lights in the cell went out. The ones in the hallway stayed on.
The gate opened. He lay sideways, curled up with his back to the wall. His shirt bunched under his head. His eyes were closed but he wasn’t sleeping. He had to go, but he couldn’t go. Like a metal rod in there trying to force its way out the tip of him.
The gate opened but he kept his eyes shut.
“Like he waitin on us.”
“The fuck is this?”
“It ain’t meatloaf.”
“Used to be.”
Frantic breathing, flesh in motion. He thought of the guy in the t-shirt doing his squats and lunges, but the guy in the t-shirt was gone.
“It’s just a bad dream.”
“Goldilocks and the Three Dogs.”
“Who been sleepin in my shit?” And whoever said it was pleased with himself and kept saying it.
Giggles. Blows like someone beating a rug. Muffled grunts.
“Open him up.”
“Gimme the spoon.”
“You just havin a bad dream.”
He had to go. He could wait. He felt it in his back and front but he could wait as long as he had to. If you tried to straighten something would break. He didn’t move or open his eyes.
When Jelonnek was a boy on the Fourth of July he lit fuses all day long. He launched bottle rockets from his hand, held a sparkler in his mouth and six in each fist, trying to write his name in light. Jumped through the Fountain of Flame like it was a lawn sprinkler. When the old man was too drunk to care, Jelonnek would reach for the big ones. The M-80’s had waterproof wicks and he’d toss them in the swimming pool next door: blue flash, muted thump, a column of water you couldn’t see in the dark, but you’d hear it collapse. He’d light a quarter-stick with a mosquito chaser, cock his arm, and wait till the fuse was just about gone. It drove everyone crazy but he still had all his fingers.
He wasn’t sure why this came to him now, but it was as brave as he’d ever been.
The janitor came in the morning. The stench filled the cell but Jelonnek was glad; it might disguise the one he hoped no one would notice. He tied his shirt around his waist and was glad he wore dark pants. The kid with the ponytail was gone. The janitor waited with his mop and bucket and wet-vac while Jelonnek and the guy on the bunk were cuffed and taken out of the cell. They had Jelonnek’s Polaroid. They took him around the corner where a dozen other inmates waited in single file. A common chain was threaded through the cuffs and they were led like a beast of many legs through a vestibule and down a long corridor with no windows. No talking, there was just the rumbling of the floor and the clink of the chain and Jelonnek thought he heard street traffic passing below them. Through another vestibule with a guard in a plexiglass booth like a cell of his own, into a stainless steel elevator the size of someone’s living room. Right off the elevator they were taken into a long narrow chamber with benches along the walls. Men wearing orange scrub suits and rubber slippers already occupied one side. One of them was standing in the corner and Jelonnek thought he looked familiar. Paul someone, someone he hadn’t seen since third grade. He’d stood in the corner then too, like he was rehearsing his future. When the choir instructor faced the class with her back to him, he would turn around and expose himself. “Now let me see yours,” he demanded later, in the cloakroom, at recess, of boy or girl. That was probably why Jelonnek remembered him. He even had the same silly grin, only higher off the floor. Their eyes met briefly.
His pants were no longer soaked but they were still very damp. The guy next to him looked hard at him, got up as though to move and the chain reminded him he couldn’t. He started to say something and the door opened.
The chain was removed and an officer in another kind of uniform came in and led them through another door into the courtroom. It was filled with people and noise but not the same kind of noise as the other part of the Justice Center, where every sound you made rang and never quite died away. Thick carpet and wood-paneled walls, no windows in here, either. The seats like pews, the first three rows empty. The scrubs sat up front. The women came in from the other side. They put them in the rows across the aisle and they looked worse off than the men because they’d fallen further and harder. Suits and briefcases standing up front and to the side. The judge had not yet arrived, the nameplate on the bench said magistrate. Everyone in uniform was a bailiff or sheriff. The one with the loudest voice took the aisle between the seats and told everyone to be quiet, that you couldn’t eat or drink in the courtroom. A woman in a black robe entered and sat at the bench. All rose. The bailiff pronounced her name.
The judge explained the proceedings, the pleas available to them. The bailiff told someone to take his hat off. Another announced the time and date. It was still early.
They started with the last letter of the alphabet. An assistant stood next to the judge with his arms full of folders. You went up one at a time and stood at a lectern in front of the bench. There was a microphone but it wasn’t on. If you pled not guilty you were taken out of the room and made to wait somewhere while they assigned a trial date. Some people were joined by attorneys. Some were found to have other charges and warrants outstanding, and these were usually returned to their seats, their cases relegated to the back of the docket.
Drunk driving, simple assault, fourth degree assault, criminal mischief. The assistant would do something with the folder, then place it before the judge. But every other case was soliciting and she, the judge, wondered aloud at such disproportion.
“Were they running a special?” she said, and the laughter was so boisterous she banged her gavel for order.
The guy who’d been roughed up stood. He still couldn’t open his eyes and had to be led up the aisle. A woman with a briefcase detached herself from the other lawyers and briefcases and approached the bench. After considerable whispering counsel and client left the room entirely, diverted to some unknown tributary of the system.
He muttered something on his way out, something about kings and merchants.
Another day set aside, a new file opened, the next offender summoned to the bench.
The guy next to Jelonnek kept raising his arm, hand over his nose. He whispered to the bailiff.
“If she don’t smell it,” the bailiff said, “it don’t smell.”
Resisting arrest, endangering a child. The judge and her assistant moved them along with admirable rhythm and efficiency, like servers in a public cafeteria. Menacing, menacing, criminal trespass. The right to a speedy trial waived. By the time Jelonnek heard his name, he’d heard enough to know that no contest was the only call to make. The court would reserve a day for sentencing and the whole process, without all those rights in the way, would complete itself that much sooner. And because he was a first offender, a working man who held a responsible job, he knew he would be released on his own recognizance, and on the way out he glanced at the man he’d been a boy with in third grade, who glanced back as if he still might ask Jelonnek to reciprocate.
Finally it was Tuesday.
They gave back almost everything they’d taken from him. They gave him his car keys but his car was at the warehouse and he no longer had any way of getting there. He took the visitors’ exit. The bus stop was around the corner and up two blocks, the Justice Center turning and looming the whole time like he couldn’t escape its gravitational pull. He heard the sound of basketball coming faintly from the squat, fortified buildings beneath the court tower. Jelonnek hated basketball; football was his game, though he’d never played.
Tuesday was sunny, and warmer than the day before. At first the bus was almost empty. Jelonnek sat in the middle of it so the driver wouldn’t talk to him, but the driver just raised his voice and asked Jelonnek if he fished.
Jelonnek hadn’t been fishing since he was a kid. He opened the window.
“Too bad,” the driver said. “Perch are spawning.”
Jelonnek asked what day it was, just to make sure.
They crossed the river to the old market on the west side, yellow brick clocktower and clerestory windows. The bus filled with shoppers, plastic bags and butcher paper. Jelonnek smelled meat and fresh vegetables. Himself. He moved to another seat but people kept looking at him so he got off two stops before his building. They shared one bedroom near the edge of the city line. After he made sure she wasn’t there he took a hot shower. Dozed on his feet. When he got out the phone was ringing, and he grabbed it in time to hear someone hang up. Her, or his job. He would call his job later.
He put on a robe and lay on the couch. He managed to doze off again, but something kept waking him up. It was the voice in the wagon, the old hand, but what if the old hand was wrong? He looked around for the phone book. Some of them gave free advice over the phone.
He heard the guy downstairs baby-talking his dog.
He couldn’t find the Yellow Pages but there was a crack in the TV screen. He hadn’t noticed it before (but he’d looked right into the camera). Then he couldn’t find the stereo, then other things; a lamp, the hassock, small things. Clean spots shone on surfaces like gaps in his life.
He was thirsty. He went to the kitchen. The coffeemaker was missing and a note was pressed to the refrigerator with a magnet. A little plastic flower. He read the note and opened the refrigerator. There was one left. I liked our story, I thought you did too. Jelonnek wasn’t sure what that meant, except that he was in some way free. He drained the can in one tilt of his head. He wondered if he should get more, or call a lawyer. 7-Eleven was four blocks away but he remembered the car was at the warehouse, and there was now the danger of being recognized. He should call Forms.
He started getting dressed. There were railroad tracks behind the building; they
crossed the street in front of the store. He stepped into his pants. He would buy some beer, come back and make phone calls. He would take the tracks. He would not make eye contact. He would wear a suit ten days later in court, where there would be an audience but no jury. No lawyer. Before sentencing he would be instructed to turn and face the face of the community, their indignation, their signs, some of which would be carefully and persuasively worded, the products of some passion and wit. Ten days from now Jelonnek would turn around with nothing to say for himself, and in response to his silence would come a wave of outrage aimed at his conscience like a volley from a firing squad. Jelonnek would swear the john next to him was crying and would feel the sniggering come over him again like sickness when you’re drunk. He would have to lower his head and put a fist to his mouth.