Criminal That I Am (18 page)

I can't help but smile back at the sight of him, and we are both grinning when we embrace. When he leans in to kiss me, I keep my eyes open to get a good look. He senses this and opens his eyes, too. With our faces pressed together we look at each other and both start laughing.

“Let's try that again,” he says. And then we do. We then take a seat outside on one of the picnic tables.

There is much to catch up on, but I first want to tell him about the Escalera brothers. I am technically departing his legal team, but I know he might have questions and is flustered when he does not have enough of an opportunity to ask them.

His face displays shock and dismay as I relay what has happened. He had filed all of the unpleasantness of his case away, and I have just forced him to reopen the file. He looks down at the picnic table for some time, rubbing his thumb against the metal. Though we are outside in the summer sunshine, holding hands, it feels as though we have suddenly relocated to the attorney room. I remain quiet as he processes the news.

“So, what does this mean?” he finally says.

“For right now, it means nothing. You've been sentenced, your case is over. The government will only want you if they go to trial. And that's unlikely.”

He looks up. “Is it really unlikely, or are you just saying that?”

“That's what everyone says. That the brothers would be crazy to risk going to trial, that they will be much better off if they plead.”

I don't mention the inexplicable bad feeling I got when I learned of their arrest, but Cameron appears to have caught wind of it.

“Okay, everyone tells you that. What do you think?”

“I have no reason to think they're wrong.”

“You didn't really answer my question.”

I sigh. “Cameron, I don't know,” I say. His face looks worried. “But yes, I think they will plead.”

I don't think I've convinced either one of us, but we let the topic go.

I notice Cameron eyeing the vending machines through the win
dow. “Are you hungry?” I ask.

“Yeah, let's get something to eat.”

We walk inside to the visiting room and make our way to the vending machines. I catch sight of Cherry Red at a table with her husband. They are holding hands and smiling at each other. I am distracted from this sight by an odd feeling from behind me. I glance over my shoulder and uncover the reason: the entire visiting room is examining Cameron's back as he decides between a sandwich and a candy bar. I watch several inmates conspicuously lean over to their visitors to whisper something and then point Cameron's way.

I had sort of forgotten that Cameron is famous here.

I look at Cameron to see if he notices his audience. He seems enthralled with his vending machine choices and oblivious to the dozens of eyes staring at him.

“What are you going to get?” he asks me.

I glance over the possibilities. “Maybe just a diet Coke for now. What about you?”

He is transfixed by the vending machine that offers submarine sandwiches. This seems a questionable choice to me, sweaty cold cuts wrapped in plastic and then shoved into a rotating shelf, but Cameron so rarely displays any appetite that I think he must really want it.

In consultation with the visitor's manual, I have brought a clear plastic bag with dollar bills for the vending machine. I push the bag toward him. “Here,” I say. “Just get what you want.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see a corrections officer closely watching.

Cameron sees him, too, and pushes the bag back at me. “I can't.”

“Why not?”

“I can't handle any money. You have to get it for me.”

He watches as I insert the bills and retrieve a sub sandwich. Like all Bureau of Prisons refreshments, the sandwich is starkly overpriced. It's also very small. I decide to get him two.

When we get to the picnic table, I put the sandwiches down in front of him. “I got you two,” I say, “because they looked pretty small.”

“Aren't you going to have one?”

I take a look at the nuclear pink lunch meat and involuntarily scrunch my face. “No, I'm good,” I say. My tone might bear a twinge of disgust.

He opens a packet of mayonnaise. “Yeah, everyone here gets so excited for the vending machines because it's so much better than the food we normally get, but it's still stuff that regular people would never eat.”

Though he appears unfazed by my insensitivity, I feel terrible.

I watch as he spreads mayonnaise on one half of a processed bun. “I just don't like lunch meat,” I lie. “But I'm hungry, I am going to get something for me, too.”

“You don't have to, just because I said that.”

“What?” I exclaim. He raises an eyebrow at my dramatic reaction. “No, I really do want to eat something.”

I leave him at the picnic table and return to the vending machines. Cherry Red is standing by the microwave. I smile at her as I select an inoffensive chicken cutlet sandwich that resides in the same machine as the rubbery subs. When I retrieve it from the machine, Cherry Red waves me over.

“You're going to want to heat that up,” she says, pointing to my sandwich.

I look down at the sandwich and decide that this could do no further harm.

She shows me how to work the microwave, an early model that appears to have been manufactured in the late 1980s. I delicately remove the plastic, though some of the bun manages to stick to the wrapping, and place the sandwich on a small paper plate that is offered next to the microwave.

We stand side by side, watching my sandwich rotate.

Cherry Red playfully nudges my hip with her own. “Hey,” she says. “You didn't say that you were visiting
that
inmate.”

I'm not sure what to say. “I guess you didn't ask.”

“My husband says he's a great guy, really polite and friendly. He told me that on Cameron's first day the entire facility stood outside waiting for his prison bus to arrive. Everyone was staring at him, my husband
said, but he was really unassuming, just went to the library to get a book and then went to his bunk to read it.”

Cameron has never described to me the circumstances of his arrival, but this sounds like how it might be. “I don't know how he takes all of that attention in a place like this,” I say. “It would drive me crazy.”

“Me, too,” she says. “When his dad came earlier this month, everyone was all over him. He was so nice, shaking everyone's hands. But I always try to keep a respectful space. I am really here to see my husband.” She points over to him, and he waves.

It's jarring to me that she knows so much about Cameron and his visits. I'm already acquainted with Cameron Douglas's father's hand-­shaking abilities, so I change the subject. “You guys seem really happy,” I say as I look over at her husband. “He's really lucky to have you.”

“Aww, that's sweet. You guys are a really cute couple, too.”

Though we aren't really a couple, I don't feel like correcting her. As kind as she is, she already knows too much. “Thanks,” I say.

The microwave announces the arrival of my heated sandwich, and so I tell Cherry Red I will see her later. I stop by the condiments table and decide that mayonnaise could serve as an important buffer. I grab two packets.

When I make my way back to the picnic table, Cameron asks me, “What were you two talking about?”

“Nothing,” I say. “Just my sandwich.”

Cameron has made his way through the first sub and has started on the second. After applying liberal amounts of mayonnaise to both sides of the cutlet, I'm pleasantly surprised that my sandwich is not just edible, but actually kind of good. I'm enjoying it enough that Cameron notices and requests a bite.

As he leans over to take a bite of my sandwich, it occurs to me that this presents the first time that he and I have ever eaten a meal together. The fact that we are breaking bread in a federal correctional facility, that our supper has come from a Bureau of Prisons–owned-and-­operated vending machine, somehow seems fitting. Criminal justice is the glue that holds us together.

Cameron notices me thinking to myself. “What?” he says. He
brushes my hair away from my face.

“Nothing,” I say.

He takes another bite of my sandwich.

Once we are sated, we sit and talk, mostly confessing all of the things we thought of each other during the case but did not say. I admit to him that on the day we met I first thought his tattoos referred to male sex organs. He sighs in a way that indicates I am not the first person to make this mistake. I laugh.

He tells me that when I brought him the Sharpie to fix his hems, he was certain that in doing so I was professing my feelings. I laugh even harder at this. “Because of a marker?”

“Because of how intent you were about fixing my problem.”

We look at each other for a moment.

“Well,” I say, breaking the silence. “You looked so ridiculous in that jumpsuit, I had to do
something.
”

This makes us both laugh.

At a break in our laughter, my mind flashes back to the attorney room. “Just so you know,” I say carefully. “I never told anyone else about that other problem I fixed for you.”

He can tell that I'm trying to confirm that he's kept our secret, too. His eyes square with mine. “Neither did I,” he says. “You don't have to worry, Jen.”

The look of conviction on his face makes me feel silly for saying anything. “I know,” I say. “I don't know why I brought it up.”

I shake my head as though to throw away the thought, and the conversation moves on to lighter fare. At some point, Cameron grabs my hand, holds it to his face, examines each finger, gently rubs each pink-polished nail.

“What are you doing?” I ask teasingly.

He doesn't look up from what he's doing. “I always liked looking at your hands,” he says. “I want to see what I was looking at.”

“Please don't tell me you have some weird hand fetish.”

He laughs. “No,” he says. He looks up at me, flashes me a sheepish grin. “I'm just biding my time until I get the rest.”

We haven't really discussed what any of this would look like in the
absence of corrections officers. “You mean
if
you get the rest,” I tell him with a smile.

“Oh, I'm going to get it,” he says. “As soon as I get out of here, I'm coming for you, Jen.”

“We'll just have to see,” I say, not a little coy. “A lot can happen between now and then.”

When visiting time is over, I get up to leave. We hug.

“Thank you for coming,” he says as though I am a dinner guest.

“Thank you for having me,” I say as though he is a dinner host.

He gives me the best kind of kiss, the kind that lasts long after it's over. I can confirm that it is conducted in good taste.

And so this is how it goes, on this visit and five others, the final of which will fall less than twenty-four hours before the feds arrive at my door. On that visit, in the final half hour, we will rush inside the visiting room from the picnic tables in order to escape a sudden downpour, finding seats near Cherry Red and her husband.

“It's amazing how it just came on so quickly, out of nowhere,” Cherry Red says of the rainstorm. She leaves early so as to get home before the weather gets any worse.

We say good-bye. I never see her again.

As I prepare to go out into the rain, we wrap up our conversation. We've created a code word for the Escalera brothers and, using this word, I tell him I will keep close watch for any developments.

“Don't worry,” I say. “I'm on it.”

As we say good-bye, I tell him, “I'm going to miss you.”

“You're going to see me in two weeks,” he says.

“Still,” I say.

“I love you,” he says.

“I love you, too,” I say.

As I make my way to the door, he takes his place in the inmate line. Before I grab the handle, I look over at him. He is looking at the ground, but I catch his eye. He smiles and places his hand, its thumb and pinky extended, to his ear.

“I'll call you,” he mouths.

But when he does, everything is different. By that time, there is
nothing that will ever be the same.

M
onths later, with my own case staring me in the face, I've long forgotten about the Escalera brothers. In early September, still months away from hearing from the government about my case, I receive an e-mail from a Google Alert that I had created for Cameron during his case and never bothered deleting.

The alert links to an article entitled “Deals Could Keep Cameron Douglas Off the Stand.” It reports that the Escalera brothers have been offered plea deals and that they will likely plead guilty within a month.

The article doesn't say much more, other than the fact that the trial judge, the same one as in Cameron's case, granted Eduardo Escalera's request for a new court-appointed attorney. The article doesn't explain why a new attorney was requested, other than to say there was “a dispute over the details” between lawyer and client.

I don't give the article much thought, other than to briefly note that Cameron's long-held fear will not be realized.

The next day, however, I'm on the subway home when the thought occurs to me: If the brothers are pleading in a month, why would ­Eduardo Escalera feel the need to request a new attorney?

I shake my head at myself for even thinking about this. I have my own case to worry about. When I return to my apartment, I delete the Google Alert and put the thought out of my mind.

I
don't return to the thought until several months later, a few weeks before my court date. My attorney calls me. Though my fate has already been decided, it still unnerves me to see his number on my caller ID.

“Just want to give you a heads-up. Though it might change, right now it is looking like the Escaleras may be going to trial and Cameron will have to testify.”