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Authors: Titus Pollard

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BOOK: Living Right on Wrong Street
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Bianca turned around. “By the way ... how is Monica?”
Job was caught off-guard. Again.
“Don't answer that, I don't mean to pry,” she said. “I'll meet you before the last bell rings.”
He spent the rest of the school day going through the motions of teaching, while his mind wandered in and out of the events that had taken place.
I've been nominated as Teacher of the Year.
Should he drown in excitement? How did Bianca pull that off? More than once, he had to draw himself back into the reality of the moment.
When Bianca mentioned Job's award nomination during the school's afternoon announcements, she ended her comments with a tag on how proud she was that one of her faculty members was going to receive such a prestigious election. The last bell could hardly be heard above the students' shouting out his name.
“Get outta here, folks!” Job swung his classroom door open and stepped aside as the young scholars cleared the room like they'd had no home training whatsoever. Once he could hear students' voices echoing outdoors, he felt safe enough to collapse in his chair and sigh in relief.
That day was almost at an end.
Bianca appeared at his classroom fifteen minutes later, looking from head to toe an icon of classic Italian beauty. She strolled across the room with her copperhead snakeskin briefcase in hand and a matching purse over her shoulder.
“Sorry I'm late,” she said. “I meant to see you before the last bell, but you know how it is.”
“Yeah.” Job took a stubby pencil and began digging at the edges of his wooden desk. “Now help me understand. How is it that I am receiving this award? Aren't there other teachers in this school more deserving?”
“You don't beat around the bush, do you?”
“I've had an exhausting day. I'm ready to go home.”
“I know ... to Monica.” Bianca placed her briefcase on his desk. “Let me assure you, Mr. Wright. What happened this morning in my office has nothing to do with your being selected for this award.”
He heard sarcasm through her dramatic sincerity, especially when she made a reference to Monica.
My loving, faithful wife.
“Now, concerning the autobiographical essay you have to compose for Disney. If you don't mind, I'd like to read it for editing before you submit it. It's your work, and I'm not trying to tell you what to do. I just want to make sure you put your best foot forward on this. You're representing our school as well as yourself.”
“You kinda jumped subjects on me.”
“Really? How's that?”
Job put the pencil down. “Well, for one thing, how do we proceed after what took place this morning in your office?”
Bianca stood in place at the edge of his desk for a moment, surveying his question. She moved within arm's distance of Job, narrowing her eyes. “You have to ask? I mean, really. What exactly do you see in front of you?” She pouted.
Strange feelings and sinful thoughts began to creep into Job's conscience. He began focusing on his desk, thinking an inanimate object would be a safe haven for his eyes, but Bianca was using it to her advantage, making circular strokes on it with her index finger.
“What I'm trying to say is that—”
“Let me help you out, Mr. Wright, 'cause it's evident you have problems expressing what you want or telling me what you feel.” She moved in closer, causing Job to spring out of his chair. They were face to face. “We fit, you cannot deny it. And you wanna take it, you want me. You're just not sure how to go about it.”
Job couldn't speak, no matter how hard he tried.
“This is the Hoopla Capital of the Northern Hemisphere, so what you do here while you're married, single, gay, straight, nobody cares. Make your decision.” She backed away from him a short distance, and Job couldn't smell her mint fresh breath any more. Then Bianca said, “I've put it out on the table. You have to let me know when, where, or not at all.” She picked up her briefcase and headed to the classroom door. “And whichever way you decide, it'll be no hard feelings, trust me.”
Job had no misunderstanding after that. All he gave was a one-word acknowledgement that he couldn't recall. Life would have been easier if she'd just left him alone to teach and only teach. Bianca's passionate approach wasn't something he'd ever had to deal with before, and what she had done that day made him prey for a kill.
She had added another dilemma to his already confusing mental mix, and he couldn't make a rational thought. And he still had to put on a good face for Monica that evening.
Chapter 13
And the keeper of the prison told this saying ... now therefore depart, and go in peace.
Acts 16:36
 
 
That same morning of September 11, Delvin was eating breakfast in the cafeteria. Grace seemed to have been extended as a leftover from Labor Day. That day, the usual compost prison administration called food had been raised one quality point above garbage. The eggs were still of the bulbous, liquid variety, but the bacon had been replaced with ham, pork chops, and loin.
He had just about completed his meal when four strategically placed televisions came on.
The news of apparent terrorists' attacks and subsequent grounding of commercial air flights scrolled at the bottom of the monitors.
Thank goodness for protective screens. Some of the inmates began tossing food and trays at the TVs, but without harm to their function. Delvin could only figure their response was to the news or plain foolishness.
“Hey, Storm,” Stinson yelled from the adjoining row of benches, “aren't you from New York?”
I'm from upstate New York, crazy idiot. There's a big difference.
“Syracuse,” he eventually answered.
Stinson boomed out, “Still New York.”
Delvin could feel a snarl engulfing him, a tightening of his face and neck. He had to twist his upper body for comfort. “Right now the nation's issues aren't my problem. Terrorists? That's not my problem. In fact, they probably did me a favor. Some of my worst enemies worked in those buildings. So what, somebody died. If
I
could murder the world, I would.”
“Let me leave you alone.” Stinson stood, brushed off his pants. “You're getting into one of your funks and I don't want to be around for the aftershock.”
After order was restored, the warden dealt out reprimands to the culprits of the breakfast melee. Liberties were given to the rest of the inmates by noon.
At 1:00
P.M.
, Delvin relieved his tension during a conjugal visit inside a normally vacant 75x30 room detestably called The Reformatory. Here, inmates with visitors could have sexual relations under armed watch. Prisoners sought relief and guards sought a thrill under the guise of voyeurism, but it was better than nothing.
To Delvin, Nadia Van Houten-Storm was far from some flighty, jet-setting twenty-six-year-old man-pleaser. The Dutch femme fatale worked to attain her U.S. citizenship and had become an accomplished sculptor and art restorer. She had diplomatic wit and keen intellect. And she was the epitome of sexy.
Delvin's wife had, according to the prison's grapevine, “moved on to a liberated man,” by dating some international playboy named Meritorious, whose money was fresh and legal. It was apparent that after Delvin's imprisonment, she wanted a man that didn't spend his nights in a cell for an apartment. Meritorious was a lucky man—if Delvin had his freedom, Mister Fresh and Legal Money would be dead. Then, he would consider whether Nadia was worth keeping.
Delvin didn't have proof positive, but he was convinced that at some time past, Nadia had done some felonious dirt without getting caught. Regardless, he had a complex trust in her, limited to certain of his financial affairs while he was stashed away in prison.
He rubbed his hair back, flicking away the droplets that had formed on the ends of each strand. He tasted the water that remained on the ends of his fingertips.
Nadia palmed his rib cage, her narrow, puckered lips parted—the look of a gratified vixen.
He meant to make that conjugal visit memorable. He had a mission for her, knowing that if she was going to cater his bidding, he needed to tattoo his motion on her body.
“Oooh, Del. What was going on in that mind of yours?” Nadia asked in an accent fired with a molten lava edge. She shook her shoulder length tresses, darkened from humidity and magnificence in the moment, and rose off the blanket ridden table they had improvised as a bed. “You bare your soul. I feel.”
I'm sure you did.
“I was ready for it,” he said. He yanked up his pants and zipped them. “Weren't you?”
Her tongue peeked from her mouth and then charmed its way back in. “Yah. It was the way you hung to me.” She batted her sapphire blues. “
Dank je
.”
“You're welcome. Anytime.” He didn't want to hear anymore of Nadia's meowing over their lovemaking. He knew that he'd added an unfamiliar aggression to his erotic responses, taking them to a summit that left them both exhausted and her in wonderment. But the hourglass was running in their time together, and there was unfinished business to be handled before she departed.
“Nadia, I have a package for you to deliver to my attorney tomorrow morning.” Delvin's lawyer was Edward Kirkpatrick, a tight-fisted, no nonsense Southern gentleman brat who had limited power of attorney over an off-shore account made clean by device. Nadia would deliver a package and give Edward instructions to disperse funds once given the directive.
“I do it. For you,” she cooed.
“It's very important. Now you don't have to fret over the prison inspector at the gate.”
“He won't take?”
“No. I fixed it so that it appears to be legal stuff. Sure, he'll look through it, but it's nothing threatening. It'll pass.”
“Okay.”
He gave Nadia the manila envelope. “Don't forget to take care of that for me, Nadia. Tomorrow.”
“I'll do.”
Delvin put on his shirt remembering that she had Mr. Worldwide Lover at her disposal. Meritorious could take up where he left off. Nadia didn't know it, but Delvin felt he had been given more than a quarterly sexual release. He had given her a role in the overthrow of Job's happiness and success.
After Nadia left, he waited a nervous sixty minutes for a word from prison officials on whether she had made it to the outside with the package in tow. If she had been detained and the package confiscated, he would soon be in Siberia or given some god-awful duty. After that hour went by without incident, he relaxed, convincing himself that he must be one of the fortunate; believing his Machiavellian pursuits were heightened because the stars aligned in his favor.
Delvin was spent and ready for a catnap, but he dared not admit that to Nadia, who seemed to have energy for days. But he couldn't rest just yet.
“Warden wants to see you,” the cell block supervisor growled without speaking the last name of any inmate in particular.
Delvin heard the stocky, oil-slick-haired supervisor, but was too engrossed in his fantasy ride to Shangri-La to believe he was the one being summoned. That was, until the supervisor raked his baton across the cell bars. “Move now!”
Delvin left his daydream long enough to start getting a proper shirt on and let the supervisor know, “I heard you. I'll be ready in a minute!” Then he went back to his flight of imagination.
It was about 3:00
P.M.
Dinner's aroma was already ghosting its way throughout the cell block and smelling quite tasty. It was a shame that it took a national tragedy to give Ashland civility.
But civility—and Delvin's personal Shangri-La—had been interrupted.
“What does Warden want?” he asked.
“You'll never know 'less you move a lot quicker.”
The only perk for any warden's job had to be to lord over resentful subjects, because Delvin didn't see why or how Grambling Cox spent his waking hours in that trap called an office suite. It was more like office soot. Warden's work place appeared to be in the early stages of diamond formation; coal. Everything was black or variations thereof. Tables, chairs, desk. Black.
Delvin guessed the State Dept of Corrections did their best to requisition dollars for furnishings in the only part of the prison with no vertical iron linings. But their best wasn't best enough.
Warden's head offered the only distinct color contrast in the entire office. His hair was a natural copper hue. Ditto on the mustache and goatee. And he had light freckles on his face.
Above all, Delvin knew that everyone had a side of them that others would regard as distinct and bizarre. Warden's—Delvin thought—idiosyncrasy was his affinity for the occult and science fiction. Volumes upon volumes on shelves, at the feet of the man's desk, others against the walls. Thick, dusty reads on the subjects of warlocks, futurist theory, satanic worship, and other topics, all bound in Olde World leather—black.
Christmas couldn't even have brightened those surroundings. It was questionable as to whether the warden celebrated any holiday in a religious or a secular fashion.
The supervisor said to Delvin, “I'm gonna put some jewelry on you, Storm. No offense. For Warden's protection in case you disagree with what he's got to say.”
He remained silent while the handcuffs were snapped in place. He was seated in a simple, splinter-laden chair facing Warden's desk. Delvin asked, “Can I keep them?” holding his hands high, the metal flashing off the light.
“What for?” the supervisor asked.
“For my next conjugal visit,” Delvin replied. His mind had just enveloped Nadia's bare body.
“Sickening.” He shook his head, then spat on the floor. “Wait for Warden.”
Only minutes went by before Warden Cox came into the office with a wet dog appearance. His head was a vat of melted pennies as his fingers raked the dome. “Mr. Storm,” he announced with a suspicious pleasantry, “guess you're wondering to yourself: self, why am I in the principal's office, huh?”
If that was meant to be comedic, it didn't work. Delvin was perturbed because his daydream had been interrupted. To answer Warden's question, no. The handcuffs kept him from feeling jovial or making guesses on his fate. “Suppose you tell me.”
Warden took in a belly of wind and laughed it out.
“You got a sense of humor. I like that, if it's held in proper perspective.” He sat behind his desk, pulling out a cigar of the discount convenience store variety. “Well, I'll tell you.”
Delvin eased his body. “Listening.”
“Mr. Storm, rumor has it that you have settled into this facility with a few bumps along the road, but they've been smoothed out. If you can call it this, you've become a model prisoner, for lack of a better term.
Now who put the blinders on him?
“Okay.”
“Well,” he paused to light his cigar, “I can pick any inmate I want, Mr. Storm, to become one of the individuals at the top of the pyramid. Yes sir. I want you to become a trustee.”
“Trustee?”
“Lemme tell ya what it involves. Quite simple. It starts out—until I see you can be trusted with the freedom you'll enjoy—with you listening and doin' what I tell ya. How 'bout them apples?”
Delvin wanted to grab and choke him. He rethought the urge. Warden Cox was a human testament on how to reside at the bottom rung of a ladder while feigning to be at the top. “I don't guess I'd mind being a trustee, Warden.”
“And you'll enjoy, eventually, free access in my little kingdom. Under the constant watch of an armed guard, of course. Think you'll like that?”
Free access?
When Delvin looked around and spotted the Dell Inspiron sitting on Warden's desk, his mind started tossing. Electronic entry to the world. “I think I can handle that, sir.”
I'm a rascal.
Delvin blocked out the majority of the cell block's noise on the remainder of that Tuesday. There were three exceptions.
The wind danced its way around between razor wire and the sharp-shooter's tower, composing countless avant-garde tunes making the beams and joists of Ashland quake, disturbing the countenance of the inmates. A higher power sending what was thought to be an otherwise undeliverable message.
Then there was the journalism commentary shipped in by public address from the prison's central electronic ignorant box. CNN, MSNBC, or some other cable news channel with minute-by-minute updates of the 9/11 cleanup and search efforts. Listening to that was enough to make him lose his sanity.
Above all, there was Murphy, standing at his cell opening, leaning. All he needed was a cigarette and fedora to have the appearance of a g-man from a black and white flick.
“Took long enough,” Delvin said. “Whatcha got?”
Murphy rubbed his fingers against each other, causing a sandpaper-to-raw-wood sound. He seemed unstirred by his barking, given the way he invited himself into the cell, sat on the bunk, and responded in an unvarying, conventional hum. “Have you secured the financing?”
“I've got the goods in place.” Delvin explained that his lawyer would receive instructions from Nadia to make funds available once Delvin knew the amount to fork over.
BOOK: Living Right on Wrong Street
6.94Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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