The Blade Itself (7 page)

‘What’s her name?’ Debbie looked over, but Evan ignored her. ‘She’s pretty.’

The woman leaned in to kiss the guy, rising up on her toes. She had her hands around his neck, and his rested on
the small of her back. It looked like a good kiss, not the usual peck you saw couples giving.

‘For people that’ve been fucking for years,’ Evan mused, ‘they sure get a kick out of each other.’

She thought of them in the zoo, the way they had lounged on a bench, the guy with his head in the woman’s lap. Evan had stayed in the car, told her to follow them, to get as close as she could. But though she’d sat on the opposite bench, she hadn’t learned much. They talked too soft, speaking just for the other. A world of two. ‘I guess they’re family.’

‘Huh?’ Evan turned to look at her.

‘Family. In love.’ She realized her voice sounded wistful, and quickly threw up her distant expression, the one she used on the guys at the bar.
You can look
, it said,
but that’s all you get
. Evan, though, was staring at her like she’d said something deep. It was the first time he’d really looked at her all morning. Her cheeks went warm, and she felt stupid to have let her guard down, exposed herself that way. ‘What?’

He shook his head. ‘Nothing. Just – nothing.’

The guy had opened the door of a silver truck and tossed his bag on the passenger seat. He got in, and the woman stepped back with her hips cocked in a pose Debbie recognized from movie magazines. As the truck pulled away, the woman turned with a grin and walked back toward the apartment. Evan didn’t start the Mustang, just watched the truck roll down the street.

‘Aren’t we going to follow him?’

Evan shook his head. ‘Not anymore.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because,’ he said, smiling at her, that thin smile that looked a little dangerous, the one that made her a little dizzy, ‘I just thought of a way to get rich and even at the same time.’

Overhead, the El rattled along the circular tracks that gave the Loop its name. A grim rain darkened the faces of crumbling parking decks as Danny stepped out of the Harold Washington Library. Green-tarnished gargoyles loomed eight stories above him, eerie personifications of the confusion he felt. Of the many thoughts jostling for his attention, one overwhelmed the others.

Coming here had been a stupid idea.

What on earth had motivated him to leave work early, drive downtown, pay the rapacious parking fees, and spend three hours researching prison? What would you call that? Shame? Guilt? Idiocy?

People always talked about the value of firsthand knowledge, and they were right. No book could convey the lonely terror of waking in an eight-foot cell, the way living so intimately with fear marked you. No amount of sunshine and fresh air ever truly wiped away the stain on your soul. Almost ten years since his last fall, but some mornings he still mistook the buzzing alarm clock for cell count, and he still spent midnight moments reconstructing himself after a dream casually obliterated his life. No doubt about it, firsthand knowledge was a bitch.

But there was a special awfulness to secondhand knowledge, too. Sharing a table with a bum dozing on a pillow of unopened books, Danny had read scholarly prose that set his demons howling. The information from the Bureau of Justice alone was staggering. America imprisoned more people than any other nation – even Russia, for chrissake –
with close to two million inmates. Many states spent more money on jails than schools. Amnesty International had actually condemned the American prison system.

And the devil was in the details. Seventy percent of inmates were illiterate, 200,000 mentally ill. If you were a black man, you were born with a one-in-four shot of serving time at some point, and you could count on serving longer. Insult to injury, in many places former felons lost certain constitutional rights; the result was that in some Southern states, as much as 30 percent of the entire African-American population had permanently lost the right to vote.

At least Evan’s not black. Lucky him
.

Danny turned his head upward, the rain soft on his face. He had a pretty good understanding of the machinery under his own hood, but he had no idea what had driven him here today. Was it guilt? Over what? Walking out, all those years ago? He replayed the look on Evan’s face, that sense that something dark had been freed within him, the vicious kicks. No. He had no guilt for bailing out of that madness. He wished to Christ it hadn’t happened, wished that he’d never seen the man’s blood pooling on the floor, wished that he’d never heard the sounds a person made in that kind of pain. For that he felt guilt, no question. Simply for being there, being a part of it. But that wasn’t what had brought him here today.

He leaned back against the wet brick. Taxis glided down State, floating on reflections of their taillights. Rain had driven the homeless out of the park next door, and they huddled together in doorways and under the El, smoking and staring. Across the street, Columbia students with backpacks and sandals sprinted through the rain, their laughter painfully young. Life went on.

There it was.

Life went on. Unless you found yourself in manacles one
bright morning, aboard a school bus that had grilles welded over the windows and a police escort. A bus that took you past people heading for work or breakfast or home, normal people for whom you had ceased to exist. Because more than anything else, prison was exile. Both first-and secondhand knowledge told him that. Prison was waiting, routine. All the while slowly succumbing to a world where violence was the only noteworthy break in the endless march of identical days.

They’d come from the same place, but the moment Evan had pulled the trigger in the pawnshop, their paths had irrevocably split. Thinking of that brought on the old mixed-up feeling Danny knew so well. All these years later, and he still couldn’t say for certain if the owner would have shot him that night. He didn’t think so – the guy was too practiced in the way he brought the gun out, the way he handled himself. And either way, it didn’t make it okay to brutalize him, to beat the woman and try to kill her. But in his midnight hours, would he always wonder whether Evan had saved his life?

Probably. And maybe that was part of what had driven him here. But standing under darkening skies, he realized there was more to it than guilt.

There was also fear.

In all the times he’d imagined seeing Evan, he’d pictured the Evan from the pawnshop, the one whose temper seared and burned and left him all too ready to pull the trigger. The one who’d gone crazy, lost his head and his humanity. But for all of that, in his calm moments, a buddy. A partner. A childhood friend who had always had his back.

But that’s not the way it worked. In all those fantasies, Danny had forgotten that time would have passed for both of them. He wasn’t dealing with the same man. The real Evan had lived a maximum-security nightmare for seven
endless years. Had come out of it twice as muscled and half as talkative. Had adapted to a world built to hide the most dangerous of men.

Danny turned up his collar and hurried across the rainy street.

What would that
do
to someone?

Danny recognized the boots. They were the same battered black work boots Evan had worn that night, seven years and a lifetime ago. Steel toes with a rigid sole that made far more noise than the jogging shoes Danny had preferred. But that wasn’t what concerned him now. What concerned him was that he’d stepped into his apartment to find them propped on his kitchen table.

The retro clock on the wall seemed loud. Danny thought of gunfighters in the old West, the silence before the storm of bullets. He dropped his bag on a stool, tossed his keys on the counter. Kept his voice calm as he spoke – ‘Make yourself at home.’ His fingers tingled with adrenaline, but it was too late to back out now. It wasn’t just dogs that could smell fear; criminals had a pretty good nose for it, too.

‘What’s with the Heineken in the fridge?’ Evan leaned back in his chair, rocking it up on two legs, the picture of comfort. There were three empty green bottles on the table already, a fourth well on its way.

‘Karen’s.’

‘Tastes like piss.’

Danny glanced around casually. If there were any other surprises planned, he wanted to know about them. The table sat in an alcove beneath the window, bright with afternoon sun. The rest of the kitchen didn’t offer much cover, just a small counter and a pantry on the far side. The pantry was maybe large enough for a person, but the bifold doors would make for an awkward exit. How long had Evan been here? And how had he known Danny would be the first one
home, and not Karen? ‘Didn’t seem to slow you down any.’

Evan shrugged. ‘Been a while since I’ve been able to enjoy cold beer. I’m still catching up. Of course,’ his eyes now hard, ‘you’ve had plenty of time, haven’t you?’

Something tightened in Danny’s gut, that humid stirring through his entrails, like the wind preceding the subway. It was an old feeling, familiar, but not missed.

He turned away, went to the fridge. Grabbed a bottle for himself, thought of the cooler move, took another. Popped the caps and handed one to Evan as he sat down.

Evan finished the beer he’d been working on in one open-throated swallow. The black T-shirt he wore traced the lines of his muscles. The upper curves of a blue-black tattoo extended just past the collar. The design was ragged and messy. Ink from inside always was. Tricky to be precise with a straight pin and a ballpoint.

Danny played at being casual as he undid the top button of his oxford and rolled the cuffs, but his mind crackled and hummed. There was no good angle from which to see Evan breaking into his house. It ramped the tension between them, elevated it to action. The disrespect would have been intentional. Only one conclusion to draw.

Evan was stepping things up.

Which made cool all the more important. Cool was currency. Cool suggested a lack of fear, an equal footing. He raised the beer. ‘Cheers.’

‘Cheers.’ They clinked bottles, looking into each other’s eyes, neither acknowledging the tension. ‘Just like old times, huh? Two friends bullshitting over a beer.’ Evan’s tone was jovial. ‘You know what it reminds me of?’

Danny smelled a setup, chose to play along. ‘What’s that?’

‘This con I knew in Stateville. Chico. Chico was a prison queer, shaved his chest and wore his jumpsuit half open. You remember the type? Suck your cock for two packs of
smokes, or one pack of menthols. He belonged to Lupé, this big Norteño Mexican, but they had an understanding. Chico could work to keep himself in luxuries, long as he split the take.’

Evan paused, holding his beer by the neck, eyes still drilling into Danny. Didn’t seem like he’d blinked yet. Danny met the gaze, knew better than to look away. The tension in his gut grew worse.

‘I’d been in a couple months when Chico got a new cellie, some eighteen-year-old transfer. Word round the yard said it was love, that Chico’d been hitting his knees for this new boy with no smokes required. Truth be told, Lupé might have tolerated that – he wasn’t a fag so much as a player – but Chico took it too far. Told Lupé they were through. He’s a changed woman, and not working anymore.’

Evan paused to take a sip of beer. ‘You know what? I’m coming around on this Heineken.’

Danny said nothing, glanced at the clock. Karen would be home soon. If he heard her key in the door, he wasn’t going to have a choice but to raise the stakes himself. He’d been too concerned with her reaction to tell her about Evan’s return. It wasn’t the idea of getting caught that scared him. He just had no intention of letting the two of them be in the same room. Ever.

‘Anyway, a couple days later, Chico and Boyfriend are in their cell splitting pruno when Lupé and his crew come for them. The pruno, that’s what reminded me. You know the stuff? Prison liquor. You steal fruit from the mess, mash it up with ketchup, some water. Put it in a bag to ferment for a couple weeks. The color of the mold on top depends on the fruit you use; sometimes it’s green, sometimes this sick orange. But if you skim that off, the liquid that’s left will get you fucked up. Shit’s worse than Mad Dog, though. It’ll give you a headache make you wish you were dead.’ He smiled.
‘Nothing like the imported beer you’ve been drinking.’

Where was this going? Was he just flexing to show how hard he’d become? Hardly necessary – Evan looked like if you drove a truck into him, you’d just end up with a busted rig. There was a larger point, Danny knew. He just didn’t see it yet.

‘So Lupé’s guys are serious gangbangers. By the way, you know what the bangers call a youth fall? Gladiator school. Nice, huh? Anyway, they get hold of our lovebirds, and right away they’ve got the gags in. Lupé’s last into the cell. He makes sure that Chico is watching, and then he paroles Boyfriend. Leaves the shank sticking out of the man’s throat.’

Danny couldn’t taste the beer. He tried to keep his face a mask, to stay above it. The ticking clock made him think of time bombs, explosions straining to escape.

Evan leaned forward, corded forearms bunching. He smelled of beer and cigarettes. ‘Then Lupé touches Chico’s face real soft. Smiles at him, turns, and walks out.

‘Chico senses what’s coming, starts struggling. You can tell he wants to kill these guys, but he’s just a prison queer. What he wants isn’t important. After all, these three are gladiators. One gets him in a chokehold, and another lifts his foot up on the bunk, stretches the leg out straight. The bangers are laughing, two of them arguing who gets to do it, like Chico isn’t even there. He’s turning white and shit, but they don’t pay him any attention. Finally the one on the bed holds Chico’s leg taut, the joint locked. The third winds up, then stomps down, just
bam
, down, like snapping firewood, right on the knee. Chico howls, I mean, you can hear it through the gag. And no fucking wonder, because bone is sticking out the back of his prison blues. The bangers hoot, and slap each other on the back while Chico shrieks. Whole thing took maybe a minute. Guards find the pruno,
the blade, Boyfriend’s body, they choose to write it off as a lover’s quarrel between the cellmates. Easier than actually looking into it. That’s the mentality on the inside.’