The Blue Hour (6 page)

He sat for a moment with
the engine running. His truck was old and small, but the air conditioner worked
well. He knew that what was about to happen was important to him and it made
him sweat. He wanted to do well for himself. He closed his eyes and aimed the
vent straight into his face.

Without any real choice in
the matter, Colesceau had assented to meeting his PA, his psychologist, and
maybe even a cop in his own home during his lunch hour from work. This was
unnerving. But as a convicted felon and parolee he had no right to privacy, and
the bureaucrats in charge of his life wanted to see him in what the
psychologist called his "domestic environment" and the PA called his
"pad." The ostensible reason for this meeting was his completion—in
exactly eight days—of his parole. Two years at Pelican Bay State Prison, two in
the Atascadero State Hospital, and then three on parole, ending at noon next
Wednesday. But there was more to this meeting than just that.

He cut the engine, pulled
hard on the parking brake and got out. The early August sun was bright and
Colesceau shaded his eyes and leaned forward as he trotted toward the front
door of 12 Meadowlark. He could feel the duct tape around his body, but he
didn't think anyone else could see it through his Pratt Automotive shirt that
said "Moros" over the pocket. The terms of his parole said nothing
about duct tape.

He read the newspapers,
however, and with the new applications of Megan's Law, cops were now telling
people when "high risk" offenders were living in their neighborhoods.
Here in Orange County they called it the SONAR program, for Sexual Offenders
Notification and Registration. What it did was get you run out of your home if
you had a history of sexual offenses and were considered "high risk"
as opposed to "serious." He understood that this interview would help
determine whether his neighbors were informed about his past.

Colesceau could think of
no fate more humiliating than to be driven out of his apartment by squeaky
clean blond people who did nothing more daring in life than cheat on their
taxes.

Holtz was standing in his
kitchen, drinking one of Colesceau's root beers. Holtz was fat with quick eyes
and the habit of smiling when he gave you bad news. Colesceau had never once
seen the lenses of his glasses clean. Holtz acted like a friend at times, but
he wasn't.

"Moras! How are
you?"

"Fine, Al"

"Hot one
today."

"It is
drastic."

"Carla should be
here any minute."

Colesceau always saw himself from the outside when he
was with other people. He always had, even as a boy. It was like watching a
play he was in. The characters spoke, and he was one of them. He was a
spectator and a participant. He had always assumed it had something to do with
not being comfortable with the people around him. But you don't really choose
your own company, he knew: especially in a family, a prison or a hospital.

So for
a brief moment Colesceau saw himself standing there, talking to the fat man in
his kitchen. Yes, that's me, he thought—short and pudgy, wearing a blue
short-sleeve shirt with a patch and his name over the pocket. Mid-twenties.
Hair medium length, black and wavy, complexion pale, lips pink and thick.
Colesceau noted his own slightly enlarged breasts, courtesy of the hormone-altering
drug Depo-Provera, which was part of his punishment. Treatment, he corrected
himself: chemical castration is part of my
treatment.
And I'll be done with that treatment in eight days.

"Al, I have a
new egg."

"Lay it on
me."

Colesceau left the kitchen
and walked into his darkened living room. He kept the blinds drawn tightly
against daylight, especially in the infernal Southern California summer. The
far side of the living room had three lawyers' bookcases against the wall—the
kind with the glassed-in shelves and the interior lights so you could see your
books.

He flipped on the
lights in the middle case.

Colesceau:
"Another emu egg. The blue one."

He pointed and Holtz
leaned forward, his nose up close to the glass.

"Nice."

"She's producing
more and more these days."

The egg
producer was Colesceau's mother, Helena. Painting eggs was an old Romanian folk
art and Helena had done hundreds in her life. Most of them ended up here, in
the lawyer's bookcases. They were painted in every color imaginable, and in
many designs and patterns. The older ones were simple. The later ones
featured lace, frill, bric-a-brac, bits of yarn and
various textiles, and lately even plastic eyes with pupils that rolled around
inside.

"Very
nice."

"It's one of my favorites."

Colesceau always tried to
endear himself to Holtz, who was a big proponent of what he called "family
values." So Colesceau talked well of his mother whenever he could. In
fact, Colesceau didn't care much for the hollow eggs his mother decorated. They
were morbid and trite. If she hadn't paid for the three bookshelves he would
have boxed them up and left them in the spare bedroom upstairs. But the display
of eggs and his flattering words were a small price to pay for mollifying two
of the most important people in his life. As one of his keepers at Atascadero
always said, you catch more flies with honey, though Colesceau had wondered
then—and still wondered now—why anybody would want to catch flies in the first
place. The doorbell rang.

"Ah, that must
be Carla!"

Colesceau went down the
hallway and opened the door. Carla it was, tanned and blond and beaming as
usual, with her prematurely wrinkled face and luminous teeth. Colesceau had
never understood why California women so eagerly courted the damage of the sun.

"Hello, Moros."

"Hello, Dr.
Fontana. You are free to come in."

She nodded,
stepped inside and followed him back toward the living room. He could feel her
behind him like
a shadow. He watched her
shake hands with Holtz, the PA eyeing her greedily through the dusty lenses of
his glasses.

And then, like watching a play again, he
found himself approaching the sofa, Dr. Fontana and Holtz settling into chairs
equidistant from him. He watched himself curl into place on the couch.
Colesceau considered himself catlike. He took off his shoes and pulled his feet
under his legs as he sat.

Holtz held open a notebook
that Colesceau had never once seen him write one letter in. Pen in fat right
hand.

Dr. Fontana pulled a tape
recorder from her purse and set it on the coffee table. She smiled at him with
her halogen teeth. Holtz looked at him.

Careful. Colesceau thought
of the fog along the river Olt and the way it hid your thoughts.

It was Dr. Fontana who
began. "I think we should start with your general outlook about things,
Mr. Colesceau—
Moros.
Can you tell us how your job and family life are
progressing, for instance?"

And it was Colesceau who
answered as he watched and listened. "Yes. Very satisfactory to me. My job
is retail, automotive parts and supplies. I spend many hours on the computer,
to order and check availability. It's not difficult work, but it spends the
hours rapidly."

Holtz: "He pretty
much runs the place, Carla."

Carla Fontana listened to
Colesceau's faint accent. His diction and syntax were a little off. Romanian,
she knew. Colesceau came to the United States as a political refugee with his
mother when he eight. By age ten he'd killed six dogs in his Anaheim
neighborhood, more suspected. He used Liva-Snaps to get them looking up, then
an ice pick to lance their hearts. His mother caught him with the tails saved
in a box taped to the frame of his bicycle.

Carla listened and
questioned and listened and tried to do her job. Her instinct was to pity him,
but her job was to protect the citizens of Orange County from pathetic little
monsters like Moras. Her heart told her he was harmless now, ready to begin a
new life. But her brain buzzed with a high-pitched warning that said
he might be dangerous . . . we've got to tell his
neighbors . ..

Holtz tried to show no
emotion as the interview went on, but all he could really feel for this guy was
pity. God knew, he'd met the mother, Helena, and the woman was a hellish crone.
No surprise that Matamoros was misshapen as a tumor. But what got to Holtz most
was the fact that Helena's husband had been machine-gunned by Ceausescu's
government police
while she and
six-year-old Matamoros were forced to watch.
When the boy rushed to
his father's body, the police dogs mauled him. Thus political asylum in the
United States for Helena and her traumatized son. Holtz listened and questioned
and listened and tried to do his job.

His guts told him that Colesceau was harmless as a
toadstool, so long as you left it in the forest. His head told him that this
fungus had indeed done his time and paid his price. He would be a free man in a
week and he ought to be treated that way. Maybe in Romania they let the dogs
chew you, but here in America once you did your time, you walked.

Colesceau read their
thoughts like skywriting—Fontana to convict, Holtz to acquit.

Now Holtz
again, blathering on: "You still see your mother once a week or so, Moros
?"

And Colesceau heard himself
answer, "Yes. Invariably. She wants to live here, with me, but I'm not
sure that would be healthful."

Now Fontana: "How do
you feel about her living with you?"

Colesceau shrugged and
sighed. Then he shrugged again. He wiped a dark curl from his forehead.
"One must honor one's parents."

Holtz: "What you have
to honor is yourself, Moros. You can't take care of everybody. Now, we've
talked about this before. Your mother doesn't set your agenda."

Colesceau settled deeper
into the sofa, feeling like a cat. Soft and flexible. Boneless.

Fontana: "What we're
saying is you don't need added stressors just when you're concluding your
parole term."

"No shit,"
Colesceau said quietly. Sometimes you had to be what Holtz called
"candid."

He looked over at Fontana,
and knew she'd have him roasted in an American electric chair if she could. No,
he corrected himself—she'd want lethal injection—it was neater and more modern
and saved energy, which saved endangered species. And that was
after
she'd tried to ruin his manhood with her barbaric medications.

Fontana: "How is
your libido, Moros?”

Colesceau saw the color
rise in his own pale face. There would be no dignity in the coming minutes.

"It is still
very removed by the medication—"

"—Removed or
reduced?" she asked.

Colesceau
looked at her again. "Reduced drastically."

Holtz: "Carla, we
know that the Depo-Provera has been tested effective in 92 percent of subjects,
with a 90 percent reduction in sexual drive.
Removal
isn't
possible. Even with a full-on surgical castration the sex drive—"

—I know," Fontana
interrupted again. "Even with physical castration sexual drive can't be
eliminated. Castrated men have raped."

Holtz: "Right."

Fontana: "Because
rape isn't about sex, it's about anger."

Colesceau: "This is
hard to imagine."

There was an odd silence,
as if Colesceau had just shed unwanted light on their discussion of him.

"Why?"
asked Dr. Fontana.

"Because of the
reduction."

"Mr. Colesceau, just
how big is the reduction in your libido?"

He imagined holding his
hands about six inches apart, then shrinking the distance to about a
centimeter. But this wasn't the kind of humor that went over with government
people, even in a democracy.

"Reduced more than
you can understand."

Fontana: "How often
do you experience physical sexual arousal, Moros?"

Colesceau looked down again. "Once at night I had dreams
and it happened."

"Erection and ejaculation?" He nodded. He felt his face
turn redder.

Holtz: "When was
that?"

"Last year.
February." Fontana: "And that's the only time, in three years of the
medication?”

"Correct."

"That tracks
with the better statistics," said Holtz.Fontana: "I know the
statistics."

Colesceau thought their
rivalry was worse torture than their hormone treatment. Well, not exactly. You
didn't have to tape down your breasts because of their rivalry.

Then Fontana, of course:
"But when's the last time you saw an old lady and wanted to sexually
assault her with a Coke bottle or your fist?"

He looked across at her.
"I have no interest in that whatsoever."

The silence was thorough
and artificially long. Like if it went on long enough he'd change his mind.
These people were blunt as tongue depressors.