Cavanaugh is sitting on Moses’ cot, his knees off to the side because the space between the cots, which is less than a foot, does not fit his giant legs. Cavanaugh holds a letter in his hand. It is not one of Gina’s letters, the ones Jorge rereads all through the day and into the night, remembering his daughter first as a little girl who wrote only in crayon, then as a whiz kid in science and math, then as a lanky, ivy-bound teenager who broke his heart by abandoning their mutual love of science, ornithology specifically, to study broadcasting, and who, today, is a fancy Upper East Side resident and producer of serious TV news. This is a different letter. From the door of the cell, Moses can see that Jorge wrote it himself. This agitates Moses. Jorge never writes a letter without having Moses read it for errors of spelling or subject-verb agreement, even the letters he writes to his daughter, because Moses learned his grammar from nuns and Jorge, a perfectionist, is afflicted by his mother tongue.
Cavanaugh leans forward with a dramatically knitted brow. He worries his fingers along the edge of the letter and ignores Moses. The cell is already crowded and simply can’t fit three men, two cots, the locker that doubles as a desk, the comby, a seatless john and sink in one, and at least ten sparrows. Birds fill the room and fly playfully just over their heads; the cell is just seven by seven by seven. Jorge sits slumped by the weight of a great and recurring worry for his daughter. A small sparrow with a red thread tied to one leg sits on his shoulder, preening and chirping a sweet chirp that is returned by another sparrow sitting on the locker. There are spots of dried white droppings on the floor, on the edge of the sink, on Moses’ clear plastic typewriter, on the concrete walls and the edge of the john, even on Gina’s diploma from Brown. Jorge has not cleaned today.
“Well, I can’t remember who is dead and who is alive anymore of these days,” Jorge says in a moment of honesty about the slips and jumps his mind’s been making. But the confession isn’t anything Moses wants to hear. Lately, a lifetime of poorly treated epilepsy is catching up with Jorge. He’s forgetful. He’s confused. And at his very worst, he’s questioned his deepest beliefs.
Everybody likes Jorge. He’s kind and he lives his faith and everyone believes in his goodness. The guards. Even Georgy, Collin, and Don. Without him, Moses would get his ass kicked daily. Of this Moses is only too aware. When Jorge’s family was still a family and they used to come inside for respite weekends in the trailers in the yard and Moses was left alone to fend for himself, he would get pummeled. Jorge would return with the pink glow of love and Moses would have a purpled eye ready to pop like a ripe plum. Without Jorge, he’d be ashes by now. Without him he would surely run into the fist that would kill him, but that’s not the half of it. In Moses’ weakest moments, when he needs something to believe in, Jorge is his faith.
Moses steps further into the cell and walks into Cavanaugh’s knees. The birds respond with a group ascent out of the cell. Moses swats at them; they know to scatter when he arrives. Cavanaugh is not so well-trained. Instead, he looks at Moses but doesn’t see him. He looks worried. Jorge is scaring Cavanaugh into believing that he is near the end with his dementia, and Cavanaugh, that pussy, is buying it. Of course Moses knows this is stupidity. Jorge’s been slipping for years.
Cavanaugh finally stands. He towers over Moses, looks down at him, and they resume their roles. Moses lowers his head, backs out of the cell and waits for Cavanaugh to notice that he’s waiting to go in. As an afterthought, Cavanaugh waves his huge hand, and Moses scurries directly to the john. He pisses and drains some of the life from his aggravation.
Jorge says to Ed, “If Gina is still alive, as you tell me, then it must be Gina, not Marie—do you hear me, Ed? Not Marie!—that comes for claiming me. I am afraid for what she would do. Gina will bury me; I will have the last rights. Marie will throw my ashes into the trash or forget me behind in the back of the closet when she moves to Miami and I will be stuck in purgatory.”
“Do you mind?” Moses says looking at Jorge. “I’d like to have some peace and quiet. I have reading to do.” He sits on his cot and pulls the World Literature Anthology onto his lap. He opens to “Death in Venice,” and as he begins to read, he thinks of Lila and is disgusted with himself. He fears what he is about to learn about Aschenbach.
Cavanaugh fills the cell door and blocks the light. “Jorge, I assure you. You have a long life to live yet. You’re healthier than most men I know. But in the event…” Ed stops. “I will make sure Gina gets this letter. You’ll be in good hands.” Ed steps forward and leans down awkwardly and shakes Jorge’s hand. Jorge grabs on. “I wasn’t a real father. Not like you are,” he says. “But without you, Gina would have had a death in my heart long ago.”
“Oh, come on with all the faggotry,” Moses says. “We’ll cry when you’re dead, Jorge. In the meantime, peace.”
Jorge waves his hand at Moses and laughs at him. “You, friend, will miss the most of me.”
“I won’t miss all this noise.”
Ed looks at Jorge with concern. “Good night, men.”
When he’s sure Ed is gone, Moses swings his feet to the side of his bed, squeezes down on his knees between the cots, his back to Jorge, and pulls the cooler of Lila’s hair out from under it. He takes out the ball in his pocket and inspects it to see if he can find the new strand. He can’t. He smells the ball of hair and caresses his cheek with it, then puts it in the box. He looks over his shoulder to make sure Jorge isn’t paying attention, and he reaches his right hand, the one with the bruise forming from Jenkin’s chair, into his pocket and pulls out the compact. He holds it greedily in his palms. It’s heavy and warm. He holds it up and smells it, then stashes it quickly away under the bed of hair.
A-one-and-a-two-and-a-three. Moses pushes up in the military style of the old school: one-armed! Like the black-and-white picture that hung on his childhood bedroom wall of the Air Force man, sinewy and powerful. The man in flat-front slacks, hair slicked back off his face, a cigarette hanging from his lip, Air Force jacket on the back of a chair in the background. Moses never saw his father in person, but he’d been an airman before he became a radioman, so Moses clipped the picture from Life magazine and hung it on the wall. At night he’d look at it while he listened to his father’s voice ringing across the airwaves. A man without a face, just a clear, strong voice, his father forever young. A cigarette hangs from Moses’ bottom lip now. He’s reassured as he pushes up against the humid air that he’s as strong as he’s ever been. Swipes the hair back from his eyes. Four-and-a-five-and-a-six.
“Permiso, Moses,” Jorge asks from his cot inside the cell. “Is this the letter?”
Moses ignores him. A-seven-and-a-eight.
Jorge asks again, his Ecuadorian accent still thick after all these years, “Is this letter written in the hand of mi hija after her death?”
Moses switches to his right arm, “What do I look like? An expert in fucking penmanship? Anyway, you know what it is. Stop acting like this.”
Jorge holds the letter out to Moses and shakes it; birds flutter off the locker, and off the shelf above the john. They fly up and out of the cell. “If it is a letter written by Gina after her death, then she is alive. Claro?”
“English!” Moses demands.
“Look at it, Moses. Tell me the date. Tell me, is it signed Te quiero, Gina?”
Moses ignores Jorge and enjoys the blood coursing through his veins. A-ten-and-eleven-and-a-twelve. He’s taking a break from “Death in Venice.” With the revelation of each of the story’s menacing, teeth-baring men, there’s been a tightening in his gut. What a fool he’d been, identifying with