Who is this?
Who is this?
They took Peanut to the nurse again. When he came back there was a cotton ball taped into the crook of his left arm. The next morning the cotton ball lay on the floor, a drop of blackened blood staring up like a pupil in a big white eye. No one picked it up—we didn’t want to catch what he had, whatever it was.
Peanut started gagging and gurgling in between his whispering. Who is this? Who is this? And I figured out he probably wasn’t saying Who is this, but something like Do his bit, or Knew this shit, or, You missed it. After a while it started to infect my head, and to combat Peanut’s refrain, I would say to myself: malingering with intent, malingering with intent, malingering with intent.
Peanut walked two or three circles around the table, then flopped to the floor and someone hit the panic button above the wall-mounted phone. The nurses came in blue scrubs and carried equipment in tackle boxes, looking as if they were on their way to a costume party at a fishing pond. Peanut held his stomach and lurched into and out of a fetal position. He stared vacantly at the wall while the nurses took his blood pressure, pulse rate, et cetera.
I sat at the table watching. You never know when you might need malingering skills, and if Peanut was only malingering, he was really good at it. I was an understudy apprenticed to a master. They wheeled him away, leaving a quarter-size puddle of shiny drool on the floor, which I swept away with a swipe of my flip-flop. Before the streak was completely dry, Peanut walked in again.
I was on the phone trying to find Kitty-Kat when I heard the commercial on TV: Avoid disappointment and future regret—call today. I listened to the info, hung up, and dialed the toll-free number. It was some sort of gold commemorative buffalo coin.
It rang twice, then stopped. American Majesty Keepsakes, she said, How can I help you?
I’m in jail, I said.
Yeah, I heard the machine. My brother’s in jail. I get this call pretty often, though not at work.
I would like to see about getting the coin that prevents disappointment and future regret.
It’s $19.95, payable by credit card or electronic check. Sorry, no CODs.
That’s a pretty good deal for all it promises.
The $19.95 includes shipping and handling. You can get a free one—actually, I’ll be honest, you have to get the free one—for extra shipping and handling. It ends up coming to about forty dollars.
Forty? I can’t really afford that.
Well, you can’t really order anything from jail, anyway. You might as well be on the moon.
For a few days, Peanut moaned and held his stomach. He told the deputy he was pregnant. The deputy walked away, talking on her noisy walkie-talkie, which squeaked and chirped at all hours like a caged monkey. Peanut sat at the table and rocked back and forth. He said he was having a miscarriage or something.
Probably gas, Little D said, hopefully, as if by diagnosing the problem Peanut’s troubles would end and he would shut up and we could all quit wondering what sort of malingering nonsense we were going to have to listen to next.
But in the corner of the cell, Little D confided quietly to me: He might really have something. Like rabies, or AIDS, or syphilis. You better think fast if he tries to bite you.
I gave him a look of disbelief.
I’m just saying, he said. Just kick at him—psychos don’t like to be kicked.
I hit a cold streak on the phone. Several days without a connection. I’d been desperate before and called lawyers—not lawyers exactly, but the receptionists—all of them cynically polite at first, until they determine whether or not you are going to make the firm any money. Usually I hear typing and voices in the background, the busy sounds of a bustling office. Once I said I was the victim of a drug company’s negligence, in jail because corporate goons had framed me.
What medication were you on?
Viagra, I said, which got me fast-tracked to a phone interview with an attorney.
So, what happened with the Viagra? a male voice said.
I got an erection, I said.
That’s what’s supposed to happen.
I hesitated a moment, and heard him sigh before hanging up.
The bail bondsmen you can actually talk to. Or their secretaries if they have one. But more often than not bondsmen are depressing, one-man operations. They’ll listen awhile because technically I could be bailed out, if I had collateral or someone to put collateral up. Or maybe they listen because bail bondspeople are low down on the justice system totem pole, one step above security guards. They never aspired to get accused criminals out on bail. Life didn’t work out somehow, and the failure translates to a willingness to listen a few minutes, even chat a little. They’ll ask where you’re locked, how long you’ve been there, how it’s going. They pretend to care long after it’s obvious there’s no money to be had in you.
Who is this?
Retired men are the most likely to answer, followed by elderly widows. Followed by former inmates, then their family members.
Do I know you? they sometimes ask. I know you, don’t I?
I tell them, It depends on what you mean by know.
A voice came over the intercom—not unlike the generic, computer-voiced, Global Tel Link operator: I had a visitor. Who? I said. Marvin Newhouse, she said.
I didn’t know any Marvin, but I was thinking maybe Kitty-Kat found me, or the guy crashing his niece’s first communion. I buttoned up my orange jumpsuit. I combed my hair. Peanut was on the toilet, moaning. Little D said he was pooping out his baby. I left the cell and followed the deputy to the visitation room, six partitioned windows with phones where you stand to talk.
It’s a long, narrow room that’s always hot from the previous inmates’ body heat, and it smells like a rotting garden hose. I stood at the far window and cleaned the black phone receiver with the front of my jumpsuit. The visitors filed in: middle-aged women with breasts bulging from their button-up shirts like dough rising; a man with a Bible; two younger ladies with the same rising loaves, this time over the sides of their jeans.
Marvin, whoever he was, never showed. I stood there in my own chest-high cubicle with the phone up to my ear wondering who was supposed to be standing in front of me. Whoever it was, at that moment, was walking across the parking lot to their car, putting the key in the ignition, driving away with one last look, like the place was a national monument.
I listened to the mingled hum of the voices on my side of the room and studied my partial reflection in the smudged glass. I could see cloudy outlines of hands and lips, all getting smaller in size farther down the window. I was looking at myself, of course, a transparent portrait brushstroked in greasy smears, but I imagined my friend, Kitty-Kat.
I laughed a good laugh, glad to see him. His knee was doing a lot better, he said, but now he thought he might be addicted to Vicodin.
I laughed again, then apologized, because addiction’s nothing to laugh at. I told him about the madman who was going to crash his niece’s communion, how I had been watching the local news expecting to hear about some dustup at a Catholic church.
I laughed it off, but Kitty-Kat grew worried. He said he would talk to a deputy, an old high school buddy of his, and maybe get some extra protection for me. I was a worthwhile person, he said. I wasn’t damaged, or diminished or anything just for the mistakes I’d made, and seemed to keep making. What would happen is this: in certain people, failure could turn into an asset. Failure could make you a better person. It could turn into success.
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