Oh, god.
I seem to remember a gloved finger wiggling around in my asshole, but maybe I was dreaming of Jude just now. I remember the sudden flash of the camera. That mugshot is a rare beauty, I’m sure.
I sit up and stare at the toilet. The water is churning up over the sides like there is big trouble underground. The water looks clear enough, for now. But as soon as I use the toilet then I will have my own nasty fluids rippling around me. I may as well take a shit on the floor.
I wonder if they gave me a phone call. That phone call shit in the movies is nonsense. The scene where some poor bastard is moaning about his rights. I know my rights, he says. I want my phone call. The phone call is not a constitutional right, as far as I know. Thomas Jefferson and the rest of his crew didn’t have telephones, and anyway they sure as hell didn’t give a shit about any drunk asshole’s rights. And the word asshole is crucial. If you get arrested for public drunkenness, it’s because you’re an asshole. You walk in the door and you’re already an asshole. You’re an asshole. I’m an asshole. Everyone in here is an asshole. The cops can wait three days to charge you if they feel like it. And if you’re an asshole with no manners, well. You may as well forget about your fucking phone call for a while.
But I appear to be on suicide watch. And this means that somebody will come by to rattle my cage before long. They have to be sure I don’t eat my own tongue or gouge out my eyes. They have to at least pretend to care. I slosh over to the door like I’m going duck hunting and man I am none too steady. Drunk as a bishop even now and when did I last eat something. The tomato sandwich that Molly made for me. I wonder how she would like me now. I lean against the steel door and I hope my neighbor is friendly. I put my mouth close to the little window, pressing my lips against the cool mesh.
Hey, I say. Anybody out there?
Long hollow silence and for a few horrifying moments I imagine I’m the only one. Like something out of a science fiction movie. All of the prisoners have died of some horrible virus. The guards have fled and the prison is functioning on computer autopilot. But that can’t be.
Hey, I say.
Shut the fuck up, says one thin voice.
Then another, dry and torn. What’s up, cousin?
Confused, I say.
About what? says the voice. You’re in the pokey.
Yeah, I get that. Are we on suicide, though?
Damn straight, he says.
Fuck me, I say.
I always go suicide, says the voice. Always. Like flying first class. I got to have my privacy.
Yeah. But they hold you for seventy-two, I say.
Nothing wrong with that, cousin. Three days peace and quiet.
I close my eyes. Three days drifting on a rubber mat in a pool of my own urine. And no cigarettes. I will probably die without cigarettes.
How long since the sheriff last came by?
Don’t have a watch, cousin. But I’d say a half hour. At least.
The thin voice pipes up. Bullshit. It was ten minutes ago.
You shut your hole, says the torn voice. You got no concept of time.
Hey. You want to come suck my fucking dick?
Laughter, wheezing. What dick?
Thanks, I say. Thanks anyway.
I flop down on my little rubber lifeboat and wait for the next head count. I chew my lip for the residual taste of tobacco. I stare up at the bright fluorescent tube of light and wonder if it is day or night. I would sleep, if I could. I would dream.
Come footsteps. The rattle and echo of a billybat against one steel door after another. Then a chorus of voices, the music of hollow bones. I can’t be sure if they are coming from within or without. To hell with boys creeping up slowly. I’m hungry, hungry. And a man may fish with a worm that hath eat of a king and then eat of the fish that fed on the worm and around and around you go. Through the guts of a beggar and I don’t like ice cream.
On my feet and to the door.
The face of a young black guard appears at my window. The whites of his eyes like porcelain. He thumps the door and asks if I’m okay.
Yeah. Thanks for asking.
He grunts and starts to move on.
Excuse me?
Yes? His eyes narrow.
I hesitate. I need to sound sane and I’m not sure my voice is reliable.
What do you want?
I need to speak to someone. I’m not sure I belong here.
The other prisoners begin to wheeze and cackle like a gang of chickens.
I’m not suicidal.
The guard peers at me. What’s your name?
Poe, I say.
He consults a clipboard. Yeah, he says. The ex-cop.
I’m not a cop. I’m just a regular asshole, now.
Says here you’re an ex-cop.
Furious whispers from left and right. Long slow, creeping shadows at the edge of my vision.
I sigh. Yeah. What am I charged with?
Assault, he says. Public drunk. Vagrant. Resisting arrest. And oh, shit. You won the lottery. Looks like you’re up for murder.
Did you say murder? That doesn’t sound right.
Tell it to the detectives, he says. They’ll be wanting to talk to you, now you’re awake.
He moves along to the next door and my neighbor says that he doesn’t belong here either. That he’s not crazy. He wants a phone call, a lawyer. He knows his fucking rights. Then he lowers his voice and confides to the guard that the fallen prophet Jeremiah has in fact been creeping around in his cell all night with his guts leaking out between his fingers and the motherfucker won’t shut up. Jeremiah is pissed off at God and he won’t let the rest of us sleep. The guard laughs and moves along.
I squat in the center of my cell with eyes closed. Murder, huh. That wasn’t part of my plan for this night, I know that much. I try to remember what happened. There was a sad fucked-up scene with an Asian whore. Then stumbling drunk. I was offensive. There was some sort of slapstick confrontation with a bouncer outside a nightclub that might have got messy, but murder seems a bit extreme.
I open my eyes now and a funny thing happens. I look around and for two seconds maybe three, this is no jail cell. I see fake wood paneling and molded furniture, avocado green. I see a stained mattress with faded blue stripes and I see an open doorway and miles and miles of yellow earth and this is home. This is my trailer back in Arizona.
I believe I would trade my soul for a cigarette.
The mad jangle of voices, farther away now. The drip of my toilet like a soft summer rain.
The thin voice. Hey, man. What the fuck? You five-oh, or what?
Long time ago, I say.
Once a cop, he says. Always a cop.
Fuck you, kid.
You talk like a cop.
Then laughter, like glass breaking apart.
Hours pass, maybe days.
My neighbor with the torn voice tells me that they never turn off the lights, that time is therefore elastic and that if I am not insane now, then surely I will be soon.
The young black guard returns and says the detectives are ready to interview me. I am led down the hall in shackles. My unlaced boots loose and flopping.