“It’s not so bad in here,” Doug said cheerfully, hoping to get another smile. He got a sad one as she said goodbye. She waved as she left slowly, still looking at him, and Doug was afraid she was going to cry.
But it isn’t so bad in here, Doug thought. He wasn’t lying for her sake. He had a CO who could get him better drugs than he’d had on the outside, and he didn’t have to feel stressed about not getting on with his life. You couldn’t get on with your life in there; that was the point.
There was no pressure. That was the beautiful thing. No one expected you to make anything of yourself. A good day in jail was when you didn’t get into a fight. You actually got credit for that. How cool would life be on the outside if, every week that you didn’t get into a fight, a government official came by and complimented you, then gave you a reward? All you had to do was be nice and everyone was happy with you.
With no pressure and with his drug and alcohol counselor frequently praising him for being good-natured, Doug felt he could finally get his life back on track. He didn’t know how yet, but it would come to him. The chopper pilot thing seemed like a stretch, even to the eternally optimistic counselor, but Doug was still thinking about writing a children’s book. He was sure that he could write about a lobster who could stay off drugs and not stab anyone. Prison was the perfect writing environment. Hadn’t there been a famous novelist who wrote from prison? Charles Dickens or Oscar Wilde, one of those English guys? Doug definitely remembered his English teacher in high school mentioning something about that.
Doug went back to his cell and the automatic lock closed behind him. His roommate, Mikey, who was in for “terroristic threats,” was snoring away on his cot. One of the guys in the mess hall had told Doug, in a conspiratorial whisper, that terroristic threats had nothing to do with terrorism. It was most likely a sentence for stalking a girl. It was hard for Doug to imagine Mikey doing illegal things, because he seemed like such a quiet, sleepy guy. Severely overweight and soft-spoken, Mikey liked playing chess and humming to himself. It had been Mikey who had first clued Doug in to the secret of prison-it wasn’t so bad.
Sure, there were no girls, and the black guys listened to shitty rap music all the time, but it was only for eighteen months. He could just hang out, relax, meet people. If there were some women and some Allman Brothers, Doug figured jail would be a pretty cool place.
Maybe after he got out, he’d take his sixty grand and go live somewhere like jail. And get a job as a sous-chef. Or a writer or something.
It was all cool.
POURING ROAD TAR was hot. The tar was hot; the metal machinery that heated it was hot; the tools were hot because they were always in contact with the tar or the machinery. Even the towels you had to have so you could touch the tools became hot a few hours into the shift. Mitch’s hands were covered in burn scars after only a week on the job. He was spending twenty dollars a week on skin lotion, and it wasn’t even summer yet.
Mitch had found a job working road construction in Cleveland. His plan had been to work for anyone who didn’t ask for ID and a Mexican woman at the day-labor service had told him about the road crew. She had mentioned it in passing, figuring that a white guy wouldn’t be interested, and had been surprised when Mitch enthusiastically copied down the number. He had been there a month before anyone even asked him his last name, and when they did, he lied. He got paid cash on Fridays.
As the only guy on the crew who was not Mexican, Mitch found himself learning Spanish fairly quickly. As the only guy who could read and write English, he found himself a foreman after two weeks. An illegal citizen in charge of illegal aliens. The bosses suspected something about him but he showed up on time and worked hard so they didn’t care.
Sweeping the tar smooth on an exit ramp on I-90, Mitch looked around at the brick warehouses on either side of him. The buildings were covered with decades of highway grime, most of the windows broken. Cleveland was dying but it still had some time before it reached the death spiral that had enveloped Wilton. Here there were the usual boarded-up businesses and homeless people and trash strewn streets, but there were echoes of life mixed in. There was a bar scene. There were art galleries. He didn’t go to them but they existed. It was comforting.
The tricky part had been finding a place to live. He didn’t want a roommate, because he had a duffel bag with sixty thousand dollars in it, but he had to find a place that wouldn’t do a background check. Despite his attempts to appear nonthreatening, everyone he talked to eventually asked for ID or mentioned a credit check. Mitch would say he forgot his wallet, then disappear into the ether. Just when he was about to give up and was considering hitting the road again, he saw a small ad in an independent newspaper for a room to rent.
The room was in a neighborhood called Bratenahl. Mitch knew right away it was what he wanted: Bratenahl was neither seedy nor flashy, just the kind of place you should live if you were trying not to be noticed. The door was answered by an old woman with a German shepherd, which reminded him of Ramone. For a brief moment, he was nostalgic for Wilton, for that comparatively secure life of dog-walking and pot-smoking and hanging out with Doug and Kevin. Then he remembered Accu-mart and the metal-refinishing plant. Things were better now. He had what everyone who lived a successful life had: secrets and money.
Mitch and the dog, named Lucy, hit it off right away, which turned out to be all the ID Mitch needed.
“What brings you out here?” the old lady asked as he was carrying his bags up the stairs to his room.
Mitch was going to make up a tall tale, something about a lost love or an undercover police mission, but decided to stay as close as possible to the truth. You had to be careful with old people. Some of them acted like they had no memory just to see if you were the type of person who would take advantage of someone with no memory. “I got laid off in Pittsburgh,” he said flatly. “Managed to find work here on a road crew.”
“Yes, times are tough,” the old woman agreed. “My James, when he was alive, he was a union electrician. He got laid off six times in forty-seven years. You never know.”
But when she left, she gave Mitch a look, which he understood perfectly. The look said, “I know you’ve done something and there’s some story as to why you’re renting a room in a town you’ve never been to before. But my dog likes you and that has to be worth something.”
MITCH BROUGHT HOME $320 a week for forty hours of splattering himself with boiling toxins. He didn’t really need the money, of course, and sometimes he thought he only kept the job so his landlady wouldn’t be suspicious of him. Because the money he earned was all extra, he blew it in bars, buying drinks for girls. Going out, enjoying himself, and talking to women were all things he hadn’t done in Wilton. And he owed it all to his Little Bag of Security.
“Let’s take a smoke break for a couple of minutes,” Mitch yelled to the Mexicans over the roar of the traffic. The noise was the worst part of the job. Sometimes, falling asleep in his room, he could still hear the cars whizzing by, an endless parade of traffic in his head. He liked it more when the work caused a traffic jam, because the idling, creeping cars didn’t make as much noise. But then you had to work faster, or else the people stuck in traffic would call the company and complain.
Fucking people.
The Mexicans, who were furiously sweeping the tar flat, looked over at him. They liked working with him because he took a lot of breaks. The oldest one, Jorge, who could speak good English, came over and bummed a cigarette.