Sharpstein set his briefcase on the table. "Don't they give you a TV in here?"
"No. I could use a TV. One of the doctors brought me some comic books, but I read them all."
"No computer? No Internet?"
"No."
Sharpstein's big, flabby face seemed to expand. "Jesus. That's gotta be a violation of something or other. What do you do all day?"
Shannon shrugged. "Work out. Try to get my body back. I still sleep a lot." He also spent hours daydreaming about Teresa, making up scenarios in his mind about the life they would never spend together, what it would have been like. But he didn't tell Sharpstein that. Who the hell was Sharpstein anyway?
"Man!" said Sharpstein. "Stuck in here all day with nothing to do? It'd make my skin crawl. Doesn't it make your skin crawl?"
Shannon's lips parted in surprise. He stared at Sharpstein for a long time. "No," he said, wondering. "It doesn't make my skin crawl. You're right, it should, shouldn't it? It always used to. But no-no, it doesn't." It was like not being afraid of prison or death row. It was another odd thing he noticed.
"So no one's telling you anything either? You have no idea what's going on out there?"
"No," said Shannon. "What's going on?"
Sharpstein laughed. He had a high-pitched laugh that made his jowls quiver. He seemed full of glee at the absurdity of people. He told Shannon that a big struggle was taking place. It was all political and hard to understand. As far as Shannon could make out, the people who talked on the radio were battling the people who appeared on TV. It had started with Foster. He had been suspended from his job and had gone on the radio to talk about it. The people on television had not let him come on, but the people on radio let him and he told his story. Then, a detective told his story on the radio. It was the detective Foster had shot on the rooftop, the one who dropped the gun that Shannon used. Somehow, he had changed sides and decided to talk on the radio, too. The people on television didn't like this. They brought people on to attack the detective and to prove he was a bad man and a liar. And he was a bad man and a liar, and they did prove it. But the thing was, when they proved it, they accidentally also proved that Ramsey was a bad man and that he was corrupt, and then the people on the radio began talking about that as well. After that, the public started to get interested, so the politicians also started fighting. The way Sharpstein told it, the politicians who wanted to look virtuous on television were squaring off against the politicians who wanted to sound virtuous on radio and they were arguing back and forth.
Shannon didn't get any of this. "What's it got to do with me?" he asked.
"Well, it saved your life for one thing," Sharpstein said. "The TV pols wanted you moved to prison so you could be killed by a fellow inmate before you gave any public testimony."
"Really? They said that?"
"No! Of course not! They don't just say things like that. What're you, crazy? They don't even know you exist yet. They just know there are witnesses being kept in seclusion, namely you. And they want you put in prison where you can be killed. They call that transparency."
"Me getting killed is transparency?"
"Or the public's right to know. Something. Anyway, luckily for you, the radio pols managed to embarrass the TV pols enough so they backed off on that and let you stay here for now where you're relatively safe… Listen, this is ridiculous. We gotta get you a television in here. And a computer so you can find out what's happening."
"Ah…" Shannon made a face. He didn't care about any of this. He didn't care what they did to him. "Forget it," he said. "Just… Could you get me one of those movie players? And some of those really old movies? You know, the ones before they had color in them."
Sharpstein took a big yellow pad out of his briefcase and put it on the table. He wrote on the pad. "You want to watch black-and-white movies."
"Yeah," said Shannon. "I like those. They're good."
So Shannon went back to watching old movies and working out in the white room, just like before. And now, when the people in expensive suits came to question him, Sharpstein was there and Sharpstein answered most of the questions for him. Shannon appreciated that. He started to like Sharpstein. Sharpstein was entertaining. Sharpstein laughed at the people in the expensive suits-and when he laughed the suit-people looked worried, as if maybe their flies were unzipped and they hadn't noticed it.
"I love this!" Sharpstein said once to a crow-faced woman in a tan pants suit. "My client is telling the truth and you're trying to plea bargain him into lying. It's beautiful!"
"No one wants anyone to lie," said the crow-faced woman grimly. But she had that is-my-fly-unzipped look in her eyes. It was very entertaining.
Then there was a startling moment.
Shannon was alone, except for the lawman who, he knew, was sitting in a chair outside the door of the white room. Shannon was watching an old black-and-white movie on the TV Sharpstein had gotten him. The movie was about a British pilot during World War II. The pilot was shot down by the Nazis, and he went diving down to earth in his plane to crash and die. But his plane went into the fog and in the fog Death couldn't find him, so even though the plane crashed, the pilot didn't die. It was a fantasy movie.
So, anyway, the pilot went off to a hospital and he met this girl and he fell in love with her. But then, Death finally caught up with him and wanted to take him away. But the pilot said, well, hold on a second, that's not right, you made a mistake and now I'm in love and it's not fair to kill me because it's all your fault I'm in this situation to begin with.
Shannon was doing sit-ups during the movie, but when it got to this part, he stopped and just sat up and watched. Because wasn't this exactly what had happened to him? Through no fault of his own, he had been given a life he wasn't supposed to have and he had fallen in love, and then they had come to take him away and it wasn't fair.
In the movie then, the pilot had to go up to heaven for a big trial that was judged by all the good people who had died, like Abraham Lincoln and so on. They argued back and forth over whether the pilot should die or be allowed to live and have his love. Shannon thought this was like what was happening now, outside in the world, between the TV people and the radio people. They were arguing back and forth and in the end they would decide what happened to him.
In the end of the movie, the judges decided that if the pilot could prove the girl really loved him, he could live again. So the pilot went back to earth and he collected a tear the girl had cried because she thought he was going to die, and he brought the tear back to heaven as proof of her love. Shannon gaped at the TV screen, because he saw it was just like the face of the angel, wasn't it? The girl's tear in the movie was just like the face he had carved when he had fallen in love with Teresa. He couldn't put it into words exactly why it was the same, but he knew it was the same. And suddenly he understood why he wasn't afraid of prison anymore or even of death row. He understood why his skin didn't crawl when he was just sitting around like this. He couldn't put any of it into words, but he understood that somehow he had won some kind of big victory, that even though good things had never happened to him and he had never had a chance in life and even though they were going to put him in prison or even send him to death row, he had somehow won anyway, like some kind of sports hero in the impossible last minutes of a game, and now his skin did not crawl and he was not afraid and whatever happened, he would be all right and his life was good. His life was good.
The final credits of the movie rolled and Shannon put his face in his hands. He was fi lled with a gigantic feeling of sweetness that he couldn't describe even to himself. He had no words for any of it, and he just sat there with his face in his hands.