David Corbett - The Devil’s Redhead

The driver rolled down his window and spat. “Ten fucking years. Out here no less. Over smokes.”

“Yeah, well, it was a lot of smokes,” Abatangelo offered. “I’d been at it awhile.”

“Which means what, you deserved it?”

They stared at each other in the mirror.

“No,” Abatangelo said. “That’s not what I said.”

The driver held his gaze a moment longer, then offered a comradely laugh. Lifting his head, he intoned, “ ‘While the State exists, there can be no freedom. When there is freedom there will be no State.’ ”

Abatangelo smiled.

“That funny?”

“I wasn’t expecting to hear cabbies quote Lenin till I got to San Francisco.”

The driver eased down into the front seat a little, as though finally convinced he could relax. “We got a chunk of time to Tucson. Settle back. You want, I can turn on the radio.”

“No thanks,” Abatangelo said. “I’m enjoying the quiet, actually. Prison’s a noisy place.”

“I remember,” the driver said. He reached into his pocket, withdrew the kickout check, and read the name. “Abbot’n’Jell-O?” he said.

“Nice try.” Abatangelo recited the name, the driver read along, then he tucked the check back into his pocket. “That’s Italian,” the cabby said.

“So goes the rumor.”

“It mean anything? In English?”

Abatangelo regarded again the wolves’ teeth and hawk feathers hanging from the rearview mirror. “You mean like Crazy Horse, Little Wolf, something like that?”

“Whatever.”

Abatangelo wondered at the man’s curiosity. People had the strangest notions about Italians, especially out here, the middle of nowhere.

“The prefix ab ,” he said, “it usually means ‘down.’ And angelo - ”

“Means ‘angel,’ ” the driver guessed.

“It never got spelled out to me in so many words, but- ”

“Fallen angel,” the man said, excited, like he was a game show contestant. He uttered a snarly little laugh. “That fucking perfect or what? A hard ten for Mr. Fallen Angel.”

At the airport they drove around to the departure gates and pulled to the curb. Abatangelo stared out at the gleaming modern structure of metal and glass. Skycaps manned their consoles. Travelers bustled in and out. He found himself strangely paralyzed. Shortly, he realized the cabby was staring at him.

“Scared?” he asked.

“So it would seem,” Abatangelo replied.

“Normal enough.” The man smiled. “Crowds here aren’t that bad. At the other end, it’ll be worse. Park yourself in the can if you have to. Wait it out. It passes.”

“Thank you.” Abatangelo gathered up his paper sack and got out and came around to the driver’s side window. “How do I look?”

He’d shorn his hair close in prison, a gesture to self-denial, and he looked like a large, savvy monk. Complicating the picture was his new suit, received only yesterday by mail. It still bore the creases from its packaging. Worse, he had on nothing but a white T-shirt underneath. The family friend who’d sent the suit had forgotten to send a shirt along.

After a cursory up and down, the driver said, “Screw how you look. How do you feel?”

Abatangelo uttered a small, nervous laugh. “First time thrown in the pool. Multiplied by a thousand.”

“A word to the wise?”

“Feel free.”

“You seem the brainy type.”

Abatangelo wondered where this was going. “Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me. Listen. I’ve known guys like you, they come outta prison a little too ready to just keep on keeping on. Hole themselves away, read everything they get their hands on. Never quite get the flow of being on the outside. You follow?”

“Yes. I do.”

The driver tapped at his temple again. “Just because you can think deep thoughts, that don’t mean they ain’t got you right where they want you.”

“Point taken,” Abatangelo said.

“Lash out. Fuck parole, break the chain. It takes some practice, remind yourself you’re a free man again.” The driver’s eyes were intense, but his voice was calm. “Got yourself an old lady? In Frisco, I mean.”

The question caught Abatangelo off-guard. He felt the pressure of Shel’s letter against his chest. “As a matter-of-fact,” he began, but then found himself unable to finish.

Putting a fresh cigarette between his lips but not lighting it, the cabby reached up behind his visor and from beneath a rubber band removed a business card and a keno pencil. He scrawled a name and address on the back of the card.

“You’re due,” he said. “I get up your direction now and again. Why’s a long story. This girl here, Mandy’s her name. I’m not saying she’s a knockout, but you gotta make sure the pump still pumps. Don’t think it over, don’t contemplate the fallout, just call. Go. Fuck her till she cries. You’re a free man. You owe yourself. They stole ten years from you. Steal them back.”

Abatangelo accepted the card and read it. There was a Tenderloin address beneath the words MANDY PODOLAK, HOLSTEIN HOTEL. He pictured a woman large, plain, and nonjudgmental. A long story.

“I’ll tell her you send your best,” he said.

“Don’t bother.”

The driver put the cab in gear and drove off. His arm appeared from the window in a final salute as he merged with outbound traffic. Once he disappeared, Abatangelo dropped the card into the nearest rubbish bin.

He reached into his coat pocket, felt the envelope with Shel’s letter inside. No return address. That was coy. And she’d written about her new life, the man in that life, some guy named Frank, blah blah blah. The good news was, she didn’t sound like she was any too thrilled about the guy. And she’d thought enough to keep track of Abatangelo’s release date after three years of silence. That meant something.

It meant she wanted him to find her. Find her, or die trying.

Frank awoke with fragmentary images of the night’s final dream trailing away. The last thing he remembered was sitting in an empty room, alone at a wood plank table, eating tripe with his fingers.

Sitting up, he tested his balance at the edge of the bed. Why is it, he wondered, I do crank and up pop the weird little nightmares about food. His skin felt like it’d been stretched across a larger body then allowed to shrink. You’re a walking road map of your own sick impulses, he thought. Where was Shel? Where was his shiny white nurse?

He rose to his feet, tottering a moment, then felt his way toward the door. The morning was quiet, except for the intermittent howl of wind funneling between the house and the barn. He made his way to the guest room. Shel went in there sometimes to have a smoke or read when she couldn’t sleep.

He turned on the light, smelling a faint reminder of her shampoo. A pair of sweatpants and two mismatched wool socks lay scattered across the floor. The bed was unmade, the window open. She liked the window open at night. It had something to do with the stint she’d pulled at the FCI in Dublin.

Just then his head erupted in pain, like his eyes were exploding from the back. He put his hands to his face and dropped to the floor. On his knees, head to the floorboards, he waved his hand overhead trying to find something to grip. After a moment he gave up, struggled to his feet and charged blind down the hallway toward the kitchen.

He forced his head beneath the cold water spigot. Violent chills broke across his back, he bolted straight and roared. Forgoing a towel, he shook his hair and let the droplets fly. Stopping to catch his breath, he felt the water drip onto his naked shoulders. One hand gripping the edge of the sink, he slid to the floor.