Джойс Оутс - Prison Noir

“Ladies. Ladies. Turn that music down right now. This isn’t a dance hall.”

Frankie opened her mouth, shut it. Counting the days.

The guard had her hands on her hips, staring at Frankie. Waiting. She turned away with a smug little grimace. “That’s right.” Her feet thudded away down the hall back to Control.

Jaykey muttered, “Ooh, Frankie. Glad ya buttoned it, angel.”

“I get real fuckin tired of her shit, yunno.”

Charlene came over. “Frankie? Could you ask her what goin on wit Rodeo?”

“Not me, Charlene. I don’t generally open conversation with them,” Frankie said. “It’s a waste of breath.”

Charlene pulled herself up to her full four foot nine inches. “I gotta know. I’ma go ask her.” She walked slow, looking back over her shoulder.

The guard stepped out of Control, her eyes slitty. “Yeah, Charlene? What they put you up to now?”

Stuttering, “Um. They didn’t d-do nothing. I jus wanta know.” She closed her lips tight, watching the guard glower at her. “What’s gone happen to Rodeo?”

The guard’s mouth did something odd, maybe a smile, maybe not — whatever it was it was buried by the delicious taste of her words. “What’s it to you?”

Charlene stepped back. “What? What? She’s my friend!”

The guard snorted. “Your friendship is unnatural.” The guard showed her teeth. “She’s gonna die. What you think?”

Charlene backed away, down the hall, her eyes big with water pooling in the corners. She flung herself into Jaykey’s arms. “But she’s supposed to get out inna few months! She’s gotta date an everything.”

Frankie saw the guard smile as she turned away. Bitch. Frankie folded up on the floor, put her arms around Charlene. Held her for a moment. “Who she is — what she done good in the world — that won’t die.”

Frankie stood up stretching, long arms out to the side, angel wings, her short light halo of hair sticking every which way, her pale oval face serious. She dropped her arms, curled her hands into fists. “I pay that bitch’s salary.” She looked around the dingy common room with her eyebrows arched. “We all pay her salary.”

“Hey then! Let’s fire her. She an arrogant bitch.”

Frankie shrugged. “Ah. Now. That we can’t do. But we can rattle her cage now and then.” Her voice started out low, built word by word into a preaching reverb. “No cop or lawyer or prison guard has ever said thank you to me. But down in the pubic hairs of reality, the crabfact squats there: without you an me, these bastards would be out a job, on the street, suckin dogshit off their shoes.”

There was a moment of quiet, a couple mumbles: “Maybe so,” “Nice ta think so.”

Jaykey moved Charlene around to face Frankie. She said, “Stan back. Frankie’s onna roll.”

“That’s right,” Frankie said, her voice going deep again with passion. “There’s a basic shape to what we do — what we can do. But we can make it better, more beautiful. Profound. Crime’s a simple art. Our clear dedication to this art — what some people might call crime — never gets the respect it deserves. Hell, we don’t get the respect we deserve.”

“Uh, Frankie? We in here. You notice? We got caught.”

“Durance vile.”

“We maybe ain’t the artists you think we be.”

Frankie didn’t even pause. “Oh yes we are. We are angels stuck in marble.” She nodded, “It’s true our enterprises are not always successful. But the labor and the ideas are all ours.”

“Jeez, Frankie. I want some a what you been gettin into.”

Frankie held out her hands. “We the ones guarantee they job security.” Leaning forward she said, “They never thank me for my service. Every day I be walkin the circle, but do any of these douche bags say: Hey, Frankie, thanks . No, they do not.”

“You be expectin too much,” Jaykey laughed.

Frankie smiled back at her. “Gotta keep expectations high. We got ways. Sometimes, hey, sometimes we manage to get over. Lemme tellyas — one time I pulled off a good one.”

Charlene checked the hallway, looked back at her. “Tell it.”

“Long time ago a friend — not a crime partner although we did some trial by fire and jars of downsuppers coke and Mexican brown, bailed each other turn and turn about — he was doin a stretch in Deuel out by Tracy. Dead-zone flat. He let me know he was getting bored. I stumble onto a batch of vitamin cees with blue drops of LSD decoratin one face.”

“You got someone out there to stumble now?”

“Fuck no. Anyway,” Frankie continued, “clearly these tabs could be an agent for great creativity there in dusty Deuel. Potentially far more than on the streets, yunno.” She scratched her arm, meditating in memory. “So after an interesting session at the firing range south of the city, tryin out a friend’s Smith & Wesson, I had him drive me out to Tracy. It’s nasty there, so yeah, we got hammered.”

Everyone remembered getting hammered.

“I felt tremendous. Powerful. Movin LSD into that prison right past those shitheads who don’t know their ass from a hole — same thing t’them anyway.” Frankie looked at her friends to make sure they were still with her. “But you know that feelin — powerful? Well, that is maybe not always a good thing. This was back in the far starry past an I was very young. I think those feelins happened more back then. In. Vince. Able. Anyway, I stroll through the sallyport lookin fine — ass-tight leather jeans, my moto-cycle jacket with all the chains and snaps and my smiiiiile.”

She gave everyone a moment to imagine, waving her hands down her long rangy body, spinning around to shake her ass. “Bingo bang, oh you all know we wasn’t born to hang, oh no oh no. I put my noisy jacket, keys, combs, rings, wallet, underwire bra — they loved to see me wiggle outta that slick-as-owl shit — into the wire basket and sashayed my fine clever self through the detectors. Hung a left at the bathrooms, plucked out several balloon-wrapped balls of vitamin cee from that easy place, headed into Visiting. Got two cups a coffee from the machine, mine black, his with cream and many many sugars. Tasted mine and went back and dumped sugar in.” She paused. “Bloody hell! Serious now. They can’t afford health care but day-yam, they oughta put decent coffee in the visiting room. These people are all just total bullshit.”

She took a breath. “My friend strolls in, pressed jeans, white tee, yes now, a classic junkie Aztec warrior. Lookin good. We shook, formal — after all, we not lovers, just general crime friends. I push his muddy creamy coffee across the Formica. The balloons were bobbin around in there like weird-ass fish. Red green gold blue. His left eyebrow lifted and his deep brown eyes got big.” Frankie shrugged. “I dunno. Thought they’d sink or somethin.”

A couple women snickered.

“What’d I know? So he gives me that look and chugs the whole cup, eyes crossin. Says, Gimme another? I’ma need it. I totter over to the machine, tryin ta look cool but I’m waitin for the collar, ya know? He pounds it down and in hardly no time visiting is over and I zip on outta there.”

“Sweat drippin, hey, Frankie?”

“Not so much right then. Just wait. I grab up my shit and head to the parkin lot, and b’lieve me, I needa cigarette. But I’m feelin real good.”

She stared at the linoleum squares on the floor, glanced up at the ceiling squares, noticed they were both the same size. Creepy, she could be standing on the ceiling if she wasn’t careful. She said, “Do you guys know that you can feel the blood drain from your face? It’s like whoosh, every single blood vessel just empties. I dunno where it goes but there’s no blood there. I’d put my hands in my pockets and there was the Marlboros, yeah, and the lighter, yeah.” Nodding. “But rattlin around in those big old pockets was a shitload of.38-caliber steel-jacket bullets I’d shoved in there as we left the range.”