Paul Cleave - Joe Victim

“Seriously, Joe, which part of what I just said didn’t compute? Take a look at me. Do I look like I care about what you need?”

I look at him. He actually looks like the kind of guy who cares about what I need and is willing to make sure I don’t get it. If I tugged hard on the phone receiver and broke it free, I could use it as a club. I could entail the fuck out of him with it. Then the phone would be useless. Which makes it a paradox, since I need it. Or an irony. Or both.

“Please,” I tell him. “Please.”

“Tell you what, Joe,” he says, pressing himself away from the wall while scratching at one of his bulging biceps. “Have you eaten the sandwich yet?”

“What sandwich?”

“The one I brought you earlier.”

“No.”

“Tell you what, Joe. Here’s how it’s going to play out. I’ll let you make your call, and in return for me letting you do that, you eat that sandwich.”

I say nothing.

He says nothing.

I think about the sandwich and what it would take to eat it. I think about tomorrow and getting out of here and never coming back.

“Well?” he says.

“Okay,” I say, the word barely coming out.

“What was that, Joe?”

“I said okay. ”

“Good. And since I’m feeling in a good mood, I’m going to trust you. You go ahead and make that phone call first. I’ll let you do that. But when we get back to your cell if you don’t eat that sandwich then there will be no more phone calls for you in the future. In fact, your future will become all about misplacement. Your misplacement. We’re not going to be keeping as good an eye on you as we should. Next thing you know, you’re in general population by accident. You’re showering with the big guys. And the thing about accidents is they happen all the time. We on the same page here, Joe?”

“I’ll eat the sandwich,” I tell him. Then after Melissa sets me free I’m going to find Adam and stuff him so full of pubic-hair sandwiches he’s going to look like a mohair jersey.

I pick the receiver back up and dial my mom’s number. It rings a few times and she doesn’t answer.

“Deal still counts even if nobody is home,” Adam says. “You’re still making your call.”

“It’s not a call if nobody answers,” I tell him.

“You’re calling and nobody is home,” he says. “Technically that’s still a call.”

Technically the pubic-hair sandwiches won’t kill him. I’ll make him eat as many as he can, though. But what will kill him will be a blade twisting slowly into his stomach.

Just then my mother answers the phone and, for the first time ever, speaking to my mom gives me a sense of relief.

“Hello?”

I can hear Walt in the background asking who it is.

“I don’t know yet,” she says to him. “Hello?” she repeats.

“Hi, Mom.”

“There’s nobody there,” she says to Walt, because she’s already pulled the phone away from her ear.

“Mom, it’s me,” I tell her.

“Hello?” Mom says.

“Perhaps let me try,” Walt says.

“Damn it, Mom, I’m here. Can’t you hear me?”

“Joe? Is that you?” she asks.

“Yes.”

“Joe?”

“I’m here,” I say, and I think about what the shrink was hinting at earlier, about surrogate victims, because this conversation has sent me back to the earlier thoughts of ripping the phone from its cable and beating Adam to death with it.

“Well why are you staying so quiet?” Mom asks.

“Is that Joe?” Walt asks.

“It’s Joe,” Mom says to Walt, her voice a little muffled as she pulls the phone away from her ear.

“Ask him how he is,” Walt says, almost yelling at her.

“Good idea, honey,” Mom says, and brings the phone back to her mouth. “How are you Joe?” she asks, almost yelling at me now because Walt is still talking to her in the background.

“Things are great,” I tell her.

“He says things are great,” she tells Walt, talking loudly to be heard over him.

“That’s wonderful,” Walt says. “Ask him if he’s looking forward to the wedding.”

“Of course he is,” she says.

“Mom-”

“Ask him anyway,” Walt says.

“Mom-”

“Joe, we want to know, are you looking forward to the wedding?”

“Yes. Of course,” I say.

“That’s fantastic,” she says, then relays the news to Walt, who has the exact same reaction. “Thanks for calling and letting us know,” she says.

“Wait, wait, Mom. .”

But Mom hangs up.

I feel something tug at my eyes and hurt as I roll them too far upward.

“Phone call is over,” Adam says.

“That’s not fair,” I tell him. “I got disconnected.”

“You still technically made the call,” he says.

“There has to be something else we can agree on,” I tell him.

He gives it a few seconds of thought. “Okay,” he says, and I realize I’ve just said something he was really hoping to hear. “Here’s how things are going to play out,” he says, which is what he said earlier. He must love that phrase. “You’re going to get to dial her back, and the next sandwich I bring you you’re going to eat without ever looking what’s inside of it. Deal?”

“Deal,” I tell him.

“Slow down there, big fella. I’m serious here. You try to renege, and I’ll make you pay. You got no idea the things I can do to you.”

“It’s a deal,” I tell him.

He smiles. A big, cold smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “When you came here, Joe, remember how they put you on suicide watch?”

I remember. They did the same thing to Caleb Cole, only I wasn’t suicidal. I was angry and disappointed, but there’s nothing you can do to rectify those things if you’re dead.

“You asked me back then to put you into general population. You remember that?”

“I remember,” I tell him, but it’s not something I think about. Not only was I angry and disappointed, I was confused too.

“You thought if I put you in there, things would end for you quick. You thought it’d be like pulling off a Band-Aid-get it done fast-and I told you that was true, except it would be pulling off a Band-Aid while being raped in the showers while a filed-down toothbrush is pressing against your neck.”

“I told you I remember,” I tell him.

“You don’t feel that way now, though, do you, Joe, because you’ve had time to calm down and now you’ve got the trial coming up and you think that somehow the jury is going to be made up of people so fucked in the head they’re going to let you go. You want to live now, don’t you, Joe?”

“Yes.”

“So let me get this straight. If you don’t eat the sandwich I bring you,” he says, “all that stuff I told you about is going to happen. It’s going to happen a lot. It’s going to happen every day they bring you back from your trial. And if you find a way to complain about it, it will start happening twice a day. So let’s be clear here, Joe, before you make that phone call.”

I think about. If all goes well I’ll be out of here tomorrow anyway. It could be days or weeks before Adam brings me that sandwich. Any number of things could have changed in that time. He could die. I could be free. The nuclear bomb I told my lawyer about might happen. All I know is that right now I have to make this phone call. Nothing else matters.

“I understand,” I tell him. “But the phone call has to connect, and if I’m disconnected I get to ring back. What I’m talking about here is a phone conversation. If I ring and nobody answers, that’s not the deal.”

Adam slowly nods. “I’m a reasonable man,” he says. “I can go along with that.”

I turn my back to him. I phone my mom. It takes her a minute to answer. It’s as if in the time I was gone she went for a walk into the lounge and got lost.