Paul Cleave - Joe Victim

“I think you should. I think you might find it insightful.”

“Okay,” I say, and sure, I’ll get right on it.

“Tell me about the first time you killed somebody,” she says.

At first I think I’ve misheard her. I’m not expecting the question, so it takes an extra couple of seconds to realize she hasn’t said Tell me about the first time you kissed anybody, which would have been my auntie, and I hope the pause makes me look like I’m actually trying to remember. Which I can. But that’s not what I tell her. “I don’t. . I don’t remember.”

“So you’ve been saying. So how about you tell me about the first time you suspected that you’d hurt somebody.”

“Well, that would be when the police came and arrested me.”

She slowly nods. Looks down at her hands. Makes a note. “So you’re telling me you never woke up covered in blood? See, the problem we’re facing here, Joe,” she says, and I like the way she thinks we’re facing the problem and not just me, it makes me feel like I’m part of a team, “is that if you don’t remember any of it, why were you carrying a gun? Why did you try to end your life when the police surrounded you?”

“Well, that’s tricky,” I tell her, “and also a good point,” I say, and I make out I haven’t heard her ask this already. “I mean, I remember the police coming and getting me, and I know I got hurt pretty bad, but I don’t remember trying to shoot myself, and I certainly don’t remember ever owning a gun.”

“The gun belonged to Detective Inspector Robert Calhoun.”

“So I’ve been told. I just don’t remember any of it.”

“Okay, Joe,” she says. “You want to stick with that story?”

It’s the story I’ve been sticking with, and changing it now would make me look like an idiot. “Yes.”

She nods. She accepts my story. Then she stands up. “We’re done here, Joe,” she says, and she knocks on the door and I know all I have to do is say the right thing and she’ll stay.

“There was one time when-”

She puts her hands out to stop me. “I don’t want to hear something you’re making up on the spot, Joe. But I’ll come back tomorrow. And that will be your final chance.”

I’ve been back in my cell, lying down, staring at the door, waiting for Caleb Cole to show up, trying to decide what I’m going to do when he does. The timing of it all is pretty unlucky, but maybe that’s just how I roll. I may be a bad-thoughts kind of guy, but also an unlucky kind of guy too-my surroundings are proof of that. All I have to do is make it through to this evening. That’s all. Then I’m out of here. Caleb Cole, the prison guards, Santa Suit Kenny, they can all go to Hell.

I don’t have anything to defend myself with. I’m not sure whether or not I’d be safer in the common area or whether that would just make it harder for the guards to get to me if I start screaming. Every time I hear footsteps I tense up.

“You missed shower time,” Adam says, stepping into my cell. I relax when it’s him and not Cole.

“I don’t need a shower.”

“Yeah, you do,” he says. “You stink. And I hear you’re going on some kind of field trip later on today, and the people you’re going with don’t want you stinking up their car.”

He leads me out of my cell. My neighbors are sitting in groups or pairs shooting the breeze, only a few of them are alone. I can’t see Cole and figure he must be in his cell, probably filing down a toothbrush. Adam leads me down to the showers. He opens the door and there’s nobody else in there. The door closes behind me, then it’s just him and me and a really bad feeling. I turn to face him.

“You heard the saying that life is a shit sandwich?” he asks me.

I don’t answer him.

He nods toward a bench where there are towels folded and half-used cakes of soap. Sitting on the closest towel is a paper bag. “Pick it up,” he says.

I back away from the bag. He reaches out and grabs my collar and pulls me forward so my face is only a few inches from his and I can smell onion on his breath.

“You owe me, Middleton,” he says. “Remember? For the phone call. This was the deal.”

“I’m not playing.”

He lets go and pushes me back slightly. Then he reaches out with his left hand and points at the wall. I turn my head to see what he’s looking at, then suddenly his other fist connects with my stomach. I double over, my breath knocked out of me, then he pushes me onto the floor where there are still a few footstep-sized puddles of water from the previous group who cleaned up here. I end up sitting on my ass and the water soaks into my jumpsuit and underwear.

“It’s just you and me in here, Middleton,” he says. “But tonight when you get back, you’re not going to have time to have a shower with your normal group. So we’ll have to arrange something else. You can be with some of the other inmates. It’ll be just like I told you yesterday. A few of them will think you’re their type. I’ve already had one guy offer me a thousand bucks if I could sneak him in here to bust your teeth out and fuck you in the mouth. Thing is, Middleton, there’s a big-screen TV that I’ve been eyeing up and a thousand bucks would go a long way to getting me that. So I’m tempted. Now, what you need to realize is that the only thing between me and that TV, and between you and that inmate, is you eating that sandwich. You get me?”

I get my breath back. I get up onto my feet and pull the wet part of my jumpsuit away from my skin. Adam’s muscles are tightly coiled. There’s something glinting in his eyes, the same kind of something others may have seen in mine in their last moments. He’s enjoying this.

“I’m not kidding,” he says, and he shoves me against the wall and I don’t fight back because I don’t know how. “Eat the fucking sandwich,” he says.

“No,” I say, because I won’t be here tonight. Melissa will be getting me out of here. Whatever plans Adam has for me won’t be happening. Unless Melissa doesn’t get me out of here. But Positive Joe doesn’t think that way.

He punches me in the stomach again, this time much harder. Then he pushes me onto the floor, back into the footstep puddles. I look up at him. The veins in his arms are sticking out. He reaches down and pulls me up and shoves me against the wall. “I can keep doing this all day, Joe,” he says. “And your shower buddies will keep doing you all night. Now eat the fucking sandwich,” he says, and pushes the bag into my chest.

“No,” I tell him again.

The shower door opens. Another guard comes in. “What the hell is going on here?” he asks, and it turns out to be Glen, Glen who has always given me such a hard time, but right now he’s my salvation. He takes one look at Adam, then at me, then back at Adam, and closes the door behind him.

Adam doesn’t answer.

“He’s trying to-” I say.

“Shut up, Middleton,” he says. “Adam, what the hell?”

“It’s not how it looks,” Adam says.

“Yeah? You sure about that?” he says, looking as mad as hell, so mad the veins in his arms are standing out more than the veins in Adam’s arms. “It looks like you started without me.”

“I haven’t,” Adam says. “Look, it’s still here,” he says, and holds up the paper bag to eye level. “He hasn’t taken a bite yet.”

I don’t understand what’s going on.

Glen takes the bag off him. He unfolds the top of it, and inside is a smaller plastic bag that’s sealed, and inside that plastic bag is a sandwich. He peels the plastic bag open and the smell that comes out is potent.

“Okay,” Glen says. “I didn’t mean to overreact. I just don’t want to miss this.”