Daniel Alarcón - At Night We Walk in Circles

“What are you looking for?” Nelson asked.

“Guards,” I said.

Nelson’s laugh was odd in that it did not contain within it an invitation to laugh along. It was dry, cutting.

We went left up the path that rounded the prison’s edge, past the entrances to the odd-numbered blocks. The shirtless pair followed us at a distance. We reached the top of the hill and stopped, facing an alley that led to the even-numbered blocks.

“They call it Main Street,” Nelson said.

It was the width of a bus, and served as both thoroughfare and market: mismatched pairs of plastic sandals, shaving mirrors and old batteries, plastic combs and razors were for sale, displayed on square patches of plastic lying on the ground. Every few steps there was a man slumped against the wall, smoking crack from a tiny metal pipe. Or maybe it only seemed this way; maybe I was so taken aback by the sight of the first addict that in my mind this one helpless man was multiplied, until I saw him everywhere, like a bright light present even with your eyes closed. In any case, I can describe him, and the men just like him, very easily: he had a narrow face dotted with uneven stubble, a receding hairline. He held up the pipe, and when he did, I noticed his thin, almost delicate wrists, his long fingers. He sat on his haunches with his knees bent, and I saw the stained black bottoms of his feet. He flicked the lighter, and curled his toes in anticipation of the high.

Nelson and I both watched him as he struggled with the lighter. He flicked it, a soft breeze blew down Main Street, and the flame went out. He tried again, and then again. Beneath it all, there was an eagerness that was almost childlike. It was impossible not to root for him.

We walked halfway down to Nelson’s block, Number Ten, and I watched through the rusty bars, trying to be invisible, while Nelson explained who I was, and why I was there. He was negotiating with an inmate, so I could pass.

Our two escorts kept their watch.

“Who are they?” I asked.

“They’re protecting you,” Nelson said.

Then we were let inside. All of us.

Men shouted from the third floor to the ground floor, from the second floor to the roof, voices straining to be heard above blasting stereos, above blaring televisions, above a dozen other voices. Noise everywhere. Nelson led me through the tier; following him was like trying to walk in a straight line through a windstorm. I wanted to see everything, remember every detail. I knew, even then, that this was my one chance, that I wouldn’t be coming back. I saw a blackened tube of a fluorescent light dangling by its cord, swaying dangerously above me. I watched how Nelson moved through the space, the way he held himself. He didn’t talk to anyone, and no one spoke to him. I remember thinking, it’s as if he’s not even here.

He told me he’d arranged for a quiet cell, so we could talk. “Terrific,” I said. It was on the second floor. His two friends waited outside while Nelson and I went in, and I quickly discovered it wasn’t actually quiet at all, only quiet in comparison to the cells on the other side of the block, overlooking the yard. I wanted good sound on this interview, but I hadn’t anticipated how difficult that would be in a place like Collectors.

“Is this okay?” he asked.

I nodded. “It’ll do.”

“I can’t understand why you’re here,” he said as I set up my recorder and microphone. I was checking the levels, and his words came blasting through my headphones. I looked up, startled.

“I’ll explain. Just give me a second.”

He waited. He sat in one of those white plastic lawn chairs, the same kind Henry kept in his dour bachelor’s apartment. Nelson leaned back now. With a nod he gestured toward the block, toward the men roving and shouting just outside the cell door.

“Pick any of them,” he said. “Stick a microphone in their face, and they’ll tell you a story. They’re dying to be heard.”

“You aren’t?”

He shook his head.

“What do you want?”

“I’ve been trying for months to get Ixta to visit me. I want her to bring Nadia. That’s what I want most of all. Why won’t she come?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“I know you don’t. Have you seen the baby?”

I nodded. We lived in the same neighborhood now; it felt cruel to say I saw her all the time. “She’s beautiful.”

“I imagine.”

“And what does she tell you?” I asked.

“Reasonable things. That she wants to move on with her life. That she’s got to look forward and not back.” He frowned. “She doesn’t think I killed Mindo, does she?”

“No one thinks you killed Mindo.”

“The judge does.”

He gave me a sharp, almost defiant smile, as if he were happy to have proven me wrong.

“Will you tell me what happened?” I asked.

He didn’t answer right away, but something in the way he looked at me made me think: Finally, an opening . I was sure of it. He rubbed the top of his head with his palm, bit his thumbnail, and narrowed his eyes. “Everyone in here is innocent, you know? Ask around, they’ll all tell you the same thing.”

I leaned toward him. “Sure. That’s what they say. But you really are.”

“So what?”

I stopped. I wasn’t getting anywhere. Maybe it was time to admit that. “Would it be better if I put this away?” I asked, gesturing at my tape recorder.

Nelson nodded, and I pressed Stop. I peeled off the headphones and the world dropped to its regular volume again.

He smiled. “This is better, isn’t it?”

“Sure,” I said.

“We can just talk now.”

I nodded.

“Can I hold it?”

I gave him the tape recorder, then the microphone. I handed over the headphones too. He left it all in his lap.

“What if I did kill Mindo? Have you thought about that?”

There was something very cold in his voice.

“You didn’t.”

“What if I did? What if I were that kind of person?”

Nelson had been inside for thirty-odd months, studying this very sort of performed aggression. And he was good. He let the questions hang there. I knew it couldn’t be true, but then he shifted his gaze, and part of me wondered why I thought that, why I was so sure. I felt a chill.

“All right,” I said. “Let’s suppose.”

“So what do you think I would do to someone who was outside while I was in here, and had decided he had the right to tell my story? If I were the person capable of killing a man on a dark street?”

I didn’t know what to say.

“Just think,” Nelson said.

I smiled, but now he didn’t smile back, and for a few long moments nothing was said. He’d made his point, and while I mulled it over, he busied himself examining my tape recorder and the microphone. He pressed Record, and pointed the mic in different directions. He snapped his fingers at the working end of the mic, and watched the needle jump.

“It’s not recording yet,” I said. “It’s on pause. If you want to …” I said, and reached for the machine. There was a button he hadn’t pressed. That was all I wanted to show him.

But he pulled the recorder away from me. It was a quick gesture, very slight. “I’ll hold it,” he said.

“I just …”

“You’re fine.”

I could feel myself turning red. I understood what was happening.

“You’re robbing me?”

Nelson gave me a disappointed look. “Is that what you think?”

“Well, I …”

“Let’s just be clear about who’s been robbing whom.”

When I didn’t respond, he stood. He took my tape recorder and the microphone and placed them on the table behind him. I could have tried to grab them, I suppose, but Nelson set his body between me and my equipment, as if daring me to take them back. And I thought about it, I did. We were the same size, neither of us particularly imposing, but my last fight had been in middle school. And now I was in Collectors, which was, for better or worse, his home. His two friends, the ones who were protecting me, stood just outside the cell. As if to underline the point, Nelson pushed the door open, and all the noise from the block came rushing in.