A. Homes - The End of Alice

Prison. Morning. The tintinnabulation of the bells. I stand at the door, the gate to my cell. I hear the calling of the names. I hear the names, I know the crimes.

“Jerusalem Stole,” the sergeant calls.

“It’s a mistake, call me Jerry.”

“Frazier,” the sergeant says. “Frazier.”

“What do you want, blood?” Frazier bellows.

I stand ready. But when my name is called, I am strangely silent.

Again the sergeant calls. He presses against the bars of my cell, his keys jingle. He asks, “Everything all right?”

“What time is it?”

“Almost time.”

Prison. Morning. Breakfast doesn’t come.

Legi Rupa, breaker of the law.

I am calmer now, resting, readying myself for what comes next. I prepare, I pack.

You worry.

You worry because I act as if I’ve forgotten what happened — Clayton — as if it were nothing, no matter. You find my lack of commentary, my dulled demeanor, disconcerting as though I have too easily dismissed the day. The violence is not what counts. That’s expected of us. In fact I probably wouldn’t have even mentioned the scene with Clayton except that I knew you were waiting for it, wanting it, had been wanting it all along.

I aim to please.

Predetermined, predestined, fantasy cum reality. What kind of prison would it be if the men did not prey on each other? And is it really so different in here than it is out there with you? What value is there in dwelling on that sour moment when before us there is something more, something better? What’s done is done. Let’s put it behind us and move on.

“What do you want, blood?” Frazier screams unbidden down the hall and begins to blow his harmonica.

I am getting ready to go, done here. Finished. If I seem rushed, hurried, and harassed, it is because time is of the essence. Suddenly, after twenty-three years, another day is too much. I have received note and notice that momentarily I am to go before the committee.

When I leave, I will take with me only one thing, my archive.

In the smallest of storage spaces my treasure is buried, hidden in the hollowed-out shell of my foam pillow. Years ago I plucked out the spongy stuffing and little by little flushed it down the toilet mixed with my daily droppings. I constructed for myself a sort of safe-deposit box, a container for the bits and pieces, slivers of society. I carefully packed them in and restitched the ticking’s edge. Were I ever to be found out, to have the contents confiscated, a second set, a more complete compilation — including early versions of my own letters, letters I’ve sent — is kept under similar circumstances in a slit in my mattress. The items stored in this second safe are of slightly less value, the feather bed at my age seeming a more precarious repository — there always being the possibility that I might lose myself in the night, might wake to find myself swimming in something other than a wet dream, a flood, an incontinent’s nightmare. Piss-stained pages, paper tinged yellow shimmering with the mineral crystals, the crustation of evaporated excrete — a conservator’s conundrum, not the kind of compilation collectors would kvell over. In such condition a collection would surely suffer a serious drop in value, making it less than salable at Christie’s despite the interest of both serious collectors and that damned new museum — therefore it is my policy not to take liquids after 8 P.M.

I cannot give you the details of my archival activity; such specificity would leave me a target for theft and blackest mail. But let me drop you a few hints. I have your letters, all of them, the ones you wrote and should never have sent. Along with those, I possess the ruminations of a noted novelist, a man of strong opinions who for quite some time considered me his confidant, until I said something sharp about his wife and abruptly he broke off. In my file is the record of a series of exchanges between a prominent — pompous — film director and myself, the declaration of his desire to adapt my life to the silver screen. I indicated interest, specifying of course I would have to write the screenplay. Hasty letters hurried back and forth from coast to coast. I saw it as a love story, he as a horror flick. Sadly, there was a parting of the ways. C’est la vie. I have the detailed plans of psychiatrists who wished to take my case, not to cure me, but to pursue the publication of my musings on morality and criminality, notes on the nature of the beast, rounded out by forewords and afterwords, crude critical commentaries they would fashion themselves. I refused. Intellectus insanus. Fuck off, I said.

I have all that and more. I am the keeper of man’s mind, the chronicler of his fate, I make maps of the things he thinks but doesn’t dare admit. I carry confessions, stories of fathers who pass little girls walking to school and feel compelled to tackle one, mothers who purposely make their children cry, only to be called on to comfort them. I have the details, the pathetic outpourings of those who open their coats and flash that fang of flesh at whatever eye they can catch and then feel flush, thrilled — more fulfilled and productive at the office.

I have my files, a compendium of all persuasion and perversion. A literal library of man’s fate, every derivation, deviation, and despicable desire I keep squirreled away, stitched into my headrest — it’s no wonder I don’t sleep nights.

Kleinman passes my door. “No mail today.”

“Holiday?”

“Gaff. Just thought you should know. I’ve written a letter of complaint, but even it won’t go out until Wednesday.” He walks on. “No mail today,” he tells Frazier.

“What do you want, blood?” Frazier screams again, the phrase now stuck in his head.

Today’s the day. The clock is ticking. I have been summoned to speak. I go before the committee with a chance to exonerate myself, to extricate, or at least explain the debacle that has become my life.

A statement, a simple speech, a song and dance that will set them straight, an incandescent incantation, a charming presentation, a show of sorts, the show of shows, it’s the only chance I’ve got. My appeal must be appealing, not entirely revealing, tucking in the tendency to be argumentative, artfully augmenting my audacity with the acuity of my observation and the alarming accuracy of my action. What can I possibly say or do? Act normal.

Everything is different from what it was before — before summer, before she arrived. I am alive again, unfettered in the head. Captivity is killing me, stifling even my sentences, my speech, confining my consciousness to this crappy cell. I’m coming undone. Enough is enough. I am chomping at the bit, dying to be released, but I cannot let them know that. My anxious arousal would only exacerbate their aggravation, their elaborate argument that I am not fit for society. Dispassion is the name of the game; flat as a pancake, dull as a board.

And before I go on, while we’re having this moment of privacy, there’s something I need to talk to you about, something that needs settling between you and me. Direct address: I’m talking to you, Herr Reader, realizing that it’s not the usual thing, knowing I’m not supposed to disassemble the invisible scrim that separates us. My apologies for suddenly aggressing. But it’s time we had it out, the two of us, alone, without interference. Concentrate, pay close attention, this is the last flash of lightning lucidity, before my rigor turns to rigor mortis.

I feel the need to reassure you — don’t respond, don’t answer, just listen, do with it what you will, and I promise not to mention this again.

I am fully aware of what you’ve been doing while you’ve been reading this — these are my pages you’re staining with your spunky splash. Your arousal, the woody in your woods, tickle in your twitty-twat, the fact that as you’ve read my mental monologue you fished out the familiar friend, rubbed it raw, stroked yourself, hello, pussy, sweet kitty cat — let the tiny tongue between your legs lick your fingers, giving them a sticky bath — and despite the depths to which it disturbed, you were released.