The Mars Room(4)

We passed a lit billboard: THREE SUITS $129. It was the name of a business. Three Suits $129.

“They’ll hook you up in that place. Walk out looking like a baller,” Conan said.

“Where they get this fool?” someone said. “Talking about cheap-ass suits.”

Where did they get any of us. Only each of us knew and no one was telling. No one but Laura Lipp.

“You want to know what they did with the children?” Laura Lipp asked me. “That old lady and her sicko husband at Magic Mountain?”

“No,” I said.

“You won’t believe it,” she continued. “It’s inhuman. They—”

An announcement exploded through the bus PA. We were to remain seated. The bus was stopping to let off the three men caged separately near the front. Guns were pointed at them and at us while the transfer took place.

“Crazy mothers up here,” Conan said. “I was in six months.”

The woman in front of Conan got excited, as in mad. “You a dude for real? For real? Shit. Officer! Officer!”

“Settle down,” Conan said. “I’m in the right place. I mean, the wrong place. Nothing right about it. But they fixed my file. They were confused and put me with the caballeros downtown, at Men’s Central. It was an honest oops.”

There was laughing and snickering. “They put you in the men’s joint? They thought you was an actual dude?”

“Not just county. I was at Wasco State Prison.”

Disbelief rippled down the aisle. Conan did not challenge it. Later, I learned the details. Conan really was at a men’s prison, at least in receiving. He truly did seem like a man, and that was how I thought of him from the moment I met him.



* * *



I regret the Mars Room, and Kennedy, but there are other things you might want me to regret or expect me to that I don’t.

The years I spent getting high and reading library books I do not regret. It wasn’t a bad life, even if I would probably never go back. I had an income from stripping and could afford to buy what I wanted, which was drugs, and if you have never tried heroin I have news for you: It makes you feel good about yourself, especially in the beginning. It makes you feel good about other people. You want to give the whole world a break, a time-out, a tender regard. There is nothing so soothing. My first dabble in it was morphine, a pill that someone else melted in a spoon and helped me inject, a guy named Bill and I hadn’t thought much about him or what the drug would be like but the careful way he tied off my arm and found my vein, the way the needle went in, so thin and delicate, the whole experience of this random guy I never saw again shooting me up in an abandoned house was exactly what a young girl dreams love can be.

“This is a pins and needles high,” he’d said. “It’ll grab you by the back of the neck.” It grabbed me by the back of the head with its firm clench, rubber tongs, then warmth spread down through me. I broke into the most relaxing sweat of my life. I fell in love. I don’t miss those years. I’m just telling you.



* * *



Back on the highway, I turned from Laura Lipp as far as I could and closed my eyes. Five minutes into my attempt to sleep, she started whispering to me again.

“This whole situation is because I’m bipolar,” she said. “In case you were wondering. You probably are. It’s chromosomal.”

Or maybe she said, “chromosomical.” Because that was the kind of people I had to be around now. People who thought everything was a scientifical conspiracy. I didn’t meet a single person in county who wasn’t convinced that AIDS had been invented by the government to wipe out gays and addicts. It got difficult to argue with. In a sense it seemed true.

The woman who had been hissing and shushing everyone turned around as best she could in her restraints. She had a faded and blurry teardrop tattoo and pencil-drawn eyebrows. Her eyes glowed a grayish green like this was a zombie film and not a bus ride to a California state prison.

“She’s a baby killer,” she called to us, or maybe to me. She was talking about Laura Lipp.

A transport cop came down the aisle.

“Well if it ain’t Fernandez,” he said. “I hear one more word from you I’ll put you in a cage.”

Fernandez didn’t look at him or respond. He returned to his seat.

Laura made a face, a slight smile, as if something mildly embarrassing but not worth acknowledging had just taken place, like someone had accidentally passed gas, definitely not her.

“Dang, you killed your child?” Conan said. “That is fucked-up. Hope I don’t have to room with you.”

“I’d guess you’ve got bigger problems than a roommate assignment,” Laura Lipp said to Conan. “You look like the kind of person who spends a lot of time in jails and prisons.”

“Why you say that? ’Cause I’m black? At least I fit in here. You look like a Manson chick. No offense. I got nothing to hide. Here’s my file: counter-rehabilitatable. ODD. That’s oppositional defiant disorder. I’m criminal-minded, narcissistic, recidivistical, and uncooperative. I’m also a prunaholic and horndog.”



* * *



People had quieted into themselves, and eventually some fell asleep. Conan was snoring like a bulldozer.