The Mars Room(67)

They’d had a swimming pool at CI Wonderful. There were bathing suits, state-issue, but you had to wear your underwear inside them because they were shared. I reveled in these details of prison the old way, before now. I’m sure it was lousy but according to Sammy some people had goldfish in tanks. They didn’t have huge towers with gunners and miles of electric fence. It wasn’t concrete living. The rooms had wood shelves, and wood cabinets. They had green grass. Their canteen was stocked with makeup you could buy, and everyone’s favorite was a lipstick called purple flame. There was a golf course next to the prison grounds, she said, and someone’s boyfriend had dragged a batting machine onto the golf course and batted balls stuffed with heroin and jewelry into the prison’s main yard. When I felt low, Sammy would tell me stories about CI Wonderful. It was paradise before the fall.

Sammy’s whole collection of pictures was prison photos. One was of a sad, beautiful girl named Sleepy who was life without parole. It was Sleepy’s only photo of herself, Sammy said. Sleepy gave it to her when Sammy was released to Keath. This girl Sleepy had no one. She gave the picture of herself to Sammy because she wanted to be sure someone free remembered her, thought of her from time to time. I never met Sleepy. She was transferred north before I arrived. But I knew why Sleepy gave that photo to Sammy, what she wanted from her. There was something about Sammy that came from, and stayed in, the world—the old one, the free one. Poor Sleepy had probably thought that if she could live in Sammy’s heart, she could live. It made me so depressed I wanted to tear up the photo when Sammy wasn’t looking.



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There was nothing to celebrate but sometimes we had parties. It was Conan’s passion to plan them in our room. He had been getting everyone to set aside psych meds. What you do is buy peanut butter from canteen, or, if, like me, you have no money for canteen, you share Conan’s peanut butter. Put a dab of it on the roof of your mouth before you go to pill call. When you open your mouth like a horse to show them you properly swallowed your meds, you’re cleared, but the pill is in the peanut butter, unswallowed. Those with dentures hide the pill under them. Some people just cheek it really well. People from all over unit 510 had contributed. Conan unveiled the stash of pills after evening count. He mashed them with the bottom of a shampoo bottle and made “punch,” which is pills dissolved in a container of iced tea. It’s a short island iced tea. Sammy snuck over to our unit and came to the room during unlock, when the big hand on the clock was in the imbecile’s red wedge.

“I’m feeling streaky,” Conan said, and mixed the punch.

I wasn’t myself feeling exactly happy as I gulped my share. Sammy refused her cup. She was staying clean, she said. I knew I could stay clean and still drink punch. We aren’t all the same. It was a Sunday night. Conan put on the radio to Art Laboe’s request and dedication show, which was everyone’s weekly favorite.

“This one is from Tiny, up at Pelican Bay, for Lulu, aka Bonita Blue Eyes. Tiny wants to tell Lulu he loves you more than anything, and his heart will always be yours. He’s there for you through and through, and he is never going anywhere.”

“That’s ’cause the motherfucker doing life,” Conan said.

An oldies song came on. The trills and dollops of the singer’s voice pelted me with unwanted sensations of longing. I drank another cup of punch.

At the next unlock, people crowded into the room. Laura Lipp put her pillow over her head and tried to ignore us. Conan played booty music and Button danced for us.

Later I danced for us, too, but I didn’t have a clear memory of it. Just Conan telling me, after, “Sometimes you see something and got to have it.”

Conan was strong, and muscular—he had that name for a reason—and he made me laugh. I stopped laughing when I ended up in his bunk that night, and the soft army of his tongue went to work. Jesus Christ, I kept whispering. Instead of his usual comic retort, he went deeper. We were still at it when I heard an incredible bang. The noise shocked the hell out of Conan, who reared up and gashed his head on the upper bunk. It was Officer Garcia, who was on night watch in our unit, banging on the window with his billy club.

The mood was ruined, so Conan and I cut out the unexpected bunk session. I wrapped his wound, which was bleeding, and we drank more punch. Everyone crowded into the bathroom, which the cops can’t see into from the observation glass.

Maybe because she was young and small, Button was the most sideways. She started talking about God. She said it was God who was in the guard tower on the yard. Which tower, someone asked, Tower One or Tower Two? She said, “He’s got the high field on us. He sees us.”

Conan said, “That’s not God. That’s Sergeant Rintler, one more Elmer Fudd up there, taking naps, jerking off. Duck-hunting motherfuckers.”

Conan adopted a cowboy twang. “Ma’am, step back, ma’am. Don’t make me write you up, ma’am.”

Button started to cry. “But they control the whole sky. This is the world now. If He’s not in the towers, where is God? Where is He?”

Laura Lipp walked into the bathroom. We stopped talking and stared. She looked like the Exorcist. She’d snuck punch from us. She was loaded.

“I’m from Apple Valley,” she said.

“We know,” everyone shouted. Sammy stood to push Laura out of the bathroom.