King of the World

  “What do I shave with?”

  Harry pulled from under his own cot a wooden box and took from it a battered electric razor, an extension cord, and a small mirror. He produced a screwdriver as well.

  “We have to take the cover off the light,” he said, pointing to the ceiling. “There’s an outlet next to the lamp socket—it’s illegal, and we have to screw the plug out and hide it before the weekly inspection. But that’s the only way you can shave. They won’t let you have blades and lather. And you have to be cleanshaven all the time.”

  Cornell breathed. “But that’s unfair! How do they expect—”

  “That’s the way they are,” said Harry. “You have no rights in here, and you get no decency. But you better get to work on your breakfast. We have only five minutes. Fortunately, the coffee is always ice-cold anyway.”

  One of the compartments in the tray held a plastic cup full of black liquid. No milk or sugar was in evidence. The edible portion of breakfast was literally a crust of stale bread, with nothing to spread upon it.

  “If they catch you with a beard,” said Harry, “it’s solitary. There you get water and moldy bread. Whereas here we do get soup for lunch and a bowlful of stewed slop for dinner in which you sometimes find a shred of meat.”

  Cornell chewed the bread. He thought of something.

  “I don’t even know where we are, Harry. Is this still the police station?”

  “It’s the Rink.”

  “Where is that located?”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I told you I’ve never been arrested before. I don’t known any of the terms.”

  “The Men’s House of Correction,” Harry said. “Rockefeller Center, where else? This cellblock’s called the Rink, don’t ask me why.” Harry wasn’t eating; he sat there watching Cornell. “Another one of the blocks is called St. Pat’s. Cons make up all kinds of names for things. When you first come in, you are put in the Rink to await arraignment. After that, they move you to another one to wait for the trial, St. Pat’s or maybe the Rainbow Room—there’s a name for you. That’s got the worst reputation. It’s the oldest part, used to be a subway tunnel. It didn’t fall in like most of the others, so they used it for a jail.”

  “Are we underground here?”

  “Oh, sure.”

  The door rattled again, and Harry seized Cornell’s tray and his untouched own and handed them out the slot.

  “Do we ever see any of the guards?” Cornell asked.

  “Forget what I told you about shaving? Five minutes again.”

  Harry took the screwdriver and climbed onto his bunk. He was just tall enough to reach the ceiling receptacle. He unfastened two screws and handed them down to Cornell. Then he carefully removed the frosted glass in its metal frame and lowered that to his cellmate.

  “Now give me the extension, and plug the razor into the other end.”

  The cord was still too short to permit Cornell to sit while he shaved. He stood, holding the mirror in one hand and the razor in the other. His hair was a disaster as a result of having been crammed under the wig and then slept on all night.

  “Do they give you a hairbrush?” he asked, wincing from the pain of the ineffectual razor as it pulled at his whispers. “Ouch! And what about makeup? I’m going to be all blotchy after this.”

  “Think they care about your beauty?” Harry asked cruelly.

  Cornell felt his chin: still very gritty. “Have you ever thought about the inconsistency, Harry? A man can’t have a beard, but he is at the same time forbidden to show any baldness or to cut his hair short. It doesn’t make sense, does it?”

  It was a rhetorical expression, and by no means original, but Harry’s silence struck Cornell as having somehow a positive charge. He turned the little mirror to catch Harry’s face.

  “You’ve already shaved?”

  “While you were still snoozing,” said Harry.

  “You must show me the trick. You’re not marked at all. I’m being torn up by this darn thing.” The less it cut, the harder Cornell rubbed his cheeks and chin, so that he was sore and red and still unshaven.

  “I don’t have a heavy beard,” said Harry, stooping to his box of treasures and finding a comb therein. He held it back over his shoulder.

  “Oh, thanks.” Despite the warnings, Cornell worried less about his beard than about his crowning glory. He let the razor dangle on its cord and started to work with the comb on the vulture’s nest of his hair. The lump on his scalp was still sensitive.

  “Well,” Harry said, “if you’re not worried, I am.” He seized the razor and, supporting Cornell’s chin in his left hand, began to shave him. He was gentle and deft, and Cornell was touched.

  “I don’t want to see you get in any more trouble,” Harry said. “I’d like to see you beat the rap. I don’t see how the cause is served if you stay in prison. If you don’t care for yourself, think of the Movement.”

  “Harry!” Cornell said. “You’re as bad as the detectives. Believe me, I wouldn’t know how to join a conspiracy if I wanted to. That’s against the law. For twenty-nine years I’ve been the most legal little boy imaginable. If I’m not halfway across the street when the RUN light comes on, I dash back where I came from. I don’t really know what got into me last night. But I had a rough day. I got fired, you see, or rather demoted to a job that’s worse in some ways than having none. And then I let myself be talked into having more beers than I could handle, and then into putting on those wretched clothes. But I guess I will get some consideration for its being my first offense, won’t I?”

  “They don’t take transvest lightly, old boy,” said Harry, holding the razor away and feeling Cornell’s face. “It depends on how the judge feels that day, whether she had a good night’s sleep and isn’t dyspeptic, etcetera, etcetera. You could easily be up for the whole twenty unless she recommends mercy. You’ll be in your fifties when you get out.”

  “Forty-nine,” Cornell said quickly.

  Harry shook his head. “That would be a terrible waste.”

  He suddenly handed the razor to Cornell. Almost immediately therafter the door clanked and squeaked open, and two uniformed women entered.

  Harry stepped to the foot of his cot and stood at attention. Cornell let the razor dangle on its cord and followed Harry’s example, standing rigidly between the bunks.

  One officer felt Harry’s chin. The other dropped a coin on his cot. It bounced off the taut blanket, and the officer caught it in her gauntlet. Then she turned to Cornell.

  “Give me your number,” she said.

  “Number?”

  She took off the leather gauntlet and struck him across the face with it.

  “We make short work of your kind in here,” she said. She ripped the extension cord from the overhead socket and the razor fell to the floor. Behind her, the other guard made an entry in a notebook. “Bed unmade, also.” Another scribble in the book.

  “I’m sorry,” Cornell said, “but it’s my first day and—”

  She struck him again. He covered his face.

  “For every demerit,” she said, “your arraignment is delayed another week. You’ve got four demerits already.”

  Cornell put down his arms and asked desperately: “Where can I get a list of the rules? I don’t want to break any more.”

  “Five,” said the guard. “You just initiated a conversation with an officer, and that’s a demerit.” She was a large woman, very near his own size, with a crumpled nose full of broken veins. “Anything more to say?”

  Now he knew better than to answer, and she said: “Refusing to respond to an officer’s direct question,” and the other guard wrote that down.

  Cornell knew he must not panic. The officer brought her coarse face very close to his. He held his breath so as not to smell what he was sure was her foul exhalation. He tried to concentrate on the visor of her cap.

  “We’ll break you,” she said with venom. “Never doubt that,” Then she spat in his face
and both officers left the cell.

  Harry slumped his shoulders. “I told you they were rough,” he said. “Actually, you got off easy. I’ve seen ’em kick the crotch out of a man for less. That means you still have a chance.”

  “For what?” asked Cornell, toweling the spit off his face. He had to be careful: it was the same towel with which he had wiped himself after vomiting.

  “To turn state’s evidence.”

  Now Cornell let himself panic.

  “Maybe I’ll just kill myself!” he said. “I’ve got nothing to tell. If they gave me the truth serum, they already know that, don’t they?”

  “It doesn’t work with everybody,” said Harry. “Certain systems resist it. That must be true with you, else you wouldn’t be rotting away down here.”

  Cornell screamed: “But what if I have nothing to tell!”

  “They’ll never believe that, I can assure you.”

  Cornell sank to the edge of the cot. “Then maybe they didn’t get Charlie’s name out of me?”

  “Charlie,” said Harry. “Is he one of them? I knew a Charlie Willis, but he wouldn’t be your man. He’s already in prison. And I also knew a Charlie Seaton, but he wasn’t any activist.”

  “Neither is Charlie Harrison! He’s just another secretary. He keeps a wardrobe of women’s clothes and has a collection of pornography.” Cornell stamped his foot. “Why don’t you believe me?”

  “Don’t get sore,” said Harry. “I’m your cellmate. That’s a closer relationship than any friendship on the outside. To survive we’ll have to get along. I’m sorry I didn’t have time to check you out on the rules. They aren’t that complicated. You never address a guard unless you’re asked a question. You must know your number. Prisoners are never referred to by name. Turn around. Your number is 33 45 93.”

  “It’s on my back?”

  “Stenciled,” said Harry.

  Cornell asked Harry to turn around. “You’re 33 15 01.” Funny he hadn’t noticed that before.

  “Have you been here long?” he asked Harry.

  “Seven months, two weeks, and three days. I should be arraigned any day now.”

  “Arraigned?” Cornell cried. “That isn’t even the trial, is it?”

  “It certainly isn’t,” said Harry. “That’s when you are charged with the crime. Don’t even talk about the trial! It doesn’t matter much anyway, frankly. The burden of proof is on us, and not the state. We’re considered guilty as from the moment of arrest And of course you are guilty, as you admit. The only way you can escape punishment, or at least get a lesser sentence than the one you richly deserve, is to make a deal, give them information—” He reacted to Cornell’s threat to become hysterical, broke off, threw up his hands, and said: “But let me clue you in to the resources of this place.”

  Harry went to a vertical pipe that ran up the corner below Cornell’s cot. “See this steampipe. This is our telegraph. The prisoners talk to one another this way, circulate news, even tell jokes. It won’t take you long to get the hang of the code.” He rapped it with his knuckles.

  After a moment an answering tapping was heard.

  “That’s Gillie. He and Randy are right underneath us. That’s the outside wall next to your bunk; behind it is solid earth. On my side is a storage room, so the fellows below are our only contact.”

  “What are they in for?” asked Cornell. But Harry was listening to a message at the moment, the taps naturally meaning nothing to Cornell.

  Harry said: “Lunch is potato soup. Their cell is above the kitchen. They can actually hear the talk down there, through their pipe, and they have cells on either side of them. They run a real message center. Last night some guys tried to break out of the Rainbow Room by tunneling through the walls. Lots of rotted concrete there, easy to get through but dangerous. The wall collapsed and dropped a couple tons of concrete on them. They should have known better. Nobody makes it out of here.”

  “I guess I should put the cover back on the light,” Cornell said, not wishing to dwell any longer on the hopelessness of his situation. He stooped and pulled the box from under Harry’s bed. He was looking for the screwdriver.

  “I’ll do that,” Harry said sharply. Harry’s hands were on his shoulders. Cornell almost went over backwards. Harry bent, plucked up the tool, and pushed the box out of sight.

  Harry held the screwdriver like a weapon.

  “You probably wonder why they don’t take something like this away from me,” he said, jabbing the air. “It could be used as a dagger or a lockpick. That just shows how confident they are that this place is escape-proof. And even if you got out, which is impossible, they’d pick you up immediately. Where would you turn for help? Their informers are everywhere.”

  He climbed onto the cot and replaced the lamp cover.

  To have shaved himself Harry would have had to go through this business with the light—cover off and cover replaced—operating the buzzing razor in between, all without awakening Cornell. That was hardly possible.

  Harry had not, however, shaved earlier that morning. He had in fact never shaved in his life. A faint growth of pale hair showed on his upper lip and the angles of his jaw were covered with a dusty golden down.

  Cornell was embarrassed by these observations. He certainly had no intention of discussing them with Harry at this point, He had no one else to depend on.

  So he said: “Seven months! How do you stand it?”

  Harry put the screwdriver away. “By not thinking of the worst to come,” he said. He grinned strangely—at what, the anticipated castration? “By thinking instead of the satisfaction I got when I screwed that woman.”

  Cornell felt repulsion again.

  Harry went on: “I was her maid, see? I cleaned her kitchen and I cleaned her toilet, and I even did her laundry.” He had neat little white teeth. Through them he now said: “But I fucked her, man. One day when she was bawling me out as she did all the time: not enough starch in the collars…” He punched his hands together, reliving this degradation. “She’d throw her tampons in the john bowl, and I’d have to unclog it. You’d think, wouldn’t you, with all the marvels of modern science, they’d do something about menstruation!”

  With this complaint it seemed to Cornell that Harry had passed from the personal to the social, but his cellmate’s rage now took on a special tone.

  “Menstruation makes no sense at all. It should be abolished! But chemically: a pill or powder. Lots of women are afraid of the knife. Why should you—they—have to undergo a hysterectomy? Fucking scientists! You can be sure they take care of themselves, but they won’t let the secret out.”

  Cornell cleared his throat. “Well, that’s one advantage we have over women.” Harry stared at him briefly in what he could have sworn was hatred. Cornell did not understand him at all.

  “Gee,” Cornell said. “I wouldn’t think their troubles would worry you.”

  Harry’s eyes cleared. “Yeah,” he said roughly. “They can all bleed to death.” He went to the water bucket and drank from the dipper.

  Cornell was reminded that he had not peed in ever so long. Part of the pain in his lower belly, for which he had blamed anxiety and dread exclusively, was no doubt due to this.

  “Uh, Harry,” he said, “I guess we must do our business in this other bucket?”

  “That or in the ventilating duct,” Harry said coarsely, pointing to the grille high on the wall. He stood there grinning while Cornell pulled up his skirts.

  “Could you turn your head, please?” Cornell requested. Someone had undressed him thoroughly: his blue bikini underpants and his pantyhose were gone, and in their stead he wore ugly bloomers in white cotton, and no stockings.

  “You’ll have to get over that false modesty,” said Harry, but he reluctantly turned away.

  The rim of the bucket, especially at the two points where the metal came up in arches to secure each end of the wire handle, was painful to the biscuit—the old childhood name for the bottom, which c
ame back to Cornell, who had not pulled down panties of this sort since he had been in the primary grades.

  He really did not feel all that better when he finished.

  “What happens here if you get sick?” he asked.

  “You die,” said Harry, turning back to watch the bloomers rise again.

  “You know,” Cornell said, letting the shapeless skirt fall into position, “I don’t know if it is right to treat people this way, even criminals. I mean, take me. I make one mistake, and here I am. Now, it seems to me that some people who were inclined to crime would think, well, I’m going to be horribly punished for the most minor of things, so I might as well do something really bad. If I’m caught, what difference would it make?”

  “You’re thinking like a man,” said Harry. “What do women care about such distinctions? They’ve got the power, and they’re going to use it as they see fit. Besides, they wouldn’t agree that it is a minor crime for a man to pose as a woman. That’s theft, isn’t it? You’re stealing what belongs to them, and what is worth more than sexual identity?”

  “Personal identity,” Cornell said with some vigor. “I like to believe that I’m Georgie Cornell first, and second a man—or second, an American, and third, a man. I think sometimes this sexual matter is carried too far. You have to eat and sleep whether you are man or woman, and if you are cut, you will bleed—”

  Harry was shaking his head and slowly waving his hand.

  “That’s just playing with words, Georgie, and you know it. You’ve always been a cipher, only now you’ve been moved into another column. You’re a zero in the statistic on how many perverts have been arrested this week, month, year.” He was sitting on his cot, and he slapped his knee. “Look, men are bigger on the average than women. Women dominate them by moral, intellectual, and psychological means. That couldn’t be done if it were a matter of sheer physical strength. You were a head taller than either of those detectives.”

  “But one had a blackjack and struck me from behind!” Cornell protested in an impulse of pride, which he regretted an instant later: he was boasting about his effeminate streak of brutality. “I was foolish to resist at all, though,” he added. “But I just saw red when I was slapped. I’ve always been like that I remember in school when another boy slapped me I’d scratch his face and pull his hair.” Something was wrong with this memory. He found it and blushed: actually, he would punch his tormentor, balling his fist like a girl.