The Commander looked down at the table, his yellow eyes filled with pity for something so far from redemption.
According to Troublemaker, she and Suede had lived the steamiest romance since Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok. They’d been regulars at the protest party outside the Fag Farm gates. They’d hiked the Pacific Crest Trail. The tattoo on his wrist…her wrist…Troublemaker’s wrist, she explained that it was a Labrys. A double-bladed ax, from Minoan Crete. It represented matriarchal cultures.
After Suede died, Troublemaker had persuaded an older man and woman to pose as her parents and pretend she was their son. With their help, Troublemaker had come here to retrieve the body of her lost lover. Like some quest out of Greek mythology.
The whole project took Kevin Clayton’s breath away, it seemed so heroic. In his mind he struggled to retrieve Mindy. But she was like a forgotten joke: something that had once possessed the power to make him instantly and reliably giddy but now escaped him.
—
By the fifth week they’d all but given up hope. Even the laser light had dimmed. Kevin maintained his vigil. Only Troublemaker kept him company. While everyone else slept in their warm beds, Kevin’s knees ached from the floor. His arms shook with the cold as he continued to petition the unknown, flashing dash-double-dash-dot-triple-dot, biting his tongue to stay awake. His body exhausted, but his faith unwavering.
As they sat in the dark sending out code, Kevin told Troublemaker how he’d planned to use his twenty thousand dollars. He’d graduate this place and elope with Mindy. They’d drive into the sunset, and find someplace perfect to live. Their first goal was to have those twins they could keep.
When Troublemaker didn’t respond, Kevin stopped talking. These nights, just the two of them sitting in the dark, talking, their situation reminded Kevin of something. A school thing. Some book. It was about a runaway kid and an escaped slave in olden times. They were floating down the Mississippi River on a raft. That book took boredom to a whole new level. Everything the slave had said didn’t make sense. To Kevin, the slave sounded like an illiterate idiot.
For a laugh, he explained to Troublemaker about his trick with the gerbils. Of all people Troublemaker should laugh.
Troublemaker only stared back at him. One end of her top lip curled in contempt. She shook her head as if to dismiss Kevin’s ignorance.
Kevin screwed up his courage. Without meeting Troublemaker’s eyes, he asked, “Aren’t you afraid of going to Hell?” He kept Morse coding into the unknown. Afloat in that ocean of night.
Troublemaker yawned. “Don’t take this the wrong way, okay?” She chuckled grimly. “My idea of Hell would be going to Heaven and being forced to pretend I’m like you for the rest of eternity.”
—
Afternoons, they picked through Betsey’s insides. Suede’s insides. That made it more difficult, at least for Kevin, knowing she used to be somebody real. Almost all her stitches were open at this point. Her carcass looked flattened and more spread out, except for her head. She looked like a tiger-skin rug. Having just the head intact, circled by houseflies, the scene reminded Kevin of another book they had to read for a class. Something about school kids stranded on a desert island after an airplane crash, it was nothing you’d bother to read if you had any choice in the matter. Once they’d been tested on it, the only details Kevin could recall were black flies and a pair of busted eyeglasses. To date, he was the only inmate who knew about Suede and Troublemaker and their star-crossed travails.
Suede was in ruins. Her organs and whatnot, leathery and preserved. The heart and stomach, they were all jumbled together. At the end of this anatomy unit the Commander was going to quiz them. Whoever had been here before, they’d written crib notes on several organs. The liver was a breeze, but someone had used indelible felt-tipped pen to write “spleen” on one slippery chunk. In different handwriting, the word “pancreas” was written on another.
Some unseen hand had scribbled “Raymond Was Here” and a date two months earlier on the anterior wall of Suede’s abdominal cavity.
Enigmatically, there were four-digit numbers jotted in hard-to-reach nooks and crannies. The number 4-1-7-9 was on the rear of her bladder. The number 2-8-2-6 was penned behind her heart. Kevin didn’t know what they meant, but he noticed Troublemaker repeating each number under her breath.
—
One night, sometime in their sixth week, Kevin’s batteries gave out.
Troublemaker didn’t hesitate. She shook Brainerd awake and demanded the batteries from his wristwatch. Brainerd asked why, and Troublemaker whisper-yelled, “To get us sprung from here.”
They fought the quietest fistfight on human record. Silent and brutal, they slugged and choked one another, wrestling quietly and violently around the floor, their knuckles muffled by their flannel pajamas. Their noses bled without making a sound. Twice, Brainerd’s body went limp, and he seemed beaten. Each time, Troublemaker started to unbuckle the wristband of the watch. But both times Brainerd rallied, rose to his stocking feet, and fought her off. The two combatants hammered with elbows and knees. When Troublemaker landed a bloody head-butt to Brainerd, the latter didn’t get up.
The victor stripped the watch from his wrist and pried open the back. Her eyes glaring, daring anyone to stop her, she dumped out the batteries as if she were unloading bullets from a revolver. She reloaded the laser pointer and stoically took it back to Kevin at the window. Three nights later Troublemaker shook Pig the Pirate awake and demanded the batteries from his Game Boy. Seeing how Brainerd still had two black eyes, Pig the Pirate gave it up without a fuss.
Everybody told him he was crazy, but Kevin was steadfast. Without pausing in his dot-double-polka-dot-dashing he whisper-lectured them that doing something crazy was better than doing nothing at all. He whisper-preached that taking what seemed like a useless action was better than accepting that they were helpless.
Kevin knelt there on the edge of nothingness, his elbows propped on the sill. He clasped both hands together near his chin. Muttering words under his breath, he sent out his message. It was a coded distress signal to a total stranger who probably didn’t even exist. He was trying to make contact with some mysterious somebody whom nobody could see or hear.
After seven weeks of no sleep, Kevin was half dead, but he held his ground. Not a glimmer of a response had come back from the dark. He looked like a fool, but his determination didn’t waver. Just before dawn, Kevin slumped to the floor, too tired to stay at his post. Still clutching his laser pointer, his fingers swollen and raw, in crippled frustration he began to whisper-sob.
The sound woke Troublemaker who crept from her warm bed, dragging her blanket. She draped it over the fallen sentry and pried the laser pointer from his stiff hands.
“Tell me what to say,” Troublemaker whispered.
“Dot,” whispered Kevin. Like an incantation, he recited, “Dash-dash, triple-dot…” He whisper-dictated the message, again and again until Troublemaker knew it by heart.
The next night Kevin slept while Troublemaker took up the task. The night after, Jasper relieved Troublemaker. On the third night, Pig the Pirate relieved Jasper. On the fourth night, Tomas woke everybody up with his whisper-screaming…
Without a break in his flash-flashing-tap-double-click-dash-dashing, Tomas whispered, “Battle stations!” He whispered, “Calling all cars!” Whisper-yelling, “All hands on deck!”
—
Those who woke first rousted their fellows. Every bed emptied. Barefoot, they rushed the window.
Never taking his eyes off the blinking red light in the distance, Brainerd said something. Nobody heard. Nobody was listening, at least nobody took the bait. “It’s like the green light.” Brainerd waited, but nobody cared. By now he was just talking to himself, spouting bullshit from some homework assignment.
Somebody brought Kevin a pad and pencil, and he started to jot down each dot…dash…dippity-dash-ding-dot-dot-dash as it happened. He didn’t look at what h
e was writing, just kept his eyes peeled. His pencil hand twitched, leaving marks across the paper. His fingers moved as if they belong to somebody else.
Whale Jr. watched the pencil marks fill up the paper. “What are they saying?”
Kevin didn’t answer.
Tomas leaned his lips close to Pig the Pirate’s ear. “They’re saying they got AIDS,” he whispered.
Pig the Pirate marveled, “Imagine getting AIDS and not dying…” His voice sounded hushed by the horror of the idea. “For the rest of your life, you couldn’t mess around.”
Brainerd seconded the idea, saying, “I’d rather die than not screw around.”
Everybody mumbled in agreement.
Whale Jr. said, “Don’t be stupid.” He shook his head, appalled by the general level of ignorance. Everybody looked at him, waiting for his magic answer. Everybody except Kevin who kept watching the light blink.
“Having AIDS doesn’t mean you can’t fuck,” explained Whale Jr. The voice of common sense, he said, “Having AIDS means you can only fuck the girls you hate.”
Except for Troublemaker, the others nodded in somber agreement. Relieved. They were amazed how Whale Jr. could see the bright side. His glass would always be half full.
Not wanting to miss a flicker, Kevin didn’t blink. His eyes watered with the effort it took to stare. On its own, his hand scribbled gibberish. The point of his pencil whispered across the page.
—
That night, they drew straws. As a sign of good faith, Brainerd advocated that someone among their ranks should show his dick at the window. It had been decided that whoever got the short straw should have to drop his pajama bottoms. To curry favor with the Rock Hudsons.
Troublemaker shook her head in disbelief, clearly panicked about getting the short straw.
Kevin pocketed his straw and waited until everyone except he and Troublemaker had displayed long ones. Kevin’s was long, too, so to save Troublemaker from being found out or looking like a coward, he reached into his pocket and snapped his in half. He brought out the half straw.
Troublemaker looked like she’d weep with relief. She mouthed the words Thank you.
That was some consolation as Kevin stepped up, onto the windowsill. His thumbs hooked in the waistband of his pajama bottoms, he shoved them down. He swiveled his skinny hips from side to side. The frigid air didn’t make him any more impressive.
Nobody said anything. Somebody coughed.
They heard a sound from the hallway outside the ward. Footsteps were coming. Keys jangled.
In a heartbeat, they were all tucked back in their beds. All except for Kevin.
Tomas hissed, “Someone’s here!”
Kevin squirmed against the window. He tried to stoop and pull up his pajama bottoms, but he couldn’t. “I’m stuck,” he whisper-wailed. “I think my dick’s froze!”
The same way a person’s tongue will freeze to a cold metal flagpole, the fleshy parts of him were welded to the frosty glass and steel window frame. To struggle tore his skin and threatened to break the window into razor-sharp shards. As the footsteps drew closer, he wept and begged for help. He appealed to their sense of comradeship and loyalty.
Troublemaker goaded the others, shouting, “We don’t leave anyone behind!”
When the floor supervisor walked in they were all on their knees around Kevin. Nobody on staff would believe they were just blowing on the glass.
—
Kevin checked and double-checked his translation of the code. It didn’t make sense.
Kidney Bean speculated that there existed an underground railroad of homos hiding homos in secret Anne Frank–type attics or in fake haystacks, by day, and smuggling them like illegal aliens, coyote-style, north to Canada at night. It was a long shot, but not out of the question.
The dots and dashes translated to Catch the midnight balloon.
Brainerd complained, “Like in Jules Verne or The Wizard of Oz?”
Troublemaker nodded, knowingly, and it dawned on Kevin that she wasn’t without an exit strategy.
In the past a balloon would occasionally break free from the Rock Hudsons’ perpetual party outside the gates. Mylar balloons shaped like little rainbows. Pink triangle-shaped ones trailing a little string of pink ribbon. And sometimes the prevailing winds carried the escaped balloon into the side of their building. It might skid along the sixth-floor windows, bumping against the glass, but eventually the wind carried it away. Even if the Rock Hudsons let loose their entire batch of the balloons it wouldn’t have enough lift capacity to carry one person.
Everyone agreed it would be suicide. Kevin flashed to communicate their skepticism. In response the Rock Hudsons dot-double-dashed just one word: Tomorrow.
—
That day, Kevin stood close to Troublemaker while the others worked on Suede. Someone had written “Whale Jr. Is A Stud” inside the uterine cavity.
Out of the blue, Troublemaker spat the word “gerbils.” She said it so only Kevin could hear. “Could you perpetuate a more-gross stereotype?”
“Sorry,” Kevin whispered, skeptical. Embarrassed. He liked Troublemaker too much to start hating her now.
Troublemaker whispered back, “The key to a fertile imagination is filling your mind with bullshit.”
Flattered but wary, Kevin whisper-asked, “So you’re a lez? Why tell me?”
Troublemaker looked at the chopped-up mess that Suede had become. “Because you told me about your babies, I guess.” She looked at the Commander standing to one side. She looked at the sheet of plastic they covered the body with every afternoon when they were done. The plastic was jumbled on the floor. Lowering her voice, Troublemaker said, “Because in every movie I’ve ever seen the queer is either the chickenshit victim, or she’s the psycho super villain. I want you to know that the hero of this story is going to be a dyke.”
—
The next night Kevin and his fellow pervs kept watch. It was freezing outside, but they opened the window to see better. Something loomed out of the darkness: a single yellow balloon. “You’ve got to be kidding,” whispered Whale Jr. The balloon butted against the window frame and bounced away. It hovered just beyond reach.
“Hurry,” Troublemaker said, “before the wind gets it.” Before anyone could stop her, she stepped up onto the sill. Gripping the jamb with one hand she stepped through and stood on the outside ledge, leaning into the void. Hanging there, suspended over nothing, she grabbed at the air. She cried, “I can’t get it.” Her voice sounded shrill with frustration.
Kevin didn’t think. He just acted. He stepped up on the sill and gripped the back of Troublemaker’s pajama bottoms with one hand. With his other he grabbed the heaviest thing he could find—Whale Jr. As Troublemaker let go of the building and hung out over certain death Kevin held her. Whale Jr. held Kevin, and everyone else held Whale Jr.
With a wild grab, Troublemaker caught the balloon and her fellow perverts pulled her back to safety so fast that they all fell in a heap. Mashed among them, the balloon popped.
Pig the Pirate contemplated the busted skin of yellow latex and looked as if he might cry. Tomas scowled and asked, “Now what?”
In frustration Kevin grabbed the torn shred of yellow. “Maybe they put a message inside. Or heroin.” Brainerd tried to grab it away, but Jasper grabbed at it, also. There was nothing inside. They were all tangled in the balloon’s pink ribbon before they noticed it was so long. The ribbon still trailed out the window. It didn’t merely droop down the side of the building, it looped off into the darkness in the direction of the gates. It seemed to stretch on forever.
Somewhere in the blackness it was attached to something. Or someone. All of their eyes tried to follow it. Troublemaker was the first to speak. “Don’t break it,” she said.
Slowly, carefully, they pulled it, taking up the slack. The ribbon gradually went tight.
“Don’t let it sag,” warned Brainerd, “or it might touch the fence.” He meant the high-voltage fence.
None of them knew if a ribbon could conduct electricity, but no one wanted to find out.
To Kevin, pulling the ribbon felt like pulling the string that held Suede’s skin shut. They pulled, carefully reeling in what felt like an impossible amount of ribbon. It collected on the floor in a heap around them. They pulled until a knot appeared. Beyond the knot there was a thin nylon cord, like a clothesline. They pulled at the cord until another knot connected it to a thick nylon rope. The rope was so long and heavy that it took all of them pulling like a team, like those horses pulling beer on television. Troublemaker dragged a length of the rope into the room and said, “We need to tie this up high.” She told Kevin to signal when it was knotted and the Rock Hudsons would pull it taut from their end.
Kevin gaped out the window. To no one in particular he said, “We’re supposed to climb down this?”
Jasper shook his head, silently, at the prospect. It was too dangerous. Even if their hands didn’t give out the rope might sag and drop them to the attack dogs or the fence.
By then Troublemaker’s eyes had already found a thick sewer pipe near the ceiling, on the far side of the room. She was stacking one bed atop another, balancing a chair on them. Climbing the heap, she was hauling the rope up to the pipe. The rope spanned the room, stretching from the ceiling, slanting downward at a slight angle until it disappeared out the window. Looping it and lashing it in knots, she ordered, “Signal them.”
They were still wearing pajamas. Lost in the excitement, none felt the cold.
Troublemaker went to her locker and retrieved a belt. She climbed the stack of furniture and looped the leather around the rope. She buckled it to make a hoop. A harness. She put her head and arms through the harness and lifted her feet to test its strength. It held. With her feet suspended above the floor, she bounced a few times. The rope didn’t sag or stretch.
Before anyone could stop her, she stepped off the chair. Like a suicide, she hung there for an instant kicking her feet in midair, her head and one arm caught in the belt. The loop slid along the rope. The others stepped aside as it zipped the length of the room. At the window Troublemaker slipped free and nimbly dropped to the floor while the belt jetted away, following the rope into the free world.