“Why did they move him there?” I asked Alex.
“They said it was for his own safety.”
“Is that true? Is he in danger?”
“Everyone in prison is in danger. He’s in more danger than the average prisoner.”
“Why, because he can’t fight the others?”
“No, because of what he’s charged with.”
“What do you mean?”
“It seems there’s a hierarchy of offenses you can be charged with, at least as far as the prisoners themselves are concerned.”
“Kidnapping isn’t the worst thing you can do.”
“He’s been charged with kidnapping a child. Anything to do with children puts you at the bottom of the pecking order in the prison community. It makes you the lowest of the low, whether you can defend yourself or not. Simon is what inside they call a ‘rock spider.’ Don’t ask me why they chose that insect.”
“But he hasn’t even been tried.”
“I know, but inside he’s already convicted. So they moved him to the maximum-security unit, ostensibly for his own protection.”
I drove out to the prison at Laverton. I was worried about how he would look and how he would receive me, but I needed him to forgive me. He had to know I was still living every minute for him. I had never been to a prison before. It had a busy parking lot like a shopping center. Families came and went. Small children clung to the legs of slightly bigger children. I had to put my bag and keys in a locker, write my name in a register, place my hand palm up under a blue light that in some way “read” it, or measured the bone density, and then submit myself to two searches before being told, some forty minutes later, that Simon wouldn’t see me.
“You his girlfriend?”
“Yes.”
“He’s popular with the ladies, isn’t he?”
I didn’t know what this meant. The lawyer Alex had gotten for him was a woman, Gina somebody. She would have to see him a lot. Maybe that was it. I went another three times before he got the idea that I was not going to give up, at least not until he saw me once. The fourth time I went there, he agreed to see me.
Once inside, a man in a guard’s uniform led me past rows of identical barracks, each of them surrounded by barbed-wire fences and all of them within a compound ringed by a huge stone fence with barbed wire on top of everything that didn’t move. All you could hear was the gravel grinding under your feet as you walked. The guard, who seemed a little put out to have to walk all that way for only one person, said nothing to me after his initial request for me to follow him. There were light towers in every corner and guard towers just beneath them. The sun beat down, and everything was still. Inside I could imagine an ocean of misery seeping through every vent. I thought about the nights there.
I was escorted into the maximum-security wing that housed some of the most violent and feared prisoners in the state. Simon had been put there, Alex had told me, for his own protection. I signed my name in yet another register inside the wing’s visit center and was told to take a seat and wait. The visit center was a big room about the size of a school gymnasium. At the far end were small rooms with plastic tables and chairs. All these rooms were full, presumably because they provided an element of privacy despite the windows in the doors. The rest of the room was full of prisoners in bizarre powder blue plastic gowns, fastened at the back like hospital gowns. They were sitting on plastic chairs trying to hold, to touch, the people who had come to visit them. They hushed their small children or bounced them on their knees as parents do. The older children crowded around vending machines to buy ice cream or drinks. It gave the adults time to kiss and grip each other in ways forbidden by the prison and by the stares of other people, especially their children. But there were moments, seconds, when the grown-ups hid in each other in order to be alone together and the better to record the memory for the rest of the time, the long time, the real time, when they were unremittingly alone separately. I watched a couple trying to steal the feel of each other when they thought no one was looking. They pressed as hard as they could, perhaps knowing it had both to end in seconds and to last longer than humans can store the touch of another, no matter how much they need it.
I had tears in my eyes before I had even seen him. And then I saw him. He looked terrible. The circles under his eyes were wider and darker than ever before. When he came over to me, I gripped him as hard as I could and the tears came out unashamedly from as deep within me as I can plumb. He hugged me tightly for a moment and then sat down. It is the feeling of the pressure from within his arms that I ache for now.
“Simon, sweetheart.” I took his hand and squeezed it. “I love you. I didn’t know this was going to happen. Please believe me.”
He left his hand in mine but didn’t squeeze back. I could see the beginning of tears in his eyes as I waited for him to speak.
“Angel,” he said, “what did you think would happen when you called the police?” He was more sad than angry.
“I don’t know, not this. You’re the most important thing in the world to me. You know that. You still are.”
“But you called the police.”
“Sweetheart, I was worried about you. I was afraid for you. You weren’t well. You haven’t been well. I got such a shock to see their little boy with you at your place. I didn’t know what to do. I still don’t understand why you took him. I wanted . . . I only ever wanted to take care of you, to help you. Don’t refuse to see me if I come to visit you. Please don’t. You haven’t been well. I wanted to help you get your life back on track.”
A tear shone on the side of his face. We were in hell, and he withdrew his hand from mine and took my breath away as he whispered: “Where the fuck do you get off giving anyone advice about anything? Your idea of having your life on track is being able to afford a Magna Executive in which to drive to an appointment with a man your father’s age.”
“Simon, don’t talk like that. You’ve loved me. You—”
“I’ve never told you that.”
“Simon, it’s okay. You can say anything you like. I can imagine what you’re going through—”
“You have no idea what I’m going through.”
“Tell me, tell me anything. Tell me how I can make it right. What can I do?”
“You’ve done everything you can do.”
“Do you want me to tell the police you were having an affair with Anna? I’ll tell them that. I’ll tell them anything that will help you. Alex told me—”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You don’t really think I took money from Joe Geraghty, do you?”
“But you did.”
“For sex. He was a client. We never ever talked about you. You don’t think I took his money to call the police? Think about it, Simon. I couldn’t have done that. I didn’t know you were going to take him.”
“You could’ve chanced it when you saw Sam.”
“What does that mean? Do you mean that I called the police when I found Sam with you in the hope of getting Joe to pay me later? Is that what you mean?”
He didn’t say anything.
“Is that what they told you, Simon? Look at me, sweetheart. Is that what the police told you? They’re trying to turn us against each other. You can’t believe them. You know the real us. Don’t let them—”
“They said you were jealous.”
“But I would never do anything—”
“They said . . .”
“What? Simon, what did they say?”
“They said I should have known that you . . . would do anything for money.”
“You didn’t believe them. Sweetheart, you can’t believe them. I’m nothing without you. I was nothing before you—”
“You have talked to them, haven’t you?”
“I had to.”
“Did they arrest you too?”
“No, but . . .”
He put his head in his hands.
“Simon, I’m not capable of that.
I couldn’t do that to anybody. You know that. You know me. We’ve been in love for two years. I took care of you. Don’t shake your head. You can tell them you love her. I don’t care. I know the truth. How can I help you? Tell me what to say, what to do to make it right. I’m so alone without you.”
“Alone? Angel, take it from me, you are alone. Most people are alone. To not be alone somebody has to connect with you and you have to connect with them. I mean really connect. I mean that somebody has to make the emotional and intellectual effort to come with you as you ride the relentless waves of fear and hope, of pain and pleasure, of doubt and certainty, that inhabit the sea of human experience.
“And you have to return the compliment. You have to project yourself into someone else’s pain and, by absorbing, lessen it. Listen to me, Angel. I was determined to not go out entirely alone. There is nothing I can do to make someone ride those waves with me. I know that. But projecting myself into someone else’s pain, that’s up to me. That’s why I took him. That’s why I took Sam. I could feel his impending pain and it was that pain that I tried to preempt by what I did. You don’t understand, do you? Nobody has even ridden these waves with you. And you have never made time in your busy schedule of lying on your back, eating and sleeping, watching television, to work at feeling someone else’s pain. Angel, you’re right. You are alone.”
“I don’t know what you’re saying.”
“Remember I said it. That’s all.”
“You’re talking empathy?”
“I’m trying to.”
“Simon, what you’re saying isn’t true. I’ve survived on your empathy. And I’ve certainly empathized with you. I’m the only one who’s ever really listened to you. Nobody remembers more of what you say than I do.”
“Angel, I loved you. But I was in love with her.”
Which of us was more desperate? When later I repeated all that I remembered of this to Alex, he looked at me with a smile and said, “He can’t decide if he’s Bettelheim or Hamlet.”
I didn’t know what that meant. But it soon became clear to me that, as desperate as I was, Simon was more desperate. It was worse even than him believing that he was in love with Anna and that that made stealing her son defensible. He was in danger.
“Look over there, without letting them see you. To your right,” Simon whispered.
To the right I saw a hollow-faced man, a prisoner, with his arm about four inches from his chest in the permanent shape of the letter s. He rocked back and forth in a chair as an older man beside him wiped the traces of ice cream from his mouth with a white handkerchief. When the handkerchief had been removed, you could see a dark triangular-shaped gap bordered by the man’s lips, trembling slightly, as he gasped for air.
“He wasn’t always like that. He didn’t come in like that. He wasn’t that way three weeks ago.”
“What happened?”
“Officially, he tripped and hit his head in the shower. But everyone knows what really happened. It’s a farce. It’s the only sphere of activity where people cooperate round here.”
“What happened to him?”
“One of the other prisoners assaulted him, stomped on his head,” Simon whispered.
“You’re not serious?”
“Of course I’m serious. This is the maximum-security wing. There are men here doing sixteen years, twenty-five years. There’s a pedophile doing eleven years on fifty-seven counts of sexual abuse of children over a period of thirty years. There are murderers, rapists, armed robbers, and drug dealers. Nothing should surprise you in here. They’re not going anywhere. Where do they take their anger, their psychoses?”
“But you haven’t even been tried for anything yet. Why are you here?”
“I was beaten up in the mainstream section.”
“What happened?”
“It wasn’t as bad as it could have been.”
“Why?”
“Anyone charged with anything to do with children is fair game in the prison system. You’re a legitimate target. The guards are even more likely to turn a blind eye to an attack on a rock spider. As far as these guys are concerned,” he said, gesturing around him, “I’m a pedophile and not just with Sam. I’m a recidivist. I’m responsible for everything that has happened to all the children who have gone missing in the last ten years.”
“Why?”
“Because the papers, the tabloids, print my name and photo next to photos of every child that’s gone missing in the last ten years. Because the public has a right to know.”
“Are you safer here than in the remand section?”
“That’s the theory. It gets Corrections off the hook. But look at him. Does it look like he was safe?”
I looked at the man and suddenly felt that I might have to pee in a hurry. I shifted on my chair.
“Do they know who did it?”
“They know. Everybody knows.”
“Why him?”
“He was weak, had no alliances, and he owed the other guy money. He was a prime target for extortion. But I’m a better one. I’m a rock spider. I’m the next one.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’ve got till the end of the month to get a certain prisoner thirty thousand dollars or I’ll be like that guy over there.”
“And if you pay him?”
“I can’t pay him.”
“But if you could?”
“If I can he’s supposed to leave me alone.”
“Can you trust him?”
“I trust him to push my skull in if I don’t get the money to him.”
“But you could pay him and then he could ask for more.”
“He could, but I can’t pay him anyway. So I don’t have to worry about the strength of his word.”
“Why don’t you tell the authorities?”
“In order to tell anybody anything I first have to get through to that man there and men like him who search me daily—mouth, underpants, arms—who watch me and mock me, who enjoy my fear for a living. Even if I was taken seriously by the Correctional Services Commissioner they couldn’t really protect me even if they wanted to. There’s always somebody stronger or able to bribe, threaten, or blackmail someone. Sooner or later”—he exhaled—“it would come.”
“Jesus, sweetheart! Simon. I’ve hardly got anything in the bank. I haven’t been saving lately. What can I do?”
He looked at me.
“You called the police.”
17.
The pleasure lives there when the sense has died;
Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.
Give me that day back. I am the whore who called the police to come and take her lover away. There is no sense in it. The sense had died.
I arranged to see Alex as soon as I could. Of course he already knew about the extortion threat. He had discussed it with Simon’s lawyer. It seemed the law was unable to prevent a crime, even in prison. That’s if the lawyer knew what she was talking about. Alex thought she did. Simon’s assessment of the situation seemed to be borne out by what she had said.
“Then we have to find the money,” I said. “You don’t have it, do you, Alex?”
“Angel, I’m living out of my office at the moment.”
“What about Simon’s father? I suppose that’s our last hope.”
“It’s both the last and the best hope.”
“But even if he hasn’t got the money himself, he could easily borrow it. He was a bank manager, for God’s sake.”
“William hasn’t even visited him. I’ve got him to put some money into Simon’s defense but I’m probably the worst person to approach him for money. He thinks he’s already wasted two years of it on my fees.”
“Why wasted?”
“Angel, come on. When he started with me Simon drank a little too much and flirted with depression. Now he’s in a maximum-security prison charged with kidnapping his ex-girlfriend’s son. I think that’s what William would call a bad return on investment. He thin
ks I spent too much time writing letters to the papers about managed care and not enough time thinking about his son.”
“Alex, he looks terrible. Why won’t his father visit him? What kind of father would desert his son under circumstances like these? And where’s his mother? Did he bring himself up?”
“Largely.”
“What the fuck is wrong with them?”
“They’re regular, everyday people. They’re ashamed. They’ve had the press around there. The mother, May, doesn’t sleep. His brother’s children have been teased at school.”
“Oh that’s tragic, Alex.”
“Angel, I’m just the messenger. Simon feels frightened, threatened, and very much alone. He’s right to feel this way. We have all let him down.”
“And he thinks I betrayed him. He thinks I caused it all.”
I was barely sleeping and barely eating. I went out to see him again but he refused to see me. I started snapping at clients, which I soon learned was worse than peeing on them. I tried to pee after every booking, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. Even pressing on my abdomen was no guarantee that I would be safe twenty minutes later. Kelly tried to stay out of my way but the smallest things about her, things I might never have noticed before or never commented on, were driving me crazy. Her way of trying to help me was to stay out of the way. She left a T-shirt on the living-room floor one day and when it was still there two days after I had bawled her out for leaving her stuff around the place, I ripped it in a fury. A couple of my regulars started seeing other girls. I was falling apart.
It was in this frame of mind that I found myself at work one night, sitting on the toilet pressing into my pelvis with my fingers, trying, as the doctor described it, to prophylax against a bout of urge incontinence, when one of the girls came and knocked on the door of my stall.
“Angelique. Angelique, are you in there?”
There was a regular waiting upstairs for me. It was Joe Geraghty.
“Surprise!” he said.
Had our relationship been the same as it had been two months earlier, I would have been tempted to tell him a little, if not about my real circumstances, then at least about what those circumstances were doing to me. He might even have offered me more than the usual fee and tip. We would have acted like old friends who enjoyed each other, because with his help and the help of those like him, I had learned to have sex feigning pleasure there when the sense had died. And after he had finished, after his endorphin release, I would have been tempted to cry. I would have been tempted to tell him that I was not well and would not get well. I might have asked him what he knew about his wife’s activities because my boyfriend got off on the two of them. I wouldn’t have added that every time I thought I had a handle on his obsession I just made things worse. I might have told him that I had lost the only person who ever really listened to me, the only person whose talk was worth listening to, the only person who ever thought I could still amount to anything. I had lost touch with my parents, not that we had ever really been in touch. My brothers were strangers to me. They had not known me since I used to dance. I was going to be a dancer. I used to breed birds. I had plans to breed them again one day: parrots, canaries, finches, doves, jarvis sparrows. I must have read forty books on them. I knew quite a lot. I was going to breed companion birds, sell them in twos. Now I needed a lot of money in a hurry, by the end of the month, more money than Joe Geraghty could fit inside me before I could call Security.