Falconer Read Free

called to make an appointment they told me you weren’t going anywhere.”
    “That’s true.”
    “I haven’t been here sooner because I’ve been in Jamaica with Gussie.”
    “That sounds great. How’s Gussie?”
    “Fat. She’s gotten terribly fat.”
    “Are you getting a divorce?”
    “Not now. I don’t feel like talking with any more lawyers at this point.”
    “Divorce is your prerogative.”
    “I know.” She looked at the Chicano couple. The man had stroked his way up to the hair in the girl’s armpits. Both their eyes were shut.
    “What,” she asked, “do you find to talk about with these people?”
    “I don’t see much of them,” he said, “excepting at chow and we can’t talk then. You see, I’m in cellblock F. It’s sort of a forgotten place. Like Piranesi. Last Tuesday they forgot to spring us for supper.”
    “What is your cell like?”
    “Twelve by seven,” he said. “The only thing that belongs to me is the Miró print, the Descartes and a color photograph of you and Peter. It’s an old one. I took it when we had a house on the Vineyard. How is Peter?”
    “Fine.”
    “Will he ever come to see me?”
    “I don’t know, I really don’t know. He doesn’t ask for you. The social worker thinks that, for the general welfare, it’s best at the moment that he not see his father in jail for murder.”
    “Could you bring me a photograph?”
    “I could if I had one.”
    “Couldn’t you take one?”
    “You know I’m no good with a camera.”
    “Anyway, thank you for sending me the new watch, dear.”
    “You’re welcome.”
    Someone on cellblock B struck a five-string banjo and began to sing: “I got those cellblock blues/I’m feeling blue all the time/I got those cellblock blues/Fenced in by walls I can’t climb….” He was good. The voice and the banjo were loud, clear and true, and brought into that border country the fact that it was a late summer afternoon all over that part of the world. Out the window he could see some underwear and fatigues hung out to dry. They moved in the breeze as if this movement—like the movements of ants, bees and geese—had some polar ordination. For a moment he felt himself to be a man of the world, a world to which his responsiveness was marvelous and absurd. She opened her bag and looked for something. “The army must have been a good preparation for this experience,” she said.
    “Sort of,” he said.
    “I never understood why you so liked the army.”
    He heard, from the open space in front of the mainentrance, a guard shouting: “You’re going to be good boys, aren’t you? You’re going to be good boys. You’re going to be good, good, good boys.” He heard the dragging ring of metal and guessed they’d come from Auburn.
    “Oh, dammit,” she said. Peevishness darkened her face. “Oh, Goddammit,” she said with pure indignation.
    “What’s wrong?” he asked.
    “I can’t find my Kleenex,” she said. She was foraging in the bag.
    “I’m sorry,” he said.
    “Everything seems to fight me today,” she said, “absolutely everything.” She dumped the contents of her bag onto the counter.
    “Lady, lady,” said the turnkey, who sat above them on an elevated chair like a lifeguard. “Lady, you ain’t allowed to have nothing on the counter but soft drinks and butt cans.”
    “I,” she said, “am a taxpayer. I help to support this place. It costs me more to keep my husband in here than it costs me to send my son to a good school.”
    “Lady, lady, please,” he said. “Get that stuff off the counter or I’ll have to kick you out.”
    She found the small box of paper and pushed the contents of her handbag back to where they belonged. Then he covered her hand with his, deeply thrilled at this recollection of his past. She pulled her hand away, but why? Had she let him touch her for a minute, the warmth, the respite, would have lasted for weeks. “Well,” she said, regaining her composure, her beauty, he