Page 4

When I quit moving, time congealed around me like amber over a mosquito that had taken a small misstep. I could hear my breaths and feel the pulse in my temples. It was in that moment I understood the phrase serving time. I was that servant.

Just as I gave up hope, a tall and, some say, handsome Irishman walked into the room.

“Gladstone,” I uttered. It might have been a psalm.

“You look like shit, your highness.”

“And I smell like piss.”

“I wasn’t gonna mention that,” he said, taking the metal chair across the table from mine. “They called and told me that you put a convict in the hospital along with three guards to keep him company. You broke one dude’s nose and another guy’s jaw.”

The grin on my face was involuntary. I could see my pain reflected in Gladstone’s eyes.

“What’s wrong with you, Joe?”

“It’s like a crazy house in here, Glad. I been beat, cut, and showered in piss. And no one even gives a damn.”

Dispatch Sergeant Gladstone Palmer was lean and mean, six foot one (two inches on me), with a mouth that was always smiling or getting ready to do so. He stared at me and shook his head.

“It’s a shame, boyo,” he said. “They turned on you like a pack of dogs.”

“Who signed the papers on the girl?” I asked.

“It was an e-mail from the chief of Ds, but when I called his office they said that they never sent it.”

“I didn’t force that woman.”

“It would help if your dick wasn’t so big and black. Just looking at her look at it, you could imagine how scared she was.”

“What about the rest of the video?”

“The only camera was in the living room. That’s all it showed.”

I remembered then that she wanted to go up to the bed after the first movement of our tragic opera. It was a plan.

“They framed me, Glad.”

My friend winced and shook his head again.

“They framed me!”

“Look, Joe,” he said after a full thirty seconds of silence. “I’m not saying they didn’t. But we all know what you’re like with the ladies, and then there’s that other thing.”

“What thing?”

“If it’s a frame it’s airtight. From the video to the girl’s testimony, they’ve got you as a predator. You were pulling her by the hair, for chrissakes.”

“She asked me to,” I said, realizing what those words would sound like in front of a jury.

“No audio on the tape. It looks like she was begging you to stop.”

I wanted to say something but couldn’t find the right words.

“But it’s not that that’s the problem,” Gladstone said. “The problem is you got powerful enemies who can reach in here and snuff you out.”

“I need a cigarette,” I replied.

My only friend in the world lit a Marlboro, stood up from his chair, and placed it between my lips. I took in a deep draw, held it, and then blew the smoke from my nostrils.