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A
pparently not.
The very next day, Things do indeed get worse.
Once again I am sitting in my cell, busily engaged in productive and industrious activity—a nap, to be honest. I have begun to feel the need for naps, and my luncheon has encouraged the feeling. Today’s delightful viands included a sandwich of Probable Chicken, Jell-O, and a red liquid whose taste might have been intended to evoke some sort of association with an unspecified fruit. The experience was exhausting, and I had to stretch out on my bed almost immediately to recover.
After far too brief a time, I hear once more the heavy metallic sounds of my door opening. I sit up; Lazlo is there. But this time his hands are full of chains. “On your feet,” he says.
“My arraignment?” I ask hopefully.
He shakes his head. “Detective to see you,” he says. “Turn around.”
I follow his brisk instructions and in a few moments I am securely bound. Once more I allow the small white bird that is hope to flutter from its perch and begin to wing away across the exceeding dark of Dexter’s Inner Sky. “Detective” could mean many things—but one of them is Deborah, and I cannot stop myself from thinking she has come at last.
Lazlo leads me out of the cell—but this time not to the thick window where Bernie shattered my eardrums. We walk on past the window, all the way over to the door that leads out, off the cell block. Lazlo must use his radio and his ID card, and then wave at the female guard who controls the doors. She sits in the center of the cell block in a glass-walled booth. There is a row of thick windows around the cells and then a deep, two-story well of space before the second row of windows that surrounds her booth. The booth is like an indoor airport’s control tower, standing in the middle in isolation, completely inaccessible from here, unless one has a bazooka and a good ladder, and possessing such things is generally discouraged here.
The woman in the booth looks up at Lazlo’s wave, checks her computer screen and monitors, and a moment later the door clicks open. We step through into a room the size of a large closet and the door closes behind us. Two steps forward and we face another door. Lazlo nods at the camera above the door, and a moment later it opens and we are in the hall. Five more steps to the elevator—and crossing such vast space is dizzying after the tight confinement of my cell. But somehow I manage, and in only a moment or two we are in the elevator. The door closes and I am back within four snug walls, relaxing in the comfort of a space more like the one I am used to now, something the size of my cell. I take a deep breath, enjoying the security.
The door slides open. Lazlo leads me out—to my surprise, we are on the ground floor. Ahead of me I can see what must be the lobby. Beyond a brace of armed guards there is a crowd of people milling around. They are unchained and wearing normal clothing, clearly waiting for something—to get in? I feel privileged—I didn’t know I lived in such desirable housing. We even have a waiting list.
But I don’t get a chance to tell them all about the wonderful accommodations and gourmet meals. Lazlo takes me away from the lobby and down a corridor, past several guards and a few orange-suited inmates busily sweeping and mopping. They move hurriedly out of our way, as though afraid I might infect them with Felony Fever.
It seems like quite a voyage to Dexter the Dedicated Homebody. Such a long way to travel, and all to see a detective—a detective who must, I am sure, be my sister. My heart flutters with expectation; I can’t help it. I have been waiting far too long for Deborah to arrive and strike the vile fetters from my lily-white limbs. And here she is at last; it can only have taken so long because she has banished the ludicrous charges against me and arranged everything. I will be not merely bailed out, but set free at last.
And so I fight to keep my hopes from rising up and drowning me, but I do not succeed very well. I am very nearly singing when we come at last to our destination, and it is not a place that speaks in any way of freedom. It is a small room deep within the bowels of the building, with windows on three sides. A table and chairs are visible inside; it is clearly an interrogation room, just the place for a detective to meet with a suspect, and not at all the kind of place where an Avenging Fury might stand to strike off my fetters.
Visible through the windows is a more-or-less human form that has no resemblance at all to a Fury, although it does look somewhat grumpy. It has even less resemblance to Deborah, Freedom, and especially Hope. It is, in fact, the very embodiment of the exact opposite of all these things.
In short, it is Detective Anderson. He looks up and sees me through the glass, and he smiles. It is not a smile that encourages in me any of the finer feelings. It is instead a smile that says to me, quite clearly, it is time for all Hope to die.
Hope obliges.
THREE
Lazlo holds my arm as he opens the door, perhaps afraid that the sight of Anderson will turn my knees to jelly and render me incapable of maintaining an upright posture. He pauses in the doorway, and of necessity, so do I.
“Wait outside,” Anderson says, still smiling at me.
Lazlo doesn’t move. “You alone?” he asks.
“You see anybody else?” Anderson sneers.
“Supposed to be two of you,” Lazlo says, stubbornly refusing to move.
“I’m not afraid of this fuckhead,” Anderson says.
“It’s regulations,” Lazlo says. “Two of you.”
“Listen, chump,” Anderson says. “My regulations say I’m a cop and you’re a fucking corrections clown. Wait outside.”
Lazlo shakes his head, looks at me. “Seventeen months and I retire,” he says. He looks at Anderson and shakes his head again, then turns to go, closing the door behind him.
“Well, fuckhead,” Detective Anderson says in cheerful greeting when we are finally alone. “How d’you like it here?”
“It’s very nice,” I tell him. “You should try it sometime.”
His smile morphs into a sneer, an expression that is much more natural for him. “I don’t think so,” he says.
