Second Interlude Gwen, Under Arrest
Second Interlude
Gwen, Under Arrest
Over breakfast, word went around that one of the born-agains, Deirdre Flannagan, skinny-ass bitch who slept with her Bible
and cried while she prayed, had killed herself overnight in her cell. She had left a note saying it was a smaller sin to take
her own life than to go on living the way she had been living.
“That’s right, Daphne,” crowed Shanelle Emerson from across the cafeteria table. “She actually preferred death to one more
night of gobbling your nasty snatch.”
“I bet it tastes hunnert times better than these aigs,” opined Jess Bloch, a woman with a swastika tattooed next to her left
eye. She used her fork to push some gray reconstituted eggs around a puddle of dishwater on her tray.
“You wanna give it a try, you’ll have to take a number and wait your turn,” Daphne Nighswander said, and winked, but her insides
were gripped cold and tight, and when she returned to her cell, she was not surprised to find two guards and Senior Officer
Humbersome waiting for her.
Humbersome, who was built wide, with tree-trunk thighs, and who had dull silver eyes under drooping eyelids, already had her baton out. “Convict 51-696, stand against the wall. We’re conducting a search of your cell. Would you like to alert us to any potential contraband?”
“You find anything, it was fuckin’ planted,” Daphne said. One of the guards gestured with his own nightstick for her to stand
against the wall, and he murmured, “Hands on your head,” without looking at her.
“Convict 51-696,” Humbersome drawled in a bored, declamatory tone, “will I find anything in your cell that could accidentally
injure me?”
“I am the one being injured here. I am the one who don’t have any civil rights. I am the one people conspire against and plant
evidence against,” Daphne said. “Been this way my whole life.”
One guard stayed between Daphne and her cell. Another went in and Humbersome followed. They went straight to the toilet. They
already knew where to look. The male guard, a tall, lanky guy with a lot of Adam’s apple—the prisoners called him Jughead
because he looked like the hungry, skinny kid in the comic—snapped on a glove and reached down into the steel bowl. He found
the wire inside the trap and pulled up a foot of line and then another foot of line and then the plastic bag containing twelve
ounces of black tar heroin. He held it up, keeping his arm away from his body, water dripping off it.
“What’s this, Convict 51-696?” Humbersome drawled.
“What’s it look like?” Daphne said. “My last shit. It’s all yours. Consider it a souvenir.”
“It’ll have to be a souvenir to remember you by,” Humbersome said. “If this is what it looks like, you’ll be enjoying your
last days here in Black Cricket, Nighswander.”
“If I could get that Baptist bitch who tolt,” Daphne said, “I’d kill her all over again.”
2.
Gwen saw trouble coming long before it finally caught up to them at the roller rink in Gogan. What she didn’t expect was that
she herself would take the first punch . . . or that for one glorious minute, Arthur would hold off an army on his own.
By eight in the evening, Donna was drunk and Donna was loud. The one usually led to the other.
Gwen thought there was a chance Donna had been drunk since the mimosas at brunch in the handsome, clubby lounge of the Captain
Lord Mansion. Allie probably spent the day drunk too, although it was harder to tell with Allison. She was the rare specimen
who became quieter as she drank, settling into a cocoon of happiness, a warm, friendly stupor. It was a shame, Gwen thought,
that Allie was almost certainly an alcoholic of the most severe type, because she wasn’t a nasty drunk in the slightest. Instead the booze let her be as loving and carefree as she wanted to be. The only one she ever hurt
was herself.
Gwen had a mimosa with them but switched to coffee afterward. Even then, at ten thirty in the morning, with light streaming
through the French windows and dazzling off the deep blue of the ocean, she thought she should pace herself. One of them had
to keep a clear head and look after the rest, and that role had always come naturally to Gwen.
They split up after lunch, the boys for a stag day, the girls out for their hen do. Colin had planned the festivities for
the boys, so Gwen knew they were off for a whiskey tasting, followed by a haunted hayride.
“Boy, I hope it’s not too scary,” said Gregg. “True fact: I threw up after watching that horror movie where Jeff Goldblum’s
you-know-what fell off.”
“They don’t know what,” Donna said. “You’re going to have to say it, love.”
“His, you know, boy parts.”
“His cock. Jeff Goldblum’s cock fell off in The Fly. Say it. It’ll be good for you. Say ‘Jeff Goldblum’s big cock fell off in The Fly.’ Cock. It feels good to say it. When you say it, your mouth makes the perfect shape for sucking one. Cock.” As she said it, she
was twisting a silver chain around her neck, a key bobbing on the end.
“Cock,” he said, and she took his carefully groomed beard and wagged his head gently back and forth, and said, “That’s my
boy.”
Gwen wasn’t sure about the politics of five straight women going to a gay bar, but Donna hadn’t put it up to a vote. It was
the weekend before Halloween, and by the time they arrived at the gay bar they were all in costume. They had agreed upon a
theme ahead of time: Dungeons & Dragons, the cartoon. Donna was dressed as Bobby the Barbarian, in a horned Viking helmet, a pair of crisscrossed leather straps
over her tits, and a thick furry pair of panties. She fit right in at the gay bar, where most of the men were in black caps
and black chaps, motorcycle boots and jingling spurs. Allie was dressed just right for the gay bar herself: she had come as
Uni the Unicorn, and wore a tail, a white leotard, and a horn on her head. She even had hooves where her hands belonged, a
clever pair of gloves. She positively twinkled.
Donna wasn’t the only one in a fur bikini. Gwen, as Diana the Acrobat, was dressed the same, although she had thrown an ankle-length
cloak over her shoulders out of modesty.
Gregg Pinet’s sisters were along too, but they hadn’t got the memo about the evening theme and had worn nun costumes. The
sisters were named Lulu and Gigi.
“I been meaning to ask,” Donna said. “What the hell is up with the names in your family? Does your mother have a stammer?
Lu-lu-luh. G-g-gi-gi. Greg-guh-guh.”
Gwen didn’t think Lulu was exactly in love with Donna. She had the hint of a smile on her plain, unremarkable face, but her
eyes remained dismissive, bordering on hostile.
“I think it’s weird you’re a Donna and your brother is a Donovan,” said Lulu. “Does your mother not have an imagination?”
Gregg’s sisters hadn’t known they were going to a leather bar either, not until they were in the car.
Gwen thought they’d balk at the door, but Lulu led them in, airy and undisturbed.
Gigi twitched when a young man walked by her in a thong, the leather mask of a dog over his face.
Gigi was breathless and nervous and skinny, a woman prone to tittering instead of laughing.
“There’s a Halloween costume I’ve never seen before!” she exclaimed. She tended not to say things but exclaim them. “I’m not
sure if he’s going as a Doberman pinscher or a disturbing sexual hang-up! But I don’t judge!”
The music pounded “One Night in Bangkok” and “I’m Too Sexy.” Colored lights stammered and flashed furiously. Gwen was glad
to see men so intent about the business of being happy, demanding the right to be joyful. She knew some of them. The old man
at the end of the bar, in leathers, had raised his pint glass to her when she came in. He visited his lover every Sunday at
the hospice where she volunteered on Sundays. He had it too—she knew the signs well, could recognize Kaposi’s at a glance
now—but it was not seriously advanced, and the AZT was beating it back in some men.
All the same, this wasn’t really her scene, her music. Arthur had sent her a vinyl record by Lord Pretender in a battered
cardboard sleeve. He had not bothered to include a letter. He didn’t always. With its big dreamy horn sections and steel drums,
listening to it was like taking a vacation in a black-and-white photograph of Tobago, like anchoring in some gentle harbor
of the past. Gwen liked to be alone when she listened to music, where she could miss Arthur in peace. Lord Pretender’s calypso
was an outstretched hand that could not and never would reach far enough to take hers. There was too much ocean and too much
sadness between them.
“A therapist would probably tell Gregg it’s a mistake to get married so quickly,” said Lulu. Lulu had to yell to be heard
over Depeche Mode. “But I think it’s great. You’ve been the ground under his feet ever since Greenland.” That was how they
referred to BA 238, it was always Greenland.
“If someone’s going to be under someone’s foot,” Donna yelled back, “it’s him. Right under my heel, where he likes it.”
“If someone’s going to be underfoot,” Gwen said, “it’s definitely me.” But no one heard her.
A flash of irritation passed across Lulu’s plain features. “What I’m saying is, you keep him grounded. He needs that steadiness.
Greenland messed him up, you know? I was worried, at first, that he wasn’t in the right place to make a lifetime commitment
to someone. I even told him, I said, Gregg, maybe you ought to put this off for a while. Do you really think someone with
obvious PTSD ought to be plunging into marriage? But he said, well, you know—”
“I hope he told you to mind your own fucking business,” Donna told her. “Maybe worry about your own love life instead of trying
to undermine his.”
“Is she always so easy to talk to?” Lulu asked, looking around with a kind of desperate annoyance.
“Nnnneigh,” said Allie, pawing at the edge of the table. She couldn’t drink her own martini, not with her hooves on, and needed Donna