Page 88 of Antihero

After he’d been processed, he’d been deloused, given prison blues in which to await arraignment, and handed a tidy square of belongings—sheet, pillow, slip-on shoes, toothbrush, bar of soap. His disposable thin-as-paper underwear chafed the insides of his thighs. He could not believe this was real. He could not believe any of this was actually happening to him.

A scrawny meth-head roommate and an overflowing toilet welcomed him to his jail cell. The power was out, the cell like a walk-in freezer, and the sheet on the stained mattress was threadbare and scratchy.

“What’re you in for?” the cellmate asked.

“I’m not,” Manny said. Even to his own ears, his voice was high-pitched, warbling with denial. “I’ll be out any second. My lawyer’s coming to get me. I’m not supposed to be here.”

The air was thick and stifling, reeked of sewage, and—and—

He was hyperventilating, choking on his own breath.

A correctional officer was banging on the bars. Manny hadn’t passed out, not exactly, but he felt distant from himself, segregated from the terror crawling through his veins.

“You asked for a call,” the CO said, unlocking the door.

Manny’s legs shook as he marched down the corridor. Arms stuck through bars, whistles, the repetitious grunts of someone jacking off.

The phone bank was crowded, the narrow room reeking of BO.

Manny was given a phone card with limited minutes. He called his brother again.

“Did you talk to a lawyer?”

“Yeah, man. Told you. He’s on it.”

“When can he get here?”

“It’s Sunday, man.”

“You don’t get it, Richie. I can’t be here. Do you hear me? I cannot be here. This is a place for animals. I’m not gonna make it. I’m not cut out for this. I can’t be in here. Not a second longer. I have money, so much fucking money, you have to make this happen for me. You have to—”

“Manny, I told you. I did what you asked. I got an expensive lawyer. I handled it for you.”

Behind Manny, a big Mexican dude with a goatee circled his finger: Hurry it up. His slicked-back hair and robust mustache glistened with sweat. A sumo-wide beer gut stretched his inmate shirt low, sagging down past his crotch. His pants, bizarrely, had neat creases from an iron.

Manny came back to the call, gripping the old-fashioned black receiver, whisper-shouting into the phone. “This isn’t fucking handled, Richie.”

“I gotta go. Maddie has softball practice.”

“I can’t be in here, man. I cannot be in here.”

A long pause. In the background, Manny could hear voices, a door shutting, his niece laughing. Sounds of life, of ordinary life in an ordinary house. His heart ached for it, for anything like it. To be out of here.

“I told you, Manny. Your job”—Richie said the word the way he felt about it—“it’s not a good job. I told you it was bad fucking news, Manny. That it would come to this.”

“What are you saying, Richie? You saying I deserve this? You saying I got what was coming?”

Scratching noises, then a muffled shout, “Be there in a second, sweet girl.” Richie came back to the line. “Know what, Manny? Maybe you do.”

He cut the line.

Manny stood there until the dial tone bleated in his ear. Outside, he had so much power. But in here?

Bile welled up in him, scouring his throat, resentment and rage and marrow-deep terror. He didn’t know what to do, where to vent everything boiling inside him.

He had a number.

They did use burners, the White On Posse, but that scrawny douche ringleader—what’d he call himself? Taz?—sometimes texted from his real phone. Manny got on him about that, couldn’t take the risk, and every time the dumb little shit pinged him, the digits scorched his memory.