Robinson is a fiftysomething African American man who’s long since come to pleasant terms with his expansive middle-aged belly. Having a belly, he’s realized, is the natural product of millions of years of evolution, a fat-storing reflex developed in the days when famine for humans was a constant concern. Robinson has come to accept himself as a creature programmed by nature to do what it takes to survive lean times. This is a good life philosophy in general, he suspects.
Robinson doesn’t yet know that Hubert Humphrey Gable is dead, or that the slender population of Caesura, about to officially increase by four, just recently decreased by one. Robinson lives in a bungalow on the farthest, quietest edge of town, by choice, and his sleep patterns verge notoriously close to hibernation. He was long divorced in his previous life, currently unmarried, and his prospects for future coupling in the Blinds are honestly not great. Not because Robinson’s not handsome. He’s actually aged into a soft and pliant but trustworthy face that’s surprisingly appealing and, if nothing else, he’s kept his hair, which he wears very short, so his pronounced widow’s peak looks like a bat taking wing on his forehead. Overall, he looks kind of debonair in a rumpled way, like someone who’s gallant but tired. Still, his prospects for future marriage remain unpromising, in part because he’s long since settled into his particular idiosyncratic patterns, and in part because getting romantically involved with a resident of the Blinds is an obviously bad idea, not to mention officially prohibited for staff. And, as stipulated in his original two-year contract that he’s now re-upped twice, he’s not allowed to leave the facility grounds, except under exceptional circumstances, which does not include blind dates. Which leaves Deputy Robinson with very few options. Deputy Dawes is his only potential onsite mate, but Robinson secretly suspects that Dawes is a closeted lesbian.
As for Cooper: Cooper’s always had a more laissez-faire attitude toward both official prohibitions and obviously bad ideas, so his record when it comes to illicit relations with the residents of the Blinds is not spotless. Admittedly, even as he’s aged into his mid-forties, huffing toward fifty like an aging slugger limping around third in a labored home-run trot, he benefits, in the Blinds, from an inherent lack of options among the citizenry. If you’re looking for an ill-considered affair, it’s not hard to find one, when there’s only a few dozen of you, stuck together and cut off from the outside world. So, no, he has not been monastically chaste during his eight-year tenure as sheriff but, he figures, he’s been good enough, and “good enough” is a standard he failed to achieve with such frequency in his life before the Blinds that it feels to him now like something akin to a moral triumph. Since his arrival here, he even once came perilously close to falling in love, but thankfully he managed to expertly fuck that up in the nick of time.
There are, in this room right now, he notes, four brand-new arrivals, two of whom are women and both of whom are attractive. The first one looks to be in her mid-forties, and she’s arresting in a way that suggests she comes from money in whatever life she’s just left behind. However, her carefully manicured nails and evident history of restorative skin peels suggest she might also find her new life among cinder block bungalows under the Texas sun to be an unwelcome adjustment. Given her obvious level of anxiety, as she mindlessly clacks said artfully manicured nails on her desktop, this new reality is likely dawning on her as well. The other woman is younger, possibly half-Asian, late twenties, with a tomboyish aspect, like someone who likes nothing more than taking a good early-morning hike. She has a pleasant, open, intelligent face, which suggests to Cooper that she’d stomach his particular brand of bullshit for about eight minutes. In any case, she’s likely young enough to be his daughter, a realization that causes Cooper, lurking as he is at the back of the room, a physical pang of unease. Cooper wonders if maybe she’s what they call “an innocent”—someone sent to the program because they witnessed some hideous crime, or imperiled their life by giving crucial testimony in some important trial, but who isn’t, themselves, a former criminal. You’re not supposed to speculate about things like that in the Blinds, but it’s hard not to do, understandably. Of course, in Cooper’s experience, everyone living here thinks they must be an innocent; they’re certain of it. Which means that probably none of them are.
The other two new arrivals are men, and definitely neither of them looks like an innocent. One is thickly muscular and looks, honestly, Cooper thinks, like a goombah: you know, pinkie rings and pomade and chest hair and attitude. Hey, Cooper didn’t invent this stereotype, he just encounters it very often. The other male is white and coiled and wiry and sits ramrod straight with a shaved head in a collarless white linen shirt. He has pale skin and the intense and bright-eyed and slightly shriveled look of someone who’s been recently fasting. He has tattoos of little faces covering his neck, inked up from below the collar of his shirt to his jawline, like some worsening rash.
At the front of the classroom, Robinson launches into his speech. “I know you have questions. Let me answer the most common ones.”
He turns and writes COMMON QUESTIONS on the whiteboard.
“We have three rules, and these three rules must always be respected.” Robinson writes THREE RULES on the whiteboard. Under that, he writes:
1. NO VISITORS
2. NO CONTACT
3. NO RETURN
He turns back to the four newcomers. “No visitors—that should be self-explanatory. Whoever you knew, or think you knew, or half-remember maybe knowing in your previous life, you will never see those people again. Fortunately, most of those people probably want to murder you.” No laugh from the crowd. That’s okay, Robinson thinks, that joke’s always hit or miss. He points to rule number two. “No contact. This means no letters, no emails, no phone calls, no telegrams, no carrier pigeons, no smoke-signals, no texts, no snaps, no pings, no whatever-the-latest-invention-is. No two-way communication with the outside world whatsoever. Period.” He points to the last rule. “No return. This may be the most important for you to understand today. Caesura is not a prison. You are not being held here against your will. This is a program that you’ve entered freely, and you are free to leave at any time. But please understand: These gates only open one way. So, if you leave, you can never come back. Is that understood?”
The four new arrivals all mumble assent, in a way that suggests obedience more than understanding, which, for now, is good enough for Robinson. He continues.