I don’t know, Nat said. Hopefully I can get something together. I got two weeks. Maybe my boss will give me an advance on my paycheck or something.
His pulse continued to throb, a wild, galloping rhythm, and what flooded into him now was the abrupt and rushing desire to pull into a vacant parking spot and enter one of the big casinos that slid everywhere across the Datsun’s windows, a desire that was surprising only because it made him realize, in the same moment, that he had somehow stopped circling that desire for several days, that it had simply evaporated from him as the date for Rick’s release approached and finally arrived. But for nearly every day of Rick’s absence from his life—most of those thirteen months—he had found himself focusing all day upon the moment his shift at the dealership would end and he could enter one of those vast carpeted rooms with their jangling slot machine bells, the pervasive odor of sweat and ammonia overlaying everything like a freshly cleaned locker room, time slipping out from under him so that the only thing that mattered was the possibility of the next card or the next pull on the slot machine’s handle and the weird feeling that he was somehow in control flowing through him from everywhere at once. He knew that it was absurd to want to gamble right after Mike’s visit but he could not shake that desire, optimism and despair riding upon him in equal measure like some dark skeleton the bones of which overlapped his own.
LANDRUM’S WAS not much bigger than the living room of the apartment they now shared, a prefabricated rectangle like a curved art deco boxcar, with room for eight stools along its counter. The cook and server was an older woman with orange hair whose face was perpetually caked with makeup, a ring of bright red smearing her sour wrinkled lips. She peered at them owlishly as they entered. It was rare to find any open stools but there were two open at the counter now and they slid onto them and ordered and the orange-haired woman turned away from them to resume cooking. Around them a few bleary-eyed locals sat eating and smoking and drinking sodas. Nat and Rick had sometimes come to the tiny restaurant at two or three in the morning to find it packed, a small crowd of nighthawks lingering outside with their winking cigarettes, high on cocaine and pot and beer, their eyes alternately blazing and sunken in, depending on which side of the evening they were riding. Once, when Rick was in prison, Nat had driven by during a break from work and had seen Susan standing out front, her arm around some man Nat did not recognize, the man’s hand on her ass. He had thought about that for a long time, had even thought of asking her about it but never had.
Rick hardly stopped talking as they waited for the food. He asked Nat what movies he had seen and then told him a story from prison, the story of an inmate named Tiny who had seen a movie where Paul Newman had eaten fifty hard-boiled eggs. It had become the talk of the prison—although Rick could not recall the name of the actual film—and eventually someone had convinced the warden to allow a hard-boiled-egg-eating competition in the cafeteria. Tiny had boasted that he could beat Newman’s record, if it even was a record, but only reached three dozen eggs before entering into a bout of vomiting so severe that he had to be admitted to the prison hospital.
He didn’t come out of that for like a week, Rick said, clapping his hands and rocking back on his stool with laughter.
Man, that’s awful, Nat said. They had received their omelets midway through the story and Nat sat chewing a forkful, smiling.
His belly looked like an egg, Rick said, holding his arms out in front of him to demonstrate. I thought he was gonna blow up. Like that guy in that Monty Python movie.
Nat was laughing hard now and it was into this laughter than the man’s voice came: a sharp, gruff sound.
You just get out?
They did not at first register that the voice was directed at them, or rather at Rick, but after a moment Nat looked down the counter to where a thin figure sat with a hamburger clenched in one fist, a man distinguished by the tattoos that swung in a tangle of black lines and blurred colors around his wiry arms.
Their laughter died out.
You mean me? Rick said.
Yep.
Yeah, I got out yesterday.
Congratulations.
Thanks, Rick said. He was still smiling.
What level?
Medium.
Lucky you.
Yeah I guess so, Rick said.
You guess so? the man said. He had not looked in their direction. Word of advice. Don’t tell prison stories while people are trying to eat.
Rick chuckled a moment and then sat staring at him. Why’s that? he said at last.
Medium was a walk in the fucking park, I guess?
Come on, buddy. I didn’t mean nothin’. Just telling my friend a story.
A cage is a cage, he said. Nothing to laugh about.
It’s just a story.
Just a story? What do you weigh? One fifty?
Something like that.
Something like that. Yeah. You know what that says to me? Says you were someone’s bitch in there. Medium or not. That’s what it says. Bitch in a cage.
Hey, look … , Nat said, but Rick was already off his stool.
You calling me a bitch? Is that what I heard?
The orange-haired woman was saying something from behind the counter now, calling to Rick first and then to the thin man, who still did not look up from his plate. Nat did not move from his seat, did not even set down his fork, instead seemed frozen there, watching them, the man’s burger descending so slowly that it seemed to float at the nether end of an arm that appeared to be constructed entirely of coiled brown rope and smeared tattoos. On his forearm, Nat could read the word Woods. Just don’t be making it seem like it’s fun and games, he said.
Don’t call me a fucking bitch, Rick said.
It’s a cage, the man said.
And again: Don’t call me a bitch.
A beat of silence. The man still did not turn, although the hamburger rested upon his plate now.