Callisto (14 page)

“Odell?”

“Hey, Lorraine.”

“How's your day been?”

“I mowed all the lawns. Two-hundred forty bucks. Do I give that to you? You probably inherited Dean's lawnmowing business as well as the house . . . I mean most likely that'll happen if . . . something happens to him, which let's hope it doesn't . . .”

“You keep that for spending money, Odell, you earned it.”

“Okay.”

“Did you have dinner yet?”

“I only just got home.” There it is again – Home.

“Well, don't go down to that freezer, that's too spooky. I'm on my way over with burgers, okay? I got two for you because you're my big guy with an appetite to match, I bet.”

“Okay.”

Her big guy! This is a lovematch for sure happening here.

“Did anyone come out there asking questions yet?”

“Two TV crews but I didn't tell them anything, just No comment.”

“That's good. You get cleaned up and I'll see you in a little while.”

“Yeah.”

She hung up. My ears were burning. Her big guy. This was getting serious very fast, but they do say that's how it happens when it's real love, like a lightning bolt from the blue –
kaboom!
My life is shaping up at last and all because my car quit on me, so it's an ill wind that blows you good as the saying goes, and I was ready to be blown.

I hung out my laundry that I did this morning and then had a shower and put on my best jeans, the tight ones that make your wedding package stand out if you've got one. Lorraine's waiting for a package delivery? Here's your package, honey! I turned on Dean's stereo and danced around on my own awhile to Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park. These bands, they can't spell worth a damn but they make millions, why is that? Looking at myself in the mirror I'm thinking maybe I should've done what the coach and the old man wanted and gone for football. Then I reminded myself it isn't just about size in sport, you have got to have commitment which I had none of, so there goes the two mil per year and the high-seven-figure contract with Nike. But if I was a football star I wouldn't have met Lorraine, which is what they call Destiny. Or maybe it's Fate. Could be both.

When she come up the driveway I'm at the door to meet
her. She's carrying a big brown paper bag with grease soaking through the bottom and my stomach lurched.

“Hey there!” she waves, looking bright and breezy in spite of the uniform.

“Hey.”

We went directly through to the kitchen and started chowing down on burgers and fries. I never tasted food so good. Lorraine, she told me about her day at the prison to make a change from talking about Dean and Bree and all that sad mess. What they have at the prison is this closed-circuit TV everywhere pointing in all directions so the inmates can't kill each other without the evidence getting caught on disk, Preventive Detection she calls it. Only there's a few extra cameras that are so small and hidden away the inmates don't know about them, but the guards do and that gives them an advantage to snoop.

What happened today was, one of the toughest guys in the place got seen while he's off by himself in a storeroom where he thinks he's invisible, and he starts sashaying around like a woman, with one hand on his hip and the other one held out crooked sideways. What he's saying, or rather singing, is that old nursery rhyme – “I'm a little teapot short and stout, Here is my handle, Here is my spout” – over and over again, prancing around the room like some show-off little kid on stage at the school show. The guards all fell over from laughing at it on replay it's so funny, and the security specialist there that runs the cameras says he'll make everyone a copy. On the serious side, it means the guards can make this teapot guy cooperate when they want him to from now on just by threatening him with the recording.

“Some badass,” says Lorraine. “All we have to do is whisper Teapot and he'll bend over for us. You don't know what a weapon that is for us inside. Hey, I put in a word for you with Connors, he's the hire'n'fire guy. I bet he wants to see you soon because everyone there is sympathetic as hell about what happened. Did those news guys bug you pretty bad?”

“They were kind of pesky but I could handle it. Too bad Chief Webb told them.”

“That's his job when something like this happens. He's got to inform the public, doesn't he? That's democracy in action, everyone knowing what's going on and no hidden secrets like they used to have in Russia and places. Anyway they'll get their info from police headquarters from now on, official statements they give out.”

“Good, I don't want anyone coming around here.”

“What about me? I can come here can't I?”

“Well, sure, it's your place after all now that Dean's . . .”

“Go on, you can say it.”

“Okay, now that Dean's dead.”

“Dead?” She got a little frown between her eyebrows and I knew I'd gone and let my guard down which I had told myself not to do. “I thought you were going to say being hunted down, which they'll do now that Andy brung in the Homeland people. That'll be some circus. Why do you think he's dead?”

“Well, I . . . I shouldn't have thought it. I don't know why I did . . . excuse me for saying it.”

“He may be a grade-A fuckup but he's still my brother. I don't want him gunned down like a dog by the feds.”

“Heck no.”

“So don't use that word again, please. It's bad enough Bree's . . . passed on, I can't even think about losing Dean too.”

“Maybe they'll catch him and put him in your prison and you could see him every day and kind of take care of him. And I could too if I'm working there. We could take care of him together.”

She shook her head. “If he gets caught he knows what's in store for someone like him – solitary, that's what he'll get. Nobody in prison approves of terrorists, and that's the label been stuck on him now. He'd be better off being an ordinary woman-killer, but being a terrorist he'd be dead meat on the block. I can't see Dean being able to survive solitary, he'd go completely nuts after awhile . . . Why are we talking about this bad shit? I don't want to. No more shit talk, okay?”

“Okay.”

She munched on her burger some more then says, “You know what I like about you, Odell?

“No.”

It's true, I didn't know, but I bet it was being tall like I am and broad across the shoulders. All the women like that and Lorraine would be the same, I'm thinking.

“The way you don't argue with me. God, that pisses me off, the way men think they're always right and no woman can say something different without her getting a load of horseshit about it. But you don't do that, do you.”

“I guess not.”

“That's why we'll get along. The guys at work, they're not too bad, but as soon as you sleep with a guy it's like he's got the green light to start telling you what to do.”

I'm getting a mixed message here. Is she saying as soon as
she sleeps with me it'll turn bad between us, so she won't take that risk by sleeping with me? Bad news. Or is she saying she'll sleep with me because I'm not that kind before or even after sleeping with her? That would be good news. Or is she saying she slept with the guys at work and after she did they gave her the kind of shit she's talking about? Baddest news yet. I wanted to ask but couldn't, not out loud, you can't do that. I didn't like to think about her and the guys at work. The sooner I got to be one of the guys at work the better.

“Do you carry a gun at work?”

“No way, not while we're on the block, we might have it snatched and used against us. Only the guys on the outside carry guns, the guys in the towers and in the restricted areas. There's an armory for use in a breakout or riot, but basically you can go all day without seeing a gun. It isn't about guns, it's about management of time and individual units. What that means is, you have to keep the inmates from congregating too many in one place. Sometimes when they do that it's what they call critical mass and stuff starts happening maybe for no good reason and you've got a riot and you have to go to lock-down, which nobody wants. You've got to give the inmates just enough freedom to move around in the main areas together so they get to socialize a little bit and don't go stir-crazy, which is what happens if you keep 'em cooped up in their cells too much. That's a bad thing for morale, shutting somebody away like that, and it doesn't serve any purpose, that's what they teach nowadays in Penal Management. It's all about psychology and how to make every son of a bitch feel good about himself.”

“Okay.”

What I was thinking about was Lorraine and her gun with no uniform on, not even underwear, just the gunbelt, and it's having an effect on me like before.

“You're getting kind of squirmy there, Odell. Like the burgers?”

“They're good. So when they catch Dean he'll go stir-crazy on account of being put in solitary?”

“Dean has gone and made his bed and has to lie in it,” she said. “He's been heading for big trouble all his life. Even when he was a kid there's all kinds of shit he got up to that drove Bree nuts, setting fires and stealing and one time she caught him torturing a cat.”

“A cat?”

“Then there was the time a neighbor caught him trying to have sex with another boy age eight. That got Dean in a lot of trouble. If he had've been older at the time, fourteen, I think, then he would've had even more trouble from that particular incident, which was the first time he got caught but not the last bad sexual act he did if you take my meaning. You think he was coming on to you with that whispering in the ear thing?”

“Maybe. It made me jump right up off the sofa.”

“Well, it would if you aren't expecting it. Whispering in the ear, that's something nice if it's in bed with your loved one and not getting hit on by some gay terrorist.”

My hard-on started going down with all that talk about tortured cats and setting fires. Dean was some fucked-up dude all right, and he had some nerve getting me involved in his terrorist lifestyle plus drug smuggling with his pal Donnie Darko.

“What was in it?” The question just popped out of me.

“What was in what? You've just got the strangest way of conversing sometimes.”

“The package.”

She stopped eating and looked at me very steamed, then she says, “There never was any package, Odell, you and me agreed about that.”

“So there won't be no more packages coming this way?”

That made her stop and think before answering. “Well, I was going to talk to you about that as a matter of fact. See, if you're here all the time, kind of like a tenant, you'll need to be taking care of the place, you know, keeping it clean and tidy, also bringing in the mail and regular chores like that. Which will include every Tuesday night there's a delivery from a certain friend of Dean's that you have to receive and pass over some payment for it. That's all you need to do, receive the package and give over the payment. The schedule got upset this week by Dean going away like he did, but the package arrived anyway, which I'm thinking was Dean's way of saying he's going away and it'll be different from now on seeing as he didn't come in, just left it on his own doorstep. If it was Dean and not the other guy.”

“Donnie Darko.”

She gave me a long look. I had done it again about letting my guard down. I think it's because I am so distracted by this woman sat across the table and this is having a bad effect on my brain.

“Donnie who?”

“Darko.”

“That's a movie. Where'd you hear it?”

“I must've gone to the movies.”

“That wouldn't make you say the name right here and now. Did Dean tell you who's coming Tuesday night? You told me you didn't see him.”

“All I saw was the green Pontiac. Maybe Dean said the name, I don't remember.”

She was still looking at me suspicious. “I hope you're not holding things back from me, Odell. We can't be friends if you're going to do that to me. Friendship is based on Trust with a capital T.”

“I'm not holding back. I remember now. . . Dean said his friend Donnie D is coming and I better not go outside when he does because it's private business needs taking care of. I peeked through the window anyway, that's how come I know what kind of car . . . and when he said Donnie D I asked what kind of a name is that and he told me about that movie
Donnie Darko
that this guy must like, I guess.”

She started eating again, chewing on a fry. “I guess you can't help but be a little curious.”

“No I can't. What's in the package that comes every Tuesday?”

“See, that's what I'm worried about, will it come next Tuesday after all this other shit has come down thanks to Dean? Donnie, he'll hear about it and maybe get cold feet. That package has to come through regular as clockwork or there's people are gonna want to know why.”

“So what's in the package?”

That is three times now I asked her. I knew what's in it, all right. There's only one thing it can be.

“Relief,” she says. “You've heard of relief packages like
prisoners of war used to get from the Red Cross in World War Two or something? You know, packages from home with coffee and chocolate and stuff the Germans didn't have. Relief.”

“So it's coffee and chocolate?”

“Kind of. Stuff people want that gives them relief.”

“Like hemmeroyd cream?”

“That's not funny.”

“Well, why aren't you telling me what it is if I'm the one that's gonna receive it?”

“Can't you guess?”

“Drugs,” I said. It's a bad word that come out easy.

“Okay, there you go, you knew all along.”