Help, I Am Being Held Prisoner

25

THE FOLLOWING FRIDAY I met Marian James, and I almost met Fred Stoon.

It happened at a party Max invited me to. He had a whole social life going on the outside, much more than any of the others, most of whom contented themselves in the outer world with their little felonies, an occasional movie, a meal in a good restaurant, every once in a while a session with one of the few local whores; they were like Navy men taking shore leave. Max, on the other hand, had integrated himself into the local community as much as possible for someone who could never invite anybody over to his place. He had a whole circle of friends and acquaintances, and was even involved in a regular Thursday night bowling league.

He was also thinking of taking an apartment somewhere in town, though the ramifications of that could get a little tricky. He talked with me about it as we walked to the party Friday night, strolling through a light fall of snow, the first of the year. After a while he asked me if I’d like to come into the deal with him. “Two of us would be better,” he said. “We could share the rent and the phone bill and everything, and there’d be somebody actually there more often. People get suspicious when there’s nobody around a place. You interested?”

“It sounds pretty good,” I said.

“Think it over,” he said.

I promised I would, but I didn’t know how much brain I was going to have left over from my main worries, which were (A) the robbery coming up two weeks from now, and (B) my fellow conspirators’ having tipped to the presence of a practical joker among them. I didn’t see anything I could do about (A) for the moment but worry, and maybe hope the world would come to an end before December 30th, but about (B) there were things I could do, at least in a negative sense. To begin with, I was performing absolutely no practical jokes. None, not in the prison and not in town. If I was caught just once, that would be the end of me. The only reason Max and Phil and the others thought there were two practical jokers was because it hadn’t occurred to them yet there might be just one practical joker who had the ability to be both inside and outside the prison. One of us eight, in fact. Guess which one.

Well, I had been hoping prison would cure me, and apparently it had. For the last three days I hadn’t even been tempted. No more. Never again.

Including the next scheduled robbery date. God knows I still didn’t want to be involved in that, but I couldn’t very well set off stink bombs in the bank every last time the gang- decided to knock it over. One coincidence they might accept, but two never. And if I couldn’t stop the robbery with one of my tricks, I couldn’t stop it at all. So it would happen.

I was almost beginning to look forward to it, just to get the damn thing done and out of the way.

I wished I didn’t have these things hanging over my head. In so many other ways life was really rather pleasant. I was in a position that was rare among prisoners in American penitentiaries-perhaps unique. There was much to enjoy in life, with the security of prison on one side and the freedom of town on the other.

Take this night, for instance. The snow drifted lazily, fat wet flakes falling straight down through the windless air, disappearing when they hit the ground. The air was crisp and cold and clear, the snow was gentle and delicate, the night was beautiful, and we were on our way to a party. A pre-Christmas party. Why couldn’t I just relax and enjoy it?

I determined to try.

The house, when we got to it, was large and white, on a corner lot, its windows flooded with light upstairs and down. Christmas music and the sound of many conversations surrounded the place like a halo. Max and I went up on the porch together, and he simply pushed the door open and walked in. I followed, and we entered a fairly large square foyer. Directly ahead was a flight of uncarpeted stairs leading up for half a flight and then turning left. On the right was a wooden bench mostly hidden beneath coats. A wide arch on the left led to a living room full of people, with a Christmas tree in a far corner. Max and I were taking off our coats, adding them to the pile on the bench, when a woman came over to us from the living room, smiling, her hand out to Max.

It was our hostess, a slender good-looking woman in her early thirties. Her dark brown hair was tied back, tightly controlled, and her clothing de-emphasized her figure. Max introduced her as Janet Kelleher, and me as Harry Kent; I smiled at her, and at the sound of my new name, and she said, “Glad to meet you, Harry.” The hand she offered was slender and pale and full of delicate bones. Max had already told me something about her, on the walk over; that she was divorced, had young twin daughters, was teaching at a local high school, and was going to bed with Max from time to time. I later learned that this kind of slightly complex thirtyish woman was his normal style, that he filled in with the Dotty Fleisches only because the Janet Kellehers were a relative rarity in this part of the world. I didn’t know Max that well then, so I was surprised at the apparent bloodlessness of this girl friend, as opposed to the raw galumphing meatiness of Dotty Fleisch.

The next hour was a strange time for me. Max and my hostess left me to my own devices, so I mostly just wandered through the crowded rooms. I was pleased to be at a happy party full of smiling faces, but on the other hand I didn’t know any of these people and very much felt my aloneness. I spent most of my time concentrating on the house instead.

It was a good house, large, with a lot of wood showing. It was slightly underfurnished, with obvious blank spots in all the rooms and with here and there a dusty rectangle on the wall to show where a painting had been. I assumed the house was left over from the marriage, and that when the husband moved out he’d taken some of the furnishings with him.

Being on a corner lot, there was much opportunity for glass. An enclosed sun porch full of plants ran along the side of the house, and a big-windowed breakfast room was off the kitchen at the back. Also off the kitchen was a large open back porch; because of the crowd in the house, and because it wasn’t all that cold outside, the kitchen door to the back porch was left open, and there were always several people out there, getting some air.

Upstairs were four bedrooms, three of them open. The door of the fourth was locked, and since I hadn’t seen Max or Janet at all since I’d gotten here I guessed they were saying hello to one another in there. That such a pale girl should be so passionate as to abandon her own party for an hour in bed amazed me. And cheered me, too. Now that I’m Harry Kent, I thought, paraphrasing Bobby Fischer, I’ll be spending more time with girls.

One of the other bedrooms was full of children; the two little girls in identical pale blue dresses stood out at once from the crowd. Toys were being played with in here, a full mini-party was going on. The parents of these children were all downstairs, mixed with a very conglomerate crowd; Janet Kelleher seemed to have invited everybody she knew, including several of her high school students. The youngest guest upstairs seemed to be about three, and the oldest downstairs were a white-haired cheery couple who had to be in their sixties.

Food and drink were all downstairs, and all serve yourself. The food was spread on a sideboard in the dining room, and the liquor bottles were lined up on the kitchen table. I made occasional visits to both places, and was in the dining room, standing next to the cake, when a girl I’d noticed before came over and said, “You don’t seem to be having a great time.”

I looked at her. She was medium height, a trifle overweight, with a round-cheeked elfin face and long curling ash-blonde hair. She was wearing no bra, a fact that the pockets of her white blouse failed to conceal. I said, “I don’t?”

“You’re just standing around,” she said, and nodded at the glass in my hand. “With that drink.”

“Everybody’s just standing around,” I said. “With drinks.” I was a bit irritated, and also embarrassed that somebody had noticed I was alone.

“If you come talk with me,” she said, still good-humored despite my manner, “I won’t eat that cake.”

I frowned at the cake, of which I’d already had two slices. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Carbohydrates,” she said, and puffed out her cheeks.

“You’re big-boned,” I said, gallantly.

She laughed. “Come take me away,” she said, “before my bones get any bigger.”

So that’s how I met Marian James. We walked into the sun porch, sat down amid the philodendra, and she told me who she was while I told her who I wasn’t. Her name was Marian James, she was twenty-nine, childless, separated from her husband, and also a teacher at Amalgamated High. “History,” she said, and when I asked her what specialty in history she said, “American. That’s all the poor little bastards get in high school. We’re surrounded by people who think mathematics, gunpowder, public streetlighting and drama are all Wasp inventions.” Her husband she described as a “freak” who found domestic life too confining and who was now making a small living as a photographer and marijuana smuggler in Mexico. “Turn off, tune out, drop dead, that’s my advice to Sonny,” she said. “And my advice to you is, never trust a grown man called Sonny.”

My own self-description could have been equally as colorful, but I very carefully avoided the temptation. I felt uncomfortable telling Max’s lie about being a civilian employee out at Camp Quattatunk, though now that I’d been there I could at least refer to the place with some familiarity. And I assured her that Max and I were thinking of taking an apartment together in town. “For the convenience,” I said.

“You had some excitement out at the camp the other night,” she said.

Honey, I was some excitement out at the camp the other night, I thought, but what I said was, “Yeah, I read about it in the papers. I didn’t know anything about it at the time.”

“They blew up a fence or something?”

“One of the gates,” I said. “Not the main gate, one out by the storage compound.”

“The paper said they were Weathermen disguised as Army officers.” The skin crinkling around her eyes, she frowned a bit and shook her head. “Doesn’t sound right to me,” she said.

“I wouldn’t know,” I said. And I was thinking that lies were supposed to be more colorful than the truth, not less. I was managing to lie myself into contention as bore of the year.

We went on like that. The Army hadn’t released details of what had been stolen, and she asked me about it, and I said I didn’t know either. She asked me if I personally knew the sentry who’d been attacked, and I said no. Oh, I was in top form, I had her on the edge of her chair. Ready to fall off asleep.

God, I needed a drink. “Refill your glass?” I said.

“I’ll go with you.”

So we went to the kitchen, where I was pouring bourbon when she said to somebody facing the other way, “Oh, Fred. I’d like you to meet a friend of mine, Harry Kent, from out at the Army base. Harry, this is Fred Stoon, he works at the-”

Stoon! I slapped the bottle down, staring in horror. The man was turning around, but I didn’t need to see his face to know who it was. And I didn’t need Marian to tell me where he worked. It was Stoon the prison guard! It was the one who escorted me to the warden’s office every time, the one who shifted his weight skeptically from foot to foot.

“Ulp,” I said. I slapped my hand over my mouth, turned, bowled my way through the crowd and out the kitchen door.

“-peniten- Harry?”

Maintain the fiction. There were four people on the back porch; I shoved through them, hand still clenched over my mouth, and flung myself like an old mattress across the rail. I hung there, draped, head down, and sensed the four people all drifting inexorably but somewhat urgently back into the house.

I was alone. I stared at the grass below me, noticing distractedly that the snow was starting to stick. It was coming down more heavily, too.

I’m doomed. It’s all over. I'm dead, I’m doomed.

A tread on the porch. My shoulders hunched, awaiting the ax.

“Harry?” It was Marian’s voice.

Slowly I raised myself, slowly I turned, step by step. Marian was alone, looking at me in some concern, saying, “You okay, Harry?”

The doorway behind her was empty, though the kitchen was full. I said, “I guess I'm okay now. I'm sorry, all of a sudden I really thought I was going to throw up.”

“Boy, you sure took off,” she said, and Stoon appeared in the kitchen doorway, looking out.

So the first time I kissed Marian James was to hide my face.