The Blue Hour

Thirty-Six

Colesceau parked outside the old Santa Ana Courthouse. You could park two hours for free, and he liked the imposing old building with its heavy stone architecture because it reminded him of torture and executions. It was early Wednesday afternoon and the smoggy heat hung over the county like the mist along the Olt. Thick enough to hide your thoughts in, Colesceau thought, but not quite thick enough to hide your body.

Too bad about that, he thought, seeing them from a block away. They were gathered outside the entrance to the Parole Board building with their cameras and cables and lights and vans. The pushy, preening reporters. The shooters. The techs. The Grant Majors of the universe. And more folkish demonstrators with their signs and placards and candles. Lots of them. Some of them were from his neighborhood, some were new converts. He looked for Trudy Powers but couldn’t find her.

You can’t even serve out your sentence without a TV show about it, he thought. America really is crazy.

He sidled down a busy side street and found a pay phone behind the old courthouse, called the Sheriffs and asked for Merci Rayborn. She answered. He used his American accent to introduce himself as John Marshall over at Federal Airborne in Santa Ana with a package for her they couldn’t deliver. Similar to the accent he gave to the Bianchi promotions fellow, but a bit of a Texas twang to it.

“Parcel got damp back east, address smudged up in transit,” he explained. “Your phone numbers were still on the sticker.”

“Who the hell’s it from?”

“Let’s see here... Bianchi International in—”

“—What’s your number there?”

He heard the rudeness in her voice, the reflexive caution, the automatic defense.

He sighed and read her the number off the phone. “You’re going to need the parcel number.”

He gave it to her and she hung up. Thirty seconds later she called.

“Federal Airborne, Marshall.”

“Merci Rayborn again.”

“What do you want us to do with this—”

She interrupted and gave him her home address, hung up.

Colesceau smiled, slid the pen back into his pocket, firmed his clip-on necktie around his neck and tried to put some resolve into his step. In the glass of a building front he saw himself: dark Kmart slacks, short-sleeve white shirt, plump and unremarkable body. He looked hunched and harried. He carried a brown paper grocery bag in his right hand and a vinyl briefcase in his left. The bag had gifts for Holtz and Carla Fontana, and the briefcase just a few pencils and paper clips. He brought it because it made him feel as if he had something meaningful in reserve.

They spotted him crossing the street and they bristled with readiness. He was barely onto the sidewalk when they were upon him, the reporters with their mikes brandished and their questions popping, the shooters gunning him in silence, the protesters yapping at him like toy breed dogs you could impale beautifully on a hat pin.

He stopped and looked at them and tried to compose himself.

How does it feel to be taking your last injection?

“I am pleased. It is an unhappy experience.”

How long until the effects of this last injection wear off?

“I’m told it will be months. It will take my body many months to recover its former health.” And when it does, he thought, I’d like to pay a call to every last one of you...

Where are you going to live next?

“Somewhere I can be forgotten.”

Will you date women?

“I have no desire for the company of human beings.”

What about employment — what kind of work will you be looking for?

“I would be good as a lighthouse watchman, but there aren’t any lighthouses left.”

What will you do when your sexual desire returns? Will you turn violent toward older women again?

“I have not had sexual or violent thoughts for many years. I never intended violence, even as a confused young man. I will never harm another person as long as I live. This is both a fact and a promise to all of you.”

AI Holtz barged outside, waving his arms and shouting as he ushered Colesceau through the throng and into the building. “Sonsofbitches have no respect at all,” he said as soon as they got through the door. He clapped a heavy hand onto Colesceau’s shoulders. “How you holding up?”

“With difficulty, Al.”

“I’m so goddamned sorry it came down this way.”

“I’m sure you tried your best to avoid it.”

“Just between you and me, I wasn’t the only vote.”

“I expected no mercy from the women.”

“It’s old news now, Moros. But there’s good news for you, too. You’re ten minutes away from being a free man.”

Psychologist Carla Fontana and Sgt. Paul Arnett, a deputy from the Sheriff’s SONAR program, were waiting in Holtz’s little office. Carla extended her tanned and freckled arm, gave him her 200-watt smile. She smelled like skin cream. Arnett shook his hand and looked him steady in the eye.

On the desk were a small round cake with frosting and a six-pack of root beer. Red napkins and white forks. The cake said GOOD LUCK MOROS in a script so inept Colesceau knew it could only belong to Holtz himself.

Holtz arranged the seats, still jabbering about the media outside, then started cutting the cake with a plastic knife. Colesceau wondered for the hundredth time how the PA saw anything out of his grimy glasses, which slid down his nose as he peered at the cake. Carla poured the root beer and the sergeant sat back against one wall with his arms folded over his chest.

Colesceau looked around the office — neat and small, that of an inconsequential bureaucrat — and was happy to think he was seeing it for the last time. It was actually kind of pleasant to sit here and realize he was finished. Except for the imminent visit from the nurse — a large flabby matron who smelled of sterile dressings and worked the needle into his vein each week with endless deliberation and satisfaction — it was exciting to him to be sitting here, being processed out of the system. He half expected an erection to begin, but none did.

“I have gifts for you, and for you, Carla,” he said. “Sergeant Arnett, I had no idea you would be attending.”

“Carry on.”

He brought out a yellow turkey egg for Holtz and a pink goose egg for Carla. The yellow egg had small checkerboard flags on toothpicks protruding from each side near the top. It wore a snug muslin vest trimmed in gold piping and festooned with gold sequins. Thus a rococo high-performance racing egg or something. He shuddered at what his mother must have been thinking when she did it. She made it for him right after he got the job at Pratt. It was astonishing in its ugliness, and Colesceau had happily chosen it for AI Holtz. Fontana’s was hung with tiny strips of dangling frill, giving it the look of a rotund, headless flapper from the ’20s. Tiny silver slippers were affixed to its bottom. Pure Carla.

He presented them one at a time. Holtz’s eyes actually became misty behind his filthy glasses. Carla Fontana smiled at him with a smile so pitying and genuine that Colesceau wished he could smash her teeth out with a brick and make her swallow them.

He shook Holtz’s hand and then Carla’s. Sergeant Arnett nodded to him.

“Well,” said Holtz. “All I can say is you’ve a good man to me, Moros. You’ve abided by the rules and maintained a sense of good humor and cooperation about it all. Especially this last part. Good luck. And, I arranged with Corrections to send you out of here today without that last injection. It’s up to the Board physicians and they took my advice. After three years of it you don’t need any more. And if you do, one more’s not going to do you any good at all. So, to you, my friend. Cheers, salud and godspeed.”

He lifted his root beer cup for a toast. Colesceau raised his own and drank.

“Drink up and have some cake,” said Holtz. “When you’re done we’ll sign the papers and sneak you out the back.”