Wearing only a towel, I was shown another video, this time focusing on the parasitic cycle. The only place to sit — no thanks — was on a freezing metal table. This video focused mainly on head lice and genital crabs, but as I stood there alone on the examination floor, my mind wandered to ticks and fleas, lamprey and ichneumon larvae, to all the flukes of the world, each leeching off the life of another, so desperate to exist they called the scrotum home, the colon cathedral. In that cold white room, I lifted my feet in turn off the icy floor, wondering what manner of beast could make it through life alone. I thought of Alexander Pope. A hunchback, a cripple, he once said,
Man, like the weedy vine, supported, lives.
The strength he gains is from th’embrace he gives.
The video screen went blue, and then the tape began to auto-repeat. I walked over to the rolling metal cart and turned it off. I thought, Do we cling any less tightly than the suckerfish, and without it, doesn’t the shark swim alone? I returned to where I had been standing, tried to find the spots where my feet had warmed the floor, but couldn’t.
“Hey,” I yelled to the ceiling, “it’s freezing in here.”
My voice still echoing off the ceramic-tile walls, I began to pound the metal door.
I pounded and pounded until, finally, I heard footsteps.
When the door opened, a little man stood there. He wore a tiny jumpsuit, khaki with a black stripe, and his wiry hair was filled with what looked like sawdust.
“Small world, Hanky,” he said. “Here’s your boots and bibs.”
These he thrust in my chest. It backed me up a step.
“Gerry,” I said, taking in his uniform. “What are you doing here?”
He grabbed his ID tag and aimed it at me. “It’s Officer Gerry,” he said.
“This is some kind of joke,” I told him. “Gerry, tell me this is a charade.”
“Officer Gerry,” he said. “That’s a week of toilets.”
Gerry was enjoying this, I could tell. I shifted strategies.
I said, “I’m terribly sorry about what happened to your miniature dog.”
“Laundry detail.”
“We’re old friends,” I reminded him. “You’re not mad about getting fired, are you? You know I’d never purposely try to get you fired.”
“Now you bought yourself twenty. Let’s have ’em.”
“Twenty what?”
“Push-ups, shitbird,” he said, pointing down. “Drop and give me twenty.”
My skin went goosepimply under the white powder.
I looked down to my waist. “I’m only wearing a towel,” I said. “And there was nothing like this in the orientation video. The video said there were no violent offenders here.” The video had depicted the campus — that’s what they called it, a “campus”—as integrated into the community, with a montage of townsfolk using the grounds as a park, walking their dogs, checking books out of the prison library, and watching one of those old 3D outer-space movies in the theater. There was even footage of the high-school swim team holding a meet in the prison pool.
Gerry glared at me. “Keep pushing me,” he said. “Go ahead and keep pushing.”
With as much dignity as possible, I let my towel go and crouched down to the cold floor. The first couple were easy, but then my elbows started to shake, and soon my chest was burning! I wanted to scream every time the tip of my manhood touched the icy floor.
Gerry mimicked my moans, trying to make me sound like a pussy. Still I kept pumping, and when I got to push-up number seven, Gerry counted out “six.”
That little “miscount” trick was one they had persecuted me with during my mandatory physical-education class at Mactaw High. Always there was some jocko like Gerry to count off your calisthenics, and always they would horse around with you in the middle of your squat thrusts and T-bones, when you didn’t have the wind to tell anyone off. Even if you had a good comeback ready, even if there was a put-down on the tip of your tongue, you were wheezing too hard to say it.
“What’s that?” Gerry said, putting his finger to his ear. “You want more?”
I put my head down, arms quivering, to squeeze out a last push-up. Instead, I collapsed. I’d done only thirteen, the last few girl-style, using my knees.
Completely pooped, I just lay there, face-down on the floor. That’s when Gerry removed a large tool from one of the steel cabinets. The device looked like a big set of bolt cutters. He stood over me with it.
“Working nights,” he said, “I never got to orient the new inmates. On night detail, I never got to use this device. But now this is my day job.”
Then Gerry sat down on me. At first, I thought he was going to choke me again, but then he positioned himself atop my bare buttocks and turned his attention to my legs. This was not in the video! Gerry grabbed a foot and tweaked it back. I felt cold metal on my calf, and then, with a flash of pain, I heard a pneumatic clamping sound.
Gerry stood. “Get dressed,” he said and kicked those new boots and baby-blue coveralls toward me. I looked down, and there, on my ankle, was a hard metal band lined with rubber, a wispy wire antenna hanging down.
* * *
Outside, Gerry led me across campus toward the extradition wing, where I was to be housed in a mostly empty unit. The air was cutting, and because the campus was on a hill, currents of mist swept through the buildings. Newly bald, I felt as if I had no scalp, no skull even, as if my brain were out there, wind whistling through the hemispheres.
I followed Gerry along a sidewalk inset with grates to fight the ice, and something about the metallic rasp of our footsteps made me think of ice climbing.
Gerry glared back at me. “Shoe’s on the other foot now, isn’t it, Hanky?”
I didn’t say anything, not after all those push-ups.
“You’re used to sitting up there on your throne, laughing at the little guy. It feels different to be the one who gets pushed around, who always gets crapped on. What, you want me to do some tricks for you, so you can be amused? You want to laugh at my backflips? Fat chance.”
Gerry turned around, so he was walking backward. Every time he gestured I winced, as if he was going to jump on me again.
“Your fat Corvette,” he said. “That cush job. What do you know about life? When have you ever lived? You’ve obviously never been arrested before. I bet you never even been fired from a job. Well, get ready to pound the pavement with a felony on your record, get ready for doors slammed in your face and the unemployment line, ’cause you’re the poodle now.”
“Actually,” I said, “I have tenure.”
Gerry stopped and looked at me funny, as if he had an idea what the term meant but wasn’t completely sure. I wasn’t about to explain it all. I only said, “I won’t be losing my job. Things will be inconvenient, sure. I suppose I’ll have to direct student dissertations during visiting hours, and my classes will have to make do with handouts for a while. But with full tenure, I could work from anywhere, from France if I wanted. And I’d have to do something pretty bad to get fired.”
“Worse than animal mutilation and grave-robbing?”
“Look here,” I said, then paused. “Well, yeah, it’d have to be worse than that.”
Gerry stared at me. Maybe the idea of tenure offended him, or maybe it thrilled him. I couldn’t tell from the way he shook his head, like now he’d heard it all. He used his teeth to tug off a glove, then pulled a watch from his pocket. He said, “We have to make a pit stop.”
Gerry veered off the path, and we pushed on through knee-deep powder toward a cluster of buildings beyond the dean’s residence, which was now called the Warden’s Residence. There weren’t any guard towers or Cyclone fences at Club Fed — the only security was a wire, buried along the perimeter of the school, which would trigger an alarm if an ankle monitor crossed it. Still, the place no longer felt like the Parkton College I’d visited over the years as a guest lecturer. Gone were the benches and fountains. Missing were the kiosks and bike racks. No coffeehouse. No food court. This was how a university must look in Russia.