He forced a wink at her over her mother’s shoulder. He murmured into Bonnie’s ear. “Come on, come on. I’m just going to the land of dreams, baby. I’m gonna set the table for you, that’s all. We’re not sad about this,” he lied to her softly, “we’re not afraid, right? Cause we know where I’m going. I’m gonna be holding you guys a place at the table. Right?”
He kept this up, a steady murmur. He knew his wife. He knew that, when she could, she would try to feel what she was supposed to feel instead of what she felt in fact. She was supposed to feel that he was going to heaven and so it was all right, and he knew she would try her best to feel that when he reminded her. He figured that would get her through these next few rotten hours anyway. So he murmured the words again and again. He could feel they were the right words. He thought that God was telling him what to say to her. But it did make him terribly lonely. To have her here, to hold her, to want to tell her everything that was in his heart-and to jolly her along like this instead. It was worse than before she’d come. The loneliness; it was unbearable, holding her like this. He was in a cage with the only people he had ever loved in this world and talking this way made him feel as distant from them as if he were an astronaut cut adrift. Black, black space inside him. A black sea of space. Nothing to do but wait in vacuous immensity for the air to run out. He held her hard. If he could have wept on her shoulder, if he could have hugged both the woman and the child to him and sobbed out how he loved them and told them how afraid he was and raged against the unfairness of it … If they could’ve all sobbed and raged honestly together, he felt they might have crossed the intolerable distance between his condemned body and their living ones. Then at least he could’ve spent this last time truly with them.
But then that’s how they would’ve remembered him-raging, crying-and it would’ve been no good for them forever. There would’ve been no peace. This would be better, he thought. So he kept on.
“Hey, we’re not sad here,” he said again and again. “I’m going to the good place, Bonnie, you know that, we’re not sad.”
It worked, anyway, eventually. After a few moments, some energy seemed to return to Bonnie’s body. He could feel it. She managed to loosen her grip on him. She tilted back from him and tried to smile up at him through her tears.
“Can we be a little sad?” she said.
Frank made a noise that he hoped sounded like an easy laugh. “Well. Just a little. Cause I’m such a great guy and we’ll miss me for a little while.”
The answer made her shake her head, made her strive toward him with her eyes, trying to tell him with her eyes just what a great guy she thought he was. But that was no good. She would lose it again, if that kept on. So he let go of her. Left only one hand gripping her shoulder, and turned to look down at Gail. The child’s pinched, worried face was pushed up at him as she held her picture open in front of her with both hands.
“Now, let’s take a look at this picture here,” he said. “What is it again?”
“Green pastures. It’s not finished yet,” said Gail, holding up her grim scribbles, lifting the sheet of newsprint toward him.
Frank was about to squat down for a better look. But the phone rang on Benson’s desk again. Frank and Bonnie both turned to look at it, their lips going tight. Gail followed their gazes.
“I’ll just let my secretary get that,” said Frank. He spoke through a tight throat.
“Maybe it’s the appeal,” said Bonnie. The tone of her voice made Frank wince. As if the appeal would make it all right, as if that’s just what they’d been waiting for. “It must be,” she said. “Don’t you think? It must be Weiss or Tryon. Maybe it’s the, it’s the appeal, the stay. Don’t you think?”
“No, no, Bonnie. Bonnie, listen …” said Frank.
“Your lawyer again, Frank,” said Benson. He was walking toward the cage, the receiver in his outstretched hand.
Frank turned to his daughter. “Hold that picture right there, monster. I just gotta talk to my lawyer a minute. This place-the action never stops, right?”
The little girl smiled at her daddy’s joke. Bonnie stood staring at the receiver, staring like a woman shipwrecked at what might be motion in the fog. Frank went to the bars. As he reached through to take the phone, his glance met Benson’s. The duty officer’s rough, handsome features remained impassive, but Frank connected with him. He felt for a moment that the two of them understood-understood the situation, the procedure, the way it would all go down, businesslike, step by step, everyone doing his job. Benson and he-they were there, they were in it together. Not like Bonnie and Gail.
He leaned toward the bars and brought the phone to his ear.
“Yeah,” he said.
“S’Hubert, Frank. We lost it.”
For all he knew it was coming, his stomach dropped like a hanged man. He cleared his throat. “Okay,” he said.
“It came in right after I hung up with you. They didn’t go for any of it. And the Hererra ruling has just killed us everywhere.” Frank heard Tryon sigh. He closed his eyes, leaning his shoulder against the bars. “We’re still trying to find a way into the U.S. Supreme but … And Tom’s going to the governor in a few hours.”
“Yeah” was all Frank could say. “Okay.”
“Yeah,” Tryon answered in his high voice. “I’m sorry, Frank. You’re gonna have to brace yourself for the worst. I won’t lie to you.”
“No,” said Frank thickly. In a black haze, he was trying to tell himself it was real, it was really going to happen, trying to force the knowledge home. But he was also thinking: There’s still the governor. We’ve still got the governor. Not because he believed it, but because the dead, hanging weight inside him was impossible to sustain. “Okay,” he said after a long silence. “Thanks.”
“I’m really sorry, Frank.”
“Yeah.”
He handed the phone back to Benson. He stood at the bars, with his back to his family. He watched the duty officer carry the receiver slowly back across the cell, the coiled wire going lax, trailing over the floor. He hoped some of the blood would return to his face before he turned around. He had felt it drain out when Tryon gave him the news.
Then he did turn. Bonnie stood, still staring, staring at him now, wet-eyed, hopeful. Their daughter’s small, concerned gaze went back and forth between them, sensing an event. Frank wished again they’d never come, that he wasn’t married at all, that he had no child, that he could go through this alone. Step by step. Everyone doing his job. Alone, it seemed to him, it would have been easy. He hoisted a corner of his mouth.
“Sorry,” he said hoarsely. “I’m a popular guy here, what can I say?”
“Is there anything …?” said Bonnie.
He waved his hand. “No, no, nothing yet. These legal things, you know. They take forever.”
Bonnie bit her lip and nodded. Frank came forward, still smiling his forced smile. He squatted down in front of his little girl. She straightened, her face lifting. She adjusted her grip on the corner of her picture, holding it before him.
“Now,” Frank said, “let’s get a look at this artwork here.”
5
The Pussy Man was standing on the corner of Pine. A dark figure shambling through the downtown corridors of red brick and white concrete and imageless glass. A middle-aged black in a filthy gray overcoat-even in this weather, the overcoat, stained and worn. He reeked of wine and urine. His stubbly face was hangdog and his eyes were yellow and streaked with red. But he was alert in a feral way: his head, his glance, darted here and there. And he kept up a steady stream of patter to the last of the lunch-hour pedestrians.
When men walked by, he demanded their money. “Gimme some of your money,” he said. “You got money. You got money on toast. I don’t got no money, gimme some of your money, you got money on toast, man, I see you with your money …” on and on like that. And when women passed-when they hurried by him with their lips pressed together in anger and disgust-he demanded sex the same way. “Gimme some of that pussy, baby, I want some of that pussy you got, you got pussy on toast, baby, what’re you saving that pussy for, I need some pussy on toast, baby, gimme some of your pussy on toast.”