Take-Out Page 10

  Maybe the cab driver would be a dark-haired rogue looking for someone to keep him company on the late shift, and they’d eat in a late-night diner where he’d regale her with wild tales from the job. Only in New York-type stuff. But no, her driver was a hunched Eastern European man who reeked of sizzling meat.

  The pizza line was her last hope.

  But no, she found herself stuck. Between the Mexican family behind her, and in front of her, a man wearing a worn tank top, stained yellow with age. Although he didn’t look capable of it, he smelled like he ran a marathon to get there.

  Nothing about any of this trip was magical.

  And for the hundredth time since she got to the airport this morning, she wondered what the hell she was doing this for. She settled on the same answer, even if she wasn’t sure it was the right one: that everyone, no matter what sin they’ve committed, deserves a little dignity in death.

  She looked up at the sign, stuck atop a black pole at the corner of the lot, looming over the line. Red cursive on white background.

  M&C Spumoni.

  What the hell is spumoni, she wondered.

  THE JOKE WAS, Cynthia was chosen for her strawberry-blonde hair.

  “He only kills brunettes,” Cap had said.

  Like it was supposed to be encouraging.

  The truth was, budget cuts and staff reductions meant the administration had to think creatively. They realized they could move Cynthia’s desk from her office in the main wing over to death row, and they wouldn’t have to pay someone else to sit there all day.

  “If anything happens,” Cap said, “just call a real guard.”

  The day she arrived, she put down a small potted cactus, and her little faux-crystal Statue of Liberty—a souvenir from a friend who had spent a week in New York and needed someone to feed her cat. Sometimes Cynthia stared at it, wondering how the real thing would compare.

  Her desk was at one end of a long, dreary hallway. Along the left wall, which was water-stain mint green, there were barred windows that looked out onto the activity yard. On the right was a line of five cells, and at the end was a blank wall with a small, off-center crucifix.

  The day Cynthia moved in, only one of the cells was occupied.

  The one holding the Southpaw Killer.

  Cynthia stood at her desk for a long time, working up the courage to walk down to the end of the row and back, which she was told to do once every hour. She’d interacted with prisoners before. Never one she heard of before she laid eyes on him.

  She took some time to adjust the plant and the statue so they were perfectly framing the boxy gray monitor. She logged on to her computer and checked her e-mail. She took a deep breath and got up and walked. As she got closer to the third cell, the one that was occupied, she drifted toward the wall with the windows, away from the bars.

  The man was in his beige uniform pants, no shirt, his muscled torso catching the light and casting shadows that made him look like he belonged on the cover of a romance novel, a thought that immediately turned her stomach. He was sitting on the slab bolted into the wall that served as his bed, reading Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen. On one side of the slab was a toilet with a sink built into the top. On the other side was a showerhead sticking out of the wall like it was an afterthought.

  He wouldn’t leave the cell until it was time to die. No physical activity in the yard, even. As Cap would say, dead men and nearly dead men had just about the same amount of rights.

  The man looked up and put the book down. His smile was sharp, showing off his teeth like an anatomical drawing. But his eyes were soft. He had a thin beard, black and dashed with salt to match his hair. Cynthia didn’t know what she was expecting, but she didn’t expect him.

  He nodded. “I must have finally done something good to get a guard pretty as you.”

  Something hot flashed in the middle of Cynthia, but she paved it over with fear and revulsion.

  “I’m not here to chat,” she said, continuing on her way, toward the end of the row, past the last two empty cells. She stopped at the crucifix, turned, and headed back the other way, not looking at the man as hard as she could.

  “I didn’t do it, you know,” he said.

  “They all say that,” Cynthia responded.

  As she neared her desk, he called, “I’m James.”

  She paused, wanting to say her name back, like a reflex. Instead, she sat down and gazed at the Statue of Liberty, its torch barely touching the bottom of her computer monitor.

  THERE WERE TWELVE known victims, spread across three states, though authorities speculate there might have been more. All of them were college-aged, doe-eyed, brunette. When the local paper ran all their pictures together on the main page, they almost looked like sisters.

  Each one was found missing her left hand.

  Cynthia turned blue links purple, scrolling back and forth through Google, reading article after article as the computer choked and chugged like an old car.

  James Winston was arrested on a description provided by two young boys who said they saw a man burying a body along a creek. Winston was a drifter, claimed to be passing through town. There was no evidence tying him to any of the crimes, no DNA, no proof he was actually at the place where those two kids said they saw him.

  Just someone matching his description.

  The jury deliberated for two days.

  Cynthia wasn’t an expert in anything. But looking at the scant evidence, she wondered how they could have wrapped up that quickly.

  Meanwhile, the district attorney, the police chief, and a local state senator were all up for re-election. All three of them were running ads claiming they’d captured the Southpaw Killer and sentenced him to death.

  The front door slammed open. Cynthia closed out all the windows on the computer, her finger slipping on the mouse, her heart racing.

  Doug stomped into the kitchen, reeking of blood and raw pork. No matter how hard he scrubbed in the locker room showers, the smell of death always followed him home from the plant.

  He stood in the middle of the kitchen, waiting. His brown eyes sunken, his thinning hair disheveled. Cynthia kissed him on the cheek, lips scraping against stubble, and she tried not to gag at the stink.

  “Dinner?” he asked.

  “We’re overdrawn,” she said.

  “Well, what about a line of credit at the grocery store? I heard they do that sometimes. Those bastards can’t just let good people starve, can they?”

  Cynthia twitched a little at “good people.”

  “They put interest on it,” she said. “We’re going to wind up paying so much more. I know it’s not ideal…”

  “Dammit, Cyn,” Doug said, smacking the flat of his fist into the fridge. An overdue bill tacked up with a magnet depicting the New York skyline came loose and drifted to the floor. “What the hell are we supposed to eat?”

  “We got some pasta and I can dip into the pantry,” she said. “Were you…were you able to bring home anything from work?”

  Doug holds up his hands, gesturing to the empty space around him. “Do you see me carrying anything?”

  “Well, no…”

  “So I should bring the food home with me. Should I cook it, too? Do you want me to do everything? I work twelve-hour days just to keep the goddamn lights on. What more do you want from me?”

  Cynthia nearly said it.

  She nearly said that he ought to stop handing so much of their income to the bar around the corner. To the machine at the grocery store that sold lotto tickets.

  Instead, she opened up the fridge, a beam of yellow light shooting between the two of them. She pulled out a can of beer and cracked it and offered it to him. “Just go on into the living room and put your feet up. I’ll make something. It’ll be good, promise. Tomorrow, I’ll see about that line of credit.”

  He ripped the beer from her hand, white suds erupting from the top, splashing her arm. He stalked off but the smell of death remained.

  Cynt
hia pressed both hands to her mouth and fought to keep from crying.

  Hours later, after they had eaten pasta with jarred sauce and watched some television and Doug had passed out on his recliner, the living room scattered with beer cans like corpses, Cynthia retreated to the back porch with a glass of wine and the copy of Pride & Prejudice she got from the library.

  “I HATE JANE Austen,” James said, putting aside the car magazine he’d been reading.

  “Seems like an odd choice, then.”

  “Well, Cynthia, it’s not like I have a whole lot of options.”

  Cynthia watched James, legs curled up onto the slab bed. A killer of women, and yet she couldn’t get past those kind eyes. The sadness that permeated the space between them.

  “What would you like to read?” she asked. “I can see if we have it.”

  James smiled and swung his legs around so he was sitting, facing her. The closest he’d gotten in all the times she’d passed by, because he always seemed to be curled up on that bed whenever she got close.

  “What’s your favorite book?” he asked.

  “I don’t have a whole lot of time for reading lately,” she said.

  “C’mon,” he said, smiling. Showing his teeth. “Everyone has a favorite. Just name something.”

  “I really liked The Stranger,” she said. “Albert Camus. I read it in college.”

  James nodded, resolute. “Then that’s what I’d like to read. I’ve never read it.”

  “We don’t have that one in the library,” she said. “It’s about a man condemned to death. Someone probably decided that’s not good for inmates.”

  James rested his elbows on his knees. “I wouldn’t want you to get in any kind of trouble. I’m just saying, if a copy were to find its way into this cell, I would be sure to hide it nice and good.”

  Cynthia turned and headed back for her desk. “You’re not worth my job.”

  “I didn’t think so,” James said, the words echoing in the empty hallway behind her like a taunt.

  CYNTHIA RAN DOWN the hallway, cursing Doug. He took the car and didn’t fill up the tank and she had to stop at the gas station and now she’d be the last one to the briefing room.

  There were ten guards to a shift and nine seats in the briefing room. It’s not that she minded standing. She was more worried that Williams was working today, and that he’d have gotten a seat first.

  Cynthia rounded the corner into the room and her heart sank.

  All the seats were filled.

  “Hey, Marks,” Williams said, smirking, spilling out his chair, pointing to the wide expanse of his lap. Something about the light in this room made his bald spot shine so much brighter, his pale skin so much waxier. “Plenty of room right here. Pay no mind to my nightstick if it pops up, okay?”

  Cap shook his head. “Williams. One more time, I’m writing you up.”

  Cynthia was keeping count. It was the seventeenth time Cap made that exact same threat. And Williams responded the same way he always did.

  “All in good fun,” he said, looking at Cap. Then he shot a look at Cynthia. A shadow passed over his face and his voice grew stern. “Right?”

  “Yes, sir.” Cynthia nodded to Williams and then Cap. “All in good fun.”

  “Exactly right,” said Williams. “You just have to know how to laugh. Marks knows how to laugh.”

  Cynthia forced a smile. “Good one,” she said.

  Williams nodded, looking around the room to make sure everyone realized his joke had gotten the sign-off.

  Cap launched into his daily spiel and Cynthia was already far off, planning out the route that would take her through the infirmary and up two flights of stairs to the death row cells. Where instead of being catcalled, she would hear something nice from a nice-looking man. She reached back and patted her rear, double-checking she had that copy of The Stranger tucked into her pocket.

  “DO YOU KNOW the origin of the last meal request for death row inmates?”

  Cynthia looked up and down the narrow hall. The walk back to her desk was taking longer every time she did it.

  She stepped a tiny bit closer to the cell, peering into the dim space. James was standing underneath the showerhead, leaning against the wall. Like he’d been waiting for her.

  “Tell me,” Cynthia said.

  “It was a superstitious act,” James said. “By accepting food, the prisoner was making peace with the jury and the executioner. This was so the person didn’t come back as a revenant.”

  “What’s a revenant?”

  “A ghost.”

  Cynthia smiled. “Why not just say ‘ghost’?”

  “It makes me sound smarter.”

  A small laugh shot out of Cynthia, like air whistling from a balloon. She closed her mouth quickly and took a step back.

  “Do you know what I would request for my last meal?” James asked.

  “You’re not going to get it, so what does it matter?”

  “But aren’t you curious?”

  “No,” Cynthia said, lying.

  “C’mon.” James curled up the right side of his mouth. “Smart girl like you. You’re curious. You like knowing things. You’re just waiting for an opportunity to use the word ‘revenant’ in conversation. Tell me I’m wrong.”

  The hallway was still empty. The crucifix on one end, her desk on the other.

  “What would you order?” Cynthia asked.

  “A slice of pizza from M&C in Brooklyn. Down in Bensonhurst.”

  Cynthia took a half-step forward. She looked down at her boots on the scuffed concrete floor, up at James again. Wondering if it looked demure. Wondering if she should be trying to look demure.

  “You can get pizza everywhere,” she said. “What makes that place special?”

  “Well,” Jason said. “You can get pizza anywhere, but you can only get good pizza in New York. Some people say it’s the dough. Other people say it’s the water. Like the mineral content. I think it’s the place. Place matters just as much as anything. Do you know what alchemy is?”

  “It’s the combination of different elements into a new element,” she said. “Like magic.”

  He nodded. “Like magic. What the hell are you doing working in a place like this, smart girl like you?”

  The way he said “smart girl” made her smile.

  She didn’t hide her face. She let him see it, allowed the moment to hang.

  “What’s so great about this pizza?” she asked.

  “It’s just…perfect. I can’t explain it. If you ate it, you would understand. You never look at a slice of pizza from around here the same way again.”

  Off in the distance, Cynthia heard a metal clank. A door opening and closing. One of the guards on rotation. She turned and walked back toward her desk.

  “It’s not fair, you know,” James called after her. “What they’re doing here is inhuman.”

  CAP HAD BEEN holding a stack of papers in his hand. When Cynthia was done with her practiced monologue, he whipped it down onto the desk with a crack.

  “Are you kidding me with this?” he asked.

  “I know it’s…” Cynthia started.

  “No, you don’t know.”

  He heaved himself down into the beaten black roller chair. Everything in the office except the chair was white. The fluorescent light. His starched uniform shirt and bushy hair. The stacks of papers that framed him and the painted brick walls surrounding them.

  Cap looked up, his eye twitching, a sign that he was really and truly annoyed. More so than his general state of agitation. He stared at Cynthia in a way that made her feel like she was getting smaller.

  “Cap, look…” she said.

  “You know the governor just shut this program down. All requests have to be fulfilled by family, or come from within five square miles of the prison. If I file this, they’re not going to just ignore it. They’re going to take it like we don’t respect them. I’m going to get a phone call.”

  “The only thi
ng within five square miles of here is an Arby’s.”

  “Then he’s got to eat Arby’s,” Cap said, leaning back, looking up at the ceiling. “That new Angus steak sandwich they got ain’t too bad.”

  Cynthia goes diving for words. Something that will win him over. A cogent argument that’ll get him to see the light. Instead, all she sees is light disappearing as she sinks deeper and deeper, drowning.

  “Why do you even need to do this?” he asked, his face twisting into a sneer.

  “Because it’s kind.”

  “After what that son of a bitch did. All those girls.”

  She meant to say it with confidence but it came out like a little peep: “Allegedly.”

  Cap slammed his hand against the desk. It was an intimidation tactic, and it worked. Cynthia jumped, then cursed herself for it.

  “He was convicted by a jury of his peers,” Cap said. “I’m sorry that we’re no longer fulfilling unreasonable demands of murderers and rapists. I’m sorry that offends your delicate sensibilities.”

  “It’s not about that.”

  Cap sighed, leaning back again. Looking at the ceiling again.

  “Do you remember that one guy, wanted that sandwich from the place in Atlantic City?” he asked. “One sandwich. The state has to pick up airfare and overtime and travel expenses. Do you remember that? Probably never been a sandwich that expensive. For a guy who murdered his wife and two children because he didn’t want to have to go through the trouble of a divorce. That’s actually what he said when they caught him. I remember that. I’m going to remember that for the rest of my life. That he did that hateful thing and then we had to spend thousands of dollars to get him a goddamn sandwich.”

  Cynthia took a deep breath, exhaled slowly.

  “I know women are hard-wired for sympathy but this is a little ridiculous,” Cap said.