Authors: Edmond Manning
“Thank you for that. I really appreciate it.”
Jerome says, “First boat’s in fifteen minutes. My book recommendations are in my letter.”
“Cool. Did you read—”
“I read it. Didn’t like it. Explained why in my letter. Gave it to Howie, and that fucker liked it, which we then debated for a week. I showed him my book review part of the letter, and he mostly scribbled the word
wrong
all over my margins.”
“That’s your fault. You give a letter to Howie, you know he’s going to do something like that. Remember the potato chip letter?”
Jerome chuckles.
We shake hands again, and he turns, strolls up the circus train of limestone blocks. After setting the knapsack on the Charlie Brown wall, he disappears over it. The knapsack disappears next.
Perry watches this departure with surprise, relief, and more surprise. Not only were we never in danger of capture, but apparently when breaking federal law on this prison island, the guards offer candy bars to the offenders.
I ease myself back down and watch him, eager to see where he takes this.
I say, “How did you sleep, babe?”
Perry climbs out of the sleeping bag and looks to the ocean. Then back up at the island.
“I brought orange juice, sparkling water, or Diet Coke. But if you want the Diet Coke, there’s no ice. It’s been chilled by ocean sand, so it should be cold. It’s buried about twenty-five feet from here.”
He doesn’t answer me, just stares.
Sitting up, I reach for our other knapsack from last night, unpacking a few Tupperware containers with pastries, fresh fruit, silver forks, cloth napkins. Perry remains quiet while I make a table from the backpack frame and prepare our continental breakfast.
“I got us a pear for breakfast in honor of you. Try to pronounce the word
pear
like the shape of a pear. Like this: peeeeeaaar. Try it. Or do you already do this with your own name? You make the
y
the stem on the pear, and twist it off. Like this. Peeeeaaaarrrry.”
I flip my head.
He gazes at me with no discernible reaction.
Amid this babble, I watch him closely, trying to ferret out his emotional state. I don’t care whether he’s angry or relieved; any feeling is fine. I want to know where he’s at, but he’s more guarded than I would like.
“Peeeeeerry,” I repeat, my jaw drawing an outline to match my pronunciation.
“We were never in danger.”
I remain silent until he looks me in the eye. “I told you, Perry, that I would not endanger you this weekend.”
“But you were willing to let me
think
we were in danger, run me terrified around a prison island all night.”
“Sure. That’s different.”
“Okay,” he says slowly.
He’s not okay with this, not one bit, but he’s still trying to absorb it. I’m not sure how big or small this explosion will go. Although his face now shows he’s rankled, the good still outweighs the bad: I’m not a serial killer and we’re not going to prison. Well, other than to have sex.
“Why’d we spend the night hiding?”
I pause, again making sure we have eye contact. “Were you insane with terror last night?”
“Yes. A couple times.”
“Did you cave in to that fear?”
“Almost.”
“Yes or no question: did you get crushed by your own fear?”
“I felt—”
“Yes or no.”
Perry is silent.
“Jerome walked right by us. Did you scream?”
“No.”
“No. You did not.”
Despite teetering on anger, his face shows surprised sorrow as his lips curve slightly downward. I’m not sure what’s going on in his head or heart, but I can see a slight shift.
“You blasted your nuts out. Afterwards in the Roman safe house, you told me that when you came you swore you could see that jizz splatter as neon green.”
Perry stares hard at me, searching for answers.
“Do you love last night even more right now? If you don’t want to give me the satisfaction of an answer, fine. But forget being mad at me for a split second and don’t lie to yourself. A trained professional knew we were hiding on the island, and he never caught us. You spent the night on Alcatraz, spying on a man
with a gun
, and even though he would not have killed us or turned us in, you didn’t know that. Your courage last night was real.”
He says, “I stood up that one time.”
“Pear, you could have given us away three dozen times, but you didn’t. You kept it together. An armed professional knew we were here and never saw us.”
His face wears a hard-to-describe expression, something like angry surprise. I love the in-between looks, irritated wonder, humbled judgment, and the half regret. The words we have for describing someone’s appearance are limited to the obvious compass directions: happy, sad, mad, and afraid. It’s hard to categorize the half expressions, the ones which reside in between. But this morning, I’m calling Perry mad by sadwest.
He remains quiet while his expression sinks in.
“Want the juice?”
“I’ll have the Diet Coke.”
“I’ll go get it. You okay for a minute?”
He nods.
I want him to have a little space, so this is good. Not much space, but enough to process this. I wander to the beach, push over the turkey-sized stone, and dig up his can of Diet Coke. Cold enough.
I think Joy sleeps in strange places. We’re always looking for her in shiny, happy, fun times, assuming that Joy prefers her twin brother, Pleasure, when she often hangs out with her somewhat stoic big sister, Strength. Joy is not always easy to recognize, dirt-smudged and sweating, brambles in her hair. I want to believe she sometimes wears a ski mask.
I return to find him sitting naked on the sleeping bag with an uncertain expression on his face, another one I can’t quite name.
“I had sex in Alcatraz,” he says. “At night.”
“Yeah.”
“In the Hole, and then fucked in a… a….”
“Grassy island hammock,” I suggest, “which I call the Hammock.”
I hand him the soda, and he pops it open.
“You made me memorize a fairy tale or you wouldn’t have sex with me.”
“Yeah,” I say, wriggling my eyebrows.
He nods at me, confirming events, and then takes a sip. He looks at the city skyline.
Perry does not love the cost of this adventure, but his investor brain is going to run the numbers. The brain always insists on being the last committee member to cave. The brain likes to make speeches that usually begin with a familiar opening: “Ladies and gentlemen, I have been wronged.”
At last he says, “Tell me about Jerome.”
“No.”
“No?” His voice is sharp.
“Ask me again after breakfast, and try a different tone.”
Perry looks surprised by my refusal, but perhaps he’s equally surprised by my lack of anger. Sure, he deserves an explanation. But I want him to hear me, and he’s not ready to listen yet. Something in his inflection says he wants to command me as I have commanded him. That’s not a helpful attitude for Saturday’s events.
I finish setting up and offer him pastries from our meager buffet. We both put on last night’s shirts so we’re not completely naked.
After a few silent minutes munching his breakfast treats, Perry makes a few halting jokes about waking up on a beach with no hair care products. A moment or two later, he volunteers a story about where he buys fresh fruit on Saturday mornings in his neighborhood. He’s coming around.
I say, “You like living there?”
“I’d rather live in Russian Hill. But it’s too expensive for a single man to buy anything.”
“Yeah, that’s a beautiful neighborhood. Lots of stairs, though. But Lower Haight is nice, right by Duboce Park. There’s that yummy breakfast place that just opened last year.”
Perry cocks his head. “Can I ask you a question about the rat bites?”
“Sure.”
Dammit.
“Why didn’t you fight them off or something?”
“I did, eventually. But for a while I thought if I didn’t do anything to them, they’d leave me alone.”
Perry says nothing to this.
I say, “Does it freak you out, the rat bite story?”
“Don’t flatter yourself. I have enough to worry about without fixating on your childhood scars. But that’s about the only thing I know about you. And you’re a mechanic, I guess. If that’s true.”
“It’s true.”
“You don’t talk much about yourself, Vin.”
I wait for a few seconds in silence. “I need a gratuitous horn blowing from the approaching boat to get me out of this conversation.”
He half chuckles, but he watches me.
“Perry, this weekend is about you. Not me. I wouldn’t… I don’t talk much about me on a King Weekend, nor do I answer many questions about the weekend itself. Save yourself some time and don’t bother asking. I’m not trying to hide, but I would rather stay focused on having fun with you. Stay in the moment.”
He half nods. Half resists.
“I train myself to think a certain way. All last night, I was like, ‘It’s the security guard, it’s the nameless security guard.’ I’ve been thinking that way about the Alcatraz guards for years, even after we became friends. It’s how I do this. When I recall their names or how well I know them, I get sloppy.”
The mournful horn signals the first tour boat’s arrival, and we both laugh.
I say, “A little late, but thank you.”
I imagine the popcorn-snarfing seagulls escorting another batch of Alcatraz tourists down the gangplank.
Perry leans over and kisses me, a slow wet kiss that says he still wants to play.
“Nice,” I say, licking my lips. “A much better wake-up than Jerome kicking our feet.”
This is good.
He lets me feed him a slice of pear, a test to see how our intimacy weathered the latest turn of events.
“Will you please tell me why they call you the Human Ghost?”
“First let’s pack up. Then ghost stories.”
It doesn’t take long for either of us to dress. Once the sleeping bag attaches to the frame and our shoes are tied, we lie facing the ocean on raised elbows, me behind him. Perry’s face lights up when I produce a small container of raspberries on the earth in front of him; he likes raspberries. I devour my Nut Roll in a few bites. I forget how good these things are.
He rolls over to face me. If Perry has softened further toward me, I will make this a kissing story.
Kissing is such a surreal way to interact. You press your squishiest part to his and read the connection in a dozen ways: the level of affection, the warmth of feeling, the need to dominate, the ability to explore, and various shades of hesitancy. All that communication from such a slender little strip of flesh.
I kiss him, slow, wet kisses, to reacquaint his lips and mine. I want these drawn-out kisses to communicate “I am here with you. This is still our island. Even as the prison repopulates for the day, I am still on an island alone with you.”
He says, “My breath feels like oysters. I don’t suppose you brought a toothbrush.”
“Two. Let’s wait until the ferry back to San Francisco. But you taste fine.”
I chew his bottom lip and pull back slowly, stretching his lip in my grasp. With my right hand, I massage his jawline, an erotic spot uncovered last night. He purrs when my fingers trace him, his entire clothed body pressing into mine, and we kiss with long, sensual strokes for a few minutes before I finally release him.
“Is there a kissing king?” he says.
“Not yet.”
We kiss again, deep, parted tangles that reveal Perry’s attempt to be okay with all this. I still feel resistance, though the fact that he’s making out with me suggests he’s working through his feeling manipulated. Definitely no need for kissing lessons with Perry.
In the middle of a particularly luscious kiss, I pull away as if nothing significant is happening.
“I started camping on Alcatraz just after I turned twenty-two.”
“And you’re thirty-one.”
“Yes. Jerome and I met by mistake during my second year. Jerome twisted his ankle outside and decided to keep it elevated until morning. I’d been hiding in a second tier cell and assumed that he left the prison by some door I did not know about. I eventually fell asleep.”
He nods.
“The next morning, I woke up early. After listening for random noise and hearing none, I walked out of my room. I yawned big, groaned. Stretched out. I put my arms over the railing, looking around and waking up. A minute later, Jerome hobbled around the corner. He had heard noise where there should have been none. To say that we were both fairly surprised is an understatement.”
Perry chuckles.
“He limped to the front door to trap me inside, and then he called it in. Once I saw he couldn’t actually chase me, I quickly gathered my things but didn’t feel all that threatened. The first ferry brought three extra security guards and a boatload of tourists. Apparently, they didn’t let the first group inside for thirty minutes. Nobody knew I had spent the previous year creating ways in and out of the prison, rigging doors and whatnot. I would never spend the night inside Alcatraz with only one exit. I have four entrances and exits, including one very dangerous way that I prefer not to use.”
“They’ve never been discovered?”
“I used to have five ways. Three years ago, an engineer on vacation noticed one of the exterior door’s hinges were slightly different from other exterior doors. He reported it. Of course, it didn’t take long for the staff to figure out that the door hinges had been deliberately refitted and scuffed to look aged. But the night guards revealed nothing when told to ‘keep an eye out’ because by then, we were buds.”
“I take it nobody caught you when you were twenty-two?”
“No. For years, I wore an Alcatraz T-shirt the mornings after a sleepover. That particular morning, they searched the prison but could not find any suspicious guest. All day, they scanned tickets trying to find me. But everyone who reboarded the ferry owned the appropriate ticket. I left around noon.”
“What about your ticket?”
“I always buy tickets for several days in a row and keep them with me. Plus, when I left that morning, I held hands with this cool rebel chick from Indiana. I told her I needed cover, and she thought it would be fun. They were looking for a lone guy. Which reminds me.”