‘It keeps me awake, this place, like a weight on my chest,’ Marcantoni said. He frowned at the board, didn’t look directly at Parker. He said, ‘Any time I’m in a place like this, when I get out, the first thing I do, I sleep for a week. It isn’t a natural environment, this.’
‘It isn’t an environment,’ Parker said. ‘It’s a body cast.’
Now Marcantoni did look at Parker, peering at him from under that eyebrow as though looking out at a field from the edge of the woods. ‘You got thatright,’ he said, then looked down at the board. ‘Whose move is it?’
‘Mine,’ Parker said, and moved.
Marcantoni said, ‘A friend of mine says I should talk to you.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Do you know why?’
‘Maybe,’ Parker said, ‘we could figure out a way to get a night’s sleep.’
Marcantoni nodded, and jumped one of Parker’s pieces. ‘This game’s too easy,’ he said. ‘Not like some games.’
‘The harder games take more concentration,’ Parker said.
‘And more risk,’ Marcantoni said.
Parker said, ‘You’re facing life. Not much risk left for you.’
Marcantoni sat back, ignoring the board. ‘You know things about me,’ he said. ‘But I don’t know diddly about you.’
‘Ask your friend.’
‘I will. You’re thinking about a game for two?’
‘Three,’ Parker said. ‘It wouldn’t be a polite game. More a power game.’
Marcantoni looked around at the other inmates in the room, playing their games, reading their magazines. ‘A lot of mutts around here,’ he said.
‘There are,’ Parker agreed.
‘You can’t be too careful.’ Marcantoni nodded, agreeing with himself. ‘That’s why you had your friend check me out and then go talk to my friend.’
‘That’s right.’
‘So you’ve got a third guy?’
‘One of my cellmates. Williams.’
Marcantoni frowned, trying to place that, then said, ‘He’s a black guy.’
‘Right.’
Marcantoni made a sour face and shook his head. ‘You wanna work with a black guy?’
‘Why not?’
‘Group loyalty,’ Marcantoni said. ‘One of the first things I learned in life, stick with the group where there’s a chance for loyalty. There’s never a guarantee, but a chance. A black guy doesn’t feel loyalty for you and me. He’d trade us for chewing gum, and we’d do the same for him.’
Parker said, ‘I’ve been here eleven days. I got the population on this floor to work with. Like you say, a lot of it’s mutts. Some of it, all they’re facing’s a nickeldime, it’s not worth it to them, try a different game. From the rest, only two have a reputation I can take a chance on. You, and Williams. He isn’t afraid to stand with you, so if you’re afraid to stand with him I’ll just have to look around, try to find somebody else.’
‘Instead of me, you mean,’ Marcantoni said.
Parker waited, looking at the board.
Marcantoni sighed, then yawned again, then laughed at himself. ‘I’m groggy, is what it is,’ he said. ‘Okay, fuck it, a new experience. Get outa your neighborhood, meet new friends.’
‘Good,’ Parker said.
‘King me,’ Marcantoni said.
10
Because of the black-white thing, it was hard for them to meet, make a plan. If a black guy and a white guy who weren’t cellmates talked to each other, people would want to know why. The guards would want to know, and some of the inmates would want to know. What have those guys got to talk to each other about? What’s going on?
The answer was to work out with the weights. Only Marcantoni had been doing that before, but now Parker and Williams went over there, too, and could be in a little separate group without snagging anybody’s interest.
The first thing Marcantoni and Williams had to do was get a sense of each other. Lifting hand weights in alternate moves, like walking up the air, not looking at anybody in particular, Marcantoni said, ‘I never had to rely on anybody your tone before.’
‘Same here,’ Williams said. Seated on a wooden bench, weights strapped to his shins, he was lifting and lowering both feet together, from the knee.
‘Maybe we got something we can share,’ Marcantoni said. ‘You got a religion?’ Then he laughed at himself, lost his rhythm with the hand weights, found it again, and said, ‘Never mind, you were brought up Baptist, I don’t even wanna know about it.’
