A guard came over and told the guys to break it up. Rufus grabbed Max by the hand and led him away.
Later on, back in their cell, Rufus said to Max, “You clean yo’ ass out good tonight, know what I’m sayin’? I don’t want no brown on my dick. My dick got enough brown on it, don’t need no more, know what I’m sayin’?”
There was nothing for Max to do now but lie in his bunk and wait for the inevitable. He was thinking about, of all people, Elvis. Max, in those last forty-eight hours of freedom, had watched so many movies, his fucking eyes hurt and how he ended up with Jailhouse Rock in his DVD player was anyone’s guess. The King, singing on the tiers, had brought tears to his eyes. He’d never really given Elvis a whole lotta time. Let’s face it, The Max was a classical music kinda guy, could pronounce Tchaikovsky without a single moment of hesitation. Fucking hum that, yah morons.
Shit, he realized he’d been talking aloud again.
“Well, fucking excuse me!” he shouted. “I’m under a little goddamn pressure here!”
Inmates in the other cells starting laughing and Max blocked it out, thinking about Elvis again. The El was one good looking hombre and Max wondered if that’s what he should do later when Rufus was, er, visiting him – pretend he was getting screwed by The King. Yeah, he’d pretend to be Priscilla. Max pledged that if he ever got out of this hole, he’d go straight to Graceland, give his thanks for help in a tight spot. Maybe hang with Priscilla. The babe had mileage but serious bucks – he could use some of that.
He was weeping now, and he knew, dammit, only a real man could allow himself that freedom.
After the slop they called dinner it was lights out. Jesus Christ, Max was sobbing again, begging for his mommy. He wished he’d read more of that fucking Genet book so at least he’d know what to expect. He would’ve paid a fortune for some Vaseline so at least it wouldn’t hurt. But he knew, worse than the pain would be all the fucking humiliation tomorrow, all the guys knowing that Rufus had done the deed. He just hoped that Rufus didn’t make him walk around the prison wearing lipstick and fucking skirts, like that queen in Animal Factory .
But then something weird happened.
He was waiting for the brute to climb down and deliver the meat, but the bunk was still. Maybe Rufus was just playing head games with him, making him think he wasn’t gonna get fucked tonight, then… kaboom.
But another ten, fifteen minutes went by and still no Rufus. And what was that noise? Was he actually snoring? The fuck was going on?
Max wanted to feel happy, but he didn’t dare let himself. It had to be part of some plan or something. A guard would unlock a bunch of inmates’ cells and let them into Max’s and the goddamn gangbang would begin.
He waited. At some point, he fell asleep.
In the morning, he woke up and wriggled his ass around a little. No pain. Was it possible he’d slept through being anally raped? It wouldn’t have been the first time but, nope, his ass was its good ol’ self.
Then another surprise: Rufus hung down from the top bunk, smiled, asked, “Yo, what up? Sleep good, Mohammed?”
What the fuck? Was this some kinda fuckin’ joke? Was this how the guy turned himself on, let his victims think they were off the hook, then, when their guard was fully down…
“Yes,” Max said hesitantly.
“That’s good,” Rufus said. “If there’s anythin’ you want me to do today, yo, you just let me know, hear, and I get that shit done for you fast, know what I’m sayin’?”
Max had no idea what to make of Rufus’s sudden turnaround, but he wasn’t complaining. His ass wasn’t complaining either.
Then the biggest surprise of all: At breakfast, there was no whistling, no catcalls, no nothing. Shit, people wouldn’t even make eye contact with him. The fuck was going on? Yeah, he was glad he hadn’t gotten raped, but the insecure Max Fisher was coming out, asking, Have I, like, lost my appeal? Other guys in the room were getting the old come-hither looks, guys younger than Max, and he found himself actually feeling jealous.
In the yard, Max went up to one of the guards, Malis, and asked, “The fuck’s going on? How come nobody’ll fuckin’ look at me anymore?”
Malis, chomping on gum, didn’t look at Max, said, “The fuck do I know?”
“Come on, give me a fuckin’ break,” Max whined. “If this silent treatment is just a set-up, if I’m gonna get ambushed tonight, the least you could do is let me know about it. I’m a well-connected guy, if you get my drift.”
Yeah, let the asshole think he was in store for a hefty bribe. Like that was gonna happen.
“You’re not gonna get ambushed,” Malis said.
“Yeah? How the fuck do you know that?”
Malis continued looking away, chewing his gum, then shook his head as if, thinking, I give up, and said, “Look, your story got around, all right?”
“Story? What story?”
“The story about what you got sent away for.”
Max was confused, said, “I’m confused.”
“All the guys,” Malis said, “they know what you did.”
“You talking about the drug dealing charges?”
“No, I’m talking about how you cut off that guy’s dick down in the city.”
The severed dick was a, well, issue that had come up in Max’s trial. Max had had nothing to do with it, but apparently the prisoners thought he had. Actually, Angela’s latest psycho boyfriend had cut off the dick, delivered it to Max in a shoebox.
“You mean they think I-”
“Everybody’s scared shitless,” Malis said. “They don’t want to come near you. Hey, and just in case you get any ideas, you come anywhere near my dick, I even see you looking at my dick, I’m gonna fuckin’ shoot you. Got that?”
It took a while – okay, less than a minute – for it to sink in. He wasn’t a target anymore. He was – get this – a feared man.
He took a little spin around the yard, a victory lap, soaking it up, letting all the suckers know who the new King was. Wasn’t there a movie like that already? The Fisher King?
Yeah, he could learn to like this joint.
Five
“I knew I’d never get enough of her. She was straight out of hell.”
When Angela and Sebastian got back to the villa, he was seriously spooked. This was a crazy woman and, lordy, if he ever got the hell away from her, he might well write her as a character in his book. The book he’d never written a line of but he would, he was literary, like Amis and Borroughs. He’d just sit down one day and voila, masterpiece. You either had it or you didn’t and he bloody well had it.
One literary effort that he actually did produce was a poem in the technical college entitled:
Lenin and Your Letter
He just flat out loved that title. It had politics, love and, to be totally honest, true resonance. And, okay, he’d been a little wiped when he wrote it, but excuse me, look at all the greats – Scott Fitz, Hem, Behan, Bukowski, Berryman, Jerry Rodriguez. Hadn’t they all been a little, well, spiffed when they wrote their finest work? You wanted pain, compassion, suffering, Sebastian knew you had to fucking live it.
He just wished he could remember the bloody poem. Only one line had remained with him:
Lenin, you Jewish hack
Ah, the thrill. Did he actually write that? He did. Oh, Booker Prize be praised. And God bless Salman Rushdie. Sebastian had his very brief moment of fame as the student union, all five of them, had accused him of anti- Zionism. Lordy, it was what every real literary lion endured.
