“If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun.”
Bunny caught a hint of a smile.
“I may be wrong,” said Cuts, “but I don’t think Katharine Hepburn ever did hard time.”
“Shows what you know,” said Bunny. “Six months for aggravated assault with a plunger. The woman was a demon when her dander was up.”
Cuts’s cellmate appeared, his headphones around his neck. Bunny noticed how he used the bars to guide himself. Blind.
“Harsh,” said Cuts. “This here is Rourke.”
“People call me Bunny,” said Bunny.
“The fuck they do,” said Harsh. “You some Disney-fied delinquent dipshit? That’s just what this place needs – another man-boy jabbering bullshit.”
Cuts nodded. “Harsh is called Harsh because, well …”
“I’m the harsh truth, motherfucker. What happened to the other guy?”
“Bunny here is sharing a cell with him.”
Harsh shook his head. “The fuck you say. Wish you’d told me sooner. I don’t believe in talking to the dead. I can smell your corpse from here.” Harsh pulled up his headphones and turned on his music.
Cuts gave Bunny a tight smile. “Don’t mind him. It’s a mental illness. He suffers from compulsive over-aggressiveness, or something like that.”
“So he’s like that all the time?”
“Yeah. It’s why he wears the headphones, mostly. All easy-listening ballads and such. Keeps him calm. That was him on his best behaviour. He’s actually a lot less friendly when you get to know him.”
“Must be tough to share with?”
“Nah. We have an understanding.”
Bunny looked around the landing. Even Jesus and the guy who’d been rocking back and forth on the floor when Bunny had passed were standing in place outside their cells. Bunny nodded back at his own cell. “Doesn’t he—”
“No,” interrupted Cuts. “And we don’t talk about it either. Trust me. You’re in a very precarious situation. Get on board with the concept that the man doesn’t exist, or pretty soon you won’t.”
“Can I ask a question?”
“As long as it’s not about—”
“No.”
“OK, then.”
“The guy with one hand, over there. Is he …?”
Cuts closed his eyes and shook his head. “Goddamn it.” He raised his voice. “Handy – give it up or I’m calling the guards.” Cuts grimaced. “Man is living proof that it won’t make you go blind. Crazy son of a bitch.”
“I thought everyone up here is crazy?”
“There’s more acceptable ways to be so.”
“You don’t seem that crazy?”
Cuts rolled his eyes before hollering, “To infinity and beyond!”
“OK,” said Bunny.
Cuts nodded. “I got an associative disorder. Psychiatrist says I can’t tell reality from the movies.”
“You seem to be doing OK with it.”
A buzzer sounded and everyone instantly turned around to head back into their cells.
“Maybe I’m thinking I’m in a prison movie? Remember what I said,” added Cuts. “You can either get busy living or get busy dying.”
“I am Spartacus.”
“Get your own gimmick.”
In the distance, Bunny could hear the braying noise starting up again. He made his way into his cell and collapsed onto his bed. He punched his pillow in an attempt to get comfortable, and it was at that point that he found the Snickers bar shoved underneath it.
As he wolfed it down, he stared at the bottom of the bunk above him, where a man that didn’t exist lay quietly, reading a comic book, until the lights went out.
Chapter Twelve
Dionne sat on the couch in front of the big screen in the living room to deliver her report. The face of Sister Dorothy, sitting in attentive silence back in Brooklyn, looked down from the TV. Dionne could do it from anywhere, but she preferred here as it was away from the sleeping quarters. Some of the other nuns kept unusual hours, and she didn’t want to disturb them. Also, Sister Joy, a vital and valued member of the team, snored so badly that it sounded like a ship lost in the worst fog.
The only downside of using the living room is that Sister Dorothy, despite the fact that Dionne had known her for a very long time, was an intimidating visage when appearing six feet high. Dionne kept resisting the urge to sit up straight and smooth the creases out of her outfit.
Dorothy sat with her lips pursed, looking off to the side as she listened, as if contemplating a sermon she was not enjoying. The woman looked tired. New York was three hours ahead of Vegas, but Dorothy had taken to ringing her at this time of night for a catch-up. The woman didn’t sleep much at the best of times, and these were certainly not those.
Dionne finished giving her update on the day’s activities, and after a moment Dorothy looked up at the camera and nodded.
“And how is this Arthur Faser gentleman settling in?”
Dionne was now so used to Dorothy’s West African accent, that she reckoned there were at least six levels to ‘gentleman.’ That one wasn’t the harshest, but he wouldn’t be getting free cake any time soon. “His room is comfortable but, as you’d expect, he’s tested the boundaries of it.”
He’d actually found two of the hidden cameras. Zoya had been impressed. He hadn’t found the other two, but still.
“I don’t mind him spending some of his time focusing on how to get the tracing ankle bracelet off his foot. The devil makes work for idle hands and all that. Besides, Joy injected him with the real tracker while he was out cold on the drive here.”
“And yet you trust this man?” asked Dorothy.
Dionne ran a hand through her hair. “I trust him to be him. I’m hoping that he will see that his best chance of starting afresh is helping us do what we need to do. Teresa’s monitoring the feeds and Zoya has set up alerts if the one on McGarry’s cell picks up any motion. It will take time, but I believe he might be able to spot something about the workings of the prison that we don’t. You and I both know that the Sisters have done
