Except for Manley and Red, the rest of the men in Slide Step's circle all had boys. Chet's boy was away at court but was due back later that week, and I had almost met Eddie's, the day he came after me with the razor blades that were taped between his fingers.
Taylor's boy, Paul, was eighteen. He was slender and short, about 5 feet 6 inches, with long red hair, which he kept pulled back in a ponytail. Taylor called him Green Eyes. When I first met Paul, he was distant and cold, and I was convinced he didn't like me, but Slide Step said it was because I was prettier than him and he didn't like the competition.
I blushed when Slide Step said it.
"You know you're a bad motherfucker, right?"
I didn't, but I did like hearing it. I never heard that back home. The girls in my neighborhood liked me, but not like that. "You're the sweetest boy we know," Tammy and Carol said, as they kissed me on the cheek and ran off with the bullies.
"Well you are," Slide Step said. "You're the baddest motherfucker in here. And you've got quite a few of these motherfuckers jealous."
I wouldn't have been able to admit it, but I was beginning to enjoy the attention. I felt my step lighten, just a little bit higher. I raised my eyes from blacktop and saw that people were watching as Slide Step and I circled the yard. He didn't say anything for a while. We just walked and I felt less selfconscious the second time around.
"You know," he said. "You'd make a good drug dealer some day."
"How's that?"
"Because you don't use," he said. "Most guys who get high, end up using their profits, and then you can't trust 'em."
Slide Step didn't do drugs either, except for an occasional joint or little spud juice every now and then. He seemed smarter than the others and I was beginning to trust him.
"Maybe you can work for me some day," he said.
"Really?"
He nodded. "But after we both get out of here." Slide Step's sentence was a lot longer than mine. He was serving a fifteen-to-twenty-five-year sentence for assault.
His gaze became serious as he stared off across the yard. His eyes gleamed with all their power, but underneath his cool icy stare seemed to be a lonely man who wanted to reach out and connect with someone. Yet prison was hardly the place where you could let your guard down easily.
A few days later, Slide Step and I were talking when Red walked up to us. I asked Red if he could give Slide Step and me a minute alone.
"What!" Red shouted. "What did you say?"
Suddenly, Slide Step was standing between us and then marched me up the hall. I didn't know what I had done.
"Bitch!" Red shouted. "You don't be asking me nothing. Who the fuck do you think you are?"
"Hold up, Red!" Slide Step said. He had an embarrassed look on his face, but I couldn't tell which one of us had embarrassed him.
"That's your man's job, Bitch. You don't ask a Man nothing!" Red said.
Slide Step walked me into the shower room and sighed. "Let me handle this."
He explained that Red was still pissed he couldn't have me. I couldn't help thinking how differently my life would've been had Red won the coin toss. He treated people like shit. I was afraid of him because he was shorttempered and mean, and from what I gathered from Slide Step, he didn't treat his boys much differently.
"The last one locked up for protection," he said. "Red chased him across the yard."
"Why?"
"Because Red was smacking him around."
"Why would he do that?"
"Because that's Red," was all Slide Step would say at first. The two of them had been friends forever, Red having worked for Slide Step's mom. He and Slide Step also served their first bit together.
"Red wanted to brand him," Slide Step said, "but the boy wasn't having it. So he broke loose and ran screaming, buck naked, across the yard to the Control Center."
"Brand him?"
"Red was going to tattoo RFD's Pussy across his ass."
The boy was Grasshopper, my friend from Quarantine. "He'll be all right," Slide Step said. "He's been transferred to H-ward, the protection unit over at M-R."
Grasshopper had arrived at Riverside a couple of weeks before I did, but by the time I got there he was already gone. They held a similar reception for him as they had for me. I asked Slide Step if Red won the coin toss that time, but he didn't answer me. He just looked at me for an uncomfortable moment, and then he tussled my hair. "I wouldn't know, Squeeze, I wasn't around when it happened."
"How can you be friends with him?"
He shrugged. "We grew up together."
I was quiet. I didn't know what else to say. Slide Step just stared off.
"We're very different," he said, "but if I need him, I know he's got my back."
I wondered what would happen to me if something bad happened to Slide Step. One thing was certain; I'd run to the Control Center as well. Slide Step said that Red had another boy, for a long time, and that he was crazy about Red. He must have treated him differently, I said, but Slide Step told me Red always treated his boys the same. He treated his women the same way too. I couldn't understand how someone would be loyal to a man who was mean and abusive. Not even in prison, where there's little choice. It didn't make sense to me.
Drugs were smuggled into prison by way of rubber balloons. They were double wrapped if it was heroine or cocaine, and the inmates would swallow them in the visiting room. The next day, they'd shit the balloons out and clean them up before opening them.
Manley said, "You can get just about any drug you want in prison;
