Beckett
November 29th
The train to Brooklyn was pretty empty for a Friday night. The streets on my block in an unsavory corner of Williamsburg were quiet too, but for a guy shouting into his cell phone as he passed me, and a siren wailing in the distance. New York always had at least one siren wailing in the distance.
My walk-up was wedged between ten other walk-up tenements, some brick, some cement. Most with graffiti. I climbed the two flights to my floor with my bike on my shoulder. Fluorescent lights flickered and buzzed along the narrow hallway. Stopping in front of 2C, I whipped my messenger bag off my shoulder, unzipped it, and pulled out the bag of Zelda’s leftovers. Thankfully the box inside the plastic bag was intact. The food even felt a tiny bit warm.
I knocked.
Thirty seconds later, I heard floorboards creak and a lock being thrown. The door cracked open the width of its chain and sharp brown eyes peered out from a nest of wrinkles.
“Hey, Mrs. Santino,” I said. “Got something for you. Hope you’re in the mood for Italian.” I glanced at my watch. “At twenty after midnight.”
She sniffed, shut the door. The chain rattled and the door opened again, this time wide enough to snatch the bag out of my hand. Her eyes raked me up and down, her lips pursed. She sniffed again and shut the door.
I shook my head with a chuckle. “Goodnight, Mrs. Santino.”
At 2E, I unlocked the door and flipped a switch. My tiny place was bathed in ugly light from a single overhead fluorescent. I rolled the bike over the thin, industrial carpet to its corner near the bathroom.
Ten steps and I was in the kitchen. I took a swig of bottled water from the half-size fridge, and moved to the window. My Brooklyn neighborhood was groggy under the deepening night that would never go fully dark against the city lights.
Zelda was out there, across the river in Manhattan, hopefully safe in the hostel she dubbed a shithole. I sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly. I did my part. I got her there safe.
Be safe, Zelda.
I sat at the little table under the window, flooded with a sudden urge to talk. To express, as my English teacher, Mrs. Browning, in high school was always urging me.
Express how you feel, Beckett. Unlock your heart. Your words are beautiful. And they have power.
It sounded like a bunch of flowery bullshit at the time, but my teacher’s advice never left me. I wanted to believe words had power. The power to change the past. To fix what was broken. To heal. By writing them down on paper, they could work some kind of magic on the reader.
I had one reader. Mrs. J. It was the end of the month, and I hadn’t written her a letter yet. I hadn’t known what to write about until tonight.
I pulled pen and paper out of a drawer.
November 29th
Dear Mrs. J,
In high school, there was this girl named Hannah Walters. Hannah wanted to be an actress and if her asshole father hadn’t pressured her toward law school, she’d be killing it in Hollywood right now. Or maybe Broadway. She got the lead in every school play. Other kids would always be pissed at her getting all the glory, but only until opening night. Then it was obvious she’d earned it.
Senior year, the spring play at PS 241 was Rashomon. Have you ever seen it? They made a movie out of it too. Anyway, it’s a Japanese story about a samurai, his wife, and a bandit. The bandit kills the samurai and rapes the samurai’s wife. That’s one version, anyway. In another version, the wife seduces the bandit and she helps kill the samurai. In another, the samurai kills himself. Each person—the bandit, the wife and the dead samurai (through a spirit medium)—tells a different story and the audience is left to wonder which one is true.
My buddies and I decided to get drunk and crash opening night. Just to make fun of it, not to actually watch. But the play was too good. We had nothing to make fun of. My friends saved face by saying it was boring and left after the second act. I stayed to the curtain call.
Hannah Walters played the medium. She came on stage as this crazed, almost ghostly creature, writhing and beseeching the spirits until the dead samurai speaks through her, telling his story. She was dressed in white rags that glowed under the lights and her face was pale, with eyes like dark, black pits that could see into the spirit world. Her voice was a keening wail, as if it physically hurt to let the dead speak through her. I felt like I was under a spell, helpless to tear my eyes away.
After the show I told Hannah that she was the only thing worth watching on that stage. Her response was to kiss me. I think she was drunk on the success of the show or maybe high on her performance. I didn’t care. I kissed her back, and tasted the chalky whiteness of the greasepaint on her lips. It was like tasting a part of that magic she’d created.
We dated for a grand total of three months, until her dad threatened to cut off my dick with a hedge clipper if he caught me near her again. I wasn’t good enough for his daughter. Too poor. Too rough. A tall kid with shabby clothes who lived with an ailing grandfather who lacked the strength to discipline him.
Losing Hannah wasn’t a high point of my life but did I love her? Not sure. Her performance in Rashomon has stuck with me almost as much as she has. But Hannah had magic in her. I think I loved that.
I’ve been with a bunch of women since. Had sex with, I should clarify. Nothing lasting. Nothing I wanted to pursue. No one who seemed like they had magic in them too. Does that sound cheesy? Probably, but there’s so much that’s shitty in this world, when you find something that shines against all that dirt and darkness, you gravitate toward it.
I met a girl tonight.
Her first impression wasn’t magical, not by a long shot. In fact, she was a pain in the ass. But smart. All of five-foot-nothing and beautiful, with large green eyes that looked miles deep. Long black hair like silk. I had to fight the urge to touch it.
She’s leaving the city tomorrow. A job interview fell through, which sucks. But hell, she took a chance. A swing and a miss, but at least she stepped up to the plate. She’s an artist. Draws comic books. I had a million questions for her. I wanted to ask and ask, because I was sure that I could talk to Zelda for days and never run out of things to know.
Yeah, her name is Zelda. I didn’t get her last name. Because I didn’t ask that or any of those hundreds of other questions. She’s leaving town, but that’s not why I kept my mouth shut. It was because of you, Mrs. J.
See, our story is sort of like Rashomon. It has three players: you, your husband and me. The wife, the dead samurai, and the bandit who killed him. Unlike the play, our story only has one interpretation. You came home to find thieves in your house, your husband’s heart gave out, and he died. There is no other version.
I didn’t ask this girl, Zelda, to grab a coffee with me. I didn’t ask for her number. I walked her to her hostel and I let her go. After all, one question too many and she’d learn I’m a felon who did two years for armed robbery. Not the stuff of great first impressions. No magic there.
Anyway, who the hell am I to even try to start something real with a girl? You were married to Mr. J for twenty-seven years. I remember that from the DA’s report. But my friends and I—my fellow bandits—we ended it, didn’t we? I helped to end it.
The dead samurai is always dead and that doesn’t change no matter who tells the story.
I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. That will never change either.
Beckett Copeland
I read the letter over, then put it in an envelope and wrote Mrs. J on the front in my tiny, precise handwriting. Gramps used to say my lettering was a perfect imitation of a typewriter. We didn’t actually have a typewriter and couldn’t afford a computer, so I had to hand-write everything for school.
I tossed the envelope on the desk and glanced around my place, trying to see it through my parole officer’s eyes. Roy was coming over tomorrow for our monthly pow-wow. I had a few chores yet to do, so I crouched down by my album collection, stacked upright against the wall next to my desk. I used to have more but the winter had been rough for the bike messenger business, and for my employer, Apollo Courier, in particular.
I plucked out Journey’s Greatest Hits and set it on my Crosley C10 two-speed record player. Ebay said I could get $400 for it. I’d sell a kidney first.
I set the needle on the vinyl. After a crackle, “Don’t Stop Believing” filled the studio. I straightened up a few things, did some dishes and collected some dirty clothes into my laundry bag. I was done before the song ended. With a place this small, having clutter would drive me fucking nuts.
I cracked the window and smoked a cigarette while I listened to the music. It was a good album. Kind of cheesy, but I sometimes think what’s considered cheesy is actually just something put in the simplest terms.
Don’t stop believing.
That’s it. No metaphor. No poetry. Straightforward advice worth about $35 at any pawn shop. I might have to hock it, but I’d miss it.
“You’d miss having a roof over your head more,” I said, squashing my smoke out on the sill.
Roy didn’t like the smell of smoke in the apartment, so I kept the window open another few minutes. The radiator was acting up again, and soon my breath began to plume with every exhale. I shut the window and gave the radiator under it a kick. It groaned and a gust of warm air huffed out. Enough to warm my hands by for a minute, then it settled back to a trickle of heat that would be just enough to keep me from freezing my nuts off all night.
I reluctantly took off my weatherproof jacket and pants and quickly exchanged them for sweatpants and two t-shirts. I pulled on another sweatshirt, then climbed into bed and wrapped myself in the covers, waiting to feel warm. The old, cold ache shivered across my skin and settled into my gut.
I wanted a woman in bed with me.
I wondered if I should try to hook up with someone tomorrow night but brushed off the idea. The complications weren’t worth it, and like I’d told Mrs. J, pursuing something more than sex was out of the question.
But I still wanted it. I wanted to listen to the sound of someone else’s breathing beside my own. I wanted to hold a woman and have her body pressed against mine, her arms and legs wrapped around me tight, our bodies shielding each other from the cold. One person alone against winter was rough. But two people, together…
Together. A word I never used.
“Get over it,” I muttered into my cold pillow. Mrs. J’s pillow was cold too. Her bed empty. Thanks to me, she couldn’t use the word together either.
I dropped into sleep and dreamt about Hannah Walters’ wailing medium, only it wasn’t the dead samurai she channeled. It was Mr. J.
Hannah swooped across the stage, pantomiming a middle-aged-man surprised by four thieves looting his brownstone. Hannah’s hand clutched her chest as the heart attack expanded in Mr. J’s. Hannah screamed. Or maybe it was Mrs. J as she watched as her husband crumpled to the floor, the life leaving his eyes before his head touched the hardwood.
I stared at the unfolding drama, just as transfixed as I’d been watching Rashomon in high school. Unable to look away. Forced to bear witness to what I’d done.
Look and see, Hannah wailed.
Watch a man die…
…and know it happened because of you.
The door buzzed at precisely eight a.m. the next morning. I was already up and dressed, coffee brewing. A smile split Roy Goodwin’s face when I opened the door for him. He sported a big Tom Selleck mustache and dressed like a social studies teacher—lots of polyester pants and button-down shirts. Sometimes he even wore a sweater vest.
No vest this morning. He shook out of his windbreaker, snagging the Department of Corrections ID badge clipped to his shirt pocket.
I was sure some of his other parolees thought Roy was soft. Maybe the desperate ones even tried to fuck with him. That would be a mistake. Under his rounding bulk, Roy was trained and quick. A former FBI agent, he’d asked for reassignment as a PO five years ago. Said he wanted to stop chasing down criminals and start helping them. From where I was standing, he was good at his job.
“How you been, Beckett?” Roy asked, tucking his clipboard under an arm and rubbing his hands together.
“Can’t complain,” I said. “How’s Mary?”
“She’s wonderful. Sends her regards.”
“Tell her hi for me,” I said. “Coffee?”
“Please,” Roy said. “Winter’s going to be a bitch, I can tell already.” He glanced around my tiny, barebones apartment. “I’m going to get started while you whip me up a mug, yeah? One cream, no sugar.”
“Got it.”
I fixed his coffee while he went through the bathroom, checking the shower, the hamper, the drawers under the sink and the medicine cabinet. He was thorough, but respectful, which I appreciated. My first PO had been an asshole who used to tear my place apart like he was doing a search and seizure for a cop show on TV. I had him only a month and then got transferred to Roy. I never knew why, but I sure as hell didn’t complain about it.
Roy came out of the bathroom making notes on his clipboard. He tucked it back under his arm and went down on hands and knees to check under my bed. He searched the two cushions on the couch, under the coffee table and inside its one drawer. Then, like a reward, his fingers walked through my album collection. He sat back on his heels, Chicago’s Chicago 17 in his hands.
“Wow. Now that’s a find.” He glanced up at me. “Don’t tell me someone dumped this beauty at a sidewalk sale?”
“That one was actually part of Gramps’ collection,” I said. “No idea how or why he got it. Frank Sinatra was more his jam. You want me to play it?”
“Does a bear shit in the woods?”
Roy handed me the album, and I set the needle while he made a few more notes on his clipboard. “I’ll take that coffee now,” he said, smiling at me through his mustache while “You’re The Inspiration” filled my apartment.
I felt, for one strange second, like I was in one of those ‘80s family sitcoms where the dad is always understanding no matter how bad the son fucks up, and there’s always a happy ending.
You’re losing it, Copeland, I thought. It’s the song and Roy’s Tom Selleck mustache.
The thought made me smile. Roy had gone easy on me with his search, as usual, although I made it pretty easy on him. I had no pictures on the wall to hide baggies of drugs behind, no vases to stash a weapon in, no decorative shit of any kind.
Ray sat on the tiny couch facing the small, on-its-last-legs flat-screen TV perched on two milk crates. I took the ratty chair to his left. The place was so small I could reach behind me and almost touch the bed. Roy set his coffee on the scratched wooden coffee table, still smiling. But behind his eyes I could see he was studying me.
“You clean?” he asked, almost apologetically.
“Does a bear shit in the woods?” I said, and that made him laugh.
Drug testing wasn’t part of my parole deal unless Roy suspected something, but he could do a spot check whenever he wanted. He asked every month if I was clean and I told the truth. Roy could sniff a lie the way most people could wake up and smell the coffee.
And besides, drugs were never my problem. Being desperate for a life other than the one Gramps and I had been stuck with was my problem. Seeking that different life at the expense of someone else had also been my problem. Mr. J dying in front of me and two years at Otisville Correctional had cured me of seeking.
“How’s work at Apollo?” Roy asked, setting his clipboard on his knee.
“Slow,” I said. His face crumpled in concern and I added quickly, “But December usually picks up. There’s a ton of last minute crosstown deliveries around the holidays. And lots of takeout. People don’t want to brave the cold on their lunch breaks.”
“I heard Uber was cutting into the messenger business.”
“I’m doing okay, Roy.”
Roy made a note on his clipboard. “And Giovanni’s?”
“Fine.”
“Rent is due in two days.” He took a slow sip of his coffee, his eyes on me over the mug. “You good?”
He was psychic, this guy, I swear. But no point in lying to him. “I’m a little short, but I’ve got it covered.”
“How?” he asked, his voice soft.
My throat tightened. Roy was as old as my father…if my father was still alive and hadn’t drunk himself into an early grave already. He and my mother had taken off when I was eight. They could both be dead for all I knew. Or cared.
“Same legal way I always do,” I said.
Roy leaned back on the couch.
“I still have one more shift at Giovanni’s tonight,” I said. “I can pull it out.”
I didn’t add that the chances of making eighty dollars bussing tables for one night was a long shot of epic proportions. But because it was Roy, I didn’t have to.
“It’s against regulations,” he said slowly. “I’m not supposed to even offer—”
“So don’t,” I said and forced a smile to blunt the edge off my voice. “I’m fine, Roy. I’ll survive. I always do.”
Selling my Journey album would get me halfway there. Giving blood would make up the rest. Weird how the two felt almost the same.
Roy looked like he was going to argue, then let it slide. “All right, so back to business. Have you had any contact with Mr. Carlyle, Mr. Lorens, or Mr. Nash?”
“No,” I said. Also the truth. None of the other guys who were there for the robbery had tried to contact me and I sure as shit wasn’t going to seek them out.
“Good.”
“I thought Nash was sent back to Rikers,” I said.
Roy’s brows came together. “And how did you hear that?”
“Darlene,” I said. “She’s better than a gossip rag when it comes to this shit.”
“Be careful with her,” Roy said. “Junkies are like black holes. They suck everyone into their darkness sooner or later. I’d hate to see you get mixed up with her or her dealer.”
“She doesn’t have a dealer,” I said. “She’s been clean for months.” I didn’t add that Darlene Montgomery, for all her fucked up-ness, was a friend. A good friend. I didn’t make a habit of kicking friends to the curb because they’d made some mistakes. I’d made a mistake. A huge one. And Darlene and our small gang of friends didn’t judge me for it. The least I could do was return the favor.
Roy made a note and asked me a few more standard parole check-in questions, and then set his clipboard down for good.
“So what’s new, Beckett? Tell me something good.”
I met a girl…
“Not much to report,” I said.
“Are you seeing anyone?”
Fuck, how does he do that? I turned my gaze away from Roy’s man-to-man-we’re-chums-shooting-the-shit smile.
“Nah, no one special. And besides, convicts are usually swipe left material in most dating scenarios.”
“Swipe left…?”
“It’s a dating app thing.” I waved my hand. “Never mind. Stupid joke.”
Roy nodded and asked his next question with a mix of hope and reluctance. “Doing anything fun for the holidays?”
“Yeah, Roy. I’m flying to Jamaica,” I said. “Going to lie on a beach and drink rum and not come back until spring.” I shot him a crooked smile. “Is it too late to put in my request?”
His chuckle sounded heavy. “A tad too late.”
I’d completed one year of parole with two to go. Until then, I couldn’t so much as leave New York state without the Board’s approval and then only with a thirty-day lead-time and recommendation from Roy. Leaving the country wasn’t even an option.
“So I was thinking…” Roy began slowly, leaning over his knees, fingers steepled. “My sainted wife makes a mean Christmas ham. She does it up with pineapple slices. You know, the kind with maraschino cherries in the middle? And she decorates with those little spikes of cloves in the most exact pattern you’ve ever seen.” He knocked my knee with his hand. “I’d almost have to take it as an insult to her if you refuse to give it a try this year.”
He said it lightly enough. Same as he did last year. My grandfather died a month after my foray into the criminal underworld, and now the Copeland family tree consisted of me, myself, and I. I hated Roy knowing that. Hated my life was an open file for him to read. But it was a consequence of being charged with a Class C felony. My past was available to anyone who wanted to know. I was a convict. Even after I was done with parole in two more years, it would follow me forever.
That’s the price you pay…
I smiled wanly at Roy. “Maybe I’ll stop by.”
I may as well have said, “Not on your life,” and we both knew it. Since my parents bailed on me, I didn’t make a habit out of getting too close to people. Roy was my parole officer. Once I finished probation, he’d vanish out of my life too. No sense in complicating things.
Roy held my gaze for a moment, and I didn’t blink. Ten seconds of heavy silence, and he gave in, slapped his hands on his knees. “Okay, Beckett. But it’ll break Mary’s heart.”
He smiled gently and we stood up together. He headed for the door while I took the three steps to my little desk under the window. I grabbed the envelope marked Mrs. J and handed it to Roy.
“See that she gets this, yeah?”
Roy’s smile was soft. “Of course.” He knew the drill. I’d been writing Mrs. J letters, one a month, since prison. Thirty-seven so far. The one in Roy’s hand was thirty-eight.
“Any, uh…?” I cleared my throat, dragged my gaze over the floor. “Anything from Mrs. J? Any word?”
“No,” Roy said quietly.
I nodded. “She probably just throws them in the trash without reading. I don’t blame her, but…”
My words trailed as Roy opened the letter and read what I’d written. He had to. He couldn’t give the wife of the man we killed anything without checking it first. The lack of privacy—again—cut me like a knife.
Roy looked up at me, a strange smile on his face. “Zelda. Like Fitzgerald’s wife.”
“That’s exactly what I said,” I replied brightly before I remembered not to give it away.
Our eyes met again with the moment growing thick with all Roy wanted to tell me: about guilt’s poisonous erosion of everything I’d worked to build after prison. I could hear his unspoken plea that I forgive myself, and I could taste the denial I would shoot him down with. I wasn’t charged with murder or manslaughter when Mr. J died because he’d had a bad ticker to begin with. But that was a technicality in my book. His poor health didn’t mean shit to me.
I didn’t say that to Roy. We’d said it all before. In another life, I could’ve loved Roy Goodwin. I could have spent holidays with him and his sainted wife, eating pineapple-and-maraschino studded ham. But he was wrong about forgiveness. Mr. J was dead and the only person who could forgive me was his wife.
At the door Roy drew on his jacket and wagged his finger in my face. “Tell that landlord of yours to fix that damn radiator already, capisce? It’s cold in here.”
“Fix it?” I said with a dry grin to make him feel better. “I set it low on purpose. Keeps me sharp.”
“Ha! Sure you do.”
Roy reached up with the hand not holding my letter to Mrs. J and patted my cheek. Exactly the way Gramps used to do. It was too personal an action for a PO to take with his parolee, but he did it and I let him. His hand was warm. Fatherly.
I pulled away.
“You take care, Beckett. Call if you need anything, and I’ll see you next month.”
I nodded, grateful he didn’t say—or offer—anything more, and shut the door behind him.
I took off the Chicago and put on Frank Sinatra. I set the needle to the third track. “My Way” filled my studio.
It was Gramps’ favorite.