A CO named Moffitt sat outside the library door. Ivy thought she smelled booze on his breath, but of course that was impossible.
“I just go in?” she said.
Moffitt looked up at her. He had a patchy little mustache. All the male guards she’d seen so far had mustaches. What was that all about?
“They don’t bite,” Moffitt said.
Ivy walked through the door.
“ ’Cept when they do,” he added in a low voice, probably to himself; but Ivy caught it.
“Be back in an hour,” Taneesha called after her.
The library was small and very bright: fluorescent lights, cement-block walls, cement floor, metal shelves half-full of dilapidated books, mostly paperbacks. In the center of the room stood a rectangular steel table, bolted to the floor. On card-table chairs around it sat four men in tan jumpsuits, one at the far end, one on the left side, two on the right, spaced about as far from each other as they could be.
“Hi,” Ivy said. “I’m Ivy, the new writing teacher.”
They looked at her; but not in the eye. A no-no.
Ivy sat down in the empty chair at the near end of the table.
“Maybe it would help if you all introduce yourselves,” she said.
Silence.
Then the man on the left—red-brown skin, tattooed arms, slicked-back oily hair—said, “Introduce? I know these guys already, way too much.”
One of the men on the right—big, black, gap-toothed—laughed. The man next to him—slight, white, balding—glanced quickly around, then snickered. How could things go wrong so fast?
Then the man at the end, black, thin-faced, close-trimmed gray goatee, sitting up very straight, gaze directed at Ivy’s forehead, said, “El-Hassam.”
“Nice to meet you,” Ivy said. “What’s your first name?”
El-Hassam shook his head, a controlled, deliberate movement; there was even something regal about it. “No need for first names here,” he said.
The tattooed man on the left leaned forward. His forearms were huge, bulging with cords of muscle. “You now entering a last-name zone.”
“Seidel,” said Ivy. “And yours?”
He blinked. “Morales,” he said.
“Perkins,” said the big man. He had a deep, rumbly voice.
“Balaban,” said the little white guy. His voice was scratchy.
“But you can call him Felix,” Morales said.
Balaban looked down, almost hanging his head.
“The exception,” El-Hassam said, “that proves the rule.”
“What the hell’s that mean?” said Morales. “Makes no sense.”
“Ask Ms. Seidel,” said El-Hassam.
What the hell did it mean? Her very first chance to actually do something with this job—and at that moment she realized she really wanted to do something with it, in fact was tremendously excited on the inside—and she was about to blow it. Then, like a miracle, came a memory fragment from some long-gone pedant boyfriend, of whom there’d been too many.
“It’s an old saying,” Ivy said, “from back when proves meant ‘tests.’ So it means the exception that tests the rule, the hard case that tells whether the rule is right or not.”
Silence. They were all looking at her, although none in the eye. Then Perkins laughed, deep and rumbling. “That’s Felix,” he said.
“The hard case,” said Morales.
Then they were all laughing, Ivy, too; all laughing except for Felix, but even he had a smile on his face, if a little uncertain. The second group laughing jag that had enveloped her since she’d been inside. A big surprise.
Moffitt, the CO, leaned around the corner and glanced into the room. El-Hassam stopped laughing. The stoppage spread quickly, too.
Silence.
“Proves means ‘tests,’” El-Hassam said.
“You knew that, Felix?” said Morales.
Felix shook his head.
“Shit, man,” said Morales, “you should get yourself a refund.”
“Refund?” said Felix.
“On your college degree,” said Morales. He turned to Ivy. “Felix here went to Harvard U-ni-ver-si-ty.”
“No,” said Felix.
A vein throbbed in Morales’s right arm, distorting the tattooed L in LATIN KINGS. “You calling me a liar, Felix?” His tone was light, almost friendly.
“Oh, no, no, no, no,” said Felix. “Just that it was actually Cornell.”
“ ’Cause I don’t tell no lies,” Morales said. “Ain’t that right, Felix?”
Felix nodded.
“Felix here went to Harvard U-ni-ver-si-ty,” Morales said.
A long silence. Then Felix nodded again, very slightly, but he did.
“Lots of great writers didn’t go to college at all,” Ivy said. A remark that didn’t really follow, but she wanted to change the direction things were going and couldn’t think of anything else.
“For instance?” said El-Hassam.
“Shakespeare,” Ivy said.
“That true?” said Morales. “Shakespeare didn’t go to no college?”
Ivy nodded.
“You know Shakespeare?” Perkins said.
“Some,” said Ivy.
“Let’s hear,” Perkins said.
“You mean know by heart?” said Ivy.
“Yeah,” said Perkins. “Know.”
Shakespeare, by heart. She’d taken a Shakespeare course, but all the way back in sophomore year, and it had been an 8:30 A.M. class, so—
“‘Tomorrow,’” she suddenly heard herself saying.
“…and tomorrow and tomorrow.
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,”
Oh God, could she have chosen worse?
“To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.”
It got quiet, so quiet Ivy could hear Moffitt burping outside the door.
Perkins leaned back in his chair. “Damn,” he said.
“Dude must have spent time inside,” Morales said.
“I don’t think they know much about his life,” Ivy said.
“Spent time inside, take my word for it,” said Morales. “What about Hitler?”
“Hitler?” said Ivy.
“He was a writer,” Morales said. “I read his book. He go to college?”
“I don’t know,” Ivy said.
“Knew a lot of shit, man,” Morales said. “Hitler. It’s all in the book.”
“He started World War Two,” said El-Hassam. “A hundred million people died.”
“So?” said Morales. “Whose fault is that?”
Another silence. The vein in Morales’s arm jumped again.
“What come after ‘dusty death’?” said Perkins.
“The next line?” Ivy said. “I’ve forgotten.” In truth, she hadn’t. Next came the whole tale-told-by-an-idiot part, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Way too depressing. “Anyway, aren’t we supposed to be writing?”
“You got the paper and the pencils?” said Morales.
“Paper and pencils?”
“You spose to bring them,” said Morales. “How else we gonna write?”
No pens. Goddamn Joel. “My mistake,” Ivy said. She started to get up.
“Hey,” said Morales. “Where you goin’?”
“I’ll see if Mr. Moffitt can help out.”
Perkins laughed his rumbly laugh. “Mister Moffitt?”
El-Hassam reached into his pocket, pulled out a pen; a ballpoint, same make of Bic as the two confiscated from Ivy’s purse. “We could take turns with this,” he said.
Ivy sat down. El-Hassam had a pen. Pens were forbidden. Therefore? Should she call Moffitt in? Would there be any teaching after that? No. Gig over. Plus El-Hassam’s pen was just a pen, unsharpened, unweaponized. And El-Hassam had such a calm air about him, almost like a spiritual leader. She was aware of their gazes on her. “What about paper?” she said.
Morales got up, picked a random book off the shelves, tore out one of the blank end pages.
“We’ll try one of those chain poems,” El-Hassam said.
“Chain poems?” said Ivy.
“Joel had us doing chain poems,” said El-Hassam. “You know Joel?”
Ivy nodded.
“He’s a fag, right?” said Morales.
This was a word Ivy would never use, except maybe coming from the mouth of some beyond-the-pale character in one of her stories. She had a lot of gay friends, had marched in the Gay Pride parade one year, believed in gay marriage.
“Right,” she said. And immediately felt like a criminal herself. It wasn’t all bad.
El-Hassam pushed the pen and paper in front of Perkins. “You start,” he said.
Perkins hunched over the blank page, stuck his tongue between his lips. The pen—like a toothpick in his huge hand—hovered over the paper, then came down and began moving quickly. In a minute or two he was done, shoved the page across the table to Morales. Why not Felix, Ivy thought, who was beside him?
Morales didn’t even read what Perkins had written. He closed his eyes tight, held on to the pen tight, just sat there, eyelids twitching a little. No one got impatient: El-Hassam closed his eyes, too, went completely still; Perkins’s eyes glazed over; only Felix Balaban seemed wakeful, his eyes darting around. They met Ivy’s, shifted quickly away, then came back. Should she say she knew who he was, mention the Danny Weinberg connection?
At that moment, Morales groaned, opened his eyes, started writing. He wrote more slowly than Perkins and in much bigger letters. The more he wrote, the more his body came alive, feet tapping, head bobbing, and that pulse, going wild in his forearm.
“A little time factor,” Felix said.
Morales’s pencil came to an abrupt halt. El-Hassam opened his eyes, and Perkins’s unglazed.
Morales stared right at Felix. “What you say, amigo?”
Felix looked down, mumbled something about time that Ivy didn’t catch.
“I don’ hear you,” Morales said.
“It’s nothing,” Felix said. “Nothing at all. Sorry.”
“Sorry?” said Morales.
Felix nodded.
Morales glanced at El-Hassam and Perkins. “He sorry.”
“Then that’s settled,” Ivy said. “Let’s get back to work.”
Perkins stifled a laugh. El-Hassam gave her a look, one elegant eyebrow raised. “Yes,” he said.
Morales gazed down at the paper. “Lost my fuckin’ concentration,” he said, and passed it to El-Hassam. El-Hassam sent it on to Felix.
“I really don’t have anything today,” Felix said.
“Felix don’ have nothin’ today,” Morales said.
The page went back to El-Hassam. He read what was already there, then started writing. There was a lot of pausing, a lot of scratching out.
“Gonna be real baaaaaaad if I’m blocked,” Morales said.
“I’m sure that’s not the case,” Felix said.
El-Hassam kept writing. Ivy remembered a documentary she’d seen about the Tuareg, the blue men of the desert. El-Hassam’s hands reminded her of those people. For a moment they could have been somewhere else, a mud village in the Sahara or a caravan stop. Then Moffitt was in the doorway.
“Time’s up,” he said.
Ivy glanced at El-Hassam. The pen was gone.
The men rose, filed out, Morales, Perkins, Felix, and El-Hassam last. He handed Ivy the paper. “Needs a title,” he said.
“We’ll do that next week,” Ivy said. “See you then.”
El-Hassam was about to say something, but Moffitt beat him to it. “Unless they all get pardoned,” he said.
Taneesha led her out: down a wide corridor, across the open space to the gate, where new guards were on duty. They shone the infrared torch on the back of her hand. VISITOR showed up in blue and they returned her license, keys, pens, cell phone.
“Coming back?” Taneesha said.
“Of course,” said Ivy, surprised.
“Lots don’t,” said Taneesha.
Ivy found her own way out of the administration building, out into the sunshine. All at once, she felt immensely powerful, completely free of worry and striving, at the tip-top of life. She crossed the street, walked up to a little park at the top of the hill. From there, she could look down, over the prison, across a broad golden flatland all the way to Lake Champlain, sparkling blue in the distance. That reminded her of the Great Salt Lake, which she had never actually seen, and those few lines liked by The New Yorker. She was going to get better than that, way better.
Ivy leaned against a tree, read the chain poem. None of them could spell at all, and El-Hassam was the worst. Many of Morales’s letters were backwards and so were some of Perkins’s. Also Perkins did a lot of capitalizing.
Corrected for spelling and those backwards letters, Perkins had written:
Tomorrow and tomorrow and Tomorrow
Creeps in this Petty Pace from day to day
To the Last syllable of recorded Time
And All our yesterdays Have lighted Fools
The way to Dusty Death.
Somehow memorizing the whole thing just from hearing her say it once.
Morales:
I had wheels man! Bright orange Camaro! like a
firebomb with a 427! and mag rims me and my
homey stole off a jew in Trenton! Zoom! Took two
hos on a cookout! Carmen and the one with the tits!
That one do what I want all the way home! Ooooo! Not
all the way, cause of we getting wrecked by this
eighteen-wheeler off of exit 79!
And he’d signed it, Hector Luis Morales, in big letters with lots of flourishes, not unlike John Hancock except for the backwards letters.
And El-Hassam:
Last night a man dream of a knife in a drawer
Very sharp knife ground sharp sharp on the stone
With a twelve inch blade gently curve and a handle
Made of mother pearl
Sharp sharp for sticking in like nothings there
No sound or friction nothing
Last night a knife in the drawer
The very very sharp sharp knife
Dream of a man.
Ivy drove home. She stopped shaking somewhere on the Northway.