CHAPTER 21

 

Wouldn’t you know it? I start thinking about Donna again and what happens! What happens is that Mr. Bliss, one of the guards who worked the visiting room, sent a runner to the barber shop with a pass for me. I had a visitor.

Donna.

For a minute, I thought about refusing the visit. A stronger man would’ve. That wasn’t me.

On the way up to the front, all kinds of weird things were going through my mind.

None of which...as it turned out...were even remotely close to reality.

“Jake,” she said, once I sat in the chair across from her. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. I didn’t even want to blink for fear that this was all an apparition, that I’d wake up in my bunk holding my johnson with sweat pouring into my eyes.

She looked so fine. Women always look fine when you’ve been inside for a while. Even the dogs look like...cute dogs. All you see is a pussy and all pussies look beautiful. I swear, if the ugliest woman in the world sat across from me when I’d been locked up for a while, the only thing that would be on my mind would be how to cop a peek up her dress.

But Donna was gorgeous no matter where you saw her. I remember the first time I saw her without any makeup on and without thinking, I said, “You don’t have any eyes!” She didn’t. Well, at least not the eyes I was used to. Without mascara and the other goop she looked...Swedish. That’s what I told her, after the shock of seeing her eyes naked had passed. “You look Swedish,” I said, the master of originality. “Like Ingmar Bergman or something.”

She had on her eye makeup today. Her hair was wild in that new way girls were doing it—”scrunched,” I think they called it—and she had on a lemon-yellow dress that was working as hard as it could to keep her boobs from falling out of it. She was getting dirty looks from all the other women on her side of the chairs. Looks from the guys on my side too, and they were dirty looks too, only a different kind of dirty. All of a sudden, I wanted to fight every swinging dick in the room while at the same time feeling so damned juiced with pride because of the drop-dead movie star that came to see me, I couldn’t see straight. I knew every man jack in that visiting room was going to be stroking the bald man that night in their cell...and I knew who every damn one of them was going to be picturing.

She looked like she’d gained a little weight, too, which was a good thing. Donna was always on some stupid diet or the other, always eating ex-lax chunks like they were Almond Joys, or sticking her finger down her throat. She could throw up and never make a sound. Just a little fillip! and it was gone. I watched her do it dozens of times and I swear her stomach never even moved.

I was always on her to gain some weight. Crack on her every chance I got. She subscribed to Weight Watchers Magazine and when it came in the mail, I’d bring it in from the mailbox and announce, “You got your Hog Digest. You make the centerfold this month?” She’d naturally get mad and I’d ask what the hell did she get stuff like that for.

“You look fantastic, babe. I always said you were too skinny.”

She looked at me and got this funny look on her face.

“Well...that’s why I came to see you, Jake.”

About her weight? Shit, it looked good!

“I’m going have a baby, Jake.”

I just sat there, a goofy grin spreading all over my entire face. I couldn’t stop it. The worse I felt inside, as what she was saying sank in, the wider my grin got.

“You’re pregnant?”

Yes, she was. Twins. She’d already had one of those ultrasounds. Two boys. You could see their penises, she said. “You wanna see?” She reached for the envelope they’d let her bring in with her.

“That’s all right,” I said, waving my hand to stop her. That was the last thing I wanted to see. Ever.

“So,” I said finally, after a long silence. “Why didn’t you just write me a letter?”

“Oh, Jake!” She reached over, put her hand on my knee. I pushed it away. I wanted to just get up, leave, but I didn’t.

“I’m getting married. Next Tuesday. I just...” She stopped, dabbed at her eyes with a Kleenex she must’ve had ready in her hand. “I just thought I should tell you in person. I owe you that much. We—”

I stood up, put up my hand like a traffic cop.

“There is no we, Donna.” It was like that time at Alexander’s. I knew I should say something memorable, something that would just reach up and bite her ass every time she thought about it, but I just couldn’t think of a damn thing. I stood there and looked down at her and I saw the hack up at the podium start to come over like he thought there was going to be trouble.

“Bye, Donna,” I said. I turned and walked toward the turnkey who let inmates in and out for their visits.