"Don't worry about me. I'm solid, man." He gripped the edge of the bunk and shuddered as though he had malaria. "Did anybody make you?"
"I don't think so. I've been out of New Orleans too long now."
"Anybody make you, get in your face, tell them we're tight."
"All right, Tony."
"There's guys in here who'll do an ex-cop, Dave. That's not a shuck."
"I think you just figured out Nate Baxter."
"Yeah, well, I'm going to square it with that cat. The word is he's getting freebies from French Quarter street whores. I know one who's got AIDS. I'm going to fix it so she gets in the sack with him."
Then he bent over and squeezed his palm across the back of his neck and said, "Oh man, the tiger's got me."
I stood him up and walked him by the arm down to the shower. Inmates lounging in the open doors of their cells or sitting on the big water pipe against the corridor wall looked at him with the curiosity and reverence of their kind—prisoners in a parish or city jail—when they were in the actual proximity of a mainline con or Mafia don. Some rose to their feet, offered to help, made an extravagant show of sympathy.
"He just got hold of some bad food," I said.
"Yeah, it's rotten, Tony," one man said.
"A roach crawled out of the grits one time, man. That's no shit," another said.
"We got a stinger and some canned goods. You're welcome to it, Tony," a third said.
Tony stood naked under the shower with his hands propped against the tiles. The water boiled his scalp white and sluiced over his olive skin and the knotted muscles in his back. In one pale buttock was a puckered red scar just above the colon. He held his face into the rush of hot water and opened and closed his small mouth like a guppy. When he turned off the faucets he breathed deeply through his nose, as though he were inhaling the morning air, and wiped his face slick with his palm.
"That's a little better," he said.
Two men farther down the shower were staring at his phallus.
"You guys got a problem with your gender or something?" he said.
"Sorry, Tony. We don't mean anything," one man said.
"Then act decent," he said.
"Sure, Tony. Everybody's glad to have you here. No, I mean, we're sorry you're busted but—"
"Get out of here," Tony said.
"Sure, anything you want. We—" Then the man lost his words, and he and his friend walked quickly out of the shower with their towels wrapped around their hips.
"That's what nobody understands about a jail. It's full of degenerates," Tony sai
d.
I walked with him back to our cell. Through the corridor windows I could see downtown New Orleans and the glow of the city against the clouds. He put on his slacks and shirt and lay down barefoot on the bunk across from me. He folded his arm behind his head. Water dripped out of his hair onto the striped mattress.
"I'm supposed to take Paul to a soccer game tomorrow afternoon," he said.
"He'll understand," I said.
"That's not the way it works with kids. You're either there for them or you're not there."
He let out a long breath and stared at the ceiling. Somebody down the corridor shouted, "Lockup, five minutes."
"How do I get out of it, man?" he said.