july 25-30
TRANSCRIPT
ISSUE06.10
WORDS+IMAGESM U S E I S T H E Q U A R T E R L Y J O U R N A L P U B L I S H E D B Y T H E L I T
MUSE IS THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL PUBLISHED BY THE LIT
ARTCRAFT BUILDING 2570 SUPERIOR AVENUE SUITE 203 CLEVELAND, OHIO 44114
WWW.THE-LIT.ORG
NONPROFIT ORG.US POSTAGE
PAIDPERMIT #4248
CLEVELAND, OH
9 771942 275009
07
ISSN 1942-275X
P R E S E N T E D B Y
A writing workshop for students entering grades 10, 11, and 12www.hb.edu/young_writers
JULY 25-30
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Founded in 1987 as Ohio Writer, MUSE is the quarterly journal published by The LIT, a nonprofit literary arts organization. No part of this journal may be reproduced without written consent of the publisher.
JUDITH MANSOUREditor/[email protected]
TIM LACHINADesign [email protected]
DAVID MEGENHARDTManaging [email protected]
RAY MCNIECEPoetry [email protected]
ROB JACKSONFiction [email protected]
ALENK A BANCOArt [email protected]
BONNIE JACOBSONNIN ANDREWSContributing [email protected]
THELITCLEVELAND’S LITERARY CENTER
ARTCRAFT BUILDING 2570 SUPERIOR AVENUE SUITE 203 CLEVELAND, OHIO 44114
216 694.0000 WWW.THE-LIT.ORG
MUSE IS THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL PUBLISHED BY THE LIT
SUBMISSIONS(Content evident) may be sent electronically to [email protected]. We prefer electronic sub-missions. MUSE publishes all genres of creative writ-ing — including but not limited to poetry, fiction, essay, memoir, humor, lyrics, and drama. Prefer-ence is given Ohio-based authors.
V O L U M E 3 , I S S U E 2 J U N 2 0 1 0
We’ve all been there: Trapped, imprisoned. Some by bars. Some by substance. Some by people. Imprisoned is a bad place. It strips us of humanity, creativity, altruism, self-love. Words, music, and images—art—can be a way out, though.
In March, I met with some friends who have begun a new nonprofit organization called Jail Guitar Doors. Yep, the same name as the song by the Clash, written for guitarist Wayne Kramer of the MC5 during his prison stay in the 1980s. Founded by Wayne and Margaret Kramer, and Billy Bragg, Jail Guitar Doors gets guitars to prison inmates so that those who are inclined have a creative release—one that doesn’t involve drugs, violence, or other bad behavior. They have been met by turns, with amazing receptivity and support, as well as with hostility and resistance. MUSE is receptive.
This group of friends inspired us to theme this issue of MUSE, as well as each of the coming issues. We solicited words and images on imprisonment, and what is printed in the following pages gripped me at my core. It’s dark. Important. It repre-sents a turning point for us: we want MUSE to make a differ-ence—a difference in literature and the arts, a difference in the way people think, a difference in the way they write. The way they live.
Below is an open call for words and images crafted to the themes listed. Help us out. Send original and unpublished fiction, poetry, prose, letters, essays, and images to us. We want to know how each of these themes inspires you. We want these themes to be your muse.
Also, I can’t let an issue go by without saying congratulations to a few of our area’s finest writers. Congratulations to 2008 Writers & Their Friends Honorees Phil Metres and David Giffels, respectively, for their 2010 Cleveland Arts Prize awards for Emerging and Mid-Career Artists, and to Henry Adams for Lifetime Achievement, all in the area of Literature. Kudos to fellow 2008 W & TF Honoree James Renner, whose breakout novel The Man From Primrose Lane (and a yet unfinished second novel) has been picked up by Sarah Crichton Books. Well deserved accolades for all.
JUDITH
MUSE 2010 ThemesSeptember: DramaDecember: The Other
MUSE 2011 ThemesMarch: MUSE Literary Competition WinnersJune: MotelsSeptember: On the CouchDecember: In the Mail
JAIL GUITAR DOORS IMAGES BY PROJECT NOISE FOUNDATION
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Founded in 1987 as Ohio Writer, MUSE is the quarterly journal published by The LIT, a nonprofit literary arts organization. No part of this journal may be reproduced without written consent of the publisher.
JUDITH MANSOUREditor/[email protected]
TIM LACHINADesign [email protected]
DAVID MEGENHARDTManaging [email protected]
RAY MCNIECEPoetry [email protected]
ROB JACKSONFiction [email protected]
ALENK A BANCOArt [email protected]
BONNIE JACOBSONNIN ANDREWSContributing [email protected]
THELITCLEVELAND’S LITERARY CENTER
ARTCRAFT BUILDING 2570 SUPERIOR AVENUE SUITE 203 CLEVELAND, OHIO 44114
216 694.0000 WWW.THE-LIT.ORG
MUSE IS THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL PUBLISHED BY THE LIT
SUBMISSIONS(Content evident) may be sent electronically to [email protected]. We prefer electronic sub-missions. MUSE publishes all genres of creative writ-ing — including but not limited to poetry, fiction, essay, memoir, humor, lyrics, and drama. Prefer-ence is given Ohio-based authors.
V O L U M E 3 , I S S U E 2 J U N 2 0 1 0
We’ve all been there: Trapped, imprisoned. Some by bars. Some by substance. Some by people. Imprisoned is a bad place. It strips us of humanity, creativity, altruism, self-love. Words, music, and images—art—can be a way out, though.
In March, I met with some friends who have begun a new nonprofit organization called Jail Guitar Doors. Yep, the same name as the song by the Clash, written for guitarist Wayne Kramer of the MC5 during his prison stay in the 1980s. Founded by Wayne and Margaret Kramer, and Billy Bragg, Jail Guitar Doors gets guitars to prison inmates so that those who are inclined have a creative release—one that doesn’t involve drugs, violence, or other bad behavior. They have been met by turns, with amazing receptivity and support, as well as with hostility and resistance. MUSE is receptive.
This group of friends inspired us to theme this issue of MUSE, as well as each of the coming issues. We solicited words and images on imprisonment, and what is printed in the following pages gripped me at my core. It’s dark. Important. It repre-sents a turning point for us: we want MUSE to make a differ-ence—a difference in literature and the arts, a difference in the way people think, a difference in the way they write. The way they live.
Below is an open call for words and images crafted to the themes listed. Help us out. Send original and unpublished fiction, poetry, prose, letters, essays, and images to us. We want to know how each of these themes inspires you. We want these themes to be your muse.
Also, I can’t let an issue go by without saying congratulations to a few of our area’s finest writers. Congratulations to 2008 Writers & Their Friends Honorees Phil Metres and David Giffels, respectively, for their 2010 Cleveland Arts Prize awards for Emerging and Mid-Career Artists, and to Henry Adams for Lifetime Achievement, all in the area of Literature. Kudos to fellow 2008 W & TF Honoree James Renner, whose breakout novel The Man From Primrose Lane (and a yet unfinished second novel) has been picked up by Sarah Crichton Books. Well deserved accolades for all.
JUDITH
MUSE 2010 ThemesSeptember: DramaDecember: The Other
MUSE 2011 ThemesMarch: MUSE Literary Competition WinnersJune: MotelsSeptember: On the CouchDecember: In the Mail
JAIL GUITAR DOORS IMAGES BY PROJECT NOISE FOUNDATION
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10 THE NARCOTIC FARM WAYNE KRAMER
11 EVEN THE GUITARKAREN SCHUBERT
12 FINAL MEAL REQUESTS PATRICIA AVERBACH
14 IMPRISONMENT: A DOMESTIC BOP DOUGLAS “SAGE” HOSTON
16 CRIM LAW, ROBERT P. LAWRY
20 THIS IS NOT A DREAM ANGELA CONSOLO MANKIEWICZ
21 FITZGERALD’S WAKE, KEN BINDAS; ROOMS, MARINA VLADOVA
22 1663, PRISONER OF WAR, & HOW TO FIGHTNIN ANDREWS
23 THE LONELIEST MAN IN THE WORLD ROBERT J. FLANAGAN
26 HAPPY ENDING ABBY NAPOLI
27 CHAPTER 11: SLEEPING IN SCOTT LAX
NIN ANDREWS is the editor of a book of
translations of the French poet Henri Mi-
chaux entitled Someone Wants to Steal My
Name from Cleveland State University Press.
She is also the author of several books includ-
ing The Book of Orgasms, Why They Grow
Wings, Midlife Crisis with Dick and Jane,
Sleeping with Houdini, and Dear Professor, Do
You Live in a Vacuum. Her book, Southern
Comfort, was published by CavanKerry Press
in 2009 and was a finalist for the 2010 Paterson
Poetry Prize.
PATRICIA AVERBACH, a Cleveland native,
is the former director and current vice presi-
dent of the Chautauqua Writers Center. She
has previously had prose and poetry published
in Lilith and Margie. Her first novel, Painting
Bridges, should be completed before the end
of the year. Pat’s avatar, Keykey Underwood,
occasionally teaches creative writing in the
3D virtual world called Second Life.
By day KEN BINDAS works as professor and
chair of the History department at Kent State
University, but his evenings are spent talking
with Marina about Hawthorne, Whitman,
Fitzgerald, and so many others and what they
write and what that means and how to make
sense of it all. They share a house with her two
girls-Sadie and Faye-who make them laugh
and think.
Author of the novel Maggot (Warner Books)
and the story collections Naked to Naked Goes
(Scribner) and Loving Power, (Bottom Dog)
ROBERT FLANAGAN has fiction in a vari-
ous anthologies, including The Norton Book
of American Short Stories and Bar Stories.
Born in Toledo, Ohio, Flanagan worked as a
dishwasher, night watchman and janitor,
sparred in enough gyms to earn two detached
retinas, served in the U.S. Marine Corps re-
serve, and graduated from the Universities of
Toledo and Chicago. “The Loneliest Man…”
is included in Fight Night, a new collection of
stories about boxers and Marines currently
on submission to publishers.
DOUGLAS HOSTON, JR, AKA SAGE THE WISECAT, is happy husband and father to,
respectively, Rasheeda Nicole and Douglas
III. He is founder and executive director of
Black Poetic, an arts and education organiza-
tion that facilitates written and performance
poetry. He has created a community initiative
to provide seasonal series of free productions
of performance poetry, song, dance, and vi-
sual art at The Cleveland Museum of Art. By
day, he is Disabilities Coordinator for the
Council for Economic Opportunities in
Greater Cleveland. Hoston has been selected
to be a panelist on the Governor’s Conference
on Increasing High School Graduation Rate
for African American Males.
WAYNE KRAMER is a songwriter whose
reputation writing music for film and televi-
sion risks supplanting his legend as one of
rock’s stellar guitarists. Rolling Stone lists him
as one of the top 100 guitarists of all time.
Wayne is recognized nearly as often as a
vigorous social activist. In 2009, along with
wife/manager Margaret Saadi Kramer and
legendary British singer Billy Bragg, he
founded Jail Guitar Doors USA, a Los Angeles
based non-profit group that provides guitars
for use in prisoner rehabilitation.
ROBERT LAWRY is Emeritus Professor of
Law and Director of the Center for Profes-
sional Ethics At CWRU. He was educated at
Fordham College, Penn Law School and Uni-
versity College, Oxford. He has been a Fellow
in Law and the Humanities at Harvard. In ad-
dition to traditional scholarly writings, he has
published in a study of Justice in Melville’s
Billy Bud and an award winning essay on
Martin Luther King, Jr., entitled “One Tough
Guy.” He has also published a chapbook of
poems, Necessary Pleadings. Recently, he was
named the Phi Beta Kappa poet for 2010 at
CWRU. He serves on three non-profit Execu-
tive Boards, The LIT among them.
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, SCOTT LAX is a
novelist, short story writer, nonfiction writer
and playwright, and teaches for The Lit and
The Chagrin Valley Writers’ Workshop. The
Denver Post called his first novel, The Year
That Trembled, “powerful” and one of 1998’s
“milestones in fiction.” He’s won numerous
awards from the Ohio Professional Writers
(nonfiction), Cleveland Press Club (nonfic-
tion), the MUSE Literary Competition (fic-
tion), and Lax is a Bread Loaf Writers’
Conference Nonfiction Scholar, Sewanee
Writers’ Conference Fiction Fellow and 2002
Midwest Filmmaker of the Year.
ANGELA CONSOLO MANKIEWICZ is the
author of four chapbooks, the most recent are
AN EYE, published by Pecan Grove Press
(2006) and AS IF, recently released from
Little Red Books-Lummox (2010). She has
also been the Contributing Editor and
Regional Editor, respectively, for the small
(now defunct) journals Mushroom Dreams
and New Press. Combining poetry and her
love of music, she is currently collaborating
with composers on an experimental chamber
opera and a song cycle.
ABBY NAPOLI is a part of the Laurel School
class of 2012, and a winner of MOCA Cleve-
land’s Women Above The Influence Writing
Competition. Her inspiration for this issue
came from one of her favorite songs: “Happy
Ending”, by MIKA.
KAREN SCHUBERT’s poems appear or are
forthcoming in Artful Dodge, Penguin Review,
Akron Art Museum’s New Words, The Vindi-
cator and others. Her chapbook is The Geog-
raphy of Lost Houses (Pudding House). Poetry
editor for Whiskey Island Magazine, she has
an MFA from the Northeast Ohio Master of
Fine Arts, and lives with her daughter in
Youngstown, Ohio.
MARINA VLADOVA has written for Inter-
view, Surface, and Big Magazine. She now lives
with her partner and two daughters in Cleve-
land Heights and teaches film and literature
at Andrews Osborne Academy in Willoughby.
contents
contributors
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“POLICE! DRUG POLICE! DO NOT MOVE! FEDERAL AGENTS!
WE WILL SHOOT YOU!”
They were screaming at the top of their lungs as they came
bursting into my apartment. I turned around and looked straight
down the business end of a 9mm pointed at my stomach. This gun
could make a really big hole.
Once I was sure these were actually drug police and not dope-
house rip-offs, I relaxed a little. Out came the badges: DEA. Federal
Drug Agents. Without doubt, I was going to prison behind this bust.
This was the logical conclusion of the downward trajectory of my
life in those days. I was 27 years old and drifted into lower and lower
circles after my rock band, the MC5, imploded in 1972.
Up to that point, going to prison was something I’d never
considered. Real prison? This couldn’t be. But when the weight of
this sunk in, I wept like a baby. I had been waiting all my life to
fuck up this bad, and I’d finally made it. As far as I was concerned,
it was everybody else’s fault. (Deep inside, I knew better.) Since I
refused to cut a deal and work for the DEA as a snitch, I, a drug ad-
dict who dealt drugs, pleaded guilty to possession. The judge gave
me four years. Though I tried to get ready for the penitentiary,
talking to my ex-con friends about what to expect behind bars
only made things worse. I quickly fell into a deep depression.
When word came down that I was going to be sent to Lexing-
ton, KY, I was relieved. I knew about the place already. I knew that
it was originally called the “United States Narcotic Farm.” I knew
this was where all the great jazz musician, hipster dope fiends
went. Jackie Maclean, Charlie Hayden, Sam Rivers, Elvin Jones,
Sonny Rollins, Howard McGee, and Ray Charles. Even William
Burroughs himself had been there and wrote about it in Junky.
Everyone I knew who had been in the federal system said Lex was
the place to do time.
But by the time I arrived at Lexington as a prisoner in 1975,
“The Drug War” was kicking in. Lexington had abandoned its
mission as a humane treatment center for addicts and was func-
tioning as little more than medium-security prison for drug
offenders.
On my arrival there I remember being stunned by the gigan-
tic size of the place. After getting photographed, fingerprinted and
given a new set of prison clothes, an official gave us the “Welcome
To Prison” talk. We could do “easy time” here if we were smart. Or
if we wanted to play it hard, he could make it very hard. When it
was over, it was clear to me that the Lexington where I’d just
arrived was nothing like the “Narcotic Farm” of years past. Back
when Burroughs was there, they called you patients, not prisoners,
because you were there for treatment— even if you’d been convicted
of a federal crime. I was not a patient. I was now inmate 00180-190.
The first few and last months there were the hardest because
my mind would go to the street and to things that I could not con-
trol. I obsessed on my girlfriend, who, it turns out, began driving a
get-away car for a series of armed robberies while I was away.
I began to adjust to life inside the institution. I was jailing now.
Empty hours are a prisoner’s enemy, so I did the best I could to fill
up my days with anything I could. I took college courses, and with
the great jazz musician Red Rodney as my teacher and fellow in-
mate, I studied music theory. I played basketball and paddleball in
the winter. In summers, I ran five miles a day around the big exer-
cise yard. Sometimes twice a day. Got into great shape. I wanted to
hit the streets “hard.”
As the days and months went on, the prison population rose.
The “Drug War” was ratcheting up. Lexington wasn’t about
“treatment” at all anymore, it was about “accountability.” This
was Prison. Not rehab. When I arrived in 1975, there were 600+
inmates at Lexington. By 1978, when I paroled out, the population
had risen to over 1200. There were people sleeping in the hallways.
Day rooms were filled with cubicles. It looked like a state joint.
From where I see it, we as a nation were just beginning to em-
brace the mentality of a total “War on Drugs” where killing or cap-
turing the enemy will somehow make this problem go away. Today
the situation is far worse than when I was incarcerated. As I write
this, this nation incarcerates more people than any other nation in
history, and hundreds of thousands of them are serving time for
non-violent drug-related charges.
As a former convict, I can say that prison changed me. And
probably not for the better. My time at Lexington, in the end, was a
crushing experience. Upon my release—with little more than
willpower to go on—I returned to a life of alcoholism and drug
addiction for a long time more. Now there are treatment programs
all over the country. And they work. I found the help and support
I needed, and today I have a beautiful and sober life.
WAYNE KRAMERLOS ANGELES, CAAPRIL 20TH, 2010
The Narcotic FarmWAYNE KRAMER
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“POLICE! DRUG POLICE! DO NOT MOVE! FEDERAL AGENTS!
WE WILL SHOOT YOU!”
They were screaming at the top of their lungs as they came
bursting into my apartment. I turned around and looked straight
down the business end of a 9mm pointed at my stomach. This gun
could make a really big hole.
Once I was sure these were actually drug police and not dope-
house rip-offs, I relaxed a little. Out came the badges: DEA. Federal
Drug Agents. Without doubt, I was going to prison behind this bust.
This was the logical conclusion of the downward trajectory of my
life in those days. I was 27 years old and drifted into lower and lower
circles after my rock band, the MC5, imploded in 1972.
Up to that point, going to prison was something I’d never
considered. Real prison? This couldn’t be. But when the weight of
this sunk in, I wept like a baby. I had been waiting all my life to
fuck up this bad, and I’d finally made it. As far as I was concerned,
it was everybody else’s fault. (Deep inside, I knew better.) Since I
refused to cut a deal and work for the DEA as a snitch, I, a drug ad-
dict who dealt drugs, pleaded guilty to possession. The judge gave
me four years. Though I tried to get ready for the penitentiary,
talking to my ex-con friends about what to expect behind bars
only made things worse. I quickly fell into a deep depression.
When word came down that I was going to be sent to Lexing-
ton, KY, I was relieved. I knew about the place already. I knew that
it was originally called the “United States Narcotic Farm.” I knew
this was where all the great jazz musician, hipster dope fiends
went. Jackie Maclean, Charlie Hayden, Sam Rivers, Elvin Jones,
Sonny Rollins, Howard McGee, and Ray Charles. Even William
Burroughs himself had been there and wrote about it in Junky.
Everyone I knew who had been in the federal system said Lex was
the place to do time.
But by the time I arrived at Lexington as a prisoner in 1975,
“The Drug War” was kicking in. Lexington had abandoned its
mission as a humane treatment center for addicts and was func-
tioning as little more than medium-security prison for drug
offenders.
On my arrival there I remember being stunned by the gigan-
tic size of the place. After getting photographed, fingerprinted and
given a new set of prison clothes, an official gave us the “Welcome
To Prison” talk. We could do “easy time” here if we were smart. Or
if we wanted to play it hard, he could make it very hard. When it
was over, it was clear to me that the Lexington where I’d just
arrived was nothing like the “Narcotic Farm” of years past. Back
when Burroughs was there, they called you patients, not prisoners,
because you were there for treatment— even if you’d been convicted
of a federal crime. I was not a patient. I was now inmate 00180-190.
The first few and last months there were the hardest because
my mind would go to the street and to things that I could not con-
trol. I obsessed on my girlfriend, who, it turns out, began driving a
get-away car for a series of armed robberies while I was away.
I began to adjust to life inside the institution. I was jailing now.
Empty hours are a prisoner’s enemy, so I did the best I could to fill
up my days with anything I could. I took college courses, and with
the great jazz musician Red Rodney as my teacher and fellow in-
mate, I studied music theory. I played basketball and paddleball in
the winter. In summers, I ran five miles a day around the big exer-
cise yard. Sometimes twice a day. Got into great shape. I wanted to
hit the streets “hard.”
As the days and months went on, the prison population rose.
The “Drug War” was ratcheting up. Lexington wasn’t about
“treatment” at all anymore, it was about “accountability.” This
was Prison. Not rehab. When I arrived in 1975, there were 600+
inmates at Lexington. By 1978, when I paroled out, the population
had risen to over 1200. There were people sleeping in the hallways.
Day rooms were filled with cubicles. It looked like a state joint.
From where I see it, we as a nation were just beginning to em-
brace the mentality of a total “War on Drugs” where killing or cap-
turing the enemy will somehow make this problem go away. Today
the situation is far worse than when I was incarcerated. As I write
this, this nation incarcerates more people than any other nation in
history, and hundreds of thousands of them are serving time for
non-violent drug-related charges.
As a former convict, I can say that prison changed me. And
probably not for the better. My time at Lexington, in the end, was a
crushing experience. Upon my release—with little more than
willpower to go on—I returned to a life of alcoholism and drug
addiction for a long time more. Now there are treatment programs
all over the country. And they work. I found the help and support
I needed, and today I have a beautiful and sober life.
WAYNE KRAMERLOS ANGELES, CAAPRIL 20TH, 2010
The Narcotic FarmWAYNE KRAMER
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Even the guitar has bullet holes.Mothers of the dead keep booksof faces, blood runs from eyesockets, from everywhere.Children with two feetpick for food in the dump,climb among bombed out trucks.They have not forgottenhow to play. Some guerrillasare young as twelve.At the checkpoint, the photographer liesflat on top of the bus among basketsof hens. The roads and walls are stone,no softness between themand the displaced, the orphaned.Pregnant women stand belly deepin the river, washing clothes.Listen, they say: the dead
are talking to you. Don’t flinch.
KAREN SCHUBERT
Final Meal Requests of Condemned Prisoners
State of Texas web.archive.org/
Karla Faye Tucker, twenty-three,
and slim, opted for the diet plate,
a banana, a peach, a garden salad -
ranch dressing on the side,
prior to her date
with the electric chair.
But most want more,
flesh and fowl,
chopped and fried,
heaping plates of simple fare:
greasy spuds, melted cheese,
crudities,
sugar, salt, hot pepper,
enough drink to drown a man.
Johnny Ray Johnson consumed
four pieces of fried chicken, two fried
steaks, twenty shrimp, four eggs,
two biscuits, two gallons of hot coffee,
and several slabs of peanut brittle.
Vincent Cooks put away
twelve pieces of fried chicken,
double cheeseburgers,
toasted buns, french fries, onions,
tomatoes, sweet pickles, hot peppers,
peach cobbler and cold milk.
Jeff Dillingham devoured
crispy fries, lasagna,
garlic bread, nachos, mac
and cheese, five scrambled eggs,
a cheeseburger heaped
with Cheddar, Swiss and Mozzarella,
three cinnamon rolls,
and eight pints of chocolate milk.
As though a single meal
could satisfy the craving
for all the years left on their plates.
Victor Feguer’s tastes
were more refined.
His last supper informed
his tongue of vinegar,
salt, a stone, the taste of tears.
When the state buried him
in the brand new suit
they’d bought for the occasion,
it’s pocket held a kernal of remorse,
the remnants of his final meal,
the pit of one black olive.
PATRICIA AVERBACH
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0610
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Even the guitar has bullet holes.Mothers of the dead keep booksof faces, blood runs from eyesockets, from everywhere.Children with two feetpick for food in the dump,climb among bombed out trucks.They have not forgottenhow to play. Some guerrillasare young as twelve.At the checkpoint, the photographer liesflat on top of the bus among basketsof hens. The roads and walls are stone,no softness between themand the displaced, the orphaned.Pregnant women stand belly deepin the river, washing clothes.Listen, they say: the dead
are talking to you. Don’t flinch.
KAREN SCHUBERT
Final Meal Requests of Condemned Prisoners
State of Texas web.archive.org/
Karla Faye Tucker, twenty-three,
and slim, opted for the diet plate,
a banana, a peach, a garden salad -
ranch dressing on the side,
prior to her date
with the electric chair.
But most want more,
flesh and fowl,
chopped and fried,
heaping plates of simple fare:
greasy spuds, melted cheese,
crudities,
sugar, salt, hot pepper,
enough drink to drown a man.
Johnny Ray Johnson consumed
four pieces of fried chicken, two fried
steaks, twenty shrimp, four eggs,
two biscuits, two gallons of hot coffee,
and several slabs of peanut brittle.
Vincent Cooks put away
twelve pieces of fried chicken,
double cheeseburgers,
toasted buns, french fries, onions,
tomatoes, sweet pickles, hot peppers,
peach cobbler and cold milk.
Jeff Dillingham devoured
crispy fries, lasagna,
garlic bread, nachos, mac
and cheese, five scrambled eggs,
a cheeseburger heaped
with Cheddar, Swiss and Mozzarella,
three cinnamon rolls,
and eight pints of chocolate milk.
As though a single meal
could satisfy the craving
for all the years left on their plates.
Victor Feguer’s tastes
were more refined.
His last supper informed
his tongue of vinegar,
salt, a stone, the taste of tears.
When the state buried him
in the brand new suit
they’d bought for the occasion,
it’s pocket held a kernal of remorse,
the remnants of his final meal,
the pit of one black olive.
PATRICIA AVERBACH
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Imprisonment: A Domestic Bop
monosyllabic grunts pass perfect apathy
in this house we’ve got good bones
could last thirty years comfortably
married to the idea of tradition
in this tomb we’ve well oiled forgetting
where love limps and dies daily
trying to make believe
that it was just a dream
there are children here
we act accordingly, coming to life
in increments, we shine for them
bright to blind out our passionlessness
we Pinocchio in unison, stringing hope
into every “how was school, today”
they bound from front door and to bedroom
blocking out our desperation
trying to make believe
that it was just a dream
the vilification of fleeing this type of imprisonment
give us the resounding pause of a gavel smack
best friends can but promise to be there after escape
we’re frightened for we’ve seen many flee and fail badly
and what does the lord say about these type sinful thoughts
so hardwired, we continue
trying to make believe
that it was just a dream
DOUGLAS “SAGE” HOSTON
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Imprisonment: A Domestic Bop
monosyllabic grunts pass perfect apathy
in this house we’ve got good bones
could last thirty years comfortably
married to the idea of tradition
in this tomb we’ve well oiled forgetting
where love limps and dies daily
trying to make believe
that it was just a dream
there are children here
we act accordingly, coming to life
in increments, we shine for them
bright to blind out our passionlessness
we Pinocchio in unison, stringing hope
into every “how was school, today”
they bound from front door and to bedroom
blocking out our desperation
trying to make believe
that it was just a dream
the vilification of fleeing this type of imprisonment
give us the resounding pause of a gavel smack
best friends can but promise to be there after escape
we’re frightened for we’ve seen many flee and fail badly
and what does the lord say about these type sinful thoughts
so hardwired, we continue
trying to make believe
that it was just a dream
DOUGLAS “SAGE” HOSTON
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THE FIRST TIME I MET DEL EL RICO MARIO BROWN,
I thought he was going to kill me. He leaned over the table, his
hands flat down upon it, and he shouted, “The man din’t calcal-
ate my time right. He din’t calcalate it right! He just din’t.” A
prison guard rushed over, looking for trouble. Mr. Brown was
furious. I was scared. I could feel his hands around my throat.
Instead, he punched the air above him. The guard had actually
pulled out his billyclub. I winced but waived him away. Del
Rico dropped his hands and his head, retrieved his fallen chair,
and sat meekly down. It would not be the last time I felt physi-
cally afraid of this client.
Del El Rico Mario Brown was thirty-two years old. Black
father – never around much and in jail himself a lot. Puerto
Rican mother – she couldn’t control him. He stood maybe five
feet four inches tall, weighed at most one hundred thirty-five
pounds. He was thin, wiry, but with muscles that bulged. He
worked out. A lot. Lifted weights. Punched the bag silly. He
could have strangled me in a heartbeat. Or so I felt, every time
we were together. With the exception of two stints, one of seven
months, the other of eleven months, Del Rico had been in some
jail or prison for his entire adult life, landing in his first cell, just
days after turning eighteen. Convicted of assault.
“Paul, my man, you are the F. Lee Bailey in this outfit. I
couldn’t handle a criminal case if my life - or the poor client’s
life - depended on it. So be a good fellow and run up to see
this...” Francis R. “Frankie” Stevens rustled through a stack of
papers in front of him, finally finding what he had been looking
for. “ ... this Del Rico fellow. He’s in the State Pen. Wants out.
How can you blame him? Judge Richter said I needed to show
that the corporate bar is willing to take on these kind of cases,
so take them on we will. Go to, Pauly. I’m right behind you.
Give it your best shot.”
Frankie Stevens was the most genial of men, full of good
cheer and quick with a self-deprecating joke; but a shrewd and
gifted lawyer as well. Grown corporate executives would grovel
readily just to be his client. To me he would always be “Mr. Ste-
vens,” the senior partner in Stevens, Henderson & McFarley,
when I was a fifth-year associate. It was 1972; there were sev-
enty-seven lawyers at Stev-Hen, making it the second largest
corporate law firm in Pittsburgh.
“Problem is sentencing. He’s mad. Look at these letters he’s
written to the court.” He handed me a reasonably thick stack of
paper, many pages of which were letters from the state prison to
Judge Richter, the Administrative Judge of the Court of Com-
mon Pleas. “Go to, young man.” Mr. Stevens was on the phone
with a real client before I was out of his corner office door. Six
months out of Pitt Law School, I defended a young cousin of
mine on a breaking and entering charge. And won. It was a
bogus indictment, and I stumbled my way through the case
against a less than interested assistant district attorney; never-
theless, it made me a tad famous in the corridors of the firm, as
“the crim law kid.” So naturally, any assigned criminal case in
the firm found its way to my desk.
Brown’s juvenile record was equally depressing. First de-
linquency charge at eleven. Five more over the next seven years.
Life on the streets, snatching what he could, hurting people be-
cause he needed to and because he could. He was now in the
State Penitentiary for armed robbery. Wielding a hand gun, he
had mugged a citizen, taken wallet and watch, and fled in a bro-
ken down stolen Chevy Impala. After crashing the car against a
street lamp, and running up an alleyway in Pittsburgh’s Hill
District, he had been shot by a police officer in both legs. He
was in the hospital for five months, because the wounds were
serious and got infected. Despite gangrene, the doctors some-
how managed to restore him to health without an amputation.
The hospital stay was the crux of the case. Brown thought
those five months should have been subtracted from the five-
year sentence he received at trial, which occurred eight months
after the robbery. Since he couldn’t make bail after he was re-
leased from the hospital, there was also the problem of the three
months he had served in jail, awaiting trial. The district attor-
ney’s office claimed the sentence of the court was for five addi-
tional years from the date of the conclusion of the trial. Mr.
Brown says his time will be up in two months because, accord-
ing to his calculations, the entire eight months needed to be
subtracted from the five year sentence. The trial transcript was
CRIM LAWROBERT P. LAWRY
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THE FIRST TIME I MET DEL EL RICO MARIO BROWN,
I thought he was going to kill me. He leaned over the table, his
hands flat down upon it, and he shouted, “The man din’t calcal-
ate my time right. He din’t calcalate it right! He just din’t.” A
prison guard rushed over, looking for trouble. Mr. Brown was
furious. I was scared. I could feel his hands around my throat.
Instead, he punched the air above him. The guard had actually
pulled out his billyclub. I winced but waived him away. Del
Rico dropped his hands and his head, retrieved his fallen chair,
and sat meekly down. It would not be the last time I felt physi-
cally afraid of this client.
Del El Rico Mario Brown was thirty-two years old. Black
father – never around much and in jail himself a lot. Puerto
Rican mother – she couldn’t control him. He stood maybe five
feet four inches tall, weighed at most one hundred thirty-five
pounds. He was thin, wiry, but with muscles that bulged. He
worked out. A lot. Lifted weights. Punched the bag silly. He
could have strangled me in a heartbeat. Or so I felt, every time
we were together. With the exception of two stints, one of seven
months, the other of eleven months, Del Rico had been in some
jail or prison for his entire adult life, landing in his first cell, just
days after turning eighteen. Convicted of assault.
“Paul, my man, you are the F. Lee Bailey in this outfit. I
couldn’t handle a criminal case if my life - or the poor client’s
life - depended on it. So be a good fellow and run up to see
this...” Francis R. “Frankie” Stevens rustled through a stack of
papers in front of him, finally finding what he had been looking
for. “ ... this Del Rico fellow. He’s in the State Pen. Wants out.
How can you blame him? Judge Richter said I needed to show
that the corporate bar is willing to take on these kind of cases,
so take them on we will. Go to, Pauly. I’m right behind you.
Give it your best shot.”
Frankie Stevens was the most genial of men, full of good
cheer and quick with a self-deprecating joke; but a shrewd and
gifted lawyer as well. Grown corporate executives would grovel
readily just to be his client. To me he would always be “Mr. Ste-
vens,” the senior partner in Stevens, Henderson & McFarley,
when I was a fifth-year associate. It was 1972; there were sev-
enty-seven lawyers at Stev-Hen, making it the second largest
corporate law firm in Pittsburgh.
“Problem is sentencing. He’s mad. Look at these letters he’s
written to the court.” He handed me a reasonably thick stack of
paper, many pages of which were letters from the state prison to
Judge Richter, the Administrative Judge of the Court of Com-
mon Pleas. “Go to, young man.” Mr. Stevens was on the phone
with a real client before I was out of his corner office door. Six
months out of Pitt Law School, I defended a young cousin of
mine on a breaking and entering charge. And won. It was a
bogus indictment, and I stumbled my way through the case
against a less than interested assistant district attorney; never-
theless, it made me a tad famous in the corridors of the firm, as
“the crim law kid.” So naturally, any assigned criminal case in
the firm found its way to my desk.
Brown’s juvenile record was equally depressing. First de-
linquency charge at eleven. Five more over the next seven years.
Life on the streets, snatching what he could, hurting people be-
cause he needed to and because he could. He was now in the
State Penitentiary for armed robbery. Wielding a hand gun, he
had mugged a citizen, taken wallet and watch, and fled in a bro-
ken down stolen Chevy Impala. After crashing the car against a
street lamp, and running up an alleyway in Pittsburgh’s Hill
District, he had been shot by a police officer in both legs. He
was in the hospital for five months, because the wounds were
serious and got infected. Despite gangrene, the doctors some-
how managed to restore him to health without an amputation.
The hospital stay was the crux of the case. Brown thought
those five months should have been subtracted from the five-
year sentence he received at trial, which occurred eight months
after the robbery. Since he couldn’t make bail after he was re-
leased from the hospital, there was also the problem of the three
months he had served in jail, awaiting trial. The district attor-
ney’s office claimed the sentence of the court was for five addi-
tional years from the date of the conclusion of the trial. Mr.
Brown says his time will be up in two months because, accord-
ing to his calculations, the entire eight months needed to be
subtracted from the five year sentence. The trial transcript was
CRIM LAWROBERT P. LAWRY
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a mess. The judge had the power to sentence him to up to ten
years; but what Judge Johnson actually did was not clear. How-
ever, to Mr. Brown, what should happen was abundantly clear.
Case law, courtesy of Del Rico Brown, regularly showed up
in my mail over the next few weeks. I was doing research to
write a brief to obtain a hearing - Del Rico was helping me. Not
that I asked. He printed in ballpoint pen in his own firm hand
on yellow legal sized paper each case that he “just knew” would
help him. Sometimes the cases were forty or fifty pages long. He
did not know or was somehow suspicious of the citations he
could have jotted down, so I could find the case he wished me to
read in one of the fat hardbound Pennsylvania State Reporter
volumes, which were methodically filed in our firm’s library.
No, he needed to print them out in his own hand. And I had
“better read them.” And I had “better use them.” When I actu-
ally filed the petition and the accompanying fifteen-page brief, I
did use several of the cases Del Rico had sent “Attenson, Attor-
nay Paul Roberts.” Some of them, I couldn’t cite. Didn’t cite.
“Why din’t you cite that Brooks case. Damn good case. Get
me out. And that Jennings case. ’Portant case. You in cahoots
with the DA, huh? That it? You in cahoots with the DA?”
He was shouting again. Standing again. Hands gripping the
table. Ready to choke me to death.
“Mr. Brown, I assure you, I am working hard and only for
you. I did cite the Parker case and the Sorenson case. Those
were your cases. Now, why would I cite them if I were working
with the D.A?”
He sat down again.
I exhaled.
“Why not all them cases? I get up at six in the morning and
do my law before breakfast even. Go to the prison library. We
got books. And I get tips from the jail lawyers. They smart. They
know what works.”
I didn’t answer readily enough.
“It’s ‘bout the power, I know that. Does you think I don’t
know that? You guys all in cahoots.”
I mostly missed the second part of his tirade because I was
so impressed with the first part. There was a network of inmates
who work at the law, trading cases and other useful information
about how the law can get them sprung from their jail cells and
fly away like birds on air. I was surprised. How would I know
such things? My law school education did not include such
practical information. Moreover, this fiery guy got up early in
the morning and spent many hours of every day “doing his
law.” I saw the proof in those fat hand printed pages, but the re-
ality of what it took to produce them did not quite sink into my
consciousness until then. Mr. Brown was disciplined. Mr.
Brown worked very hard.
“Well,” I started to explain. “Some of those cases were too
easily distinguishable...”
His dark eyes blazed. I started again. “They just didn’t fit.
You’ll have to trust me on this. I went to law school for three
years to learn which ones fit and which ones don’t fit.”
“Yea,” he said, but softly, not in anger. “And I be reading my
cases for years too!”
I knew he could be a lawyer, could have been a lawyer. I told
that to Mr. Stevens one day, as we were talking of another, fee-
generating case.
“Really?” He said, blinking his eyes and pausing for a mo-
ment. Quickly, he returned to business. “But, now, if I under-
stand your point, your research shows the evidence might be
admissible. Explain to me again how this clear hearsay evidence
could be admissible.”
Judge Henry Reynolds – twelve years on the bench, experi-
enced, and cranky – was assigned to the case. He granted our
petition for a full-blown hearing before the district attorney’s
office could file a responsive brief. He no doubt saw Frank R.
Stevens’ name and our firm’s blueback attached to the petition,
and knew that he had to give Frankie his day in court on behalf
of this indigent inmate. Had to.
So, I was really not surprised when three days before the
hearing, Mr. Stevens phoned me and said: “Pauly, I have to
make that Del Rico presentation. Won’t look good if I don’t.
Prepare a ten or twelve page speech for me. Make sure you have
it double-spaced and all in capital letters. I can read it better
that way.”
“It might take me a day to get something in that kind of
shape, Mr. Stevens.”.
“Hell, Pauly, take what time you need. Just make sure I have
the speech when we trot over to court.”
Huh? He was not going to study it beforehand? Question
me about it? I got it to him on Tuesday afternoon at about three
o’clock. The hearing was set for Thursday at ten a.m. I called
thee times on Wednesday, but Mr. Stevens did not return any of
my calls. At about five in the afternoon on Wednesday, his sec-
retary called to tell me her boss wanted me in his office at nine
thirty the next day. He was going to read the presentation over-
night and quiz me as we walked to the courtroom. Pretty ballsy
stuff, even for a litigator as experienced as Frank Stevens. So, I
was both awed and bewildered when I arrived at his office at
nine twenty nine the next morning to see him chatting on the
phone with a client. He hung up at about nine forty. “Do you
have that speech for me?” he asked with a wink. “It’s been on
your desk since Tuesday,” I said. “Oh, yes, I did see it some-
where. Now, didn’t I?” He laughed, turned over some papers,
then said: “You wouldn’t have another copy with you, Pauly,
now would ‘ya?” I had six. When I gave him one, he tossed it in
his briefcase and we left for the courthouse, two blocks away. I
tried, but we just never got to talk about substance. He only
asked, “All caps, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And double-spaced?”
“Triple-spaced actually. Looked easier to read.”
“Good boy. Always helps to have a smart lawyer with you
when you go into battle.”
He paused to chat up a fellow lawyer from another firm,
also walking to court. When we got to the hearing room, he
whispered to me. “How many pages?”
“Fifteen,” I said.
“Too long.” He laughed.
“Remember, it’s triple-spaced. There are only two cases
that count. And the trial judge’s opinion was ambiguous, so it is
clearly a question of law.” I was trying my best to give him some
useful information before he read the argument for the first
time—out loud—and to the judge who was going to decide the
matter.
He smiled, patted my arm, then immediately walked over
to our client, who was in his orange prison jump suit and hand-
cuffed. “So glad to meet you, Mr. Brown. It is a real honor. Paul
has told me so much about you. We’re going to do fine.”
The prisoner sat there expressionless. I thought he might
actually be in shock. How could he know what to make of this
smiling, balding, take-charge man, who was “honored” to meet
him and who was now going to change the man’s life?”
I shook hands with the middle-aged assistant D.A. with
whom I had been in contact since the petition was filed. He
would be arguing for the prosecution. Mr. Stevens did not shake
the man’s hand, but simply nodded at him, as if he were an un-
important nobody. The judge arrived on the bench with little
fanfare. “Good to see you, Mr. Stevens,” he said. “The court is
honored by your appearance here today.” Then he turned to the
prosecutor. “Are you ready, Mr. Davies?” Because his face was
completely blank, I wondered if the lawyer had heard. I couldn’t
tell if he were amused or intimidated or just preoccupied with
what he was doing. “Yes, your honor,” he said.
The judge did not interrupt once, but seemed to follow
every word, giving an occasional shake of the head downward,
as if in complete agreement. After Mr. Stevens said, “Thank
you, your honor,” there was complete silence.
The assistant district attorney rose but was frozen in posi-
tion before he could approach the podium. “I have read your
brief, and am unpersuaded by it. Is there anything Mr. Stevens
said that you might response to in any way that is different from
what is in your brief?” The poor fellow was speechless for sev-
eral seconds.”
“Well?” said the judge.
The prosecutor cleared his throat. “Your honor, I do want
to call your attention to the words actually used by the trial
judge at the sentencing in this case,” he began.
“You did that in the brief. I read the words. I understand
your argument. Anything different?”
“No, your honor.”
“Good. Then I am ready to rule. Mr. Brown, will you please
step forward.”
Brown stood still, and after a few seconds, I took his arm
and helped him up to the podium. He stood beside his six foot
two inch, two hundred thirty pound lawyer.
“Mr. Brown, I find that the calculation of your sentence by
the state was in error.
The one hundred and fifty five days you were in the hospi-
tal and the ninety two days you were in jail prior to your trial on
armed robbery should have been subtracted from your five year
sentence. In fourteen days time, you will have served five full
years. But, as Mr. Stevens eloquently put it, ‘If anyone has paid
his debt to society, then you have. Therefore, it is the decision of
this court that you are free to leave the custody of the state im-
mediately upon being properly processed. I understand that
you will have fifty-two dollars and twelve cents coming to you
to begin your new life of freedom. I also understand from the
probation office that your uncle is offering you a job at his ware-
house. Work hard. Stay out of trouble. Good luck to you.”
Del El Rico Mario Brown did not move. He did not utter a
word. Then Frank Stevens whipped out his wallet and produced
a one hundred dollar bill. “I want to add a little something to
Mr. Brown’s bank account. Here you go.” He handed the bill to
the still stricken man, now massaging his wrists, first one, then
the other. A policeman had quietly unlocked the handcuffs.
“And if there is anything I can do for you in the future,” the big-
gest of big lawyers boomed, “please don’t hesitate to call.”
The hundred dollars was crazy enough. But even I couldn’t
believe that last “throw caution to the absolute winds” state-
ment. Did Frankie have any idea what he was saying? I’m still
not sure he understood the speech he had just made, the one
which had just unshackled his client.. But it didn’t matter. Del
El Rico Mario Brown was a free man - and had a one hundred
and fifty two dollar and twelve cent leg up on his precarious
future. He also, apparently, had a job. I had worked every family
and probation office angle I could to get him that offer. So, for
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a mess. The judge had the power to sentence him to up to ten
years; but what Judge Johnson actually did was not clear. How-
ever, to Mr. Brown, what should happen was abundantly clear.
Case law, courtesy of Del Rico Brown, regularly showed up
in my mail over the next few weeks. I was doing research to
write a brief to obtain a hearing - Del Rico was helping me. Not
that I asked. He printed in ballpoint pen in his own firm hand
on yellow legal sized paper each case that he “just knew” would
help him. Sometimes the cases were forty or fifty pages long. He
did not know or was somehow suspicious of the citations he
could have jotted down, so I could find the case he wished me to
read in one of the fat hardbound Pennsylvania State Reporter
volumes, which were methodically filed in our firm’s library.
No, he needed to print them out in his own hand. And I had
“better read them.” And I had “better use them.” When I actu-
ally filed the petition and the accompanying fifteen-page brief, I
did use several of the cases Del Rico had sent “Attenson, Attor-
nay Paul Roberts.” Some of them, I couldn’t cite. Didn’t cite.
“Why din’t you cite that Brooks case. Damn good case. Get
me out. And that Jennings case. ’Portant case. You in cahoots
with the DA, huh? That it? You in cahoots with the DA?”
He was shouting again. Standing again. Hands gripping the
table. Ready to choke me to death.
“Mr. Brown, I assure you, I am working hard and only for
you. I did cite the Parker case and the Sorenson case. Those
were your cases. Now, why would I cite them if I were working
with the D.A?”
He sat down again.
I exhaled.
“Why not all them cases? I get up at six in the morning and
do my law before breakfast even. Go to the prison library. We
got books. And I get tips from the jail lawyers. They smart. They
know what works.”
I didn’t answer readily enough.
“It’s ‘bout the power, I know that. Does you think I don’t
know that? You guys all in cahoots.”
I mostly missed the second part of his tirade because I was
so impressed with the first part. There was a network of inmates
who work at the law, trading cases and other useful information
about how the law can get them sprung from their jail cells and
fly away like birds on air. I was surprised. How would I know
such things? My law school education did not include such
practical information. Moreover, this fiery guy got up early in
the morning and spent many hours of every day “doing his
law.” I saw the proof in those fat hand printed pages, but the re-
ality of what it took to produce them did not quite sink into my
consciousness until then. Mr. Brown was disciplined. Mr.
Brown worked very hard.
“Well,” I started to explain. “Some of those cases were too
easily distinguishable...”
His dark eyes blazed. I started again. “They just didn’t fit.
You’ll have to trust me on this. I went to law school for three
years to learn which ones fit and which ones don’t fit.”
“Yea,” he said, but softly, not in anger. “And I be reading my
cases for years too!”
I knew he could be a lawyer, could have been a lawyer. I told
that to Mr. Stevens one day, as we were talking of another, fee-
generating case.
“Really?” He said, blinking his eyes and pausing for a mo-
ment. Quickly, he returned to business. “But, now, if I under-
stand your point, your research shows the evidence might be
admissible. Explain to me again how this clear hearsay evidence
could be admissible.”
Judge Henry Reynolds – twelve years on the bench, experi-
enced, and cranky – was assigned to the case. He granted our
petition for a full-blown hearing before the district attorney’s
office could file a responsive brief. He no doubt saw Frank R.
Stevens’ name and our firm’s blueback attached to the petition,
and knew that he had to give Frankie his day in court on behalf
of this indigent inmate. Had to.
So, I was really not surprised when three days before the
hearing, Mr. Stevens phoned me and said: “Pauly, I have to
make that Del Rico presentation. Won’t look good if I don’t.
Prepare a ten or twelve page speech for me. Make sure you have
it double-spaced and all in capital letters. I can read it better
that way.”
“It might take me a day to get something in that kind of
shape, Mr. Stevens.”.
“Hell, Pauly, take what time you need. Just make sure I have
the speech when we trot over to court.”
Huh? He was not going to study it beforehand? Question
me about it? I got it to him on Tuesday afternoon at about three
o’clock. The hearing was set for Thursday at ten a.m. I called
thee times on Wednesday, but Mr. Stevens did not return any of
my calls. At about five in the afternoon on Wednesday, his sec-
retary called to tell me her boss wanted me in his office at nine
thirty the next day. He was going to read the presentation over-
night and quiz me as we walked to the courtroom. Pretty ballsy
stuff, even for a litigator as experienced as Frank Stevens. So, I
was both awed and bewildered when I arrived at his office at
nine twenty nine the next morning to see him chatting on the
phone with a client. He hung up at about nine forty. “Do you
have that speech for me?” he asked with a wink. “It’s been on
your desk since Tuesday,” I said. “Oh, yes, I did see it some-
where. Now, didn’t I?” He laughed, turned over some papers,
then said: “You wouldn’t have another copy with you, Pauly,
now would ‘ya?” I had six. When I gave him one, he tossed it in
his briefcase and we left for the courthouse, two blocks away. I
tried, but we just never got to talk about substance. He only
asked, “All caps, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And double-spaced?”
“Triple-spaced actually. Looked easier to read.”
“Good boy. Always helps to have a smart lawyer with you
when you go into battle.”
He paused to chat up a fellow lawyer from another firm,
also walking to court. When we got to the hearing room, he
whispered to me. “How many pages?”
“Fifteen,” I said.
“Too long.” He laughed.
“Remember, it’s triple-spaced. There are only two cases
that count. And the trial judge’s opinion was ambiguous, so it is
clearly a question of law.” I was trying my best to give him some
useful information before he read the argument for the first
time—out loud—and to the judge who was going to decide the
matter.
He smiled, patted my arm, then immediately walked over
to our client, who was in his orange prison jump suit and hand-
cuffed. “So glad to meet you, Mr. Brown. It is a real honor. Paul
has told me so much about you. We’re going to do fine.”
The prisoner sat there expressionless. I thought he might
actually be in shock. How could he know what to make of this
smiling, balding, take-charge man, who was “honored” to meet
him and who was now going to change the man’s life?”
I shook hands with the middle-aged assistant D.A. with
whom I had been in contact since the petition was filed. He
would be arguing for the prosecution. Mr. Stevens did not shake
the man’s hand, but simply nodded at him, as if he were an un-
important nobody. The judge arrived on the bench with little
fanfare. “Good to see you, Mr. Stevens,” he said. “The court is
honored by your appearance here today.” Then he turned to the
prosecutor. “Are you ready, Mr. Davies?” Because his face was
completely blank, I wondered if the lawyer had heard. I couldn’t
tell if he were amused or intimidated or just preoccupied with
what he was doing. “Yes, your honor,” he said.
The judge did not interrupt once, but seemed to follow
every word, giving an occasional shake of the head downward,
as if in complete agreement. After Mr. Stevens said, “Thank
you, your honor,” there was complete silence.
The assistant district attorney rose but was frozen in posi-
tion before he could approach the podium. “I have read your
brief, and am unpersuaded by it. Is there anything Mr. Stevens
said that you might response to in any way that is different from
what is in your brief?” The poor fellow was speechless for sev-
eral seconds.”
“Well?” said the judge.
The prosecutor cleared his throat. “Your honor, I do want
to call your attention to the words actually used by the trial
judge at the sentencing in this case,” he began.
“You did that in the brief. I read the words. I understand
your argument. Anything different?”
“No, your honor.”
“Good. Then I am ready to rule. Mr. Brown, will you please
step forward.”
Brown stood still, and after a few seconds, I took his arm
and helped him up to the podium. He stood beside his six foot
two inch, two hundred thirty pound lawyer.
“Mr. Brown, I find that the calculation of your sentence by
the state was in error.
The one hundred and fifty five days you were in the hospi-
tal and the ninety two days you were in jail prior to your trial on
armed robbery should have been subtracted from your five year
sentence. In fourteen days time, you will have served five full
years. But, as Mr. Stevens eloquently put it, ‘If anyone has paid
his debt to society, then you have. Therefore, it is the decision of
this court that you are free to leave the custody of the state im-
mediately upon being properly processed. I understand that
you will have fifty-two dollars and twelve cents coming to you
to begin your new life of freedom. I also understand from the
probation office that your uncle is offering you a job at his ware-
house. Work hard. Stay out of trouble. Good luck to you.”
Del El Rico Mario Brown did not move. He did not utter a
word. Then Frank Stevens whipped out his wallet and produced
a one hundred dollar bill. “I want to add a little something to
Mr. Brown’s bank account. Here you go.” He handed the bill to
the still stricken man, now massaging his wrists, first one, then
the other. A policeman had quietly unlocked the handcuffs.
“And if there is anything I can do for you in the future,” the big-
gest of big lawyers boomed, “please don’t hesitate to call.”
The hundred dollars was crazy enough. But even I couldn’t
believe that last “throw caution to the absolute winds” state-
ment. Did Frankie have any idea what he was saying? I’m still
not sure he understood the speech he had just made, the one
which had just unshackled his client.. But it didn’t matter. Del
El Rico Mario Brown was a free man - and had a one hundred
and fifty two dollar and twelve cent leg up on his precarious
future. He also, apparently, had a job. I had worked every family
and probation office angle I could to get him that offer. So, for
0610
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0610
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This Is Not a Dream
It is here:
a tight room, brown and
lighter brown, Seurat
with a flat pencil point
plotting out squares and
ovals on a dresser top,
thick golden curlicues
clasping a ponderous mirror
of transparent dots, necessary
to fake white, to define
this room,
a tight room, but not
without warmth, spreading,
connecting itself, unashamed
of what it is;
with a door, but not
a window, a garden
without frost, longings
one can depend on.
ANGELA CONSOLO MANKIEWICZ
the moment, he had a future. His work and discipline and per-
sistence and anger got him there. Some luck, a little magic, and
the way the world works, all combined to do the rest.
Less than one year later, I received a call in my tiny Legal
Aid office. I had left Stevens and Henderson about six months
before, unable to get the Brown case out of my mind and heart,
crazy as that sounded to my exasperated wife and my upwardly
mobile, but now diminishing, list of Stev-Hen lawyer friends. A
familiar voice boomed in my ear. “Pauly, my man, how are you?
We miss you over here. You can come back whenever you want
to, you know. Always need a good criminal lawyer in our kind
of work.” Frank Stevens laughed heartily then, like Santa Claus
laughs, from the full belly up.
“I appreciated your saying that, sir. But I’m happy here,
doing what I can.”
“Good for you, my boy, good for you. Now, Pauly, the rea-
son I’m calling is that my secretary tells me she took a message
from a man, who called himself Del El Rico Mario Brown.
Ring a bell?”
“Yes, sir, it sure does.”
“Well, he says he wants to talk with me - but, really, he
wants to talk to you. I know that. What do I know that could
help a fellow like that?”
“You helped him big-time a year ago.”
“Sure. Sure. But he needs you, not me, I’m not that dumb.
Mind giving him a call?
“Of course not, Mr. Stevens. I’d be happy to.”
When I phoned the number I had, a little girl’s voice an-
swered. I judged her to be nine, maybe ten years old. When I
told her slowly and carefully who I was and that I was returning
the call that Del Rico had made to Mr. Stevens, she replied ner-
vously, all the words in a hurry.
“Ain’t nobody here by that name.”
“Are you sure? The name is Del El Rico Mario Brown.”
“Ain’t nobody here by that name, mister.”
“Well, when he comes in, will you tell him to call me?” I
gave her my name and number, which I thought she actually
might be recording on a piece of paper.
“You will tell him, won’t you?” I just wanted to make sure.
“Yea, I’ll tell Daddy Del,” she responded, then abruptly
hung up.
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0610
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This Is Not a Dream
It is here:
a tight room, brown and
lighter brown, Seurat
with a flat pencil point
plotting out squares and
ovals on a dresser top,
thick golden curlicues
clasping a ponderous mirror
of transparent dots, necessary
to fake white, to define
this room,
a tight room, but not
without warmth, spreading,
connecting itself, unashamed
of what it is;
with a door, but not
a window, a garden
without frost, longings
one can depend on.
ANGELA CONSOLO MANKIEWICZ
the moment, he had a future. His work and discipline and per-
sistence and anger got him there. Some luck, a little magic, and
the way the world works, all combined to do the rest.
Less than one year later, I received a call in my tiny Legal
Aid office. I had left Stevens and Henderson about six months
before, unable to get the Brown case out of my mind and heart,
crazy as that sounded to my exasperated wife and my upwardly
mobile, but now diminishing, list of Stev-Hen lawyer friends. A
familiar voice boomed in my ear. “Pauly, my man, how are you?
We miss you over here. You can come back whenever you want
to, you know. Always need a good criminal lawyer in our kind
of work.” Frank Stevens laughed heartily then, like Santa Claus
laughs, from the full belly up.
“I appreciated your saying that, sir. But I’m happy here,
doing what I can.”
“Good for you, my boy, good for you. Now, Pauly, the rea-
son I’m calling is that my secretary tells me she took a message
from a man, who called himself Del El Rico Mario Brown.
Ring a bell?”
“Yes, sir, it sure does.”
“Well, he says he wants to talk with me - but, really, he
wants to talk to you. I know that. What do I know that could
help a fellow like that?”
“You helped him big-time a year ago.”
“Sure. Sure. But he needs you, not me, I’m not that dumb.
Mind giving him a call?
“Of course not, Mr. Stevens. I’d be happy to.”
When I phoned the number I had, a little girl’s voice an-
swered. I judged her to be nine, maybe ten years old. When I
told her slowly and carefully who I was and that I was returning
the call that Del Rico had made to Mr. Stevens, she replied ner-
vously, all the words in a hurry.
“Ain’t nobody here by that name.”
“Are you sure? The name is Del El Rico Mario Brown.”
“Ain’t nobody here by that name, mister.”
“Well, when he comes in, will you tell him to call me?” I
gave her my name and number, which I thought she actually
might be recording on a piece of paper.
“You will tell him, won’t you?” I just wanted to make sure.
“Yea, I’ll tell Daddy Del,” she responded, then abruptly
hung up.
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0610
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Fitzgerald’s Wake
I listened to a Fitzgerald book today.
His language so sanguine,
salacious,
trying his best to obfuscate his ignorance.
Magnanimous and obtuse, terrified by the realization that he is still dead,
despite rumors of resurrection.
KEN BINDAS
Rooms
Crushed dreams give new face
Steal it, mash it into walnut shells,
brew it into crustacean casings.
The tepid interior of Seamless floors
soiled with fingernail bits and
fastened by cat raked furniture
give way to concrete floors
and stainless steel penal-ware
Too many rooms to just leave
as small sounds ushered incident—
Time—an extraneous dictator,
enveloped, disrobed, sealed.
Wars fought too long to cease,
small injuries restfully lodged—
Spartan tranquility anesthetizes
extracts her arboreal dreams,
as she now timidly sleeps.
MARINA VLADOVA
1963
MY PARENTS WERE ALWAYS TERRIFIED BACK THEN.
They whispered in their room late at night, asking each other
what they should do and how to explain it to the children. That
was the year my father built a bomb shelter in our basement and
stocked it with soft drinks, Campbell’s soup, Dinty Moore Stew,
and toiletries. The shelter was a huge cement room with four
bunk beds, two space heaters, and an endless supply of Pepsi cans.
On the hottest summer days, we’d sneak into the basement to
enjoy Pepsi and the dank cool air, pretending the Russians were
coming while we lay back on the moldy mattresses and stared at
the centipedes scurrying across the cement ceiling. Sometimes
we’d turn on the transistor radio that was always playing the top
10 hits like “Louie Louie”, “Surf City”, and “Sugar Shack”. My
brother liked to cut out the lights and tell us that the whole world
was going up in smoke while we lay in the dark. How long till we
can go back out? I would ask, feeling suddenly chilled and terri-
fied. He said we had to wait until the gamma rays dispersed.
That could take anywhere from 3 days to two weeks. No one
knew for sure. Someone on the radio would tell us when it was
safe to come back out.
Prisoner of War
I WANNA GO TO VIETNAM. I wanna kill a Charlie
Cong. With a knife or a gun, it’s sure to be some real good fun.
If I die in combat zone, box me up and send me home, fold my
arms across my chest and tell my mom I did my best. –Song Joe,
the farmhand, sang when he was on leave from Vietnam.
In grade school I wore POW bracelets on my skinny wrists,
Peace signs, bell bottom jeans, and mod boots, so tight at the
toes I could barely walk in them, much less run. (Remember
Nancy Sinatra singing, These boots are made for walking?
Well, she was wrong.) I’d slip them off when we played Capture
the Flag at recess and pretend that if I ran fast enough, or won, I
could make Joe and my brother’s friends come home for good.
Once I stole the red flag from the other team and raced back
across the line just in time. Everyone circled around me as Stu-
art Delaney shouted, “We won! We won! We got the commie
flag!” I had never captured the flag before then. I don’t think
I’d ever won anything. I can still feel the wind in my hair forty
years later, the adrenaline rushing through my veins as I raced
on sock feet across the grass, thinking only faster, faster, faster. It’s
that feeling of winning I think of now whenever I am with the
guys, and they start talking about the days when they played foot-
ball, baseball, track, when they scored touchdowns, home-runs,
perfect plays, way back then, once upon a time, when they were all
quick enough to save the day, win the war, and free all the prison-
ers. They never talk about Joe anymore. No one knows what hap-
pened to him. (My sister was sure she saw him once on the mall
downtown, but when she looked again, he was gone.) Or Ron who
lost both arms. Or Mitch who is still living the war. You can’t in-
vite him to dinner without him telling you about it again and
again and again. Forty years later, he’s still a prisoner of that war.
How to Fight
TIGHTEN YOUR FISTS, JOE SAID. Like this. I’d never seen a
boxing match before that night on March 8, 1971. Joe, the farm-
hand was telling me what to expect. He said he hated Ali, the guy
who refused to go to Vietnam, who took on a Muslim name, and
bragged and teased. He moves right quick, he said. But you
watch. He’s don’t move quick enough. I was excited until the fight
began. In the sixth round, when Frazier knocked Ali against the
ropes and was pounding his head, I leaned over and threw up.
“That’s okay,” Joe said, mopping the floor with Lysol. “A girl
needs to throw up when she needs to throw up. Don’t you
worry about a thing.” He said that he had a lot of practice in
Vietnam, with boxing and puking both. It’s a skill you might
need one day. You never know. Like if someone bad ever comes
too close. Know what I mean? And you can’t run? I know you
can’t punch. Puking is the best thing. No man wants a girl who
pukes on him. Peeing is next. And shitting your pants.
“But whatever happens, Girl, don’t go still. Or silent. Don’t ever
be like a cat in the alfalfa field. Crouching low when the mow-
ing begins. It’s like standing still or lying in the street when the
trucks roll in. Not making a move. You see it all the time with
women and cats. It’s the strangest thing. They just sit there
when danger comes close. They don’t run. They don’t scream.
Even in broad daylight. It’s like they think they’re invisible. But
I’m telling you, Girl. Some men are like mowers, come haying
time. It’s a lucky cat who can walk away alive.”
NIN ANDREWS
0610
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0610
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Fitzgerald’s Wake
I listened to a Fitzgerald book today.
His language so sanguine,
salacious,
trying his best to obfuscate his ignorance.
Magnanimous and obtuse, terrified by the realization that he is still dead,
despite rumors of resurrection.
KEN BINDAS
Rooms
Crushed dreams give new face
Steal it, mash it into walnut shells,
brew it into crustacean casings.
The tepid interior of Seamless floors
soiled with fingernail bits and
fastened by cat raked furniture
give way to concrete floors
and stainless steel penal-ware
Too many rooms to just leave
as small sounds ushered incident—
Time—an extraneous dictator,
enveloped, disrobed, sealed.
Wars fought too long to cease,
small injuries restfully lodged—
Spartan tranquility anesthetizes
extracts her arboreal dreams,
as she now timidly sleeps.
MARINA VLADOVA
1963
MY PARENTS WERE ALWAYS TERRIFIED BACK THEN.
They whispered in their room late at night, asking each other
what they should do and how to explain it to the children. That
was the year my father built a bomb shelter in our basement and
stocked it with soft drinks, Campbell’s soup, Dinty Moore Stew,
and toiletries. The shelter was a huge cement room with four
bunk beds, two space heaters, and an endless supply of Pepsi cans.
On the hottest summer days, we’d sneak into the basement to
enjoy Pepsi and the dank cool air, pretending the Russians were
coming while we lay back on the moldy mattresses and stared at
the centipedes scurrying across the cement ceiling. Sometimes
we’d turn on the transistor radio that was always playing the top
10 hits like “Louie Louie”, “Surf City”, and “Sugar Shack”. My
brother liked to cut out the lights and tell us that the whole world
was going up in smoke while we lay in the dark. How long till we
can go back out? I would ask, feeling suddenly chilled and terri-
fied. He said we had to wait until the gamma rays dispersed.
That could take anywhere from 3 days to two weeks. No one
knew for sure. Someone on the radio would tell us when it was
safe to come back out.
Prisoner of War
I WANNA GO TO VIETNAM. I wanna kill a Charlie
Cong. With a knife or a gun, it’s sure to be some real good fun.
If I die in combat zone, box me up and send me home, fold my
arms across my chest and tell my mom I did my best. –Song Joe,
the farmhand, sang when he was on leave from Vietnam.
In grade school I wore POW bracelets on my skinny wrists,
Peace signs, bell bottom jeans, and mod boots, so tight at the
toes I could barely walk in them, much less run. (Remember
Nancy Sinatra singing, These boots are made for walking?
Well, she was wrong.) I’d slip them off when we played Capture
the Flag at recess and pretend that if I ran fast enough, or won, I
could make Joe and my brother’s friends come home for good.
Once I stole the red flag from the other team and raced back
across the line just in time. Everyone circled around me as Stu-
art Delaney shouted, “We won! We won! We got the commie
flag!” I had never captured the flag before then. I don’t think
I’d ever won anything. I can still feel the wind in my hair forty
years later, the adrenaline rushing through my veins as I raced
on sock feet across the grass, thinking only faster, faster, faster. It’s
that feeling of winning I think of now whenever I am with the
guys, and they start talking about the days when they played foot-
ball, baseball, track, when they scored touchdowns, home-runs,
perfect plays, way back then, once upon a time, when they were all
quick enough to save the day, win the war, and free all the prison-
ers. They never talk about Joe anymore. No one knows what hap-
pened to him. (My sister was sure she saw him once on the mall
downtown, but when she looked again, he was gone.) Or Ron who
lost both arms. Or Mitch who is still living the war. You can’t in-
vite him to dinner without him telling you about it again and
again and again. Forty years later, he’s still a prisoner of that war.
How to Fight
TIGHTEN YOUR FISTS, JOE SAID. Like this. I’d never seen a
boxing match before that night on March 8, 1971. Joe, the farm-
hand was telling me what to expect. He said he hated Ali, the guy
who refused to go to Vietnam, who took on a Muslim name, and
bragged and teased. He moves right quick, he said. But you
watch. He’s don’t move quick enough. I was excited until the fight
began. In the sixth round, when Frazier knocked Ali against the
ropes and was pounding his head, I leaned over and threw up.
“That’s okay,” Joe said, mopping the floor with Lysol. “A girl
needs to throw up when she needs to throw up. Don’t you
worry about a thing.” He said that he had a lot of practice in
Vietnam, with boxing and puking both. It’s a skill you might
need one day. You never know. Like if someone bad ever comes
too close. Know what I mean? And you can’t run? I know you
can’t punch. Puking is the best thing. No man wants a girl who
pukes on him. Peeing is next. And shitting your pants.
“But whatever happens, Girl, don’t go still. Or silent. Don’t ever
be like a cat in the alfalfa field. Crouching low when the mow-
ing begins. It’s like standing still or lying in the street when the
trucks roll in. Not making a move. You see it all the time with
women and cats. It’s the strangest thing. They just sit there
when danger comes close. They don’t run. They don’t scream.
Even in broad daylight. It’s like they think they’re invisible. But
I’m telling you, Girl. Some men are like mowers, come haying
time. It’s a lucky cat who can walk away alive.”
NIN ANDREWS
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0610
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HE TOOK A FRONT TABLE IN THE LOUNGE CLOSE TO
THE PIANO and away from a clot of tourists, gaudy as macaws
in floral shirts. Nursing a scotch and soda he text-messaged his
co-writer on “Life as It Happens Next Door,” cautioning him in
the rewrite not to take their reality pilot so far into voyeurism
that it turned creepy.
The balding black man in the white jacket at the white
piano toyed with “Body and Soul,” “Come Rain or Come
Shine,” “Memories of Love,” adding little runs and variations,
keeping himself interested.
He emptied his glass and again glanced at his watch. It
seemed he spent more and more time lately waiting for her to
get dressed, although the final effect was always worth the wait.
As it was when she undressed.
Behind the bar above a row of bottles was a long, narrow
aquarium with neon fish weaving in and out of the wavy green
ferns.
The piano man worked his way through the chord changes
of Monk’s “Well, You Needn’t.”
Looking about for service, he was surprised to see her
seated three tables behind him, watching him. Hands spread, he
mimed bafflement.
He scraped back his chair to stand just as a waitress came to
take his order. When the girl left, he stayed put.
From her table she gave him a slant smile. One of her plea-
sures, she’d told him early on in their relationship, was eating
alone in hotels and feeling no need to strike up a conversation,
not feeling lonely but rather private, even mysterious, and tak-
ing pleasure in guessing what other diners might suppose about
her.
Was that what she’d been doing just now? Or had she en-
joyed observing him unawares? Had she not already known
him, he wondered, what might she have imagined him to be?
That he was an interesting sort? Attractive in his solitude? Or
just another marital casualty adrift in the midlife sea?
Holding her look, he speed-dialed her. At the “moonlight
sonata” ring tone she cocked her head to one side – what’s this? –
then dipped into a white-beaded clutch to retrieve her cell.
“Yes?”
“What are you doing over there?”
She shrugged. A drink sat on her table, something with a
pink umbrella.
“Why didn’t you come here?”
“You looked preoccupied.
“Just waiting for you,” he said.
“And all along I’ve been right here.”
“You can’t have been there that long, I’d have noticed.”
“You want to know the last five piano pieces?”
“I already know them.”
“So do I. ̀ Body and Soul,’ don’t you love it?”
“So, are you coming over?”
“Too close to the music. I like a little distance.”
When the waitress brought his drink he tipped her, put
away his cell and picked up his drink. He stepped to the piano
and folded a five into the tip glass. “Thank you, brother,” the
man said, not looking up from the keyboard as he tapped out
Ellington’s “Mood Indigo.”
He took his drink to the rear table. “You having fun?”
“Here?” she asked.
“You’ve been somewhere else?”
“No,” she said, “I mean here in the lounge? Or here on the
island?”
“Here, spying on me.”
“Was that what I was doing?”
“Not just that. I see you ordered a drink.”
She shook her head.
He looked at her glass, his eyebrows lifting.
“I have a drink, yes.”
“But you didn’t get it?”
She shook her head.
“Someone bought you a drink?”
She nodded.
“No. Really? Who?”
“The loneliest man in the world,” she said.
“How many of those have you had?”
“Drinks? Just one.”
“Which somebody bought –”
“I said. The loneliest man –”
“Right,” he said.
Over the rim of his glass he glanced at the other tables,
spotting no men on their own. The bar stood directly behind
him and he didn’t want to turn to look at it in case the character
was watching them. If what she said was actually true. She
tended to embellish. But who didn’t? And her flights of fancy, he
recalled, were one of things that had attracted him.
It struck him then that she was the one who’d given him
the idea for the “Life Next Door” pilot. Not consciously on her
part, but just in being who she was. Whether telling her that
would please her or make her feel used, he didn’t know.
“So he was hitting on you?”
“Don’t sound so surprised,” she said.
“I’m not.
But—the
loneliest man?
What a pathetic
pick-up line.”
“He wasn’t
trying to pick
me up.”
“You just
said…”
“Not then.
By then he’d
given up.”
“By then?”
“He tried
more than
once.”
“While I
was here?”
“There. I
was here, you
were there. He came here.”
“Introducing himself as the loneliest…”
She shook her head. “At first he just said, hi, all alone?”
“And you said?”
“I said, yes, by choice.”
“To his all alone?”
“Yes.”
“Snappy, but not exactly true.”
“No?”
“No. We’re here together.”
“Not then we weren’t.”
“But in general… Look, why didn’t you just join me like
any sensible person would?”
“That’s what sensible people do, join you?”
“You know what I mean.”
He had first noticed her at the travel agency on the ground
floor of the building in which he rented an office. Her desk sat
near the window where the afternoon sun caught the red high-
lights in her hair.
“You knew I was waiting for you,” he said. “Why didn’t you
come over?
“Obviously I’m not a sensible person.”
Though separated, he still was married the day he stopped
in to ask her to lunch.
“Then he came back,” she said, “a second effort. ̀ You look
lonely,’ he told me. But I’m not, I told him.”
“I should
hope not.”
“The third
time he said
maybe I didn’t
know my own
feelings.”
“No. He ac-
tually said
that?”
“That deep
down I was a
lot lonelier
than I knew.
He could tell
just by looking
at me.”
“He knows
what you’re
feeling even if
you feel you’re
not feeling it?”
“`You just don’t know it yet,’” he said. “`It hasn’t caught up
to you on the conscious level. Or you’re afraid to let yourself
face it.’”
“At which point I hope you told him he was full of it.”
“Then the last time was when he called himself the loneli-
est man in the world. Not only because he was lonely but be-
cause he could sense it in others. Like a drug-sniffing dog, he
said. Not that he wanted to. No. It was painful to live with. The
only thing that helped was human company. If I could spend
some time with him, he said, go for a walk, talk, it would be a
comfort to him.”
“Mm-hm.” He tapped fingers on the table to Ellington’s “It
don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t’ Got That Swing.)”
“He told me that when his mother, a true beauty, died, his
THE LONELIEST MAN IN THE WORLDROBERT J. FLANAGAN
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father had remarried within the year, to a plain, even homely,
woman. Not much to look at, he’d told his son, but good
company.”
“What does that have to do with you?”
She shrugged.
“You’re as far from plain and homely as any woman I know.”
“Just…company, he said, that’s all he wanted.”
She poked at the ice in her drink with the tiny umbrella.
“He looked so sad it made me wish there was something I
could do.”
“You don’t mean go off with him?”
“No, but something.”
Heading for the exit the group of tourists swarmed about
their table, laughing and blathering. My, what a grand time they
were having!
“I could get a camera crew to follow him around,” he said.
“Put together a reality pilot. ̀ Adventures in Loneliness’?”
“Don’t,” she told him.
He caught the tone in her voice, the way she got at times.
Once she closed up there was no way to reach her, not even in
bed. Then even sex was nothing but more friction.
“Why didn’t you tell him you were with someone?”
“He could see that I wasn’t.”
“Not at the same table, but… Look, I’m sorry, but I can’t
believe all this went on while and I was right over there, waiting
for you.”
Her eyes drifted past him, over his shoulder.
“Wait a second. He’s not still here, is he?”
They snapped back to him. “It doesn’t matter,” she said,
“he’s given up.”
“He’s at the bar?”
“Please. No heroics.”
“Me? You’ve got the wrong guy.”
“You’d only be protecting yourself, not me.”
“So he is here.”
As he started to turn she touched his wrist. “Here,” she
said, taking a black clamshell compact from her purse and tuck-
ing it into his palm. “Act like you have something in your eye.”
Opening the compact, he held it at an angle from his face and
maneuvered it to take in the bar. Two men sat side by side on
stools, hunched over drinks. A third stood at one end of the bar
looking out a big tinted window at the swimming pool.
Crowded during the day, the pool was nearly empty now.
“That’s him, the guy standing?”
She nodded.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. Why?”
He shrugged and shut the compact. He’d pictured the char-
acter as being closer to his own age, not someone in his thirties
with a full head of hair.
“Did you see his eyes,” she asked, “the circles? He can’t
sleep.”
“Uh-huh.” He slid the compact across the table. “But if
you’d sleep with him he’d feel better.”
“You think he’s wrong? That you know better?”
“No, no, not at all. Look, let’s just drop it, all right? I’m glad
you put him off, glad that we finally got together.” He drained
his glass. “But if you ask me, he looks sick. Like someone with a
disease.”
“Loneliness,” she said.
“For all you know he could have the plague.”
She glanced at the bar and away.
One of the things she feared most was catching a disease
from someone. When they first began sleeping together she was
constantly worried, despite his assurances, that he might pass
something on to her from his wife, some sickness that neither of
them knew he had.
Wrapping up “Caravan,” the piano man announced a
break and left the room.
“Probably it’s rotting his brain,” he told her. “I mean, the
loneliest man in the world -- it’s such a pathetic line. Who’d fall
for it?”
“Lonely people.”
He took a breath and let it out slowly. “Right,” he said. “Like
we used to be before we found each other.”
She bent her head slightly; nodded, maybe.
He stood. “Why don’t we go someplace else?”
She looked off in the direction of the aquarium, the win-
dows, anywhere but at him. He knew what was coming and
braced himself.
I: Wake up in the morning, stumble on my lifeWhat a horrible feeling; the feeling of losing time. No, not los-
ing time, but the time that I lost.
II: And half of what I didn’t do could be different, would it make it better?My foot is still hovering over the pedal. I have a full tank of
gas, I’m in a sports car, and there are only infinite miles of
open road ahead of me, with but one diminutive stop light be-
tween me and this endless highway. And countless times the
light has turned green, and just as many countless times I have
stood still at the light as I wait for it to turn red once more.
Other cars are speeding past me; eager to move forward and
get on with their journey, and are one mile closer towards
reaching their final destination. And though I desperately
want to accelerate ahead like the other cars, my foot doesn’t
move an inch. The light exchanges from green to yellow, and
when I finally resolve that really I should be going, my foot
only proceeds halfway to the pedal before the light screams
red, and I have to surrender my attempt to start the same vi-
cious cycle of waiting all over again.
III: A little bit of heaven, but a little bit of hellI look at the sky; a ribbon of pink and orange wrap around the
earth and embrace it before black engulfs the day. I bring my
head into my hands. I do not want to witness something so
beautiful being conquered by such darkness.
IV: In any other world you could tell the differenceHer wide hazel eyes are now fixed straight into mine as they
command me to move out of her way. Though even as they are
glowering, they still manage to maintain their glittery sparkle.
The same, stupid self-conscious thought arises in my head
every time I look into them. My eyes are every bit as green and
brown as hers. Why don’t they sparkle?
V: Don’t scream - there are so many roads left“Excuse me? Yes, I am so sorry to bother you, but I am just so
incredibly lost.” The first pause. “Well, you see, I was told to go
and find myself, and I don’t even know what the address is.”
The second pause. “So do you know which path I take? I am
just so tired; these burdens that I place upon my shoulders are
wearing me down.” The third pause. “Well, I think I am going
to endeavor this way now anyways. It feels right, and I must
keep going.” The fourth pause. “And one more question: if I do
manage to find myself, how will I know I am there if I haven’t
the slightest idea what I’m looking for? Can you tell me what I
should see?” The fifth pause. “Oh yes, I have heard that it is in-
describable.” The first smile.
HAPPY ENDINGABBY NAPOLI
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father had remarried within the year, to a plain, even homely,
woman. Not much to look at, he’d told his son, but good
company.”
“What does that have to do with you?”
She shrugged.
“You’re as far from plain and homely as any woman I know.”
“Just…company, he said, that’s all he wanted.”
She poked at the ice in her drink with the tiny umbrella.
“He looked so sad it made me wish there was something I
could do.”
“You don’t mean go off with him?”
“No, but something.”
Heading for the exit the group of tourists swarmed about
their table, laughing and blathering. My, what a grand time they
were having!
“I could get a camera crew to follow him around,” he said.
“Put together a reality pilot. ̀ Adventures in Loneliness’?”
“Don’t,” she told him.
He caught the tone in her voice, the way she got at times.
Once she closed up there was no way to reach her, not even in
bed. Then even sex was nothing but more friction.
“Why didn’t you tell him you were with someone?”
“He could see that I wasn’t.”
“Not at the same table, but… Look, I’m sorry, but I can’t
believe all this went on while and I was right over there, waiting
for you.”
Her eyes drifted past him, over his shoulder.
“Wait a second. He’s not still here, is he?”
They snapped back to him. “It doesn’t matter,” she said,
“he’s given up.”
“He’s at the bar?”
“Please. No heroics.”
“Me? You’ve got the wrong guy.”
“You’d only be protecting yourself, not me.”
“So he is here.”
As he started to turn she touched his wrist. “Here,” she
said, taking a black clamshell compact from her purse and tuck-
ing it into his palm. “Act like you have something in your eye.”
Opening the compact, he held it at an angle from his face and
maneuvered it to take in the bar. Two men sat side by side on
stools, hunched over drinks. A third stood at one end of the bar
looking out a big tinted window at the swimming pool.
Crowded during the day, the pool was nearly empty now.
“That’s him, the guy standing?”
She nodded.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. Why?”
He shrugged and shut the compact. He’d pictured the char-
acter as being closer to his own age, not someone in his thirties
with a full head of hair.
“Did you see his eyes,” she asked, “the circles? He can’t
sleep.”
“Uh-huh.” He slid the compact across the table. “But if
you’d sleep with him he’d feel better.”
“You think he’s wrong? That you know better?”
“No, no, not at all. Look, let’s just drop it, all right? I’m glad
you put him off, glad that we finally got together.” He drained
his glass. “But if you ask me, he looks sick. Like someone with a
disease.”
“Loneliness,” she said.
“For all you know he could have the plague.”
She glanced at the bar and away.
One of the things she feared most was catching a disease
from someone. When they first began sleeping together she was
constantly worried, despite his assurances, that he might pass
something on to her from his wife, some sickness that neither of
them knew he had.
Wrapping up “Caravan,” the piano man announced a
break and left the room.
“Probably it’s rotting his brain,” he told her. “I mean, the
loneliest man in the world -- it’s such a pathetic line. Who’d fall
for it?”
“Lonely people.”
He took a breath and let it out slowly. “Right,” he said. “Like
we used to be before we found each other.”
She bent her head slightly; nodded, maybe.
He stood. “Why don’t we go someplace else?”
She looked off in the direction of the aquarium, the win-
dows, anywhere but at him. He knew what was coming and
braced himself.
I: Wake up in the morning, stumble on my lifeWhat a horrible feeling; the feeling of losing time. No, not los-
ing time, but the time that I lost.
II: And half of what I didn’t do could be different, would it make it better?My foot is still hovering over the pedal. I have a full tank of
gas, I’m in a sports car, and there are only infinite miles of
open road ahead of me, with but one diminutive stop light be-
tween me and this endless highway. And countless times the
light has turned green, and just as many countless times I have
stood still at the light as I wait for it to turn red once more.
Other cars are speeding past me; eager to move forward and
get on with their journey, and are one mile closer towards
reaching their final destination. And though I desperately
want to accelerate ahead like the other cars, my foot doesn’t
move an inch. The light exchanges from green to yellow, and
when I finally resolve that really I should be going, my foot
only proceeds halfway to the pedal before the light screams
red, and I have to surrender my attempt to start the same vi-
cious cycle of waiting all over again.
III: A little bit of heaven, but a little bit of hellI look at the sky; a ribbon of pink and orange wrap around the
earth and embrace it before black engulfs the day. I bring my
head into my hands. I do not want to witness something so
beautiful being conquered by such darkness.
IV: In any other world you could tell the differenceHer wide hazel eyes are now fixed straight into mine as they
command me to move out of her way. Though even as they are
glowering, they still manage to maintain their glittery sparkle.
The same, stupid self-conscious thought arises in my head
every time I look into them. My eyes are every bit as green and
brown as hers. Why don’t they sparkle?
V: Don’t scream - there are so many roads left“Excuse me? Yes, I am so sorry to bother you, but I am just so
incredibly lost.” The first pause. “Well, you see, I was told to go
and find myself, and I don’t even know what the address is.”
The second pause. “So do you know which path I take? I am
just so tired; these burdens that I place upon my shoulders are
wearing me down.” The third pause. “Well, I think I am going
to endeavor this way now anyways. It feels right, and I must
keep going.” The fourth pause. “And one more question: if I do
manage to find myself, how will I know I am there if I haven’t
the slightest idea what I’m looking for? Can you tell me what I
should see?” The fifth pause. “Oh yes, I have heard that it is in-
describable.” The first smile.
HAPPY ENDINGABBY NAPOLI
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HE TOOK A FRONT TABLE IN THE LOUNGE CLOSE TO
THE PIANO and away from a clot of tourists, gaudy as macaws
in floral shirts. Nursing a scotch and soda he text-messaged his
co-writer on “Life as It Happens Next Door,” cautioning him in
the rewrite not to take their reality pilot so far into voyeurism
that it turned creepy.
The balding black man in the white jacket at the white
piano toyed with “Body and Soul,” “Come Rain or Come
Shine,” “Memories of Love,” adding little runs and variations,
keeping himself interested.
He emptied his glass and again glanced at his watch. It
seemed he spent more and more time lately waiting for her to
get dressed, although the final effect was always worth the wait.
As it was when she undressed.
Behind the bar above a row of bottles was a long, narrow
aquarium with neon fish weaving in and out of the wavy green
ferns.
The piano man worked his way through the chord changes
of Monk’s “Well, You Needn’t.”
Looking about for service, he was surprised to see her
seated three tables behind him, watching him. Hands spread, he
mimed bafflement.
He scraped back his chair to stand just as a waitress came to
take his order. When the girl left, he stayed put.
From her table she gave him a slant smile. One of her plea-
sures, she’d told him early on in their relationship, was eating
alone in hotels and feeling no need to strike up a conversation,
not feeling lonely but rather private, even mysterious, and tak-
ing pleasure in guessing what other diners might suppose about
her.
Was that what she’d been doing just now? Or had she en-
joyed observing him unawares? Had she not already known
him, he wondered, what might she have imagined him to be?
That he was an interesting sort? Attractive in his solitude? Or
just another marital casualty adrift in the midlife sea?
Holding her look, he speed-dialed her. At the “moonlight
sonata” ring tone she cocked her head to one side – what’s this? –
then dipped into a white-beaded clutch to retrieve her cell.
“Yes?”
“What are you doing over there?”
She shrugged. A drink sat on her table, something with a
pink umbrella.
“Why didn’t you come here?”
“You looked preoccupied.
“Just waiting for you,” he said.
“And all along I’ve been right here.”
“You can’t have been there that long, I’d have noticed.”
“You want to know the last five piano pieces?”
“I already know them.”
“So do I. ̀ Body and Soul,’ don’t you love it?”
“So, are you coming over?”
“Too close to the music. I like a little distance.”
When the waitress brought his drink he tipped her, put
away his cell and picked up his drink. He stepped to the piano
and folded a five into the tip glass. “Thank you, brother,” the
man said, not looking up from the keyboard as he tapped out
Ellington’s “Mood Indigo.”
He took his drink to the rear table. “You having fun?”
“Here?” she asked.
“You’ve been somewhere else?”
“No,” she said, “I mean here in the lounge? Or here on the
island?”
“Here, spying on me.”
“Was that what I was doing?”
“Not just that. I see you ordered a drink.”
She shook her head.
He looked at her glass, his eyebrows lifting.
“I have a drink, yes.”
“But you didn’t get it?”
She shook her head.
“Someone bought you a drink?”
She nodded.
“No. Really? Who?”
“The loneliest man in the world,” she said.
“How many of those have you had?”
“Drinks? Just one.”
“Which somebody bought –”
“I said. The loneliest man –”
“Right,” he said.
Over the rim of his glass he glanced at the other tables,
spotting no men on their own. The bar stood directly behind
him and he didn’t want to turn to look at it in case the character
was watching them. If what she said was actually true. She
tended to embellish. But who didn’t? And her flights of fancy, he
recalled, were one of things that had attracted him.
It struck him then that she was the one who’d given him
the idea for the “Life Next Door” pilot. Not consciously on her
part, but just in being who she was. Whether telling her that
would please her or make her feel used, he didn’t know.
“So he was hitting on you?”
“Don’t sound so surprised,” she said.
“I’m not.
But—the
loneliest man?
What a pathetic
pick-up line.”
“He wasn’t
trying to pick
me up.”
“You just
said…”
“Not then.
By then he’d
given up.”
“By then?”
“He tried
more than
once.”
“While I
was here?”
“There. I
was here, you
were there. He came here.”
“Introducing himself as the loneliest…”
She shook her head. “At first he just said, hi, all alone?”
“And you said?”
“I said, yes, by choice.”
“To his all alone?”
“Yes.”
“Snappy, but not exactly true.”
“No?”
“No. We’re here together.”
“Not then we weren’t.”
“But in general… Look, why didn’t you just join me like
any sensible person would?”
“That’s what sensible people do, join you?”
“You know what I mean.”
He had first noticed her at the travel agency on the ground
floor of the building in which he rented an office. Her desk sat
near the window where the afternoon sun caught the red high-
lights in her hair.
“You knew I was waiting for you,” he said. “Why didn’t you
come over?
“Obviously I’m not a sensible person.”
Though separated, he still was married the day he stopped
in to ask her to lunch.
“Then he came back,” she said, “a second effort. ̀ You look
lonely,’ he told me. But I’m not, I told him.”
“I should
hope not.”
“The third
time he said
maybe I didn’t
know my own
feelings.”
“No. He ac-
tually said
that?”
“That deep
down I was a
lot lonelier
than I knew.
He could tell
just by looking
at me.”
“He knows
what you’re
feeling even if
you feel you’re
not feeling it?”
“`You just don’t know it yet,’” he said. “`It hasn’t caught up
to you on the conscious level. Or you’re afraid to let yourself
face it.’”
“At which point I hope you told him he was full of it.”
“Then the last time was when he called himself the loneli-
est man in the world. Not only because he was lonely but be-
cause he could sense it in others. Like a drug-sniffing dog, he
said. Not that he wanted to. No. It was painful to live with. The
only thing that helped was human company. If I could spend
some time with him, he said, go for a walk, talk, it would be a
comfort to him.”
“Mm-hm.” He tapped fingers on the table to Ellington’s “It
don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t’ Got That Swing.)”
“He told me that when his mother, a true beauty, died, his
THE LONELIEST MAN IN THE WORLDROBERT J. FLANAGAN
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DURING THE FIRST YEARS OF THE NEW MILLEN-
NIUM, Thor Ungvald asked himself how many other New
Yorkers, especially those who lived near downtown, had slept
through not one, but both planes hitting the Twin Towers. How
many others had turned off their cell phones in a Bushmill’s-
soaked stumble shortly before passing out slightly before dawn,
only to awaken more than six hours after the planes hit? Thou-
sands? A few hundred? Dozens? One or two? None?
To maintain his sanity and move beyond the question
that he asked himself for half a decade, Thor settled on
“none.” He was, he decided, the sole wretch who had been so
hung over that he slept through the worst crisis in his city’s
history, not to mention one of most heinous mornings in his
country’s, not counting any given morning during the Civil
War, the Indian genocides or Pearl Harbor.
Guilt over country Thor could manage. Why worry
about a country that, nine years after religious fanatics at-
tacked America, a waddling swarm of live-ammo, holster-
wearing, brick-throwing, basketball gutted, middle-aged
American fanatics raged against a president that was one gen-
eration removed from his African roots. This was as opposed
to their own, which went back less than a hundred thousand
years, when their ancestors, along with the president’s, left their
East African villages in search of one thing or another. In 2010,
Thor wished the brick-throwers’ forebears had stayed put.
Between the sun-baked necks of the waddling swarm
and the tanning bed-tinted orange mugs of their congressio-
nal defenders, their skin-tones were often a deeper shade than
the president’s – a fact not lost on a Thor, whose winter-white
pigmentation turned brown easily in the summer. Something
about a Laplander and Great-grandmother, he’d heard.
Thor wondered if his bitterness at the land of the free existed
merely to lessen his guilt over profiting off those who still had
their millions – or billions. It wasn’t remorse from his heists
from which he needed relief, rather his sense of turning on
one’s own tribe, however marginalized he was from it.
Redemption from the sin of stealing wasn’t in the cards
for the Nordic Lutheran-turned-marauding heathen, which
is how he’d come to think of himself. He hadn’t been to
church in a dozen years. More than once he’d cursed his Vi-
king blood, and more than once he handled his guilt in the
only way he knew how – by plundering yet another wealthy
acquaintance on the Upper West or Upper East Side. (He left
downtown untouched; enough damage there already, he
figured.)
Thor felt the worst about his Jewish friends, for they’d
suffered as New York City had suffered, but for centuries, not
merely a decade. Still, it didn’t stop him. But he was no Bernie
Madoff, he reasoned: he left them with their bank accounts
intact, if lighter in the cash and carry department.
Emotional attachment to things aside, Thor rationalized,
the only entities that really took a hit from his thievery were
insurance companies. They were tied into the Street, to the
banks, and for these reasons any guilt that sneaked up on
Thor was giddily overcome by a quiet euphoria, as if he had
not only tackled the star quarterback behind the line of
scrimmage, but also forced a fumble and knocked him cold.
In Thor’s shimmering reverie, the star quarterback was a
mouth-breathing bully, especially to the girls at school. He
deserved what he got, and Thor gave it to him. In his better
moments, Thor thought himself a quiet hero. Falling asleep
by dawn’s sallow light, he half-dreamed that by the time the
girls – who had been elusive to schoolboy Thor – tried to
thank him, he’d be gone. So what if dark heroes like Batman
and Thor had intimacy issues? They were still heroes.
Though not having the somnambulant lure of a Bat
Cave, sleeping in at his loft was nothing new for Thor; he’d
been fired from Lehman seven months before that crystal
blue, horrific September morning. Just as his severance pay
had run out, 9-11 happened, and he began living off his
grandmother’s modest trust fund. Grandma had instructed
that the fund would move on to the next generation except
“…in the case of extreme emergency.” For Thor, a childless
only child, a “next generation” was an increasingly remote
SLEEPING IN( E X C E R P T )
SCOTT LAX
possibility. His grandmother’s estate at-
torney and executor, who had lost three
friends in the Towers, quickly agreed to
the emergency and loosed the vault.
For Thor, jobless but not income-
less, the nihilism of 2002 New York had
led to his own 21st Century reprise of his
1980’s weekday nightlife and consequen-
tial sleeping in. This, he relearned
quickly, was empty. It reminded
him of decades earlier, when
he’d walked into Studio 54
during the daytime, months
after its fall from grace, and
found just another nasty bar
smelling of Lysol, grease and
the perma-smoke of a thou-
sand nights.
He thus quickly aban-
doned this sad foray into ca-
rousing as if scraping dog shit
off his shoe and hoped no one
would notice, much less re-
member seeing him step in it;
and no one did. He was too old
to register in the brains of post-
post modern Harvard and
Middlebury grads that were on
their own decade-long bender,
as if by a decree that overrode
any sense of Getting Serious
About Life in post-9-11 Amer-
ica. And, too, Thor’s lingering
dignity made him invisible to
the opaque, sagging, half-century and
older night creatures – those that hadn’t
died from powdered, pill or liquid con-
sumption – who still trolled behind
fraying velvet ropes, waiting in vain for
the return of the glory days of China
Club and Columbus; waiting in vain, as
it happened, for the same psychic mini-
pits of hell that they’d unearthed in the
pre-Web era.
His retro-recklessness quelled by
mid-2003, Thor’s thoughts turned solely
to supporting the modest if cosmopoli-
tan lifestyle to which he’d become ac-
customed. Had it been the late seventies,
when he’d first wanted it, Grandmoth-
er’s trust would have been adequate to
keep him well clothed and coiffed in
Chelsea and avoiding Wall Street.
He’d realized that, in the bright new
millennium, tarnished by tragedy as it
nonetheless was, his post-firing monthly
stipend wasn’t enough to get him a walk-
up in Harlem, much less keep him in
Chelsea. After Lehman kicked him to
the curb, he managed to hang on to his
loft by taking the odd bartending job or
helping Geoffrey – hadn’t he been Jeff in
college? – do his art installations at non-
profits that Thor had never heard of,
even though he’d made it his Sunday
habit of scouring the Times for high so-
ciety’s underbelly of excess in the guise
of largess.
Not until Thor turned fifty, in the
early autumn of 2008, before the Crash
took down many of his former col-
leagues, did he realize that his life-long
tendency for sleeping in was an asset, not
a character flaw. Sure, he’d missed 9-11
because of his circadian
rhythm – he reckoned a
recessive gene from a cave-
dwelling night watchman
accounted for the quirk –
and the consequent late-
night stories at barrooms
and parties that went along
with being a survivor. Yet
his advantage was that he
was already out of the sys-
tem and working as an old-
fashioned thief when the
Street crashed and sent his
past co-workers and school-
mates into the gutters of
self-loathing in which he’d
been living part-time for
seven years.
If nothing else, the
Crash finally allowed him to
not care about never speak-
ing up during the What I
Was Doing When The
Planes Crashed conversa-
tions. Now the money crowd talked
about What I Was Doing When The
Dow Crashed, replacing 9-11 as their
raison d’être for getting wasted.
By Christmas 2008, Thor Ungvald,
whose father’s father had refused to
change his name at Ellis Island; Thor,
the stubborn, hulking Norwegian who
had never really fit in at The Pennington
School, or Yale, or at Salomon Brothers,
and later at Lehman, was seven years
C H A P T E R 1 1
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DURING THE FIRST YEARS OF THE NEW MILLEN-
NIUM, Thor Ungvald asked himself how many other New
Yorkers, especially those who lived near downtown, had slept
through not one, but both planes hitting the Twin Towers. How
many others had turned off their cell phones in a Bushmill’s-
soaked stumble shortly before passing out slightly before dawn,
only to awaken more than six hours after the planes hit? Thou-
sands? A few hundred? Dozens? One or two? None?
To maintain his sanity and move beyond the question
that he asked himself for half a decade, Thor settled on
“none.” He was, he decided, the sole wretch who had been so
hung over that he slept through the worst crisis in his city’s
history, not to mention one of most heinous mornings in his
country’s, not counting any given morning during the Civil
War, the Indian genocides or Pearl Harbor.
Guilt over country Thor could manage. Why worry
about a country that, nine years after religious fanatics at-
tacked America, a waddling swarm of live-ammo, holster-
wearing, brick-throwing, basketball gutted, middle-aged
American fanatics raged against a president that was one gen-
eration removed from his African roots. This was as opposed
to their own, which went back less than a hundred thousand
years, when their ancestors, along with the president’s, left their
East African villages in search of one thing or another. In 2010,
Thor wished the brick-throwers’ forebears had stayed put.
Between the sun-baked necks of the waddling swarm
and the tanning bed-tinted orange mugs of their congressio-
nal defenders, their skin-tones were often a deeper shade than
the president’s – a fact not lost on a Thor, whose winter-white
pigmentation turned brown easily in the summer. Something
about a Laplander and Great-grandmother, he’d heard.
Thor wondered if his bitterness at the land of the free existed
merely to lessen his guilt over profiting off those who still had
their millions – or billions. It wasn’t remorse from his heists
from which he needed relief, rather his sense of turning on
one’s own tribe, however marginalized he was from it.
Redemption from the sin of stealing wasn’t in the cards
for the Nordic Lutheran-turned-marauding heathen, which
is how he’d come to think of himself. He hadn’t been to
church in a dozen years. More than once he’d cursed his Vi-
king blood, and more than once he handled his guilt in the
only way he knew how – by plundering yet another wealthy
acquaintance on the Upper West or Upper East Side. (He left
downtown untouched; enough damage there already, he
figured.)
Thor felt the worst about his Jewish friends, for they’d
suffered as New York City had suffered, but for centuries, not
merely a decade. Still, it didn’t stop him. But he was no Bernie
Madoff, he reasoned: he left them with their bank accounts
intact, if lighter in the cash and carry department.
Emotional attachment to things aside, Thor rationalized,
the only entities that really took a hit from his thievery were
insurance companies. They were tied into the Street, to the
banks, and for these reasons any guilt that sneaked up on
Thor was giddily overcome by a quiet euphoria, as if he had
not only tackled the star quarterback behind the line of
scrimmage, but also forced a fumble and knocked him cold.
In Thor’s shimmering reverie, the star quarterback was a
mouth-breathing bully, especially to the girls at school. He
deserved what he got, and Thor gave it to him. In his better
moments, Thor thought himself a quiet hero. Falling asleep
by dawn’s sallow light, he half-dreamed that by the time the
girls – who had been elusive to schoolboy Thor – tried to
thank him, he’d be gone. So what if dark heroes like Batman
and Thor had intimacy issues? They were still heroes.
Though not having the somnambulant lure of a Bat
Cave, sleeping in at his loft was nothing new for Thor; he’d
been fired from Lehman seven months before that crystal
blue, horrific September morning. Just as his severance pay
had run out, 9-11 happened, and he began living off his
grandmother’s modest trust fund. Grandma had instructed
that the fund would move on to the next generation except
“…in the case of extreme emergency.” For Thor, a childless
only child, a “next generation” was an increasingly remote
SLEEPING IN( E X C E R P T )
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possibility. His grandmother’s estate at-
torney and executor, who had lost three
friends in the Towers, quickly agreed to
the emergency and loosed the vault.
For Thor, jobless but not income-
less, the nihilism of 2002 New York had
led to his own 21st Century reprise of his
1980’s weekday nightlife and consequen-
tial sleeping in. This, he relearned
quickly, was empty. It reminded
him of decades earlier, when
he’d walked into Studio 54
during the daytime, months
after its fall from grace, and
found just another nasty bar
smelling of Lysol, grease and
the perma-smoke of a thou-
sand nights.
He thus quickly aban-
doned this sad foray into ca-
rousing as if scraping dog shit
off his shoe and hoped no one
would notice, much less re-
member seeing him step in it;
and no one did. He was too old
to register in the brains of post-
post modern Harvard and
Middlebury grads that were on
their own decade-long bender,
as if by a decree that overrode
any sense of Getting Serious
About Life in post-9-11 Amer-
ica. And, too, Thor’s lingering
dignity made him invisible to
the opaque, sagging, half-century and
older night creatures – those that hadn’t
died from powdered, pill or liquid con-
sumption – who still trolled behind
fraying velvet ropes, waiting in vain for
the return of the glory days of China
Club and Columbus; waiting in vain, as
it happened, for the same psychic mini-
pits of hell that they’d unearthed in the
pre-Web era.
His retro-recklessness quelled by
mid-2003, Thor’s thoughts turned solely
to supporting the modest if cosmopoli-
tan lifestyle to which he’d become ac-
customed. Had it been the late seventies,
when he’d first wanted it, Grandmoth-
er’s trust would have been adequate to
keep him well clothed and coiffed in
Chelsea and avoiding Wall Street.
He’d realized that, in the bright new
millennium, tarnished by tragedy as it
nonetheless was, his post-firing monthly
stipend wasn’t enough to get him a walk-
up in Harlem, much less keep him in
Chelsea. After Lehman kicked him to
the curb, he managed to hang on to his
loft by taking the odd bartending job or
helping Geoffrey – hadn’t he been Jeff in
college? – do his art installations at non-
profits that Thor had never heard of,
even though he’d made it his Sunday
habit of scouring the Times for high so-
ciety’s underbelly of excess in the guise
of largess.
Not until Thor turned fifty, in the
early autumn of 2008, before the Crash
took down many of his former col-
leagues, did he realize that his life-long
tendency for sleeping in was an asset, not
a character flaw. Sure, he’d missed 9-11
because of his circadian
rhythm – he reckoned a
recessive gene from a cave-
dwelling night watchman
accounted for the quirk –
and the consequent late-
night stories at barrooms
and parties that went along
with being a survivor. Yet
his advantage was that he
was already out of the sys-
tem and working as an old-
fashioned thief when the
Street crashed and sent his
past co-workers and school-
mates into the gutters of
self-loathing in which he’d
been living part-time for
seven years.
If nothing else, the
Crash finally allowed him to
not care about never speak-
ing up during the What I
Was Doing When The
Planes Crashed conversa-
tions. Now the money crowd talked
about What I Was Doing When The
Dow Crashed, replacing 9-11 as their
raison d’être for getting wasted.
By Christmas 2008, Thor Ungvald,
whose father’s father had refused to
change his name at Ellis Island; Thor,
the stubborn, hulking Norwegian who
had never really fit in at The Pennington
School, or Yale, or at Salomon Brothers,
and later at Lehman, was seven years
C H A P T E R 1 1
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ahead of his freshly financially-fucked
former friends.
While those former friends were
reeling, Thor Ungvald was stealing. Not
that the public knew it: the victims
didn’t want it publicized, and the FBI –
despite the 10 MOST WANTED posters
of Usama bin Laden and nine other so-
ciopaths in post offices and on the FBI’s
1990’s-platform website – gladly obliged
the upper crust’s penchant for anony-
mous victimhood.
The New Media, in its amorphous
idiocy, collectively thought it covered
everything that mattered, yet had not
even come close to catching on to the
big blond man that had stolen approxi-
mately fifteen million dollars in cash,
jewelry and objets d’art at parties, fund-
raisers, weddings and sundry gather-
ings of those whom Thor regarded
without contempt as Philistines. None
of the beautifully dressed Philistines
were ever there with something as base
as a cell phone from which to take a
photo or do anything that could thwart
what was once romantically known by
the upper half-percent as a high society
burglar. Wealth trusts wealth, and
Thor, though on the lower end of that
class, was trusted in the best way possi-
ble for him: shabby-chicly tousled and
rugged, he was invited by hostesses as
an amusement, but essentially ignored,
which gave him time to forage for
treasures.
Thor’s stolen art alone, easily
fence-able to clients in the Middle East,
Eastern Europe and Japan, was enough
to not only keep in him Chelsea, but pay
for a significant housing upgrade. Yet he
remained in the same loft he’d once
tried so desperately to hold onto, the
same place he’d lived before he had fig-
ured out his new line of work, and the
same place he lived after his net worth
went up by a thousand fold. The loft
drew no attention, for just as he had
done when he went from high six-figure
trader to mid-five figure trust-funder,
Thor went about his life without any
noticeable change in his behavior. That
he had a streak of his grandfather’s per-
verse Norse pride and practicality
turned out to be a gift that served him
well in his new life.
THOR AWAKENS at seventeen min-
utes after one on a glorious Wednesday
afternoon in the early spring of 2010.
That he has begun waking at the same
time has been freaking him out for
weeks. Until recently, wake up was as
random as bedtime: it could be any
time after eleven AM – twelve-thirty,
two-twenty, whenever his body was
fully rested from the pale bleak world of
pre-dawn Manhattan.
An old-fashioned alarm clock with
hour, minute and second hands on it,
sits on his bedside table; it is an alarm
clock he never sets. But it’s clear enough
to him that after a couple of weeks that
it’s no coincidence that wake-up is 1:17
PM, whether digital or analogue or not
looking at the clock at all.
Today he checks it against his cell
phone, which is no longer shut-off, but
on silent. He does not like this as much
because he can see who calls while he
sleeps – not that anyone ever does ex-
cept for fences and end-customers. His
social invitations are by paper or
e-mail. There must be some term more
insidious than “loner,” Thor thinks, for
that indicates a kind of romantic soli-
tude. In his case, it’s merely because he
lives a lie, and a criminal one at that.
One-seventeen. “Fucking satellite
time,” Thor thinks. He feels his stom-
ach tighten. “Now my body decides to
set its own clock?” And for the first time
since he awoke to the hours-old televi-
sion images of the cause of the deathly
debris-cloud outside his window nearly
nine years before, Thor is afraid.
His fear lasts only a few minutes,
because his Madame Bovary, Holly Go-
lightly, untold number of rappers and
rockers mid-day schedule is, on some
level, still a schedule. He has a body to
maintain and feed, plans to make, rou-
tines to keep, alibis to fashion, a storage
locker to fill, and orders to ship.
Whatever cavern of guilt he had
carved in his soul two years ago when
he began his pillaging has been filled –
his Lutheran traditions having kicked
in – with a sense of duty. Twisting Kant
in the philosophical wind, Thor’s duty
to himself becomes his prison; having
slept in through most of his philosophy
class at Yale, he cannot remember the
rest of Kant, but a vague “duty” is
enough to drive him to wherever it is
he’s going.
As evening approaches, he passes
men on the sidewalk on his way uptown –
he is too old to imagine women as Wall
Street crooks – and Thor sees his life as
a kind of universal duty to take from
them that which they have taken from
so many others. That much he knows,
for he reads the newspaper, dutifully.
On this fine spring afternoon, Thor
walks uptown more than a hundred
blocks. Halfway he stops and walks
across Central Park. He wishes he could
share the bounty he will score tonight
with the bum that sleeps at the entrance
to Strawberry Fields. “Should I take his
name and bring him a money order?”
he wonders. He knows he cannot; the
bum would rat him out to the cops in a
heartbeat to avoid jail on some other
day when it’s his own time to be taken
off the streets.
His philanthropic urge assuaged,
Thor arrives at the soaring Upper East
Side brownstone of Maggie and Todd
Rosen for a party that promises a five-fig-
ure take. A credit card in a small hand-
bag left on a table here; a piece of jewelry
from the master bedroom there.
When Maggie went to Yale with Thor she
was Maggie Hartwick. Thor has followed
her trajectory of Yale to NYU M.F.A., to
teaching in the inner city, to the Times
wedding announcement of marrying
Todd Rosen, son of Dr. and Mrs. Irving
Rosen of New Jersey. Todd Rosen is now
an unindicted, if nervous principal of
one of the Street’s biggest firms.
Todd opens the door. Like Thor, he
is in good shape physically and finan-
cially. Like Thor, he makes his living
taking things from other people. Like
Thor, he has the easy smile of money and
comfort. Unlike Thor, Todd has been
working closely – if reluctantly, and
sworn not to tell his wife, who did so
adore Thor in college – with the FBI.
Thor enters the brownstone and im-
mediately relaxes from the overwhelm-
ing sense of wealth: the paintings by
famous artists, both living and dead,
seem to welcome him; the intricate
woodwork embraces him; the soft light-
ing of the eight thousand dollar lamp on
the table in the hallway is like the smile
of an angel from heaven.
Yet Thor is confused as he looks
around: he hears no music or chattering
guests, and sees no one there but Todd,
who wears a pair of Paul & Shark jeans,
Izod sweater and John Lobb lace-ups.
Just before Thor is knocked – somewhat
considerately – to the floor by three FBI
agents, with two more holding guns to
his head, he wonders if Maggie still likes
to drink Rolling Rock from the bottle,
and observes that Todd’s shoes are too
dressy for the rest his outfit, but doesn’t
have the heart to tell him. He likes Mag-
gie and Todd, just as he’s liked nearly all
of his victims.
As he’s being put into the FBI’s large
blue Ford, Thor looks back at Todd, who
holds a half-filled crystal whisky tum-
bler and stands expressionless on the
steps to his brownstone. Thor, in hand-
cuffs, smiles at Todd and attempts to
wave. He doesn’t feel any anger toward
Todd. He wants to tell Todd that he
hopes he continues to get away with his
crimes, not because he approves of the
Street stealing billions from the com-
mon folk, but because he can’t imagine
incarceration for Todd.
Passing Elaine’s on the way to the
FBI headquarters downtown, Thor
smiles to himself. He remembers a par-
ticular bowl of tasteless pasta he ate
there in the mid-80s but it didn’t matter
because he was laughing with…who was
it? He can’t recall. The FBI car moves
past the Park going south, and Thor tells
himself he’s had a good run. He’s been
able to sleep in – through his early
morning classes in college, and often
enough during his days on the Street,
which seem an eternity ago.
He asks himself if sleeping all day
on 9-11 screwed up his karma and threw
off his life’s real purpose. He wonders, as
he watches the Upper East Side go by, in
all its softened nighttime elegance, its
quiet power of unlimited money and
privilege behind those golden windows,
if perhaps it was all meant to be, after all.
He got to sleep in, gloriously, covered in
the rare silk of morning slumber, oblivi-
ous to the rest of New York – to the world –
that was so very busy being productive.
And then that world was destroyed, and
then nothing was the same, and sleeping
in was something he could no longer be
proud of while still part of that world.
He passes through mid-town and the
lights grow brighter; Thor knows he
cannot go back. He hopes those he has
robbed got their possessions replaced.
And he begins his new plan for sleeping
in – one that, this time, will not be inter-
rupted by anything, not even prison.
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ahead of his freshly financially-fucked
former friends.
While those former friends were
reeling, Thor Ungvald was stealing. Not
that the public knew it: the victims
didn’t want it publicized, and the FBI –
despite the 10 MOST WANTED posters
of Usama bin Laden and nine other so-
ciopaths in post offices and on the FBI’s
1990’s-platform website – gladly obliged
the upper crust’s penchant for anony-
mous victimhood.
The New Media, in its amorphous
idiocy, collectively thought it covered
everything that mattered, yet had not
even come close to catching on to the
big blond man that had stolen approxi-
mately fifteen million dollars in cash,
jewelry and objets d’art at parties, fund-
raisers, weddings and sundry gather-
ings of those whom Thor regarded
without contempt as Philistines. None
of the beautifully dressed Philistines
were ever there with something as base
as a cell phone from which to take a
photo or do anything that could thwart
what was once romantically known by
the upper half-percent as a high society
burglar. Wealth trusts wealth, and
Thor, though on the lower end of that
class, was trusted in the best way possi-
ble for him: shabby-chicly tousled and
rugged, he was invited by hostesses as
an amusement, but essentially ignored,
which gave him time to forage for
treasures.
Thor’s stolen art alone, easily
fence-able to clients in the Middle East,
Eastern Europe and Japan, was enough
to not only keep in him Chelsea, but pay
for a significant housing upgrade. Yet he
remained in the same loft he’d once
tried so desperately to hold onto, the
same place he’d lived before he had fig-
ured out his new line of work, and the
same place he lived after his net worth
went up by a thousand fold. The loft
drew no attention, for just as he had
done when he went from high six-figure
trader to mid-five figure trust-funder,
Thor went about his life without any
noticeable change in his behavior. That
he had a streak of his grandfather’s per-
verse Norse pride and practicality
turned out to be a gift that served him
well in his new life.
THOR AWAKENS at seventeen min-
utes after one on a glorious Wednesday
afternoon in the early spring of 2010.
That he has begun waking at the same
time has been freaking him out for
weeks. Until recently, wake up was as
random as bedtime: it could be any
time after eleven AM – twelve-thirty,
two-twenty, whenever his body was
fully rested from the pale bleak world of
pre-dawn Manhattan.
An old-fashioned alarm clock with
hour, minute and second hands on it,
sits on his bedside table; it is an alarm
clock he never sets. But it’s clear enough
to him that after a couple of weeks that
it’s no coincidence that wake-up is 1:17
PM, whether digital or analogue or not
looking at the clock at all.
Today he checks it against his cell
phone, which is no longer shut-off, but
on silent. He does not like this as much
because he can see who calls while he
sleeps – not that anyone ever does ex-
cept for fences and end-customers. His
social invitations are by paper or
e-mail. There must be some term more
insidious than “loner,” Thor thinks, for
that indicates a kind of romantic soli-
tude. In his case, it’s merely because he
lives a lie, and a criminal one at that.
One-seventeen. “Fucking satellite
time,” Thor thinks. He feels his stom-
ach tighten. “Now my body decides to
set its own clock?” And for the first time
since he awoke to the hours-old televi-
sion images of the cause of the deathly
debris-cloud outside his window nearly
nine years before, Thor is afraid.
His fear lasts only a few minutes,
because his Madame Bovary, Holly Go-
lightly, untold number of rappers and
rockers mid-day schedule is, on some
level, still a schedule. He has a body to
maintain and feed, plans to make, rou-
tines to keep, alibis to fashion, a storage
locker to fill, and orders to ship.
Whatever cavern of guilt he had
carved in his soul two years ago when
he began his pillaging has been filled –
his Lutheran traditions having kicked
in – with a sense of duty. Twisting Kant
in the philosophical wind, Thor’s duty
to himself becomes his prison; having
slept in through most of his philosophy
class at Yale, he cannot remember the
rest of Kant, but a vague “duty” is
enough to drive him to wherever it is
he’s going.
As evening approaches, he passes
men on the sidewalk on his way uptown –
he is too old to imagine women as Wall
Street crooks – and Thor sees his life as
a kind of universal duty to take from
them that which they have taken from
so many others. That much he knows,
for he reads the newspaper, dutifully.
On this fine spring afternoon, Thor
walks uptown more than a hundred
blocks. Halfway he stops and walks
across Central Park. He wishes he could
share the bounty he will score tonight
with the bum that sleeps at the entrance
to Strawberry Fields. “Should I take his
name and bring him a money order?”
he wonders. He knows he cannot; the
bum would rat him out to the cops in a
heartbeat to avoid jail on some other
day when it’s his own time to be taken
off the streets.
His philanthropic urge assuaged,
Thor arrives at the soaring Upper East
Side brownstone of Maggie and Todd
Rosen for a party that promises a five-fig-
ure take. A credit card in a small hand-
bag left on a table here; a piece of jewelry
from the master bedroom there.
When Maggie went to Yale with Thor she
was Maggie Hartwick. Thor has followed
her trajectory of Yale to NYU M.F.A., to
teaching in the inner city, to the Times
wedding announcement of marrying
Todd Rosen, son of Dr. and Mrs. Irving
Rosen of New Jersey. Todd Rosen is now
an unindicted, if nervous principal of
one of the Street’s biggest firms.
Todd opens the door. Like Thor, he
is in good shape physically and finan-
cially. Like Thor, he makes his living
taking things from other people. Like
Thor, he has the easy smile of money and
comfort. Unlike Thor, Todd has been
working closely – if reluctantly, and
sworn not to tell his wife, who did so
adore Thor in college – with the FBI.
Thor enters the brownstone and im-
mediately relaxes from the overwhelm-
ing sense of wealth: the paintings by
famous artists, both living and dead,
seem to welcome him; the intricate
woodwork embraces him; the soft light-
ing of the eight thousand dollar lamp on
the table in the hallway is like the smile
of an angel from heaven.
Yet Thor is confused as he looks
around: he hears no music or chattering
guests, and sees no one there but Todd,
who wears a pair of Paul & Shark jeans,
Izod sweater and John Lobb lace-ups.
Just before Thor is knocked – somewhat
considerately – to the floor by three FBI
agents, with two more holding guns to
his head, he wonders if Maggie still likes
to drink Rolling Rock from the bottle,
and observes that Todd’s shoes are too
dressy for the rest his outfit, but doesn’t
have the heart to tell him. He likes Mag-
gie and Todd, just as he’s liked nearly all
of his victims.
As he’s being put into the FBI’s large
blue Ford, Thor looks back at Todd, who
holds a half-filled crystal whisky tum-
bler and stands expressionless on the
steps to his brownstone. Thor, in hand-
cuffs, smiles at Todd and attempts to
wave. He doesn’t feel any anger toward
Todd. He wants to tell Todd that he
hopes he continues to get away with his
crimes, not because he approves of the
Street stealing billions from the com-
mon folk, but because he can’t imagine
incarceration for Todd.
Passing Elaine’s on the way to the
FBI headquarters downtown, Thor
smiles to himself. He remembers a par-
ticular bowl of tasteless pasta he ate
there in the mid-80s but it didn’t matter
because he was laughing with…who was
it? He can’t recall. The FBI car moves
past the Park going south, and Thor tells
himself he’s had a good run. He’s been
able to sleep in – through his early
morning classes in college, and often
enough during his days on the Street,
which seem an eternity ago.
He asks himself if sleeping all day
on 9-11 screwed up his karma and threw
off his life’s real purpose. He wonders, as
he watches the Upper East Side go by, in
all its softened nighttime elegance, its
quiet power of unlimited money and
privilege behind those golden windows,
if perhaps it was all meant to be, after all.
He got to sleep in, gloriously, covered in
the rare silk of morning slumber, oblivi-
ous to the rest of New York – to the world –
that was so very busy being productive.
And then that world was destroyed, and
then nothing was the same, and sleeping
in was something he could no longer be
proud of while still part of that world.
He passes through mid-town and the
lights grow brighter; Thor knows he
cannot go back. He hopes those he has
robbed got their possessions replaced.
And he begins his new plan for sleeping
in – one that, this time, will not be inter-
rupted by anything, not even prison.
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