Here She Lies

I guessed that on the outside we were supposed to act as if we’d never done time.
    Clark was a small man with a big embrace. At the prison, inmates were strictly forbidden to touch us and so I hadn’t known what a tactile guy he was. He was wearing cologne, an improvement over the generalized smell of sweat that had clung to many of the prisoners regardless of how clean they were. After the hug we stood back and smiled at each other. Clark wore the shadow of a teenage acne mask, a misfortune he couldn’t help, and a new hairstyle he definitely should have done something about. His inmate’s regulation buzz cut had sprouted into a frizzy topiary puffed high in the front, long down the back of his neck and trimmed short in between. And he had a big, bushy mustache. I felt like asking what was up with all the hair, but I pretended I didn’t notice.
    “Clark! What are you doing here? It’s so great to see you!”
    “Yeah, yeah, that’s what they all say.” He smirked and nodded rapidly, but that was his special humor: dry, self-effacing, a little obtuse. “Looking for work. Busboy, shit like that. I just talked to someone at the fancy-pants restaurant upstairs, Per Say.” I had heard of Per Se — it was considered one of Manhattan’s finest restaurants — but I hadn’t realized it was right here. “That joint’s a con. Guy as good as told me the prices were fixed. Menu on the way out said it all: two-tenapiece just for lunch. Thought I’d choke. Guy gave me such a friggin’ attitude, even with all my experience I know I’ll never hear from that queer again.”
    All my experience. Clark’s criminal record detailed a range of experience from petty to grand larceny; he was what they called a nonviolent felony repeat offender. I didn’t want to insult him by asking if he was showing prospective employers his real résumé — or why he was showing them his creepy tattoo. I knew that finding his place in the law-abiding layers of society would be a real endeavor, which was no doubt why he was aiming low, at busboy, when he might have sought something a little more dignified and better paying, some kind of starting position in an office somewhere.
    “You can do better than busboy, Clark.”
    “You think?”
    “I do.”
    “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m selling myself short. Maybe I oughta try for something better than that restaurant shit. Problem is...” He trailed off. With ex-cons, it was always the same roadblock.
    “Your record. But you did your time and the rules are we’re supposed to give you a chance to succeed now.”
    “Rules.” He smirked.
    “Well, some people follow them.”
    Clark smiled. Back in the slammer, as he might have said, we used to have these conversations about different kinds of people. In his world you were guilty until proven innocent; in my world it was the opposite. Ourdebates had been friendly and sometimes fun, but we’d never convinced each other to change our views.
    “So what brings you here?” he asked.
    “I left the prison. I’ve got a new job here in the city.”
    “Get outta town.”
    I nodded, smiled, stayed in town.
    “So what about Mr. Goodman?” Wink wink wink. “I thought he was some kind of lifer in the joint.”
    “He’s still there.”
    He nodded heavily, hair bobbing all of a piece. “Too bad. I thought you guys’d last.”
    “It’s just a temporary separation, for a year or so, until he earns his pension. We’ll see each other every weekend.”
    Clark eyed me as if I were conning him, which of course I was. But I had my privacy to protect.
    “You know what they say about long-distance romances.”
    “No. What?”
    “They’re for the birds.”
    I laughed out loud. “That’s the truth!”
    “So, who left who? I mean, besides you being the one who flew the coop.”
    “No one left anyone.”
    “That’s such fuckin’ bullshit, if I may say so myself.”
    I stared at him. “That was really out of line.”
    “It’s just that I always liked both of you. You were both good to me in the clinic, and believe me, that was the only thing kept me sane. Mr. Goodman, he’s the kind of guy’s got his nose to the grindstone, makes agood living, stays straight. I mean, what more do you want from a guy?”
    “Fidelity.” It slipped out before I could stop myself and then there seemed no point in holding back. “He cheated on me, Clark. So now you know.”
    “Mr. G?”
    I nodded.
    “You caught him in flagrante, I guess.”
    I