MY WIFE AND MY DEAD WIFE
An Oz Story
By Gemma Files

WIFE...is a four-letter word.
     --Augustus Hill.

Part One

Gen Pop, 5:15 A.M. Vern Schillinger wakes up well before the bell, his right hand knotted, the tendons in his wrist like a lit fuse. Molten pain, worse every morning. He lies looking at the ceiling, schooling himself for another day of pretending to ignore his growing agony.
     Telling himself it's nothing, fuck it. You can take it. What are you, some kind of faggot?
     (Thank you, Dad.)
     Below him, the new guy in the bottom bunk--what the hell IS his name?--turns and sighs, sounding for all the world like Tobias Beecher. Same M.O., every fucking night: Awake, it's the constant ragged hitch in the breath, the "I'm not crying" wheeze. Asleep, he whimpers and snores like a bitch in heat. Bad dreams, Vern guesses, though he doesn't much care if he's right or not.
     As if on cue, the nonentity in question starts to moan and makes a brief, nightmare-gripped scrabble against the nearest bedpost, trying to ward off whatever's chasing him through sheer bodily effort.
     And: Ten more years to go of this, Vern thinks, unable to stop himself. Ten whole more years of listening to other people dream.
     He exhales through his nose, slowly. Starts ticking down the daily list: THINGS TO DO, part infinity.
     Currently, the project marked number one with a bullet involves making whatever accomodations have to be made to deal with the empty space left in the wake of Mark Mack's sudden demise. Not that Vern really wants to get directly involved with the Aryan Brotherhood's now-officially-open leadership race anymore; he's kind of enjoying looking good on paper, for novelty's sake alone if nothing more, and there's only so far his Em City hack connections can--or should--safely take him.
     Sipple was fun, but dumb; he can admit to that, within the private confines of his own skull. Restraint is the key. Planning. You go with what's proven, what's workable: Find another idiot figurehead, set him up, then retreat and keep pulling the strings from behind the scene, just like before.
     Yeah. That'll do.
     Subsidiary projects include the following:
     --Make sure that bad juju motherfucker Adebisi stays in Ad Seg.
     --Pay that holier-than-thou would-be spade messiah Said back for throwing his case.
     --Offer that devious Mick shit O'Reilly something that'll take his mind off of what Vern did to his retard brother, before Vern's reduced to praying O'Reilly's cancer of the tit reappears in time to keep him from putting VERN on the famous Nino Schibetta ground glass diet.
     Lists. You run 'em in your head, so nobody can read over your shoulder. It's a longstanding game Vern plays with himself--keeps him mentally fit, not to mention making sure no one around him has any idea what he thinks until HE chooses to tell them. And not even then, maybe.
     (...whole fucking WRIST feels like it's full of ground glass now...)
     This thing with his hand: Last Monday, it was a thin ache, like fatigue. By mid-week, a vague spike up the inside of his forearm, worse whenever he picked things up. And now a skewer, twisting. A bright, keen line of harm.
     But no big deal, he reminds himself, yet again. His mother had arthritis; the Old Man still does. He's 47 years old, and what with all the time he's already spent in Oz, it'd be a surprise if he DIDN'T have something wrong with him.
     What passes for medical help in this shithole is, however--naturally enough--out of the question. You go to doctors, they'll just give you drugs. That pretty mongrel Dr Nathan, O'Reilly's unrequited jack-off fantasy? Word is, she LOVES to medicate. A fact the real Beecher must surely be well aware of, by now.
     And that's Vern's final to-do project for today, right there: Since Operation Toby has finally been laid so far to rest its underside must be cooking on Hell's rooftop, can he now start trying to keep his goddamn mind off Tobias goddamn Beecher, for more than five goddamn minutes at a goddamn time?
     It must at least be POSSIBLE, for Christ's sake.
     Not much bounce left in the old Beech-ball, anyway, from what Chris Keller tells him. Just lies there like  a broken doll, encased in plaster, making faces. Grinning, sometimes. Sometimes mouthing a few words, like he's talking to himself. Fuckin' little nutcase.
     (And what are you doing still watching him that close, exactly, Chris-to-pher? Trying to read his lips?)
     Screw Keller. His motivation's not Vern's problem. None of it's his problem, now.
     Better things to do, not to mention people.
     Vern catches his reflection in the mirror above the sink, seen sideways, and notes that the back of his head needs a shave. Feels his thumb and index pinch together reflexively, as if gripping a razor's handle, and winces.
     (Shit. That really does HURT.)
     But not enough for him to say it does, especially out loud. Never that.'Cause that kind of self-indulgent guts-spilling, that's for...what?
     Liberals. Catholics. Educated weaklings. Potential prags.
     ...Beecher.
     (But you never did know what Beecher was thinking, did you?) A quiet voice at the back of his head points out, slyly. (Not REALLY. As you later found out.)
     Vern blinks the words away. Feels a headache building, on top of everything else: A phantom needle slipped through the soft tissue in back of his bad eye, neatly skewering that floating, hazy spot where his cornea once bunched and scarred against a piece of glass from his old pod's broken window. A little bit of blindness left over for good, even after they finally took his patch away. A little reminder of what happened, of who was responsible. Of what had to be done about it.
      Like he'd really needed one.
     And now the bell's going to ring, any minute, right above his ear. He'll vault out of the top bunk, game face tightly set in place. Work all day in the post office, stamping and sorting, every movement like a nail hammered straight through the bone, marrow-deep. His own little one-handed crucifixion: Sympathy pains for Sipple, that pedophile priest fuck.
     Whatever. He's Vern Schillinger, and that still counts for something--in here, at least.
     If nowhere else.
 

MY WIFE AND MY DEAD WIFE, by Gemma Files

Part Two

Yesterday it was McManus, the ever-fucking-present: His features swimming constantly in and out of focus, lapped and drowned in a shaky haze of light, myopic eyes narrowed introspectively beneath a wispy suggestion of brows. The image was almost enough to make Tobias Beecher suspect Em City's resident Wizard maybe had his own set of demolished glasses hidden away somewhere--that, just like Beecher himself, McManus had deliberately retreated behind a protective shield of imperfect vision, letting astigmatism de-edge (if only ever-so-slightly) the hard and ugly world around him.
     Which would be pretty pathetic, if true. Seeing how McManus was the one who'd CREATED this particular world, in the first place.
     "Beecher?" Then, raising his voice just a little--ignoring, as usual, the total lack of response--"Beecher, you hear me? You know who I am?"
     (Oh, and how could I ever forget?)
     But Beecher simply licked his dry lips and replied, slowly: "Sure. You're...tha' guy who's not...a travel agent."
     And closed his eyes, dismissively. Then opened them again to find--without surprise, though more than a little dim pleasure--to find nothing but an empty space where McManus had been.
     Today, however, it's Sister Peter Marie--her clever, weary face peering down at him, smiling in what seems like genuine sympathy. Beecher tries to return the favor, but isn't sure how it works out; not too good, by her carefully-controlled reaction.
     "Welcome back, Tobias."
     Beecher swallows, wets his tongue. But manages only: "'Lo, Siss...er."
     Sister Pete's eyelids flicker--shock and dismay, expertly masked. He wonders what the trigger is, exactly: His obviously stoned incoherence, wandering half-lidded eyes, the four-fold starfish droop of his limp, plaster-covered limbs? Or some combination of the above?
     Better get used to it, he thinks, so vehemently he surprises even himself.
     "We miss you at the office," she tells him.
     "...we?"
     "Well...me."
     Beecher gives the drowned husk of a laugh, liquid with glorious, painkiller-soaked warmth. Forcing himself to enunciate, he replies:
     "You really gotta get...out more, Siss--ter. Make some...REAL friends."
     Sister Pete plays idly with the string of her bifocals. Softly:
     "You're real to me, Tobias."
     And Toby feels all his pushed-aside post-traumatic fatigue fall on him again, at once, neatly displacing the pharmaceutical coccoon he's kept himself insulated inside thus far. The deadweight of his own broken bones, pulling him back down into the dark.
     "Sure," he replies, exhausted. "...sure I am."
     Later:
     "'Tripped and fell,'" the nun repeats, her tone pretty firmly unconvinced.
     "You...got it."
     For a long moment, Sister Pete falls quiet, obviously taking extra time--and care--with her next sentence. Beecher sneaks a hidden glance, through downcast lashes.
     "If you'd just tell Tim McManus who did this to you..." she begins, slowly. But Beecher cuts her off.
     "I'M who...did it," He says, an ironic stress on the "I". "To me."
     Impatient: "That's just not true, and you know it."
     "Might as...well be."
     (Besides...) a voice in his head asks, uncharitably (...what are you and him gonna do about it? Sic God on 'em?)
     A deep, calm voice--familiar, somehow. He feels his stomach knot under its lazy drawl, touched with a trailing, icy finger of unconscious recognition.
     Sister Pete sighs. "I know you don't believe me, Tobias, but it's like this: God--"
     (that tumor)
     "--really never does give you more than you can bear to carry. He's good that way."
     "Know that for...sure, huh?"
     Sharply: "What are you looking for here, instant karma? Not so easy. God's God; I can't read His mind, and I don't try to. So when I talk about His promises, I just have to take them on faith, same as everybody else. Even you."
     "Thass what I like...best about you, Siss-ter. All advice...and no consent."
     Right on cue, Beecher feels his drugged mind begin to wander, and decides--just for a moment--to lie there and let it. Slipping and sliding, brief sideways flashes, stripped to their barest essentials. That last drink as a free man, unneeded and unwanted, burning on its way down. The sick thud of Kathy's body across his front window. Her mother screaming at him, through the glass: I hope you die in here.
     Well: Not so much longer to wait, probably.
     Caught up in the warm, embracing hollow of God's hand, the Ryan O'Reilly version, heroin singing through his nostrils, his veins. Then back to starch, Tide, an invasive ache and an itchy horrified shame: The sense-memory scent of Vern Schillinger's freshly-laundered shirts, spilling over into an entirely different sort of violation. Another date, but the same humming bank of machines, as Chris Keller's Judas arms curl tight around him--sweet pressure, firey rush of passion met and matched--hauling him high, lifting, seeking...
     ...and Gen, and the kids. And Gen. And the kids.
     And Gen.
     That one conjugal, standing there with her stupid little picnic basket, ridiculously over-accessorized. The automatic recoil when he touched her, shiver of repressed disgust in her voice. Her hollow words of comfort--transparent lies, cliched, and ill-told to boot. Insultingly so.
     And his own, long-deferred anger welling up, frighteningly cold: Bitch, do you even care what I went through, just to see you today? What I'll be going "home" to, when you're safely back in the REAL world again?
     You knew I was weak when you married me--just not HOW weak. Or where it might take us both.
     But screw it. No more guilt, no more sadness. He's wiped clean now, decision already made. The next time her folks call, he'll sign the papers willingly. Tell them they can feel free to take the kids, move away, pretend he's dead too, if it makes the situation seem any better. Why not? It's pretty much true.
     (Husband and wife are one flesh. And you took yours away from me.)
     Took yourself away, and left me here alone.
     He can't remember back before they were married, can't remember WHY he married her, in the first place. Or how long it's been since he's thought of her at all, except in the possessive: Genevieve Beecher, wife. "My" wife.
     My...dead wife.
     Abruptly, he finds himself talking again--faster, clearer. Telling Sister Pete:
     "Had this...dream, last night. Kinda...interesting. I come into my pod--"
     (mine and Keller's)
     "--and there I am--the OLD me, right? Glasses, the...hair--you remember." Sister Pete nods. "Sitting there, suit and all, and I'm...SMILING up at myself. Like: Oh, pleeease, be niiiice to me...And I just think: What an idiot. Kind of guy deserves everything he gets."
     He gives a secret smile, Madonna-blank. Sister Pete watching him from the corner of her eye, unwilling--or unable--to face his monologue head-on, as it begins to really hit its stride.
     "And as I'm sitting--standing--there, thinking 'bout how I...disgust myself, it, uh--sorta starts to...turn me on. So I...grab me by the hair, and I knock me down, really lay the boots to me. Beat me up. Ride me 'til I scream. And then I make me get down on my knees, and I make me kiss me. And I make me tell me--I love me."
     His eyes ache, retelling it, cheeks pulsing with effort. Lips gone dry again, drained. Skin moistly acrawl--unseen--beneath his sweat-damp casts.
      "Except--and here's the REALLY interesting part--when I wake up, I'm...coming. First time ever since I got here; unaided, I mean."
      Once again, he sees her bite back some unguarded comment. Damn, but she's tolerant.
     He isn't sure, anymore, whether that impresses him--or annoys him.
      Concluding, viciously: "And it feels GOOD."
     "But does it really make you feel any BETTER?" Sister Pete asks, quietly.
     Such sweet reason. He snorts to hear it.
     "Oh, c'mon, Sisster; not much left here to get broken. Oh, but wait, I get it. You're thinking 'bout my soul."
     Said with a sweet smile, but a mocking lilt: Sooooul. A polite euphemism for something sordid.
     And now those meds from lunch are REALLY kicking back in. He gives a bone-cracking yawn, Sister Pete's face starting to swim. Eyes seeping, just a little; the world fading out around him, all warm, and soft, and sleepy.
     "Bet you don't like me so much now, huh?" He murmurs. "Anymore." Another big yawn."Be...honest."
     From far away: "I don't think YOU like you very much, Tobias."
     Some time passes. Beecher watches it slide by, snail-track slow, The fever growing, paring him down, melting him away. He feels himself become supple, languid, feral. Barely recognizable, to her OR to himself.
     Then he uses the last of his strength on a subtle twist of the head, his new shrug--a quick, bovine squirm, like some tailless bull trying to flick away flies.
     "No," he agrees. "Guess...I never did."
     And he's gone.

Surfacing hours later, he spots Keller lurking outside the glass at the hospital wing's far end. That dark face, intent, unreadable: The invisible man. They lock eyes.
     "Hey..." Beecher whispers. "S'my old *friend*, Chris. C'mon in, friend. Be *friendly*."
     Knowing Keller can't hear. Knowing he doesn't have to.
     The swelling bubble of his own amusement squeezes Beecher's eyes shut again--and when he pries them back open, Keller's been replaced...by O'Reilly, his new hair brush-cut length now. His Irish eyes most DEFINITELY smiling.
     "Hey, Beech. Scratch your nose?"
     "...you're late."
     "Yeah, well."
     O'Reilly ankles a chair over and slides in beside the bed, checking automatically behind him. Scanning for Dr Nathan, probably.
     (Happy to get your ass kicked out, I bet, 'long as she's the one does it.)
     That voice again. And this time...this time, Beecher has a fairly good idea who it's meant to be. The human mind being such a predictable fucking thing, all told.
      He remembers when O'Reilly first came to him, after his "accident" in the gym. No apology, per se, for the way they'd drifted apart--but ever since the riot, Beecher's had a  fairly uncanny sense of what O'Reilly's thinking, under the usual layers of subterfuge. Not that he CARED all that much, back then: His lawyer's logic distracted, submerged beneath a bile-filled flood, all nursery rhymes and aimless antagonism. Chaos for the sake of chaos, dick-biting optional.
      Now, however, their interests happen to coincide once more. And Beecher will happily take advantage of that fact, for as long as it continues to be true.
      Keller broke his arms, his legs, his heart. But Keller is just a tool. His problem doesn't lie with him; it never has. What Beecher wants is the person BEHIND Keller--that deep voice, those osmotically-learned thought-patterns. The living ghost in Beecher's haunted head.
      (Oh, just SAY it, cupcake.)
      Fine: He wants Vern.
      (Happy now?)
      De-fuckin'-lirious.
      "So," O'Reilly asks, "you up for all the latest?"
      Beecher coughs, clearing his throat. Then, with a deep and bitter irony:
      "I'm...not going anywhere."

End Part Two
 

MY WIFE AND MY DEAD WIFE Part Three

One week later: McManus's office. Not a place Vern particularly thought
he'd ever see the inside of again--anytime soon, at least. And McManus,
distractedly self-righteous as ever, gesturing him in.
     Vern settles into his customary soldier's stance, bad hand--now all one big
glowing, glove-shaped ache, shot through and wound tight with red-black
streaks of pure pain--kept firmly restrained behind his back. Down on the
floor, the new Aryan heir apparent waits by the Em City mail truck, loitering
and posing: Der Fuhrer in waiting. He's got Vern's vote, mainly by virtue of
being even more creatively stupid than the rest of the regulars.
     Behind him, C.O. Karl Metzger passes unseen, just completing one of his
patented, circling shark-type sweep-'rounds. A big, blond, uniformed shadow,
casting a cold blue eye Vern's way as he does so, wondering--no doubt--what
McManus wants with him, and whether or not it involves one or more of the
many secrets he and Vern share.
     Metzger: Now THERE's a can of worms Vern is not exactly eager to
jimmy open, whether by accident OR intention. A situation looming, maybe;
warranting further study, one way or another--
     (UUUUH, my fuckin' WRIST)
     "--Schillinger?"
     "I'm listening."
     McManus frowns. "Could've fooled me."
     Oh, you have NO IDEA, you pathetic liberal dupe, Vern thinks, unable to
stop himself.
     "You got a call," he prompts. "Great. Must be nice having phone
privileges. And this involves me--how?"
     "Well, as a matter of fact, the call was for you. Some woman named
Rachel--"
     "Never heard of her."
     Too fast. And way too loud. He can see that freak "Mole" Busmalis jerk
around on the opposite catwalk, cued by tone alone.
     McManus's barely-there eyebrows quirk, dubious; he steeples his fingers,
leans back in his chair. The obvious questions already implicit in every long,
tense inch of him: Nobody named Rachel? Anywhere? EVER?
     "She says he's your wife."
     Vern feels himself go glacial. Replies, with atypical care:
     "My wife's dead."
     "So who's this?"
     "Fuck should I know? Whoever she is, she's lying."
     "Why would anybody pretend to be your wife, Schillinger?"
     Haughtily: "I look like a  shrink to you?"
     The world's full of nutcases; McManus should invest in a mirror
sometime, and find that particular fact out for himself.
     And the voice in his head, commenting dryly:
     (Yeah, sure is--and you married two of 'em.)
     Two?
     One. Just one.
     Not that he's going to admit to it, even now.
     "Whoever she is," McManus continues, apparently unswayed by Vern's
vehemence, "she wants to arrange a visit. Somebody on the front desk
forwarded her to me; hadn't heard about you being back in Gen Pop, I
guess."
     "Yeah, well, think I'll skip that little get-together, Seeing how I don't
actually KNOW her, and all."
     McManus blinks, mildly. Gives a vaguely offensive little grin.
     "I think it'd be a healthy change of pace for you, personally," he says.
"After your little run-in with Sipple."
     'Scuse me?
     (He means in the cell, moron. In front of Whittlesey. His ex-squeeze?)
     When Metzger arranges "rec time", it tends to STAY arranged, not to
mention discreet--as plenty of people have already found out. Sipple for
one...
     ...Beecher for another.
     Keller's revelation, and Toby-baby's reaction: The leap, the sprawl, the
four-pack snap. Thinking back, Vern doesn't think he's ever laughed quite
so hard in his life. Worth a whole year's wait, just to get to THAT punchline.
     Reassured by the memory, Vern matches Em City's little tin god grin for
grin: Wide, hard, flat.
     "'Personally'?" He mimicks. "Screw that--and screw you, while we're at
it. I'm not part of your little rat-maze anymore, remember, McManus? Don't
play well enough with others to fit your high and mighty standards, or what-
fuckin'-ever. So since I am back in Gen Pop and I don't have another parole
hearing scheduled before 2010, I don't see how what you think has to mean a
goddamn thing to me, anymore."
     Oh, and McManus doesn't like that at ALL. Frown-lines ruck the skin of
his high-domed temples. As he points out, softly:
     "I can still make things pretty hard for you in Oz, Schillinger, and you
know it. No matter where you end up."
     "I have a legal right to refuse visitors."
     "And I do Sunday dinners with Warden Glynn. You remember him, right?
Guy you called a nigger to his face?"
     Fucking little despot.
     Vern hisses through his teeth. Then, with admirable restraint: "So when's
this delusional bitch of yours due?"
     "She said early next week; Monday, Tuesday."
     "Fine." He turns for the door. "Now, if you don't mind--I've got mail to
deliver."
     "Anything for me?"
     Vern shoots him a quick, narrow look--is this a joke? Hard to tell, with
McManus; he only seems to have two expressions, and he's already gone
back to the first: Mild-mannered, to the point of vague mental handicap. Not
quite Cyril O'Reilly territory, but damn close.
     Coolly: "Hadn't noticed. Want me to check?"
     McManus smiles again--the free and easy smile of someone who's just
jerked a chain, only to hear it clink loud and clear.
     "Oh, it'll keep." He opens a file; dismissively: "See you on Monday,
Schillinger."
     (See you in HELL, college boy.)
    "Can't hardly wait," Vern replies. And stalks out, letting glass door
connect with glass wall, a sharp scrape just this side of a muffled screech.

Upstairs and down, pods resound with whispered gossip: The Em City chorus,
inquiring minds hard at work, spurred on by the twin goads of boredom and
proximity.
     Busmalis, to Dave Rebadow: "You hear about Schillinger's wife?"
     Rebadow: "Years back."
     "But not from GOD, right?"
     Rebadow just shrugs. Allowing:
     "Well, God does still talk to me--but most of the time, I try to ignore
Him."

In the mess hall, Chris Keller sidles lithely by--just out of focus--as Fuhrer-
boy and the usual Aryan posse comitatus core membership trade lame jokes
about about McManus's suddenly-renewed interest in their erstwhile leader.
Vern basically ignores them, though not so overtly that they notice. Thinking-
-or is it the voice in his head? So goddamn hard to tell, behind this oozing
curtain of pain--
     --this really how you thought you were gonna spend your middle years,
Vernon? Centre-stage in a clutch of (mainly) dyed-blond, over-swastika'd
punks, spouting White Power rhetoric and talking shit as the rest of the world
goes by?
     (Just shut fucking UP, Dad. You cocksucker.)
     Except that doesn't really sound like the Old Man, on closer reflection.
More eloquent, more sarcastic. Better educated. More like--
     (Rachel.)
     Pretty little Rachel, smart as a whip, and with just as much sting in her tail.
Thrill-seeking college girl turned biker's mama, turned mother of his
precious sons, turned soldier's wife--then traitor--in the upcoming Racial
Holy War. The heart of his house. His once and only love.
     (That miscegenating cunt.)
     You're dead, he tells her, in his mind. Dead to me, at least. Dead for real,
I'd ever caught you with that coon, and screw the penalty.
     So lie the fuck down, and stay there.
     Commotion by the door--a protesting squall, man-sized in volume,
childlike in nature. Der Fuhrer at his elbow, nudging: "Hey, Vern--looks like
somebody grabbed that O'Reilly retard's ball again."
     From behind him, laconic: "Guy must lose more *balls*, that way..."
     Keller.
     Eerie, materializing motherfucker--and his tone, as ever, hovering on the
ragged edge of outright insult. But a blessed distraction, nonetheless.
     Vern turns to catch Cyril O'Reilly's blue eyes across the hall, wide with
frustration--so soothing, in their trusting idiocy. Recognizing him, they widen
further, anger turning to fear. Behind the counter, somebody alerts the other--
more dangerous--O'Reilly brother, who snaps around, glaring; Vern grins at
Ryan's protective bristle, and furls his tongue lasciviously in Cyril's direction,
just for the brief pleasure of making sure Ryan gets to see his big, muscular
"little" brother recoil, squirm, sit back down--ball safely forgotten--as a
blush of vague but dreadful memory turns his fair skin bright red from jaw to
hairline.
     There, Vern thinks, his outlook brightening exponentially. That's much
better.
     At which point--with no time to prepare for impact--Keller suddenly
"helpfully" slaps a tray full of food down into Vern's bad hand, sending a
nuclear blast of agony rocketing up through his elbow, shoulder, neck,
migraine-pierced eye, SKULL.
     Vern bolts upright, SHRIEKS aloud, drops it. Swearing:
     "Aw, FUUUUCK ME!"
     Everybody in the place turns to look at him. Dead silence.
     Quick hits: Cyril O'Reilly, both hands over his mouth, astonished eyes like
cerulean pie-plates. Ryan O'Reilly, his initial double-take already tripling,
maybe quadrupling, eyebrows practically on top of his head. The Aryan
bunch, flash-frozen with shock.
     And Keller, who KNOWS. Like Beecher would. 'Cause he's been that
close, learned Vern's language that well: This is some very bad shit in
progress, too bad even for Vern to bear, one fucking minute longer.
     "You better get yourself to the doctor, buddy," he suggests, quietly.
"Now."
     To which Vern, too momentarily numb with pain and exhaustion to call
him on his condescending familiarity, can only nod.

Two hours later, after Dr Nathan's MADE him take some pills--actually stood
there and watched while he did it, like some Grade School teacher auditing a
spelling test--Vern and she end up in the Oz medical wing's jury-rigged x-ray
room, staring at backlit photos of his hand: A spidery, fragile-looking reach
of naked bone, secret failure finally found out--fallen down on the job of
keeping him whole and healthy--and set aglow with the radioactive trace-
elements of their betrayal.
     "Carpal tunnel syndrome," Dr Nathan says. "Pretty classic."
     She's wearing some kind of perfume; light, floral. Vern feels himself
literally twitch at the scent, and hugs his Judas hand like some talisman to
ward off his own arousal. He can't remember, suddenly, when he's last been
this close to a real live woman who isn't either a hack or a nun. Is this how
O'Reilly got snagged?
     "Carpet--what?" He forces himself to ask.
     "It's a stress injury, characteristic to jobs involving repetitive motion. Like
marching fractures, in the infantry?" She peels down one of the photos, peers
at it. "Lots of postal workers get it."
     "From processing mail."
     "Yeah, and sorting, stacking--filing, xeroxing. Typing, sometimes. It's an
office thing, one way or another."
      Vern's shoulders rise against the implication, neck bunching with
offended cords. Some fuckin' educated weakling's disease?
     "But it gets better, right?" He demands. "Therapy, treatment...you
HEAL, right?"
     Dr Nathan looks up, away--distracted by something outside? "Uh, not
really--well, sort   of--" She heads for the door, dropping the photo: "Wait
here."
     That shadow snaking past: Lean, dark, hungry. Too slim for Keller.
     O'Reilly?
     (Just great.)
     My right hand's an accident waiting to happen, and that Mick bastard's
looking to get his wick dipped. Fuckin' typical.
     (Typical as anything gets, 'round here.)
     Vern's mind strays back to the problem "at hand", running scenarios,
cross-referencing experiences: It all looks anything but good. A permanent
injury, somewhere like Oz? Pain medication dulling his senses...some cast,
some brace, some sling like a constant brand of weakness, out there for
everybody to see...
     Might as well paste a "throw me down and fuck me" sign to his own back,
and get it over with.
     Vern sits down, morosely. Closes his eyes. And starts, as a voice from the
corner says:
     "Yeah, a woman in my firm had that. Executive secretary. She was still
wearing the cast, the day I got arrested."
     (Beecher.)
     Sitting to the left, in a wheelchair--startlingly CLOSE, but so still
previously that Vern mistook him for--
     "Thought I was a piece of furniture," Beecher notes, grinning. "Not the
first time that's happened, huh?"
     His intent blue stare, bruising around the eye-sockets like lavender make-
up--kind of becoming, weirdly. Rims the lids with shadow, banking a fierce,
pale heat. His unwashed hair looks bedheaded, elf-locked--standing partially
upright, like the stained white curls on some half-mildewed statue, a plaster-
cast New Orleans cemetery angel. And that smile: Kitten-teeth in a wry,
sidelong half-moon, disturbingly sharp.
     Immobile, grave-perched. Watching. Waiting.
     A voodoo fetish, haloed in still and acrid hate, ripe with repressed power.
     Something in Beecher's smile, his proximity--broken limbs and all--
touches  some wary chord in Vern, far deeper than he'd like to admit. Makes
him stiffen his spine, deepen his voice--lay on the amused, silken rumble,
thick as it'll go.
     "Bitch...er."
     "Hey, Vern."
     "Like the chair."
     "Yeah? Well, better take a good look; casts're coming off next week.
They'll have me back on my feet in no time, after that."
     Companionable. Almost chatty. No nursery rhymes, no posturing. No
craziness, as such. And no--visible--fear.
      It's...disconcerting. To say the least.
     "You fishing for something , Beech-ball?"
     Beecher shrugs. "Oh, nothin' much. You just look like you got it
bad...and THAT ain't good."
     And he--winks at Vern. Sly, droll. Creepily intimate.
     ('Cause we both get that  joke, don't we?)
     Vern, snapping: "Are you high, or what?"
     Beecher pauses, seems to "consider". "Hmm, let me think." Then,
brightly: "Boy, AM I! This place is an addict's dream. I may never come
down. And the best part is, every time I scream, they bring me more. You
should try it."
     "I don't--"
     "Oh, I know, I know, you superior life-form, you. Geez."
     Vern shoots a glance at the door: Is that Nathan, coming back? Nope. Just
an orderly, pushing a cart full of meds.
     I've had just about enough of this crazy prag's bullshit, he thinks.
     "Can I maybe WAIT SOMEWHERE ELSE, PLEASE?" He bellows.
     "What you think this is, a hospital?" The guy tosses back, already halfway
around the corner.
     (Well, isn't it?)
     "Vern," Beecher says, reprovingly. "Don't tell me you want to rush off
so soon. I mean, I haven't seen you since--oh, the gym, I guess! How's that
nice Guard Metzger doing, anyway?"
     "Would'a  thought you'd want to know about Keller."
     Beecher wrinkles his nose. "What for?"
     And he seems sincere.
     (What the FUCK is he playing at?)
     Fine. Enough with the subtlety; not like they're being monitored. Vern
leans close, fixes Beecher with his coldest stare, and rumbles: "You're lucky
to even be alive, you nutcase bitch."
     "And don't I know it. But you didn't kill me, did you? And how do you
explain that to everybody down at Swastika Central, exactly?"
     "I don't have to."
     "'Course not: You're Vern Schillinger, great white Aryan warrior hope.
You do what you want. Take what you want. Appropos of which--got yourself
another prag yet? Or are you still shopping around?"
     (Oh, hold the DOOR.)
     "I mean, been a while; you must be missing it. And I'd've thought it'd be
a fairly easy situation to remedy, too: New fish served fresh every week, just
about. Or are you just...sentimental about the old days?" Quoting himself
now, words carrying just a teasing shade of that same evil energy Vern
remembers him humming with during the riot, before the SORT team rushed
the doors and all hell broke loose: "'...all those...good times...we had
together...'" Then right back in line, clear as whiplash, almost equally cold:
"'Cause you know, I never really thought I was the BEST fuck in Oz. Even
with all your--careful instruction."
     And: I do NOT want to be having this conversation right now, Vern
realizes, as his wrist spasms again--tendons flexing, pain boring suddenly
inward like a knot of wasps all stinging the same spot at once, even under the
debilitating buzz of Dr Nathan's drug cocktail. Not now, not with him, not
like this. Maybe not ever.
     "Had a lot of time to think about all this, y'know," Beecher continues,
apparently unaware of Vern's discomfort. His voice dropping: "In bed..."
     Goaded beyond endurance: "Man, you really do love the sound of your
own mouth--"
     "Oh, you used to like my mouth just fine, once upon a time. As I recall."
     Beecher peers at him, bland, innocuous; Vern stares back.
     "Say what?" He blurts, finally.
     "You heard me."
     A hot bag of blush falls over Vern's head, embarassment and rage
admixed. He can't even figure out how Beecher just insulted him. Because
that was an insult, right?
     Well, what the hell else would it be?
     "You," he starts--then clears his throat, and starts again, lashing out with a
pre-emptive spurt of bile and mockery: "You--think you know how to push
my buttons? You don't know shit. I'm the one knows you, sweetpea, you little
junkie fuckin' Yuppie whore, inside and out. I KNOW you."
     And Beecher just replies, coolly:
     "Who are you trying to kid, you self-made redneck? The only thing you
ever really knew about me is how far you can stick it in, before it starts to
hurt."
     Like a lit match to the medulla oblongata, the brain's most primitive part:
Vern sees the pod wall collapsing inward, feels the glass pierce his eye. Knows
in that one split second before it's too late to do anything exactly how stupid
he'd been to turf Beecher out, just because he thought Scott Ross would be
more of a challenge--and after all, a man needs challenges. Can't have things
too soft, if you want to stay hard. You pussy, idiot, dumb fuckin' faggot, you.
     (Just shut up, shut UP, SHUT UP)
     Lunging, Vern knits his ache-heavy fingers into Beecher's hair, hauls
him close enough to touch: "Listen, you--"
     "Ooh, cripple cat-fight!" Beecher grins, and--
      --TURNS his face into Vern's hand, too fast to stop, trailing hot breath
and sharp tongue alike across the inside of Vern's palm. A lick of sweet fire,
cat-rough. A searing, scarring moisture trail.
      Vern freezes.
      Beecher just keeps grinning.
      "Gee," he says. "Did I catch you off-guard?"
      Quiet: "Then--how's this?"
      And he leans forward, quick as a striking snake--and kisses Vern full on
the mouth, tongue darting inside, swishing across the palate, right, left, then
back out again. Leaving nothing behind but a pants-load of fire and ice, plus
a groin so unexpectedly and entirely erect that Vern can swear to GOD feel
the seam of his zipper printing itself into the skin of his painfully trapped
dick.
      Vern drops him like a hot rock, recoiling. He's up against the glass wall,
stomach-kicked. Almost panting.
      Beecher, meanwhile, lolls back, lashes lowering. His eyes sultry, paling
further--to grey, to almost-white with a faint blue chaser--a banked gas
flame, hot enough to cauterize.
     And whispers, with that thin, sharp smile:
     "So what do we do now? Head-butt each other?"
      Vern: "You are--so--"
      Beecher: "Fucked?"
      (One way to put it, yeah.)
      Soft: "I'm what you made of me."
      And Vern just sits there, unable to muster any sort of comeback.
Thinking, numbly: I've fucked this little bastard, face-fucked him. I made
him lick my boots and do my laundry. I set him up to get his heart wrecked
and his limbs broken. I mocked his kids. I made him sing in drag. And in all
that time, I never kissed him once, not once.
     Which must be why...
     (...I never knew he could kiss like that)
     And at that exact moment, Dr Nathan finally looks back in. A little
breathless, a bit rumpled. O'Reilly's work?
     Like Vern even cares, at this point.
     "'Kay, sorry," she says. "Schillinger, be with you in a minute. Beecher?"
     "Right here."
     Nodding to the same orderly, on his way back: "You can take him back,
now."
     Beecher, bright and cool: "Perfect."
     Then leaning a little towards Vern and adding, sotto voce: "By the way--
you might want to cross your legs, before she comes back in."
     (Oh, you bitch and a half.)
     The orderly snags Beecher's chair, pushes him away. Vern takes a deep
breath, tries to slow this frantic pulse in his neck, this hammering in his head
and veins. This fury below the waist. This utter confusion above.
     What the FUCK just happened here? He wonders. Then: Do I really want
to know?
     But it's a bit too late for that now. As even HE can tell.

End Part Three

MY WIFE AND MY DEAD WIFE Part Four

"You want these now, or later?"
     This from the orderly, pouring out Beecher's evening meds. And Beecher, safely laid back out on his bed again--sheathed limbs gone slack, drained and appalled by his own impulsive actions, itchily desperate for anything that'll wash the taste of Vern (literally) from his mouth--thinks: Now, of course, you dumb-ass. Now, now, NOW.
     (Like relieving your stress through chemicals is a GOOD habit to get back into.)
     Instead, he forces himself to shake his head, and say--with remarkable conviction--
     "--I'm fine."
     The orderly shrugs. "Your call, man."
     He plops the meds back down into a plastic cup, leaves the water-jug uncapped, and
pushes Beecher's chair away, whistling. A moment passes.
     Then, from behind the nearest screen: "He gone?"
     "Yes," Beecher replies, not even glancing towards it: O'Reilly. Of course.
     Shakespeare, king of the unseen observer, would've had a field day with someone like
Ryan O: Arrases, tapestries, nooks and crevices, secret rooms. In Oz, however, he's regularly
forced to make do with a far more prosaic class of hiding place--and cuts it close to the line,
more often than not, by sneaking a quick cig between monologues. As Beecher can smell him
doing, even now; dragging deep, then exhaling a last thick plume of smoke, before crushing
the evidence underheel and stowing it away for later recycling.
     "Thanks," Beecher tell him.
     "For what?"
     "The distraction. Dr Nathan?"
     O'Reilly grins, scar crinkling. "Hey...my pleasure." And then, sprawling lengthwise onto
the next--empty--bed, hands behind his head: "So. Whatcha get up to with ol' Vern in there,
anyway?"
     Beecher rolls his head from side to side, carefully, a slow-mo shrug. Feels his neck crack,
as he answers:
     "Oh, you know--needled him a little--stuck the knife in, twisted it--"
     (--licked his hand. Kissed him.)
     And God alone knows what O'Reilly--Mr Raving Heterocentrist himself--would have to
say about THAT.
     If he puts some effort into it, Beecher can still dimly remember all his initial dreams of
revenge against Vern Schillinger--feverish scenarios cobbled together between humiliations,
weaving equal parts fact and fantasy. Alliances with Ryan, with Adebisi, with anyone strong or
devious enough to help him play his hatred out to one or more of its most illogical
conclusions; poison in Vern's food, a fire in the post office, a group assault in the showers.
Elaborate, multipart epics: The Schillinger kids hit Oz, strung out and vulnerable, and
Beecher--now so wise to the ugly ways of Oz--prags them while Vern watches, hemmed in on
so many sides that he's rendered helpless to prevent it. Or the more direct route: Paying Vern
back act for act, with contemptuous, well-learned skill--but shit, let's face it: Rape him?
Beecher doesn't even want to TOUCH him.
       And his own panicked inner voice, incoherent with speed, with fright: Then what the
fuck's with that KISS, Tobias? Teasing him, deliberately, in a way seemingly designed to
make start coming for you again? Man's a fucking bulldozer, as you know better than
anyone...
      (Except Keller, maybe.)
      ...he'll crush you flat. What the hell are you, a glutton for punishment?
      Babble, babble, babble.
      Yeah. I guess maybe I am.
     Back to the present, to O'Reilly. Joining him in mid-sentence:
     "--Gloria, before she ran off, she said something about how Schillinger's got--what? Crap
syndrome, or some shit. Like that's why he threw the hissy fit in the mess hall."
     "Carpal tunnel."
     O'Reilly nods, impatient: "Whatever. Point is--does it HURT, or what?"
     "I'd say." Beecher flicks a sidelong blue glance at him. "And Vern doesn't do too well with
pain--when it's his, not somebody else's."
     Ryan laughs. "Oh YEAH, baby. So--push him?"
     "Hard."
     Ryan nods, absently. "Yeah..." he repeats, trailing off--his mind already running at high
speed, brimming with bad ideas. Oblivious, in the midst of his scheming, to Beecher's own
abstraction: Backsliding headlong into memory's trap, as he recalls their conversation earlier
today.
     If Vern's HERE, O'Reilly, I'm not going anywhere near him. You know that, right?
     I just need ya to scope him out, Beech. That's all. 'Cause I need inside information--and
YOU got the Vern-o-vision.
     *Since you're so CLOSE, after all, what with him having spent a half-year doing you like
dinner,* Beecher remembers interpreting, bitterly--the not-too-subtle subtext beneath
O'Reilly's skanky Irish charm. *I mean, it's your area of expertise.*
     (I'll take Figuring Out What Vern Schillinger Wants Before He Even Knows He Wants It,
for a hundred, Alex.)
     A backrub. A blowjob. Agreement. Aquiescence.
     A kiss goodnight, "like you mean it." But no tongue, 'cause that's for fags--and no
backtalk either, bitch. So go make yourself pretty, and then spend the next hour or so
wandering around the quad, with everybody pointing and laughing. Just so they all know that
YOU know you're MINE.
     Beecher closes his eyes against the mnemonic flood, feels his head throb, muscles behind
his sockets starting to ache. Finding it harder to focus--literally OR figuratively--the longer he
tries to wait before finally letting himself take those meds. Depression welling up in him again
like sequestered blood, a forming bruise: Familiar as his own hide, and roughly twenty
thousand times as hard to perforate. And his little "victory" in the x-ray room, if that's even
what it was, goes rocketing away down a long, dark hall...swallowed by shadow, drowned in
doubt.
     I want my glasses back, he thinks, momentarily unable to check the shallow--but intense--
rush of self-pity. I want a hot shower, a cold beer, and an hour-long Shiatsu massage. I want
to go home, hug my kids, fall asleep watching David Letterman and listening to Gen snore.
My glasses. My wife. My life.
     Not to mention a drink on top of the beer, a REAL drink--and not one that comes in a
paper fuckin' bag, either.
     He stares over at the wall behind O'Reilly's head, as though expecting a phantom bartender
to emerge from it at any moment. *Your usual, sir? Very good. And will that be the
Stolnichaya, the Cristal, or the hundred-proof still-brew in the stolen specimen jar?*
     Stop torturing yourself, Toby.
     (Oh, but it's such FUN. And everybody ELSE is doing it!)
     O'Reilly, surfacing from his meditations: "Hey, I almost forgot: Hear about Schillinger's
wife yet?"
     Beecher, listless, eyes still white plaster-locked: "The apple-pie saint? She's dead."
     (Something else we have in common.)
     "Apparently--not." As Beecher's head snaps back towards him: "APPARENTLY, she's
comin' by. Next week."
     "You've GOT to be fucking kidding me."
     "Scout's honor."
     Beecher hisses. Then snorts.
     "Yeah, and maybe she'll bring the kids," he mutters, half to himself. "My step-whatevers.
They can all have themselves a big contact visit, and I can play chaperone on wheels."
     Ryan's eyes narrow, finally recognizing the psychic black hole towards which his ally's
derailed train of thought is racing; he raps his knuckles against Beecher's nearest cast, hard
and sharp, trying to pull him back. "Beech: Snap out of it, buddy. Don't fade on me now."
     Beecher nods, slightly. Tries to organize his thoughts. Offering, at last:
     "If Vern's wife's alive, then he LIED."
     "Like that's a newsflash--but yeah, and not just to YOU, either." O'Reilly's grin turns scary.
"And believe me, I'm gonna fuck him up over it, six ways to Sunday. For what he did to
Cyril..."
     (And to me.)
     Right on cue: "...AND to you."
     Beecher allows himself a weary little smile.
     (Did I call THAT one right, or what?)
     "Wanna preview?"
     "Nope."
     "It's juicy."
     "I'm sure; thanks anyway."
     O'Reilly shrugs, rises. "Your loss, bro." Glancing down at Beecher's tray: "You, uh--want
those meds, now?"
     Beecher starts to refuse, but thinks better of it. "...uh huh."
     He opens his mouth. O'Reilly palms the pills into it, doses him with water. Wipes away the
overflow, brusque but gentle--surprisingly so.
     Or maybe not. Since, while it's not like they're friends, or anything--because O'Reilly HAS
no friends, just tools or opponents--Beecher does continue to prove himself useful to the Irish
Iago's cause, one way or another. And useful things are worthy of their own upkeep.
     (VERN taught me that.)
     "Sleep tight," O'Reilly tells him. While Beecher just nods in reply, already yawning.
     ('Nighty...'night.)
     And he lets the meds pull him down, down, down once more--down into that deep and
suppurating hole in the centre of his soul, that scarred-open place he can never quite fill. His
unhealed, unhealing wound. His truest weapon.
     Away from Ryan, from Vern. From the intrusive, intermittent flash of Chris Keller's
shadow falling across his thoughts, a death-shroud on the very idea of love. From himself.
     Away from Oz, for a few brief, stolen hours--pathetically short as such a respite might
always be doomed to last.

And oh, how right I was about THAT, he thinks--waking a  mere three hours later, bladder
painfully full, to find Keller himself leaning over him.
     Beecher lies still, feigning sleep, staring up through his lashes. Studying Keller's dark
profile, the curve of his throat--head cocked to one side, intent.
     "Toby. TOBY." Then: "Toby, don't be an asshole, okay? I know you're awake."
     "You call me Toby one more time, you lying 'ho, and I'll bite your fucking throat out."
     Keller rocks back on his heels, smirking. "THERE we go."
     And looking just SO pleased with himself--pleased to have gotten a rise out of Beecher,
one way or another; those dark eyes graze the knot of sheets around his waist, checking for
damage, and Toby feels himself blush furiously, helplessly. Knowing his splayed condition
means he couldn't hide...anything. Even if he tried.
     Beecher clears his throat. Says, hoarsely:
     "So: You LIVE in here now? Or do you just not HAVE a job?"
     Keller shrugs. "'S IS my job, for now. 'Infirmary janitorial'." He bares his teeth, slyly. "New
idea from McManus, like you couldn't guess...everybody should do everything, at least once.
Helps  'build up empathy' for each other. Like that whole podmate rotation thing."
     (Remember, honey? How we met.)
     Beecher sniffs. "Oh, yeah--'cause that one was a REAL winner."
     Thinking: Well, he tries to take me away from Sister Pete, he's gonna have a fight on his
hands. And not from ME.
     He smiles, slightly, distracted by the thought. Keller notices, and seems to stiffen--annoyed
at losing Beecher's attention?
     (Because that's YOUR addiction, isn't it, Chris? Making people want you...or want to be
wanted. By you.)
     The hot, wormy thread in the stomach; the squirming, shameful pleasure-shiver.
Inadvertant. Unwanted.
     Undeniable.
     It's a little high in itself; Beecher can admit that. One more in a long, long list--longer
every time he turns around, apparently: Ambition, arrogance, booze, faith, heroin, rage,
madness, an alcohol-soaked kiss in the laundry room, the bleeding spectre of L-O-V-E luuuv.
Trying to draft Jefferson Keane's motion. "Manipulating" Vern into taking out a contract on
his, Beecher's, life. Teaching Keller chess. Voting Sister Pete the sexiest woman in Oz.
Beecher will always find something to glitch on, be it adrenaline, pheremones, that synthetic
heroin produced in the pleasure centres of the brain--he's been "gifted", perhaps genetically,
with a burning need to be SOMEWHERE ELSE. An understandable impulse, especially here
in Oz; but the fact is, he's always felt that way, no matter WHERE he was.
     That's what landed him here, in the first place.
     "Hey, Tobe--" Keller begins--ammending, quickly (at Beecher's glare) to  "--BEEcher.
What happened..." He pauses. "You know it was nothin' personal, right?"
     Beecher meets his eyes, coolly, Waits a minute, composing himself. Then says, with almost
litigational care:
     "Sure, Chris. Because PERSONAL would imply you had feelings. For anybody but
yourself."
     Keller makes an explosive, inarticulate sound--a long HUFF of air, mixed with some kind
of repressed curse flattened to its bare consonants. His complexion darkens further, hawk-like
profile turning entirely predatory. Drawing himself up, link by spinal link, like he's winding
up for some kind of pitch.
     "You fuckin' little rich-boy, shyster BRAT," he says, finally.
     (And NOW we get to the truth.)
     "Swanning around, actin' like your ass is made of gold--what the fuck you think this is,
high tragedy? This is OZ, ToBIas. It ain't nice, and it ain't fair, it just is what it fuckin' is. And
guys like you, soft guys from good homes, they don't stand up the FIRST FUCKING DAY,
then they get fucked. You lay down and took it: Way of the world, baby. Get over it."
     It's a hard hit; a year ago, even, it might have rocked the old Beecher's world, just a tad.
     (But that Toby's been and gone, baby.)
     And thus the new Beecher--post-gym--just shows his own teeth, grinning right back at
Keller. Asking, sweetly:
     "Like you did?"
     Keller pauses, visibly allows himself a moment to cool down. Then turns the charm back
on, full-strength. Murmuring:
     "Well...don't tell me you don't like the results."
     Stick with the tricks you know, Beecher thinks, contemptuously. Yet feels all the blood in
his sheet-sheathed groin clench to see it, yet again--a hot and painful throb, traitorously
responsive.
     (Because...damn it, they WORK.)
     "Oh yeah," he replies, tonelessly. "Vern did a  really good job. On both of us."
     Keller shrugs. "What happened between us...fuck the reasons, okay? They don't matter.
Fact is, you know you wanted it."
     "Hey, THAT sounds familiar."
     And it does, too.
     (Sending out that prime prag vibe, first day I saw you) Vern's memory-voice whispers, all
warm and close-range silky, in Beecher's head. (Everybody could see it, but I got there first.
And aren't you GLAD, sweetpea?)
     Glad, because it could have been Adebisi. Or one of the subsidiary Aryans. Or anybody
else off the Em City floor, God knows, at that point.
     Gutter psychology, self-taught. Just enough empathy to know which way street-dumb
bunnies like Beecher are likely to jump--but not enough to care WHY they do it. Or care what
you're doing to them.
     Keller understands the comparison immediately--and doesn't seem to like it.
     "So what, I raped you too?" He gives a short, ugly hoot. "Would'a thought for sure you
could tell the difference."
     "The only difference is, VERN never claimed he loved me."
     "You heard what you wanted to hear."
     Beecher's grin widens. "Yeah, that's right. And he used to tell me that, too."
     Which makes Keller eyes darken, now--a cold wind blowing in behind his pupils, draining
them of life. Burnishing them to a hypnotic sheen, like black coals.
     "Vern ever do THIS to you?" He asks. And, leaning down--
     --he STROKES his damnably skillful Judas hands deliberately up and down Beecher, like
a man teasing a heat-crazed cat--from the top of his scalp along the line of his neck, his chest,
his hip, and further. Sweat springing up, everywhere he touches. As Beecher tries--and fails--
to shy away, thrashing helpless, wrenching at his own numb limbs in aroused panic, Keller
traces the blush spreading from his jawline as far down as it'll go--down to the hard little nub
of one nipple, straining against the worn fabric of Beecher's issue t-shirt. Pinches it between
his thumb and forefinger, with deceptive softness, and feels Beecher draw a ragged breath,
pulse jumping in the hollow of his throat, where a damp curl of golden hair nests...
     Keller wipes the sweat from that hollow, a deliberate, teasing flick. And then licks his
fingers clean.
     Smiling again, smugly: "I don't think so."
     Lying there pinned, with all his outer defenses already broken--easy pickings, with
nothing to ward Keller off with but his mind, his tongue. So Beecher snaps: "Yeah, you like it
when they can't fight back, don't you, Chris? That what the gym was--foreplay?"
     "I think you maybe wanna shut the fuck up about that."
     "Or what? You'll step on my neck? You snapped my bones because that Nazi bastard told
you to, and you LAUGHED about it. I heard you. I SAW you."
     "So tell McManus." Beecher falls silent. Quiet: "But you never did, didja?"
     Muttering: "Not yet."
     "Not ever."
     "Don't...flatter yourself."
     But Keller hears the little crack in Beecher's voice as he says it. And shrugs once more,
immediately morphed back into his old, smooth self--hard-carapaced, impenetrable.
     "Got a lot of time left to do, you and me," he says. "And we're still in the same pod, last I
heard. So...we'll see."
     The last word, cue for a perfect exit. Which he now makes, hips swinging. Like if he had a
tail to match his black cat's strut, it'd be curled in a sinuous flourish.
     Beecher wishes he could cover his eyes; shuts them, instead. And is alone once more with
his pressing need to urinate, his scoured and aching skull. His cock so hard, he'd need to jerk
off before he could pee straight anyways...which he can't even do, without help.
     (You fucking, lying, cheating, spying, sexy motherFUCKER.)
     Lying there panting, gulping. Mind racing. Body burning, but thoughts--cooling.
Becoming icy. Cold, clean, clear. And SHARP.
     (Okay. All right. Okay. All right. Fine.)
     Thinking: This is what Chris does to me. And this...is what I do. To Vern.
     For the first time in a year and a  half, Beecher forces himself to consider Vern
Schillinger--not just as his enemy, the blight on his life, but part by part: The sheer physical
REALITY of Vern, once so omnipresent in Beecher's day-to-day routine. The way his eyes
slant when he smiles, changing color subtly; blue darkening, taking on an almost greyish cast.
His bullish shadow. His dry, reptile brain. His half-bald, leonine skull. The Oz-bred pallor of
his skin, dusted with a faint, sandy tracing of hair along his forearms, his pectoralis, the nape
of his neck. The surprising smoothness of his soft underbelly--middle-aged spread,
incongruously "normal" for his age, nourished by high-starch prison food and worn slung
low in a ropy net of muscle.
     His smell, terrible only in implication--the warm, sweaty odor of any given older male
relative. Like when you brush past your uncle at a wedding reception, his shirt plastered to
him from dancing with all the available female cousins. And he makes you take a drink of
HIS drink, a big swig--Rye and ginger, say--'cause hey, it's a special occasion. You're old
enough. Practically a  man, huh, Toby?
     (Yeah. And then he drags you into the shower room, and screws you up the ass.)
     Oh, those good, good times.
     You poisoned me, you fucking Nazi fuck, Beecher thinks--eyes wide open and unseeing,
staring up at the ceiling of the darkened hospital wing. Burnt me, branded me, ran me
through and ran all THROUGH me, like a disease. Like everything you touch withers--every
precious memory. Every safe place.
     All polluted, now, by his constant knowledge of those...other things. The ones Keller must
ALSO have experienced. The weight of Vern's torso across your back--the wishbone strain of
having your hips spread and elevated from behind--counting the seconds and cursing your
own body as it manufactures an endless, rising, wave of automatic pleasure, indistinguishable
in its intensity from humiliation, from rage, from a burning desire to kill...or die.
     There are parts of Toby Beecher that no one but Vern Schillinger has ever seen; they both
know this. Secret places even Keller hasn't yet broached. Moments of helpless capitulation.
The rush and the heat: Thrusting in, hitting something deep, coming and retching at the same
breathless time, sickened by his own response.
     Because, though Vern CAN be cruel, he knows--conoisseur of suffering that he is--how
much more insulting deceptive attendance to his victim's "needs" can be, given the right
circumstances: There, there, baby--I know you're much too...delicate to take it like a MAN.
So there you go--and doesn't that feel GOOD?
     (Now thank me. And do it NICELY, bitch.)
     A stream-of-consciousness manifesto, cold and clear. A PLAN that only someone crazy as
Beecher is now could think up--and only someone as crazy as he's going to have to MAKE
himself could ever carry through. Thinking:
     I'll never be seen apart from Vern, not as long as I'm in Oz, and he's still alive. Crazy
Beecher, prag for life--a rebel or an adjunct, publicly branded a nut AND a slut. Always a
pariah, no matter how bloodily (or shittily) I proclaim my independence: An Other, for better
or worse.
     I was this, I was that. Soft. Successful. Civilized. Loved.
     (And I WAS loved, damn it. I was, was, was, was, was.)
     Well, fuck WAS. Here's what IS.
     I've been in Oz two years plus now, and every move I've ever made has turned out to be
yet one more in an endless string of almost equally bad decisions. Chris is right about one
thing, that whoring son of a whore--I lay down and took it, and standing up later don't count
for shit. Even if, in this case, most of said shit ended up on Vern's face.
     But what I never understood so clearly before--probably because I never wanted to--is
how everything he's done since then wasn't really some macho rep-repair thing at all. It was
because he still wants me--so bad, he must feel like he spends all day walking around with a
jackhammer stuck down his pants.
     (Say, THERE's an image.)
     And Keller's endless, groundless provocations, tweaking Beecher just to tweak him--where
do THEY come from? A former prag's jealousy over Vern's continued fascination with the
new boy on the block? Or does Keller want to one-up Vern somehow by taking Beecher away
from him--to take vicarious revenge for his own defloration, by stealing Vern's "property"
right from under his nose?
     I don't know, Beecher thinks, and really, I don't care. But I DO know I'm going to play
him exactly the way you played me--do him just the way you taught me to. We'll have a big
'ho showdown, you and me...and to the victor go the spoils, EXTREMELY spoiled as they're
eventually going to be.
     And now, a little word in O'Reilly's virtual ear. Because he's going to be the silent partner
in all of this...yang to Beecher's yin, slowly but surely backing Vern into the corner that'll
form his corrida. When Vern goes down, snorting and choking on his own blood, Ryan will
be the one who gets to cut his horns off.
     See--here's what I know about Vern, Ryan, Beecher thinks. When he's feeling good, he can
be pretty magnanimous. It's when he's not--when he's in pain, or afraid--that you have to
watch out, because the only way he can get himself straight again is to take a little hit off
YOU. Your fear replacing his, your pain, and so on. Sex is not really the primary
consideration.
     So really, HE's the weak one, because he NEEDS to hurt someone--not just wants, NEEDS.
And I guess I really am like a woman, in some ways, because I know for a fact that I can take
more pain than Vern even knows about.
     Gen told me once that until you've had a kid, given birth, you don't know what real pain is.
And I think rape is sort of the closest a man can come to that particular experience--
watermelon through the asshole time, for sure. So who's the strong one here? Not Vern. The
person on the bottom has all the power. They set the pace; they ALLOW what happens
to...happen...
     (Oh, what the FUCK am I SAYING?)
     So all I have to do is let him know I'm here, that I'm waiting to start this whole sick cycle
up again--MY way, this time. And see how long it takes him to take advantage.
     And then you MOVE, Ryan--you keep him dodging. Keep him uncomfortable. You'll
see.
     He can see O'Reilly's nose wrinkling even now, frankly grossed out by the whole idea. So
hard for him to even admit even now, explicitly, what Beecher was when they first met --this
macho Irish thug, unable to name what happened to his brother aloud: The "bad thing". As
done by "the bad man", aka Vern.
     You want me to fist-fight him in the Em City quad, Ryan? Or do you want us to just run at
each other, like elks? Drawn dicks at thirty paces? Well, I can't keep on knocking him down
and taking a crap on his head. It's exhausting, and it DOESN'T WORK. I just don't have the
energy.
     The big dog, the alpha male. You think you have to "be a man", right? Be a man, be
strong, be tough, don't bend over for anybody...but the funny thing is, when you suddenly
have all that taken away from you, in a way--it's not slavery at all. It's freedom. Give up
always thinking about having to "be a man", and you can bend over backwards--or forwards,
as the case may be--while all around you break.
     And that's what I'm gonna do.
     Because what don't I know about Vern, if I let myself remember? Up to and including that
little noise he makes just before he comes...and the fact that HE thinks he doesn't make one.
     No, fact is, O'Reilly doesn't want to think about any of this, in theory OR detail. He doesn't
want to know what  Beecher knows, let alone how he knows it.
     So don't ask, Beecher tells him, silently: Just use it. You're good at that.
     It's like--pleading a case. You know, when you're litigating on behalf of someone with a
truly baseless claim, a moron, some greedy turd with no cause to speak of, who just wants to
stir up trouble and pick somebody else's pocket while he does it. And not a jury trial, 'cause
that's too easy--all you need is one malcontent on your side to hang the whole thing out to
dry. No. A judge trial, where all you have to do is get one person to believe a point of total
bullshit just long enough to convince themselves--though they should know better--to rule in
your favor.
     Beecher's done that; Ryan hasn't.
     (So between the two of us, I'd be the guy who knows what the fuck he's talking about,
wouldn't I?)
     And as for Vern...well.
     Man and wife really ARE one flesh. Which means, whatever Beecher is--Vern is, too.
Weak, and needy, and addicted. And doomed.
     And I'm going to show the whole of Oswald State Penitentiary, Beecher thinks, before I
show YOU, you bastard: That whatever drew you to me, in the first place, was nothing more or
less than the overt display of every secret thing you carry buried deep inside yourself.
     He lies there in the darkness, and feels it seep inside him with every breath. His drying
shell of sweat. His plaster shell, almost ready to crack and shed--a  profane coccoon from
which he already feels himself begin to emerge: One more version of Toby Beecher, sacred
victim. The man whose FIRST impulse is always to throw himself headlong into the path of
his own destruction, to hurt himself in order to hurt those he hates.
     (You sad, sick fucker.)
     Yeah, yeah, yeah.
     (And what the fuck ELSE is new?)
     Do I DESERVE Vern? Beecher wonders, for the last time. And finally knows, with utter
certainty: No.
     But I've got him, if I want him.
     (If.)

End Part Four

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MY WIFE AND MY DEAD WIFE Part Five/1

Monday morning, by the visitors' gate. Photo I.D. in place, through yet another in a series of contact doors which unlock with a shrieking buzz and the punch of a hidden button--and
Tim McManus steps forward as Vern Schillinger's mysterious visitor steps through, clipboard in one hand, offering her the other:
     "Mrs Schillinger?"
     "Rachel. And it's Renton, these days."
     Maiden name, or another marriage? She doesn't volunteer; he forces himself not to pursue it. Part of his general post-riot attitude adjustment: Realize that not EVERYONE you come into contact with owes you their secrets, even if you ARE Oz's self-elected resident Wizard.
     So, instead, he conjures a smile--somewhat dubious in execution, as ever, but (reasonably) pure of intent. And replies:
     "Tim McManus."
     He gives her a  brief, businesslike handshake, trying to avoid making eye contact with C.O. Diane Whittlesey, who--of course--just happens to be the escort guard. Not that she seems in any big hurry to look at HIM, anyway.
     "Visiting room's this way," he tells Rachel Renton/Schillinger, who nods. To Diane:
"Thanks."
     And: Not even a shrug, in response. Just a flick of the eyebrow, a little twirl on her heel. And her blue-clad, high-held back, sauntering away down the hall.
     NICE, he finds himself thinking, uncharitably. Knowing full well the reasons behind
Whittlesey's continued animosity, as exactly as he knows the shape and scope of his own
lingering lust for--but distrust of--her.
     (Or not.)
     To distract himself, McManus turns his attention to Rachel--a quick inventory, head to toe. Finding her...nothing at all like he expected.
     But who WOULD he have cast as Schillinger's wife, really, aside from anybody free, white and fertile? The faceless, All-American wife and mother Sister Peter Marie tells him
Schillinger's described, whenever prompted, in her sessions with him? Or, conversely--though far less plausibly--some towering, airbrushed Aryan Warrior Princess, threateningly pneumatic; some submissive, elaborately "feminine" shell of a woman, all make-up and frills, like an anatomically-incorrect drag queen.
     Rachel, however, fits into none of the above categories. Ten, maybe twelve years younger than Vern--which would make her what, 35?--with incongruously middle-class clothes (burgundy coat-dress, opaque black tights, sensible shoes) and manners. Three small silver rings in her right ear, two in her left. She carries a flat black bag slung over her shoulder, big enough for basic travel supplies and what looks like a package of legal documentation.
     (Divorce? Custody? Something medical?)
     Just STOP it, Tim.
     A long, wheat-sheaf blonde mass of hair worn wound in a crown of heavy braids, already starting to go a little grey at the temples. Blue eyes, frank and level under similarly silvery brows. A small-nosed, flat-cheekboned little face, wryly plain-pretty, bare except for a trace of lipstick.
     And the mouth, under that slight touch of color: Firm, mobile. Utterly guarded.
     So odd: Schillinger's such a PREDATOR. And she--doesn't look like prey.
     (Or not any more, maybe.)
     She reminds him of someone, too. Someone...familiar.
     (Can't think of just WHO, though.)
     As Rachel watches, McManus flips open a copy of Schillinger's file, and begins:
     "I don't know how much you want to be filled in about what your--EX-husband?"
     "We're...separated."
     "--has been up to, the last five years, but..."
     Rachel shrugs--nothing more, nothing less. Fluid. Dismissive.
     Not knowing exactly what to make of the gesture, McManus simply confines himself to
clearing his throat, and continues:
     "...okay. He's been active in the Aryan Brotherhood since pretty much the beginning of
his stay here in Oz--one of their biggest wheels, in Gen Pop for three years, Em City...that's the experimental facility in cellblock three, which I run...for almost two. We also suspect he's been involved in numerous crimes while imprisoned, none of which we've been able to pin on him so far--except for when he tried to take a contract out on his former pod-, I mean, cellmate."
     "And you've got him back in population?"
     "The last few months, yes." McManus gives her another sidelong glance. "I take it you
already heard about him losing parole over the contract incident, and the extra time added
onto his sentence."
      Rachel's thin mouth curves, for the first time, into an equally thin little smile: Not exactly humorless, but far too in on the joke to find it as funny as she otherwise might.
      "Frankly? That's the only reason I decided to approach Vern directly, even now." She
pauses. "If I thought he was likely to be back on the street, anytime soon..."
     (I'd run like hell, and keep running.)
     Which, McManus suspects, is probably exactly what Rachel HAS been doing, up 'till now.
     Must take a hell of a lot of strength, to leave somebody like Schillinger--to face that kind
of destroying rage, that calculated will to revenge. But then, he'd never thought BEECHER
would have had the strength to leave Vern, either, before it actually happened--let alone the
guts. Nobody did.
     (Not even Vern.)
     Should he tell her about all that? Or would she really want to know?
     But she doesn't ASK. Just follows alongside him, keeping pace. And now they're almost at the visiting room door.
     He turns, pauses. Finds himself staring, yet again: Such delicate bones in her wrists, her ankles; such an elegant--but fragile--column for a throat. All that impractical hair.
     How would the weight of it look, down? He wonders. Falling around her--and YOUR  --face...
     Jesus, Tim! He snaps at himself, annoyed at the sudden speed with which mere study has broadened into a vague, theoretical rush of desire. Woman's got somebody waiting outside for her, for Christ's sake. Stop acting like a human groin.
     And WHO--the HELL--is it she reminds me of, exactly?
     Diane, a little. Obviously. That sense of rue and regret--unsentimental, non-judgemental. We make our mistakes, and we move on, and we don't look back. Ever.
     But someone else, too.
     "You don't seem too surprised by anything I've told you," he comments.
     She looks him straight in the eye: "Should I be?" A pause; now it's McManus' turn to
shrug, uncomfortable. Rachel gives him that smile again. "I was married to Vern for twelve
years, Mr McManus; I'm pretty sure I know what he's capable of. Not much left he could do to SHOCK me."
     A simple statement. But this time, McManus simply CAN'T resist.
     "You know--you're a very attractive woman, Mrs--Ms?--Renton--"
     (oh, good GOING, Tim)
     "--if you don't mind me saying so, and--uh--"
     Rachel cocks an eyebrow; he trails away, unable to complete the thought: Game called on account of embarassment. And she steps in--coolly--to finish for him:
     "--I SEEM smart. Right? So why would I end up with--Vern?"
     "...that's what I'm wondering, yeah."
     Rachel gives him a narrow glance, seems to consider her answer. McManus can see a
variety of things passing behind those squinted blue eyes, information he has no earthly right to access.
    She doesn't know him; he doesn't know HER, and never will. Intimacies are hardly
appropriate, let alone required.
     "Mr McManus," she says, finally--carefully--"I drove a very long way to get here today, and I wouldn't be here at all if I didn't really NEED to be. So if it's all the same to you, can I maybe just speak to him, and go home?"
     And again, there's that tweak of weird familiarity: Something in the way she moves, she
talks. Her attention to language. Her impatient, deliberate lack of emotional candor. Her
innate ability to call him on his bullshit, without a hint of deliberate rudeness, while still
managing to make him feel like the earth's just opened up beneath his feet.
     But SOMETHING continues to keep him from figuring out who she resembles. A
transpositional glitch, caught--and stranded--halfway between memory and resemblance.
Needing only one more salient detail to shake itself alive, to become...utterly obvious.
     Though what that detail might BE, he couldn't even begin to guess.
     McManus hands her the clipboard. Pointing: "Sign here."
     Rachel squints again, blonde brows ruffling. "Just a sec..."
     And turns--to rummage in her bag Explaining:
     "...I'm, uh--gonna need my glasses."

Meanwhile, in Em City:
     Tobias Beecher makes his return entrance, officially cast-free at last--crab-legging it
slowly across the quad, a crutch under either arm. From the floor and the overhanging pods, cat-calls, claps--and, here and there, a few cheers--greet him.
     "Beecher, shit! How's it hangin'?"
     "Hey, Beech--welcome back, you crazy fuck!"
     "Bite any good dicks lately?"
     This last from one of the Aryan contingent, sprawled en masse around the TV area's bank of screens. Beecher, limping past, just shows them his teeth, derisively. Asks, sweetly--
     "Why--you volunteering?"
     --and brings his back molars together, with a vicious CLICK.
     Some laugh, but more...FAR more...wince. Which only makes Beecher grin wider.
Without even a glance back, he heaves his crutches up onto the next level and starts hauling
himself bodily up the staircase rail, heading towards his--
     (and Chris's)
     --pod. And though the effort makes him pant and his wasted muscles burn, he keeps
grimly on, ignoring the pain in his chest, his arms.
     But no: Not *ignoring,* so much as INTERNALIZING. Hurt becoming heat, banked and carefully nutured--a smelting forge, a white-hot womb, in which his half-formed weapons already turn and burn. Fuel for the rising fire.
      (...cheap, at half the price.)
      From above: "Need a hand?"
      He looks up, sweat stinging his eyes: Sees Ryan and Cyril O'Reilly waiting for him at the staircase's head--Cyril beaming, all innocent elation, like some six-foot-plus toddler at an impromptu birthday party; Ryan hanging back a little, playing it cool. But smiling too, by the set of his eyes, behind the hand that cups his chin.
     Rebadow and Busmalis stand by their own pod's door, ready to comment and
commiserate--the Others welcome wagon, together again. If Hill came rolling up, right about now, it'd be just like old times.
     And: You know, I really do MISS old Augustus, Beecher thinks, a little surprised by the sudden force of his own regret. Good podmate, good conversationalist. Good GUY, all told, once he finally got over being scared I was gonna circumcise him in his sleep.
     But all that seems like a thousand years ago, at least. A millennium to itself.
     Just then, Cyril--obviously unable to adequately control his delight for ONE SECOND
longer--rushes  forward, hoisting Beecher up bodily into a hug so hard it makes him gasp and wince.
     "Toby!"
     "Hi, Cyr--"
     But he's cut off in mid-syllable, as Cyril squeezes tighter. Crowing: "You can walk--I saw you! Right, Ryan?"
     O'Reilly saunters over, gives Beecher a dry look: Some fun, huh, Tobe? And tells Cyril:
     "Sure did."
     (Uh, GREAT, but--)
     Beecher coughs, feeling his ribs start to give. Suggests, hoarsely:
     "--put me down now, huh, Cyril? So I can KEEP on walking."
     Slightly offended by this less-than-equally-pleased response, Cyril looks to Ryan--who
nods. Lowering Beecher, with exaggerated dignity, he complains: "YOU said you were gonna teach me that game, remember? With the knights, and the horses."
     "Still will," Beecher replies, breathless. He leans on the upper deck's guard-rail, hacks
again, long and loud. Straightens, gingerly. "I promise."
     Brightening: "Today?"
     "Can't, today--gotta start my physio. But soon."
     As Cyril's face falls, disappointed, Beecher feels himself start to droop, exhaustion rushing over him--and feels a sudden hand on his shoulder, holding him up.
     "You," O'Reilly tells him, "look like shit warmed over, my man."
     Dry: "Thanks."
     Cyril knows he's being ignored, and doesn't like it. As his lower lip starts to protrude, Ryan heads off the coming storm by ordering: "Bro. Go show Rebadow and the Mole your ball."
     Cyril's pout deepens. "...they've SEEN it."
     "Yeah? Well, show 'em again."
     Cyril gifts them both with a classic guilt-inducing glare, to which Ryan seems patently
immune, and huffs off. O'Reilly taps Beecher's shoulder, gently. "Still hurtin'?"
     "Not as bad as it could be; they extended my meds prescription."
     Which draws a sharp look, like: You maybe wanna watch it with that, buddy. As though THAT particular thought had never crossed Beecher's mind before--roughly a million times, by last count.
     (Yeah, yeah, fucking yeah. I KNOW, okay?)
     He feels irritation well up inside him: A sore spot, deliberately scratched. He salves it by
reconsidering the Aryans, who all now seem to be deep into discussion about what looks like a program entirely devoted to monster truck trading.
     "Mail been by yet?" Beecher asks Ryan, deceptively idle. O'Reilly grins.
     "Nope. Vern's got the day off, far as I know--'cause'a the WIFE."
     Uh HUH.
     Beecher casts a glance back at his pod: No Chris. Yet.
     (Well, screw it. I'm back, and he's gonna have to learn to deal with it--just like every-
fucking-body else.)
     "Wanna help me unpack?"
     O'Reilly arches a brow, skeptical. You're fuckin' kidding, right?
     Without missing a beat: "Cyril?"

Pausing just outside the visiting room's door, inmates' side, Vern Schillinger takes a  moment to steel himself with a quick, compulsive set of rituals: Smooths his shirt-sleeves down over his tattooed arms, checking the buttons on collar and cuffs; readjusts the straps on the cumbersome cloth cast he's now forced to wear. Runs a brisk hand over the back of his fresh-shaved skull. Breathes in. Breathes out.
     These pills Nathan has him on are making him feel fuzzy, vaguely nauseous--SOFT. Like, any second now, his whole head is simply going to detach and float away. And more than a little (extra-)paranoid, too: Catches people looking at him out of the corner of their eyes and smirking at his discomfort--the cast his public badge of weakness, a bright red "P" for pussy, spottable from twenty paces. If this is how Adebisi used to feel, always shoving those tits up his nose, Vern's no longer so surprised that even THAT stone freak coon finally ended up going completely bugfuck.
     On top of which, they don't WORK, either. His hand keeps right on buzzing, a low-level hum of constant pain-chatter.
     With the voice in his head already mocking him:
     (Way you're actin', you'd think the bitch was someone to be SCARED of.)
     But: Fuck her, he thinks, grimly. And fuck you, too.
     He straightens, nods at the C.O. to cue the door,and steps through.
     From partition three, Rachel hears the door screech open, and looks over. Their eyes meet through the glass, as Vern freezes--his first glimpse of that lying slut, that cheating cunt, that Day Of the Rope-worthy race traitor--his lawfully-wedded ex-wife--in six-plus years. And realizes, horrified, that all he can think, seeing her sitting there, is:
     (Oh, CHRIST.)
     Because goddamn, she looks good. And goddamn, God DAMN--
     --she looks like Beecher. Especially with her glasses on.
     (Do NOT tell me I'm this fuckin' simple.)
     He feels his gorge rise, and gives himself a rough internal shake: The HELL. The
resemblance IS disturbing, granted, but it's only partial. The idea of comparing tiny Rachel, so feminine it's kind of funny, to ANY man...
     But still: The blonde hair, that peering look. That hovering, almost subconscious sense of constant disapproval--of being examined at close range, held up to the stanadrds of some
dismissive, alien intelligence...and found wanting.
     As ever.
     He remembers how he used to take her hand in his sometimes, right at the beginning, just to heft and splay her delicate fingers with a kind of longing amazement: So soft, so easily bruised. So utterly...breakable.
     The image--its intensity, its inexplicable RIGHTNESS--makes something turn over inside him, old and slow, an anger fathoms deep. If he could just--get his head straight...
     Clarify. Cauterize.
     It's a situation full of friction, calling out for ease, for lubrication. And since blood makes such a great lube--SOMEBODY is gonna have to bleed.
     (And it might as well be her.)
     So he forces himself to saunter over, to sit down. Lean back in his chair, legs sprawled;
cross his arms, waiting--
     --for HER to make the first move.
     Rachel picks up her phone. Vern goes to pick up HIS phone, with his bad hand--thinks
briefly better of it--then notices her, noticing his hesitation. And does it anyway.
     Her voice, comes to him filtered through static: A stab to the heart, with its flat, familiar
San Francisco drawl.
     "Wow," she says. "You put on a LOT of weight."
     "What do you want, Rachel?"
     "Something wrong with your hand?"
     "What do you *want*, Rachel?"
     She sighs. "Look. I just, uh--"
     "You want to tell me what you WANT, Rachel?"
     She sighs again. Then, cool but simple:
     "I want you to sign over power of attorney on the kids to me, Vern. So I can get 'em away from your Dad."
     And Vern, equally cool, replies:
     "You still with that nigger?"
     "...yes."
     He shrugs. "Then there you go."
     The message implicit, yet fairly obvious: Not in MY lifetime, cupcake.
     It's a good comeback--just the right tone of authortitative contempt. But his eyes keep
sliding away from her, unwilling even to acknowledge her presence--skirting her outline,
reflexively, like she's some vortex he doesn't want to get trapped in. A woman-sized black
hole.
     "You know where I just came from?" She asks.
     "Couldn't even begin to guess."
     "The hospital, seeing Jan. Our son?" Continuing, as Vern falls silent: "Somebody sold him an extra-pure dose of Ice; he O.D.ed. Cory was there too, luckily--called 911, then just took off and left him by the side of the road. Cops picked him up an hour later. I'd bail him out, but--"
     "--Dad says different."
     "Oh, so you HAVE heard this one before."
     Her smart, sharp mouth--it goes straight to his crotch, just like old times. He can see that junior White Power temper starting to spark and flare in her, peeking out from behind the hoity, pseudo-Hippie trappings of what he takes to be the nigger's "civilizing" influence. Fucker must be a full professor by now, dressing her up like some pansy-ass Gap ad. But underneath all the gloss, Vern can still recognize the alcohol-poisoned little punk girl he met in that S.F. biker bar, along for the ride while her college-boy buddy dealt meth out the back of his Honda: Purple hair with yellow eyebrows, safety pins in her ears and backwards swastikas all over her jacket--so drunk she could barely stay vertical, yet imperious enough to stare down anybody who dared to step to her.
     Saw you lookin', she told him, later. Back and forth, forth and back--man, you stood OUT. Every guy in there with hair down to his ass or a Mohawk, and you got a  Post Office employee shirt with VERN on the pocket, like somebody's Dad.
     Adding, with a crooked grin: But not MINE.
     Her body, her face, her devious, double-crossing Political Science student's mind--all HIS property, once upon a time. And every move she makes now sheds ever more memories, hot splinters of rage and desire. Leaves him right back where he started, muzzled and rigid with his own hopeless, devouring lust.
     He looks at her, eyes lidding, matching her anger for anger. And rumbles:
     "My personal advice? You really should stop tryin' to sound like you give a shit--'cause
you know,  it just don't PLAY."
     "They're MY sons too."
     "Oh, yeah, right. Mother of the fuckin' year, that's you."
     And what do you know--that actually DOES hurt. Her nose wrinkles, eyes narrowing.
     "I left them with you," she says, VERY carefully, "because I know you LOVE them, Vern--better than you ever loved me, that's for sure. I thought they'd be...*safe* with you."
     An extra stress, subtly mocking, on the "safe". Vern flushes, snapping:
     "You saying they WEREN'T?"
     With deceptive softness: "Oh, no. I mean, you took care of them--for the FIRST five
minutes at least."
      (Before you got yourself thrown in JAIL, that is.)
      Because you really fucked up on that first dealer, didn't you? You got mad, crazy mad,
and you got CAUGHT--which meant you WEREN'T there for the next one, or the NEXT
one. And you sure as hell weren't there to protect them from the Old Man, after the courts
gave him custody: Closest relative, automatic choice, what with Rachel in hiding. And
Mom...dead.
     So now you get to sit in here, eat your three squares a day and play your little dominance games, and blame it all on me. And that just lets YOU off the hook, now, doesn't it?
     She doesn't have to SAY all this, of course. And she knows it.
     "I'm...TRYING to be polite to you here, Rachel..."
     "Really? I hadn't noticed."
     (Aaagh, you pissy little BITCH.)
     Pain vises Vern's head, making the left side of his face twitch; he looks down, realizes he's been GRIPPING the phone like he wants to crush it flat, other hand already a fist. With her RIGHT THERE, on the other side of the glass--knowing exactly what he wants to do to her, and well aware...REVELLING...in the fact that...he *can't*.
     It's like that first time she left him, when he hunted her back down and dragged her from her parents' home by her newly grown-out hair. All his life, he'd despised men who beat on women--men like the Old Man, who frankly didn't have enough guts to take on anybody who could potentially fuck THEIR ass. Because that was one thing his first stints in jail had taught him: The dark rush of victory which comes with cracking another man wide open, muscle against muscle. Nothing natural about it, no hint of REAL union, real responsibility. Just power from power, hurt for hurt: You make your mark, suck out their heart and then throw the rind away--knowing, forever after, that they'll be yours ANYTIME you care to give 'em the nod again.
     Since women are already born weak, there's no earthly reason you have to try and MAKE them that way. It's coward bullshit. Overkill.
     But Rachel--there was a girl BORN not to know her place. She'd slapped him, kicked him, used her too-educated tongue, along with those few secrets he'd been cunt-drunk enough to tell her, to flay him alive. And he'd beaten her with everything he knew, used every trick the Old Man had ever practiced in front of him--holding her in his arms, afterwards, and berating her in a moaning howl so unexpected he even scared himself.
     (You see what you DO to me, you bitch? You see what you MAKE me do?)
     His only coherent thought: Mine, mine, mine. MY wife. MY child inside her. Mine forever, better or worse. Death do us part.
     Rachel, who'd fought him like a man--always--and taken the consequences.
     These goddamn DRUGS, making him reel with long-buried things. He wants to sift his
own skull, run his fingers through his memories, pick out all the ones that have to do with her, and burn them. He WANTS to throw her down, right damn now, and fuck her so hard her cold blue eyes bug out. So hard his head sings with blood and his tattoos burn, black lightning bolts humping like parasitical worms beneath his skin
     Feeling those eyes on him, suddenly, he comes to all at once--realizes it's been far too long since he last spoke. That she can see--too much.
     "Boy," she says, quietly. "You really ARE in a lot of pain, aren't you?"
     (The worst possible observation, at the WORST possible moment.)
     "I need you to shut the FUCK UP, Rachel, that's what I need. Right fucking now."
     "Look, it's pretty OBVIOUS you've got some kind of--"
     "Woman, will you just SHUT FUCKING *UP*?"
     Even shielded, she recoils from his ferocity; he grins to see her flinch. Then, after a  long moment:
     "Well. Very sorry indeed to distract you with my dumb little female troubles,  *Vernon*--"
     (Vern-baby)
     "--since I know how much you must be ENJOYING your stay here in this--estrogen-free zone--"
     (VERY cute. You endless cunt.)
     "--but--" Her facade cracking, at last: "--Jesus! This is JAN. CORY. Remember them?  You really want to tell me you WANT them to end up like that asshole you call Dad? Or--oh, but no, I forgot: YOU just want them to end up like YOU."
     (In jail. In OZ.)
     They glare at each other again, Vern's hand throbbing hard. Rachel panting, just a little.
He can see her Eve's non-apple rise and fall, between the two popped pearl buttons at her
dress's neck. One blue vein just visible, running the taut length of that soft, white throat...
     Rising, he turns back toward the door. Tells the guard: "I'm ready."
     "Guess I'll see you next week, then," Rachel says, before he has time to hang up the phone. "Same place, same time."
     "Fuck you will."
     "Fuck I WON'T. No trouble, really. My boss lets me work at home--and Paul says he can always drive me up, anytime I want."
     Vern pauses, brow twisting: "Who?"
     Rachel smiles one more time--a bitter twist of the lips. And explains, as SHE leans to hang up:
     "PAUL, Vernon. You know. 'The nigger.'"

Screech of contact doors. Vern stomps away down the corridor, back to Gen Pop, with
everything on fire: His head, his chest. His groin. Grinding against himself in shameful
pleasure, as he curses her anew with every step.
     McManus, appearing from behind, calls after him. "So, Schillinger--you guys have a nice talk? Work some stuff out?"
     Without turning: "FUCK you, McManus."
     "She comes back, you DO know I'm gonna make you see her again, right?" As Vern
reaches the corner: "THERAPY, Schillinger! Get used to it!"
     Grinding his teeth. And refusing to call back, much as he may ACHE to do so:
     (Oh, SUCK my fuckin' DICK, you skinny psych-major prag-in-waiting.)

And then they're gone, in separate directions. Leaving the hallway empty once more.
End Part 5/1
 
 
 
 
 

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MY WIFE AND MY DEAD WIFE Part 5/2

Limping back into Sister Peter Marie's office for the first time in eleven long weeks, Tobias Beecher finds both Sister Pete herself, already up and smiling, warmly, in his direction--no surprise there--plus his old desk, which  sports a MASSIVE pile of as-yet-unentered files.
     He raises an eyebrow. She raises one back.
     "TOLD you you were missed," she says. And opens her arms.

Now he sits in front of the blinking terminal, still feeling the residue of that hug cling to him like a warm mist--her bird-like body, so unexpectedly wiry in his grip. So fierce, and so unabashedly free with her own affection.
     If she only knew what I'm going to do... he thinks, unable to avoid it ...to Vern and--myself, really...
     (...she'd kick your no longer quite so broke ass from here to Heaven's gate.)
     And, no doubt, she'd be right to.
     *You know, I can't really believe in God anymore,* he remembers telling O'Reilly once,  high as a proverbial kite, while they reeled and cackled together by the foot of the Irishman's  bunk. *But the one thing left I CAN believe in...that's gotta be Sister Pete.*
     With O'Reilly nodding along, a stoned study in too-solemn agreement:
     *Right on, Toby, my man. Right fuckin' ON.*
     Knowing it'll hurt her; that's all Beecher has REAL qualms about. Because, let's face it--everything else, he could pretty much perform in his sleep. Been there, been done like that. Got the t-shirt.
     Nearly took out a guy's eye and tried to jump off the top deck, just to avoid having to wear it.
     (And speaking of which--)
     --it suddenly occurs to Beecher that he STILL hasn't seen hide nor (figurative) hair of ol' Vern as yet, for all that his visit with "the wife" must surely have ended hours before. Such inaccessibility bids fair to put a bit of a damper on all Beecher's evil plans--the same ones he's eager to jump-start BEFORE he's had adequate time to try and talk himself out of carrying them through.
     But let's face it: There's only so many places Em City and Gen Pop CAN overlap, in point of fact. It's bound to happen. And then...
     ...then we get to see, Toby. If you can really stand to put your money where your mouth is.
     (Or vice versa.)
     Stretching out his legs, which have already started to cramp and burn with enforced inactivity, Beecher turns his attention back to the task before him. He remembers the last time he was in here, nursing the most recent in a long line of post-heartbreak hangovers; running a dry tongue over furry teeth, desperate to justify his burning urge to call up Keller's file and cross-reference what clues to Chris's inner world he'd THOUGHT he'd gleaned from enforced proximity and obsessive observation with Sister Pete's notes--Keller's private, intimate consultations with Oz's own psychiatrist/nun, detail by hard-won detail, left right there on the record for anyone with access...like Beecher, say, Sister Pete's most devoted devotee...to pour over.
     At first, surreptitiously rifling through the same psych files he spent all day helping to compile had been simple self-defense: A desperate attempt to head off Vern's ploys at the source, by decoding those personal signals far too obscure--or simply alien--for him NOT to initially fumble. Then returning, after his own little Independence Day celebration--and the riot that followed--to rack up ideas for his revenge...boning up on Vern's self-confessed sore spots, preparatory to the elaborate pre-parole mindfuck Beecher had so carefully planned out while sitting alone in the hole, licking the walls for moisture and trying (in vain) to cough the taste of that dumb Gen Pop would-be pragholder's genital blood from his throat.
     (She just leaves you in here alone?)
     Oh, all the time, Guard Whittlesey. All the time. She TRUSTS me.
     (More fool HER.)
     Which MIGHT be the perfect cue for a fresh, distracting rush of disgust at the arcane workings of his own black, tangled heart--if a voice from the doorway didn't suddenly intrude.
     "Am I interrupting anything?"
     Beecher, swivelling, recognizes the man Dr Nathan introduced him to last week, on his way back from getting the casts off--Joe somebody, volunteer physical therapist to the incarcerated. 3:00 already; time for their first session outside the infirmary.
     And: Back to the GYM, he thinks. That legendary patch of unhallowed ground, where all bad things begin...and end.
     Beecher feels memory start to stir, so long deferred, and tenses at its sneaky, seductive touch: A helpless sense of willing complicity in his own betrayal, offset by the koan-like sound of four limbs snapping. And raises his hands from the keyboard, giving his most studiedly "harmless" smile--the same one he used to trot our during contract negotiations, gently self-deprecating, as if to prove himself utterly free of any bad intentions. The same one he gave Gen, just before he asked her out.
     The same one he gave that cunt of a judge on the first day of his trial--when he looked deep into her unsympathetic eyes, and KNEW he was going to be convicted. Suspecting, even then, that whatever followed would be worse than anything he could have previously imagined.
     (And if nothing else, I sure was right about THAT.)
     Rummaging underneath the desk for his crutches, Beecher levers himself up. Replying:
     "I'm all yours."

Stalking and scowling back through the halls of Gen Pop, Vern Schillinger already suspects--from long experience of such things-that, like McManus, the Em City chorus will also not have failed to take notice of his ex-wife Rachel's visit.
     Which turns out, soon enough, to be true.
     Poet to Kenny Wangler: "Yo, yo, li'l dog, you gots to catch a sight'a Schillinger's ol' lady, man: 'Bout so high, all this hair like Malibu fuckin' Barbie or some shit, and yo, she gots the MAD titties on her, too..."
     Wangler: "Man, you even more fucked up than usual. Thought you was seein' YOUR bitch up in there today."
     Poet: "Aw, sure, but you know how it is, a'ight--I'm in the stall next to 'em, and you KNOW I just gotta take a peek. 'Sides, turns out she on some *serious* jungle fever shit, for real."
     Wangler: "Say WHAT?"
     Poet: "Naw, trip on THIS: O'Reilly got it from some Mick hack on the gate. She may'a come to SEE ol' Vern, but she goin' HOME with a BROTHER."
     In the kitchen, meanwhile, Ryan O'Reilly whistles while he works. Knowing that phase 1-A of the longterm rep assassination job he's already come to think of as "Operation Vern-baby" is ticking along just as it should...right on track, and right on time.

In Oz, as everywhere else, being "part of something" takes work. Case in point:
    "Ever since Nappa and Wangler hooked up, gangstas been actin' STONE out of control. Them *niggaz* is laughin' at us, fellas. So what WE gotta do is tear one of 'em's fuckin' head clean off, take a dump down his neck, plus maybe fuck the bloody stump while we're thinkin' 'bout it."
     Fritz Duchene, aka "Der Fuhrer", watches his fellow Aryans nod in agreement, and takes a stealthy glance around the yard, scanning for any visible trace of Schillinger--besides the words currently coming out of his own mouth, that is. Because, effective as those words may be--incendiary, concise, what-fuckin'-ever--he's getting just a LITTLE tired of playing the big man's duly-elected mouthpiece.
     'Course, there's a lot worse things to be. And it's mainly Vern's still-potent influence in Oz which has saved him from exploring most of THOSE options, thus far.
     Under his itchy, realtively new A.B. tattoos, Duchene can feel the lingering traces of the white-boy gangsta-wannabe signifiers he walked IN with: "Pretty fly" back when he was dealing on the street, but hardly appropriate after a week or so under Vern's tender care. But it's cool. He can always take to wearing turtlenecks, once he makes it out of this shitstorm with all his parts intact.
      And here comes the S-man now: Stomping heavy around the basketball court, amid the usual jeers and hisses, so preoccupied he doesn't even bother to shoot the offenders an automatic one-finger salute. The right side of his mouth is drawn up in a grim, skewed line; his bad eye looks absent, almost unfocussed.
     "Hey, Vern," Duchene calls, striking a pretty good balance between Heil-fellow-well-met and beta-dog placatory. But Vern just throws himself down centre-group, not even bothering to respond--his baleful blue glare enough to scare everybody else equally silent.
     (So what crawled up YOUR butt and died?)
     Not that Duchene's got *quite* the wad to say it out loud, however--'cause even after all his various setbacks, Vern remains one fairly scary, authoritative motherfucker, tapped in tight with true-life freak magnets like Metzger both inside Oz AND out. So whenever he shines his light on you, you better be ready either to run and jump, or duck and cover--and Fritz hasn't spent THIS much time protecting his own precious ass just to get it reamed out, lit or fig, by another Aryan.
     "You been talking about Wangler and Nappa?" He asks, without preamble. At Fritz's nod: "'Kay. So here's what we're gonna do..."
     ...make an example of one of Wangler's crew--some incoming drug mule, preferably...
     ...cut him open so the heroin-filled condoms in his stomach spill out for everyone to see...
     ...then kill two birds with one stone by trading the blame for this apparent anti-drug statement on to Kareem Said and HIS bunch--the bulk of whose Gen Pop-based chapter are, as usual, hard at prayer on the yard's opposite side, salaaming towards Mecca and wailing intermittent cries of "Allah--u'ackbar!" with roughly equal fervor.
     It's a sexy plan, and Vern gives it all he's got: The silk-over-steel Big Daddy delivery, hypnotically intimate, cut here and there with a free and easy, "just-plain-folks" grin, as though amused--and just a little aroused--by the sheer extent of his own Machiavellian invention.
     But Duchene notices him playing with his CT cast, absently. The slight drag on his consonants, a barely-measurable time-lapse between thought and statement. And thinks:
     Man, if I didn't know better...I'd say he was STONED.
     And he IS, he realizes, slowly--on Dr Nathan's painkiller cocktail, its original potentcy obviously doubled by Vern's mounting stress. This thing with his hand, making him surreptitiously pop pills, violating his own strict anti-drug code. Not to *mention* this thing with his WIFE.
    Sure, Vern's usually got the skinny--but all his White Power certainty didn't save him from a shit facial, did it?
    Is he going down? And, if so--how can Fritz avoid going down with him?
    "...and then, when Wangler's already swingin', we take a pull on his feet just to make sure he's dead," Vern concludes. "McManus identifies him as head of the tits trade, and bounces him into the hole; the whole thing reverts back to Nappa, who has to call in--say--Ryan O'Reilly to play prime pusher figurehead, or risk takin'  the chance that McManus goes after HIM next. Which, in turn, gets that fuckin' Mick off OUR--"
     (--my--)
     "--back."
     (Here endeth the lesson.)
     Vern pauses; Duchene--gripped by a serious Afterschool Special flashback--has to resist the urge to raise his hand, before replying:
     "Not like I mean to take a crap on your parade," he begins, "but--tell me again why should we GIVE that scheming bastard a fuckin' thing, exactly?"
     Vern shoots him a freezing look. And asks, with exaggerated patience:
     "Who'd you rather have to deal with, Fritz? A Mick, a wop--or an uppitty little fuckin' nigger who ain't even old enough to vote?"
     "How 'bout none of the above?"
     Vern just smiles. Softly: "Well, there's *always* gonna be SOMEBODY."
     (The trick, of course, being to make sure you get to pick the enemy you WANT.)
     He snaps his fingers at two of the posse, who dog-jump to his side. "You--and you--I want this done soon, and I want it done...obvious. You got that?"
     The goons nod--then, remembering Duchene, look to him for confirmation. He nods back.
     Get the meat to do your dirty work, huh, Vern? Fritz thinks. They take the risk, you get the glory; choice.
     But wait a second. That Duchene ever ended up in line for this position at all, after the late Mark Mack ended up burying himself alive beneath Em City's floor, came about pretty much  as a direct result of his personal involvement in one or two earlier...command decisions.
     So--does that imply Schillinger thinks HE's meat? And, maybe--always HAS?
     Before he can allow this sudden insight the kind of closer observation it deserves, however, Vern rises, turning for the yard's nearest exit.
    "Where *you* goin'?" Duchene hears himself snap, too startled even to modify his tone.
    Vern: "The gym."
    "NOW?"
    "Right now." Coolly: "And I suggest you tag along--'cause if you wanna stay on top-- AND out of the hole--we're *both* gonna need to establish ourselves an alibi."
     Duchene bridles--but Vern's already halfway gone. Fritz, flushing, is forced to sprint to catch up, and look dumb doing it. Neither of which sensations he enjoys.
     But: We'll see, he thinks, to himself. After the dust settles, we'll just SEE who has the real advantage--the meat, or the motion.

Meanwhile, in the gym:
     Chris Keller lays into the punching bag HARD--left-right-left, uppercut, jab. Right hook. A half-assed kick, sending it slamming unexpectedly back against his knee and up along the inside his thigh--a painful collision, though one he bites his tongue on rather than do more than grunt. He closes his eyes, leans his damp and aching forehead against the bag's cool, smooth surface. Tries to ignore the spectacle playing itself out right in front of him, through the mesh fence: Beecher being put through his physio paces on a nearby mat, while the therapist bullies and exhorts him to "make that sweat COUNT!"
     (That...sweat...)
     And Beecher, half-pound weights velcroed to his wrists and ankles, casting the occasional sidelong glance Keller's way, in between each successive stretch and pose--languid, lax, strangely sinuous--as though calculating the effect his display is having on him, so overt he might as well be asking it aloud: You like this one, Chris? This?
     Oh, and how  'bout *this*--my PERSONAL favorite. And so hard to do, even if you *haven't* just recovered from getting your arms and legs snapped like twigs by someone you...
     (...trust...)
     ...love.
     That WORD again. The one Keller's never been able to translate with absolute surety. Always saying it, eventually--and always meaning it, for that one brief moment: Sure I "love" you, baby--"love" your mouth, your hands, your eyes. Your body's response, and the response it triggers in mine. How much *you* obviously WANT to be "in love" with *me*.
     Breathing it into the clean curve of Toby's freshly-shaved jaw, though, as his lips brush up and over--into the sweetly revealed line of his lips, his hot teeth, his wet velvet tongue--
     *I...love you. Too.*
     --and feeling it in his bones, his gut, his stiffening, lit-from-within dick: So fine. So NICE. So very, weirdly RIGHT in every way, somehow...
     ...he could almost believe it himself.
     We want what we want, he thinks. If we're lucky, we even figure out how to GET what we want, before it's too late to do anything about it.
     And if mouthing one simple phrase is enough to bring me what I want, then what the fuck do you *expect* me to say?
     It's a funny thing, being kept so close to someone--anyone, unsuspecting prospective "favor" for an old friend or not. Breathing the same air, acclimatizing to their smell. Learning, almost subconsciously, to mark off the hours by their personal pattern of ritualized behavior: When they eat, sleep, piss.
     A certain familiarity can't help but develop. A kind of proprietary interest--all part of the plan, of course. And yet...not.
     Even ranting and snapping, aloof and nightmare-plagued--even sporting that rancid, four-forked beard, masking his face like the world's ugliest suit of self-produced armor--Tobias Beecher really WAS one good-lookin' item. Keller could totally understand Vern's continued quest to rebreak and regain him, much as the old Nazi might claim it was strictly payback time for their legendary gym pas-de-deux. Because there was a perversely seductive current at work beneath Beecher's madness, whether HE knew it or not--passionate, immediate, *intense* as a claws-out slap to the face. Raw enough to pull even Keller in hard, practiced whore that he was; to hook him deep and leave him to squirm, unsatisfied.
     *You're such a DOG, Chris,* his first wife had snarled at him, once, in the midst of yet another argument. *Chase anything that moves, and jump on top of anything that don't. If you can't have pussy, there's always ass--bet you'd fuck a damn snake, you son of a bitch, if you thought you could find the right hole.*
     And he'd just smirked back at her, not even bothering to defend himself--leaned back against the wall, striking his habitual pose of sexy indifference. Thinking:
     That's right, honey. And when the snakes run out, you know where to find me--off in some corner, humpin' up against a ROCK.
     Just not even a  problem, pretending to get it up--or GETTING it up, if it went that far--on command, for anybody, anytime. His stock in trade, sorta--the skill that'd saved him from so many tough spots, all through his life: Long before Vern, as well as after.
     And so, that hug. That ill-timed grope. Those shower-room conversations. Chess and wrestling. That one brief--TOO brief--laundry-room kiss, improv-ed at such short notice it took Keller's breath away, and prefaced by an unplanned, headlong blurt of truth. I married four different women, Toby, each one a fucked-up attempt to get close without getting TOO close. Told 'em each what they wanted to hear...only to be pretty damn disappointed, frankly, when they were willfully dumb enough to take me seriously.
     (Like *you* did, too, in the end.)
     But not anymore.
     Like a bolt to the heart, the icy sting of Beecher's disregard. When the gym doors first opened to admit them, and Keller looked up--unprepared--to meet that frigid stare, he'd felt an odd little squeeze in his chest, a hitch and flutter in his breath: His palms gone slick, beneath the gloves. Actually wavering on the ragged edge of saying something, not that he had the faintest idea WHAT--
     --until Beecher just crutched blithely by him, following Mr Physio without even a backwards glance.
     (Oh, you little, fuckin'--LAWYER, you.)
     Another kick, spinning the bag on its chain. Another jab.
     (I SAID I was sorry. Meant it, even. And you just blew me off, froze me out--like I crashed your cocktail party, or took a crap in your cappucino, or something.)
     Rich boy, college boy, *boy*, spoiled-rotten BRAT. Think you're better than me? You lay down and took it too, remember?
     But: Not forever, he didn't.
     (Which is more than you can say about yourself.)
     Keller hauls back and slugs the bag again, so hard his whole arm jars with pain. Looks over at the mat, almost reflexively...and sees Beecher leaned back now, panting with over-exertion, his wet golden head cradled gently in the therapist's lap.
     Nothing sexual about the image, really--unless, as Keller finds himself doing, you mentally substitute your own pelvis for the physio-guy's. Feel the silky hairs on the nape of Beech's tense neck make secret contact with your pelvic cage, sharp intersecting ridges of bone and muscle soothed--and teased--by careful pressure.
     Those calm blue eyes staring up at you, rimmed with pale gilt lash. Those myopic pupils, narrowing in concentration. Then irising open again, eclipsing the blue, as your shadow falls over him. As you lean down, ever closer, *closer*...
     (And THEN what, Chris?)
     ...he puckers up--and spits, right in your fuckin' Judas face.
     Keller hisses through his nose at the image, a sledgehammer to his mental chest. It shouldn't hurt so much; shouldn't mean a damn thing. Doesn't.
     Not really.
     (Except for the fact that it DOES.)
     But just then, the gym door opens, admitting some Aryan guy--Duchene, right? They all kinda run together, after awhile. And, right behind him--
     --Vern.
     (OH, boy.)

At the sound, Beecher turns his head. Looks up. Meets Vern's eyes, halfway--sees shock and ...what? Something else, quickly masked: Rememberance of mats past, maybe. Beecher pinned by Keller, red-faced and roaring, split seconds away from the most intense pain of his life--though hardly the most enduring.
     Keller, still over by the punching bag, pretends not to notice--while Vern's latest flunky, also either bent on ignoring or simply unable to percieve the sudden surge of murderous energy rocketing through the room, simply crosses over to the nearest bench and lays back, hands going automatically to the thirty-pound barbell shelfed just overhead. And says, to Vern:
     "Spot me?"
     Vern shakes himself awake--a nearly imperceptible twitch, to those unversed in the art of Schillinger-reading--and replies:
     "Sure."
     Turning away, deliberately, from the therapeutic pieta beyond the mesh. While Beecher shuts his own eyes, thinking:
     And so...it begins.
     To Joe: "I'm done for today."
     "Ten more minutes, Toby."
     "I'm DONE, 'Joe'. Had enough. Sweating like a pig, can't move. No more."
     An attempt at a chuckle, professionally warm. "Listen, man, if you got the strength to argue--"
     Beecher lets his eyes snap open again, growls up at him: "I *hurt*, okay? You get that? So you can either have yourself a good ol' time counting off the next ten all on your ownsome, while I lie here like a sentient stump, or you can just gimme my goddamn meds and let me go back to my pod, before I pass out and pee all over this lovely new equipment of yours."
     Poor Joe sits back on his heels, a little stunned by this sudden rush of bile; Oz's orientation courses probably didn't give him much advice on how to deal with abrupt mood-swings in formerly-crippled white-collar criminals, Beecher guesses.
     "I...don't have them with me," he begins, hesitant.
     "Better go GET them then, huh?" Softening, slightly: "Please."
     "...all right."
     He gets up, walks away. From his position on the mat, Beecher can see him talking with Whittlesey, who's apparently just replaced that guy who gave Beecher the smarmy, "I know what happened to YOU"-type grin on their way in. Fine; *she's* got at least a TOUCH of integrity, plus that pleasantly pissy attitude. If Beecher had actually listened to her "welcoming" spiel on his way into Em City, maybe he wouldn't be lying where he is today.
     And speaking of which...
     Still prone, Beecher raises his voice slightly:
     "Vern." No response. He repeats: "Hey, Vern. Vern. VERN. *Hey, VERN*."
     From the weights area, just loud enough to betray real annoyance: "Fucking WHAT, you *freak*?"
     Beecher smiles to himself--and Chris. Who he can just see through the mesh, still playing like he isn't watching.
     "Oh, just wanted to know if you were awake. And LISTENING."

And, switching back TO Keller...
     (What the fuck does he think he's *doing*?)
     Keller scans Beecher for signs of motive, finds none: Kind of scary, in itself. Because even at his nuttiest, Beech has always been readable--incapable of concealing his emotions, any more than he could stop his pale skin from changing color under pressure. But now...now, there's something new about him. Some shield: Invisible, reflective.
     (Impenetrable.)
     Lawyers lie, that's their job. And according to Toby, he's not a real lawyer, not since they took away his license--but how true can THAT be, really? Maybe he's just so good at it, he can't even tell when he's doing it anymore.
     (Or maybe that's yourself you're thinking about, Chris.)
     ...maybe.
     The guy on the bench completes his reps, and makes way for Vern. As the barbell starts its steady rise and fall once more, meanwhile, Beecher snaps the tabs on his wrist-weights and slips them free--one, two. A little clumsy. Freed from their restraint, he pulls himself--slowly--up into a sitting position, and does the same with the weights on his ankles. Taking a moment, he hugs his stiff knees to him, as though for protection; seems to pause, to think. To draw a long, slow breath.
     Then he puts his hands on the floor, and forces himself upwards--up on his feet, swaying slightly. Turns, unsteady, towards the mesh. And takes first one crutchless step, then another...
     The barbell pauses.
     Beecher has reached the mesh now, the door-frame. Balancing himself, with the wall's help, he steps through--into the weights area itself.
     The Aryan stares, as does Keller. Thinking, with a sick kind of humor:
     Whoo, yeah, gang's all here--the ex, the ex and the ex.
     (Oh, and THIS guy.)
     Vern--NOT staring, pointedly, but apparently feeling his arms start to tremble--reshelfs the barbell and lies back against the bench, waiting.
     "You got something to say to me?" He asks. Very simply.
     Beecher pauses again, miming thought. Then replies, brightly:
     "Well...YES."
     And smiles--that brisk, characteristic, all-too-wide grimace, full of teeth. The Aryan glances over, raises an eyebrow: Do something? But Vern just shakes his head. Telling Beecher:
     "Then just SAY it, sweetpea. Or go get fucked."
     At the sound of this double-barrelled endearment/insult combination, Beecher grins again. Moves past Keller, still frozen at the bag's side, fixing him out of the corner of one glacial blue eye as he goes by. And gifting him, so quick it's almost unregisterable--
     --with a sly, cold...*wink*.
     To which Keller can only think, aghast: Oh, Toby, what the FUCK.
     Realizing, finally, that he does NOT know this man, after all. Not the version currently in front of him, at least--the one hobbling towards Schillinger, his former tormentor, and forcing his unsteady stride into a parody of Keller's own stray cat (in heat) strut. The one playing idly with his own soaked shirt-tail, sketching light fingers up the moist muscles of his own half-revealed belly...
     Lowering his eyes, demure as some unveiled harem girl. And murmuring:
     "So, Vern...you enjoy your little visit today? Your fifteen-minute slice of martial bliss?"
     "None of your fuckin' business."
     "Oh, I think so. Being as how--barring any unforseen complications--the fact that your wifey finally trekked her no doubt pure-white self out to Oz makes ME the only *real* widower in here. Unless..." To Keller: "...Chris--any of YOUR wives dead, you know of?"
     Keller shrugs, uncomfortably. Beecher gives a droll coo.
     "You are SUCH a romantic."
     The Aryan snickers; Keller resists the urge to deck him one. While Vern, never too comfortable when he thinks he's no longer the centre of attention, snaps back:
     "Hey: You wanna flirt with him all day? Or do you wanna get on with it, before your nigger nursemaid gets back with the daily fix?"
     Beech blinks.
     "Just wanted to make sure you understood," he says. "The, uh--offer--I made, that time in the infirmary--?"
     ("Offer"? WHAT fuckin' "offer"?)
     "--it's...still open."
     Vern's eyes slit. "'Scuse me?"
     (No: 'Scuse ME.)
     Beecher, shrugging: "Well, I really don't know how much more--EXPLICIT--I can possibly get..."
     VERY close now--right at the bench's edge, practically hovering between Vern's wide-sprawled legs--he lets his hand stray further up, checking his own forehead, as though for signs of fever. Announces, to no one in particular: "Man, I am WIPED."
     Then, to Vern: "You mind?"
     And with one surprisingly quick, surprising long stride, the crazy son of a bitch actually SITS DOWN across Vern's knees, almost in his lap.
     The sudden impact forces an inadvertant "Oof!" from Schillinger's throat. Aryan-guy chokes; Keller gulps down a whoop, converting it--at last possible minute--to a fairly plausible cough.
     Beecher, meanwhile--smile growing again--shifts slightly. Holds Vern's eyes as he re-seats himself with equal firmness, but just a TAD more finesse.
     And Keller, watching both their bodies' language, knows--KNOWS--not only that Vern is already harder than a steel pole in winter, but that Beecher is *well* able to feel the indisputable proof of that well-concealed fact for himself.
     "So where were we? Oh, yeah. My OFFER."
     Vern, hoarse: "You nutbag fuckin' FA--"
     Beecher touches his lips, with two crossed fingers; a gentle touch from which Vern shies like a fly-stung horse, though willpower--and the prospect of looking weak in front of TWO underlings--conspires to keep him rigid.
     "Sssh," he says. "Just listen."
     Leaning in, ever closer, one hand on the barbell. The other on Vern's shoulder, now--fingers splayed, digging in. Barely keeping Beecher aloft.
     "You know what happened here, Vern? Back then, on that mat, me and Chris? You *won*. You wanted to punish me; I'm punished. Teach me my place? 'Kay, done. So, since THAT's settled, why don't I come by the post office--next few days, or so--and..."
     Even FURTHER in. And whispering, right next to Vern's ear:
     "...fuck your fuckin' BRAINS out?"
     (Making it sound far more like a threat than a seduction.)
     Adding, quickly: "You on top, of course. Just like you like it."
     As Vern struggles to compose some kind of coherent reply--the resident Ayran far BEYOND staring, now--a sudden commotion at the door intrudes: Mr Physio, returning, with guard Whittlesey in tow.
     Whittlesey, amazed, drawing her nightstick: "Break it *UP*, fellas!"
     (No fighting, no fucking, and DEFINITELY no lap-dancing.)
     Beecher, still at Vern's ear, ignores the warning. Lowers his voice even further. And hisses:
     "Or can you only get it up when the other person ISN'T interested?"
     At which Vern basically ERUPTS up off the bench, from lengthwise to full height in barely a second--the sheer force of his movement throwing Beecher to the floor, where he sprawls, wincing...right at his therapist's feet.
     Therapist: "What the *hell* just happened?"
     One good goddamn question, Keller thinks.
     Beecher looks at Vern, eyes paling with repressed amusement; Vern glares back, patently UNamused.
     "Toby?" The therapist prompts. And Whittlesey, similarly immune to the joke, cautions:
     "You better give him an answer, Beecher."
     Gaze still on Vern, Beecher shrugs again. "Fell down, Guard Whittlesey," he says. "Just like you saw."
     "Yeah, you keep DOING that."
     Dry: "That's right. Frankly, I'm surprised you guys leave me in here at all."
     The therapist sighs, and sticks out his hand. Beecher takes it. Allows himself to be drawn up, as Whittlesey deigns to collect his crutches. And follows meekly after poor Joe, with Whittlesey at his heels--scowling back at Keller, the Aryan, Vern. Scanning for clues, and getting exactly nothing: Aryan-boy's slack jaw, Keller's world-class game face.
     And Vern, just standing there, casted hand clenched by his side, wearing a look that could be either baffled rage, or enraged bafflement: Confusion run rampant, just like that *very*- visible swelling behind the fly of his pants. Unwilling, or unable, to lift his eyes from the patch of floor where Beecher used to be--like he expects to still see his former (and future?) prag's outline burned onto it, his murmuring mouth, his silken eyes. His smile, radioactive with mockery and promise.
     A joke, Keller's mind repeats, hopefully. That's what is is. On Vern. On me. On BOTH of us, for what we did.
     (What *you* did.)
     What Vern...MADE me do.
     (Uh huh. And besides--you SAID you were sorry. Right?)
     Right.
     Besides, it's not like Beech can *mean* it. Not him--and not with *Vern*. No way, nohow.
     No--fuckin'--WAY.
     ('Course not.)
     Nevertheless, Keller finds himself hugging the punching bag, almost surreptitiously. Not quite as convinced as he'd like to be.
     And not able to understand WHY...given everything that's happened...he's so sure he'd feel so much better, if only he WAS convinced.

End Part 5/2
 

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<x-charset iso-8859-1>MY WIFE AND MY DEAD WIFE Part 5/3

An hour later, in the kitchen, Ryan O'Reilly and Kenny Wangler stand head-to-head--to the Irishman's lanky, compact CHEST, in Wangler's case--glaring each other down over a plate of pasta destined for the table of Antonio Nappa.
     Wangler: "Look, fuck YOU, a'ight, O'Reilly? I MADE that ol' wop motherfucker his goddamn noodles--"
     Ryan grits his teeth. "So what do you want, a medal? This ain't even his order, asswipe!"
     A warning tone: "Man, you NEED to step back off'a that shit, 'fore I--"
     "I mean, FUCK, Wangler, even *Adebisi* could tell the difference between red sauce and white sauce--one's red, one's white, for Chrissakes! You need me to draw you a fuckin' map?"
     "Don't you be throwin' Adebisi up to me, bitch!"
     "Who you callin' a *bitch*, BITCH?"
     From behind them both, a dry cough intrudes: McManus, flanked by two of Em City's largest C.O.s--barring Metzger, that is, who Ryan can't help but notice McManus seems to be avoiding, these days.
     (Gotta look into that...)
     Kenny turns, hands on hips. "What'chu want, McManus?"
     "You familiar with a guy name of LeVon Jordaire, Kenny?"
     Jordaire: A Jefferson Keane-era gangsta hanger-on usually found moping around the phone booth, nervously twisting the fake-gold Uzi he sports on a chain around his neck and telling barely-plausible lies about all the 'hos he's done back in the 'hood. Ryan's heard he runs tits for Wangler, which seems fairly consistent with the general tenor of Kenny's operation: The fucked-up leading the fuck-ups.
     One way or another, Nappa's pact with Kenny's getting so it ain't worth the paper it was never signed on, FAST. But O'Reilly's just stood back and watched, so far--marking territory, mapping players. And letting nature...the Oz version, at least...take its usual, prospectively bloody course.
     "Y'all KNOW it."
     McManus nods, slow; a little sad, even.
     (Or faking it, more like.)
     "Yeah," he says. "I *do* know. That you--knew him."
     (*Knew*?)
     But McManus is already nodding to the hacks, who drag Kenny off, protesting--won't even bother to explain why, obviously, 'til Wangler's safely in his office or the hole, whiever comes first. Then glances over at O'Reilly, who meets his glance without hesitation, studiedly expressionless. Not even reacting...on the surface, at least.
     Think I can't find out for myself what just happened, Timmy-boy? Ryan lets his squinted green eyes ask, silently. Take me five fuckin' minutes. Maybe less.
     McManus' pale gaze holds his for a long moment, as if assessing the relative penatrability of O'Reilly's assumed indifference. Then looks away--looks down, slowly, as if only now noticing the pasta, left cooling on the counter between them.
     "Appetizing," he says.
     (Oh, uh huh. 'Cause I know you got SUCH a high opinion of my...way with food.)
     You skinny, holier-than-who-fuckin'-ever, pale-ass fuckin' *fuck*.
     Ever since O'Reilly confessed to having Cyril kill Preston Nathan, McManus can always be found hovering at the Irishman's back, like he's looking for the exact right place to jump on. And again, O'Reilly's simply been taking it, without protest--well aware both of McManus's motives (professional frustration, personal jealousy, basic congenital assholism) and the built-in necessities of his (Ryan's) own current situation.
     Keeping himself cool. Free and easy. MOBILE.
     (Always the first--the best--plan. The plan from which all other plans flow.)
     And not just doing what he does so well for his own benefit now, either: For Cyril, romping puppish around the Em City quad like it's some bright and shiny new form of jungle gym, too unaware to avoid the predators lurking 'round every see-through corner. And for Toby Beecher, sort of--"Get Drunk, Kill Somebody, Go to Jail, Get Fucked, Get High, Get Crazy, Get Your Dim-Bulb Arms and *Legs* Broken" Beecher, so weirdly smart and so immeasurably friggin' DUMB at the same damn time, all deranged law-boy quirks and soft-life hangover baggage. Who remains much the same bottomless pit of mad-dog fuckery he's been since the riot on, but always worth cultivating nevertheless--'long as O'Reilly still thinks he can get something out of doing so, that is. Which, so far, he has.
     (So FAR.)
     And, most of all, for Gloria. Dr Nathan. Whether she wants him to...or not.
     Because if Ryan can stick it out, stick around long enough--then maybe, just maybe, she'll actually start saying more than five words at a time to him again. *Look* at him while she's doin' it, even. TOUCH him.
     (...love...)
     Sure, Ryan thinks, deliberately vicious. And maybe I'm gonna jump out the nearest stairwell window, levitate over that barbed-wire fence and fly away. Maybe I turned into Superman in my sleep last night, 'round about the same time all that stuff used to be under my nipple suddenly grew back, and those construction workers I ran over did the funky chicken home from beyond the fuckin' grave.
     On the other hand, as he dimly recalls, Ma always used to make like she really believed that every time she lit a candle in church, some dead mook somewhere got let off of ten more years in Purgatory. So maybe anything is possible.
     As Augustus Hill might chime in, if only he were available to do so: Yeah, *right*.
     So: Ryan shrugs, gestures at the pasta. And asks, with a thin smile:
     "Want some?"
     McManus blinks. "Not...right now."
     (But maybe later.)
     O'Reilly lets his game face crack, momentarily, into his customary grin: Bright, blithe, unaffected. Not so much shit-EATING, as "I just don't GIVE a shit". And tossing off, as a parting line:
     "Well, you name the time, McManus; kitchen's always open."

Drifting over to the door, now, O'Reilly watches the hacks shoehorn Wangler--STILL struggling! Man, that little asshole just don't know when to quit--into McManus's office, McManus already slipping behind his desk. From up here, it just looks like yet another pod: All of Em City laid out beneath him, two tiers of whitewashed misery all wrapped up in galss and steel. McManus's idea of good, clean prison life: Work hard, French-kiss my ass every day, and I'll save your soul...not that it'll shave any time off your sentence, or anything. But it's the thought that counts, right?
     Unable to contain his own grim amusement, Ryan turns away, grinning again--only to unexpectedly catch the eye of that tall, bald Aryan with the black lightning bolt tattooed on the back of his naked scalp, standing on the other side of the deck. Watching.
     "*What*?" Ryan snaps.
     And the Aryan--grins *back* at him.

"Mole" Busmalis kings Bob Rebadow, then pauses before clearing the checkerboard. "Back when we first started playing," he begins, "you always used to win...and I always used to say you were cheating, remember? Because anytime you wanted, God would tell you what I was gonna do next."
     "Except that I don't talk to God anymore. Because--"
     "--yeah, right, he lied to you. But you COULD have."
     "Well, you just weren't very good, either." Rebadow points out. "So I wouldn't ever have *had* to ask God for advice, even if I WAS still talking to him. Which I'm not."
     The Mole clicks his tongue in annoyance. "Okay, forget I said anything." He pauses. "So--how 'bout that *Beecher*, huh?"
     "I'm sure he THINKS he knows what he's doing..." The (even) older man murmurs.
     The Mole, perking up: "Ah, yes. But *does* he?"
     Rebadow casts his eyes first upwards--briefly--then back over at the wall of Beecher's pod, where Whittlesey and the physiotherapist redeposited him not so terribly long ago. And replies, shrugging:
     "...don't ask me."

In the pod, meanwhile, Tobias Beecher lies back on his bunk, half-drowsing with the combined lassitude of post-physio exhaustion, plus the added kick of those meds he so rudely demanded from poor Joe. Not to mention the adrenaline high--and commensurate let-down--of that stunt he just pulled with Vern...
     (...in *front of* Keller...)
     Feeling no pain, lit or fig, and KNOWING he needs to watch that, thank you very much. But not--right now, at least--really giving too much of a running fuck at a rolling donut.
     Across the pod, meanwhile, Cyril--aware of none of this--chatters on, uninterrrupted. Not, apparently, either bored or insulted by Beecher's palpable lack of interest in the current topic of conversation: Whether or not Ryan should have kids, "when they get out"...ha, ha, fucking ha...so Cyril can finally have someone his own age to play with, presumably.
     (Ohhh, that's nasty.)
     Well, Beecher thinks, I'm a fairly nasty person. As proven.
     It's probably all over Em City by now, considering how he knows those Aryans like to gossip: His "offer", voiced and avowed in the presence of several witnesses, at least one of whom looked young, dumb and full of cum enough to blab it to the next friendly shaved head he saw--and carries the added benefit of not being personally tied, one way or another, to EITHER side of this impending psychosexual brouhaha. As opposed to Chris, of course.
     (Who's tied to *both*...and neither. Since nothing--and no one--that whore does seems to leave much of an impression on him, afterward.)
     But he's not going to waste his time thinking about KELLER. Not when there's a quasi-natural high to ride that didn't cost him a goddamn thing to manufacture--his stretched-out body knotting and unknotting lazily, muscles gone all pleasantly limp and tingly--or a plaintive-voiced blond giant to smile up at, stoned, yet vaguely paternal: Sure, Cyr, baby-honey-doll. Ask me whatEVER you want.
     It's almost like *having* kids again.
     (Almost.)
     "Two," he confirms. "That's right."
     "You got pictures?" Cyril asks, hopefully. But Beecher just shakes--flops--his head from side to side.
     "Nope. I *had* some--used to. But..."
     ...I tore them up, right in front of Vern, and flushed them down the toilet. He LIKED that; big joke, big laugh. But fuck *him*, like I used to tell your big brother, back when that was all I ever DID. Because no one else can take away what you've already gotten rid of; that's why you can actually SAVE what you love by seeming to destroy it.
     Subtle, huh?
     (Too bad it didn't work for the *rest* of my life.)
     "...not any more," he finishes, finally.
     "They gonna visit?"
     Beecher shakes again, a back-and-forth twitch. And repeats: "Not...any more."

Outside, unnoticed by either, O'Reilly comes stalking up past the Mole and Rebadow--but pauses, hearing Cyril's voice from inside Beecher's pod, confiding: "You know, Shannon--Ryan told me, she can *do* it, but she can't, um--get..."
     Beecher: "Pregnant?" Cyril nods. "That's too bad. Kids're SUCH a gift. They make you feel so--"
     (whole)
     "--real."
     And for a  minute, JUST a  minute--a split micro-second's flicker--O'Reilly actually finds himself wondering what kind of kid he and Gloria might have: A boy, a girl. One with her warm skin and liquid eyes, his long limbs and shaggy pre-cancer hair. Her arrogant competence. His rakish tensions.
     Because she does look so ripe, so welcoming; a single spot of human warmth in all that sterile pallor. So unbelievably...fertile.
     (Aw, Jesus, STOP it.)
     Thinking: Who the fuck're you kidding, O'Reilly? You killed her husband. Even say you DID do the deed--and not like *that*'s likely--you knock her up, she'd probably flush it down the toilet, first chance she got. Plain fact is--
     (--Cyril's the only kid YOU're ever gonna have.)
     Cyril, too dumb to run and too big to hide. Who's now saying, wistfully:
     "Maybe *I* could get a girlfriend. 'Cept--I'd have to learn how to drive again, 'cause girls like a guy with a car."
     While Beecher smiles, goonily, head lolling back. Obviously whacked out on SOMETHING besides his normal 'scrip--what is he, a fuckin' drug magnet? And agrees, without the slightest trace of irony:
     "Oh, yeah. They DO like *that*."
     (Just try not to pull a DUI while you're showin' it off.)
     At which point Ryan, with one long stride, reaches the open pod door. Rapping his knuckles against the glass, he tells his brother: "Cyril--go watch TV."
     Cyril, caught out in mid-"thought", frowns. "What's on?"
     "World's Worst Party Disasters." As Cyril still hesitates: "C'mon, bro--you don't haul ass, you're gonna miss the birthday cake blowin' up AND the flaming string-fight!"
     (And that, to quote Vern Schillinger himself, would SUCK.)
     The mere prospect of string-in-a-can on fire, however, is enough to do the trick--sending Cyril bounding to his feet, up and almost out the door, with a righteous: "All *right*!" Pausing only to turn--where ARE my manners?--and throw a brief farewell Beech's way: "Oh --an' see ya, Toby!"
     Beecher waves back, a tiny, languid flip of the fingers. "Later."
     And settles in again--a  sort of general squirm, equally lax, cat-stretching over rucked sheets. The sight makes Ryan turn sidelong, uncomfortable, like every other time Beech starts to act a little too...sensitive; watching the blond man trot out these flirtatious little fake-fag mannerisms--no doubt designed to turn *somebody*'s crank (Vern's, probably)--only ever succeeds in turning O'Reilly's stomach.
     Beecher's blue eyes crinkling, meanwhile, sly and unfocussed: KNOWING how Ryan dislikes what he's doing, and doing it anyways. 'Cause that's just the type of hairpin he is.
     (Like every other lawyer.)
     "Sooooo," he drawls. "Something you don't care to discuss *devant les enfants*, dear?"
     "Say WHAT?"
     Beecher sighs. "You looking to cover subject matter unfit for Cyril's tender ears, O'Reilly? 'Cause you know, I bet I can guess what it is."
     Ryan crosses his arms, leans back. And says, without preamble: "I hear you're gonna fuck Vern-baby's brains out--that about the size of it?"
     Beecher shrugs. "'Friends close, enemies closer'; GODFATHER logic. Thought that'd appeal to you, considering the company you keep."
     "Yeah, well, I saw the movie too, Beech. And I don't think he meant THAT close."
     "Hey, it's no swastika off YOUR ass." Another sigh. "You wanted him distracted; I'm distracting him."
     (Oh, *that* all?)
     "What I *want* him," Ryan says, carefully, "is DEAD. Thought you did, too."
     "I DO."
     "Oh, so what--you planning on *screwing* him to death?"
     Unexpectedly cold: "In a way."
     O'Reilly stares at Beecher, whose wandering eyes have now slipped up onto the bottom of the next bunk--Keller's, that world-class sack of dirt on wheels. Guy plays a good game of cards, but Ryan wouldn't trust him any further than he could throw him (which ain't far, 'cause he's pretty damn built). And this, apparently, is who Beecher chose to hand his heart to after finally slipping Vern's chain--not that O'Reilly's ever asked, directly, or Beecher would ever answer.
     Like Ryan should even talk about bad decisions, love-life-wise, anyway.
     (I had CANCER, your honor. I loved her SOOOO much. It was HER fault, really. Honest.)
     Auugh, fuck. ENOUGH, already.
     But Beecher...he didn't even snitch to McManus, back when he first hit the ward, even though he must've known it was his best chance going to take *both* those bastards down at once, for good, without (literally) lifting a finger. No: HIS first call went to Ryan, via a visiting Rebadow--knowing the Irishman had his own reasons for wanting revenge against Vern, and remembering that sotto voce conversation they once shared just before the riot broke out, in their few, hitherto-unrepeated hours of podmate-dom. When O'Reilly had asked him to "be his brother", not knowing how soon fate would fill that slot with an *actual* blood relative--and Beecher, already just a thin skin of quasi-politeness over pure berserker impulse, had jumped at the chance to prove that slippery fraternal bond several times over in quick succession: Strangling the Muslim, backing Ryan up against Aryans and Bikers alike.
     Standing his ground as the tear-gas grenades started flying, so scarily ready to do or die that Ryan had had to pull him bodily away, or risk losing his latest willing tool to imminent self-immolation.
     (*YEAH*, motherfucker!)
     'Cause--putting his revulsion for Beech's methods aside--the fact is, O'Reilly *knows* this brave new wrinkle Toby's working is just an (illogical) extension of what he's been doing all along: Manipulating HIM, Ryan, into giving him the best bang for his buck by arranging--and executing--Vern-baby's downfall. And it IS cold, cold as anything Ryan ever saw out on the street...not to mention almost completely out of character for that vaguely sweet dupe Ryan first approached in the library and tried to trick into reviving his case, the career victim slinking around Em City in hooker-red lipstick for his master's amusement, or pretending not to cry while he tried to brush the dirt from Vern's boots off his tongue.
     But who knows, man: Is this the REAL Beecher? Corporate litigator Beecher? Arrogant drunk driver Beecher? The guy who figures out the best deal, calm and cool--an eye on every angle, legal or not--then just rams it through, no matter how much it hurts, and fuck the consequences for anyone but him?
     I could get behind that, probably, Ryan thinks. If I really thought he could hold it together long enough to make it work.
     "You tellin' me you're gonna go all the way with this?" He demands.
     Beecher's aimless smile peels back, shows teeth.
     "Kind of the point of the exercise, wouldn't you say?" He replies. "Besides--what do you think I'd be doing I hadn't already been *made* to do, and much more than once?" His voice laced with a widening thread of contempt: "Oh, but wait--you're embarrassed on my behalf, right? 'Cause we're such GOOD FRIENDS. Or just *embarrassed*. Doesn't reflect too well on you, I guess--macho, staff member-fucking man that you are--having a big ol' cellblock slut for a partner."
     Ryan winces. And Beecher, seeing it, adds--a little softer--
     "Anyway, you never seemed to care much what Vern did--back when he was just doing it to ME."
     (Oh, MAN, that's dirty pool.)
     "Cyril can't fight back, okay?" O'Reilly snaps. "And you--"
     He pauses, searching for the right way to put it--which Beecher, courteously enough, soon provides.
     "--I didn't. So fuck me...or rather, let HIM fuck me."
     Close enough, Ryan thinks. Remembering how he never exactly jumped to Beech's rescue, *publicly*, or did more than kinda nod and smile when those around him--solitary-for-lifer Miguel Alvarez, long-dead Nino Schibetta, Adebisi--made cracks about how bad he looked in drag. 'Cause you don't wanna look weak even by association, especially not in Oz--and openly allying yourself with somebody who takes it up the ass every day is *not* gonna  help.
     "So what are you gonna tell Cyril?"
     (About doing "the bad thing" with "the bad man", and all?)
     Beecher raises a skeptical eyebrow.
     "Well, gee, O'Reilly," he says, "Cyril's a sweet kid--but he's not MY brother."
     (And neither are *you*.)
     O'Reilly feels himself go equally cold. And tells the blond man:
     "Look, I don't like this play much, okay? But here's how it goes: Hurt yourself if you want to, Beech--if you want, ALL you want. I'll back ya up. But you hurt Cyril, and havin' Schillinger by the dick won't be enough to keep me off'a you."
     "Ah. So 'don't make trouble' or I'm 'next'?"
     Quoting O'Reilly's own words back to him, without even a blink. And O'Reilly flushing, in spite of himself: That STINGS.
     (You really ARE some kinda bitch these days, ain't you, Beech?)
     "But think about it this way," Beecher continues. "The more I start acting like the prag of all time, less there's any WAY anyone realizes we're in this thing together."
     "And you don't give a shit 'bout the hits YOUR rep's gonna take?"
     Beecher laughs. "*What* rep, O'Reilly? I mean...everybody in Oz already knows I'm CRAZY."
     It's a REAL laugh, too, warm and free--stoned, sure, but back on track. Kinda like the old Beecher, when the two of them were high, coughing and sputtering breathlessly over some suddenly-hilarious observation. Or would that have been the *new* Beecher, according to Ryan's earlier theory?
     Okay, Ryan thinks. Let it go.
     (For now.)
     He smiles at Beech, forgivingly--who smiles back, gone all conveniently loosey-goosey again. Murmuring:
     "I do the work, and you take advantage afterward--*tell* me that's not the way you like it."
     Ryan, (mock-)insulted: "Hey, fuck *you*, man. Not ALL the work."
     "Lord of the fuckin' Dance."
     "You know it, buddy."

Well, Beecher thinks, his eyes closing, every muscle softening at once. Then I guess it must be nearly time for you to...get jiggy...

And: Down, down, down. Into the dark, the grey, the unwelcome light...the past rushing up at him, blurry and bright around the edges, one time or so removed. As though he's seeing it through the glass walls of his *old* pod.
     (Vern's pod.)
     Tumbling down into memory--a flashback, unwanted, unasked-for, to those "good, good times" he and Vern used to share, in between assorted random humiliations and assaults...
     (and soon might again, the direction you're going)
     ...this particular one starting with a sharp jerk of the head and a brief, dazed moment of reaction, as Beecher realizes he's just had his glasses tugged off from above AND behind. Half-rising, he drops the book he was reading (some supermodel puff biography, all they had left in the library bin) on his bunk and peers upward--as Vern, simultaneously, slings his legs off the top bunk and turns to face him, putting Beecher's face at about crotch-level: Business as usual, figuratively speaking.
     You MIND? Beecher thinks, automatically. But knows, even as the words form--
     (--no, he doesn't.)
     Vern holds the glasses up, studying the way Em City refracts and splinters through their lenses.
     "'Bout how far can you see without these, anyway?" He asks, with (Beecher can only assume) typically deceptive mildness.
     Beecher, tight-lipped: "Not that far."
     "No? Seems like you get along fine without 'em, to me. Didn't notice you fallin' off the stage at the talent show, or anything."
     "I can't *read* without my glasses."
     "Well, what're you gonna read, anyway--latest issue of Prag Magazine International?" Voice darkening, as Beecher exhales--a bit too impatiently, perhaps, for established standards of submissiveness: "STAND THERE and *stop huffin'*, I'm talkin' to you right now."
     (Oh, you think?)
     "Sir."
     The ultimate fall-back position. Vern smiles, recognizing it--and offers Beecher the glasses. Beecher hesitates, knowing he's being teased, then moves to take them; Vern snatches them back, immediately, and chuckles.
     Jesus, Beecher thinks. This is like *high school*.
     (But then, you probably wouldn't know.)
     "So, To-by. Bet you live in a big house. I mean, you have to--you're rich, right?"
     "Permission to...speak freely?"
     Magnanimous: "Granted."
     Beecher grits his teeth, tries not to grind. "I don't *live* there anymore," he says, carefully,  "big or small. I live HERE. With YOU. So what the fuck does it matter, exactly?"
     "It matters, prag. 'Cause I say it matters."
     (*There*'s a surprise.)
     "Fine, okay. Yes, we're well off--"
     To no one in particular: "Every notice how rich people never wanna SAY they're rich?"
     "--RICH. By some standards."
     (Yours, probably.)
     "House?"
     "Condo."
     "Got a backyard?"
     "We're near a park."
     "Public?"
     "Private."
     "Huh. School in the area?"
     "Driving distance."
     "Who drives?"
     "My wife. Usually."
     "'Cause she's at home."
     "Right."
     "Quit her job right after you got married?"
     "A little before."
     "During the...engagement period."
     "Yes."
     Vern smiles to himself again; Beecher, who can only see the expression as a slight, vague twitch, just stands there, silently. Struggling--internally--to keep his face unreadable.
     A flash of light from one lens, then the other. Vern weighs the glasses in one hand, idly.
     Announcing: "Man, you know, I should have been a dentist, because THIS is like pulling teeth."
      (Well, I never thought you keep me around for my *conversation*.)
     Then, bright: "Maybe I should step on these right now, what d'you say?"
     "...don't?"
     Another smile. Suggesting, mildly: "Don't...'please'?"
     (Ohhh...fuck *you*, fuck YOU, FUCK *YOU*.)
     "Look, you just do what you WANT, okay?" Beecher hears himself snap--frankly amazed, in a giddy but terrifying  way--at the extent of his own temerity. "You will anyway."
     Not that Vern actually seems *angered* by it. Just raises his hands and eyebrows, shrugging, like: Well. BE that way.
     ('Cause...after all, that's simply true.)
     "My wife..." Vern begins, musingly. Prompting Beecher to think:
     ...and here we go again...
     "...her parents, down in San Francisco--THEY had a house. Big one. Been in the family three generations." He looks up, catches Beecher staring: "What? MY wife can't be somebody *well off*?"
     (I'm not saying ANYTHING.)
     "You're not *sayin'* anything," Vern notes, dryly. And Beecher keeps standing there, his mouth clenched, throat burning--no right answer to this one, right? As though there ever *is*.
     "Will you give me my glasses back, or not?"
     "Later. Maybe." A pause. "So. How far CAN you see?"
     Throat burning. Stomach--roiling. Nausea building in every part of him, from head to toe--not today, Christ, not now, not ever. Not even one more time.
     And thinking: Goddamn him. Oh, God...God *damn*.
     (Goddamn him, and God damn me, if I'm not damned already.)
     "I see you fine," Beecher says. Lying. And hears...
     (of course)
     ...the sound of a zipper. Coming down.
     "How 'bout that?"

...yeah. That too.

And Beecher wakes, back in the here and now, knotted and blind and wet all over. Salt on his face, his hands, in his mouth: Tears? Sweat?
     (Blood?)
     With Keller shaking him awake: "Beech. Hey, Beech? COUNT."
     "Uhn," he hears himself gasp--high, warped. Just on the edge of cracking. And heaves himself clear, shrugging Keller's hand off--up and stumbling towards the door, his knees weak and pulsing. Hugging himself, still half-immersed in this rush of dreadful memory, as he waits for the C.O. to pass by, to tick him from the register.
     Thinking: What am I doing? No one's *making* me do this. Not even--
     (him)
     Vern, Toby. Say it. VERN.
     (Even what happened, even...Chris. He couldn't *make* me. He had to *trick* me.)
     So now, you get to trick him. Any fucking way you can.
     (Apt turn of phrase.)
     It's not the same. Couldn't be. Because YOU're not the same.
     But thinking, anyway. Because he can't help himself:
     It's just. I just. I just don't EVER, I don't--*EVER*--want to be...that person...again.
     (And...I won't.)
     Count over, he reels back inside, over to the toilet, for a lengthy pre-lights-out piss. Only to have Chris immediately slip in behind him, reaching over his shoulder for the toothpaste. And murmur in his ear, a warm, intimate puff of breath:
     "So what the fuck was *that* about? Back in the gym?"
     "Aside from none of your business?"
     Quick and snippy--and his voice doesn't even shake. Unlike, say his traitor legs or his own  right hand, now struggling to flick the last few drops from his dying stream in the right direction, rather than letting them splash onto the floor. He tucks himself away, tries to turn--and meets Keller's hand halfway, up against his abdomen. Which tenses on contact.
     Looking down, quiet: "Let go."
     Keller does, with a flourish.
     "He's never gonna go for it, y'know," he tells Beecher, confidentially. And starts to brush, humming to himself.
     Beecher sits back down on his bunk, heavily. Thinking:
     You know, Chris--I'd tell you to suck my dick, but you'd probably take that as an invitation.
     From the P.A. system: "LIGHTS OUT, LADIES! SHUT THE FUCK UP, AND GET YOURSELVES SOME SHUT-EYE!"
     Beecher curls up, pulling the sheets over his legs, as Keller rinses, spits, heads for the ladder. Then pauses, leaning down, to whisper:
     "I'm just telling you this for your own good. Beech."
     Mocking: "Don't want to see me hurt?"
     "You got it."
     Beecher feels his lips retract, an instinctive half-snarl...with the barest hint, *just* a hint, of sob thrown in. For bad measure.
     "Sure you're not a little--JEALOUS, Chris?" He asks. The strain of being equally quiet flattening Keller's name into a hiss.
     Keller smiles, in the darkness. And whispers back:
     "...you *want* me to be?"
     Squinting down--is that a blush, spreading over Beecher's neck and face? Like back in the infirmary? Impossible to tell, without light...or through that sheet, as Beech pulls it up further, tighter. Nothing, in fact, to go on at all--except Toby's voice, a bit muffled, but louder. And a *lot* colder.
     Saying: "Frankly? I could give two shits WHAT you do."
     And the rest--is silence.
     (For tonight, at least.)
End Part 5/3

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<x-charset iso-8859-1>MY WIFE AND MY DEAD WIFE Part 5/4

Noon, on Tuesday. The infirmary.
     "Just take your meds and go back to work, Schillinger," Dr Nathan tells him, exasperated. While Vern--a dangerous flush creeping up the back of his neck, trying hard to keep his (already-frayed) temper in check--explains, with deceptive calm:
     "Is it *possible* you got me on the wrong prescription? That's all I'm askin'."
     "No."
     Sarcastic: "So my concentration is MEANT to be all shot to shit."
     "You think it would be *better* if you were in pain?"
     "God DAMN it, I already AM--" Seeing the orderly's head snap up, across the room, Vern modifies his tone, hastily. Lower:  "--in pain, okay? I *am* in pain. That's the part DOESN'T change."
     "Then take your meds."
     "They...don't...*help*."
     Nathan sighs, her nostrils flaring. Looks none too good herself, now Vern comes to think about it--hair practically on end, even kinkier than usual, like she combed it with a fork; fresh new shadows under those liquid nigger/Spic eyes. Late nights riding her hand over Ryan O'Reilly, probably. Or riding that queasy fucker McManus, to take her so-called mind OFF O'Reilly.
     But I don't think you wanna think about *that* particular image too hard, he tells himself.
     (Miscengenation: Eeeuuch. Makes his fuckin' skin crawl.)
     Besides which...strikes just a little close to home for comfort, huh, Vernon? What with Rachel back in the picture, and all--
     (--her and *her* nigger.)
     Man, it's like some kinda goddamn curse. Last week, everything reminded him of Beecher; *this* week, everything seems doomed to remind him of Rachel. But that's no escape, either.
     (Nothing is.)
     Discomfort and desire: The undimmed pain in his hand and this constant, galling pressure below his belt, running roughly parallel. And these pills he "needs" to take, according to Nathan and McManus, continue to make him feel vulnerable ways he doesn't even recognize--fuzzy, confused, soft.
     Unlike the thought of Tobias Beecher, say--lurking, luring--which makes him feel HARD.
     ('Cept you're NOT thinking about Beecher. Right?)
     Yeah. *Sure* he's not.
     A year, or close as makes no difference, spent with his mind kept firmly on everything BUT sex: First how to get out and get back with his kids, set 'em straight, make up for everything--and then, how to take the best possible revenge (allowing for circumstances) over having been cheated out of his one chance *to* do that, plus walk out of Oz sometime before he qualified for Social Security. Relaxing enough, near the end--when he was sure that Beecher was gonna get his--to take advantage of Cyril O'Reilly...but that wasn't anything *real*. No challenge to speak of, just a natural progression--like a snake eating a baby bird. Fun, but easy; almost too easy even to enjoy.
     (Not to mention outta control. I mean, what the hell WERE you thinking?)
     Oh--not much. *Above* the waist.
     And now: Shaken by the fallout of Rachel's visit, the unwanted intoxication of her presence; hearing the hacks joke about how McManus looked at her, and finding himself rocked by crippling gusts of disproportionate, inappropriate jealousy. Reeling, all the while, with his own renewed, desperate need for her, a need which--he's vaguely sickened to realize--seems to be spilling back over (by virtue of their...more and more embarassingly obvious...similarities) onto Beecher.
     'Cause after all, Beecher's available, supposedly--amenable, at least. Or so he says. And Rachel...isn't.
     (Or so he *says*.)
     Well, that'd be the big question, wouldn't it?
     Not that Vern can get *away* from the motherfucker, one way or another. You'd think having the whole length and breadth of Gen Pop between them would be enough. But nope: It's Toby-baby day in and day out, seemingly everywhere Vern turns, just like back during that pre-parole sting operation--hovering, as though by some subconscious instinct, right under the cataracted spot on Schillinger's bad eye. A scar-haloed human blur, always staring, insolently flirtatious. Practically mouthing the words: Well? NOW?
     THERE's grounds for a complaint, Vern thinks, grimly. Conjuring a comic whine: Oh, McMANus, Beecher keeps harRASSing me...
     Following Vern around. *Licking* himself.
     Fuckin' freaky little FREAK.
     So slim now, bent but lithe over the double weight of his crutches, all his carefully-cultivated extra muscle mass melted away. So...*soft*.
     (Christ, just STOP it.)
     And how COULD Vern want him, anyway? How fucked up would *that* be, exactly?
     (Cut my cornea open, lose me my parole, take a dump on my FACE in front of every-fuckin'-body...you really think I want to stick my dick anywhere in your direction, nutjob? Ever again?)
     But then, that pitch-black day he'd come home from work to find the boys watching TV, dinner in the oven and a note saying Rachel had left him, for good this time--when he'd read her note, connected the dots, and finally understood...with a soul-sickening lurch...just *who* she must have run off with--
     --he'd never thought he'd want *her* again, either.
     With Rachel, anything had seemed possible. Plotting world domination on a mail carrier's salary, putting White Power mailing lists and racist recruiting literature together at their one-bedroom apartment's kitchen table; working double shifts for a half-year to get that first computer, that all-important Internet access, so he could discover all sorts of like-minded friends in high (or low) places: C.O. Karl Metzger, for one.
     (And hadn't *that* come in handy.)
     But AFTER Rachel, with every fresh disappointment, the scope of his goals had just kept on shrinking: Raising his kids, fighting his war. Winning his court case. Oz domination. Em City domination.
     ...Beecher domination.
     (With a few rematch possibilities left open on *that* one, apparently)
     Still: Even when things were at their worst--when the only time they ever spoke at all was in bed, 'cause (as she'd once told him, right to his face) she'd simply rather fuck than fight--even when he knew she hated him--
     (--but she didn't HATE me. She never HATED me.)
     Or: Maybe she did. And he just hadn't been able to tell.
     Beecher, though--*there*, Vern can tell. Fucker hates him worse'n a Jew hates Christmas.
     (And Rachel again, correcting him coolly: They don't HATE it, Vernon. They IGNORE it.)
     Which is what makes the whole prospect, unlikely as it might be, of slipping back into some sort of groove with that crazy little bastard so--damn--
     --exciting.
     Deliberately, with an almost palpable wrench, Vern drags himself out of memory's endless loop and back to Nathan. Who's saying:
     "Look, I up your dose, you're running the risk of getting addicted--"
     "I don't *want* it upped. LESS, not more, you get it? This some kind of *language* problem we're havin', here?"
     (You mule-stubborn little half-breed cunt.)
     They eye each other, equally fierce--Vern's hand knotting, right on cue, as his throat clenches in sympathy. Got his CT cast lashed on so tight he's already blistering beneath his knuckles, on the inside of his wrist: Little raw spots, the skin rubbed away by contact wear and tear. Hurts like a bitch.
     Which is good. But not good enough, for his purposes.
     Just a rub-up between two subspecies, he thinks, that's all you are--a walking, talking, living fucking mistake. *Doctor*.
     As she replies, so cold it's like she can hear his thoughts, or something--
     "You don't want it upped, and I can't cut it; obviously, we've got nothing more to talk about. And since I have a few other patients to see today--do you want to take those pills, or do you want me to call the guard, and have him MAKE you take them?"
     Well, *gee*.
     Vern breathes out, slowly. Feels the flush mount. Telling himself:
     Okay. You take 'em, for now--and then you go find something she wants, and you give it to her. Do this PRACTICAL, for once. Give her what she wants...flowers, candy, a brand-new scalpel, a conjugal with O'Reilly, the Mick's head on a fuckin' plate...so she'll give *you* what *you* want.
     I mean, fuck, she must want SOMETHING. Everybody does.
     And the voice in his skull chimes in, slyly insinuating: Didn't know what *you* wanted, though, did you? Not 'till after you threw her away.
     (or him)
     'Cause...you never do. With anything.
     Wordless, automatic, he puts out his right hand--then remembers it's the "bad" one now, and puts out his left. Nathan tucks the meds into his palm, watches him swallow, then hands him a glass of water.
     "There," she says. "Better?"
     Than getting fucked in the *ass*, I guess, Vern thinks.
     Hastily adding, to himself: Not that I'd know.
     "Thank you," he forces himself to reply, aloud, giving the glass back--and gets only a shrug for his restraint. Across the room, meanwhile, he's fucking SURE he can see the orderly repressing a snicker; filing it all away, for later distribution and discussion
     Looking at Nathan, resentfully: You and Mc-fucking-Manus. I'm up for ten more, so I lose my right to privacy? Think I NEED everybody and his brother knowing my goddamn business?
     But this is Oz. And, *because* it's Oz--as he knows full well--everybody already DOES.

Afterwards, in the post office, Vern works his way through a neverending pile of outgoing prisoner mail: Skimming and censoring text, packing and marking envelopes. All the latest modern conveniences available, here in Oz's informational larder--a sponge-roll to save him on flap-licking, addresses called from the prison's database, printed out on easy-peel, easy-stick labels. When he racks up an even three hundred, he'll switch over to the pre-paid postage machine awhile, stamping each one individually--yet more repetitive motion for his hand to ingest. Gotta keep the monster fed.
     (And speaking of monsters...)
     Back in the storage closet, there's a whole new shipment of Metzger's favorite contraband to be sorted: Aryan "literature", cleverly disguised for easy distribution--through the Christian coalition's Biker liaisons--as Chick Tracts, those Fundamentalist cartoon booklets most "normal" people find only slightly less offensive than material which wears its swastika on its sleeve. And since there's a remarkable dearth of nigger, Spic or mongrel Christians in Em City to begin with, recruiting directly  from their ranks has the double effect of filtering out all the white-*looking* kikes before any annoying misunderstandings even have a chance to occur.
     Vern wonders, vaguely, whether any of the stuff Rachel used to write has ended up in those packages, somewhere. All those grand philosophical arguments: Mud People vs. Ice People, backed up with a thousand different examples from history, archaeology, religion...man, she was always so GOOD with that kind of shit.
     (Value of a post-high-school education. Maybe.)
     Metzger and his schemes--all revolving around Em City, natch, 'cause that's HIS beat. And screw the fact that Vern's not actually *in* there anymore...how much harder being back in Gen Pop makes it for him to maneuvre, plus the extra strain (and insult) of having to use a drug-selling, nigger-imitating hand-puppet like Duchene to express himself through...
     Whatever; he said it, he'll do it. One more thing on the list, ticked off.
     --Like LeVon Jordaire, drug mule, found literally coughing up his own guts behind the Em City furnace, a mess of blood-slicked, heroin-filled condoms spilling from his perforated stomach.
     --Like Kenny Wangler, former teeange tits magnate, now doing his long-deferred detox in the Hole, pissing in his pants and pissing *off* every hack within earshot with his screams.
     --Like Karim Said, self-elected coon Savior, who's already been called into conference with McManus...a sit-down, Vern hears, which ended with Said stomping away in a self-righteous snit, AMAZED that anyone could have the stones to suggest *he*--living saint that he is--might've actually been the anti-drug force behind Jordaire's death.
     Lists upon lists upon lists. One list done, then right on to the next, an endless progression. Old debts to pay, and new ones to incur: New threats. New goals. New "asks".
     Oz is a machine that runs on blood and favors, the former greasing the latter. And...
     (...Christ, I'm so damn--tired. Of them both.)
     All his adult life, Vern Schillinger has run what few small sections of the world he could grab a hold of with an instinctive combination of impulse and strategy--act, then react. Plan things out beforehand if he can; if not, at least try like hell to plan for their *containment*, later on. Strike first, fast and hard. Never back down. Regret nothing--
     (--well, almost nothing.)
     And never, ever be stupid enough to tell anybody, if you *do*.
     But now, with this fucking carpal tunnel bullcrap to deal with...these DRUGS, blurring his brain and draining him of his normal energy reserve, along with the anger that fuels it...
     Movement at the post office door. He looks up, squinting--right into the familiar face of Christopher Keller, already slouched up against the wall in one of his patented "I'm too sexy for the world" poses. Head lowered, staring up under half-lidded eyes. Expressionless.
     And: Now, *that*'s different, Vern thinks.
     He and Keller's lives have kept themselves remarkably separate, this last month or so--ever since that oh-so-satisfying retributive scene with Beecher in the gym, to be exact. Not that they were exactly up each other's butts BEFORE, of course; but that'd been Operation Toby in action, the plan which slid neatly into place that very first day Vern'd spotted Keller tomcatting it arrogantly across the Oz yard--all grown up and fronting like an expert, even with the cast on his arm.
     A serious nostalgia jolt right there, no doubt about it. A one-way mental trip back to those long-lost days at Lardner, when Chris was carrying a whole lot less muscle, and Vern had sported a LOT more hair.
     Looking at him, and thinking: YES. Now I have a weapon, an utterly reliable source of mayhem and deception. The one card left in my deck that Toby friggin' Beecher's never seen.
     (As yet.)
     Just like the Old Man used to say, that usually-useless fuck: You got garbage problems, dumb-ass, you call a garbage collector--got thief problems, set another thief.
     Got *prag* problems...
     No smile seems forthcoming. So Vern smiles, instead: The old silk-over-steel special. Rumbling:
     "Hey, CHRIS. Good to see ya."
     ('Cause, y'know? We never *talk* anymore.)
     Continuing, as Keller just stands there: "Got a package for me?"
     Keller raises a well-defined eyebrow--less at any part of the preceding, far as Vern can figure it, than at something already going on inside his own head.
     "More like--a message."
     Another pause. Now it's Vern's turn to do the facial twitch thing--BOTH sandy brows, plus a leonine mass of forehead. Prompting:
     "You want me to *guess*, or what?"
     "It's from Beecher."
     "Oh, no shit."
     (So to speak.)
     "Sort of an--ultimatum? Terms, anyway."
     Vern hisses at the word, a congested half-laugh. Almost to himself: "*Lawyer*." Then, to Keller: "'Kay, shoot. Surprise me."
     Keller leans back further, arms crossing, and pauses yet again--takes a long breath, like he's charging himself up. Acting like his shorts are too tight, too, while he's doing it; what *is* that current at work under his game face, anyway? Discomfort? Disgust?
     (...*disappointment*?)
     Fuck it, though--Keller's always been unreadable, a walking contradiction. That dark hair and that predatory, almost Jew-like profile, offset by that unmistakably German name: Ambiguous enough to fuck, but never trust, unless all you wanted was the traditional prison mentorship transaction--protection for pleasure, no questions asked, no intimacies (beyond the strictly physical) offered.
     Business as usual, and nothin' but. Vern kept him safe, and Keller kept him--
     (happy)
     --satisfied. Which was, after all, the point of the exercise.
     'Cause let's face it--everything finds its natural position, eventually. Sinks to its own level. And Chris had found his *long* before Vern ever got to him: On his knees, or bent over, for anybody strong enough to get him what he wants.
     At any rate--
     "Beech says to tell you," Keller begins, "he--lemme see, here--he 'still wasn't sure if you got what he was *getting* at'--"
     (--him being so SUBTLE about it, and all--)
     "--so here's the dope: You lay off with the vendetta and everything goes back the way it was, 'cept he stays in Em City, and you stay in Gen Pop. Oh, yeah--and he wants a sorta, um, 'marriage contract'."
     "'Scuse me?"
     Keller shrugs. "Y'know--more *equal*, kinda? You watch his back, he watches yours; he doesn't fuck around, and you don't get to either. Or share him. Or rent him out."
     (Or make him lick your boots. Or dress him up in drag. Or burn a swastika into his *other* ass-cheek.)
     Vern snorts. "Don't want MUCH, does he?"
     Keller: "You want my opinion?"
     "Not really."
     An automatic snub. Remembering how uppitty Keller's been through this whole thing, pretty much from the get-go on: Flexing in front of the other Aryans, correcting him to his face. Talking down, like HE's the Beecher expert, all of a sudden--*No, Vern, I'M the key.* Cocky little slut.
     ("Little"? Who the fuck're *you* fooling?)
     Okay, sure, Keller's gotten a bit bigger than Vern, height-wise--taller, more pumped. Born prag like that, though, size doesn't matter. Hell, even *Beecher* has a whole half-inch on Vern, in actual fact--when he stands up straight, at least. Which is almost never.
     (Unless MADE to.)
     And Metzger: No shame not measuring up there, though. Guy's the Aryan version of the Incredible Hulk--blond, white and blue all over, instead of green.
     Shit, Vern finds himself thinking, morosely; they ever got Augustus Hill back on his feet, *he*'d probably turn out to be taller than me.
     (Jesus, Schillinger! Get your--one good--eye back on the BALL.)
     But Keller doesn't seem to have noticed the lapse, thankfully. Just turns his head sideways, fixing Vern with that sharp, dark gaze. And asks:
     "You KNOW he's just jerking your chain, right?"
     "And your point is...?"
     "He's never gonna go *through* with it--that enough of a point for you?"
     "Says you."
     "Yeah, says ME. The guy he's in LOVE with."
     "Oh, puh*lease*," Vern scoffs. Then, to himself: "Bitch thinks he can dictate *shit* to me, he really IS be a fuckin' nut."
     (Not that *that* was ever really in doubt.)
     "Let it go, Vern."
     "What it? Oh, wait--you mean HIM, don'tcha?" Another smile. "Well, heck, Chris-- worried I'm gonna use him all up, and there won't be anything left over for *you*? Lot of old Toby to go around, still, from what I saw."
     A rush of color comes spreading up over Keller's Adam's apple, one muscle humping itself along the hinge of his clenched jaw...and Vern gets a jump-cut flash of how he used to look, back at Lardner--gasping into Vern's shoulder, wrists crossed behind his head, one or both legs bent up and wedged under Vern's laboring arms.
     (Always was *flexible*, that Chris.)
     Faking it, probably. But who cares, then OR now?
     (And that's why you want Beecher so bad, right? 'Cause I've had him. Like I've had *you*.)
     "Kinda sounds like you got a bit too close to your work there, maybe, Chris-to-pher," Vern suggests, idly. "I mean--what I gave you was a *job*, not some fuckin' prag double-date--"
     Keller's eyes spark, darkening further. "I DID your damn job."
     "Sure you did."
     "And now we're even."
     "Sure we are."
     "This ain't Lardner, Vern. I'm not 17 anymore."
     (Like he's trying to convince himself, almost.)
     "'Course not." A pause. "Funny how you still do whatever I tell you to, though, huh?"
     A definite charge in the air, crackling between them; it lifts Vern from the crotch on up, warming and waking him all over. The drug haze cracks and peels back like a shed mental skin, while Keller clenches his hands, contemplating action--and Vern, sensing an advantage to press, lowers his own head like a bull about to charge. Murmuring:
     "Or maybe you wanna cut a deal. That it, Chris? Some kind of trade--you for him? Wanna step in the closet, back there, and show me why you're still the better bet?"
     Letting his eyes roam all over Keller's frame, with casual possessiveness--checking out the goods, weighing the price. Back to basics: You make me an offer, and I accept...or I refuse.
     And either way--*you*'re the one gets fucked.
     (Not so big now, are you, cocksucker?)
     Keller just stares back at him, admirably cool. And replies:
     "That's--*not* gonna happen."
     "Aw. I'm crushed."
     "I can tell. And this thing with Beech? THAT's not gonna happen, either."
     Another grin, mockery turned up high. "'Cause you just know him *so well*."
     "Better than YOU do," Keller throws back--then strides away, piece supposedly said. But pauses by the door, nevertheless, to add--
     "Better--than you *ever*--knew me."
     Good exit line, if Vern ever heard one. Kinda--what five-dollar word would Rachel use to describe it? Oh, yeah: PITHY.
     "Tell him I'll think about it," he calls after Keller, lightly--taking a brief moment to admire the lithe,  professional sway of Chris's retreating ass. And goes back to his envelopes, whistling slightly.
     Thinking: And the game goes to Schillinger. Point, score. Set--and match.
     (For once.)

The next few days, however, don't go quite as well.

Wednesday morning, McManus collars Vern in the hall. Apparently, Dr Nathan's spilled the beans about him asking to get his meds cut--*big* fuckin' surprise there--so it's off to see Sister Peter Marie, hi ho, hi ho...whether Vern actually feels like discussing his supposedly traumatized interior landscape with that creepy midget Spic-of-some-derivation witchdoctress, or not.
     Standing in her office, tightening and retightening the straps on his cast, as she throws and he fields: Question after question, all met with the same strict lack of response.
     "Tim tells me your wife came to see you on Monday--"
     "Mmh."
     "Your--DEAD--wife."
     "Mmh."
     "And that makes you feel...how?"
     A shrug, plus a fish-eyed grimace: You tell ME, *Sis*.
     Sister Pete sighs, shuts his file. "I can't HELP you if you don't *express yourself*, Schillinger."
     "Mmh...hmh."
     (But since when *have* you ever actually HELPED anyone, you Catholic voodoo bullshit-selling con artist?)
     As he stalks back out, meanwhile, who's there in the waiting area but Beecher--tapping away, hard at work on those files he likes so much. Looking up at the sound of Vern's footsteps. Smiling.
     And...running his tongue over his lips.

Wednesday *afternoon*, meanwhile--once Vern's stress-spurred migraine has had a little more time to cook--ends up being given over to what the upcoming administrators' meeting will call "this month's mini-riot". It starts in the mess hall, crammed to the gills with Gen Pop and Em City's usual roster of freaks and losers, where meatloaf is being served yet  AGAIN, which jacks up the tension a notch or two right outta the gate...and leaves Vern pinned, before he quite gets the chance to see it coming, between two halves of the same old shit: On the one hand, some quarterback-sized Muslim, all puffed with zealous ire; on the other, some gold-toothed Wanglerite with his chinos halfway down his ass, throwing his gang sign in Vern's face and babbling like a Baptist on crack.
     The Muslim: "...slandering our holy Minister Said..."
     The gangsta: "...KNOW y'all capped LeVon, a'ight, fishbelly? 'Cause ain't none of you got the balls to dis Kenny to his face..."
     "...Allah, who will judge the wicked and reward the righteous..."
     "...gotta go behind a brother's back an' do him dirt..."
     Vern, to Fritz "Der Fuhrer" Duchene, who's trapped behind him: "Be SO much easier if they came with subtitles, wouldn't it?"
     Calm and cool, more amused than threatening--even as his head and hand throb practically in unison, a live-wire current, holding him up against the tidal swell of his own mounting rage.With the Muslim now nearing veritable incoherence, which suits Vern just fine--but the gangsta, on the other hand, reaching new heights of insult. And insight.
     "...jes' 'cause the Missus gots a fever for the *brown sugar* flava--"
     And Vern, rounding on him, nose-to-nose. Snapping: "WHAT did you just say, boy?"
     "I SAY, she run off with some Denzel-type mother, an' you gotta flex to keep it up--'cause you ain't *kep'* it up far enough to KEEP her."
     An answering laugh, from further down the hall: "Word! Thass what the cast for, right, Schillin-jah?"
     "Ger!" Vern roars, losing it completely--as, at the same time, that so-called "Poet" Jackson calls out--"Yo, yo, y'all come correct--he been jerkin' off over other folks' mail so long, ol' Vern gone an' sprained somethin'!"
     The gangsta, to Vern: "What'chu growlin' at, man?"
     "It's ShillinGer, you mongrel."
     "Yeah? Ruff RUFF, *boy*."
     At which point, everything explodes.
     Vern has a vague memory of pivoting to flip his tray in Poet's direction, then using his casted hand to punch Gang-Banger Guy right in his fuckin' crap-spewing mouth--pow, BAM, an almost-orgasmic spurt of purifying pain--that gold tooth crunching on impact, gouging a flap of flesh loose across Vern's knuckles. And then limbs everywhere, yells and screams--*swearing* he can hear Beecher's voice filtering down from the front of the line, howling like a Doberman in heat as he cracks one of his crutches over somebody's too-close head. Rebadow hiding in a corner, with Keller half-sheltering him from a blundering, duelling pair of El Cid's homeboys; Cyril O'Reilly overturning a table, as Ryan vaults the counter, ladle in hand; Duchene's grip dragging Vern steadily away from the heart of the fight, even as he keeps on kicking blindly, wounded fist thrust into his own shirt-front, trying to staunch the blood and ward off attacks from every angle at the same time...
     ...until he and Duchene rocket out the mess hall doors, up against the hallway wall with their hands on their heads, as the SORT team rushes past them: Look, no threat, 'kay? *Good* cons. Wanna bust some skulls, go in THERE and do it, you rubber-armored motherhumps.
     Noticing Duchene's arm still in his, and throwing it off, angrily: What the fuck're you trying to DO, Fritz? Ruin my rep?
     And Fuhrer-boy watching him pant and sweat, eyes open wide. Yet more evidence that the "S-man"'s starting to lose it, on ample display.
     Not, at that exact moment, that Vern can find it in himself to give much of a fuck *what* that asshole thinks.

Not enough Hole left unoccupied to hold everybody responsible, as usual; the Muslim and Poet finger Vern, only to have Metzger tell McManus and Glynn *he* couldn't see who threw the first punch, exactly. So a few hours later, Vern walks out of the infirmary with a fresh, itchy row of stiches, and right INTO the huge, looming shadow of his favorite Internet email-pal, his guardian white devil: Metzger himself, looking none too pleased with Vern's increasing lack of self-discipline.
     "You just *forget* to bounce that whole Jordaire idea off of me first, Vern?" He asks, gently. "I mean, I know you've been under a lot of...STRESS, lately..."
     "Nothin' I can't deal with."
     "Don't doubt it. Just remember to keep a low profile, from now on--that's what we got Duchene for, or so you told *me*. Power BEHIND the throne, remember?"
     "Behind the throne's for--"
     (...prags.)
     But Metzger just looks at him. And says--
     "You maybe want to slow down a tad, Vern. Think things over. Get your head...straight."
     And Vern looks back, eyes narrowed, blue on blue. Thinking: There somethin' you wanna *say* to me, Karl?
     ('Cept...I guess you just said it. Didn't you?)
     While Metzger strolls away, jauntily, swinging his nightstick. A study in Supremacy.

And now it's Thursday evening, just after lights-out; Vern on the top bunk, nameless/faceless cellmate on the bottom. Big news of the day is that Wangler cut a deal: Preferred confessing to murder over spending one more night in the Hole, if you can fuckin' believe THAT. Turns out *he* actually offed that old Nigerian everybody thought Adebisi took a steak-knife to; didn't name anybody else involved--like Nappa, for example --but this pretty much gets rid of his share of the tits trade in Em City, opening the way for O'Reilly.
     Which just leaves one small matter still to be resolved--the next item on his list, unconsidered (in any great detail) since Keller's post office visit--
     Vern turns over, restless; light through the bars hurts his eyes, good AND bad. His hand and his new wound hum, cancelling each other out. Feeling prickly all over, feverish, like he's burning up by degrees; kinda like Ortolani must've, that arrogant dago peckerwood, the minute just before the match hit.
     Thinking: How long has it been since he's been anywhere but here, doing anything but this--this same set of limited motions, over and over again?
     Thinking: What day is it now? What year? What fucking SEASON?
     Thinking about Rachel, and her nigger. Keller, and his backsliding.
     Beecher, and his...ultimatum.
     So Chris claims he has ulterior motives: Vern'd be SHOCKED, frankly, if he *didn't*. Guy's a lawyer, a liar, a friggin' all-purpose addict, always hiding out at the bottom of a bottle, a packet of tits, a bigtime psycho freakout. Just like the Old Man, back in the day--when the only reason Vern even stuck around the same zip code as that worthless son-of-a-bitch (sorry, Grossmutter) was to make sure he kept off'a Mom--Beecher's the kind of weak-minded hypocrite who has to get high before he can do the kind of things he'd never admit to WANTING to do while sober.
     I mean, running over somebody's kid? DRUNK's no excuse. That's one step up from Sipple, in Vern's book.
     His kids...his boys. Jan in the hospital. Cory in jail.
     And Rachel, back next week, according to McManus.
     (And the week after...and the week *after*...)
     ...Christ.
     And: Why the hell *shouldn't* I get to get my "brains fucked out", every once in a while? Vern finds himself wondering, resentfully. I goddamn well DESERVE it, shit that keeps piling up on *my* plate.
     Which sends his brain spinning back, inevitably, to the subject of Beecher as object of desire: A fairly new concept for Vern, weirdly enough, considering the way they routinely used to spend their nights (and days, in part) during Toby-baby's first year at Oz. 'Cause the kick Vern got out of having Beecher under his heel was always more a matter of subjugation, of spectacle, than of straight-up *sex*--
     (--not like YOU're a fag, after all.)
     The high 'n' mighty lawyer, brought to heel; the stuck-up college boy, forcibly silenced--here, suck on THIS awhile.
     And Beecher himself, too shell-shocked to be much more than utilitarian anyways. Slumping and slinking, only perking up when his humiliation couldn't be contained anymore, or when he was high: Either screaming "May I PLEASE fuck my *WIFE*?", or cooing incoherently about how God was holding him in the hollow of his hand. Not to mention looking uglier in drag than anybody Vern'd ever SEEN before, barring maybe Robin Williams.
     (So why'd you take him in the first place, if you didn't WANT him?)
     Because he told me I could, Vern thinks.
     Remembering that look in his eyes: The yielding, unconscious or not. The unspoken complicity. That vibe he fairly oozed, minute Vern realized *who* McManus'd been dumb enough to shack this little hunk of Yuppie roadkill up with: "Yes, please, throw me up against the wall and have your way with me, 'cause I just don't deserve any better."
     And now, he almost seems to be...telling Vern that again. This time out loud.
     That moment in the infirmary, after--
     (the kiss)
     And Beecher, softly: *I'm what you made of me.*
     Well, shit--he wants to get fucked, then FUCK him. Pansy, soft-ass college-boy bitch! *Fuck* him.
     But--he *can*'t. Not...not if Beecher actually--wants?--it...
     (I can't think about this right now.)
     CAN'T.
     (...now.)
     That first morning after, with Rachel--holding her as she slept, in bed, hugging close and breathing quiet into the back of her neck, ruffling those fine golden hairs. And knowing: Right here, right now--he was *happy*.
     (So THAT's what that feels like.)
     Wasn't like he'd never HAD pussy before. But in jail, things were--different--
     (easier)
     --and the strain of having to *court* her, not just take her...to be charming and persuasive...to listen to what she said and then give back just as deeply, not simply file the information away for later use...it made him crazy with wanting her. *Knowing* she was his already, and had told him as much--but forced by circumstance to wait, seemingly in vain, for HER to figure that out.
     The first time Vern had asked Rachel to marry him, she'd laughed; the second time, she'd groaned...then laughed again. And then there was the third time, when she'd gotten mad: Snapped that this was getting pretty fuckin' old, and why couldn't they just have FUN together, without the legal contract bullshit? Like they already were?
     But he'd kept on, knowing that persistence was one of his better qualities. And finally--the eighth or ninth time--she'd said yes.
     Of course, by then, she'd been pregnant...with Jan, it turned out...
     Rachel. Rachel, Rachel--my one and only. My...*intended*.
     And now she's lying out there, somewhere--far outside this--
     (estrogen-free zone)
     --lying next to someone else. Some fuckin'...jungle bunny. With Vern's dead love still all over her, a skin-sized scar. His mark. His *brand*...
     (...like the one on Beecher, lying--under--Chris.)
     In his *bunk*.
     (But belonging...under *you*.)
     And: Oh, Christ Jesus, Vern thinks, this whole CELL is the size of my fucking storage closet. I'm choking. I've got to get out. Let me the fuck *out* of here, NOW.
     He's a liar. A drunk. A wild card, a freak. He screwed me out of my parole. He shit all over my FACE. He's not RACHEL, for fuck's sake; he's not even as good-lookin' a piece of ass as Chris--and after the 'tude that sword-swallowing little slut's thrown my way lately, I wouldn't touch *him* again unless he got down on his knees and begged.
     (And what if HE did? Beecher?)
     Which he just might, given the stuff he's already pulled...
     (So what are you saying, Vernon? He's SMARTER than you?)
     Vern presses his fists to his head, hard enough to feel his skull sing. Then growls aloud, just this side of a groan.
     Because now--remembering that split-second x-ray room kiss, slow-mo to freeze-frame, back and forth and back--he can *taste* Beecher's over-educated addict's tongue on his...all over again.
     At exactly which, highly inopportune moment--the idiot on the bottom bunk chooses to make yet ANOTHER noise.
     "You don't shut the fuck up, down there," Vern tells him, between bared teeth--voice automatically gone all calm and reasonable, almost soothing in its own deep warmth--"I swear to Christ, I'm gonna give you something WORTH having nightmares about."

(And, you know...I might just do that anyways.)

End Part 5/4.

Continued...