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Fresh, Bloated,
Decay, Post-Decay,
Skeletal [Dance Mix]
By
Jon Alan Carroll
Damn birds woke him up again. To them, talk was cheep.
Bolzano opened his eyes to another morning. He yawned and stretched, taking care not to smash his knee against the steering wheel again.
Today's plan was to drive over to Alicia's house and pick up his unemployment check. Cash it, get a room, take a long shower. Bolzano coaxed the old Ford to life and sat while it warmed up. He'd kill some time and drink some coffee. But he'd have to leave immediately, since the cops would soon be around to roust all the positive thinkers out of the park.
He pulled out and headed over to the Stray Mutt cafe. His radio said the news was bad and the traffic was worse. Overturned big-rigs, dead motorists, traffic snarled for miles. It was gridlock time for the monkey army. The Stray Mutt, his favorite art dump, was almost deserted. None of the regulars were crazy enough to get up this early.
Bolzano counted out some change and sat down with his coffee. Every morning, he felt deader and deader. Somebody had opened a valve in his brain and the energy started dripping out. A few more months of dragging his corpse around and it all would be over.
At least he had his health, as Mom always said. He was cold, miserable, and broke, but he had his health.
He called Alicia on the Mutt's payphone and made sure she was up. After a couple of false starts, he pointed the Ford toward Third and over to her house in Dogpatch. She was pretty brave, living alone in a hard neighborhood like that.
On Fillmore, Bolzano checked the rearview and saw a police cruiser coming up fast behind him. The cops turned on their siren and Bolzano pulled over.
Now what, he thought.
One of the cops walked over to Bolzano and asked him if he realized his registration was expired. The cop demanded his license, staring like Bolzano was just more meat on the administrative hoof.
The cop took Bolzano's license back to the squad car while his partner walked over and asked if he could search the vehicle.
Bolzano got out and untied the tarp from the truck bed. "Go ahead," he said.
The second cop searched the cab and gave Bolzano's possessions a half-hearted once-over. This wasn't the cop's first choice of assignments.
The cop pulled a wooden plaque out of one of Bolzano's boxes and started reading it. "What's this," the cop asked, "'Editor of the Year'? Did you get this at some flea market or something?"
The first cop walked back and gave Bolzano another look. This wasn't a hardboiled look, but more like a microwave breakfast burrito look. The cop was going to ruin Bolzano's life quickly and efficiently, and then move onto the next slob.
"Mr. Bolzano," the cop said, "Do you realize you have 24 unpaid traffic tickets? That would be a total of 21 parking violations and three moving violations?"
"Uh," Bolzano said.
"Are you aware your license expired four months ago? Do you have insurance on this vehicle?"
"Uh, no," Bolzano said.
"You're under arrest," the cop said, nodding in agreement with himself.
The cop put the handcuffs on Bolzano and put him in the back seat. Bolzano listened to weird strings of acronyms coming out of the police radio as they sat blocking traffic on Fillmore. Everything's going exactly as planned, Bolzano thought.
A tow truck came and hauled his truck away.
The cops drove Bolzano to City Prison, a moldy Victorian workhouse. There was a new jail across town, a bright white light of postmodern prison vision, but apparently Bolzano wasn't good enough for the new jail. The two cops turned Bolzano over to the jail guards. The old jail stunk of sweat, puke, and institutional disinfectant. Bolzano squinted in the strange, aquatic light. The jail was as dim as a mole's nightlight. The jailers booked and fingerprinted him and told Bolzano if he posted $3,500 bail he'd be free as a pigeon. If Bolzano paid all the tickets and
back registration, he could have his truck back, too.
"Haha, another rich one," one guard said. The guard, a beachball in a stained uniform, had clearly found his life's meaning in crullers. He walked Bolzano to a small holding cell with two phones.
Bolzano sat on the jail bench, trying to think of someone he could call to bail him out. He had nothing and they'd cut off his credit cards long ago. His parents were out, they'd both drop dead if he called them from jail. He still owed Alicia $900, his friend Pete $2,000.
Bolzano was out of luck, hosed, screwed. In fact, he was 20,000 leagues below screwed. It would take an incredible run of luck just to get back to screwed.
Donut Guard came back in about half an hour and led Bolzano to a large room where about a dozen other positive thinkers were lined up. The prisoners were of all sizes and styles, sort of a UN of the hosed.
An angry-looking guard stood at the front of the room. "Alright," he ordered, "Take off your shoes and strip to your shorts."
A foul grumble stunk up the room. Donut-World asked for some cooperation, but the prisoners knew who they were and cursed as they stripped down to their shorts.
As he stripped, Bolzano noticed that Angry Guard had a weird resemblance to his graduate thesis advisor. The same deadbolted face, grim hair, wire-frame glasses. Except Angry Guard was taller, much beefier, and glared like a bill collector in a bad mood.
Donut-World went through their clothes as Angry Guard walked down the row and inspected their hair.
"Alright," Angry Guard said, "Raise your feet and show the heels. First the right, then the left."
Bolzano hopped on his left foot. The guy next to him, a fireplug covered in jailhouse tattoos, muttered he was cold and hurry the fuck up.
As Donut-World went down the line, looking into mouths, Angry Guard walked up to Fireplug and screamed, "Alright, dipstick, shut up and open your mouth. Lift your tongue. Now keep it shut or we'll go in the back room and talk about it."
Fireplug shut his mouth and then gave the guard's back a nice little kill-your-family look.
Angry Guard moved to the front of the room and said, "Alright, now drop your shorts, bend over and spread 'em."
Bending over, Fireplug mumbled something about eating babies. Angry Guard walked by and inspected Bolzano's butthole for weapons, drugs, and stray symphony orchestras.
Donut-World said, "OK, geniuses, put your clothes back on. It's time to move down to the dayroom with your peers, haha." The prisoners had other problems and looked unconcerned by the guard's remarks.
Angry Guard slammed open the steel door and herded Bolzano and the rest of the smiley faces down a half-lit hall and into a large room with about 10 metal tables.
The Latinos had four tables, the African-Americans three. Bolzano walked over and sat with the white guys.
All the prisoners were watching the Sitcom Channel on a TV protected by plastic. Ancient, unfunny reruns were apparently part of the punishment.
This is it, Bolzano thought, the lowest point ever. Watching sitcoms in prison. It can't get any worse than this, unless it does.
A jittery-looking blonde guy walked over and sat across the table. "Jeff Bolzano? Remember me, man?"
It took him a second to place the guy. "Yeah," Bolzano said, "from the Journal."
It was Greene, one of the file clerks at the Ectoplasm Journal. Bolzano had been an editor at the EJ, but not after that international information cartel bought the journal and did a Pol Pot on the staff. Once their skulls were neatly stacked, the cartel merged the journal into their digital sweatshop in Bangalore.
Now he was staring at Greene across the jail table. Like leaves through an hourglass, he thought, so are the days of our lives.
"So what's a bigfoot like you in here for," Greene said.
"Tickets," Bolzano said. Twitchy eyes, black-hole teeth, Greene was skinnier than a pipe cleaner. The man was so scrawny he looked like you were hungry.
"Oh, yeah, ha, the big ticket crackdown," Greene said. "They're pulling over every car with an expired reg, to cut down on crime all that crap."
"What about you," Bolzano said.
"Methamphetamine for sale. Popular charge around here," Greene said. "Cops claim I sold some ounces while in possession of weaponry. It's all bullshit."
Bolzano now realized why Greene had been such an efficient file clerk. And why he usually talked like a deck of cards shot into gale-force winds. "Yeah, so," Greene rolled on, "I'm just waiting to get sent upstairs. They don't have to feed you for 12 hours after they arrest you, but they will. Sandwich and an orange, I think you'll like it. Dinner's much better. Last night I had to stab three bikers to keep them from stealing my fondue." Some con rolled trays into the dayroom and announced that lunch was served, you morons.
"Shit, Bolzano, I always liked you, man," Greene said. "You treated us pretty good, not like the rest of the fucking droids in that place. So, they leave you here on Floor One to see if you bail out. If not, upstairs." Some guy made a joke in Spanish about one of the Eight Is Enough girls. All the Latinos cracked up.
"Man, look at this place. Smells like Lysol and toe jam. Trash all over. Slobs. Why can't these guys be proud of their prison?"
Bolzano nodded and got in line for a tray. Bologna sandwich and an orange. Greene didn't stop as Bolzano savored the County cuisine. "...This is just lightweight county jail, not prison, man. Most of these guys are just losers or insane. One guy turned himself in when he was on X. How lame is that." Greene paused and took a breath. "Then there were these two guys who kidnapped dogs and made the owners pay to get them back. Ha, Grand Theft--Dog. Ain't theft grand?"
Bolzano sat around, watching sitcoms and listening to Greene's warp-speed tweak-talk. It was sort of fun, in a desolate gulag kind of way.
A guard called Bolzano over after dinner and said you're going to be our guest tonight. A while later, right in the middle of Happy Days, Bolzano heard Donut-World call his name.
"Upstairs for you," Greene said. "What kind of bird don't fly, Bolzano?"
"A jailbird," Bolzano said.
Donut-World took Bolzano through a couple of sets of bars and doors and up an ancient elevator. They stopped in front of a cell with some longhaired guy groaning in the bottom bunk.
Bolzano walked into the cell and Donut-World slammed the door.
"Budget cutbacks," Donut-World said. "No more Thorazine for the junkies. Hard life, huh?"
Bolzano looked at Donut-World and Donut-World glared back. Donut-World hated all Italians, but especially this one, who thought he was so cool with his
little shaved head and weirdo clothes. He hated Bolzano and Bolzano's type,
whatever the hell that was.
"Enjoy," said Donut-World as he shuffled away.
Bolzano said hello to the guy in the bottom bunk, but the guy just said I'm sick and went back to sweating and groaning. He flopped on the top bunk. There's no end, Bolzano thought, no bottom to it.
Metal clanked, prisoners yelled, his cellmate groaned. There was no way he was going to get any sleep tonight.
Bolzano stared into space. He tried counting sheep, the women he'd known, the English Romantics. Finally, he started reciting the multiplication tables up to 12.
Pipes rumbled, prisoners went on yelling at each other, and the groaning continued from the bottom bunk.
This tore it. This was the end. Bolzano gave up.
He would be whatever the world wanted him to be. He'd move back to St. Louis, get a real job, reestablish his credit. Work hard, watch TV, maybe buy a little place in the suburbs.
He'd give up his foggy dreams and all those ridiculous ideas about "resistant subjectivity." From now on, Bolzano would be a team player. And he'd vote in every election, no matter how fake.
Eventually, he fell asleep.
The next morning, they gave him a court date and warned him he'd better show up. A police van dropped him and three others in front of the Hall of Justice.
Bolzano walked out and stood on the sidewalk on Brannan. The traffic was beginning to clot as the monkey army headed downtown.
Now what, he thought.
Copyright © 2005 Jon Alan Carroll
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