King Perry (9 page)

Perry makes grumbling noises but hands everything over.

Wow, that went easier than expected. Push it.

“Spare change? Yeah, that too.”

I could have asked for this stuff earlier, but I want him to hand everything over while distracted. I need every subtle advantage I can muster for what’s to come. That worked nicely. I have to remember to….

No. No reviewing or thinking too far ahead while in the weekend. One of the four pillars of kinging: be here, Vin. Be in this moment, right now.

I guide us from landmark to landmark, ancillary buildings, quietly discussing which shadows offer the best protection. I encourage Perry to watch the guard’s beam to learn how wide he swings the light, how closely he looks behind corners, and we survey our immediate surroundings to determine obvious spots where the guard might direct his attention if looking for unwanted guests. I point out good hiding places in case we get separated and plan a rendezvous spot. Perry is not crazy about hearing this, and truthfully, there’s no chance we will be separated. I wouldn’t do that to him. But I’m okay if he’s afraid of that possibility for a while.

“Do you like the word
ancillary
?”

“Vin,” he says, threatening me.

“
Alaska
. You have to use my Alcatraz name. What’s yours?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, come up with one or else I’ll have to yell out your name.”

He says, “Nevada.”

“You’re copying my state theme? Lame.”

“Still not laughing under this.”

“Nevada, you have to learn to relax. You’re way too tense.”

We skirt the security guard twice and tour almost completely around the island, ending only about 500 yards north from where we first made our initial disappearance over the Charlie Brown wall. All that separates us is the bird sanctuary.

I guide him toward the stone stairs outside the sanctuary gate and we descend, lower and lower, until we find ourselves standing in an abandoned building structure. We’re far enough below the night guard’s walking path that his beam won’t reach us even if he directs it our way. I consider this space to be my Roman safe house. A cement foundation littered with stray twigs supports two stone walls but no actual roof. Each wall boasts enormous floor-to-ceiling rough-carved windows.

It feels Roman to me: austere, commanding, with a legacy of violence. Caesar might have told his troops to make camp here on the eve of battle. I could imagine fires in the corner, square shadows jerking, rectangular ghosts and maybe a flogging over there. Geez, Vin, don’t think about Roman brutality. I almost barfed when Perry talked about spilling intestines….

No. Stop.

Talk about something.

“Don’t you think this place could use some big curtains? Over those windows? Something that would ripple in the wind, like maybe thick, velvety maroon. Big ferns in the corner over there and a bust of Caesar on a column. Nothing excessive, but it’s a boxy space, so maybe something—”

“What are you talking about?” Perry asks, mouth frowning through his ski mask. “Why would you hang curtains?”

“I’m decorating. It’s what we, as a people, consider when confronted with unfinished space like this.”

Perry is silent for a moment. Then he says, “You were freaking me out with all those words-that-start-with-
x
stuff. Now this.”

“No, no, the word doesn’t have to start with an
x
; I like words with
x
in them, or sound funny in some way.
Boxy
has an
x
.”

“Could you not be that way while I’m freaking out to death, please? Seriously.”

“Sure. Let’s sit.”

I move to sit behind Perry and position him so we can watch for the guard’s light. I hold him and massage his neck to help him relax.

“I’m sorry I freaked you out with the word stuff. That was me being goofy to get you to calm down.”

Perry leans back into me, a gesture that indicates he is more relaxed with me than his brain realizes. His body reveals that he’s not worried about me being a serial killer; he just dislikes feeling fear.

After a few minutes, Perry says, “The few times this week I actually considered your weekend thing, I worried about you talking the whole time about spark plugs and changing out engines. I thought we wouldn’t have anything in common.” He pauses. “Clearly, I worried about the wrong shit.”

“I try not to talk about cars while I’m on vacation. I think about cars way too much. But not while I’m on vacation.”

Perry grunts and says nothing.

“I’m glad you’re here,” I say softly. “I will always remember this vacation with you.”

He says nothing, but he chuckles into his chest, some joke he does not share, relaxes a measure further, and then pushes back. I think he’s trying, for this moment, to appreciate this.

When we see the guard’s beam flash in our direction, Perry’s arms tense, but I rock him and we watch in silence. Soon the guard turns around and heads back north, which means it’s time to ascend. We stretch out our arms and legs.

I kiss Perry again, this time with more sexual intensity, because while this might be scary, we really are attracted to each other, and during our seated rocking, his fear shifted so that more of his personality is present.

I make the hand signal for “go forward,” though it’s completely unnecessary. We climb a dozen steps until I signal a stop and leave the stone staircase. With the moon glowing behind clouds, the hillside remains dark. No problem; I did not hide my tools far. But the rock they’re under is big enough I have to put a little muscle into moving it.

I return to our stair a moment later and without words indicate he should take them.

“What are these for? Metal file and—what is this exactly?”

“It’s a combo screwdriver and wrench. It’s a custom made, specifically designed for oil pans on tricked-out Subarus, not the standard engine. I know a guy. He crafted this for me.”

“It bends funny.”

“You carry them.”

“Why?”

“Perry, just do it.”

He takes the two tools without further argument.

“One in each back pocket. Don’t want them to click together and make sound. How tight are those jeans on your ass?”

“Tight enough.”

“So they won’t fall out?”

“No.”

“I’ll have to check, Nevada.”

I grope his ass, checking the firmness of each muscular cheek. “Yeah, I’d say the jeans are tight.”

He chuckles. “Wow, that was classy. And subtle.”

“You do work on your ass at the gym, right? Some machine for glutes?”

Perry scoffs.

“Is that a yes?”

Perry says, “Yes.”

“Awesome. Your ass is amazing. Let’s go.”

As we climb the stone stairs, I’d like to ask Perry if he thinks the phrase
stone stairs
sounds like a right angle, but I’m going to respect his wishes and talk less about my word quirks. For now, at least.

Climbing these stairs reminds me of ascending from Billy’s basement after the kitchen light had been extinguished—the crack under the door turning black at last. Or daylight broke through. Poker night ended for another month.

I don’t know why it took me so long to learn that I could crouch midway up the stairs and kick the rats down when they climbed up to find me. I guess I wasn’t a bright kid. Of course, if Billy had opened the basement door one of those exact moments, he would have seen me huddled, ripe for the picking. Always a risk to hide right there, but after an hour or two, he would stop daring me to come up.

Stop it.

What’s with all the Billy stuff? Is it because I told Perry my big secret about the rat bites? Is that why he keeps coming up? Billy has no place here, no place on a King Weekend. It’s my turn to banish him to the basement of my thoughts; I’m upstairs now. But for some reason, it doesn’t seem to work; Billy’s still at the top of the stairs.

Go. Away.

Stone stairs, stone stairs, stone stairs.

We pass a tangled mess of chain-link fence, stomping over complicated shadows, and continue to sneak upward, climbing the remaining distance. Perry huffs, and I do too, because I could stand to lose some extra pounds. But I’ve done these stone stairs enough times to pace myself and know when to pause and breathe.

We reach the top and pass through a ruined archway, emerging into a spot we visited earlier this afternoon.

“Recognize this place?”

“Their back patio,” Perry says, peering around.

I frown. “Back patio?”

“I can’t think of the word. It’s the, the exercise yard.”

“There you go.”

The prison yard stretches into a big rectangle with four giant rows of cement bleachers facing San Francisco, inviting convicts to sit and watch life across the bay. The absence of any amenities suggests an intention to taunt men with “Here’s what you’re missing.”

I scurry across the moonlit space to the slim shadow at the base of an enormous wall, and Perry follows. A black wrought iron staircase attaches to the exterior prison wall. Although solid and secure, the structure feels so exposed and so steep, you can’t help but feel the whole thing is precarious and rickety. Now, there’s a good word:
rickety
. Shadows cast through the latticework create an intricate spider web on the wall below. We leap up each step until we arrive at the impossible door barring our entrance to Alcatraz. We make no discernable sound, or rather, we have the ocean to thank for masking the noises we do make.

At the top, I feel him twitch next to me, his head darting from side to side, so while I fiddle with the mechanism on the lock, using small tools and wire from inside my jacket, I ask him to recalculate my release age after a twenty-five-year sentence, give or take six years for being a model prisoner. He’s freaking out; I need to keep him occupied while I’m busy.

“Do you think they’d let me work at the prison library?” I say. “I could make book recommendations to other prisoners based on what crimes they committed.”

“Vin,” he says, trying to play along, but his voice betrays terror.

“Thieves would appreciate poetry, and murderers get nonfiction, biographies, I would think. Biographies of famous British people, mostly. The Tudor kings or something.”

A moment later, the door swings open with surprising silence, the bank vault opened at last. Good. A red glow spills out, its source nothing more sinister than an exit sign bolted to the ceiling, yet somehow it still pulses impending doom.

In the moonlight, I see Perry’s eyes, a snapshot of Halloween horror because while maybe his brain has accepted that he’s here on the island, he hadn’t anticipated we’d actually go in the prison.

I say, “I oiled the door Monday night. It’s more work than you would think being the Human Ghost.”

From within his ski mask, Perry shakes his head from side to side, like a kid refusing vegetables.

I step inside and reach my hand back to him. Already, red light devours half of my body.

He says, “No.”

“Cross this threshold, my king. We can do this.”

He looks at me, and I think at this second his brain tenders its resignation, collapsing under stress. With no remaining faculty for resisting, he takes my hand and allows me to pull him inside and push the door closed. The mechanism clicks locked.

Bathed in the red light, I kiss him deeply, spooling a different light into him, one that he needs, all my love, to survive this next challenge. Perry breathes sharply, but he’s trying to soften his rapid breathing, so we kiss more naturally after a moment, lips and mask fabric creating an interesting friction. Soon I feel a warm pressure in his lips that suggests he’s at last feeling this, maybe even enjoying it.

I grip the back of his head and kiss him so hard that we’re both statues. After a half minute, I break it off and he whispers, “Damn.”

I tug his hand. He nods with a sexy confidence.

“Take off your ski mask,” I say.

He complies, and we tuck them into our back pockets.

He takes my hand, and unless I’m mistaken, something inside him digs this, despite the fear. We’re two adventurers, disobedient school kids who have abandoned the tour. We tread with silent footsteps up and down the sullen galleys, occasionally reminding each other of the security guard’s schedule. I check his watch a few times to make him feel safer. We have lots of time.

While we could speak at normal volume, we keep conversation to a minimum. As much as I would like to point out the lack of rats, I do not, because sometimes pointing out the absence of a thing draws more attention. I lead us to the furthest east galley, the one facing San Francisco, where strong moonlight filters through chain-link windows and hits the floors with crisp, institutional lines.

Oh. Moon’s out.

“Look. Moon’s out.”

He nods.

As we trudge slowly forward, it’s easy to pretend that we’re walking down Death Row.

Perry shudders.

Even without living occupants, each cell radiates invisible, angry life. I almost dread looking inside them, afraid of encountering the furious gaze of someone not yet paroled. The last few cells along this galley are unusual because their doors are solid iron, where the worst of the worst were sent, the ones who could not stop ripping apart humanity, though they were mostly tearing through themselves.

These rooms are sensory deprivation tanks, steel walls offering no glimmer of light. On the audio tour, one former convict reported that while in the Hole, he kept himself sane by ripping a button from his uniform and throwing it into the invisible night, spending hour after hour on his hands and knees finding it. He played this game over and over, and somehow he lived through his darkness. The solid doors remain bolted open so vacationing older brothers can’t traumatize their younger siblings. I lead him to the doorway of one in particular and instantly feel his resistance.

He says, “Alcatraz is closed.”

I arch my eyebrows at him, not getting his meaning.

Perry puts the palm of his hand to his eye socket, and a silent guffaw animates him. “That was stupid.”

I scratch my goatee. “True, we’re stretching visiting hours. Trust me, Perry, this will be an experience you never forget. And by that, I mean you will live far beyond this weekend to remember it, barring unforeseen San Francisco bus accidents and future earthquakes. King’s honor.”