Page 9 of A Handsome Devil

It’d been ten years since my wife had died of an OD. That horrifying event had propelled me out of my county health worker seat and into the Establishment House. That I’d been unable to save her was my number one MO for helping addicts. I didn’t want to make the same mistakes I’d made with her. I was going to get Alessio out of this and onto a new healthy path.

I almost wanted to kiss his forehead. I didn’t want to add to his stress by overwhelming him, so I went downstairs to get him a Gatorade.

Instead, I wound up pouring myself a glass of red wine from nearby Sonoma. I needed the fucking mental break.

My office was on the downstairs entry level, and I wanted to be within hearing distance of Alessio, so I sat at the dining table answering emails on my laptop, drinking wine and chomping deli prawns. An email from the Health and Human Services director at City Hall already grilled me for the “runaway” parolee, Alessio Messina. Of course people had told him Alessio was the one orating from the rooftop. Parolees ran away all the time, but I was a horrible liar. I’d have to huddle with Gunning and Erin before responding to that one. Maybe Gunning could answer for me. He was a great liar.

Around four, my front door security camera dinged. Squinting at the screen on the wall, I saw it was Gunning himself, with Erin in tow.

Upstairs, Gunning glanced around with suspicion, as though someone would leap out at him with a cleaver. I understood. His background made him paranoid. With his turned-up jacket collar he resembled a skulking robber.

Erin was half-Native American, half-Swiss, as far as she could recall of her childhood. It was difficult to imagine the pain she’d endured as a hooker, addict, and prisoner because she was so gorgeous, her skin so flawless. She wasn’t missing any teeth. I knew this could be misleading.

No one seemed to wonder why I was shirtless, my hair damp and messy.

“How is he?” Gunning demanded to know before even sitting at the table.

Erin, always more mannerly, elbowed him to shut up. But she also wanted to know, “Is he okay? I was so impressed with his speech.”

I lowered my voice. Alessio could actually be listening from one floor up. There was no door shutting my bedroom off. “The usual. His stomach is empty so he has nothing to puke. He killed some guy in jail who was raping him.”

Erin nodded. “That’s understandable.”

I didn’t mention the foster father. This was enough for now. “He was only in the halfway house for a month, so hopefully it won’t be a bad comedown.”

Gunning asked, “Is he really a composer? That’s what someone told me. He writes this wild, avant-garde kind of . . . rock-n-roll mixed with jazz and classical. Very cool. Some guy showed me a YouTube video. He’s performed at the San Francisco Opera House.”

I tried not to show pride or awe. I certainly didn’t want my co-workers knowing I had a crush on a patient. I figured it’d lower their estimation of me. “Really? He doesn’t play anything himself? Just composes and conducts?”

Erin butted in. “Guitar,” she said with shining eyes. “Gibson Les Paul. He seems to be a master at that too.”

I nodded, thinking of my Les Paul I hadn’t played in ten years. “Well, listen. This is gonna be a hard row to hoe. The guy he killed was a fellow inmate, a prison wolf who raped him, I imagine more than once.”

Erin went soft with camaraderie. “Oh, wow. I guess no one ever found out?”

“No. Some road dog took the rap for him.”

Gunning said, “That’s an awfully momentous thing to take the rap for. I wonder why the guy did it?”

I shrugged. “Probably already doing Buck Rogers time. Owed Alessio a solid.”

I knew this would set off Erin, and I always had to tread carefully about this kind of abuse. She blurted, “The US is the first place in history where more men have been raped in jail than women.”

Erin should know. She’d spent her last five years out of jail poring over books, cramming her head with facts. Imprisoned for prostitution as a wayward teen, she had also been put in a cage, left to burn in the desert by guards with a particular sense of humor. She’d swallowed a razor blade because no one wanted to hear what she had to say. This was their punishment. “I just wanted a friend.”

So they put her uncovered cage into the 106-degree sun, no water, no bed. They laughed when she asked for water.

Only supposed to use the cage for two hours, the guards left her in there for ten, insulting her. She burned her face against the metal. Fellow inmates, upstairs in the air-conditioned luxury of the cellblock, finally convinced admin to call an ambulance. Her naked body was covered in burn blisters. They say she was muttering something about Jay-Z and Beyoncé. Her internal organs were cooking, her eyeballs like parchment.

That she recovered was miracle enough. That she lifted herself up to become my assistant was a revelation of the first order.

As a Mojave, we’d been half-assedly trying to find her real family for a couple of years. Wasn’t easy, with the separate and scattershot records the tribes kept. Erin still called herself a worthless junkie from time to time. I always told her she was an amazing person. And she was.

Both Erin and Gunning knew what it was like to be imprisoned in cages. Their devotion to each other, their solidarity was evident to me every day.

I had to close my eyes briefly. Squeezing the bridge of my nose as though I had a headache, when I opened my eyes I saw Gunning striding to the kitchen, to the exact cabinet where I’d hidden the wine. I had to chuckle. He knew me well. I got up to join him, refilling my own glass. That’s when I saw Alessio’s day bag on the floor.

“Thanks for bringing this,” I said. “I reckon I have to wash all of the clothes in there.”