Struggle On Home

Chapter Three

Out of the courtroom, one guard at either side of them. Down a flight of clanging metal stairs. Into a long corridor where the AC was broken. Abel felt the agonising pinpricks of sweat breaking on his back and underneath his arms. Beside him, K.C. was sucking down noisy gulps of fetid air like a landed fish.

They were led over to a tiny desk set into the wall, behind which stood a limpid court official who was fanning herself with a few sheets of foolscap.

"Names, please."

K.C. spoke first. "K.C. Anders-"

The woman shot him a strange look, one that was somehow annoyed and amused at the same time. "I mean your real name, sweetheart."

K.C. stared at her. His eyebrows bore into one another like stormclouds.

The official's eyes seemed to soften in pity. "Okay, okay, I can guess it," she said, scrawling something onto a form. "I'm gonna need yours, too."

"Uh....Abel Clark."

Some more scribbling, and then she put away the forms and said, "Okay, this is the ugly part. Maurice-" this was directed at one of the guards-"you know the drill."

On cue, the pimply kid she'd called Maurice grabbed Abel's forearm and tugged him to a wooden door a few feet away. The room inside was unfurnished, save for a wooden shelf with a cloth jumpsuit on it.

Maurice shut the door and turned to Abel with a face covered in apologies.

"First time here?" he asked him.

"Well, obviously."

Maurice laughed. "Oh, you'd be surprised. I've had captains of industry come in here wearing three thousand dollar suits and cufflinks, and they go back out wearing that." He jerked his head in the jumpsuit's direction. "And that brings me to my next point. I, uh, don't really know how to break this to you, buuuut...."

Abel figured out what he meant. The realisation clutched at his stomach and squeezed it. "You want me to change into that thing in front of you?"

Maurice spread his hands out in front of him. "And I have to watch, and take away all your personal shit. I'm really, really sorry."

"Well, what happens if I decide not to?"

"Listen, Clark, you seem like an okay kid, and I get that you're pissed off about this, but please don't make things worse for yourself. I get to go home, remember-you've got a lotta time to pass in here, and it'll be easier if no-one's mad at you. Got it?"

Abel suddenly understood how completely his destruction of his own life had been.

As though they were seperate entities from him, his fingers rose up to his throat and began undoing his tie.

——

Out of the room with the shelf in it, fatter than ever and lumpy in his jumpsuit. Giving more information to the woman at the desk, struggling to remember his social security number, not knowing what an alias was. Then a door at the other end of the corridor wheezed open and out shuffled K.C., pale as a patch of mist, with two raw pink circles for eyes.

The sight of K.C. cowering in jailhouse clothes-his best friend, a Catherine's wheel that never died down, the one guy he knew who really could eat three Steak Shack Widowmakers at one sitting and not throw up-hit Abel like a rogue buck charging him. His lungs were being pulled taut by ropes. He wondered if he was having a heart attack, but no-it was adrenaline that made his heart shiver like that. His body wanted him to kill someone to make up for this.

K.C. rattled off his details in a nasal drone, the kind of voice you use when you're trying not to cry. The guard-a thatch-haired guy with a face made for scowling-handed over a plastic bag containing K.C.'s suit, his shoes, his cellphone, and a few legal documents. Maurice contributed a similar bag filled with Abel's belongings to the courthouse jail property lockup.