Only the Moon Watching

Chapter 8: The Best Piece of Meat

"You didn't even get a notebook? A pen?" hisses Shiv. "How are you going to write to Steak? He's called already, you know, while you were gone?"

"Called?"
"He knocked on the bowl! Or his roommate did, someone knocked and I heard the echoes. That's usually the signal they want to send something down or up, but you weren't here! You don't even have a note ready!"

"Didn't his girlfriend just leave yesterday? I'm sure he's not up for–"

Shiv flops backward onto her bed, splaying out her hair like she's posing for a photoshoot.

"Kristina Kelly didn't deserve Steak and if they'd spent more than a passing second together, he would have realized that! Sure, she's pretty enough to glance at in the hallways, but her notes to him must have been the most boring, self-absorbed... I don't think she could sustain a conversation with a broomstick! She didn't even commit a crime, you know," Shiv says, propping herself up on her elbows and glaring at me. "She was just an accomplice to her boyfriend. Stayed in the backseat of the car the whole time, claims not to have known what was going on and after living with her for seven months, I believe her! Steak's got a brain and if he'd had the opportunity to talk to someone else, he would have taken it."

She pulls her legs onto the bed and folds them beneath her, picking at the holes in her crocs in frustration.

"Why don't you write to him, then?" I suggest. "You went to school – lied your way into school! – you could talk to him about that."

"Please," she sniffs.

"You're not into him? He's supposedly the hottest–"

Shiv gives a frustrated grunt, like a cave-girl trying to upend a boulder. "Jos, he is. Believe me! Do you want to see a picture?"

I shrug.

"Well I don't have one – not yet. That's why I needed you to get the items to send him a message! But I've seen photos, I can describe him: he's indescribable. You know? You can't tell what he is, what kind of mixed. Could be Blasian, could be Hispanic... He's the type you'd cast for a role as a sexy alien, because you can't put your finger on where he's from but you want to put your fingers all over him, does that make sense? And he has, like, black eyes – not just in photos, even in real life they're really dark and mysterious and even the White Power girls have to admit they're so incredibly –" She grunts again.

"And of course –" Shiv slides off her bed and gets to her knees, physically pleading with me. "He's prison ripped!" She clasps her hands in prayer and shakes them at me, begging me to join her in drooling over him. "Guys get really creative with their workouts in here, there's not really much else to do!" She stays on the floor, showing me how they string together routines of sit ups and pushups and plank against the frames of our beds. "And I said he's smart, right? He's a pretty decent writer, I had to give Kristina Kelly the SparkNotes versions of some of his letters– one time he referenced Cat's Cradle – did you read Vonnegut in school?"
I shake my head no. Frustrated, Shiv rolls onto her stomach and pushes herself onto all fours, then she stands up slowly, arching her back like a stripper:

"We've got it in the library, I'm pretty sure – I hope it's not one of the books with all the middle pages missing... I read it in college when I was still impersonating my cousin. Anyway, there's a type of relationship in the book – it's called a granfalloon – it's a fake connection. Like, everyone from Indiana thinks they're part of the same club cuz they're Hoosiers. In one of his letters, Steak said he thought jail is a grandfalloon – we aren't all the same just because we're stuck in here, together. The Gardas think we are, and think they are – think they're better than us, some special little club. Steak was trying to talk to Kristina Kelly about it, to figure out how she actually identified herself, if you get past the shallow 'falloon bits, like: 'What's your Hogwarts house?' 'What's your star sign?' 'Which Sex and the City woman are you?' But Kristina Kelly was all shallow bits. She thought Kurt Vonnegut was a character on GLEE!"

"Oh come on," I say, rolling my eyes. "Steak sounds fake deep. If Kristina Kelly liked astrology and her boyfriend liked astrology that would make it important: it'd be something they have in common! And if her letters–"

"Oh!" Shiv interrupts, "I should tell you, they're called kites in here. Letters are kites. You'll pick it up eventually, jail's got its own lingo, doesn't it? Gen-pop –that's where we are–, Ad-Seg, talking the bowl, getting kites... Anyway, point with Kristina Kelly is that she didn't get Steak. I didn't get him either – I read most of his letters, appreciated them, even, but I still wasn't a good enough fit." She walks circles around our room now, doing star jumps and swinging her arms. "I've got nervous energy, though, just thinking about him! Or thinking about you thinking about him!

"Anyway – I couldn't make toilet talking work for me, but now that you're here, maybe you can make them sing."