"Don't suppose you have a match?" Remo prompted.
"Not since Muhammad Ali went soft in the head."
"That's old."
"In stir, every joke is old. If I slip you a matchbook, you gonna slide it back afterward?"
"Sure."
"Okay, my man. Don't screw up any worse than you did to get here."
The matchbook slid into view like a dim hockey puck. It came to rest beside a cell bar and Remo retrieved it on the first try. He tore off a match and struck it. The flame caught the dirty end of the Camel in Remo's mouth.
Remo sat on his bunk and took a deep drag.
The tobacco smoke hit his lungs like mustard gas. The urge to cough was overpowering. He tried to choke it back, knowing that it could bring the guards or, worse, wake up every man on death row. But the coughing refused to be suppressed.
Remo went to his knees. He put his head under the cot and surrendered to a coughing fit. He hacked like a twelve-year-old trying to get through his first smoke.
"You okay, Jim?" Popcorn hissed. "You gonna bring down all kinds of shit on our sorry heads if you don't stifle yourself."
Remo's coughing spasms trailed off into a strangled moan.
"Don't you die on me, Jim," Popcorn pleaded. "You got my last book a' matches. Don't you die on me."
Through his own pain Remo heard the sincerity in Popcorn's voice. Prison sentimentality. Don't die until I get back what's mine. He never got used to its callous ruthlessness.
Finally Remo crawled back into his bunk. "First time?" Popcorn asked wryly.
"I'm used to filtered cigarettes," Remo said. His lungs felt like they were on fire. Instead of clearing his head, the nicotine dulled his brain even more. Maybe, he thought, he was having a reaction to the sedative that had kept him asleep during the trip from New Jersey. Still, he shouldn't have a reaction like that. He was a pack-a-day man.
"What about my matches, man?"
"In the morning," Remo shot back weakly. "I'm sick."
"You crazy if you think you're gonna keep my matches, sucker," Popcorn hissed. "You hear me?" The speed with which Popcorn's easy solicitude had turned hard and then nasty was elemental.
Remo turned over and tried to find sleep, but it eluded him until the five-o'clock buzzer, and then, too soon, it was the start of another interminable gray day.
Chapter 5
Before the guard appeared with the breakfast trays, Remo set the matchbook outside the bars of his cell and gave it a single-finger shove.
"There it is," he called. "Got it?"
"Yeah, man, I got it." Popcorn's voice was wary. Remo imagined him opening up the cover to carefully count each match. He must have done it twice because it was a while before his voice, again suffused with cocky good humor, came back.
"That's two you owe me, Jim," he said. "One for the tailor-made and the other for the igniter."
"Catch you in the yard sometime," Remo said. "If we get the yard on the same day."
Breakfast was cold cornflakes in a single-serving package and a separate pint container of low-fat milk. Remo poured the milk over the flakes slowly. The smell of it was strong. He put his nose to the bowl. Not sour. Just strong. He had never smelled milk this strong. Funny. He had never thought of fresh milk as having a smell before.
Remo decided to skip the sugar and forced the first spoonful down his throat. It went down hard. The flakes felt like they were sandpapering his esophagus. He got it down. Five minutes later he threw it up all over the floor.
"You sure you done time before, Jim?" Popcorn's voice was wary again. "You don't seem to be acclimatizin' none too good. Hate to think you was a fish. 'Cause if you was a fish, that'd mean you was a rat. Though what the Man would be doing puttin' a rat on the row is more than I can understand."
"You got anything to rat about?" Remo asked, spitting the last of the milk from his mouth. It tasted sour now, but that was stomach-acid taste.
"No. But you be acting like a first-timer, not a lifer."
"I haven't smelled free air since . . ." Remo hesitated. When did he go in first? Was in '71. No, earlier, '70. Maybe '69. No, it couldn't have been '69. He remembered pounding a beat in '69, just another beat cop on his way to a faraway pension.
The C.O. came around for the tray and saw the mess on Remo's floor. His tight expression turned into a glower.
"You do that on purpose?" he demanded hotly.
"I threw up," Remo told him.
The guard looked closer. "Doesn't look like vomit to me."
"It wasn't in my stomach more than two minutes," Remo said with the sullenness that came to a prisoner after being in the joint for so long that all the pride had seeped out of the soul. It was a consequence of being treated, for all intents and purposes, like a dangerous teenager.
Popcorn spoke up. "I can vouch for whitey, there," he said. "I heard him throw. Man sounded like he was coughin' up his lungs. Kidneys too."
"Shut up, Dead Man."
The guard went away, coming back with a mop and bucket.
"Rack Number Two," he called down the line. The door to Remo's cell rolled aside. The C.O. shoved the mop and bucket in through the half-open door.
"Clean it up," he told Remo.
Remo looked in the bucket and said, "No water."
"Boy, you got endless water," the guard said, pointing to the open stainless-steel toilet.
Remo dipped the mop into the open bowl, slopped it into the bucket, and carried both over to the mess. He swabbed the floor until it was clean, emptied the bucket into the bowl, and then brought bucket and mop back to the cell door.
"Wring it out first," the guard insisted.
"With what?" Remo demanded.
"You got hands."
"I don't shower again until tomorrow."