A Conversation with My Cellmate on My Last Day in Prison

Short fiction with some currency.

On my last day in prison, my cellmate asked me to visit his girlfriend.

“I didn’t know you had a girlfriend.”

“We’re engaged.”

“Engaged? We shared a cell for five to seven years and now you tell me you have a fiancée? What else are you hiding from me? Am I gonna find out you didn’t shiv those snitches back in 2013?”

“Nah, man, I did shiv those guys. Guy gotta have some secrets, you know? Can’t be an open book.”

He handed me a torn, empty envelope. “Her address is on this.”

“What’s her name?”

“Frederica. But I call her Juice. When I first met her, I say to her, I’m gonna call you Juice. Cuz you look like O.J.”

“She looked like O.J. Simpson, the football player?”

“That’s what she thought! I say nah, it cuz you look like a bottle of orange juice. Not the big bottle, the little one you get at the deli.”

“That doesn’t sound very flattering.”

“Not the whole shape, man, just the way her neck slopes into her shoulders, reminds of that bottle. Very sexy.”

“Okay.”

“So anyway, we been dating about a year, and I go to her house one day like, I need ten dollars. She say, why you need ten dollars? I say, I’m about to go deal with some conchetumare running around town saying I don’t pay my debts so I’m gonna meet him at the park and hold out the ten-dollar bill and when he goes to take it I’m gonna let go of it and it gonna float down like a green feather and when he looks like a chump picking it up off the ground I’m gonna lean down and go: you just been sawbucked!”

“Ah.”

“A sawbuck is like another word for ten dollars.”

“I know.”

“Yeah. Anyway, she’s like, I don’t got a ten-dollar bill, but I got a ten-dollar roll of quarters, and I say, why you have a roll of quarters? And she say she got a videogame habit and I tell I never see her playing no video games.”

“Uh huh…”

“And she look down at the floor and get real quiet and then she say, like in a whisper, I use them for the laundromat. And I say, why you going to the laundromat? You got a washer and dryer. And she tell me there was this guy who work at the laundromat she think he’s kinda cute — she tell me this was before we hook up — and she bring her laundry there, like every other day, even clean laundry, just so she can see him. He must have thought she had a dozen roommates, her bringing so much laundry there.”

“Did she ever hook up with the laundry guy?”

“Nah, she claim he turn out to be gay. I don’t believe her, but I say to myself, I’ll deal with this when I get back. So she give me the roll of quarters and I hide it in my fist and go to the park to meet this guy.”

“Did you actually owe him ten dollars?”

“That ain’t the point. So I get to the park and there’s already this big crowd and I was gonna drop the roll of quarters onto the ground and watch him scramble to pick them up but the whole time I been thinking about Juice and the laundromat guy. And the conchetumare comes through the crowd and goes up to me all smug like, what up, and in a rage I go, this is what up and I pop him — BAM! — and that roll of quarters just explode. Them quarters make my fist like a fuckin’ hammer — and you know I can punch, cuz I did Golden Gloves — so I knocked his jaw halfway off his face!”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah. Quarters everywhere. Didn’t have the effect I wanted. Couldn’t even say the sawbuck line.”

“You could have said: you’ve just been drawn and quartered.”

“Aw, man, that would’ve been a good line. Anyway, people start going crazy, grabbing quarters, and instead of running away I’m wrestling them to get all the quarters back, so I get arrested and end up here for forty years.”

“You got forty years for breaking the guy’s jaw? Did he end up dying?”

“Nah, he just has to drink his dinner from now on. Me, I had some outstanding warrants. I stabbed a bunch of people at a bar near Notre Dame.”

“The South Bend Stabber? That was you?”

“Yeah. Them Fighting Irish, they don’t put up much of a fight.”

“I’m almost sad to be getting out of here. I feel like I barely know you.”

“People got they stories, man. Like you might be a serial killer.”

“I was here for mail fraud.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I read about you in the paper when they took your boat. Anyway, you gotta go see my girlfriend.”

“And say what? That you love her?”

“Yeah, some shit like that. But here’s what you need to do. After you make the small talk, tell her you’re on the way to get your laundry done before you head home, and ask if she has any quarters, like a LOT of quarters.”

“And if she does?”

“Then I need you to visit the laundromat, know what I mean?”