The Jodi Picoult Collection #4 Read online

  “Fuck!” Crash yelled. “I just got soaked!”

  “Man, that looks like blood,” Pogie said, horrified. “I’m not washing up in that.”

  “It’s in the toilets, too,” Texas added.

  We all knew our pipes were connected. The bad news about this was that you literally could not get away from the shit brought down by the others around you. On the bright side, you could actually flush a note down the length of the pod; it would briefly appear in the next cell’s bowl before heading through the sewage system. I turned and looked into my toilet. The water was as dark as rubies.

  “Holy crap,” Crash said. “It ain’t blood. It’s wine.” He started to crow like a madman. “Taste it, ladies. Drinks are on the house.”

  I waited. I did not drink the tap water in here. As it was, I had a feeling that my AIDS medications, which came on a punch card, might be some government experiment done on expendable inmates . . . I wasn’t about to imbibe from a water treatment system run by the same administration. But then I heard Joey start laughing, and Calloway slurping from the faucet, and Texas and Pogie singing drinking songs. In fact, the entire mood of the tier changed so radically that CO Whitaker’s voice boomed over the intercom, confused by the visions on the monitors. “What’s going on in there?” he asked. “Is there a water main leak?”

  “You could say that,” Crash replied. “Or you could say we got us a powerful thirst.”

  “Come on in, CO,” Pogie added. “We’ll buy the next round.”

  Everyone seemed to find this hilarious, but then, they’d all downed nearly a half gallon of whatever this fluid was by now. I dipped my finger into the dark stream that was still running strong from my sink. It could have been iron or manganese, but it was true—this water smelled like sugar, and dried sticky. I bent my head to the tap and drank tentatively from the flow.

  Adam and I had been closet sommeliers, taking trips to the California vineyards. To that end, for my birthday that last year, Adam had gotten me a 2001 Dominus Estate cabernet sauvignon. We were going to drink it on New Year’s Eve. Weeks later, when I came in and found them, twisted together like jungle vines, that bottle was there, too—tipped off the nightstand and staining the bedroom carpet, like blood that had already been spilled.

  If you’ve been in prison as long as I have, you’ve experienced a good many innovative highs. I’ve drunk hooch distilled from fruit juice and bread and Jolly Rancher candies; I’ve huffed spray deodorant; I’ve smoked dried banana peels rolled up in a page of the Bible. But this was like none of those. This was honest-to-God wine.

  I laughed. But before long I began to sob, tears running down my face for what I had lost, for what was now literally coursing through my fingers. You can only miss something you remember having, and it had been so long since creature comforts had been part of my ordinary life. I filled a plastic mug with wine and drank it down; I did this over and over again until it became easier to forget the fact that all extraordinary things must come to an end—a lesson I could have lectured on, given my history.

  By now, the COs realized that there had been some snafu with the plumbing. Two of them came onto the tier, fuming, and paused in front of my cell. “You,” Whitaker commanded. “Cuffs.”

  I went through the rigmarole of having my wrists bound through the open trap so that when Whitaker had my door buzzed open I could be secured by Smythe while he investigated. I watched over my shoulder as Whitaker touched a pinky to the stream of wine and held it up to his tongue. “Lucius,” he said, “what is this?”

  “At first I thought it was a cabernet, Officer,” I said. “But now I’m leaning toward a cheap merlot.”

  “The water comes from the town reservoir,” Smythe said. “Inmates can’t mess with that.”

  “Maybe it’s a miracle,” Crash sang. “You know all about miracles, don’t you, Officer Bible-thumper?”

  My cell door was closed and my hands freed. Whitaker stood on the catwalk in front of our cells. “Who did this?” he asked, but nobody was listening. “Who’s responsible?”

  “Who cares?” Crash replied.

  “So help me, if one of you doesn’t fess up, I’ll have maintenance turn off your water for the next week,” Whitaker threatened.

  Crash laughed. “The ACLU needs a poster child, Whit.”

  As the COs stormed off the tier, we were all laughing. Things that weren’t humorous became funny; I didn’t even mind listening to Crash. At some point, the wine trickled and dried up, but by then, Pogie had already passed out cold, Texas and Joey were singing “Danny Boy” in harmony, and I was fading fast. In fact, the last thing I remember is Shay asking Calloway what he was going to name his bird, and Calloway’s answer: Batman the Robin. And Calloway challenging Shay to a chugging contest, but Shay saying he would sit that one out. That actually, he didn’t drink.

  * * *

  For two days after the water on I-tier had turned into wine, a steady stream of plumbers, scientists, and prison administrators visited our cells. Apparently, we were the only unit within the prison where this had happened, and the only reason anyone in power even believed it was because when our cells were tossed, the COs confiscated the shampoo bottles and milk containers and even plastic bags that we had all innovatively used to store some extra wine before it had run dry; and because swabs taken in the pipes revealed a matching substance. Although nobody would officially give us the results of the lab testing, rumor had it that the liquid in question was definitely not tap water.

  Our exercise and shower privileges were revoked for a week, as if this had been our fault in the first place, and forty-three hours passed before I was allowed a visit from the prison nurse, Alma, who smelled of lemons and linen; and who had a massive coiled tower of braided hair that, I imagined, required architectural intervention in order for her to sleep. Normally, she came twice a day to bring me a card full of pills as bright and big as dragonflies. She also spread cream on inmates’ fungal foot infections, checked teeth that had been rotted out by crystal meth, and did anything else that didn’t require a visit to the infirmary. I admit to faking illness several times so that Alma would take my temperature or blood pressure. Sometimes, she was the only person who touched me for weeks.

  “So,” she said, as she was let into my cell by CO Smythe. “I hear things have been pretty exciting on I-tier. You gonna tell me what happened?”

  “Would if I could,” I said, and then glanced at the officer accompanying her. “Or maybe I wouldn’t.”

  “I can only think of one person who ever turned water into wine,” she said, “and my pastor will tell you it didn’t happen in the state prison this Monday.”

  “Maybe your pastor can suggest that next time, Jesus try a nice full-bodied Syrah.”

  Alma laughed and stuck a thermometer into my mouth. Over her back, I stared at CO Smythe. His eyes were red, and instead of watching me to make sure I didn’t do anything stupid, like take Alma hostage, he was staring at the wall behind my head, lost in thought.

  The thermometer beeped. “You’re still running a fever.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” I replied. I felt blood pool under my tongue, courtesy of the sores that were part and parcel of this horrific disease.

  “You taking those meds?”

  I shrugged. “You see me put them in my mouth every day, don’t you?”

  Alma knew there were as many different ways for a prisoner to kill himself as there were prisoners. “Don’t you check out on me, Jupiter,” she said, rubbing something viscous on the red spot on my forehead that had led to this nickname. “Who else would tell me what I miss on General Hospital?”

  “That’s a pretty paltry reason to stick around.”

  “I’ve heard worse.” Alma turned to CO Smythe. “I’m all set here.”

  She left, and the control booth slid the door home again, the sound of metallic teeth gnashing shut. “Shay,” I called out. “You awake?”

  “I am now.”

&n