Chapter Text
They grew up separated not just by the two and a half mile width of Manhattan but by the East River too. Riff on the west side in a fading tenement building destined for demolition. Tony in the street level unit of a squat row house in Greenpoint, far up on the northern point of Brooklyn, where more people spoke Polish than English.
Little cared for and little looked after, Riff spent the entirety of his childhood hungry and mean and fell naturally into gang life by the age of 12, joining a street gang at the time called the Skunks. By the time he was 16, he led the gang, changed the name, and solidified how far their territory extended (a few blocks shy of the hospital in which he was born) and who their enemies were (pretty much anyone born further away than that, especially those born much further away, a whole ocean away.)
Tony was, for a time, a much less obvious candidate for gang life. Sweet-faced and roundly pudgy from too many pierogi fed to him by an overindulgent mother and grandmother, he was the type of kid likely to have been bullied by Riff had they lived in the same neighborhood. As it was, Tony had enough bullying from his father, a drunk who couldn’t ever hold a job. After getting fired from factory work, Anton Senior tried out being a cab driver, and one night, indebted far more to loan sharks for the taxicab than he could ever recover in fares, he drove it straight into the East River with Tony’s mother strapped in the seat next to him, and Tony’s baby sister asleep in the back. The shock of it brought about a change in Tony. He was already in the midst of a transformation of sorts—still very large but developing more solid muscle than fat—and his soul hardened up too, same like his body. He started his own gang, a Polish one, to contrast with the South Brooklyn Boys, who were a loosely connected group of gangs, Italian, every one of them.
For Tony, teenage warfare was more of a diversion, a place to direct his anger – almost a lark if it wasn’t so stupid or so violent. Riff was more intentional about rumbles; he usually had a purpose in mind – one that might be incomprehensible or hateful or both, but justifiable to his own way of thinking. Still, the two of them were more alike than not, and they both ended up in exactly the same place for close to the same reason. Tony arrived at Clinton Correctional first, sent upstate for aggravated assault and battery, and Riff arrived shortly after with a longer sentence because his felony included use of a dangerous weapon – a piece of rubble, which Riff could attest to being dangerous but was surprised to find the eyes of the law saw it that way too. Neither of them was yet twenty.
The cell was empty when Riff first arrived and was shown to it by a guard to drop off the standard thin pillow, scratchy blanket, and spare uniform he’d been given. It was empty again when Riff returned there after dinner. Tony worked kitchen, which was one of the better work assignments, but it meant he stayed after dinner to clean dishes. Riff decided he preferred the bottom bunk and also needed to show his unseen cellmate who was in charge, so he pulled out Tony’s blanket and sheets from where they were tightly tucked into the corners and threw them in a heap on the top bunk. He settled himself on the bottom mattress, head atop both pillows, fingers laced behind his head and legs outstretched in front of him. A bundle of nerves cramped in his stomach—there was no telling what kind of guy his cellmate would be—and he didn’t have a cigarette, stick of gum, or even a toothpick to distract him, but he was the leader of the Jets, and he didn’t back down for no one.
If Riff had known his cellmate would turn out to be both comically large and cartoonishly handsome, he might have done things differently, or he might not have. Riff never had much sense. Tony arrived, a hulking and freshly showered mass, dressed not in a prison uniform but in gray sweatpants and a t-shirt – items, which if intended for sleep, Riff hadn’t received any of. Tony smelled antiseptic like coal tar soap. He cast a long shadow from the flickering hallway overhead light, and he made Riff hate himself in a way that was both familiar and not. Riff had never experienced so clearly and powerfully wanting someone the way he wanted Tony from the first moment he lay eyes on him.
“It was nice having this cell to myself for a few days,” Tony said in a flat voice, looking Riff over, unimpressed.
“You’re in prison. You can’t go expecting a good thing to last in here,” Riff said with all the wisdom of someone who had just arrived.
“Top bunk is yours,” Tony said.
“I prefer the bottom,” Riff said.
“You’re new here,” Tony said. “So I can forgive you not knowing how everything works. But this one ain’t hard to figure out. I was here first, and I’m bigger than you. So get off my fucking bed.”
“Where were you being held before you got here?” Riff asked. “Rikers?”
“Yeah,” Tony said. “Same as most.”
“I was in the Tombs,” Riff said. “Makes Rikers look like a picnic.”
“Jail’s a jail,” Tony said in a tone that suggested he thought Riff was an idiot.
“Yeah well,” Riff said. “In the Tombs, I was in one of them cells sleeps six guys. I wake up one morning, one of the guys is dead. Strangled with a torn up piece of bedsheet. No one can figure out from which of us five still alive who did it.”
Tony’s mouth twitched up at the corners. “It’s cute how you think you’re scary,” he said. “But pal, you know you gotta get outta my bed.”
Riff, who didn’t start things he didn’t mean to finish, had been fully prepared to fight and—judging by the overall look and shape of Tony—lose, but Tony’s unexpected hint of a smile and offhand use of “pal” threw him.
“Size of you,” Riff muttered with a frown. “I guess it’d be a hazard to have you on the top bunk anyway.” He took his time rolling out of the bed and climbing up to the top one, and he dropped Tony’s sheets and blanket down onto the floor carelessly. Tony tossed a pillow up and managed to hit Riff in the face with it, despite not looking to aim.
“Where’d you get them sleep clothes?” Riff asked.
“Commissary,” Tony said, as he set to remaking his bed. “T-shirts are two dollars and sweatpants three.”
“You gotta buy them?”
“Ain’t nothing much in here comes for free,” Tony said. “I got some extra money in commissary I can loan you if you need it. Until you get a visitor who can put funds in yours.”
“You must got a nice mom or something,” Riff said bitterly. “One that’s real soft on you.” It was a childish reaction, literally – a jealousy he could remember feeling from the age of six, each and every time he encountered a boy who was better dressed, better fed, or in any way showing signs of being better cared for than him.
“Something like that,” Tony said.
“Gotta tell you, pal,” Riff said. “Kind of suspicious. You offering.”
“I been in here a little while,” Tony said. “And I gotta tell you pal, your time’s better spent making friends than enemies.”
Riff stared up at the ceiling for a while, not having a response for that or much else to say. Tony was finished making his bed and lay down on it, silent, and eventually Riff got curious and peered over the edge down at him. He was reading a book.
“Lights out in another thirty minutes or so,” Tony said, glancing up over the top of his book, as if he had sensed Riff looking. “You can get a book for yourself at the library tomorrow.”
“I ain’t much of a reader,” Riff said.
“That’s what I thought too,” Tony said. “But it gets pretty boring in here. And library’s got books like I ain’t never seen before. You’ll find something.”
Riff tried to make out the book jacket but couldn’t from the angle Tony was holding it at. He didn’t want to seem too interested, so he flopped back down on his bed. After lights out, Riff climbed down from the bed and stripped out of his prison uniform so as not to have to sleep in the uncomfortably rough fabric. He climbed back up in nothing but his drawers and socks, no comment from Tony. He wasn’t used to so early a bedtime and had trouble falling asleep. The night felt colder as the hours dwindled by, so he wrapped himself tighter in the thin blanket and listened to the soft, snuffling noises of Tony’s breathing until he joined him in sleep.
Tony was gone from the cell early to prep for breakfast. In his absence, Riff fished out the book from beneath the bed. The title was Animal Farm and Riff flipped through it to see what it was about. He was farsighted and couldn’t read much without getting a headache, but he got the general gist and figured Tony must be some kind of simpleton to be reading a children’s book about talking animals, so it was a good thing Riff was there now to look after him.
***
Riff got assigned to a work detail clearing trail in the state-owned portion of the Adirondacks. There were far worse assignments—he could be stuck scrubbing toilets—and to some, the opportunity to be outside for several hours a day was a welcome taste of freedom, but Riff found plenty of reason to complain.
“It’s fucking May and they still got snow and ice up there,” Riff said morosely to Tony over dinner. “The last of it’s melting now, but that just means it’s muddy like you wouldn’t believe.”
“Someone take a swing at you out there?” Tony asked.
Riff raised his hand to the left side of his face, which did feel tender and was probably purpling. He told Tony how one or more of them slipped in the mud while going up a steep trail and how the whole sorry chain gang got dragged down to the bottom as a result, and not knowing who to blame, they all started fighting each other until the guards broke them up. “It ain’t funny,” he said to Tony, who was snickering.
They had all been caked in mud when they returned and hadn’t even been allowed back inside without first getting hosed off—the water an icy, high-pressure blast that left Riff’s skin raw and pink. He was allowed a shower after, but the prison showers never really approached a satisfactory temperature and generally were a place to get in and out of as quickly as possible. A chill ran through him still, and he gripped his fork in a tight fist to stop his hand from shaking.
Tony, who always piled his tray high with food from the kitchen as opposed to having to wait in the serving line like the rest of them, placed a second piece of cake on Riff’s tray. “You want a switch?” Tony asked. “I wouldn’t mind being out there.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Riff said with annoyance. “We can’t switch.”
“Sure we can,” Tony said. “Old Boar won’t mind you in the kitchen. Long as you do what you’re told.”
“Boar?” Riff asked. “What kind of guard goes by that?”
“Not a guard,” Tony said. “Ain’t no guards running things back there. Boar’s a grumpy old bastard, but he’s a convict like us. Been here going on fifteen years. Kitchen’s his little kingdom. He likes speaking Polish more than English, and I know enough from living with my grandma, that’s how come I end up there.”
“I ain’t a Polack,” Riff pointed out.
“Yeah but Boar likes me. He won’t mind. And I’ll teach ya a little Polish, so you can keep up.”
“Forget it,” Riff said with a shake of his head. “Sounds like more trouble than it’s worth.”
But Tony didn’t drop it. At night in their cell, Tony reached his arms up to grip the bars that covered the narrow, high window. He pulled himself up in an easy show of strength to peer out, his feet dangling off the ground. Sun had dropped, and from the top bunk Riff saw only shadows and the first stars appearing in the sky, but he knew what Tony was trying to see. In daylight the window offered a clear view of the mountains. “Wouldn’t mind being out there,” Tony repeated, so wistful Riff’s heart damn near broke.
“Tell you what,” Riff said. “Happy to switch, but how you figure it’s gonna work with the guards on my side of things?”
“Easy,” Tony said, dropping down from the window and turning to smile up at Riff, who was sitting with his legs dangling over the top bunk. “I show up in a work coat and hat, whose to know I ain’t you?”
“Anyone with eyes,” Riff said.
“Guards can’t keep up,” Tony said. “There’s thousands of us and they switch shifts all the time. You and me ain’t that far off in height. Keep our heads down nobody will know the difference. Guards got bigger fish to fry than us.”
“Someone might rat on you.”
“Nah,” Tony said with the kind of confidence a guy must get from looking like him. “Nobody will.”
Nobody did, and Tony was still windswept and ruddy-cheeked when he went through the serving line at dinner the next night. No sooner had Riff sat down across from him did Tony open his mouth to tell Riff eagerly about all the waterfalls and bubbling brooks he’d seen overflowing from snow melt, as if Riff hadn’t seen them himself just the day before. He told Riff excitedly about a deer, and a porcupine, and whole family of beavers he’d seen, like he’d been on a sightseeing tour and not chained up to a half a dozen other guys doing the backbreaking labor of digging up stumps and boulders from the dirt to clear new trails.
“Do you fish?” Tony asked.
“Fuck no,” Riff said.
“Used to fish in the East River,” Tony said. “Off Hurricane Point. Kept me and my grandma fed from April to November. But I bet the fish from the rivers and lakes here taste better. Like how the air up here smells better, tastes better.”
“You planning to come back here sometime recreationally ?” Riff asked.
“No, I guess not.” Tony said. “It’s just — I really like them mountains. Never been this far outside the city before.”
“You’re kind of peculiar,” Riff said.
“For liking fresh air?” Tony laughed.
“For swapping with me. Kitchen’s gotta be the best work there is. You know you can eat anything you want back there? I had three cans of peaches before lunchtime.”
“Christ,” Tony said. “Your teeth are gonna fall out you keep that up. They’re packed in syrup.”
Peaches weren’t the only thing of interest to Riff back in the kitchen. It didn’t take any amount of cleverness to figure out Old Boar had contraband hidden around. To help get through the drudgery of peeling potatoes or chopping onions or doing dishes, he noticed several of the guys smoking cigarettes—a brand that wasn’t sold in commissary—and drinking straight out of vinegar bottles—a liquid that sure wasn’t vinegar. He swiped a bottle to bring back to the cell later that night, kept it hidden on him until light’s out, and then lowered it down from the top bunk to Tony proudly.
“You smuggled this out on day one?” Tony asked. “You ain’t a coward that’s for sure. Boar would kill you if you got caught with this.”
“You never taken one outta the kitchen before?” Riff asked.
“Maybe once or twice,” Tony admitted. “But I’m trying — I don’t want to drink so much. My father, he drank a lot. And I don’t wanna be like him.”
“What’s in it?” Riff asked. “I ain’t tried it yet.”
“Potato vodka,” Tony said.
“Have a sip with me,” Riff whispered. They needed to keep quiet after light’s out. “One little drink.”
“Alright,” Tony agreed. “Get down here.”
They sat side by side on the bed, backs leaning against the cement wall, wearing matching t-shirts and sweatpants – Riff’s purchased for him from the commissary by Tony. Tony took the first sip from the bottle and nearly choked on it, spluttering and covering his mouth to keep quiet.
“What’s wrong with you?” Riff asked. “It been that long since you had a drink?”
“Guess so,” Tony said and handed the bottle to Riff.
Riff took a swig and spit it out immediately all over Tony. The bottle, which he was sure had been from the right stash, was actually just straight vinegar.
“Guess I deserved that,” Tony said good naturedly. He pulled his t-shirt off, wiped his face with it and threw it on the floor. “I think if a guard caught you sneaking around with that bottle they’d be more confused than anything.”
“I’ll get the right one next time,” Riff said, disappointed.
“Don’t risk it pal,” Tony said. “You don’t wanna prolong your stay here.”
Although he no longer had any excuse to, and although Tony’s bare chest emanated a sort of danger, Riff stayed sitting next to Tony on the bottom bunk, and Tony let him. They talked about their old neighborhoods back home, Riff wondering what was left of his, Tony saying he wouldn’t necessarily think it a bad thing if there was less of his to go back to. They talked about their gangs, the guys who were reliable, the ones who weren’t, the rumbles they’d won and lost, the cops they outsmarted and outran until they didn’t. Riff said he’d been making time with the prettiest girl on the west side, Velma, but she didn’t strike him as the type who would sit around and wait for him to get out and anyway girls were an awful lot of work to keep happy. Tony said in his experience the effort with girls was usually worth it, and that he had an Italian girl from South Brooklyn, Graziella, and it used to be fun going round to enemy territory to pick her up. Each thought the other’s gang sounded odd.
“So you were all Polacks?” Riff asked.
“Yeah,” Tony said. “Ain’t your gang all — Irish?” he guessed.
“No, we got all kinds. Irish, Italians, Greeks, Polacks too. Some guys more than one thing.”
“Sounds peaceable,” Tony said. “Who did you even rumble with then?”
“PRs mostly,” Riff said.
“Huh,” Tony said. “Never knew a Puerto Rican gang.”
“Only a matter of time,” Riff said. “Maybe they just ain’t started up in Brooklyn yet.”
“Maybe,” Tony said. “But I’m done with all that. Time to grow up, right?”
Feeling respectful of Tony’s opinion, Riff didn’t disagree. They talked a little about family. Tony said he worried about his grandmother, felt real bad about being locked up when he was the only one in the world she had left. The sorry woman had outlived her three children, one son dead from illness, one son dead from the war, and Tony’s mother. Tony didn’t say what happened to his mother. Riff said he could barely remember his mother, but he had a gold chain of hers that he used to wear around his wrist and was now somewhere in the bag of possessions he’d get back when he got out. Tony’s voice was a soft, soft rumble, and he said he’d be eligible for parole by the end of summer, talked about what he wanted to do when he got out, which was mostly to make good, find more steady work, maybe finish schooling. Sounds boring, Riff said, and Tony agreed that it probably would be boring. He was respectful of Riff’s opinion too. Riff thought he’d never had time pass so well while sober and only reluctantly climbed back up to his own bed when he saw Tony’s eyes start to droop shut.
So it went from then on. Tony happy to be working atop a mountain in the deep, verdant woods, eagles circling in the sky above, and a crisp wind that felt like it purified him as it blew through him. Riff content enough in the kitchen where there was plenty of downtime between meals and no shortage of sweet things to eat and cigarettes to smoke. From the loading dock, where he was sent to fetch deliveries for the kitchen, Riff would stop and gaze at the mountains, imagine Tony hidden beneath the trees, and anticipate him coming back smelling pleasantly earthy like dirt and moss or clear running water and sunlight because Tony was right – everything did smell better up there.
At night, they found plenty more to talk about—it was like they had each been saving up all their words to say to the other. Sometimes their tongues were loosened from a swallow of vodka, sometimes not. They talked about the other guys in the kitchen, who Tony knew too, speculated what they might be locked up for.
“I could be in for murder,” Tony said. “The kid I busted up — one more hit maybe, he woulda died.”
“But he didn’t” Riff said. “Don’t beat yourself up over it.”
They talked about the guys they knew who did die, one dead from drugs, one from a switchblade, one from a subway car he stepped in front of on purpose. They talked about movies they’d seen and liked, what kind of car they’d like to own, the dog the Russians sent up into space and how it was only a matter of time before they sent a human up there too.
“I wouldn’t mind going up there,” Tony said while looking past Riff towards the window, the same way he had said he wouldn’t mind being up in the mountains.
“You’re crazy,” Riff said. “It’s a one way trip. Dog never came back.”
Tony shrugged like it didn’t matter to him, and Riff’s chest ached.
Sometimes they’d get to talking so late Tony would fall asleep on Riff’s shoulder, and Riff would stay in place, as still as he’d ever been in his life, until he could tell he was on the verge of doing something stupid and then he would slip away carefully so that Tony collapsed gently on the bed. In the mornings, Riff was first awake because he needed to leave early to prep breakfast, and he watched Tony sleep—tangled in the bedsheet, the rising sun casting a soft glow on him—and he felt strange, felt like he’d been waiting his whole life for Tony to come along and now here he was, felt like he’d never known it was possible to want someone so badly.
***
At the end of June, Ice and Action came to visit Riff, apologized for not coming earlier, put money they’d pooled together in his commissary account, updated him on the state of things in the west side. Riff struggled to care, too busy thinking about the mundane details of how it would work exactly to pay Tony back, if it was possible to move funds from one commissary account to another, or if he should just buy Tony five packs of cigarettes and twenty candy bars.
“You look —” Iced paused before finishing, “healthy.”
Riff didn’t have any idea how his looks were faring in prison—he only saw enough of his reflection in the cloudy and warped bathroom mirrors to shave—but he was suddenly worried about it. “You trying to say I look bad or good?” he demanded.
“Could use a haircut,” Action said, and as Riff started to compulsively yank on his hair, which did feel long, added, “Relax. Who you got to impress in here anyway?”
Riff forced his hands down and asked about Velma because he thought he ought to. Both Ice and Action started to look shifty, which Riff took to mean one of them was keeping her company in a more than friendly way. He didn’t mind, not really, but he pretended to later that night to get Tony to drink with him, sitting side by side on the bottom bunk, fishing for sympathy.
“That ain’t right,” Tony said, shaking his head. “Plenty of girls in the world without going after yours. Don’t seem like something a friend would do.”
“What about your girl?” Riff asked. “Graziella. She ever come visit you?”
“Just the once,” Tony said. “Could be more if didn’t take five fucking hours to get here. I told her I don’t like her making that trip. She’s a great girl though. Checks in on my grandma, writes me.”
“She’s waiting for you then,” Riff said, though he already knew that to be the case. Riff had once snuck back into their cell during the day to read the letters Graziella had written, which Tony kept folded up in a single envelope tucked beneath his mattress. Each letter included a countdown of the months left until Tony was eligible for parole, but they were otherwise uninteresting – full of details about which girls Graziella liked or didn’t like at her secretarial school and conveying messages from Tony’s grandmother, who was very concerned that Tony wasn’t getting enough to eat in prison and that other inmates were picking on him. Riff figured the old lady was half blind if she was worried about either of those things.
“Aw,” Tony said and threw an arm over Riff’s shoulders, shook him a little. “You’re better off without this Velma. She can’t be too smart, choosing some other guy over you. Anyway, it’s a lot of pressure Grazi being so good to me. I’m thinking she’ll want to get married once I’m out.”
“Married?” Riff asked, absorbing the idea about as well as if he’d swallowed a razor blade, but he played if off, said, “Christ. Now I just feel sorry for you. Least I’m not about to have an Italian mother-in-law,” and he shoved Tony, who fell back on the bed laughing lightly.
The strange thing was Riff followed him, or Tony brought Riff down with him, and easy as anything, Riff was lying on top of Tony, considerably more intimate than they’d ever been before. He hesitated, but Tony didn’t push him off. Tony raised his hand and ran it through Riff’s hair like he was trying to sooth where Riff had agitatedly pulled on it earlier. Lights were out, but panels of moonlight shone through their barred window and illuminated Tony, who was looking so pretty and smiling so fondly that Riff couldn’t help but to kiss him.
“It’s just a prison thing,” Riff said because he thought he needed an explanation for putting his mouth on Tony’s and for his hands creeping under Tony’s t-shirt and for his dick being hard. “I ain’t no queer.”
“I know,” Tony said. “You don’t gotta explain. I been in here a while. Ain’t my first rodeo.”
Riff wanted to ask what in the hell Tony meant by that, but Tony took Riff’s hand and guided it down to his erect cock, and Riff curled his hand around it and forgot to ask anything.
They went at it in silence by necessity—noise traveled too well through the long halls of the prison—and when Riff was so near to release he thought he might die before reaching it, he lay back and pressed the pillow over his face, suffocating himself into quiet. He kept himself covered that way long after arching his back and coming in Tony’s shockingly willing, warm mouth, until Tony, amused and lowly murmuring assurances, prodded Riff into releasing the pillow and then nudged him gently upwards, a broad hand to the back of his neck, to slide the pillow beneath his head. Riff woke in the morning with his pants still around his ankles but covered by the blanket, and Tony gone but not far. Tony was on the top bunk, asleep on his stomach, long limbs spilling over the edge of the bed.
Riff was half hard just looking at Tony, but there was nothing to be done about it in daylight, and he went to the kitchen where he was distracted and useless for anything but doing dishes. In the yard during downtime, he smoked half a pack of cigarettes, blowing out forceful smoke clouds while looking up at the mountains. He picked a fight out of boredom—a minor one, the guards broke them up before either could inflict any damage on the other.
Only one thing occupied his mind the whole day, leading him down a path of somewhat creative ideation, and at night he brought back a bottle not of vodka or vinegar but of oil, gave it to Tony, who looked at it and asked, “You done this before?”
“Yeah,” Riff said. He hadn’t, but he didn’t think an instruction manual was needed.
“You got a preference which way?” Tony asked, a question Riff hadn’t been prepared for. He’d only been picturing it one kind of way.
“Fuck me,” Riff said, both because he wanted it and because Tony didn’t strike him as the type of guy who would go for it the other way around. He turned out to be wrong about that. Tony seemed to be up for pretty much anything Riff wanted, but Riff wants were so dark and deep he thought they might eclipse the sun—to fuck Tony and to be fucked by Tony, to never leave the prison cell again, to die in there, to be buried alive in there, suffocated beneath rubble, a death he imagined would feel like a familiar embrace after all the times he smothered himself by burying his face in a pillow or in Tony’s chest to stay silent.
The way they had been spending nights talking to each other—long conversations winding this way and that, delivered conspiratorially, barely above whisper-level, and satisfying some shared hunger for connection—was not dissimilar to how they spent nights fucking. Except some nights it was much more urgent and hurried, and Tony said once, lying spread eagle, wrung out from a brief but intense fucking, “Christ. I don’t know what makes it so good with you. Must be something in the water on the west side.” Riff was furious at the reminder there’d been other times for Tony, but whatever look of outrage shone on his face, Tony laughed at, and he pulled Riff down next to him, saying confidently, like they’d known each other for much longer than they had, that Riff was quick to anger but quick to forgive too.
There were only the two of them in the cell, and outside of the cell, few had anything to say to them. Plenty knew or suspected what was between them, but it was just a prison arrangement and not an unusual one. Most inmates at Clinton were playing at relationships of one form or another—sometimes fatherly ones like Old Boar looking after the younger guys in the kitchen, sometimes brotherly ones, like the guys who drifted into loosely formed gangs—everyone looking for a substitute for what they were missing on the outside.
Riff couldn’t name exactly what he was to Tony, but within the confines of the prison, he didn’t mind what others might call it. He felt almost proud, and on weekends when Tony didn’t have work duty, Riff started a couple of fights in the yard just for the pleasure of seeing Tony finish them for him. Tony was thrillingly protective, but Riff stopped when he saw Tony regretted fighting, the same way he regretted drinking too much. If Tony wanted to keep clean, Riff could do the same. The only thing that discomfited Riff was the ease of it all. Nothing good in his life had ever come so easy. Nothing good like Tony had ever come at all. He tried to remind himself that Tony would be eligible for parole at the end of summer and off to marry Graziella. He dwelled on how being locked up hundreds of miles away from home was the happiest he’d ever been in his life and how unlikely it was Tony felt the same way.
***
The last week of July, Tony got word that his grandmother had taken ill and was in the hospital. By the first week of August she was dead, and Tony put in a request for an early parole hearing so he could go to her burial. Riff didn’t have any idea how to comfort Tony, who alternated between painfully, visibly distraught and dead-eyed and stone-faced, saying, “I didn’t never do right by her. And now I never will.”
An early parole hearing was granted, and Riff felt like someone had his chest compressed in a vice, the ache unbearable. He skipped out on work duty but stopped by the kitchen to swipe two bottles of vodka, though only one was needed to drink himself into a stupor. He hid away inside the prison church, where he was discovered passed out by a nun, who alerted a guard. The situation caused some confusion at first and then an uproar, leading to the discovery that Riff and Tony had traded work assignments and to a search of the kitchen where all the hidden contraband was seized. Tony was denied early parole and further punished to wait until October to be eligible again. Old Boar lost the run of the kitchen. Riff spent a good 24 hours in the infirmary semi-unconscious and when he got out, he was moved to another cell at the far end of the prison from the one he had shared with Tony and put back to work outdoors clearing trail, where Tony wasn’t.
“Did you do it on purpose?” Tony asked when Riff tracked him down and tried to talk to him. “To keep me here?”
“Yes,” Riff said. It was a cruel and an incredibly vain conclusion for Tony to jump to, but the thing was, Riff wasn’t sure he was wrong to think the worst of him.
Tony hit him but looked immediately regretful and staunched the flow of blood from Riff’s nose with his own shirt before a guard pulled him away. They didn’t see each other except maybe in passing after that, and it was like they were strangers to each other, anonymous faces amongst the other thousand prisoners. In October Tony was gone, his parole granted.
Old Boar was eventually returned to the kitchen because it was too much of a mess without him, and with his return, Riff started to be denied food in the serving line as a punishment. He subsisted on candy bars and bags of chips purchased from the commissary. More than one guy approached Riff because he had a reputation as someone amenable to taking a dick in the mouth or up the ass, and Riff let more than one fuck him in the dirty bathroom stalls but couldn’t say why. It was rough and often painful, and every single encounter left him feeling worse than he did before. Chained up working on the mountain amidst the decay of fall and the birds departing south, he thought of Tony wanting to fish in the clear streams and tried to will him into appearing. In winter, his work crew no longer went to the mountains but shoveled the heaps of snow covering the prison grounds. From the way his clothes hung off of him, Riff guessed he was skinnier than ever. He felt chilled to the bone from the bitter wind, felt the swirling snow and ice bite right through him. He felt about as bad as he ever had in his life, but then he was in prison, and he shouldn’t have expected a good thing to last.