JImmy Boy

He sidles in, rocking in his pocket a careful-wound spool, and a pair of dirty old tweezers he nicked from the nurses when the cops didn't show. It's his point of personal, personified pride, and if he ever were to misplace it, he would instantly liquefy on the common room floor, next to where Miss Paisley barfed last Sunday Mass. Or week before? Take it from me, you can't tell time off the smell of sick, so it's best if you start carrying a watch, though of course, in here, they won't let you. That's when you grab a fistful of chalk-gray hair, and pulp your way out of this joint. Mind your clean socks around the mess that you've made. Wouldn't wanna drag outside all that nasty, lumpy, thick blood-like-mush that's inside people and of people, only when at their worst, only for people like me.
Me, I'm fast. I'm clean. I'm hardly ever sick, and mostly only when the situation calls for it. Like when I steal a piece of news from one of the orderlies, or that time Pete slammed my back so hard into the concrete pillar, I lost my nerve and shit out my guts. I was a mess then, sure, but mostly, I'm clean, which don't mean not angry.
It ain't easy, but I've come up with a few tricks to keep yourself sane in this hellhole. Keep saying I'll print them up sometime and nail them to the kitchen door, my own smithy-soul reform, singed in blood and monkey's ashes. When and if they ever let me use the fucking printer. Course, I'd first gotta learn how to read, 'cept I knows how to read, only not words, and the others here, they ain't learned to make out legible the language I made up inside my head. I keep tryna teach them. I love them, I love 'em, but I try to tell them and my mouth slobbers, so I punch out my own lights to slice down the cost and save up for a Playboy Mansion the day I'm finally outta here. I'd treat 'em like proper women, if they looked at me like anything other than a cricket-swallow toadie. I love my ladies. And my Lord.
But I'm telling you about him, this ain't about my mamma, god rest her, it's him and the spool and the tweezers and the heart a bunch of skinheads tore out of him in the calle once when he was abroad. All parents pray their kid comes back home safe from battle, except not all do. Not all can, and this the story of one that didn't.
We never learn just what they took from him, though my room's right next to his, and sometimes when I'm sleeping cozied up to the wall to keep myself from sodomy, I hear him on the other side bawling. Slurping while he sucks his thumb. Wishing he were dead.

He worries they'll take away his thumb if he don't behave himself. The idiot's worried about the finger, but not about the tweezer. Plays his own worst enemy, bets against the house out of pure spite.
'Cept he's quiet today, and the saloon like we calls it is sleepy and peaceful. It's the perfect summer day, and the sun warm in the window-catchers, and my toes curl and pounce on account o' flat feet. I'm working on getting 'em strong, see, for when I gets out, so I can run and don't gotta stop for nobody no more. It's then I hears it.
She don't scream. She won't so much as wince. In fact, I wouldna know she'd done anything of notice at all if it weren't for that tiny involuntary kick of her left foot that kicks over the chair and startles Jimmy in the act. He's leaning over her, see, straddling her hip with his knees, biting her nose to keep her in place, tom-cat in heat with one eye missing. He is, I can tell by the hunch-out shoulderblades, completely immersed in what he is doing. He's a proper craftsman and a gentleman, Jimmy is, but he don't like loud noises on account of them skinheads.

The room ices over.

I stop rummaging my nose. Across from me, Mrs. Paisley looks slowly up from her rag-mag. Underneath, pinned by thighs like lustful pitbulls, Carrie-Anne, that sweet hippie baby of the low valleys, for the first time, whimpers. It's only Jimmy keeps his silence, begins to turn very slowly, follows along the bare dawdle of ingrown hairs and burst veins that's her leg, and over to the chair. Is about to lose his cool. Flip his lid. Blow the roof off this joint. I can read it in his eyes, we're tight, me and Jimmy.
Lets out a long, low horse exhale, then saying nothing, turns back to his woman who ain't his 'cause Carrie-Anne's a child of the noughties and only believes in filthy backdoor fucking no decent man would touch with a ten foot pole and calls it free lovin'. And Jimmy ain't nothing if not a gentleman. Still. You gets what I mean.
Returns to her, does Jimmy, with the pitch-perfect composure of a Sydney Operahouse conductor, looks expectant a moment, then wedges his fat, bare knuckle in between two canines and cautions her not to bite, or he'll bust up her face good. Slides in the tweezers. To one side, I catches the bloodied, unwound black spool Jimmy uses to file down stubborn gums. Carrie-Anne don't even whimper. She opens obediently and it's a miracle she ain't swallowed it in all the commotion. All it takes is one last, hearty, bon voyage pluck, and the tooth comes out clean, almost bloodless. Makes you think it's a prop, a red herring, Jimmy holds it up for her, then all the rest of us to see, face beaming with pride. The satisfaction of a job well done is a rare token in this hellhole.

Me and Jimmy are still like two statues. Catch his eye, know he don't enjoy it. Jimmy ain't no maniac, but it's weeks since she been begging him. Carrie-Anne says when you lets go o' the past, it's gotta hurt a little.
We stare at each other, all us three, and the moment goes on forever, then stops abruptly. I glance over at the ruckus, see Miss Paisley flapping together her hands like a seal, clapping like a mad ole cow at the curtain-down of Othello.
With a heave and a ho, I pick up my weary bones, 'cause someone's gotta and the others are bloodied and still coming off their high. Walk up to the window speaker for where the sightless eyes hover and watch, press my lips against the grill, feel the stench of my own acrid midday breath.
"Uhm. Hello? Just wannae say, like, Miss Paisley's got her hands on one them rag-mags again. Dunno how. You knows how she gets. All agitated like. I'm not tryna tell you how to do your job like, but maybe you should take it from 'er now. Please."
Then return to my chair. Ignore Miss Paisley's dead glare. Wait. Hope they come soon. The room still smells of barf. From last time.