Glass Cell Read Online Free Page B

had a second shower at noon, and he also shined his heavy shoes. He took as much trouble with himself as he had for his wedding, and he considered telling Hazel that and decided not to, because she might not think it very funny. Carter pressed his baggy trousers in a room down the hall from the ward which had an iron and an ironing board and a sink in it. Then he put on the white shirt that inmates were allowed to wear on Sundays, if they had a visitor. It was a short-sleeved shirt with overlong collar tabs—inmates were not allowed ties because they might hang themselves, Carter supposed—but at least the shirt was white, and a change from flesh color was a treat.
    He looked at himself in the mirror by the ward door, and tried to see himself as Hazel would. There were depressions under his eyes, though they were not dark. Certainly his face was thinner. And he looked at least thirty-five, he thought, not thirty. Even his lips seemed thinner and more taut, even his head narrower, but that was due to the prison haircut, of course. His blue eyes looked out at him like the eyes of another person, tired, hard, and vaguely suspicious.
    Dr. Cassini walked up and slapped him on the shoulder. “All dolled up, eh, Philip?”
    Carter nodded, smiling, and suddenly his heart began to beat faster with excitement. He had a feeling of giddy anticipation, as if time had turned back and he were about to call for Hazel on a date, rushing back down to Gramercy Park in a taxi with a box of flowers across his lap, running up her front steps two at a time—and Hazel opening the brown door with the brass knob before he touched the knocker.
    “Want another shot?”
    “No, I’m okay, thanks.” His thumbs were starting to hurt a little, but he didn’t want another shot now, at 12:30. He had had a shot at 10, and he thought it should last until 1:50, when Hazel’s visit would be over. By ten past 1, the jabs from the pulses in his thumbs were growing more acute, and Carter was tempted to get a quick shot from Pete, which he could have had just for the asking, but he decided to stick by his little vow to himself that he wouldn’t, just before he saw Hazel. He had Pete bandage his thumbs so they would not shock her.
    He went down in the elevator with his pass signed by Dr. Cassini and the guard named Clark in the hospital corridor. Carter had to show the pass three times, each time acquiring a new signature or initials, before he reached his old A-block, at the front end of which was the entrance to the visiting room. By then he was beginning to feel weak in the knees.
    Carter saw Hanky’s blobby figure walking ahead of him and along the left side of the corridor, heading for their old cell, probably. Carter slowed his walk so that he would not overtake Hanky or be seen by him. Carter peered through the bars as he walked toward them, but he could not identify Hazel among the figures in the waiting area. The lobby, or waiting room, had benches like church pews with an aisle down the middle. At the back near the outside door was a coffee-vending machine and a candy-and-gum machine. Between the cell block and the waiting room was an area of some twenty feet square enclosed on two sides by walls and on the other two sides by bars that went from floor to ceiling. This enclosure was called the cage. There were always two guards in the cage, and the two doors were never opened at the same time, nor was a visitor ever allowed in the cage while an inmate was in it, even if the inmate was only handing the outgoing mailbag to a guard. In the cage, to the right as one faced the waiting room, was a locked door through which visitors were admitted to the visiting room one floor below the block. Inmates who had visitors were admitted by a door near the cage in the corridor.
    Carter saw Hazel when he was about twenty feet from the cage. She was standing at the tall desk on the right in the waiting room, showing her identification card to the officer there.