MUG SHOT

by Rebecca Tiger

Author's Note: "Mug Shot" is a manual for understanding the emotional ties that keep the center and the margins linked despite repeated stress fractures. 

Anthony’s long slender toes curve over the edge of the dark flip flops he wears with a black tuxedo, his moustache is full, and his thick shiny almost-black hair hangs on his shoulders, feathered, as was the fashion in the late 1970s. The photo captures Anthony’s movie star looks, the beauty that allowed him to cross borders, smile or talk or brood his way inside. No rules seemed to apply to him, but he did start to push too much. One night he broke a window to get into his cousin’s house, looking for some food and a warm bed. He found imitations of comfort in the jail cell he went to when his cousin wanted to show him a lesson. Many people tried to teach Anthony a lesson, but he was impervious to learning. I suppose I was too.
 
For years, I tried to get through to him. There was no reason to live the way he did, I reasoned. He said I was a lucky man, with a wife who loved me and a good son. I told him he could have that too if he wanted it. Hell, he could have his pick of beautiful women and there were more than a few in our town! I was Anthony’s only visitor when they sent him to Cleveland for rehab. When he saw me, his smile was genuine. His mouthful of pearly whites was out of place in the decrepit facility where the people shuffling by with greasy hair and dirty robes gave a whole new meaning to down and out. Anthony told me how great he was doing. That he was making friends. This worried me because I doubted that any of the guys inside were the best source of companionship. But Anthony really did, in his way, spin straw into gold and that’s something I always liked about him. He said the food was delicious, as he patted his belly. When one nurse with thick legs and white shoes that squeaked walked by, he gave her a flirtatious smile, said she looked especially fine that day. Her blush made me wonder if even here, where his true nature was on display, he had wormed his way into her heart. Maybe it was because he was here. He told me he’d be out any day, that his public defender was working on his case right now. He didn’t talk about how he would stay sober. We both knew that wasn’t in his plan. When I got up to leave, I told him I was there for him. Most of our other friends had abandoned him.
 
I liked to think I was the one person Anthony could be truthful with – I’d known him since kindergarten – but I came to realize I was fooling myself. You could say that I, too, fell under his spell. When I told Anthony my mother was dying, he was truly sad. She had liked him, always calling him a “handsome scoundrel,” even when he was too young to be either. Maybe she was able to see into the future but even so, it would have broken her heart to know he was locked up. I never told her. Anthony’s mother had headed north, leaving him and his father, when he was five years old.  “How is that boy supposed to fend for himself?” she asked though he had a dad and an aunt who cared for him, several cousins who thought the world of him until they only saw him as a disappointment.
 
One night, it must have been about six months after I visited Anthony, my wife and I were awoken by the phone ringing at 3 am. It was a sheriff asking me if I owned a blue Ford Taurus. I did, technically, though it was the car my teenage son used. “We’re fishing it out of Brandywine Creek right now.” My heart was racing.
 
“Is he okay?” I blurted out.
 
My wife started crying, as if she knew before I did that something terrible had happened. She got up and ran out of the room.
 
“He’s very drunk, but did remember your number,” the sheriff said. “We’ve got him locked up.”
 
That didn’t quite make sense to me. I know parents can be surprised by their kids, but my boy was solid and smart, due in a large part to his mother. Maybe he was sad about his grandmother? It’s true I didn’t talk to him much, perhaps caught up in my own thoughts about my impending life as a motherless child. But my wife did converse with him about it, and she told me he was doing okay. When my wife came back in our bedroom, I was putting jeans on over my pajamas, rushing to get to our boy, but she said, “Jake’s in his room. He’s okay. He’s alive.” I was confused. Tired.
 
“So, who took our car?”
 
“Take a wild guess,” my wife said as she flopped into bed, pulling the covers over her head. I could hear her stifled sobs under the blankets. A deep cry is what I needed too but I hadn’t done that in years, so I envied her as I finished getting dressed.
 
When I got to the jail, Anthony was in what passed for the drunk tank: a room with a cot, a bucket next to it, and a guard with a direct view of this guy writhing and retching. He looked up at me through bleary eyes. His face brightened when he saw me, a large smile on his otherwise haggard face. It broke my heart, right there and then but I had to leave him, just turn around and walk away. I had kept him in my life, hoping to give him stability, but he violated that proximity. He needed someone to rely on but didn’t I too? I went out to my car, sat in the driver’s seat, and bawled. I wept for all that I was losing, my best friend and my mother. It’s felt like I was walking a tightrope and there was simply no way I could make it to the other end. I did eventually, bruised but intact.
 
I’m not lying when I say I mostly forgot about Anthony for about fifteen years. Life just started moving so quickly, I could barely get a handle on it. I mean, he came into my mind now and then, but I let it go. My wife had said good riddance to that friendship, and I respected that she didn’t want any mention of the man who stole her son’s car. While it didn’t seem like that big a deal to me, whenever I thought about checking in with him, I remembered how distraught she was thinking her son was dead and decided against it. Jake was the first in my family to go to college then got a job in New York City; he really did us proud, and I like to think he made his grandmother, in heaven now, proud too. I should have felt content. I was content. But I’m also someone who is always in process, never quite there.
 
When I found the photo of Anthony, in a large pile of crap my wife told me to sift through or she was going to throw it out, it was like seeing a ghost. But I knew he was alive. I’d heard this from his cousins who kept their distance but also tabs on him. They told me he was living in an SRO type place right next to the suspension bridge. That sounded about right. Yes, curiosity got the better of me, so I drove down one day and no I didn’t tell my wife. I intended to just pass by but when I did, there was a group of guys hanging out so I pulled up and asked them if they knew someone named Anthony. Of course they did! They hooted and hollered, screaming his name. “Anthony! Anthony!” I looked across the road as a handsome man, tall with gray hair and a wide smile, headed my way.
 
Our reunion is what you might expect. He didn’t mention my car and I didn’t either. He was upbeat, happy, living in this house that I later found out is where the city put indigent drunks. He had a thriving business, he told me, repairing umbrellas, certainly a dying art when a decent one costs $5 on Amazon, and a new girlfriend. He had the same aquiline nose, the devilish smile I remember, his hair was thick and full. Anthony still dodged and swerved, his eyes darting around as if someone was on his trail or a better opportunity was lurking just outside of the frame, but he did seem glad to see me.
 
“You gotta meet my girl,” he said.
 
This surprised me though it shouldn’t have. Anthony was never without a woman and why would his alcoholism or financial situation or subpar living arrangements make any difference?
 
Anthony called up to a window: “Carla, come meet my best buddy!” How could he call me that after so much time? Yet, I was the one who went looking for him.
 
A few minutes later, an ample lady exited the building and headed towards us. She was nothing like the babes he got in the past, so that had changed, but like them, she was at his beck and call, running when he said to, no doubt jumping when he commanded her to go higher.
 
“This is my woman,” he said, putting his arm around Carla’s waist. They were beaming. His smile still gleamed after all these years. Most of her teeth were missing. Just gone. It reminded me of a Halloween costume I had once, where I was a hobo and put black wax on my top front teeth to look like I didn’t have any. I smiled back at them. I was genuinely happy, so I said, “Let’s get a photo!” I stood next to them and pulled out my phone, yelling “SAY CHEESE!” Anthony roguishly mugged for the camera like a kid, his arm around Carla. I was on his other side grinning. When I looked at the photo later, I noticed that my eyes were glistening with admiration for the man in the middle, who still wore flip flops a size too small. 




Rebecca Tiger teaches sociology at Middlebury College and in jails in Vermont and lives part-time in New York City. Her stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net and have appeared in Bending Genres, BULL, Cowboy Jamboree, Ghost Parachute, Pithead Chapel, trampset and elsewhere. She is the flash fiction editor for Blood+Honey Lit. You can find her published work at rebeccatigerwriter.com.