Mr. Clarinet

It took Sandra four months to organize and book the tour. She arranged the itinerary so they'd arrive back home in Miami exactly a year to the day they'd left, on their next wedding anniversary. In between they would see all of Europe, starting with England, and then they'd move on to Russia and China, followed by Japan and the Far East, before flying on to Australia, New Zealand, and then on to Africa and the Middle East, before closing out in Turkey.

The more she told Max about the trip during her weekly visits, the more he started looking forward to it. He took to reading in the prison library about some of the places they'd be visiting. In the beginning, it was a way of getting him out of one day and into the next, but the more he began to delve into the stuff of his wife's dreams, the closer he got to her, perhaps closer than he'd ever been.

She finished paying for the trip the day she died in a car crash on U.S. 1, which she appeared to have caused by inexplicably and quite suddenly switching lanes straight into the path of an oncoming truck. When they performed the autopsy, they found the brain aneurysm that had killed her at the wheel.

The warden broke the news to him. Max was too stunned to react. He nodded, said nothing else, left the warden's office, and went about the rest of his day pretty much as normal, cleaning the kitchen surfaces, serving at the counter, feeding the trays through the dishwasher, mopping the floors. He didn't say anything to Velasquez. You didn't do that. Showing grief or sadness or any emotion unrelated to anger was a sign of weakness. You kept those things well hidden, bottled up, out of sight and sense.

Sandra's death didn't sink in until the next day, Thursday. Thursday was her visiting day. She'd never missed one. She'd fly in the night before, stay with an aunt who lived in Queens, and then, the next day, she'd drive up to see him. At around two p.m., when he'd usually be finishing off in the kitchen or bullshitting with Henry, the cook, he'd be called out to the visiting room over the PA system. Sandra would be waiting for him on the other side of the booth, behind the glass partition and the wall between them. She'd always be immaculately dressed, a fresh layer of lipstick on her mouth, big smile on her face, eyes lighting up, just like she was on a first date. They'd talk about this and that, how he was feeling, how he was looking, then she'd give him back-home news, tell him about herself, tell him about the house, talk about her job.

Henry and Max had an arrangement. Henry would work around Max on Thursdays, giving him things he could finish up quickly so he could get out as soon as his name was called. Max always helped Henry out in the same way on Sundays, when Henry's family—his wife and four kids—came to see him. They got on well enough for Max to ignore that Henry was doing fifteen to life for an armed robbery that had left a pregnant woman dead, and that he ran with the Aryan Brotherhood.

On the outside, it was business as usual that Thursday. Only, Max had woken up with a heavy, aching feeling in his chest and a sense of emptiness that opened up into a numb void as the morning went on. He kept on hearing a peculiar rush of air in his ears, as though he was stuck in a wind tunnel, and the vein in his forehead began to wriggle and twitch under his skin. He wanted to tell Henry his wife wasn't coming that week and then let him know why the following week, but he couldn't bring himself to say anything, because he knew the minute he did he'd lose control of his words and most likely crack up.

He didn't have enough to do in the kitchen to keep his mind busy. He had the almost-spotless stove to wipe down. The stove had a clock set in the middle of its controls. He tried to stop himself, but he kept on staring at the clock, watching the black hands move in clicks, stepping up to 2:00.

He replayed the previous week's visit in his mind, every single second of the last time they were together. He recalled every word she'd said to him—about the surprise discount she'd managed to get from one airline, the free nights at a luxury hotel she'd won in a contest, how impressed she was with his knowledge of Australian history. Had she ever said anything about migraines, or headaches, or dizzy spells, blackouts, nosebleeds? He saw her face again through the bulletproof-glass partition they met through; the glass was smeared with the ghostly fingerprints and lipmarks where a million convicts had touched and kissed their loved ones by proxy. They'd never done that. They agreed it was pointless and desperate. It wasn't as if they'd never get to do the real thing again, was it? He wished they had now. It would have been better than the absolute nothing he was left with.

"Max," Henry called over from the sink. "Time to play husband."

It was a few clicks away from 2:00. Max started taking off his apron, right on cue, then stopped.