King Perry by Edmond Manning Read Free Book Online

Alcatraz, how excited I was, how cool the buildings are to explore.
    “You’ll love it,” I assure him.
    Perry offers a queasy nod. “I’m not trying to be a total dick. I just… I’ve never done anything this crazy, Vin. I don’t know how to be right now.”
    “You’re not being a dick. You’re being nervous.”
    I grin big and put my hands on his shoulders as I follow him down the narrow interior stairs.
    I’m happy.
    I always love the moment when someone begins a journey. Perry will find a piece of himself on Alcatraz, and he’ll abandon something that no longer serves him. A different man will leave this island.
    Once we have officially disembarked and have more room around us, he turns to me and says under his breath, “You like to kiss?”
    I say, “Definitely. For hours.”
    He smiles and looks away. He’s trying to come around.
    The island glows with green life, despite today’s lack of direct sunlight. The shiny, rubbery leaves of blackberry vines, the honeysuckle draped elegantly over thick cement walls. A dozen recognizable flowers, yellow and slender, red geraniums too, survive in the under-tended gardens. The enormous gray prison still dominates the landscape, but chirpy white blooms and bold orange nasturtiums suddenly appear around corners along the winding paths to the prison entrance, cheerful surprises amid the dreary stone and sky.
    I push my shoulder into his, and he’s startled by this. He scrutinizes me, but when I grin his way, he pushes back some, ready to play.
    “What’s with the king story?” he says. “Did you make it up, or is it something I should already know?”
    “You may not have heard it, but it’s an old story.”
    “Should I be memorizing all these guys’ names? I forgot most of them already.”
    “No worries.”
    “So what happened when they got lost?”
    “To be continued.”
    “When?”
    “When it’s time . You have to wait for the story to unfold.”
    He frowns, nodding.
    I think he’s pondering this. Not my answer, which was simple enough, but the fact that this weekend will unfurl without explanation, without an agenda, and will possibly include an impossible monarchy full of legislative contradictions. It’s a lot for me to interpret from a single head nod and the silence that follows, but that’s what it looks like to me.
    He says, “I’ve always meant to come to Alcatraz, especially when I first moved to San Francisco. Once a year, I think to myself, ‘I should go,’ but then I never make it happen.”
    “Today’s your lucky day.”
    He says, “I should get a T-shirt.”
    “I have three. I recommend the one covered in prison bars. Always a classic.”
    I push him with my shoulder again, and this time, he’s ready with a little resistance. When we reach the prison entrance, the guide asks if we want the audio tour and I make a puppy face at Perry, so he says with a droll inflection, “Of course we do.”
    The uniformed guide nods and says, “Return the sets as you leave.”
    Once we’ve crossed into the gloomy interior, Perry punches my arm. “You didn’t want a sex buddy for the weekend, you wanted a tour guide. We’re going to be tourists all weekend, aren’t we?”
    “Absolutely. Wait until you see what I have planned for the Golden Gate Bridge.”
    He laughs.
    The audio tour always impresses me with its ability to evoke the prison’s dark history, incorporating the sounds of muffled clanking doors and prisoners yelling up and down the galley. We walk when we’re supposed to walk, stop and look where the narrators tell us to stop and look. I occasionally point to a thing as it’s explained and shoot him a meaningful glance implying “Cool, huh?” We gawk at the bullet holes riddling the floor from a failed prison escape and share uneasy glances as a former prisoner describes the weekly regime in detail.
    He pulls off his headphones to ask, “What time were cocktails?”
    I remove mine. “After the oil painting