I have wished for a comm a hundred thousand times an hour since they stuck me in this shithole, and now that I have one, I don't know who to call. Not smart. Not happy.
I run my fingers over the keypad, think about all the stupid, terrible decisions that I made on the way to this place in my life. I feel like I could burst into tears, like I could tear the hair out of my head, like I could pound my fists bloody on the floor. My fingers, splayed over the keypad, tap out the old nervous rhythms of the phone numbers I've know all my life, my first house, my Mom's comm, Gran's place.
Gran. I tap out her number and hit the commit button. I put the phone to my head.
"Gran?"
"Arthur?"
"Oh, Gran!"
"Arthur, I'm so worried about you. I spoke to your cousins yesterday, they tell me you're not doing so good there."
"No, no I'm not." The stitches in my jaw throb in counterpoint with my back.
"I tried to explain it all to Father Ferlenghetti, but I didn't have the details right. He said it didn't make any sense."
"It doesn't. They don't care. They've just put me here."
"He said that they should have let you put your own experts up when you had your hearing."
"Well, of *course* they should have."
"No, he said that they *had* to, that it was the law in Massachusetts. He used to live there, you know."
"I didn't know."
"Oh yes, he had a congregation in Newton. That was before he moved to Toronto. He seemed very sure of it."
"Why was he living in Newton?"
"Oh, he moved there after university. He's a Harvard man, you know."
"I think you've got that wrong. Harvard doesn't have a divinity school."
"No, this was *after* divinity school. He was doing a psychiatry degree at Harvard."
Oh, my.
"Oh, my."
"What is it, Arthur?"
"Do you have Father Ferlenghetti's number, Gran?"