Page 14 of Rat Park
Dominic tilted his head up, staring at the swollen clouds. “Yeah.”
“Hey man, if I can do it, you can do it.” Curly bumped him on the shoulder. Dominic smiled slightly. Neither of them mentioned that they were both in the same place for the same reason. That they had yet to keep the promise Curly was making.
“Yeah. Well, you got your kid. Face like that would keep anybody sober.”
“That’s right. I’m not dying from no overdose for my kid to find.”
“Yeah.”
Curly grasped Dominic’s shoulder suddenly, making him turn to look. Curly’s eyes were bright, intelligent, piercing through him. “Whatever it is that you need to stay sober, it’s out there. Or in you. You just gotta find it.”
If that was true, Dominic had never seen heads or tails of it, but all he could do was nod.
Curly shook him lightly for a moment before letting him go. Dominic looked up at the sky again.
The rain was just starting to fall.
CHAPTER SIX
The sun was high in the clear blue sky the day Dominic got out. He was twenty-five and on parole. It could have felt like a beginning…if history hadn’t been pressing down on him so unforgivingly.
The open space around Dominic was almost disorienting. It wasn’t that he had enjoyed being confined in prison, but he had become accustomed to it. There had been something terrible and dehumanizing and comforting about the routine lack of agency of his days. Now, possibility after possibility hung like the sunlit air around him.
The day before, Dominic had said goodbye to Lee, Curly, and the few inmates he’d befriended inside. They had been friendships forged in war. Intense and all-encompassing in the trenches, people he would be able to depend on if he were brave enough to call but virtually useless in the now-foreign landscape of the home front.
Dominic kept his head down as he walked towards the bus stop. He had a plastic bag carrying a folder filled with paperwork, his old phone and wallet in his pocket, an address in his hand, a wad of cash that Curly’s girl, to his embarrassment, had left him, and the clothes on his back. The social worker assigned to him had helped him secure somewhere to live when he got out, and he knew to report to his parole officer the next morning. Until then, he was on his own.
He got on the fifty-four bus when it arrived and took a seat near the front. Nobody so much as glanced at him. He might as well have been a ghost.
He had to take two more buses to get to his destination, a housing estate that was almost a cheap, lax version of a halfway house. He signed in at the estate’s little office and got his keys and directions on how to get to the apartment from the bored attendant. Dominic nodded his thanks and walked to what would now essentially be his home.
The space that met him was as drab and depressing as he had imagined, but it was furnished and equipped with everything he needed. It was a small, rectangular space with a tiny kitchenette and a bedroom area, an attached bathroom to the side. Everything was tinted in browns and beiges. People like Dominic didn’t deserve colour.
He walked around the space, feeling numb and like he could shake right out of his skin all at once. He stood, frozen for a moment, before heading out again.
He walked around the neighbourhood, trying not to become overwhelmed. He took stock of where the local shops were. The grocer’s, the laundromat, the dollar store, a hardware shop. It had only been three years since he was living amidst these things. There was no real reason why they should feel so foreign.
He went to the grocer’s and bought some staples for the kitchen, remembering to get some toilet paper at the last moment. He had to make the lady at the till wait as he ran to get it. His heart was still racing even as he left, his arms heavy with plastic bags.
He locked his front door behind him as he arrived at his room. He unpacked the bags slowly. He had forgotten to check, and the fridge was off. He plugged it in and tried not to feel like a failure. He put all the perishables inside anyway and hoped the fridge cooled before they went bad.
He went to the bathroom and put a roll of toilet paper in its place before sticking the rest behind the foot of the sink. There wasn’t exactly a lot of closet space. He placed the shampoo and gel in the shower—at least he hadn’t forgotten about that.
He sat on his bed when he was done, thankfully equipped with a simple, scratchy bedsheet. He looked around again, taking his new home in. Compared to prison, the possibilities of what to do were endless. He could do anything.
The thought was terrifying.
**********
Dominic attended his parole meetings, found a job bagging groceries, maintained his room as neat as a prison cell. He worked out and tried to eat as healthily as his budget allowed, filling out a little, his skin improving. He kept his head down, hands and feet inside the ride at all times. He ignored the itch and the hopelessness and the sleepless nights.
His resolve lasted all of three months.
Dominic managed to find a TV cheap enough to be in his budget, a blocky monstrosity looking like it came from the 1950s. He couldn’t afford cable, an internet connection, or even the expense of buying a beer or coffee just to get out of the house, so his evenings were always excruciating. He’d lie on his bed and stare at the staticky screen, desperately trying not to move a muscle. Not to give in.
He twitched out of the numb place he’d slipped into, glancing at his ringing cell, which looked almost as old as the TV. Dominic flipped it open, not even bothering to decipher where the area code was from.
“Yeah?” he croaked. It’d been a while since he used his voice, not that it would matter to whatever cold caller was on the line.
