WATER PEOPLE A written creative work submitted to the faculty of San Francisco State University In partial fulfillment of The Requirements for ^ The Degree 3G Master of Fine Arts In English: Creative Writing by John Anthony Mancini San Francisco, California January, 2018 Copyright by John Anthony Mancini 2018 WATER PEOPLE John Anthony Mancini San Francisco, California 2018 Water People is a novel about a family-run drug cartel from Baltimore, Maryland. I certify that the Annotation is a correct representation of the content of this written 11'M l? Date CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL I certify that I have read Water People by John Anthony Mancini, and that in my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a written creative work submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree: Master of Fine Arts in English: Creative Writing at San Francisco State University. laxine Chemoff Professor of English 1 There were times in life when everything seemed to fall into place. This was not one of those times. Tommy Murphy stood outside the perimeter of the double chain link fences that surrounded the prison. He looked up at the rows of swirling razor wire and the twin gun towers that flanked the front of the massive industrial complex. The air smelled different out here, as if being on the other side of that fence gave you access to new air, air that was still unaffected by the body odor of all the inmates. Under his left arm, Tommy held his brown paper release package and with his free hand shielded his eyes from the glare of the sunlight. Come to think of it, the light seemed brighter than the sunlight he’d seen in the yard, too. The sky was so blue it hurt to look at. Tommy saw the white Mustang convertible shimmering like a mirage in the heat that rose off the road. It came into focus as it sped down the long straight drive and braked at the curb where he stood. The passenger window rolled down. Tommy bent forward and peered inside the car. Deb smiled, pushed a button and the door unlocked. “What’s this?” “Do you like it?” Deb said. “Her name’s Rhonda.” He’d told her to treat herself, and she obviously hadn’t wasted any time. “Rhonda,” he said, taking a good long look at the car. “Eighty-nine you said?” “Eighty-eight. I leased it. It was cheaper. Watch this.” She pressed an overhead switch and the canvas retracted. “She’s fully loaded.” “Not bad,” Tommy said. 2 Deb cranked the knob on the stereo, and Ted Nugent’s distorted Les Paul rocked the speakers in the door panel. “Sounds good.” Tommy nodded toward the trash bag stretched over the seat. “What’s the plastic for?” “Oh, that’s for you, dummy. I don’t want you dirtying up my new car.” He tossed his package on the floor and dropped into the seat. “You know, they let me take showers in there.” “You don’t smell like it.” She said, pinching her nose. “What is that smell?” “Prison,” he said. “I probably smell like a prison. You know, I’ve been in one.” “No,” she said. “It’s something else. You smell like, I don’t know. It’s like, bologna and com chips.” “That sounds about right,” Tommy said. He laughed because Deb was laughing too. It felt good to be out, and it felt good to feel good, but something was missing. It wasn’t that he wasn’t happy to be out. He just felt deflated. He felt older. A year in prison was like a dog year, like seven human ones packed into one. It took a lot out of you. A year in the pen could set you back like a tour of duty could, make it difficult to readjust to civilian life, everybody walking around the grocery stores buying their beer and their sausages and their heads of lettuce like it was the most natural thing in the world to do. It wasn’t natural at all. 3 Tommy laughed at himself, at the absurdity of being out and not really feeling all that great. Not really feeling free. “I’ll tell you one thing,” he said, wiping a tear from his eye. “I don’t want to see another fucking bologna sandwich for a long long time.” “So what do you want to do first, Mister ex-con?” “I want to eat a big juicy steak.” “Don’t you want to kiss me?” “Oh, right.” He leaned across the center console, shift knob digging into his side, and kissed her. “That too.” “I missed you too, chief. Your sister missed you. We’re going over her house this weekend.” “For what?” “She’s having a party.” Tommy looked out the side window. “A coming-home-from-jail party?” “Actually, Glen wants to show off the new house.” “Ah, I don’t know if I’m ready for all that.” “Don’t worry. We’ll hose you down first.” She put the Mustang in gear and revved the engine. “Jackie going to be there?” “Far as I know.” Tommy nodded. “Frank?” 4 “I don’t know who all’s coming. It’ll be fun. Take a look behind you. There’s cooler of beer if you want one.” Tommy shifted in his seat and glanced over his shoulder. “I’ll be damned. You shouldn’t have, Deb.” He reached into the cooler, grabbed a National Bohemian, beads of water sliding down the cold can, popped the tab and breathed in the smell. “I know I shouldn’t have,” Deb said. “I shouldn’t have done a lot of things.” She hit the accelerator and twisted the volume knob on the radio. Deb hung a left on Waterloo and the wide wheels hugged the blacktop around the on ramp and took them north toward the parkway. She changed lanes and the Mustang was taken up with the stream of midday traffic. Tommy hitched sideways in his seat and looked out the passenger window at the Jessup Correctional Institution, a grid of windows, most of them blacked out, broken or missing, too narrow to climb out of anyway. And he’d definitely thought about it. Climbing out was not an option. The gun towers looked like silos in the distance, the whole complex surrounded by nothing but farm country. In the sideview mirror, Tommy watched it recede into the haze that shimmered on the horizon. The humidity made everything seem heavier, denser. Tommy felt the good beer in his belly cooling him and he half closed his eyes, allowing it all to soften a little at the edges and blur his vision. When they neared the city, he could smell the sour odor of the bay and the smoke from the factories sticking in the humid air. Deb looked good behind the wheel with her 5 sunglasses on, but he wasn’t quite sure how to read her, sitting there with her eyes on the road and her red hair shining like a strawberry in the sun. It felt like he was going to have to relearn the rules. He had to hand it to her: she’d showed up when she said she was going to show up and she was driving him home. He thought about what that was going to feel like, walking into that house, how much had changed while he was away, what if anything of his was still sitting where he’d left it. Tommy met Deb six months after her divorce from her first husband. They were both living at the beach, her waiting tables at Philips Seafood while he was working in one of the boardwalk arcades where every night he held court with a bevy of bimbos that Deb absolutely hated. She made a point of not associating with any of his groupies, and she also made her presence known. One by one, she chased all the other girls away, just through a force of will. One night Tommy’s manager took him aside and told he better do something about this girl that was hanging around. “She’s chasing all my customers away,” he said. So Tommy asked her out on a date. By the end of the summer they were inseparable. Maybe things hadn’t changed that much. Maybe he was just imagining things. Deb cut into the left lane and ran the convertible up to seventy, and Tommy felt the power of the five-liter engine pulling him back in his seat. The billboards along the side of the highway weren’t any different from the ones that had been there before he went away. There was the one for the steakhouse and the one for the insurance agency and the one with a bunch of young happy people smoking long skinny cigarettes. There was even 6 his lawyer - the most photographed man in Baltimore next to the used car salesman on Belair Road - Mark Diamond, smiling down at him, his big grinning face fifteen feet wide, eye-black grease to make him look like a football player. Diamond for the Defense, it said. The outlet mall had finally gone up next to the Toyota dealership and the Burger King. All of it pulsed with new life and seemed different somehow, like something he should appreciate, all of it part of a big puzzle that most people had already solved, those brightly colored things pictured on the signs all anybody needed to make life complete, the advertisements for Marlboro and Pepsi Cola and Giant Foods and UTZ potato chips.