I flick through Regulations and Morals to find out what kind of punishment I might expect if I break any rules, something that has been weighing down on me since I was first locked up.
Every command so far has come with a warning, like the popper at the end of a leather whip.
“Speak any Japanese?” the guard asked in a gruff, condescending tone as he removed the handcuffs from my wrists.
I nodded.
“Sit,” he said, pointing to a seat. It was bolted to the floor and faced a steel desk cluttered with papers.
The guard sat across from me, and taking a sheet of paper, started going through a list of questions.
“Tattoos?”
“Huh?”
“Tattoos? Got any tattoos?” he asked testily, keeping his acne-scarred face down, eyes hidden behind the visor of his hat.
“Tattoos? No. No, I haven’t got any tattoos.” There were undertakers more effervescent than that guard.
“Bubbles” made a notation on the form. He was left-handed, and wrote in the tortured way that southpaws write, the pen strangled in a tense white claw.
Raising his head slightly, eyes still concealed, Bubbles warned that I would be severely punished if any tattoos were found on me later.
He rattled off the next question, so quickly I couldn’t catch it.
“Pardon me?”
“Have you been naughty?”
“Naughty? I’m sorry, but I don’t understand.”
“Have you been naughty with your genitalia?”
“Huh?” Did Bubbles want to know if I jerked off? Like any man, I did, but, Christ, it certainly wasn’t anyone’s business but mine whether I throttled the snake every now and then.
“Your genitalia,” he said, raising his acne scarred face enough for our eyes to finally meet. “You got any pearls or beads . . .”
Jesus. Now I knew what he was getting at.
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