Clockers by Richard Price

Author:Richard Price
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781857995046
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 1992-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

Strike sat in the tiny waiting area of the probation office, choosing one of the two molded plastic chairs over the cotton plaid couch because the fabric could take in stink and crawling things off people’s hair and clothes. Besides, the couch was occupied by a light-skinned man with dried blood on his T-shirt and a face so swollen Strike couldn’t tell if he was black or Puerto Rican or white. He wasn’t wearing shoes, just bedroom slippers that didn’t hide his scabby and swollen ankles. Strike believed in going to see your PO looking a little bummy, so no one would think you were still clocking, but this was going the whole other way around. It was best to dress down—down, but clean. A nice fresh sweatshirt, pressed stone-washed jeans, shoes instead of sneakers in order to suggest that he wasn’t the type who ever needed to run anywhere—everything in Strike’s PO wardrobe was clean, cheap, respectful.

The waiting area was cut off from the huge room of interview cubicles by frosted glass partitions and a bulletproof reception window. Half a dozen fruity-smelling deodorizing strips were glued to the walls, and Strike didn’t know whether to be insulted or grateful. He was required to visit his PO for just fifteen minutes a month, but it felt like going to the dentist or the Roosevelt rental office, the visits filling him with an unfocused dread that he hadn’t felt since childhood.

Strike sat holding his passport-size probation book out in front of him. He wished he had a Yoo-Hoo to calm his empty stomach, but he was afraid that sitting with a bottle of anything, even Yoo-Hoo, would be enough to trigger his PO, make him think “attitude,” and that’s when shit could happen. Even if they didn’t throw you in County, they still found some way to make you pay.

The door to the outside hallway opened and a guy whose face Strike recalled but couldn’t place entered the waiting area and took the other plastic chair.

“Wha’s up?” the guy said to Strike, not knowing exactly who Strike was either. Strike thought the guy looked like an advertisement for clocking: snow-white high-top BKs, a royal-blue Fila warm-up suit that must have set him back two hundred dollars, a gold nameplate hanging off his neck, two gold rings and an ID bracelet. Strike imagined the guy telling his PO, “Yeah, I’m still making deliveries for Shop-Rite, just like last month.” Maybe he had the blind PO, the lady whose bruised-looking eyelids opened only a tiny bit, who had no lamp on her desk, no posters on her walls, the one whose cubicle looked as if a shitstorm hit it. Strike’s stomach jumped just thinking about her. Goddamn, they make you pay.

Finally Strike’s name was called, and as he walked up the center aisle to his PO’s desk, he passed ten probation meets on either side of him. He nodded in recognition to three of the guys and one of the girls.

He took a chair across the desk from Mr.

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