The Decameron Project by The New York Times

Author:The New York Times
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2020-11-10T00:00:00+00:00

o sea view? For nine hundred quid a week? TripAdvisor’s gonna hear ’bout this.”

She snorts. “On the plus side, Your Majesty, you’ve got your penthouse all to yourself. Jacuzzi. Sauna. Minibar.” She taps in the code, swipes her card, and the LED goes green. “Home away from home.” Bolts clunk and the door opens. Bog-standard 8-by-14-foot cell. Shitter. Desk. Chair. Locker. Dirty windows. Seen better. Seen worse.

The door shuts behind me—revealing the bunk bed with some bastard lying on the top. He’s an Arab, Indian, Asian, something. He’s as not pleased to see me as I’m not pleased to see him. I bang on the door. “Oy! Guard! This cell’s occupied!”

No joy.

“Guard!”

Daft bloody moo’s moved on.

Today’s outlook: heavy cloud, all day.

Dump my bag on my bed. “Great.” I look at the Asian bloke. He ain’t got that Rottweiler glint, but yer don’t take nothing for granted. I’m guessing he’s Muslim. “Just came from Wandsworth,” I tell him. “I’m s’posed to be in quarantine. One to a cell. My cellmate had the virus.”

“I tested positive,” Asian Bloke says, “at Belmarsh.”

Belmarsh is a Cat A prison. I’m thinking, Terrorism?

“No,” Asian Bloke says. “I’m not an ISIS sympathizer. No, I don’t pray toward Mecca. No, I don’t have four wives and ten kids.”

Can’t deny I was thinking it. “Yer don’t look ill.”

“I’m asymptomatic.” He clocks. I ain’t sure what that means. “I’ve got the antibodies, so I don’t get sick, but I have the virus, and I can pass it on. You really shouldn’t have been put in here.”

Voilà. Classic Ministry of Justice fuck-up. There’s an emergency call button, so I press the CALL button.

“I was told the guards here cut the wires,” Asian Bloke says. “Anything for a quiet life.”

I believe it. “Prob’ly too late by now, anyway. Virus-wise.”

He lights up a roll-up. “You may be right.”

“Happy fucking birthday to me.”

Water chunders down a pipe.

“Is it your birthday?” he asks.

“Just an expression.”

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