Hey, sweetie. Thanks for coming; I know you don’t want to hear it like this. No one wanted to hear it back then either, except for this one guy, younger than you, who asked me about it once. He was cute. He bought me a drink one night on the Hill and we had a little bit of chemistry, but when he asked, he never even opened his notebook, it just sat there on the bar with his limp-dick pen sitting on top and then back in his jacket pocket without so much as a sympathy scribble because he didn’t really want to know, I mean really want to know, because that would have meant that he would have had to write it all down and put it in his newspaper and that wouldn’t have been any good for any of us, now would it? I mean, can you imagine?

But that’s not what I meant when I said you won’t want to hear it. Nobody does, nobody ever has. Everybody wants to believe what they want to believe, that he was a puppet or hero or hawk or saint, but baby, people are more complicated than that. You know that better than most by now, right? Anyway, I stopped talking about it years ago—24 to be exact—because people would just give me this “There goes that crazy bitch again” look and tune me out.

I’m glad you didn’t. I like your rag and I like what you write, especially all the radical liberal stuff about what’s wrong with the government and that one about the mother of five who got sent up for signing a delivery slip for a package of smack for her dog boyfriend. I had a friend who shared a cell with that girl back in the ‘90s, and she said you tried to get her out with what you wrote. Guess that’s why I called. That, and because she said you had the prettiest blue eyes she’d ever seen.

So. Anyway, like I said on the phone, you’re not gonna like what I have to say. I don’t really care, but I feel like I should finally tell someone, because I’ve had so much time to think in here. I suppose I want at least one person to know him like I knew him, even though that’s impossible.

Sorry. I know we don’t have much time. I’m not used to talking to people. I’ll just say it. Or, give me your pen.

There. Wait. Give it back. “Lover” sounds too cheap. Put it like this: He was the most loving man I’ve known. He had so much love in him, so much life in him, so much goodness, such a light. He was kind. Gentle. When he was with me, he said he felt like a little boy, like his best self, like he was free. I told him he should be with me all the time. He said he couldn’t, but that if he was, he could change the world. Weird to think about that now, after everything. Iran and all that. I wasn’t around for that, or the convention riots. I saw his face on TV that night when St. Paul was burning and he looked like a scared little kid. I should have been there.

Didn’t he have a great smile? I’m surprised none of you newspaper guys ever asked him about it. I did, all the time. He’d be on TV for something, with those squirrelly eyes and that getting-away-with-sumpin’ grin, and when I’d see him later I’d say, “Why were you smiling, honey?” And he’d say, “You, honey.”

It wasn’t the power or money or gifts or anything else I’m sure you’re thinking about. It was just two people, meeting, the way people do. It was chemical, animal; I got drunk on his smell the first time we met. Has that ever happened to you? Hard to forget, isn’t it? I spend a lot of time reading in here, and a couple years ago I read in a medical journal or something that human beings never lose their scent. Even after they’re dead and buried, thousands of years later, their bones or remains or whatever smell the way they smelled in life, and the truth is some nights I still smell him on me.

We were like a couple of college kids, getting to know each other. I taught him about the Kama Sutra and Day Of The Dead art. He had this kick-ass stereo system in his office and another one just like it in his bedroom and he played me all sorts of records I’d never heard before. Lightnin’ Hopkins. Robert Johnson. John Lee Hooker. John Coltrane. It was nasty and pure and soul-whipping, man; real turn-up-the-bass-grab-the-ankles-and-fuck stuff.

Oh, don’t write that. Please? Vulgar. All you need to know is how much love he had in him. How he paid attention to me. He was special. Smart. Fun. Really thoughtful, and super-caring. I’m sorry if that’s not what you came to hear, but it’s true. He was this beautiful, beautiful creature sent to me from heaven.

I haven’t seen him for a long time. The last was in 2008. He was running for re-election. He came for a visit and he made it look like he was campaigning, but I knew better. He wanted to see me. The photograph in the paper the next day was of him and me and underneath it, it said something about him posing with “exemplary inmate Margaret Nin, who was imprisoned in 2006 for tax fraud.” After that photo was taken—I’ve got it framed on the wall in my cell—he told everyone to leave the room so he could “deliver an inspirational message to the prisoner.”

We talked for a spell, and when I started crying, he waved for the guard. Before he left, he winked at me, that knee-wobbling wink, and whispered, “This was our conjugal visit.” That made me laugh. He promised to get me out of here, just like he did when I first got sent up (“for your own safety”), but I haven’t heard from him since. I guess he’s been busy with his memoirs and all.

I can tell you don’t believe me. That’s OK. I suppose I wouldn’t, either. But you’d think that somebody somewhere would’ve said something sometime, but maybe he really did do what he said he would and make sure that nobody ever knew.

He said that all the time: I’d get scared thinking about all the trouble I’d get into if we ever got caught. He’d hold me and tell me that everything had been taken care of, that they’d gone “to school on Marilyn and Monica,” and that I was safe. That’s what he said his job was; to make everybody feel that way; that’s how he made me feel, even to this day, even after New York and North Korea and San Francisco and Saudi Arabia and Minnesota and December 22.

Safe.