“Sit up and do it, anyway.” My hard tone made him blink. He stared at me but couldn’t hold it past a few seconds. Pitiful attention span. Maybe part of that was sensory deprivation due to being locked up, but my guess was he’d always had trouble concentrating.

I handed him the pencil and the paper and the drawing board. He sat there for a while, finally put the board in his lap, gripped the pencil. The point froze on the paper.

“Draw,” I said.

His hand began circling lazily, floating above the paper. Finally making contact, as he created flabby, barely visible, concentric ellipses. The page began to fill. Darker ellipses. His eyes shut as he scrawled. For two weeks he’d done that a lot— blinding himself to his hellish reality.

Today, his pencil hand moved faster. The ellipses grew more angular. Flatter, darker. Sharpening to jagged, spearlike shapes.

He kept going, tongue tip snaking between his lips. The paper became a storm of black. His free hand fisted and gathered the hem of his jail shirt as his drawing hand moved faster. The pencil dug in and the page puckered. Ripped. He slashed downward. Circled faster. Digging in harder, as the paper shredded. The pencil went through to the drawing board, hit the glossy, fiberboard surface and slid out from his hand.

Landing on the floor of the cell.

He moved quickly, retrieved it. Exhaled. Held the yellow nub in a grubby, moist palm. “Sorry.”

The paper was confetti. The pencil’s graphite tip had broken off, leaving behind splintered wood. Sharp little spikes.

I took the pencil. Put it in my pocket.

* * *

After my final visit, walking to the subterranean parking lot, I heard someone call my name and turned to see a heavy woman in a flowered dress leaning on an aluminum cane. The dirty-milk sky matched her complexion. I’d awakened to sunny blue Beverly Glen firmament, but cheer had eluded the grimy corner of East L.A. dominated by the jail.

She took a few steps toward me and the cane clunked on pavement. “You’re the psychologist, right? I’m Rand’s gram.”

I walked to her, held out my hand.

“Margaret Sieff,” she said, in a smoker’s voice. Her free arm remained at her side. The dress was a scratchy-looking cotton print, relenting at the seams. Camellias and lilies and delphiniums and greenery sprawled across an aqua background. Her hair was white, short, curly, thinning so severely that patches of pink scalp shone through. Blue eyes took me in. Small, sharp, searching eyes. Nothing like her grandson’s.

“You been here all week but I never heard from you. You don’ figger to talk to me?”

“I plan to when I’m finished evaluating Rand.”

“Evaluatin’.” The word seemed to distress her. “What you figger you can do for him?”

“I’ve been asked by Judge Laskin to— ”