I couldn’t tell whether Mr Pink had a knife on him. Usually he did. It was an afternoon in July 2020, and the sun beamed down on Sing Sing, baking the B Block yard’s blacktop. By now the first wave of Covid, which had breached the prison in March and killed a guard and four prisoners, had mostly passed, and everyone was glad to be outside. I knew Mr Pink had a beef with me. But since I’d moved to B Block several weeks earlier, he hadn’t made anything of it. Jogging along the perimeter fence capped with whorled razor wire, I glanced in my periphery at him and another grimy guy seated at a metal picnic table each time I passed. They were watching me, scheming. Looking to make a move.
I also knew Mr Pink had manufactured his beef with me. A few years ago, my writing career took off, and everyone knew I was making money. Some guys were inspired, others were envious. But it was something more for Mr Pink. (The name is a pseudonym; using’s 2020 Super Bowl issue about prison’s sports-betting culture. Around the time the issue came out, Sing Sing guards raided the cell of the guy who was holding Mr Pink’s stash—items that had nothing to do with gambling—and who happened to share the nickname of a character in my story. The guards confiscated the guy’s contraband and sent him to solitary. Mr Pink, so I’d been told, held me responsible for his losses.
