Confidence: a Novel

Contents Cover Title Page Dedication Epigraph Prologue Part I Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Part II Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Part III Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Epilogue Acknowledgments About the Author Copyright Guide Cover Start of Content Title Page Dedication Epigraph Prologue Epilogue Acknowledgments About the Author Copyright I II III V VI VII VIII 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 
 
 “A delightful, irreverent, and poignant novel.”—Nathan Hill, New York Times bestselling author of The Nix
 Confidence
 A Novel
 Rafael Frumkin
 
 
 
 
 
 For Fig
 
 
 
 I followed you, Muse! Beneath your spell,
 Oh, la, la, what glorious loves I dreamed!
 —ARTHUR RIMBAUD, “Wandering”
 Is there a good kind of hustler?
 —MAGGIE NELSON, Bluets
 
 
 
 PROLOGUE
 IN PRISON, SMALL THINGS MATTER: a pencil, a banana, a packet of ramen. People studying for their GEDs got pencils; bananas were a rare commodity, meaning you had to be rich or smart if you were mashing one into your oatmeal; and ramen was so warm and filling, gave the eater such a sense of reassurance that people would trade cigarettes for it, or pay you to take their GED exams in exchange for five or six packets. You had to purchase the ramen from the commissary and then it would be “released” to you in the chow hall at the end of the meal. The inmates working in the kitchen would heat it up and give it to you in a little bowl with a plastic spoon, and you’d be allowed to take it back to your cell—or, if you were lucky, the TV room—to eat. Plastic spoons could be snapped in half and given rigid edges, so you had to be proven well-behaved to get to use one outside the chow hall. My cellmate once made a gash in someone’s forearm with the end of a plastic fork. He wasn’t allowed any utensils—instead he ate his food with his hands, which worked, because most of the food was congealed into cakey spheres that were easy to pick up and eat in a matter of bites. Unlike him, I had connections. I was eating macaroni and cheese when everyone else was eating meat loaf, brownies when everyone else was eating Jell-O.
 Everyone was surprised by how well I fared in prison: it was kind of a joke, the little pretty kid is actually the meanest motherfucker in here. But, really, I wasn’t mean, nor was I particularly pretty. I was just focused on doing what I did best. I’d converted another inmate, Tyrell, to the magic of NuLife, and together we’d become business partners, Synthesizing members of the general population in exchange for loosies, ramen, drugs, shower privileges, protection, and sex. We held weekly informational meetings in the library that we pretended were AA meetings, bribing the COs with low-quality molly and oxy to go get high in the stacks and ignore us. We’d rearrange the demeaning twelve-step circle into rows and Tyrell and I would stand at the front, his lanky form towering over mine. Our first meeting was on a Wednesday night directly after chow, in those restless few hours when people tried to get drunk or pick fights before we had to return to our bunks.
 “What’s NuLife?” Duke, who’d lost an eye in a botched bank robbery, wanted to know.
 “NuLife is a way of turning matter into potential,” I said.
 Tyrell gestured to the four walls enclosing us.
 “Take this library,” he said. “The windows are barred. It’s only books in the stacks that’s supposed to be safe for convicts to read. You know what I mean by ‘safe’?”
 Blank stares.
 “Unlikely to provoke restlessness, awareness of our condition,” I chimed in. “Stifling independent thought. Prohibitive to freedom.”
 “But with the power of NuLife, you can be free anywhere,” Tyrell said, nodding to me.
 “You wake up every morning doubting yourselves and doubt yourselves until you go to sleep.” I began walking up and down the aisles, watching the inmates’ heads swivel to accommodate my movement. “You spend an inordinate amount of