Hard Time

by McKenna, Cara

  By Thursday, I still didn’t own anything red.

  It was rainy and muggy, and Karen and I were cooking alive in the bookmobile. School was out but we went to youth centers and day camps through the summer break, and we’d hit three stops so far, with five more to make after lunch.

  “Lookie there,” Karen said as we hit the outskirts of a small city. “Your new best friends.”

  A line of men dressed in orange were scattered along the median and right-hand shoulder, tending to the skinny saplings tethered at intervals and bagging grass clippings and trash. On the backs of their jumpsuits, COUSINS was stenciled in black. And to my mingled horror and excitement, when the traffic came to a halt for a red light, who should be closest on my side but inmate 802267. Outdoors, no razor wire between us, just a dozen paces’ worth of pavement and the window glass. It was positively thrilling. Nothing like how I might’ve expected.

  He kept his head down, eyes on his work. His temples and forearms shone with sweat. At once, my ambivalence was gone. All I wanted was a taste of him, outside like this. And I was wearing makeup and jewelry, and my hair was down. God help me, I wanted him to see me this way, all polished up.

  I pushed the switch to unroll my window. “Hey,” I called.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Karen barked.

  When he didn’t look, I tried again. “Eric!”

  That brought his face up. Brown eyes went wide, then fled back to his busy hands.

  “Anne,” Karen scolded, and my window rose at the push of her button. “Jesus, have you lost your fucking mind?”

  “I know some of those guys. I help that one with his dysgraphia.” And his sexual frustration. “I thought it’d be nice. I mean, how often do those guys get told hello on the outside?”

  She shook her head lamentingly, like I was talking about lifting my shirt for them. I’d never have pegged her for the paranoid kind.

  “Jeez. It’s not like they’re going to stab us for being friendly—even if they wanted to there’s supervisor guys everywhere.”

  “They’re not allowed to talk to you, dummy. They’re not even allowed to look at you. Man can lose major privileges for that. He could get kicked off work release.”

  “Oh.” My face burned. “No one told me that.” I craned my neck as we started moving again, making sure Collier wasn’t getting chewed out. Looked like I’d gotten away with it. My polite self wanted to roll down the window and shout an apology, but I’d learned my lesson there.

  The whole thing seemed monumentally . . . barbaric. I knew these men. Some of them, anyhow. They were people to me, students even, yet the rules demanded I treat them with all the respect of animate traffic cones. It made me feel gross inside, this forced inhumanity.

  I turned to Karen. “So if some jerk shouted stuff at them, or threw something even, they just have to ignore it?”

  “Course they do. Hurt feelings are the least of what those boys forfeited.” She shot me a look, stern expression softening. “You’re too sweet for your own good. You better watch yourself in there.”

  Chastised, I shut up for the next couple of miles. But when the embarrassment lifted all that was left underneath was an urge, the same instinct that had made me call out to him. The urge to catch his eye. The urge to connect with him.

  “I’m feeling like a BLT,” Karen said as we rolled into the next small town. We had an hour before our next stop.

  “Fine by me.”

  She pulled us up along the curbless roadside before a family restaurant. The shop next to it caught my eye. Divinely Debbi. Women’s wear, one of those stores that’s clearly somebody’s doomed dream. People around here could barely afford groceries—no way were they shopping at boutiques. I bet it wouldn’t make it three months, but for now, it was surely Debbi’s pride and joy.

  And right there in the window was a red dress.

  “I’ll just be a minute,” I told Karen. “I want to look at something in here.”

  “Want me to order for you?”

  “Sure.”

  “What?”

  “Surprise me,” I said, not really listening. My feet were dragging me toward the window display and the red dress.

  I couldn’t wear that to the prison—it was a knee-length halter. If Shonda lost her mind and actually let me into the dayroom, I’d cause a riot.

  I pulled the door open, greeted by country music and a blessed blast of AC.

  “Good afternoon!” said an older woman, Debbi perhaps, coming out from behind the counter. I was the only customer. I bet I’d been the only customer all morning.

  “Afternoon.”

  “I saw you looking at that dress in the window.” Whore, she added in my imagination.

  I nodded. “It’s pretty, but I need something more conservative I could wear to work. Do you have anything else in that color, maybe a top? Short sleeves are okay, but nothing low-cut.”

  She showed me some options, but everything was pretty summery, embellished with beads or cutouts or just too revealing.

  As she went out back to check for something, I poked through the racks.

  And I found it.

  It was cream colored, a soft knit top with three-quarter sleeves and a boat neck, not wide enough to flash any bra strap. And splashed off-center across the front was a huge red poppy, bright as a maraschino cherry against vanilla ice cream.

  “Sorry, nothing,” she said, reappearing.

  “I’ll try this one,” I said, holding up my find.

  She led me to a booth and pulled the curtain closed. The top fit like a glove, and I scrutinized the shape, assuring myself poppies weren’t vaginal-looking, as flowers went.

  It wasn’t a red top, per se.

  But the flower was bold. Bold as a flag whipped in a bull’s face.

  Still. It’s not all red. I’m not a total whore. Just a partial one. Just a splash of whore.

  I liked it. I’d wear it—if not tomorrow at Cousins, then elsewhere. I changed back into my tee and headed to the counter.

  “Do you have this in a size bigger?” It fit perfectly for what it was, but what it was would let a convict guess my measurements far more accurately than any of the other outfits I’d worn.

  “That’s the last of its kind, I’m afraid.”

  I drummed my fingertips on the hanger and bit my lip. I could throw a cardigan over it. Just let a little of the red peak through. A little wink of whorefulness.

  “I’ll take five dollars off,” the woman said, and that was all it took to tip me.

  “Deal.”

  * * *

  “Cute top,” Shonda said, holding it out before her.

  It was my fourth Friday at Cousins, and for the first time, she’d let me keep my bra and panties on during the strip search.

  As I pulled my jeans and the top back on I asked, “This isn’t too snug, is it? I could keep my sweater on, but it’s hot today . . .”

  She laughed. “A parka’s snug enough for these men. They’ve all been guessing what’s under your clothes, Anne. If you want to give them an extra hint, that’s up to you. You’re not violating any codes in that, but decide for yourself how much attention you’re willing to draw.”

  I’d worn the thing. I wanted some attention. Some very, very specific attention, from one set of male eyes among the couple hundred I’d encounter today. But since I’d bought the top, something strange had hatched inside me. Something invasive, with creeping vines. The tendrils had taken over, wrapping me in a sensation I hadn’t felt in five years—feminine mischief.

  Five years.

  Five years since I’d wanted to feel sexual, and invite that attention.

  Five years since Eric Collier had been with a woman.

  A long time since a woman had felt like a woman, and a man like a man. A long time for two people to shut their nee
ds in the dark, I thought, buttoning my cardigan over most of the red blossom. Most but not all. It was so hot inside it. And I wanted to bloom.

  Shonda led me across the dayroom floor. Collier’s energy led my eyes to his. That dark gaze dropped, just for a second, finding so much more than the simple shape of my breasts that the other men sought. His stare shot back up to my face, and I saw red there, too. Lava in that stare.

  I felt my hips sway of their own accord and locked my legs back up. Locked my eyes on Shonda’s collar until we passed through the next set of locked doors.

  I got through the morning sessions, though I couldn’t tell you how. My eyes were on the clock, my mind elsewhere. I practically jogged from classroom B to the office. I wondered if anyone had noticed how I’d taken to eating alone. If they thought I was antisocial.

  It’s not you, I might tell them. It’s just this damned pornography that’s always playing outside my window. I can’t seem to quit watching it.

  This was the only time I got to feel any control over my infatuation, I realized as I stood before the glass, finding Collier in the crowd now filling the yard. A nod to the black guys in their corner. Shirt comes off. Thirty chin-ups, fifty push-ups, fifty sit-ups, repeat. Then these two-in-one things he did at the end—a pull-up, then drop for a one-handed push-up, double quick. Twenty of those, for dessert. Sometimes afterward he’d jog around the yard a few times, but today he got drawn into a conversation with some of the other men who were working out . He kept his body language neutral, arms crossed over his bare chest, shirt slung around his shoulders—no open hostility but no real friendliness either.

  “’Round here if you black,” Wallace said during Book Discussion an hour later, on the topic of social division, “you best only talk to the blacks, or else nobody got your back when shit goes down. It ain’t even racism—it’s just basic fuckin’ math. One, two, three, four,” he said, pointing to himself and a few neighbors. “And if you white, you best keep to the whites. One, two, three-fucking-four,” he said again, waving toward the other side of the room. “Math. Forget that biracial buddies Shawshank shit. Chocolate and vanilla don’t mix in here.”

  “And if you some kinda in-between caramel motherfucker,” one of perhaps three Hispanic guys in the room added with a grin, “then ain’t no calculator gonna save your ass.”

  The group shared a good laugh at that, united for a moment in their perfect division.

  I wasn’t comfortable with this discussion, but strangely, every last man in the room seemed absolutely fine with it, like Wallace had simply explained how the sun came out during the day and the moon at night.

  I steered us back to the story, but stole a glance at Collier. He was wearing the shadow of a smile. He’d probably laughed at the joke, too, and I wished I’d seen it. Heard it. I bet he laughed real quiet—grudging little huff of air, sidelong smirk. Not sinister, just mischievous.

  Maybe I’d make him laugh, one of these days. Maybe this afternoon, during Resources.

  Yeah, right. I was lucky when I managed to even take a full breath around the man.

  He took so long coming after me during Resources, I’d begun glancing down at my chest, checking that the red flower was indeed visible, wondering if it didn’t count. Worrying it hadn’t been enough.

  Then at five minutes to five, that tall shadow came through the door once again, paper in hand. I was helping someone fill out a legal form, and immediately I felt drunk and fuzzy brained, struggling to answer his simple questions. I apologized, blaming the heat. And without even thinking, I unbuttoned my sweater and stuffed it in my bag.

  The second I realized it, I froze. I glanced frantically around the room, expecting two dozen pairs of eyes staring at me, all of them as wide as if I’d stripped naked. That was how it felt, with that huge orange-red flower leering from my chest. A few guys were indeed admiring the change, but I was the only one flirting with a heart attack over it.

  A bell rang at five and the man I was helping said thanks and gathered his things. I did the same, and Collier wandered close.

  “Sorry I missed you,” he said, eyes on my shirt, my face, my shirt, my face.

  “Me too. Maybe next week.”

  “Sorry you had to see me yesterday,” he said more quietly. “Like that. Bad enough I’m stuck in these pajamas, inside.”

  “I don’t care. I’m sorry I tried to get your attention. Nobody told me you guys can’t look at anybody when you’re working.”

  Nearly whispering now, he said, “Would’ve been worth anything they took from me, just to hear you say my name.”

  I went all warm and stupid at that, too hazy to say anything. He changed the subject.

  “I don’t suppose I could give you somethin’ to read over again?” He held out the folded paper—two sheets.

  I accepted them, slid them into my bag. “Sure.”

  “That’s a poppy,” he said, eyeing my top.

  “Yes, I believe it is. You know your flowers.” Or your opium.

  A little half smile upset my middle in the nicest way. “Been learning all about plants, the past few months,” he said. “Landscaping stuff, for work release.”

  “It must be nice,” I managed, suffocating. “To get outside.”

  Again his gaze dipped to my shirt. “It sure is.”

  The guard told everybody to get a move on, and Collier took a step backward, another, another, hands in his pockets. “You have a good weekend now, Annie.”

  I nodded, and the words came out with an effort like childbirth. “You too, Eric.”

  I stopped at the supermarket on the drive home and made myself dinner at the salad bar, grabbing a bottle of white wine for no good reason.

  No good reason or absolute necessity? I wasn’t a hundred percent pleased with my newfound interest in alcohol, but on the other hand, at least that meant Justin hadn’t ruined it for me.

  I turned the fans on high when I got in and opened the windows. The temperature had dropped and the sky had gone gunmetal, a much-needed thunderstorm on the way. I poured myself a few ounces of wine in the fanciest glass I owned, an etched crystal goblet that was the lone survivor from my grandma’s antique punch set. I added an ice cube, stashed my salad in the fridge, and settled down on the couch.

  Something was missing.

  I hopped up and grabbed the votive from the bathroom, checking my reflection before I exited. I looked different, wearing red. But I didn’t look like a whore—not a bit. I looked like a frigging virgin, all dewy from the humidity, wide-eyed and scared and eager. Dumb and nervous and innocent as a bunny.

  I lit the candle and set it beside the wine. Went back to the bathroom and put on makeup, spritzed perfume in the air, and whipped my hair through it, like my mom had taught me. I put on jewelry, headed back to the couch. To the closest thing I’d had to a date in over five years.

  I took a deep drink. Found Collier’s pages in my bag, stroked the backs of his words, unfolded the paper and smoothed its creases.

  Drank some more.

  Breathed in, breathed out.

  Read.

  Darling,

  I guess you wore red. So I’ll tell you the things I think about.

  First I feel like I should tell you what I’m in for in case you didn’t look it up. I know lots of the guards and other staff don’t like to know. Makes it easier to treat us half decent if they don’t know what we did. So if you didn’t find out for yourself I’ll tell you straight that I’m in for assault.

  I blinked at that word, feeling strangely numb. Assault. That explained the ten years Jake had mentioned. I wasn’t surprised, not horrified either. Not even disappointed. Maybe a little unnerved, but purely by my own complete lack of reaction. I was relieved though, that I’d heard it from him. All the times I’d considered snooping around online, I’d wound up shaky and dry-mouthed, and chickened out. />
  I read on, bracing myself for details.

  It was against a guy who had it coming. You’ll have to trust me on that since I’m sure he’d tell you different. Anyhow it was bad and it was ugly and impulsive. If that scares you then maybe it’ll help when I say it’s real unlikely I’ll be getting out anytime soon.

  Though it made me feel guilty . . . yeah, that did help. And although assault was terrible . . . Impulsive, he’d said. Not planned or plotted or premeditated. That loosened my chest. Maybe it’d been some bar fight gone terribly, terribly wrong.

  Ten years, though, Jake had said. Hell of a bar fight. I set the worry aside—shut it back its drawer, the one labeled Massive Denial that made this reckless affair possible.

  Anyhow if you’re okay with knowing that I’ll get back to the nicer stuff. Just seemed like time you knew if you didn’t already. I know I don’t know you or what you like so I hope nothing I say offends you. All I got is the truth. I hope maybe you’ll like it.

  I like to watch your mouth when you read from that book. I can’t tell you what the story’s even about but I’ve got your lips memorized. I shut my eyes sometimes and just listen to how you talk. I’ve never been with a southern girl but it’s like every word you say comes out rolled in sugar. I think about kissing you like I said. Real deep and slow with our eyes closed. Maybe feel your hands on my chest or my back. As I hold your face or your hair. As I got to see if you taste like sugar to match how you sound.

  I grabbed my glass off the table, took a deep taste and let the wine coat my mouth.

  There’s other ways I think about your mouth and about holding your face and hair, too. I think you can guess what I mean.

  “Oh mercy.”

  I’d be real gentle, though. Tender. I promise. It’s just that I’ve felt nothing but my own hand for so long. I’d kill to know how your mouth felt. Warm and wet. Nothing nasty. Whatever you maybe want to do to me.

  My hands shook, the letters blurring. I shut my eyes tight, and I let myself imagine it. Us, in his cell, but no one around anywhere. Perfect silence except for his breathing, hitching above me in anticipation. A thumb hooked under that waistband and his strong hand easing it down, that staple of my recent fantasies. Collier exposing himself. Those dark eyes full of hunger or need, aggression or total helplessness. I couldn’t begin to guess, so I opened my own eyes, needing more clues to who this man was. And what he wanted from me.