This morning she was sitting beside Angel Fitzroy, watching the morning report on WTRF, Channel 7 out of Wheeling. The news was the usual stew: a drive-by shooting, a transformer fire, a woman arrested for assaulting another woman at the Monster Truck Jam, the state legislature having an argle-bargle over a new men’s prison that had been built on a mountaintop removal site and appeared to have structural problems. On the national front, the Kinsman Brightleaf siege continued. On the other side of the globe, thousands were thought dead in a North Korean earthquake, and doctors in Australia were reporting an outbreak of sleeping sickness that seemed to affect only women.
“That’d be meth,” Angel Fitzroy said. She was nibbling a Twix she had found in the snack machine’s dispenser tray. Making it last.
“Which? The sleeping women, the chick at the Monster Truck Jam, or the reality show–type guy?”
“Could be all, but I was thinking of the chick at the Jam. I was at one of those once, and damn near everbody oncept the kiddies was coked up or smoked up. You want some of this?” She cupped the remains of the Twix in her hand (in case Officer Lampley was currently monitoring one of the common room cameras), and offered it to Jeanette. “It ain’t so stale as some of them in there.”
“I’ll pass,” Jeanette said.
“Sometimes I see something makes me wish I was dead,” Angel said matter-of-factly. “Or wish everbody else was. Lookit that.” She pointed to a new poster between the snack machine and the soft drink dispenser. It showed a sand dune with footprints leading away, seemingly into infinity. Below the photo was this message: THE CHALLENGE IS GETTING THERE.
“The guy got there, but where did he go? Where is that place?” Angel wanted to know.
“Iraq?” Jeanette asked. “He’s probably at the next oasis.”
“Nope, he’s dead of heatstroke. Just a-layin out there just where you can’t see, eyes all buggin out and skin black as a tophat.” She didn’t smile. Angel was a tweaker, and serious country: bark-chewing, baptized-in-a-moonshine-still country. Assault was what they got her for, but Jeanette guessed Angel could have hit most of the categories on a criminal scorecard. Her face was all bones and angles—it looked hard enough to break up pavement. She had spent a goodly amount of time in C Wing during her stay at Dooling. In C Wing you only got out two hours a day. It was bad-girl country, was C Wing.
“I don’t think you turn black even if you die of heatstroke in Iraq,” Jeanette said. It could be a mistake to disagree (even humorously) with Angel, who had what Dr. Norcross liked to call “anger issues,” but this morning Jeanette felt like living dangerously.
“My point is, that’s a crock of shit,” Angel said. “The challenge is just livin through fuckin today, as you probly well know.”
“Who do you think put it up? Dr. Norcross?”
Angel snorted. “Norcross has got more sense. No, that’s Warden Coates. Jaaaanice. Honey’s big on motivation. Seen the one in her office?”
Jeanette had—an oldie, but not a goodie. It showed a kitten hanging from a tree branch. Hang in there, baby, indeed. Most of the kitties in this place had already fallen off their branches. Some were out of their trees.
The TV news was now showing the mug shot of an escaped convict. “Oh man,” Angel said. “He put the lie to black is beautiful, don’t he?”
Jeanette did not comment. The fact was, she still liked guys with mean eyes. She was working on it with Dr. Norcross, but for the time being she was stuck with this attraction to fellows who looked like they might at any moment decide to take a wire whisk to your bare back while you were in the shower.
“McDavid’s in one of Norcross’s babysitting cells in A Wing,” Angel said.
“Where did you hear that?” Kitty McDavid was one of Jeanette’s favorite people—smart and feisty. Rumor was that Kitty had rolled with a heavy crowd on the outside, but there was no real meanness in her, except for the kind that was self-directed. She had been a deeply dedicated cutter at some point in the past; the scars were on her breasts, sides, upper thighs. And she was prone to periods of depression, although whatever meds Norcross had her on seemed to have been helping with that.
“You want all the news, you got to get in here early. I heard it from her.” Angel pointed at Maura Dunbarton, an elderly trustee who was in for life. Maura was now placing magazines from her wheelie cart on the tables, doing it with infinite care and precision. Her white hair stood out around her head in a filmy corona. Her legs were clad in heavy support hose the color of cotton candy.
“Maura!” Jeanette called—but low. Shouting in the common room was strictly verboten, except by kids on visiting days and inmates on the monthly Party Nites. “Walk this way, girlfriend!”
Maura rolled her cart slowly toward them. “Got a Seventeen,” she said. “Either of you interested?”
“I wasn’t interested when I was seventeen,” Jeanette said. “What’s up with Kitty?”
“Screaming half the night,” Maura said. “Surprised you didn’t hear her. They pulled her out of her cell, gave her a needle, and put her in A. Sleeping now.”
“Screaming what?” Angel asked. “Or just screaming?”
“Screaming that the Black Queen is coming,” Maura said. “Says she’ll be here today.”
“Aretha coming to put on a show?” Angel asked. “She’s the only black queen I know.”
Maura paid no attention. She was gazing at the blue-eyed blonde on the cover of the magazine. “Sure neither of you wants this Seventeen? There’s some nice party dresses.”
Angel said, “I don’t wear no dress like that unless I have my tiara,” and laughed.
“Has Dr. Norcross seen Kitty?” Jeanette asked.
“Not in yet,” Maura said. “I had a party dress once. Real pretty blue, poofy. My husband burned a hole in it with the iron. It was an accident. He was trying to help. No one ever taught him how to iron, though. Most men never learn. And he won’t now, that’s for sure.”
Neither of them replied. What Maura Dunbarton did to her husband and two children was well known. It happened thirty years ago, but some crimes are unforgettable.
7
Three or four years earlier—or maybe five or six; the aughts had sort of sprinted away on her and the landmarks were hazy—in a parking lot behind a Kmart in North Carolina a man told Tiffany Jones she was headed for trouble. Vaporous as the last decade and a half had been, this moment had stayed with her. Seagulls were screeching and picking at the trash around the Kmart loading dock. Drizzle streaked the window glass of the Jeep she was sitting in, which belonged to the guy who said she was headed for trouble. The guy was mall fuzz. She had just given him a blowjob.
What happened was he caught her shoplifting deodorant. The quid pro quo they’d agreed on had been fairly straightforward and unsurprising; she gave him oral sex, he let her go. He was a beefy son of a bitch. It had been quite an operation, getting access to his dick while negotiating his gut and thighs and the steering wheel of his car. But Tiffany had done a lot of things and this was so minor by comparison it wouldn’t even have made the long list, except for what he said.