“Can I send the message here?”
“No, it has to go through the mail. We have a process.”
“So another several days before I can get a form?”
“If he sends one. Then a couple weeks on the criminal history.”
So another month she’d have to wait. If Dane even sent her the paperwork. She felt tears coming and got more angry with herself. When had she become such a sniveling wreck? She took the paper. “I see. Okay.”
“I can make a registry of your visit,” Mrs. Murchison said. “The caseworker might notice. She might tell him you were here. No promises. ID?”
Stella passed her the license and watched as her name and number were scribbled in the blank space near Dane’s name.
“Here ya go.” The woman attempted a mildly sympathetic look as she passed back the ID. “You got a phone number?”
Stella wasn’t sure which one to give her, Beatrice’s or the perfume shop’s. But the shop had an answering machine. She gave her that one.
One of the big steel doors opened, and she peered through, hoping to see anything inside. Just a corridor. An elderly woman came out, ushered by yet another guard. She was bent over, her gray hair pale against her dark forehead, which was all Stella could see as she was so stooped.
The woman lifted her chin, revealing tired eyes behind tiny silver spectacles on a chain. “I remember my first time here,” she said, and Stella wondered how they could tell who was new. “I looked a lot like you, young and fresh.” Her hand trembled on a black cane.
Stella whirled around and barreled toward the door.
She gulped in sunshine and air. Two guards stood near each other, smoking cigarettes by the stone wall. They saw her and laughed. “Bad visit?” one jeered.
Stella ran to her car in a full-on sprint. The Mustang roared to life, and she hightailed it back toward the guard station. The inside guard held up his hands. She rolled down her window. “Whoa, Nelly,” he said. “You can’t be rushing out like this. People will get antsy.”
“I have to go,” she said. “Please let me out.”
He chortled. “First-timers.” Still, he inspected the backseat before signaling the other guard, who opened the gate. The moment it had swung wide enough, she pushed the gas, aiming to put as much distance between her car and the prison as she could. Maybe forever.
34
Dane Gets the Number
––––––––
DANE startled awake when the guard rapped on the bars. “You have a message.”
“Who, me?” Dane asked. His cellmate Alex still lay on his bed, a towel over his face.
“Yes, you. From the office.” The guard pushed the paper through the bars.
Dane shuffled forward. He hated midday naps, but even after a month, he could not get used to the 5 a.m. starts, the dark making his eyelids want to droop even as they were herded down to the showers. Each night he tried to sleep, but restlessness coupled with the misery coming from other members of the cellblock kept him up. He needed to stay sharp, and during the midday inmate count, they were stuck in their cells for over an hour. So he slept then.
The guard was the just-doing-my-job sort, not one of the blowhards who enjoyed authority. So the paper was simply passed over to him rather than crumpled or tossed or laid just out of reach on the ground. You learned to not give a shit about small stuff like that, and to never be too eager for anything.
He returned to his bed, unfolding the paper. At the top were his name and prisoner number. Then one line, “Prisoner has earned telephone privileges.” Then instructions on placing collect calls.
He glanced out the window, the sun lighting up the dome of his cell, carved from stone quarried by the very prisoners the rooms once housed. The walls had been painted so many times that they peeled in colors, white, brown—someone at some point had coated them in dusty blue.
He didn’t know Stella’s number. Or even where she was. He’d mailed her at the shop hoping Beatrice would know. He knew addresses. Just not numbers. They didn’t give them phone books. Information was a big thing, powerful, and in short supply on the inside.
He flipped the page over. On the back was a handwritten note.
Stella Ashton visited 10-20-84. Visitor services explained her lack of visitation status. Left phone number. 555-490-2309.
Call her. We can start the forms. Maggie
Dane’s hand gripped the paper so hard, it crumpled. He panicked, realizing how easily this number could be lost. He glanced at Alex. A difficult cellmate, hyper, overanimated, always making jokes Dane didn’t get. Alex came from Brooklyn originally and had failed to get extradited after a botched armed robbery. Dane had never explained his own crime, but obviously the inmates talked, as Alex came in on the second day saying, “I ain’t gonna get you mad. I ain’t ever gonna make you mad.”
But there could be worse. Alex might be emaciated and jacked up, already working the system for contraband and hoping for drugs, but fortunately he didn’t have any street cred or cash. Dane expected, though, that as much as the boy asked around, their cell would be subject to more searches than usual. Didn’t matter. He had nothing but his blank envelopes and paper. Having nothing to lose made life easier, although he did keep the scrap of pink fabric that was Stella’s hidden in a crumpled piece of paper in the back corner of the desk.
But now there was this. He opened the drawer and took out the pen. He wrote the number on another piece of blank stationery. Then he waited for the guards to pass again, and quickly scribbled the number both on the side of the desk, and on the wall by his pillow. He lay back on his bed, and for the first time in a long time, just to be sure he could not lose it, committed a phone number to memory.
*
The three phone booths in the rec area were all taken, so Dane sat on a rickety chair nearby to wait. He refused to let his anxiety show, something that could be used against him. If he didn’t get to call today, tomorrow was just another day.
But it did matter. Stella had come by yesterday, a Saturday. She’d left her number, so she wouldn’t know why he didn’t call. She had no idea how limited their time was, how hard it could be for someone new on the block to get to a phone. He tried to look like he wasn’t waiting, and didn’t care, but stayed close, to be the first in if someone left a booth. He kept the paper folded tightly in his palm, hidden, a dead giveaway that he was a first-timer. Didn’t matter, he’d memorized everything. The dial-out number, the prisoner code. But he had no idea where Stella’s number would lead. A hotel, or the shop, or one of Stella’s friends. He doubted she’d moved back home. She’d come to see him. Hopefully that didn’t mean something was wrong. God, what if she were pregnant? Or getting arrested for being there too? What if Darlene had gone after her?
His anxiety rose until his face felt like it would pop from the pressure. Another inmate, Carter, one of the real jackasses and seriously dangerous, strolled up to the phone booths and rapped on the door. “Out, motherfucker,” he said to the guy inside. The man shook his head, and Carter yanked open the door and jerked him out.
Dane glanced over at the guard who watched not fifteen feet away. Another plain Jane, nobody who would get all puffed up and overreact. Carter had already known this, which was why he’d risk it.
The door slid shut, and Dane continued to wait. The ejected inmate cursed to himself and wandered off. None of the others seemed to be ready to go anytime soon. He had to stay cool. The numbers were easy, straightforward, and comforting to simply recite in his mind. He laid them out backward, then rolled them out from the outside in, rearranged them numerically, categorized them by odd and even, added them up. And finally, the man on the end left his booth.
Dane didn’t even let the glass close but rushed inside. The small room was rank, airless, and hot. Nothing like the one with Stella at the truck stop, a lifetime ago. He picked up the black receiver, strung on a metal coil too short to wrap around someone’s neck, and thus not long enough to allow you
to stand up straight, or sit on the floor. Dane leaned in as he punched the numbers on the worn gray keypad.
“Your name?” an operator with a whiny voice asked.
“Dane Scoffield.”
After a couple of clicks, he could hear the phone ringing, distantly, like it was in another booth. Once. Twice. Three times. Could be no one home.
Then another click. “You’ve got the good sense to call Good Scents. Please leave a message at the tone.”
“Sowwwy,” the operator said. “Can’t do collect on an answering machine.”
But then, they heard a series of beeps, and a muffled “Crap!” Then “Hello? Hello?”
“I have a collect call from the Missouri State Penitentiary. A Dane Scuffield. Do you accept the charges?”
Scoffield! She’d gotten it wrong.
“Yes! Yes!”
Dane recognized Beatrice’s voice. With another click, the sounds all got louder, and Dane realized the operator was gone.
“Dane, is that you?”
“Yes. Hello, Beatrice.”
“Are you all right? How are you? Are you okay?”
Dane felt himself smiling into the mouthpiece. “As good as can be expected. How is Stella?”
“She’s fine. She’s, crap, let me get her. Just hold on!”
The receiver thunked in his ear. He pictured the phone resting on the glass cabinet, and the register, hiding Stella’s dream book, and the cushioned seats, the rows of bottles, the heavy air laden with mingling perfumes.
The receiver moved, something rubbed on it, then she was there, Stella. “Dane? Dane? Is that you?”
“It’s me, Stell.”
He thought she might have sobbed, or something. Maybe she was having a hard time thinking what to say. “They told me you came to visit.”
“I didn’t have the forms!”
“I know. I didn’t know.” He should have done it different.
“You didn’t know I needed them? Don’t they tell you anything?” Her voice was high, strident.
“No, I mean, I didn’t know if you’d want to come. I wanted to write you first.”
“Oh. But, yes. Of course. And I came.”
“Thank you.”
He could hear her breathing and squeezed his eyes closed, trying to blot out the marked-up wall of the booth, the stench, the noise outside, and the fear that he’d be ripped from the conversation. “Listen, these calls end suddenly sometimes. But I wanted to talk to you. To hear you.”
“Dane, I’ve been so worried.”
“I’m fine in here. It’s not that bad. Really. Sort of boring.”
She forced a laugh. “Boring?”
“Sure, not much to do. Bunch of angry boys all trying to get the best corner of the sandbox.”
“You be careful. I’ve heard such terrible stories.”
He sensed a movement by the door but refused to look. “Don’t believe them. It’s dull as dishwater, and I’m going to get fat.”
She laughed again. “More of you to love.”
He swallowed. “I don’t deserve any of that.”
The silence was long and hard, but finally she said, “So you going to send me that damn form?”
“I’ll send you all twenty.”
“But you only get twenty.”
“Then you get them all.”
She laughed again. “I don’t know what to do without you.”
He had no idea how to answer that. “I’ll get the form to you.” The air changed as the door came open. Still, he didn’t look. “Rec time is over. I’ll call again. Okay? You can write me, make sure I have your numbers. This is the time of day I can call.” A hand gripped his shoulder. He still wouldn’t look.
“Bye, Dane,” she said.
“Bye.” He pushed down on the hook to disconnect and set the receiver into place. Then, and only then, did he turn.
It was the guard. “Time’s up. To the yard.”
Dane exhaled slowly. He kept a grip on the paper he hadn’t needed and whistled lightly as he lined up with the other gray pants and white shirts. This had been the best day in over a month.
35
Farewell, Holly
––––––––
STELLA set the phone back down slowly even though the dial tone had buzzed in her ear for several seconds. He’d sounded so normal. He could have been calling from anywhere. Joe’s. Or his duplex.
Beatrice stepped back through the curtain. “How is he?”
“He sounds fine. Totally normal.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?” Beatrice set a box on the counter. “We want him to be fine.”
“I’m not fine!”
Beatrice went around the cash register to envelop Stella in a hug. “What would make you fine?”
Stella felt swallowed by the cushy embrace and the overpowering smell of Chanel No. 19. “I need to see him. It’s like he isn’t real.”
“Is that what you want? To be near him?”
Stella paced the shop, stopping to straighten a bottle or tuck a bit of tissue paper back into a basket. “Yes, I do. I’m too far.” She’d been too far from Grandma. She wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. Who else in this world did she love?
Crap. Love. She’d thought it. She aligned a bottle of bath splash with the row. Hell of a time to figure that out.
Beatrice was following her. “It’ll be hard, not being around anybody who cares for you, starting over with your man in prison.”
Stella plunked down onto the cushioned bench. “I understand that. And maybe I’ll hate it and leave again. But I have to do something.”
“Well, I’d agree with that. You’re going stir-crazy.”
Stella dropped her forehead into her hands. “And as much as I love Janine, her wedding...it’s awful. I can’t...do anything more. I’ll be her maid of honor, I will. And I’ll be there. But day in and day out. Colors and flowers and picking out doilies.”
“I know. It seems so silly to you with what you have to deal with.”
“It’s important to her, I know. But I can’t do it. It’s so far from what I get.”
“She’ll understand.”
But Janine wouldn’t. She’d be upset, just like in Jefferson, when Stella had shown up at the dress shop and not been completely focused on the twenty gowns that all looked the same. They were all beautiful. Why did anyone have to spend so much energy deciding between necklines?
Stella walked back to Beatrice. “I know it seems like I’ve left a dozen times already and didn’t get out the door. But I think this one is really it. I’m moving to Jefferson. Get a job. A little apartment. I’ll be all right for a while, with the savings.”
“I’ll help in any way I can.”
“I know you will. You’ve been great.” Like the mom she never had.
Stella tugged the book of brochures and flyers out from under the cash register. “Time for a new dream.” She chucked the binder into the trash.
“Not what you expected.”
“Nothing ever is.” Stella looked around the shop. “I think I’m leaving you in pretty good shape.”
Beatrice sniffed, her eyes red. “You aren’t, and you know it.”
Stella hugged her this time. “I do know. You would have been a great mom, Bea. You should have had kids.”
“Tell that to the men who never married me,” Beatrice sniffed. “But I got you to carry on about. You better call me. And invite me up when you get all settled so I can see your place.”
“I will.” Stella pulled away. “It won’t take me a couple hours to get everything back in the car. Most of it is still in boxes.”
“I’ll write you a letter of recommendation. I’ll go type it right now.”
Beatrice hurried to the back room again, and Stella circled the shop slowly. She’d seen Dane for the first time right there. And this was where they’d agreed to meet on the tower. No place would ever mean more to her. It wasn’t going to work out with Dane, she could see that. Twelve years
was just too much. But for now, she might as well go. Play it out for a bit longer. She did love him, though she’d never said it. And that would carry her through, until it couldn’t anymore.
*
Stella roared out of Holly early the next morning, Beatrice waving from the porch, instructed to tell Dane how to find Stella if he called Good Scents again. She’d already written him a letter and left it in the mailbox, saying the same thing. She felt confident now that they’d be in contact more often, even if the paperwork meant it would be a while before she could visit him.
The three hours passed slowly, though she did take time to walk through the truck stop outside Branson where they’d cleaned up that last day together. She bought another one of the green “Show-Me State” shirts and kept it in her lap the rest of the drive. She only had one set of pictures of them together, taken that same day in a photo booth at a restaurant, a strip of four shots in black and white. Now she clipped it to the rear-view mirror. She looked frightful in them, hair loose and down, no makeup, but happy. Her head rested against Dane’s shoulder as he stared straight into the camera in one. In another, they kissed. One was blurry as he pretended to attack her. In the last, you could only see his head and back as he grabbed her.
Stella pulled off at a dime store on the outskirts of Jefferson City around lunchtime, hoping to pick up a newspaper for help-wanted ads and maybe a place to rent. The city wasn’t huge like normal state capitals, not that she’d been to many, but it was large enough to get lost in. She didn’t know what areas to look in, what might be expensive or unsafe.
Inside she spotted a simple black frame, long and skinny like her strip of pictures, so she took it to the counter. A teenager just out of high school, or a dropout maybe, sat on a stool blowing big pink bubbles. Her hair was teased, held in place by a lace headband. Stella had never seen anything like it. “Your hair,” she said. “Wow.”
The girl grasped a chunk of it and crunched it with her hand. “Madonna style. Didn’t you see her on MTV? The Music Awards?”
At Stella’s confused stare, she pulled out a magazine. “Last month. ‘Like a Virgin.’” On the cover was a woman in white underwear, a big poofy skirt, and her hair was just like this girl’s—full of stiff waves.
Tangled: A New Adult Romance Boxed Set (12 Book Bundle of Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Royalty) Page 132