Somebody Else’s Sky: Something in the Way, 2

by Jessica Hawkins

  “It’s more fun this way. Speaking of fun.” She slipped a Playboy from the bottom of the pile. I was one of the lucky bastards whose girlfriend brought him porn and probably the only guy who didn’t care about it.

  I took the magazine. A naked blonde I recognized from MTV looked back at me from the cover. Her knowing blue eyes and smile-smirk were familiar. “She looks a little like you,” I said. “Maybe in a few years.”

  She vaulted forward to see better as I checked for the centerfold. “Jenny McCarthy?” she asked. “I think her boobs are fake. Do you like that?”

  “No.” I closed it. “Thanks, but I told you, I don’t read these.”

  “And I told you, I don’t believe you. But if that’s true, just trade it for whatever you need. But,” she lowered her voice to a breathy whisper, “not before you check pages eighteen and nineteen. Don’t trade it until you do that.”

  “What’ll I find on pages eighteen and nineteen?” I asked, watching her fingers twist her hair into one, big golden curl.

  She smiled with her lips closed, like she had a secret, and I knew what I’d find on pages eighteen and nineteen—or more like stuck between them. The female correctional officer on duty, Jameson, was all right, so I peeked inside at two Polaroids of Tiffany in black lingerie. As I followed the lines of her curves, my balls tightened. This, the possibility of one day having it, got me off way more than glossy chicks I didn’t know. “Who took these?”

  “Sarah. She did it for her boyfriend, too.”

  “You know CO Ludwig might ‘confiscate these,’” I said. He’d cleaned me out of cigarettes, porno, and chewing tobacco during the last shakedown, and that fucker would delight in violating any inmate by taking his girl’s photos.

  “So you’ll have them until he does.” She shrugged. “He’s pathetic. That fat idiot has to take them because unlike you, he has nobody to give him any.”

  I didn’t like the idea of it, but Tiffany took it in stride. She knew how little control I had in here. I didn’t know many girls who wouldn’t freak out about a “fat idiot” drooling over their photo. Behind the Polaroids, she’d folded up a page torn from a magazine. I opened it. Tiffany smiled brightly on the page in khakis and a navy polo, her arms crossed as she leaned her shoulder against a man wearing the same outfit.

  “My second catalogue,” she said. “It’s for this company that sells uniforms. I know the clothing is hideous, but I wanted you to see—”

  “I don’t care what you’re wearing.” I smoothed out the creases. “You look happy. Even prettier than Jenny what’s-her-name.”

  She nudged my leg with her foot. “Thank you.”

  “Any more news from that agent lady?”

  Her blue eyes lit up. “I have a go-see for a swimsuit company this weekend. My agent thinks I’ll get it. They’re looking for a beach babe.”

  “You’re a beach babe if I ever saw one.”

  “I need this job, Manning. I can’t wait to quit Nordstrom. My manager has been so obnoxious this week. She made me vacuum the fitting rooms twice in one day. As if anyone could tell the difference.”

  Outside this space, I would’ve stopped her there. I couldn’t fake interest in overpriced clothing, the women Tiffany constantly had to compliment, or sales floor brawls over commission. But my life was about routines now, and this was part of ours. Hearing about her day-to-day life, it wasn’t much, but it was something I looked forward to anyway.

  Tiffany’d gotten a modeling agent after I’d been locked up, and almost right away, she’d been in a catalogue. Paid pretty well, too, though she’d blown most of the money already. “It’s just temporary,” I reminded her.

  “I know. I’ll feel better after I pick up my paycheck.” She put her hands in her lap. “Which is something I wanted to talk about. I’ve been thinking.”

  “Yeah?” I sat back in my seat. “What about?”

  “I’ve been saving a little each pay period like you said.”

  Before this, I’d been pretty good about setting extra money aside. It was all gone now, mostly on fines and restitution, but I’d been going over savings accounts and compound interest with Tiffany during our visits. Apparently, her dad had tried and given up, but I figured she had to see the light sooner or later. Maybe she finally had. “Good,” I said.

  “And, well, things have been really tense at home, so I might . . . I might try to get my own place.”

  “Can you afford the rent?”

  “I can if I cut back shopping at the store. I just save so much with the discount.”

  “Not more than you’d save if you didn’t buy anything,” I pointed out.

  She considered that a second. “I never thought of it that way. Anyway, what do you think? About the apartment?”

  As long as Tiffany lived at home, she’d be under her dad’s thumb. I didn’t see how that had helped her up to this point. “I like the idea.”

  “Really?” she asked. “My dad says I can’t afford it.”

  “Well, that’s because he hasn’t seen you try. Prove him wrong. Get a roommate if you need to. Move inland. Stop eating out. You can do it if you set your mind to it.”

  “You really think so? Because I’ve looked into it, and I do think I can do it, but when he said that, I started to doubt myself.”

  “I know you can make it happen,” I said. “You just have to stay focused.”

  “Okay. I will.” Her smile fell into a frown when she checked the clock over my head. “I have to go in a minute. If I don’t run the errands Mom gave me for tonight, I’ll be dead meat.”

  “What’s tonight?” I asked.

  “Oh, it’s . . .” She glanced away.

  She always looked left when she was exaggerating or stretching the truth. Wherever she had to be tonight, she didn’t want to tell me. I couldn’t think of any reason why that might be except one—another guy. We’d never really made things official, her and I—she called me her boyfriend, but I suspected she hadn’t gone almost a year waiting for me. Nor did I expect her to. We’d never slept together, so it seemed like a fair arrangement.

  Tiffany came around more often than anyone. Every couple months, Henry, the officer who’d looked out for me after Maddy’s death, drove my aunt almost four hours to Blythe for a visit, but they couldn’t make it out as much as they wanted to.

  Tiff was consistent and affectionate, reminding me she cared, touching me the way nobody had in almost a year. I wouldn’t be happy to hear she was seeing another guy tonight, but I wouldn’t make her talk about it. I opened my hand across the table, and she put hers in it. “You don’t have to tell me. But everything’s all right?”

  “I’m just stressed with work and my dad and hearing about USC nonstop—it’s her birthday. That’s why I can’t stay long. Mom ordered this fancy cake, and I have to go pick it up.”

  Her.

  I tensed. Tiffany hadn’t even said her name, but I knew. It was an interruption to our routine. Tiffany rarely brought up her sister, and when she did, I shut down the conversation. I wanted to know everything, but Lake belonged outside these dismal walls, away from this dusty town off the freeway, and far from my mind. So I knew nothing. I never asked about her, and except in moments of extreme weakness, never thought about her, either. Just the mention of her felt like a sucker punch. “It’s today?” I asked. “Her birthday?”

  “As if every other day isn’t about Lake, now we have to throw her a stupid party.” She fidgeted with one of the paperbacks’ creased covers, folding up the corner. “It’s obnoxious.”

  “What’s the date today?” I asked her.

  “Why do you care?”

  I took a breath. “Never mind.”

  Ten months. That was how long I’d gone without a fix. Lake’s letters came every couple weeks. I’d opened the first one, but that was it. I’d known right then that if I was going to make it through this, I couldn’t think of her. Couldn’t be inside her head that way, and she definitely couldn’t be inside mine
.

  A year from today, she’d be eighteen, but that didn’t matter anymore, not when I’d turned into this. Standing in that courtroom last August, hearing Lake’s voice in the same moment I was falsely charged with burglary, I’d turned and seen something no man ever should. One way or another, the pain and confusion on her face all led back to me. I’d exposed her to this life and chipped away some of her innocence, and I’d never forgive myself for it. I wouldn’t make that mistake twice.

  I hoped that Lake never thought of me, never worried about me. That I was far from her mind. At the same time, it killed me that I might be.

  Fuck. She didn’t belong in here. I pushed thoughts of Lake out of my mind and focused on Tiffany. She’d been loyal and deserved my attention. Not only for sticking by me, but for stepping up when I’d needed her. After my sentencing, Tiffany had taken my lease to Dexter Grimes, who’d told her there was no way to break it without a fee. She’d set her mind to it anyway and had convinced the landlord to reduce it. All I’d lost was a couple hundred bucks and last-month’s rent. Then, she’d sold my furniture and car. Part of that money went to student loans that hadn’t amounted to anything, and the rest went to the victim or my commissary.

  My chest tightened just thinking about. Having Lake on my mind again, I already needed another cigarette. If I could smoke two at a time, I probably would. Nothing brought me pure pleasure like smoking. Tiff’s visits were a highlight of my stay. Cigarettes, though, they made life in here worth living.

  I turned in my seat to check the clock. Five more minutes.

  I started when Tiffany touched the back of my neck, her finger slipping down my skin, under the edge of my collar. “Is this new?”

  “Young lady,” a voice came over the intercom. Ludwig. I hadn’t even seen him come in. “You want to touch a man in this room, go right ahead—just make sure he ain’t in orange. First and final warning.”

  Tiffany took her hand back as I sat forward again. Ludwig was the only man in the room not wearing prison scrubs. “Don’t do that,” I said under my breath. “They’ll restrict us to non-contact visits.”

  “Sorry. What is it?”

  I rubbed the back of my neck, the hairs on end where her fingers had been. “Tattoo.”

  “But of what? All I saw was a thin line.”

  I wasn’t sure how she’d seen anything at all. It was simple, black tracings on the back of my right shoulder. “It’s nothing. Dumb. One of the lifers used to be a tattoo artist and I was bored.”

  The ghost of her fingers lingered. It felt good to be touched. Tiffany wasn’t scared, didn’t hesitate, just reached out and did it. As if it were normal.

  As if I wasn’t a convicted felon.

  “Don’t go getting my name in ink or anything,” she said, smiling a little. “A friend of mine’s boyfriend did that inside. Now they’re broken up.”

  “You breaking up with me?” I asked.

  “No way.”

  “Who of your friends has a boyfriend inside?”

  “You don’t know her. Anyway, he’s out now.”

  “Time’s up,” Jameson called.

  Tiffany stood, tugging down her skirt in a way that was almost cute, a little self-conscious. To me, Tiffany and Lake were complete opposites, but they looked alike to the rest of the world. Sometimes, I’d catch glimpses of Lake in her sister. An expression she’d made before, a gesture, the way she pronounced a word. Blonde hair, blue eyes, smooth skin. It made forgetting Lake even harder and left me worrying about Tiffany driving up here alone, being around the facility when I was incapacitated.

  “You really shouldn’t wear that stuff around here,” I told her.

  “I want to look good for you.”

  “Yeah, well, you look good to the other guys, too.” I stood. “They see you in that skirt and I get shit for it.”

  She cocked a hip, leaning her thigh against the edge of the metal table. “Really?” she asked excitedly. “I heard it gives you street cred to have a hot girlfriend.”

  “Where’d you hear that?”

  “I’ve been asking around. Reading some stuff.”

  Truth was, at some point, I’d started to look forward to seeing what she’d wear—it was a sweet kind of torture—but the guys baited me with it all the time. “I’ve got the best-looking girl in the joint,” I said. “They go crazy over you.”

  She tucked her chin into her shoulder, her cheeks reddening. “That’s so sweet—”

  “It’s not a good thing.” I shook my head. “If you heard what these guys said . . . what they called women . . . there’s nothing sweet about it.”

  “You sound like my dad. He hates that I come here. He thinks it’s dangerous. I told him—it’s a prison. Everyone’s already locked up. It’s probably the safest place I could be.”

  Charles was right to be concerned. They’d called Tiffany and other women lots of things. Bitch, sexy, walking pussy. It was true what I’d said—I got it worse than most because Tiffany was ten times better looking than their visitors, but that wasn’t the only reason. The guys knew it was the only thing that got to me. After Tiffany’s first visit, a few weeks following the arraignment, one of the guys had gone as far as to mimic bending her over the cafeteria table. Stressed from getting shoved into this new life, I’d flown off the handle and sent him to the infirmary. I’d almost caught more charges. Rumor had spread about how fast I’d put him down, but I’d also shown them exactly how to get to me.

  Now, I kept it inside. It was counterintuitive to take a calming breath when they called her names, but it wouldn’t do anybody any good if I got myself in more trouble. I stopped giving a fuck. In here, women were bitches, even though we’d give our left nuts for a few hours alone with one. In here, justification was a rampant disease. Men killed and stole for their families. For their brothers. For their bitches. Out of respect. Or a debt to pay. Everyone was guilty of something.

  Even me.

  2

  Manning

  The days after Tiffany’s visits usually dragged, but this time was worse. She’d caught me off guard when she’d broken unspoken protocol and mentioned Lake. My self-control got slippery. Her name was everywhere. I saw it in books, heard it on the news. A guard had an upcoming vacation to Lake Tahoe. An inmate’s daughter was starring in a school production of Swan Lake.

  I went to the library to distract myself. Since I’d been twelve credits short of a criminal justice degree before all this, I helped with some of the guys’ cases and they paid for that. But combing through legal books reminded me of my early days in prison, when I’d done nothing but try to understand how I’d gotten here, so my mind drifted to that night in the truck with Lake. It was the first time I’d thought of it in weeks. I left the library to work in the yard, mixing and placing concrete in hundred-degree weather until I thought I’d pass out from the heat. All that for fifty cents an hour, half of which went to the victim’s compensation fund, but at least I’d been forced to learn a lot on the job. More than I would’ve jumping from crew to crew like I’d been.

  A few nights after Tiffany’s visit, following a full day’s work, I went to my cell for lights out.

  Wills sat on his bunk, short legs dangling over my bed as he sniffed the air like a rat. “You still got that jackbook?”

  “No.” I’d traded my porn for Cup Noodles and cigarettes.

  “How about we swap—pictures of my girl for yours?”

  “Not unless you want to take a trip to the infirmary.”

  Tiffany’s Polaroids and catalogue tear-out were hidden in my legal paperwork with my letters. Just to make sure he hadn’t fucked with me, I went and squatted in front of my locker, opening my files to check that everything was there.

  “I’ve been looking at the same titties for months,” he pleaded. “I need new material.”

  Lake’s name found me again, her pretty scrawl tempting me from the corner of each of her envelopes. If I could get one message to her, it would be to stop sendin
g the fucking letters. She needed to know they made things worse for me. I was strong enough not to read them, but I couldn’t bring myself to trash them like I should. The smart thing would’ve been burning each letter as it’d arrived. Having them here was dangerous. The guys, they couldn’t know about Lake. They didn’t need that kind of lethal ammunition against me.

  I stood up. My body ached, my muscles fatigued from a rough few days outside, but hard labor kept me sane. Focused.

  Wills picked up his feet as I ducked to sit on my bed with the letters, and he belched a familiar tune. “It’s the theme song from Growing Pains,” he said. “You know that show with the curly-haired kid?”

  Madison had probably watched it. I couldn’t remember. I’d never talked to Wills about my sister, though. Or anyone in here for that matter. I lay back with an arm behind my head, staring at the underside of Wills’ bunk. The springs glinted from the fluorescent lights, winking at me like stars. I could be back at the camp pool with Lake if I’d just let myself go there. Her curious hand inching across the pavement toward mine. Even with my eyes on the sky, I’d heard her shallow breathing, sensed her nervousness. I’d wanted to find out exactly what thoughts ran through her head, what had made her come looking for me. What had prompted a quiet, almost shy girl like her to check out Lolita from the library and then tell me about it. I was pretty sure she’d talked herself into everything she’d done that night. Asking me questions about Madison. About myself. Leaning in to try and kiss me.

  She was seventeen now.

  I pushed the thought away. Her age didn’t matter. She could’ve been twenty-four like me, but I’d still be a convict with a “suspicious” background as my lawyer had put it. A minimum-wage construction worker. The son of a murderer.

  “You think it’ll affect my daughter, me being gone the first few years of her life?” Wills got in a philosophical mood some nights. “Like babies just know that shit? Or you think they’re as dumb as they look, all goo-goo ga-ga?”