"You tell me what it is," said Rings.
"No." Christina shook her head. "You gotta give me the Dep."
The guard picked up his keys and clipboard, unlocked the barred door, disappeared behind it, and locked it again. In a minute he was back, a look of surprise on his face. "All right."
She proceeded through the bars and down the cement-block hallway to the deputy warden's office, feeling the air conditioning touch her face. The deputy warden stood at his desk, a little man in a bad suit, and waved his hand in front of his chair. "Miss Welles, you-"
"I got something to talk about, but not what I told Rings."
The deputy warden lifted his hand to interrupt.
"No, wait, wait, Dep, let me talk," she said. "Soft T has been terrorizing the women."
"Mr. Thomas?"
"Mr. Thomas. He's using the clipboard to get sexual favors for himself."
The deputy warden sat down. "That's a very serious charge."
"I know it's a very serious charge." She could guess what he was thinking, because the wiring inside the prison was plain to anyone who had been there a few months: The prison generally let the guards get away with as much as they could, but a guard who was proven to have forced sex onto a female prisoner subjected the prison to the sensationalistic and synergizing effects of news reports, watchdog agency press conferences, civil lawsuits, and TV-movie deals. And then he had to be removed, which, the union correctly pointed out, deprived the man of his livelihood, guards being generally unqualified to do much else-the job required subservience to a military chain of command, tolerance for extreme boredom, a masked but present desire to abuse weaker human beings, and last but by no means least, the ability to attack and, if necessary, beat a woman.
The deputy warden saw that Christina was resolute. "Go on," he said.
"He's forcing women to give him blow jobs."
"You?"
She held his gaze. "Me."
"When?"
"About five minutes ago."
He nodded noncommittally and whisked his hands across his desk, as if sweeping away grains of irritation. The gesture carried an entire mindset-two decades of professional tedium, a thousand forgotten memos, a hundred remembered alimony payments, beer cans in an otherwise empty refrigerator, dead flies on the windowsill. "You know my problem, Miss Welles, it's his word against yours."
She waited until he seemed sure that she had no response. And then longer, creating enough silence to break his certainty.
"I've got proof."
The deputy warden folded his arms. He'd heard everything in his time. Christina slipped her hand into her pocket. "Here. Don't take my word for it." She put the little paper cup on the warden's desk. "That's his-his ejaculate. You have that tested, get the DNA or whatever they do, and then test him, Dep. He just shot that all over my face five minutes ago. You go ask him how I got that, okay? I didn't steal it from him, you know what I mean?"
The deputy warden picked up the little paper cup. He tore the tape off, looked inside, and nodded. Then he raised his eyes to Christina. "That's it, then," he said.
She didn't understand his tone. "What? You're not going to do anything?"
"I am going to do something, as a matter of fact." The deputy-warden pushed the cup to one side on his desk. "But when and in what manner is not your business. However"-he glanced at a couple of papers on his desk-"we have something else much more important to talk about."
She couldn't believe it. He wasn't going to do anything about Soft T. "What?" she spat, thinking bitterly of what she had just put herself through. "What do we have to talk about that is more important than what I just told you, Dep?"
"This." He was holding a piece of paper. "You're due to appear in court tomorrow, Miss Welles."
"Court?"
"State Supreme Court."
"I don't get it."
"Your lawyer never contacted you, I see."
"Nobody told me anything," she breathed, afraid now. "They can't be adding on to my sentence, they aren't-"
"No, no," the deputy warden interrupted, his voice both disgusted and amused. He handed the heavy stationery to Christina. The letter was from the Manhattan District Attorney's Office: You are hereby directed to produce Christina Welles, inmate number 95G1139-112D, in State Supreme Court, New York County, Part 47, for a 440.10 motion request. It is anticipated by this office that the motion to vacate the inmate's conviction and sentence will be signed by the Court. We have been unable to contact the inmate's family members. Please advise the inmate of her anticipated change in status and prepare her for her imminent release.
She looked up at the deputy warden. He nodded silently, his mouth shut. The air conditioner in the window battered out a hum. She glanced back at the letter. Signed by her own prosecutor, whom she'd last seen at the sentencing hearing, where she'd received her seven years, no thanks due to her attorney, Mrs. Bertoli, a meat-faced hack lawyer who worked out of a castle of hack lawyers on lower Broadway. Why had the prosecutor written the letter? She barely remembered him, a faceless man in his late twenties who wanted to know everything about her life before she'd been arrested, wanted to understand how a young woman like her had become a felon-unlike Mrs. Bertoli, who was just putting in the time for a fee, the fee Rick had so magnanimously agreed to pay using money Christina had earned for him. But Christina had not been cooperative with the prosecutor, and he had marched through the charges relentlessly. She had accepted her conviction, breathed it in like a mountain, seen it as the logical result of a life out of control. Too many wrong choices in a row, and you ended up in the bad place.
"I'm getting out?" she said now, trying to keep her voice even.
"Yes," the deputy warden replied, face tight.
She blinked. "Wait, this never happens."
"Never, usually."
"I can't believe it."
The deputy warden's eyes were cold. "I can."
That night she stood under the cell's single lightbulb and packed her things in a black plastic trash bag. Not much. A few books, her music tapes. Five pairs of panties, two pairs of pants, three T-shirts, one ugly dress, and a pair of sneakers. A mail-order bra. Her hairbrush, her toothbrush, dental floss, Tampax, a small bottle of aspirin. She didn't own any makeup. Among her papers were photos of her mother and dead father and an out-of-date address book. Everyone from her former life had moved on or died or married or otherwise departed. She hadn't kept up with people. She'd wanted to forget them and for them to forget her.
Mazy stood watching, crying quietly, the wetness catching in the asymmetrical grooves in her cheeks. "Maybe you come back visit me."
"I can't, Mazy," said Christina. "I'm going to miss you, but I can't ever come back here."
Mazy handed her a small bottle of perfume. "I don't have anything else to give you."
Christina kept packing. "You don't need to give me anything."
"I ain't ever known anyone like you. You're not like the rest of us here."
"I'm like everybody, Mazy."
"Everyone going remember what you did today. Everyone already talking about it. They dragged old Soft T right out of here this afternoon. Took his keys away."
Mazy glanced down the hallway, then back at Christina, eyes soft, smiling sweetly.
Christina shook her head. "I can't, Mazy."
"It's our last time."
"I can't. My mind is already out of here." She looked at the ceiling. She knew every crack, every flake of paint waiting to fall. One more night and she'd never see the cell again.
Mazy stepped near but did not touch her. "You don't want come be close one last time?"