Hi Fred,
I recieved your message after you saw me on the website. I am writting this letter to thank you for being my “penn pal” lol. I am “403” but please call me Angel. The address to write to is on the envellope. From now on write here. Did the website tell you the rules about how mail gets read by other’s both ways?
Take care,
Fred liked that last part — so affectionate. He was careful wording his reply, wanting his first letter to be eloquent. He hammered at the keyboard, glancing every few minutes at the color image of Angel’s website profile lying beside his desktop. He’d Photoshopped the image to put himself there, behind her, grinning like a mega-lotto winner, hands resting on her shoulders — actually, pretty close to the swell of her chest. He wrote how glad he was to hear from her, how much he’d already thought about her.
He didn’t mention anything about her being in prison. That could wait. In a way, it was beside the point. He wanted to help her think about the future and forget her troubles. Instead, he asked if she had a boyfriend. I bet you have a boyfriend, he wrote, but if not, consider me a candidate! He added a smiley-face icon, something he thought he would never do, but here it just seemed right. Fred told her about his life and where he lived in West Garden Grove in a remodeled home, well maintained but in need of a woman’s touch. He hoped that wasn’t too forward. He didn’t want to scare her away; that was why he left out his picture. He wrapped up by asking her to please write back ASAP.
Going over his letter, he polished it up. He took out the part calling himself a shy geek, also the mention of how many cops lived in his neighborhood. He got rid of his horrible childhood, how he escaped his hateful parents by moving from the upper Midwest to California and hadn’t seen them in years, what he secretly called his “witness self-protection program.” He called himself single instead of never married. Why be negative?
Fred printed it, signed it, sealed it in an envelope, and drove to the post office. He used the automated machine to send it express. He didn’t need some snotty clerk snickering at Angel’s prison address. They might even throw it in the trash — after they ripped it open and read it, the creeps. Someone should go postal and rip them open.
After the first exchanges, things moved pretty fast even if the mail didn’t. Then Angel wrote that even though he couldn’t call her, she could call him collect. Fred did a solitary endzone dance and demanded in his reply, Why didn’t you mention it before? Call me any old time! He gave his home number, but not the cell or office. Too distracting.
Fred worked at a nationwide income-tax preparation company. After ten years, the job was routine enough for him to sneak online and daydream — that’s how he’d found InmatePlaymates.com. In his free time, he’d toss back a few Coronas with his cop buddy and across-the-street neighbor Manny Delgado, maybe go to a Ducks game, whatever.
These days Fred was interested in working off a beer belly, not drinking it. Since Angel had soon asked pointedly about a picture, he dug one out taken at a workmate’s wedding a few years earlier. Fred was quite a bit thinner back then — but he knew he’d be at least down to that weight by the time he could go on a visit. If he laid off the energy bars and bottled Frappuccino and used the stairs at work, he’d be back into his old clothes in no time flat. Old clothes, nothing — he’d buy the new ones he’d budgeted for. During tax season, he couldn’t get away. He’d be working long hours including weekends, so he and Angel would have to wait awhile. Besides, they hadn’t even discussed a visit yet.
In the picture, he’d taken off his glasses and held them behind his back. He wore dark slacks, a white shirt, and a narrow black tie. Now he smiled, realizing that to her he might look like a slightly plump Mormon on bike patrol. He could have altered it electronically to include sunglasses so he’d look more like John Belushi as a Blues Brother, but changing an image for his own entertainment and deceiving her were two different things.
He wanted Angel to see how he was and think he was still okay, so her next letter was a huge relief. She even said something that gave him a hot shiver of anticipation:
Hi Fred.
Your picture was a pleasant suprise. I always thought men who can wear plus sizes are more attractive, they are fun to cuddle. At certain times you just need something to grab on to and who wants a hand full of skinny ribs and no butt? Your so cute I feel more lonelier now!
Kisses and big bare hugs,
Bare or bear, either was fine with him.
That next week was a blur of work: run home and see if there was a letter, eat something “healthy” from the microwave, take a quick walk, go to sleep, and get up to do it over again. Fred had explained to Angel about tax season but began to take work home so he’d be there in case she called. Soon the letters were pouring through the door slot. Twice they passed in the mail because they had so much to say. He was getting pretty good at flirting and double meanings, if he did say so himself. In fact, he’d never felt better, like on a high, full of energy, smiling. He was rocketing through the tax forms. He told Angel to call him, and soon. Her next letter said, Thanks for the offer, I will call you March 1st Friday so, dont go on a date just kidding lol!
Did she really think he’d do that to her? With everything she’d told him about the abuse and terror her parents and ex-boyfriend had made her endure, all he wanted to do was protect and care for her. He didn’t expect more than gratitude, at first, but he knew she would want to show it, someday, when she had the chance.
Friday arrived. Because he didn’t want to get stuck in evening rush-hour traffic, Fred left work early and undetected. He kept his cool on the freeway. There was the usual nasty honking and flipping off, but he drove just under the speed of traffic and in the slow lane, thwarting any thug who tried to use it to pass on the right. Pretty soon, he was almost to the intersection he secretly called White Trash Corners at the southern edge of his neighborhood. Twice every workday, Fred’s freeway shortcut took him through the four-way stop.
Uh — glee! The first house had gray paint, gray trim, a never-watered grayish tan lawn, and a gray fence that looked like it was put together without nails in a wind tunnel, leaning this way and that. Not to code. The old guy who lived there with a mousy little wife often put up handwritten screeds in his window about politics or the Bible. Fred didn’t bother reading them.
The second house had peeling, dirty white paint and trim. The residents were a guy and his two grown sons. It seemed all they did was watch over their beer cans as the original asphalt driveway cracked, separated, and disappeared under the thatchy so-called lawn, where a truck and two cars were parked. The truck never moved.
The third house took a woman’s touch to be bad. In front, right on the corner, were three stumps of what had probably been palm trees. The lady there decorated those stumps for every holiday, small and large, and usually left them up until it was time for the next holiday. Just so you wouldn’t forget her fat ass, she had a country-style garden decoration, really just some painted plywood, that showed the back view of some damn woman bent over, probably picking up dogshit decorations.