Poor kid, so alone. His eyes had watered a little then. He knew what it was like to be lonesome. After numerous humiliating ordeals called “dates,” Fred took his sex life private, getting along with toys and DVDs. Cheaper and safer.
Fred went through a metal detector like at an airport, then finished the check-in routine at the desk, where a guard counted his money, stamped his wrist, looked closely at the pass and his ID, and confiscated the bag, saying, “Nothing from outside comes inside, nothing inside goes out.”
Inmate visiting was in a big boxy room with picnic tables, walls punctuated by vending machines behind heavy yellow stripes on the floor. Prisoners weren’t allowed to handle money, he remembered. He sat, twisted sideways on the assigned bench, since his seat faced the back wall and he wanted to watch Angel come out. A guard unlocked a door and brought out a group of women, but none of them could be Angel, so he calmed down and waited.
About fifteen minutes later, another group came out and he spotted her. She looked like her picture — a little shorter, maybe. She was dressed like a nurse, scrubs the same color as the tired green buildings, some painfully white new running shoes. He stood and watched as she approached. Angel didn’t wait, just said, “Aloha, FRED!” threw her hands around his neck and kissed his cheek hard, saying in his ear, “Sorry I can’t give you a lei.” He didn’t hesitate and kissed her on the mouth, carried away to another place, blissed out, breathless and trembling and ready to keep right on going where it led, and to hell with everyone else.
Angel pulled back, whispering, “Guards don’t like you to overdo it, even if I do. No matter how much we want to, we can’t hug or kiss again until you leave.” She looked up, beaming into his face. “Well, what did you bring me?”
“Uh — well, I tried to bring something but they, I mean the guards, wouldn’t let—” He gestured back the way he’d come.
“I know that. Just a little joke. We have to sit across from each other. It’s okay to hold hands on top of the table.”
They sat playing together with their hands; she smiled at him and he smiled back, but from time to time her eyes flicked to the side as someone came or went. Not paranoid, but vigilant.
Fred thought it made her seem vulnerable, a good person stuck in a bad place. Finally he managed, “I knew you’d be just as beautiful and sexy as your picture.”
“Thank you — sure don’t feel like it in these clothes.”
“Don’t worry. I can get past your clothes.”
“I wish you could.”
He tried to picture her naked. He could tell she had a good body. Not perfect, nobody was perfect — but she was so pretty, even better than he’d hoped.
The room had filled with visitors, the majority women with kids. Mothers, sisters, friends? Their own kids or the inmates’? Almost all of them looked poor. So what if the atmosphere wasn’t romantic? This was a little bit of paradise with only two people in it. And the most intoxicating thing was that he could tell from everything Angel said and did that she felt exactly the same way. He couldn’t get enough of that way she looked at him, like he was a big fat birthday present.
He wanted to talk and said the first thing that came to mind. “Why don’t they let you bring in chewing gum?”
“I dunno. So you can’t use it to stick things together and make a weapon?”
“Amazing what people will think up, huh.”
She smiled indulgently. “What the fuck else they got to do with their time, squeezy bear?”
Fred didn’t want to talk yet about her cleaning up her mouth, so he asked if she wanted anything from the vending machines. “I don’t want to ask for a Slim Jim. You might think I was ba-a-a-a-d,” she said, tucking a bit of hair behind her ear. “Maybe some beef jerky. Surprise me.”
He stepped over the yellow line and bought the jerky, which came in a cellophane sleeve and looked about five-to-twenty-five years past its pull date, and some peanut M&Ms. He wasn’t hungry himself, so he got a cup of sour-smelling machine coffee and a bottle of water.
Fred returned and tossed her the jerky lightly.
She pointed at his other hand. “What else you got there, squeezy bear?”
“Squeezy bear, huh? I kind of like that name.”
“I thought you might. That’s how I always think about you, just a big ol’ huggy squeezy bear.”
“I won’t deny it. I don’t need any other name for you, though, cause Angel fits just right. I got this for you too.” As he held up the bag of chocolate candies, he couldn’t help grinning.
“Ooh, I’ll take dessert first!”
“Okay, but I get to feed ’em to you.”
“Uh-uh. We can’t touch.”
“See, we won’t be,” he said like a spy setting up a meeting. “I’ll give ’em to you one by one. I’ll hold this side of the candy and you get the other side with your teeth.”
“Can’t — a guard can terminate the visit for that kind of shit, and they do.”
He sighed. “Another rule. Okay.” So much for the fantasy of watching her lick chocolate off his fingers.
She ripped the bag open, tilted it to get a mouthful of candy, and wolfed it. Then she started on the jerky, chewing more thoughtfully, still glancing around. She looked like a sweet little puppy learning to guard her dish.
He tried to ignore the helpless gesturing of the people around them, their crying diluted by quiet attempts to laugh, sing sweetly, or pray with confidence. Everyone tried desperately to have a private visit in an exposed public place. One table over, an inmate asked, “Don’t you think I know what’s going on?” The visitor said, “You don’t know what it’s like,” and muttered about how hard he had it. When she whispered into his ear, he shot up out of his seat and said, not quite shouting, “You too, bitch!” He raised a hand swiftly, but it was to signal a guard.
The whole room went silent, waiting, all the guards intent as one of them took the inmate away and another led the guy out. A few seconds later came several tentative whispers, shifting on benches, footsteps, the clinking of coins in machines.
Fred looked across at Angel, softened inside when he saw how relieved she was, and swore he could hear his happily beating heart. Love lifted him to a different plane from other people.
She smiled and said, “All it takes is one asshole to stop everyone’s visit, but not this time.”
They chatted about Fred’s job and his house and his plans to buy a new car, when a crackling loudspeaker announced that Inmate Visiting had filled to capacity and that the first-in, first-out policy would apply. Several pass numbers were called, none of them Fred’s, and the guard broadcast, “Say goodbye to your inmate.”
Angel looked stricken.
“Hey, it’s okay,” Fred said. “I don’t have to go right now, do I? I was at least ten people from the front.”
“Not that — I wanted to tell you some good news. My counselor gave me a release date—”
“When?”
“June 1. Time off and early release to relieve overcrowding.”
“Great! You’re saying—”
“I’ll be free. I go live my life again, report to my parole officer, and don’t reoffend.” Angel rolled her eyes. “As if I would.”
Fred stroked the palm of her hand. “Look, I’ve been wanting to ask how you got to be here...”
She answered in a whisper, leaning in. “Sure. I got nothing to hide. These two so-called friends—” she spat the word “—asked me to drive ’em someplace. Then they tell me to wait in this strip mall and they go in a jewelry store? So I wait, but then a few minutes later I hear like a lot of sirens, and I’m freaking, I’m panicked, I start the car and go.”