Colin Harrison - Afterburn

"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?"

I'll cry about Mazy later, she told herself. "I'm sorry, Mazy. I've got so much to think about now."

Mazy sighed. "You going go back to men?"

"That's not what I'm thinking about right now."

"I know, but I was just wondering."

"I haven't been thinking about it, Mazy, I really haven't."

She turned. Mazy's big calm eyes were fixed on her. "I'm pretty sure you going do that," Mazy said, her voice affectionate. "That's who you are, baby."

"We'll see."

"No, I'm pretty sure."

Maybe it was true. It was definitely true. It was so true that she felt something in her knees just thinking about it.

"I miss men," Mazy said. "I miss my Robbie, he my youngest's daddy, he one of the biggest men I ever seen."

"Yeah, I knew a guy who was full of muscles," Christina replied, if only to talk the remaining time away.

"Who was he, baby?"

"He was the asshole who got me into this place."

"You never talked about it."

"I told you things, Mazy. I told you what I could."

"I know that girl Katisha? She went out of here after four years, and then she called up one of the gals and she had something like ten men that first week she was out."

Christina nodded, remembering. "That's truly insane."

"You going call your sweet mother down Florida?"

She wanted to, but it might be a bad idea. "I'm not sure."

"She'll miss you so much."

Christina dropped the bag to the floor. "I might let her think I'm still here."

Mazy frowned with incomprehension. "That's hard."

She tightened. Yes, it was.

Her parole had been so far off that she hadn't allowed herself to think about what it would be like to live in Manhattan again. But now, after only a few hours, all kinds of things crowded her mind. She'd need money, that was certain. She had just over three hundred dollars in her prison account, and if she could somehow live on that for a couple of weeks, she'd be okay. She'd get a job and rent a room downtown, near First or Second Avenue. Start all over. No flashy moves. Be careful what she said to people. You could live on almost nothing if you had to. You spent every dollar carefully, that's all. She wanted to walk along the streets, look at the store windows. She'd buy a small radio and lie on her bed and listen to WCBS-FM, the oldies station. She'd read magazines in the bookstore. She missed all the magazines, even the trashy ones. She'd go to the movies, just sink into one of those seats with a Coke and some popcorn. She wanted to see a Jack Nicholson movie. Anything he was in. Yes. She would take a bath, her first in four years. Watch the water go down the drain and fill it up again, hot as she could stand it. She'd watch the beautiful little babies in the park and think, Where has the time gone? She would try to find the next version of herself. Woman in the city. Woman being careful. Woman in a long dark coat, one of those third-hand wool ones with deep pockets you could get in the Village for forty bucks. Big enough to hide in. She'd pet dogs. She'd buy a broom! Sweep her floor. Sweep her floor over and over. Maybe she'd get a place where she could paint the floorboards. A rose or light green, perhaps. Then one table. A simple oak table. A small one, with a chair. She'd buy a nice bra when she could afford it. A pretty one. So many things to think about. She'd get a cat, she'd buy good lipstick, she'd disagree with the op-ed pages. She'd marry a millionaire. Ha. She'd light a candle, watch the flame. She would watch her ass, too. Not talk to too many people. Not tell them much. Maybe cut her hair, buy some sunglasses. She had to assume that Tony Verducci's people would be looking for her. Watching to see what she did. She would find a place and tell the landlord she had to have good heat. The prison was so cold, the walls started getting icy in December; half the women caught pneumonia each winter, coughing and spitting up gunk in the bathrooms, especially the women with AIDS. What else? Well, there was wine. She'd sit somewhere and just sip it and let it hit her head. Nothing to drink for four years. That first glass, maybe with a piece of lamb or chicken. Could you drink red wine with chicken? She didn't remember. It didn't matter. To be drunk, that was the thing. And some good coffee. Not too much, just a couple of cups, to help her think. Cigarettes, too. As many as she wanted. But no more than five a day. She'd go to the Strand bookstore and look at the old titles. Peruse the history section. She used to do that, she used to feel safe doing that. She was going to find the latest biography of Charles Dickens. She was going to get a little shit job and survive on nothing. Lay low, live well. She was going to buy only good stuff and put it in the refrigerator. Vegetables and fruit and skim milk. Good bread. Maybe a little cheese. Fresh carrots. Grapefruit. She had missed onions and decent Mexican food and hummus and garlic and Granny Smith apples and the smell of the dry cleaner's shop and the feeling of a newspaper that had never been read by anyone else and good shampoo and getting a smoked turkey sandwich at the deli and watching the limousines outside the Plaza Hotel and having her own telephone and real butter and the feeling of a man's big hand running lightly up and down her neck-yes, that, too. And the moment when he was fully inside of you, when you didn't have to think about anything. Anything but. And riding in elevators and watching the traffic light turn green and the ticking of a bicycle. So much she'd missed, so much to think about, including the things she didn't want to think about-the things that worried her, the worst one being why in God's name the Manhattan District Attorney's Office had decided to let her go. She was guilty, after all.