I'd never had visitors before, but I was sure this was not the way to the visitation area. The footsteps of my escorts along with my shackled shuffles echoed in the long hall, a long stumbling walk from the block I'd known for the past six years. I didn't like this at all; the whole thing was starting to seem like a great way to get offed.
Lizard Brain was rapidly running through possible self-defense scenarios, none of which seemed likely to succeed, as Forebrain tried to calculate who I'd pissed off lately. Nobody I could think of; the money that appeared every month in my commissary account almost all went towards keeping various gang leaders off my back, and I thought I'd been pretty scrupulous about avoiding schemes and drama. Prison was tough enough without the hassles.
I brought my cuffed hands to my face and scratched nervously. "Hey boss, where we headed?" I'd long gotten over the bile in my throat from having to call these dickheads 'boss,' another tool employed to keep my head down in here.
"Shut up," Richardson barked. I was fairly certain that if you looked up 'Napoleon Complex' in the encyclopedia you'd find his picture; the kind of asshole that seemed to enjoy trashing my cell in contraband searches. Not that joy seemed an emotion he was capable of at all. He never found anything I wasn't supposed to have - drama avoidance - but the short little fuck liked reminding prisoners that he was the one in control. The way the gangs ran their business, I knew he was fooling himself, but I wasn't gonna be the one to tell him.
The hall ended with a door on the left, labeled with stencil: CONJUGAL. What the fuck? Lizard Brain was loud in my head now, yelling about assassination, murder, imminent death. Forebrain just tried to will my body to stop shaking as a guard I didn't know (another bad sign, Lizard Brain screamed) unlocked the door, waving me through. My eyes darted between the guards' faces, looking for signs of satisfaction, deception, anything; but all registered the same bored tension as always.
I sighed; if this was the end, it would probably be quick, if painful. I'd had a decent life, certainly not starved of pussy until I'd gotten here. Resigned to my fate, I shuffled on until they stopped me at the door labeled #2. As Richardson unlocked the door, the others removed my leg and wrist shackles. I tried to remain still and tense, waiting for the knife.
"Two hours, convict," Richardson muttered, gesturing me into the room beyond. "Have fun." He had a perverted leer on his face as he gave an exaggerated wink in response to my confused stare. I knew better than to hesitate too long with these inbreds, so with halting steps I walked in. The door slammed shut, the lock re-engaged with a loud clack, and again I wondered what the hell was going on.
The room was like a small hotel suite, if an industrial one. Two bolted-down steel chairs at a small table, near a queen-size bed covered by a once-white sheet, four plastic pillows at the head; a toilet, steel sink and faux-mirror in a far corner. The smell of mold and cheap cleaning agents wasn't overwhelming, but strong. Unlike every other portal in this goddamn place, there was no window in the door. I looked about for the ever-present security camera, but saw none, which made sense; just about every place here was well covered by security, best to murder me somewhere private.
I sat on the edge of the bed facing the door, closed my eyes, and tried to meditate. I'd gotten pretty good at it - beat the shit out of boredom, and probably helpful for my drug-damaged ticker - but now inner peace escaped me. My confusion as to the current situation was turning into certainty that these were my final minutes on Earth, and I was out of ideas, other than wondering if the plastic pillows were hard enough to hurt an attacker.
Minutes passed at a glacial pace as I tried to regulate my breathing and relax. After several eternities I heard the lock click, my eyes snapping open. I grit my teeth, clenched my fists, and braced myself for death. But I was unprepared for what walked in.
"Hello, Zack," she said softly, a guard pushing the door shut behind her. She was dressed in a manner I couldn't have imagined her in before: her auburn hair in a tight bun, curvaceous form encased in a tan blazer and matching knee-length skirt over a crisp white button-down shirt, holding a dark brown briefcase. Despite their being mostly obscured by her professional garb, my sex-starved mind had had plenty of time to remember those curves.
The years since she'd given me the greatest lapdance mortal man had ever known, had changed her face only a little. She wouldn't be mistaken for eighteen again; my guess was twenty-nine or thirty. Still a beauty though, perhaps the prettiest girl I'd ever seen. Certainly one of the last I'd ever seen. She blinked at me from behind wireframed lenses as I gaped at her.
My mouth opened and closed itself repeatedly as words failed to come. On her lips flashed an almost-sad, almost-pitying half-smile that started to make me angry; she must have sensed that, allowing her face to go slack. We stared at each other for another few moments, before she walked to the table, placing her briefcase there before turning to me once more. We continued to say nothing for a long time.
Thoughts of her had long plagued me during my imprisonment. The last thing I remembered about our hours together was one last drink of my excellent whiskey before leaving the club; the first intact memory after, a hell of a lot of DEA goons sticking guns in my hungover face. Sometimes in dreams or meditation little flashes of those forgotten hours would leap out like glitches in the system: stumbling out of the car, opening my safe, being guided to bed, her hand stroking my hair as I tried to compose poetry about her mind and body.
My lawyer said it sounded like midazolam, rohypnol, or maybe scopolamine, some kind of heavy amnesic. But, he implored, the amount of uncut cocaine in my wide-open safe rendered that incredibly irrelevant. I should consider myself lucky, he'd told me. Supposedly there were inklings of a two-year investigation into not only felony trafficking but first-degree murder, RICO, multiple rapes - which was absolute bullshit, sex by force being not my jam in any way. Irrelevant, he'd repeated; though the investigation had been "botched at the end somehow" as he put it, my options were quite limited. Especially considering my frozen accounts, and his working off the last of my retainer. If I didn't want to die in prison, I needed to plead guilty and turn in all associates.
I agreed to the former, but not the latter, which given the nature of said associates would've been a death sentence itself. That refusal plus all the coke - which is all they ended up being able to pin on me -- added up to, according to the jerkface judge, thirty years without parole. Pushing sixty now, I would indeed probably die behind these walls. Now I was staring at the woman instrumental in putting me here, with no idea what to say.
"You look good, Zack," she said finally. "In a lot better shape."
"Prison food and calisthenics'll do that," I muttered back, though it was true: I was in the best shape of my life, due to boredom and desire for self-preservation.
"I bet," she nodded slowly, her eyes never leaving mine.
Finally words came to me. "There a reason for, this?" I gestured at the suite. "You couldn't visit like a normal person?"
"No, I couldn't," she replied evenly. "Visitation has cameras. Recording devices. Our conversation can't be recorded." She paused, then added, "This was incredibly expensive and difficult to arrange, yes. But hopefully worth it. To both of us." She turned toward the briefcase again, opening it and removing a legal pad, which she dropped paper-down on the table before turning back to me, hands on her wide, flaring hips. Even dressed professionally she was still the sexiest woman I'd ever met. Not that I had anything to compare to, these days.
"You know my name now, huh. What's
your
real name, anyway? Not 'Candy,' or 'Jennifer,' surely."
She seemed to consider for a moment. "Mariah, Mariah Moore," she answered.
"Show me I.D."
Her face fell. "I.D.'s fake. I don't want my real name on your visitation list. The one I have is for Candace Theresa Nought."
"Ha!" I couldn't help laughing at her inside joke, but my sour mood didn't dissipate. "Mariah, huh. As in, Mariah is a lie-ah," I spat.
