When I entered the visiting room, Tiffany stood from a bench and smoothed her hands over a short, plaid skirt. I wove through the tables to her and bent for a quick kiss.
She put her arms around my neck. “How are you?” she asked in my ear.
“Same.”
“Same’s good.”
As we hugged, her short top rode up a little to expose her lower back. I pulled away so my mind wouldn’t go where it shouldn’t and took the seat across from her. “Did Grimes call you?”
“Two more months.” She slid a few bags of M&M’s from the vending machine across the table and kept one for herself. “I can’t believe he was right. Are you relieved?”
When my public defender had presented my plea bargain, he’d said I was likely to get out early for good behavior. I’d been skeptical, but it turned out I’d only have to serve half of my two-year sentence. Overcrowding helped moved the process along. There were men shoulder-to-shoulder at every cafeteria table. Out in the yard while we worked, someone was always shoveling or pouring concrete nearby. If I wasn’t careful, they’d forklift my ass. To shower, I waited in line forty minutes to stand under a spigot for sixty seconds. Our cells were close enough to hear guys spanking it. That’d all work in my favor, though, as long as I kept to myself the next couple months.
“I won’t be relieved until I’m breathing air outside this shithole,” I said.
The air conditioner hummed to life. I’d’ve been grateful if it actually cooled the room a few degrees, but it just added another layer of noise to everyone’s conversations. “Did everything go okay with the new guy they put in your cell?” she asked.
That depended on her definition of okay. Considering she wasn’t locked up in here, it was likely different than mine. “It’s fine.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I don’t believe you. Did someone figure out he was, you know . . .” She lowered her voice. “A snitch?”
Wills and I had been assigned a new cellmate last month. Once it got out he’d ratted on a rival gang member for a lesser sentence, it hadn’t taken long for word to spread to the wrong people. “They put it together last week,” I said. “Wasn’t any chance they wouldn’t.”
“And?”
“And nothing.” I didn’t see any point in worrying her.
She put an M&M in her mouth, chewing absentmindedly, then sat up a little straighter, as if she’d come to a decision about something. “Did they beat him up?”
“Well . . . yeah.”
“How bad? You can tell me. You don’t have to protect me like you would some girls.”
Far as I knew, none of the guys in here were worried about scarring their girlfriends. Tiffany wasn’t exactly innocent, but she’d lived a pretty sheltered life. I rubbed my jaw. “Pretty bad.”
“Were you there?”
I shifted in my seat. I’d been working across the yard but close enough to see it go down. If I could’ve intervened, I would’ve, but from day one I’d had a plan, and that was to keep my head down and stay out of trouble.
An inmate a few tables away grabbed his kid’s arm. I glanced at CO Jameson, who was already heading over.
“What happened?” Tiffany asked, sneaking glances as the female guard handled a man twice her size. She escorted him out more nicely than I would’ve. “You can tell me, Manning. You should talk about it. It’s not healthy to keep it inside.”
I didn’t know about all that, but truth was, watching a defenseless man get the shit beat out of him had stuck with me. A man I’d talked to, had shared a cell with, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it. “Slock,” I said. “He’s been in the infirmary a week.”
“Slock?”
It was a common enough weapon in here. Tiffany really didn’t know shit about this stuff if she’d never heard the term. “Lock in a sock.”
“Like the kind I used on my high school locker?”
“Exactly.” I demonstrated winding up a sock, pausing to gauge her reaction. She worried her lip between her teeth but nodded me on. “Then you swing it,” I said. “He lost an eye.”
She sucked in a breath. “Could that happen to you?” she asked. “You’re a big guy.”
She wasn’t even going to comment on the eyeball? I almost laughed. She got points for that. I could think of a few people I’d never burden that image with, but I didn’t want to go there, so I kept talking. “Nobody’s too big to go down,” I answered. “But you don’t need to worry about me. I don’t get involved with anyone’s business. It’s not like you see in the movies. I leave them alone, they leave me alone, and if I do come up against something, I stand my ground.”