I’d like to feed you your dinner off it, Jeanette thought, but she went to the rolling mop bucket. She did not want to go on Bad Report. If that happened, she would very likely not be in this room when her sister arrived with her son to visit her this coming weekend. That was a long bus ride, and how she loved Bobby for never complaining about making it. But her headache was getting worse and all she wanted in this world was her aspirin and a nap.
Ree inspected the cleaning supplies and selected a spray can and a rag.
“You want to sniff that Pledge, Dumpster? Shoot some up your snoot and get high?”
“No,” Ree said.
“You’d like to get high, wouldn’t you?”
“No.”
“No what?”
“No, Officer Peters.”
Ree began to polish a table. Jeanette filled the mop bucket from the sink in the corner, wet the mop, squeegeed it, and began to do the floor. Through the chainlink fence in front of the prison, she could see West Lavin, where cars filled with free people traveled back and forth, to work, to home, to lunch at Denny’s, to someplace.
“Get over here, Sorley,” Peters said. He was standing between the snack machine and the soda machine, a camera blind spot where inmates sometimes exchanged pills and cigarettes and kisses.
She shook her head and kept mopping. Long wet streaks on the linoleum that dried quickly.
“Get over here if you want to see your boy next time he’s here.”
I ought to say no, she thought. I ought to say you leave me alone or I’ll report you. Only he’s been getting away with it a long time, hasn’t he? Everyone knew about Peters. Coates had to know, too, but in spite of all her big talk about having zero tolerance for sexual harassment, it kept going on.
Jeanette trudged to the little alcove between the machines and stood before him, head down, mop in one hand.
“In there. Back against the wall. Never mind the mop, you can leave that.”
“I don’t want to, Officer.” Her headache was really bad now, throbbing and throbbing. B-7 was just down the corridor, with her aspirin on her little shelf.
“You get in here or you go on Bad Report and lose your visitation. Then I’ll make sure you get another Bad Report, and poof, there goes your Good Time.”
And my chance of parole next year, Jeanette thought. No Good Time, no parole, back to square one, case closed.
She squeezed past Peters and he rocked his hips into her so she could feel his boner. She stood against the wall. Peters moved in. She could smell his sweat and aftershave and hair tonic. She was taller than he was and over his shoulder she could see her cellie. Ree had stopped polishing. Her eyes were filled with fear, dismay, and what might have been anger. She was gripping the can of Pledge and slowly raising it. Jeanette gave her head a minute shake. Peters didn’t see; he was busy unzipping his fly.
Ree lowered the can and resumed polishing the table that needed no more polishing, hadn’t needed any in the first place.
“Now cop my joint,” Peters said. “I need some relief. You know what I wish? I wish you was Coatsie. I wish I had her old flat ass backed up against this wall. If it was her, it wouldn’t be just a pull-off, either.”
He gasped as she grasped him. It was sort of ridiculous, really. He had no more than three inches, nothing he’d want other men to see unless it was absolutely unavoidable, but it was hard enough. And she knew what to do. Most women did. Guys had a gun; you unloaded it; they went about their business.
“Easy, Jesus!” he hissed. His breath was rotten with some spicy meat, maybe a Slim Jim or a pepperoni stick. “Wait, give me your hand.” She gave it to him and he spat in her palm. “Now do it. And tickle my balls a little.”
She did as she was told, and while she did it, she kept her eyes on the window beyond his shoulder. This was a technique she had begun learning at eleven, when her stepfather touched her, and had perfected with her late husband. If you found something to lock onto, a point of focus, you could almost leave your body behind, and pretend it was doing its own thing while you were visiting whatever it was you suddenly found so fascinating.
A county sheriff’s car stopped outside, and Jeanette watched it first wait in the dead space and then roll into the yard once the inner gate rumbled open. Warden Coates, Dr. Norcross, and Officer Lampley walked out to meet it. Officer Peters’s breath panting in her ear was far away. Two cops got out of the car, a woman from behind the wheel and a man from the passenger side. They both drew their sidearms, which suggested that their prisoner was a bad sugarpop, probably bound for C Wing. The woman officer opened the back door, and another woman got out. She didn’t look dangerous to Jeanette. She looked beautiful in spite of the bruises on her face. Her hair was a dark flood down her back, and she had enough curves to even make the baggy County Browns she was wearing look cool. Something was fluttering around her head. A big mosquito? A moth? Jeanette tried to see, but she couldn’t be sure. Peters’s gasps had taken on a squeaky edge.
The male officer took the dark-haired woman by the shoulder and got her walking toward intake, where Norcross and Coates met her. Once inside, the process would begin. The woman brushed at the flyer circling her hair and as she did so, her wide mouth opened and she tilted her head to the sky, and Jeanette saw her laugh, saw her bright, straight teeth.
Peters began to buck against her, and his ejaculate pumped into her hand.
He stepped back. His cheeks were flushed. There was a smile on his fat little face as he zipped up his fly. “Wipe that on the back of the Coke machine, Sorley, and then finish mopping the fucking floor.”
Jeanette wiped his semen away, then pushed the mop bucket back down to the sink so she could rinse off her hand. When she came back, Peters was sitting at one of the tables and drinking a Coke.
“You okay?” Ree whispered.
“Yes,” Jeanette whispered back. And she would be, as soon as she got some aspirin for her head. The last four minutes hadn’t even happened. She had been watching the woman get out of the police cruiser, that was all. She didn’t need to think about the last four minutes ever again. She just needed to see Bobby on his next visit.
Hsst-hsst, went the shooter of the polish can.
Three or four seconds of blessed silence elapsed before Ree checked in again. “Did you see the new one?”
“Yes.”
“Was she beautiful, or was that just me?”
“She was beautiful.”
“Those County Mounties drew their guns, you see that?”
“Yes.” Jeanette glanced at Peters, who had clicked on the television and was now staring at some news report. The picture showed someone slumped behind the wheel of a car. It was hard to tell if it was a man or woman, because he or she seemed to be wrapped in gauze. On the bottom of the screen, BREAKING NEWS was flashing on and off in red, but that meant nothing; they called it breaking news if Kim Kardashian farted. Jeanette blinked back the water that had suddenly welled up in her eyes.
“What do you think she did?”
She cleared her throat, sucking back the tears. “No idea.”
“You sure you’re all right?”
Before Jeanette could reply, Peters spoke without turning his head. “You two ladies stop gossiping or you’re both going on Bad Report.”