Chapter 8

I’d been up all-night dreaming about seeing her, my woman. More than a year since I’d been arrested and tried and sentenced, and then sent up here to hell. I had talked to her once in county and gotten letters, but apart from those, nada.

Like I said, she did write and that fairly often. I did know what was going on back home, and I had gotten a picture of my little girl. She’d sent it as kind of an early Christmas present. I so loved that baby. Daddies always adored their baby girls; it was nature. I so wanted to hold her. It killed me that I never would. She’d be grown up, well a lot, when I got out, even if I was lucky enough to get an early parole. She was already almost two. Damn!

The siren sounded and the cell doors opened for us inmates to make our way down to the visitation room, really, a kind of large auditorium with four-person, white steel tables with seats fixed to the tables that could not be moved or detached. The worst was that there was no physical contact between prisoners and visitors in max; that was ironclad.

“I got me a table kind of in the middle of the room. Today it looked like I was going to be lucky; I wouldn’t have to be sharing the table with another inmate and his visitor.

I saw her come in. Her first time up here. It had to be scary for her. I knew she’d been scanned at the entrance and maybe searched; I wasn’t sure about that part. I stood so she could see me. She did and marched over to me. I was confident that she knew the rules. She’d let me know that she’d gotten the rules-packet when she’d applied to get on my approved—approved by me—visitation list.

We took our seats. “Oh my God, Andrew. I am so damn sorry!” she said. “Your face!”

“I was in a fight. It happens,” I said. “No big deal.”

“Jesus, I am so damn sorry. This is all my fault. I don’t know what to say, do, think...”

“No need, no need to worry. We only got two hours, and there is so much to say,” I said. “I don’t want to talk about some chulo asshole. Okay?” She nodded, but it was a worried nod.

“Did you get the pic of Kari I sent?” she said. She knew I had. I’d written her that I had. “But I guess she was just checking, talking, saying something.

“Yes, and it’s the best present I ever got!” I said. “God she is beautiful. Just like you my darling,” I said. She smiled.

“And you are the most beautiful man in the world,” she said.

“Hah! I only wish,” I said. And I did smirk.

“You damn sure are to me, Mister, don’t ever doubt it!” she said.

“So, how’s it going. I mean the job and what all?” I said.

“Good, good, I guess. Apart from missing you, it’s all good. Really,” she said.

We talked for the whole two hours and then she was gone. One mouthed kiss, and she was gone. I was the loneliest guy in the place once she had gone. But I also felt good. I was doing this for her, and it was worth it.

I had to be on my best behavior. I had to get out as soon as possible. Ten years was technically the soonest I could be paroled, but I knew from talking to my lawyer and from scuttlebutt around the block that that was a dream not to be contemplated. Maybe a couple of years after that if my record was clean enough. That was the reality.

Pearl Nicholson knew everyone who was anyone in her part of town. And, she knew quite a few others that were from other parts of town, such as Scottsdale.