Chapter 8

2003

Over the next four years, I got exactly zero visits from the bad guys. Yeah, well I wasn’t complaining about that, nosirree!

I had decisions to make. I had considered everything the guy, Grimes, had laid on me in that one and only meet up with him, well, if you didn’t count our little set to at that TG-day party he’d hosted. Yeah, I’d considered it all, all he’d laid on me, and the more I considered his propositions the less I liked what I was considering.

What was for sure a fact, was the truth that I couldn’t beat him at whatever it was that would ever be a bone of contention between us. He just had too much money and influence while I was a nothing, a con. I’d re-decided that I could not accept anything from the man, from any of them, not ever. No, all I wanted from them was their absence from my life. It’s the way it had to be.

My relationship with Darrell, my cellmate, had turned out to be an actual good experience, well, as much as one could be in a max prison. I’d been beaten and butt fucked and forced to suck other men’s dicks for virtually the whole first eight years I’d been inside. It was common that guys my size just did as we were told when it came to those kinds of things. My second time around, at first, I was actually resisting. But, after the fact I realized that that had been a bad idea: I lost every time. But then I’d gotten lucky and gotten paired with Darrell. He and his Christian brotherhood were never messed with. Oh, and yes, I had found Jesus. Hell yes, I had.

A side note to Darrell and me was his wife, who I met once on one of my informal visits with my lawyer in the common area. She was visiting Darrell at the same time I was with Jennifer. She sure was pretty and seemed happy the one time I’d met her. She’d also seemed very interested in me for some reason, but maybe that was because of my amazing good looks.

“So, you’re getting out next month,” said Darrell.

“Yeah, looks like,” I said.

“Whaddya gonna do?” he said.

“Honestly, I’m not sure. Like I told you, my ex’s husband wants to help me out, but I’m not into that not on any level,” I said.

“I can dig it man. But a man does need a little money to get started again, back out amongst them again, and a woman? You got any plans?” he said.

“No, not really, I’ll shack up at the halfway house for a while, and get me a job, any job.” I said.

“Hmm,” he said.

As noted I’d done a lot of thinking since my meet up with Nathan Grimes, some four years gone now. He knew when I was getting out, I was certain of that. But, it was always iffy, that is as per exact dates were concerned, when it came to any inmate being released from the joint.

I was supposed to be released so Jennifer had informed me on the first of July. I wasn’t; I was released on the twenty-fifth of June. The gate clanged behind me. I didn’t turn around to see it. I’d seen enough of the place. The good news? I wasn’t on parole. The bad news, and it wasn’t that bad, it was a mile and a half to the bus stop. I had a tube bag with a change of clothes and couple of bathroom items, those courtesy of the state of Arizona, oh, and $174, yippee!

Yeah, I’d done a lot of thinking and decided hard core against asking the man for help and the rest of it. I couldn’t be around them, the Grimes clan, not on any level.

And why would a horny sonovabitch like me turn down money and maybe some arranged for pussy, I mean any pussy? Because, if I’d chosen to accept his stinking offers of money, station, and woman, I would be around him and the ex-love of my life more likely and more often than not. The woman who didn’t want to be the love of my life anymore; and, around my daughter and have the ineffable joy of watching the other guy be her real father while I was going to be relegated to little more than a holiday ornament. No, none of that was the least bit enticing after the fact, the fact of my release. So, sayo-fucking-nara to all of it and them.

I’d done what I’d done for the woman and I was proud of myself. I’d endured and endured was the operative term; and I had now come out the other side of the experience in relative good health and starting over.

I would need to get a job. I did have a ticket to stay in a halfway house if I wanted to: the ticket was good for sixty days in my case. I’d find me a cheap motel for my first night back in town and then decide about the government accommodations.

The Drover was my kind of place: country western music, pretty girls to ogle because that’s all I could afford to do, and real cold beer to drink which I could afford.

The bartender’s name was Angel. She was a big girl with lots of personality and some skill handling the riff-raff that pretty much described most of the current patrons. Hell, an ex-con like me was upper middle class here.

“Been out long, Mister?” said a middle age gal with more tattoos than the guys back in the joint. And no, I didn’t have any, tattoos that is. I would never stain my body on purpose.

“And you are?” I said.

“Call me Lily. I forgot my real name,” she said. I nodded. I could understand that.

“A while,” I said, answering her earlier question.

“You mean a short while, right?” she said. I snorted.

“Why the questions?” I said.

“No reason. Done a little myself, time that is,” she said. “I can recognize the signs. Wanna dance?” I snorted again. They were playing something slow, so I nodded my agreeableness.

The dancing was good for me. We stayed out on the floor for a few songs and then got a table.

“Where are you staying?” she said.

“Not sure about tomorrow, but tonight the motel next door,” I said.

“Wanna bed partner?” she said. I gave her a look. No pussy in fifteen years. There could only be one answer.

We had a couple more beers and then adjourned to room 115 next door.

The sex was nowhere near what it had been with Victoria back in the day, but I did get my rocks off. It counted for a lot.