Chapter 3

Stephanie: 1993 My husband has been in prison for four years, and I am sick at heart about it. He’s my hero for damn sure. No other man would do for me what he has done. It’s hard. My job pays the bills barely, and I need to work extra whenever I can, like today. It is what it is.

Men come in for pedicures just like women anymore. Oh, they don’t get nail polish and the “make me pretty” stuff that we women go for, but trimmed and sanded down, as we like to say, yes, they do.

The man sitting in the chair looked prosperous. I saw him drive up in a fancy car too. I would talk to this one; likely a good tipper; well, one could hope.

“Hi,” I said. “I’m Stephanie.” He smiled.

“Do me good,” he said. “It’s been a couple of weeks.” I didn’t remember him, probably got it done somewhere else.

“For sure,” I said. The man wasn’t exactly staring at me, but he was, well, kinda staring at me. Creepy, actually. Then he decided to talk.

“So, you married?” he said.

“Huh?” I said.

“I’m not,” he said.

“Okay,” I said. “And yes, I’m married. Got a daughter too.”

“Hmm,” he said. “That complicates things.”

“Complicates things?” I said.

“Yes, because I want to date you. Oh, and you want to date me,” He said.

“Mister... ?” I said. This guy was either ultra-confident, or crazy; and I was betting on the latter.

He just smiled and kinda laid back waiting for me to finish. Five minutes later I was done. I helped him put his socks back on; he did his shoes himself. I smiled and went over to the counter to get his bill. He joined me at the counter to pay. He handed me his card, a black American Express. I ran it and gave him back his card.

“Oh, and here,” he said. He reached out to shake my hand. In his hand was a bill. “I almost forgot the tip.” It was a hundred dollars.

“Well thank you,” I said.

“In case you’d like to have lunch with me, I’ll be at Denny’s for the next couple of hours.” He nodded toward the diner across the parking lot. “No pressure,” he said.

No pressure! A hundred-dollar tip “was” pressure any way you cut it!

It was half an hour before my lunch time. I wondered if he really would be waiting for me, and I knew for sure that that’s what he’d said he’d be doing, waiting for me: nobody sat in a diner for two hours unless there was a pretty serious reason.

The guy wanted to date me. But I was married, and not just to any man, but to “the” man! My man, Jack Danson, who had been sitting in prison for me for the last four years. Date this maybe rich guy? Not a chance, but a lunch? Maybe that. Yes, I would see what this over the top, whatever he was, had to say for himself. Maybe he knew people, people who could help my man.

I got off for lunch right on time. I only had half an hour, so whatever the guy had to say for himself had to be quick.

Charlene saw me come in. “Same as usual,” I said. She nodded. She knew I only had half an hour.

I saw the guy and went over to his booth. “Have a seat,” he said. I’d been standing kinda looking at him but so far saying nothing. I took the seat.

“I only have half an hour,” I said.

“You can keep your job here if you want, or, you can come to work for me at twice your current pay, including whatever you make in tips.” He said.

“Huh?” I said.

“Look, I know you’re likely making somewhere around thirty-five grand annual working there,” he said. He nodded back toward the parlor.

“I’ll pay you seventy-five to work for me; and, to be my arm candy and sometime date,” he said. “And, yes, I heard you tell me you were married. I’ll make it worth your hubby’s while too.”

I looked down. The money he was offering if it was for real would do wonders for me and Barbie. We were struggling, making it, but struggling.

“What’s the job?” I said, ignoring his arm candy remark.

“You’d be working for me as an info gathering and coordinating agent,” he said.

“Info gathering?” I said, just as my food arrived. He looked me askance. I smiled.

“Charlene knows I only have half hour lunch times,” I said.

I wondered if he had two job openings. I knew for a fact that Melanie could use a boost in salary too. She and Andrew were doing okay, but they were holding off having a kid for financial reasons.

“Your husband, what does he do?” said the man, whose name I still did not know.

“Uh, Mister...”

“Herbert, Herbert Halstead, sorry, I wasn’t thinking. I know yours is Stephanie, of course, you told me that back there,” He said.

“Yes, Stephanie Danson,” I said. “And, I guess I need to be straight up with you Mister Halstead...”

“Herb,” he said, interrupting me.

“Herb then,” I said. “My husband’s in prison. Second degree murder. It’s complicated, but he did it saving me. So, you see...”

“Oh my,” said Herb. “So, I’ll need to be seeing to helping him too. I mean if you take me up on my offer.”

“Huh?” I said.

“I have influence. Probably can’t get your man out, but I can see what I can do to help him. Wherever he’s incarcerated?” said Herb.

“You mean my husband being in prison doesn’t...”

“No, it does not affect my offer to you, or, to him, at all,” said Herb.

“Mister Halstead...” I started.

“Herb,” he said.

“Okay, Herb, this isn’t just you trying to get into my pants?” I said. He smiled.

“Stephanie, let me put it this way.

“How long has your husband been inside?”

“A bit over four years,” I said. The man nodded, sympathetically nodded.

“Stephanie, he’s going to be in there for damn near ever. I don’t even have to guess what his sentence is. When he gets out, if he doesn’t die inside, he will hardly know you, not really. And your daughter? He won’t know her in any meaningful way at all. On the other hand,...

“If he’s got a brain in his head, he will listen to the offer I am going to make him, which is: one million in cash, and or a good job when he gets out, if he does, have a brain in his head that is. Those are his for the following. One, doing his best to understand the reality of things and giving his blessing for you to divorce him. Next to accept the reality of the truth that I will be your daughter’s de facto dad. He won’t be cut out of her life, but he will have to understand, again, the reality of things,” said Herbert Halstead.

“But...” she said.

“And, as for wanting to get into your pants; yes, I do want to get into those pants of yours. I want to marry you. So, finally, he’ll have to accept the fact that you will be marrying me,” he said.

I slumped back in my seat. I’d known the man for a couple of hours tops and he was proposing to me.

“But, Herb, you don’t know me. You don’t know me at all. There are things...”

“Don’t care,” he said.

“Herb, there is one favor I’d like to ask of you,” I said.

“Okay?” he said.

“One of the girls who works where I do...” I said.

“She needs a job too?” he said. I looked down.

“Done,” he said. I was nodding.

“Herb, I need to think some, and I need to tell you stuff that might make you think twice about all of this. But, for my part, I accept your offers, all of them,” I said. “I mean I think I do.”

Just as I got done saying what I was saying, a man came up and handed Herb a small package. Herb nodded to the man who then absented himself. I’d watched as the man did his thing.

Herb opened the nondescript packet. Took whatever was in it out and came around to me. He got down on one knee and proposed, formally proposed. He opened the little box and produced a ring that was way too big to be real. But I knew without knowing the man at all that it was real!

I nodded, and said yes. As I did so, I was thinking not of my man in prison. Not of Herb who was kneeling in front of me. I was thinking of Barbie. Her life had just changed even though she didn’t know it. She was eleven years old and her life would likely never be the same again. And, nor would her dad’s. Shit! What was I doing!

I had big decisions to make. One, I had to tell Herb the truth about that awful day. And two, I had to figure a way to break them, my decisions, to Jack. Fuck!

And, I knew one other thing for sure. Unless Herb turned out in the end to be a phony, and it was pretty damn clear to me that he wasn’t, the first thing we had to do was somehow help, my now used to be man inside that awful place. Oh yes, that had to be the first thing for damn sure.

My BFF from my high school days, was sitting across from me. Andrew was at work fixing cars. Melanie had the day off, and we’d soon be no longer employed at the salon in any event. I’d let Herb know that we had to give the boss two weeks’ notice. I wasn’t just going to dump on her, neither was Melanie.

“Okay, then,” said Mel, if this is for real of course I’m in it with you. But oh, I am so glad I am not going to be with you when you lay it on your man.

“For real,” I said. “It’s going to be bad. I know it and so does Herb. And, Herb is going to see the man himself if Jack will allow. It’s the timing. I’ve been visiting on our anniversary so far; I guess I will be sticking with that routine for this event as well.”

It was a bit over a month since first meeting up with my new man. We’d had dates, Now I had to tell him the real truth. I didn’t think he’d tell me to fuck off after the fact. But it was a small risk. I saw his car pull up in front of the house: our old house, mine and Jack’s. I took a deep breath. Barbie was in school.

I went to the door and let him in. “Hi,” I said. My tone cued him.

“Something wrong?” he said.

“Yes and no,” I said.

“Okay?” I said. We took seats in the front room across from each other.

“Herb, as you know, Jack and I were raised just a few houses apart from the days we were born. We went to school together all the way to graduation. I hasten to add that I treated him like shit in high school, and well, now I’m about to do it again. Different, but he is more than likely going to see it as the same old same old,” I said.

“Stef, I get it, I...” I raised my hand to short shank him. I had to get this out in one go.

“But this is not the same old same old.

“Herb a bit over four years ago, my husband, that wonderful man, was convicted of second-degree murder for killing two drug dealers in a cheap ass motel downtown. My husband as you also know was a cop at the time. And because one of the victims was a guy he’d busted before. The D.A. was able to sell the jury on the untruth that Jack killed him and the other guy in revenge for raping me and for getting me hooked on Oxycodone as you and I have discussed before.

“But the truth is he didn’t shoot those two men. I did,” I said. The expression of the man across from me didn’t change. I was grateful for that. I had more to say.

“My life was over. I knew it. I was going to prison, maybe even to death row: I’d used our household gun an extra one that Jack kept in the house and taught me how to use.”

I tossed my windbreaker, the one I’d worn that awful day, onto the coffee table between us. I pointed to the bullet hole in the pocket where I’d fired the first of the two bullets, the one that killed Lopez.

“I decided to confess to Jack. First tell him all of it, and then turn myself in. I called him. He came. He saw the horror and made me let him take the fall for me.

“The rest I guess you kinda know,” I said.

“That it,” he said.

“Yes?” I said, waiting to see if he wanted me to say anymore.

“Jesus what a man you are married to. No, not a mere man, a great man. But Stephanie, he did what he had to do. He had to protect his woman. But this changes nothing except the degree to which I will be helping him if he will allow. And, now, I’m worried that he won’t let me help him, I mean a man like him! But, Stephanie, he has to. Anyway, we’ll figure a way,” said Herb.