Fuck that shit. I walked down the road a ways until the sign for the Correctional Facility was at least out of sight. I stuck out my thumb. I figured that since it was the Woman’s Facility nobody would be too concerned that I’d just broken out.
Not that it made that much difference. There just wasn’t any traffic. Two buses went by, and I was just about ready to flag down the third one when an old guy in a pickup pulled over. It was a perfect ride. He didn’t say a damn thing and neither did I.
We passed by some of the places they used to take us to pick up litter along the roadway. Before they let Dolores out, I’d sent a letter to my ex-girlfriend, asking her if Dolores could stay with her for a while. I never heard back. I never heard from Dolores either, even though she told me she’d write me every single day.
The old guy dropped me on the south side, not far from the place where I’d been staying. The first thing on my agenda was to get my wheels. But when I got there, there was my car sitting up on the lawn, the front end all crumpled in, the axle all bent out of shape.
I banged on the door.
“Hector. You’re out. How ya doing?”
“So what’s up with my car?”
“Oh yeah. An accident. Nothing serious. Nobody got killed or anything. My cousin thinks he can fix it up. It’s going to take some money, though.”
“Can I get my stuff?”
“It’s in the garage. I had to get another roommate. You know, to make the rent. So where are you staying?”
“Good question.”
“You can crash here I guess. If you want. On the couch. Until you get yourself squared away.”
“Yeah, well, can I get my stuff?”
There wasn’t that much anyway, some clothes in a trash bag. I took a couple shirts and a pair of pants. No sign of my cash jar.
“I had to take out a rent payment. There wasn’t much left.”
—
It was about twelve blocks over to the Diner where Sophie worked. My ex-girlfriend, the one I’d written to about Dolores. I thought she might be working, but Sharon was there instead.
“Hi, Hector,” she smiled. “Long time.” She sat me in a booth.
“Sophie coming in today?”
She gave me a questioning look. “Sophie isn’t here anymore. She moved to Hawaii about a month ago.”
“Hawaii?”
“You remember her friend Tessa? She’s going to school over there. Sophie went over to check it out. I guess she found a place to stay.”
So Sophie wasn’t here. That meant she hadn’t gotten my letter. And she hadn’t been here when Dolores came looking for her.
Sharon noticed the look on my face and winced in commiseration. “Can I get you something?”
I ordered a hamburger and a cup of coffee. My twenty bucks would cover that. So if Dolores wasn’t with Sophie, I wasn’t exactly sure where she might be.
Sharon brought the hamburger, and a little slice of pie on the house. She sat down for a second. She was a couple years older than Sophie and me. She was sweet, and pretty enough, but her insecurity was just a little too apparent. She’d never had much luck in the boyfriend department. She sort of lived vicariously through her girlfriends’ exploits. My position as Sophie’s ex-boyfriend made us sort of honorary cousins.
“So I take it you’re out,” she said, speaking low so that no one would overhear. “Is everything all right?”
“Trying to figure that out.”
“Do you have a place to stay?”
“I’m working on it.”
—
Annie had given me the address of the shop where her boyfriend worked. It was way over on the east side. It was kinda strange to be walking around in regular clothes, passing by people who had no idea where I’d just come from.
Otis was big and strong, the kind of guy you’d picture Annie being with.
“Dolores stopped by just after she got out. Annie told me you’d be coming by too. How’s she doing?”
“She gets a little down sometimes. She and Dolores were pretty tight, and she misses her. It means a lot to her that you come to see her, though.”
“I guess you know she didn’t even do what they put her in for. But she’ll be getting out before too long.”
“So do you know where Dolores is staying?”
“With a girlfriend of hers, I think. At least she was. She was supposed to go up with me to visit you guys a couple of weeks ago, but she never showed. I haven’t heard from her since then.”
“I can’t seem to locate her. We made a plan, but it looks like it fell through.”
“She’ll get back in touch, I’m sure. You need anything? You got money?”
“I’m OK.”
He took out his wallet. “Here’s forty bucks. It’s all I got on me now.”
“No, really . . .”
“Come on, man. Annie finds out I didn’t even give you this much, I’ll be in the dog house for sure. You can pay me back when you get back on your feet.”
I don’t usually go looking for charity, but I’m not too proud to accept it when it comes looking for me. “OK, man. I appreciate it.”
—
The place Dolores had been living with her stepfather was on the east side too, a dozen dingy blocks from Otis’s shop. It was a nondescript single level house in a yard full of dried out weeds. I knocked on the screen door.
An unkempt guy in a sleeveless undershirt came to the door and looked out.
“Fuck you want?”
“Looking for Dolores.”
“She’s in jail.”
“Heard she got out.”
That was apparently news to him. The gears in his weasley brain started to creak.
“Well, she ain’t come by here yet. You see her, you tell her I got her room all fixed up, just like she left it. OK?”
Gave me the fucking creeps.
—
One thing about being in, at least they give you a mattress to sleep on, even if you do have to share it with someone. On the outside you’ve got to fend for yourself. I could go sleep on Brian’s couch. I’d probably end up there eventually. But Sharon had implied that her couch might be available too. That seemed more appealing.
It was a long hike back to the west side. I got to the Diner well after the supper rush. Sharon was getting ready to close up. I had a grilled cheese sandwich and left her a big tip. Which she didn’t pick up.
She lived in a little second-story apartment over a travel agency.
“Just let me get out of this uniform,” she said. She went into her bedroom and came out a couple minutes later in a bathrobe. “It’s all that grease from the kitchen. I’ll just be a minute.” She went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. I sat down on the couch.
She came back out in her bathrobe with a towel around her hair. She sat down at the other end of the couch. She’d always been a good friend to me as well as to Sophie. She hadn’t taken sides when we broke up, she’d stayed loyal and supportive to both of us.
“So, how are you doing?” I asked her.
“Oh,” she said, giving a little shrug. “You know.” But then she looked at me in her admiring-cousin way. “Was it . . . rough in there?”
I could have made something up, but there really wasn’t any reason to. “There was a mixup in the paperwork. They ended up sending me to the Women’s Facility by mistake.”
Her eyes got bigger as she tried to comprehend the situation.
“It wasn’t so bad, really. They make you do busy work and stuff. Those people you see out on the highway picking up trash? The ones in the orange vests? That was us. It wasn’t so bad.”
“Do they keep you behind actual bars?”
“There were bars on the windows. I mean, they locked us in our cells at night. They always had guards watching us.”
Her eyes were still awful big, trying to imagine what it must have been like. “So what are you going to do now?”
“First thing, I’m trying to hook up with my cellmate. She got out a couple weeks ago. That’s why I wanted to see Sophie, I thought she might be staying with her.”
“Was she a friend of hers?”
“No, but she needed a place to stay. I wrote Sophie a letter, asking if she could stay with her for a bit. But I guess she never got it.”
Sharon wrinkled her brow, trying to sort it all out. “Well, she must be staying somewhere else then.”
“Yeah. I tried a couple places today, but she wasn’t there either. She must be someplace, though.”
“So you and her are like . . .”
“Yeah. I guess you’d say so.”
She nodded. The situation was becoming a little clearer. I noticed, though, that her eyes were getting droopy. She must have had a long day.
“You must be tired,” I said.
She didn’t deny it.
“Why don’t you just go to bed then. Don’t mind me. I’ll be all right.”
“I’ll make up the couch for you.” She went and got some sheets. That’s what people do, I guess, when someone stays over. But it just seemed so . . . lonely. Her little apartment, her little couch . . .
“No need to go to all that trouble,” I said. I took the sheets from her. “At the Facility you get kind of used to sharing a bed.”
She wasn’t exactly sure what to make of that. I put the sheets down and went into her bedroom. The dresser was all cluttered with stuff, the bed unmade, her work clothes scattered on top. She snatched them up and put them on the hamper.
“It’ll be cozier this way,” I said. “OK?” I swear to God that all I was thinking was that it would be like it had been with Dolores, the two of us just sleeping together in the same bed.
She still wasn’t exactly sure, though. I started to undress. I’d sort of gotten used to not wearing underwear, so it didn’t take me very long. She cautiously undid the sash of her robe. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath either. She was a little embarrassed. We’d never seen each other naked before.
She had a little extra padding about her hips and tummy. Waitressing must not give you the best type of exercise. Her breasts were nice, though, full without being droopy, with perky nipples, the kind that just naturally call attention to themselves. Her pussy wasn’t shaved. I was a little surprised. I’d seen my share of unshaven pussies at the Facility, but somehow I had it in my mind that women on the outside mostly all shaved down there these days.
We got into bed. She looked at me, timidly, but not shrinkingly. My heart went out to her. I thought again about what a good friend she’d always been. She deserved better than this loneliness. I put my arm around her and pulled her into a little good-night hug. Her skin was soft and fresh from her shower. Even though we were just going to be sleeping together, my cock perked up and pressed itself against her thigh.