Getting Off

forever, and they don’t call it the Talk Truck, do they? So do we really want to spend the whole time talking?”

“Audrey,” he said. “Audrey, Audrey, Audrey.”

Well, it wasn’t a horrible name. If he insisted upon saying it over and over, it might as well be a name she could stand.

They’d gotten past the little game of pretending he was drugged and immobilized, and their lovemaking was more spirited this time around. He’d had a week to think about what he might like to do to and with her, and he turned out to be equipped with both imagination and skill, and she didn’t have to feign her response.

Oh, it might have been better. It would have heightened her pleasure considerably if there’d been a way to conclude things with his death. As she got close, she imagined him dying in a dozen different ways — shot, stabbed, throttled, hanging from a rope — and that all helped, but it wasn’t the real thing.

The real thing would have to wait. Forever, apparently.

“Audrey.”

She rolled onto her side, laid a hand on his chest. “I like the way you say my name.”

“I didn’t even know your name. You told me your name was Jennifer, and I’d pretty much forgotten you, false name and all, until you turned up here.” He drew a breath. “And gave me a reason to live.”

Oh?

“I hadn’t planned on saying that,” he said, “but I think I’ve got to get past keeping things to myself. I wasn’t planning on killing myself, nothing like that. I’ve thought about it and rejected it.”

Well, think about it some more, why don’t you?

“But all I was doing was letting my life run its course. My sentence has three more years to run. My lawyer arranged for me to plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter, and I’ve served two years of a five year sentence. And I figured that gave me three more years to decide what I was going to do with the rest of my life, and I didn’t mind postponing that decision.”

“And now?”

“The day before yesterday,” he said, “I filed an application for parole.”

He’d been eligible since the completion of his first year. But you had to apply, and each month he’d passed up the opportunity to do so. Because all parole would do was force him to figure out what to do with his life, and that had been a decision he was unprepared to make.

Besides, he felt he deserved to serve his full sentence. He’d killed Maureen, whether or not it had been his intention, and it was only fair that he be deprived of three more years, having himself deprived her of the entire remainder of her life.

And prison wasn’t so bad. He hadn’t made friends inside the walls, but he hadn’t made enemies, either, and he’d found it easy enough to take the days one at a time and get through them that way. They fed you three times a day, and if the meals weren’t Cordon Bleu, at least they kept you alive. You could find the routine of prison life limiting and confining, or you could do as he had done and adjust to it, embracing it as something that relieved you of the burden of decision. It was, in its way, like being in the army, or working for a corporation. You did what they told you to do, and one day followed another, and you got along.

“I don’t know how you feel about me,” he said, “or even how I feel about you. Am I in love with you? It certainly feels like it, but I don’t know that I can trust the feeling. I mean, I barely know you.”

Well, you got that right.

“And as far as our having a future together, it seems pointless even to speculate. But what you’ve done, Audrey, is show me that I have a future, whatever form it takes. So I put in my application, and in two months I’ll have a hearing, and then, well, I’ll have to see how it goes. I hope I’ll see you between now and then, and I hope I’ll see you when I get out, but for now you’ve given me my life back, and I’ll always be grateful to you for that. I only wish there were something I could give you in return.”

She stretched out on the bed, parted her thighs. “We’ve got half an hour,” she said. “Maybe you can think of something.”

Two months until his hearing. Then, if the parole board decided in his favor, a few weeks to run the paperwork and let him out of there.

All at once it had become manageable. She’d never given a thought to parole, never imagined it might have been available to him all along.

Of course you couldn’t predict what the parole board might do. Back in Hawley there’d been an inspector at Motor Vehicles who made sure nobody ever passed the road test the first time through. He’d find some way to fail you. So there was always the chance some similar tightass on the Parole Board made everyone apply more than once, just on general principles. But Peter had committed no infractions of penitentiary rules, pulled no time in solitary, and indeed had led an apparently blameless life until the single unfortunate incident that had put him behind bars. It would be hard to find a better candidate for parole, and she could only assume the odds were in his favor.

So now she had to keep her distance. As soon as he was free, she’d take him to bed in some yet-to-be- determined venue a little more private than the fuck truck. They’d celebrate his freedom, and by the time they were done she’d have her own freedom to celebrate, and one less name on her list.

Until then, she would have to do what she could to lower her profile. Every time she walked through the metal detector and into the prison, a camera recorded the visit. They wouldn’t keep the tapes forever, but how long would it be before they recycled them? Probably a week, she figured, but it could be as long as a month, so if she wanted to avoid having her features on file somewhere…well, it looked as though the best way to stay out of prison was to stay out of prison.

She picked up a carton of Marlboros — undoctored, this time — and paid him a last visit to tell him through the pane of glass that he wouldn’t be seeing her for a while. “I’ll be in California,” she said. “In fact I should have been there all along. I have an aunt in Yreka who’s not in good health, and I’ve been splitting caretaker duties with my sister, and I’m long overdue to get out there and take my turn.”

“I didn’t know you had a sister.”

“You probably didn’t know about the aunt, either. I don’t know how long I’ll have to stay, and I’m not sure where I’ll be staying.”

“You can’t stay with your aunt?”

“Even if I could,” she said, “I wouldn’t.” And she riffed on what a pigpen the aunt’s house was, and then went on to explain that there was someone else she had to see, not in California, because there was a conversation she had to have, and it really ought to be face to face.

“See, I’ve sort of been in a relationship,” she said. “And, well, I don’t know what the future’s going to hold for us, Peter, but I’d like to make room for us to give it a chance. Do you know what I mean?”

“I didn’t know you were seeing anybody.”

“I know, I’m full of surprises. A sister, an aunt, and now a boyfriend. Except he’s not exactly a boyfriend, and I’ve been ready to break it off for a while now, and this is the right time.” She put her palm on the glass, and once he’d matched his palm to hers she said, “Peter, no strings. You’re not under any obligation, and how can we possibly know where this is going? But I want to give it a chance, and I hope you want to, too.”

“There’s nothing I want more.”

“I don’t know when I’ll be able to see you again,” she said, “but I’ll want to keep in touch, and of course I’ll want to know what happens with your hearing, and how that goes. I suppose I could write to you, but—”

“I’ll get a cell phone.”

“They’re allowed in here?”

He nodded. “I never bothered getting one,” he said. “I never saw the point. Who would I call?”

SEVENTEEN

“It’s pronounced Why-reeka,” she said, “and it’s supposed to be a Shasta Indian word meaning white mountain, but I haven’t run into any Shasta Indians who can say one way or the other.”