Triptych

He opened the box, showing her it was empty.

She went down her checklist. “Not hiding any Viagra in here, are you?” John shook his head. “Illegal drugs? Porn? Weapons of any kind?”

“No, ma’am,” he assured her.

“Still working at the Gorilla?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Anything changes, you’ll tell me about it first, right?” Yes, ma am.

“Well.” She had her hands tucked into her hips again. “All righty, then. Clean bill for today.”

“Thank you,” he said.

She wagged a manicured finger at him. “I’m watching you, John. Don’t you forget that.”

“No, Ms. Lam. I won’t.”

She looked at him a moment longer, then shook her head as if she couldn’t understand a thing about him. “You stay out of trouble and we won’t have any problems, okay?”

“Okay,” he agreed. Stupidly, he added, “Thank you.”

“I’ll see you around,” she said, heading for the door. “Keep your nose clean.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he agreed. He closed the door behind her, leaving his palm flat against the wood, resting his head on the back of his hand and just trying to breathe.

“Knock-knock,” he heard above him. Ms. Lam was in charge of the old-lady rapist, too. John didn’t know the guy’s name because every time he saw him in the hall, it took all of John’s willpower not to deck him.

He turned back to his room, blocking out Ms. Lam’s voice as she made her cheery rounds upstairs. John hated people going through his shit. The most important thing he had learned in prison was that you never touched another man’s property unless you were willing to die for it.

He picked up his T-shirt, one of the six that he owned, and refolded it. He had a pair of chinos, two pairs of jeans, three pairs of socks and eight pairs of boxers because for some reason his mother had always brought him underwear in prison.

John used his foot to upright one of his sneakers. Ms. Lam had searched them, too. The tongues were pulled out, the inserts crooked. Thirty dollars for a pair of shoes, John thought. He couldn’t believe how expensive clothes and shoes had gotten while he was inside.

Upstairs, he heard Ms. Lam say, “Uh-oh!” John froze, knowing she had found something. He heard the rapist mutter a response, then Ms. Lam’s voice loud and clear: “Tell it to the judge.”

There wasn’t much of a scuffle. She had a Glock, after all, and it wasn’t like there was anywhere to run in the dilapidated house they all called home. John couldn’t resist sticking his head out the door when he heard them making their way down the stairs. Ms. Lam had one hand on the rapist’s shoulder, one on the cuffs that were locking his hands behind his back. The guy was still in his underwear, no shirt, no socks, no shoes. They’d have a real nice time with him in the holding cell, as Ms. Lam well knew.

She saw him peering from behind the door. “He messed up, John,” she said, as if that wasn’t obvious. “Take it as a lesson.”

John didn’t respond. He closed the door, waiting until he heard a car door slam on the street, an engine turn over, the car pull away.

Still, he checked out the window, pulling back the construction paper in time to see Ms. Lam’s red SUV stop at the light at the end of the street.

John dropped to his knees and picked at the edge of the filthy brown carpet. He tried not to think about the roach they had seen or the mouse turds between the carpet and the pad. He found the credit report right where he had left it. Not contraband, but what would Ms. Lam say if she found it? “Uh-oh!” And then he’d be gone.

John slipped on his jeans and shoved his feet into his sneakers. He took the stairs two at a time. There was a phone in the hallway that they could use for local calls, and he picked it up, dialing the number he knew by heart.

“Keener, Rose and Shelley,” the receptionist on the other end said. “How can I direct your call?”

John kept his voice low. “Joyce Shelley, please.”

“Who can I say is calling?”

He almost gave her a different name, but relented. “John Shelley.”

There was a pause, a hesitation that kept him in his place. “Just a moment.”

The moment turned into a couple of minutes, and John could picture his sister’s frown when her secretary told her who was on the line. Joyce’s life was pretty settled and she seemed to be doing well. She had rebelled against their father in her own way: instead of becoming a doctor, she had dropped out of medical school her second year at Emory and switched to law. Now, she did real estate closings all day, taking a flat fee for getting folks to sign on the dotted line. He couldn’t imagine her doing something so boring, but then, Joyce probably got a good laugh out of him wiping soapy water off of cars all day.

“What is it?” his sister whispered, not even bothering with a hello.

“I need to ask you something.”

“I’m in the middle of a closing.”

“It won’t take long,” he said, then kept talking because he knew she’d cut him off if he didn’t. “What’s a credit score?”

She spoke in her normal voice. “Are you an idiot?”

“Yeah, Joyce. You know I am.”

She gave a heavy sigh that sounded more labored than usual. He wondered if she had a cold or maybe she’d started smoking again. “All the credit card companies, the banks, anybody who lets you buy anything on credit, report to credit agencies about how well you pay your bills, whether you’re on time, whether you’re slow, if you make the minimum payment or pay it all off each month or whatever. Those agencies compile your payment histories and come up with a score that tells other companies how good a credit risk you are.”

“Is seven hundred ten a good score?”

“John,” she said. “I really don’t have time for this. What kind of scam are you running?”

“None,” he said. “I don’t run scams, Joyce. That’s not why they sent me to prison.”

She was quiet and he knew he had pushed her too far. “I haven’t forgotten why they sent you to prison,” she said, the edge to her voice telling him she was having a hard time keeping control.

“What if somebody got my information and used it to get credit cards and stuff?”

“Then it’d wreck your score.”

“No.” He clarified, “What if they were paying off the cards and everything every month?”

She hesitated a moment. “Why would they do that?”

“I don’t know, Joyce. That’s why I’m asking you.”

“Are you for real?” she demanded. “What is this, John? Just ask me what you need to know. I’ve got work to do.”

“I am asking you,” he said. “It’s just that someone…” He let his voice trail off. Would this implicate Joyce in whatever was going on? Could she somehow get in trouble for having knowledge of this? He didn’t know how the law worked. Hell, last week he hadn’t even known there was such a thing as a credit score.

He didn’t know, either, if Ms. Lam tapped the phone.

He finally said, “It’s this scam some guys were running in prison.”

“Jesus.” She was whispering again. “You’d better not be getting involved in it.”

“No,” he said. “I’m keeping my nose clean.”

“You’d better be, John. They will throw your ass back in jail so fast you won’t even have time to think.”

“You sound like Dad.”

“Is that your way of asking how he’s doing?”

John realized he was holding his breath. “No.”

“Good, because he wouldn’t want me telling you anyway.”

“I know.”

“Christ, John.” She sighed again. He was upsetting her. Why had he called her? Why did he have to bother her with this?

He felt tears in his eyes and pressed his fingers into the corners to try to stop them. He remembered when