“I’m really sorry, Ada,” I said. “I didn’t know the protocol.”
“I’m not surprised, punk-ass Brentwood girl like you.” Ada sniffed at me. “But this fat little meat puppet here should have known the rules. I’m shocked to see you here after you ripped me at Happy Valley.”
“You what?” I turned to Sneak, who was reddening around the neck while the fingers that gripped the arms of her chair were turning white.
“I stole a pair of earrings from her on my last day,” Sneak said.
“Sneak! You think you could have mentioned that outside?” I cried.
“I forgot!”
“You forgot?”
“They were really nice earrings,” she huffed. “This cute dude I met through the inmate pen pal program was picking me up. I wanted to look nice.”
The man behind Sneak stepped forward. I thought he was going to slap her again, until I caught a flash of silver in the dim light. I failed to stifle a yelp of terror as he grabbed Sneak expertly by the ear and sliced off her earlobe in one swift, seamless motion.
“Oh my god! Oh my god!” I tried to rise but Fred pinned me in my seat, his hands on my shoulders like steel.
“You sure look nice now.” Ada smiled as Sneak bled. “Red is a good color for you. You should say thank you. I’ve done you a favor. From now on, it’s half-price on earrings for you.”
Ada leaned her chin on her fist.
“Mike’s ex–Special Forces, Iraq,” she told me, watching Mike deposit what he’d cut from Sneak into a chrome trash can by the desk. “He’s the one you hear unfolding his toolkit while you sit tied to a chair with a hood on your head.”
“Listen.” I shifted to the edge of my seat. “I know we shouldn’t be here. It was a mistake to come the way we did. I promise you, Ada, we didn’t mean any disrespect.”
“So tell me what the fuck you’re doing here,” she said. “And I get bored real easy, so make it interesting.”
I told her about Dayly, the robbery at the Pump’n’Jump, the blood in her apartment, and the phone call to Sneak in the middle of the night. I told her about Dayly’s boyfriend, and Al Tasik roughing me up. Sneak wasn’t making a sound. There was blood running down the side of her neck as she sat rigid in her chair, staring at the floor.
“We need some help,” I concluded.
“Why are you in on this?” Ada jutted her chin at me. “Surely this idiot has stolen from you, too. Thieves are the worst kind of people. The sex trade is full of them. When I started up this place here, every third girl I hired was a thief. It took a while to get the message out around town that you don’t steal from me. There was so much blood on the floor in those days, I had a rug dealer on speed dial.”
“Look, you’re right. Sneak has stolen from me,” I said. “She steals from everyone. But I looked her daughter in the face and that kid was scared, and I’ve got a child myself. I want to help.”
“You’re risking a lot,” Ada said. “You’re throwing more jail time on the table to help this walking trash bag and her scum-sucking kid. Why?”
“Sneak is my friend. She’s always been good to me. And I … Well, I’m trying to do something with my life,” I said. “I was a good person once. I was happy. I was respected. Now I work at a gas station and my son’s afraid of me. I live in a shitty apartment and I can’t afford the basics sometimes. I just want to do something good.”
It was the first time I had put my reasons into words. It sounded weak, and behind my meaningless utterings my mind unveiled subtext, the words between the words, my real reasons. Being around Sneak and Ada, the two of them together, reminded me of conversations in my dorm with other inmates. Plans for the future. For redemption. We were a trio of people who had experienced the sheer terror and crushing demoralization of prison. Though I was horrified with what Ada had done to my friend, there was a familiarity to being in the presence of these women that was comforting.
Dangerously comforting.
I’d felt it first when Sneak turned up and shoved her way into my apartment. Now it was in full force. I felt at home around these underhanded, dangerous people. My feet were on the floor—steady, safe—for the first time since I had left the prison gates. I knew the rules here. Some of them, anyway. And I was no better or worse than either of these women. I gripped my wooden chair and thought about that. About letting myself be led, step by step, into something criminal and dangerous, and risking the life I had spent a year building, just because I felt safer and more comfortable in prison than I did outside.
“Tell me about this boyfriend,” Ada said. “The video.”
I went to the desk and put my phone before her. I had the video Sneak had sent to me on the screen. Ada took the phone and leaned back in her chair, put her feet, in black python-skin boots, on the desk. She looked at the screen and recognition came onto her face. She smiled, gave a small, dark laugh.
“Look who it is,” she said, beckoning Fred. Fred went and looked at the phone, gave a quarter-smile.
“You know Dayly?” I asked as Fred returned to his station behind me.
“I met this bitch,” Ada said, nodding.
“Where? How?”
“Never mind.” Ada waved me off. She tapped the phone and watched the video. The whole video. Sneak, Mike, Fred, and I were silent for twelve minutes and fourteen seconds as Dayly and her boyfriend had sex on
