Thin Luck

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Connecticut - Section 53a-110 (a)

Criminal Trespass

I STARED AT the same dull grey concrete. I traced over the cracks and etched out graffiti like I had so many days in my past, but this time my heart beat with anticipation. I would see my baby today, hear Kyle laugh for the first time, see his smile, touch his chubby little cheeks. His baby smell would clear my sinuses of all the rot they'd been exposed to for the last two years.

Today, I would be free.

"So, what, you're gonna lay there all morning?" Carla asked. My cellmate's voice grated as it always had, but the last few days made her voice sound more like a bolt in a blender-a strange mix of grinding and high-pitched whine.

"Yes," I said.

"Your loss," Carla said. "I'm going down for the bacon. Can't you smell that?"

I ignored her. Sure the bacon smelled like bacon, but it tasted like molded shoe leather.

Peterson showed up at my cell at one o'clock. "Ready?" she asked with a swing of her keys.

"Yeah."

Peterson pointed her stubby black finger down the hall. "This way."

I knew the way. Today wasn't my only taste of freedom. I'd left the prison two other times in the last two years. The first time, six months ago, I met with the state prosecutor. He was a dandy with his pink suspenders and purple polka dot bow tie. I got the feeling he spent as much time combing his hair as making illicit phone calls. Antique pieces covered in gold and marble furnished his grand office. I felt out of place in my plain khaki uniform. But I was just a prison snitch, no more important to him than the neatly stacked files on his desk.

The second time I walked out of the prison was less than a month ago. I testified in front of a grand jury wearing a dress so modest it looked stolen from an Amish girl who long ago left for her Rumspringa. Luckily I didn't trip over the hemline. I wondered if, in some cosmic twist of fate, the Amish girl wore a miniskirt I had donated to Goodwill.

Based on my testimony in front of the grand jury, Carla would do a lot more time. Even more importantly, the state prosecutor needed me to testify at Carla's trial about her methods for smuggling drugs into prison. Carla didn't know this, of course, or I wouldn't be breathing. She'd find out soon enough. The point of getting me out of prison was to press charges against Carla without me getting killed.

Once I passed the final gate, Peterson placed two manila envelopes and a plastic bin in my hands. "Personal effects. Take your stuff there. Change." Peterson pointed to the bathroom.

I never liked the fragmented sentences uttered by the guards, but I'd long ago suppressed my need to correct them. I corrected a guard once for saying "tooken" instead of "taken." She punched me in the gut. The stern warning echoed from my left ear through the pain in my abdomen and out through the cellblock. Carla liked to say that was my first lesson in manners, and she took over as my prison etiquette coach after that.

I didn't remember what was in the plastic bin, but the smell of my old perfume trapped inside for almost two years nearly knocked me over. The little black thong probably seemed like a great idea at the time. The skirt was too big. After handing Kyle over to the nurse six and a half months into my prison sentence, I'd lost nearly twenty pounds in the York Women's Correctional facility. The weight stayed off, even with the over-processed, fatty foods served in the cafeteria. Maybe I could write a book: The Correctional Facility Diet. It could be a best seller like all those other fad diets.