Page 3 of Thick

I straightened my posture and lifted my chin. “Stay positive.”

The advice sounded juvenile, and I wished I hadn’t said it. Stay positive. What kind of advice was that? Ridiculous advice, that’s what it was.

“I’m only looking at five years,” he said as if a five-year prison sentence was nothing but a walk in the park. “I can sleep through a five-year bit. It’ll be over in no time, and then I’ll be riding my Harley down the PCH to Oceanside.”

“Are you still going to ride with the motorcycle club when you get out?”

His gaze hardened. “I’m not in this place because of the club. I’ve got no plans to abandon my family, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Every time I talked to him, it seemed I said something I later regretted. I needed to learn to keep my mouth shut, but I found him too easy to talk to, and impossible to ignore.

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” I said in an apologetic tone. “I was just asking.”

“Those men are my brothers. I’d much rather ride with them than alone.” He picked up the tray, gave the oatmeal a stern glare, and then looked at me. “When I get out, I’ll look you up. We’ll go on a poker run or something. You’ll see. They’re a good bunch of fellas.”

He often joked about what things would be like if we’d met on the street. Truthfully, I wished we had. Even if I wanted to spend time with him, doing so would be impossible. Corrections Officers were prohibited from having any contact with the inmates beyond the limits of the institution.

There was nothing in the handbook about daydreaming, though. It was a good thing, because I did plenty of it. “Sounds like a good plan.” I smiled and wondered if it looked cheesy. “Enjoy your breakfast.”

After passing out the food to the remaining inmates, I returned to the observation station. Officer Perry’s attitude met me at the door.

He was pacing the floor at the far end of the office, swinging his keychain in his hand as he walked. It was his only means of exercise. When I entered, he paused. Halfway through a lap, he looked at me and scoffed. “I don’t know when you’re going to learn, Madden. Probably take having one of these dip-shits slip a shank between your ribs to convince you that they’re not good people.”

I sat down in front of a row of monitors, shot him a quick glare, and then turned away. “Jesus, Perry,” I spat. “Nobody’s getting shanked. All I did was ask him if he had a trial date scheduled yet.”

“Keep talking to him like he’s one of your old classmates,” he warned. “Crazy bastard will hunt you down when he gets out of prison – if he gets out – then him and his biker gang will take turns with you and leave you for dead in the alley behind the fish market with your panties dangling off one of your ankles.”

“What the fuck?” I gave him a look. “Graphic much?”

He shrugged. “Happens all the time.”

“It does not,” I snapped. “And, he’s not like that.”

Gazing blankly into the cellblock, he brushed his comb-over across the top of his head with the palm of his hand. The long strands of orange hair flattened against his pink scalp, leaving the top of his head splattered with four one-inch wide stripes of hair.

“They’re all like that,” he seethed.

I gave a half-hearted nod and wagged my eyebrows. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

He turned toward me and rested his forearms on the top of his belly. “You need to be invisible to these guys,” he explained. “I’ve been here long enough to know the importance of that.”

Perry had been a corrections officer for ten years, which was nine years and nine months longer than me. After retiring from the military at thirty-eight years old, he started his career as a corrections officer. Balding, and just south of fifty years old, his attitude was as long as his horrible comb-over. He’d spent 20 uneventful years behind a desk in the Navy, and had never seen a moment’s action within the walls of the jail.

To hear him talk, however, he was a seasoned veteran.

He yearned for the opportunity to either beat or pepper spray an inmate, but that day had yet to come. More proof that no one was getting shanked between their ribs in the federal holding facility.

The small wing we worked in housed only the federal inmates. Although they were as threatening as the state controlled population, there were far less of them. It made guarding them – and controlling them – a more manageable task.

“He seems different,” I said.

“That’s because he wants you to see him as different. Believe me, he’s not. He’ll crawl inside your head, get you to lower your guard, and then he’ll stick a sharpened spoon handle in your gut.”

I gazed blankly through the glass and into the cellblock. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Keep up with that dismissive attitude. They’ll be hauling you out of here on a stretcher with a punctured spleen.”

I swiveled my chair to the side and met his stare. “How long have you been here?”