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“Typically.”
“Did you ever meet on a weekend?”
“Maybe once—twice tops. It was difficult to book the Belmond then.”
“But you could have met somewhere else.”
“I preferred the Belmond. I think Laurel did as well.”
“So you consider yourself a creature of habit then, Dr. Hastings?”
“I have an affinity for efficiency.”
She looks at me directly before glancing down at her hands. “What happened to your cheek?”
I touched it, unintentionally pointing out the obvious. “Walked into the end of a metal pipe. Crushed the bone.”
“It must be tough for you?”
“What?”
“Well—from what you’ve told me—you’re used to being on the opposite end of things.”
“I don’t see what this has to do with anything.”
“Would you say the Valium is helping with the anxiety?
“Not as much as I’d like it to.”
Capitalism doesn’t stop in jail. Incarceration is an economy of its own. Like life on the outside, you learn to barter. You learn to sell. You learn the value of things, real quick. You learn to build alliances. You learn if you can’t be the strongest, you have to be the smartest. It’s a different kind of smart, but intellect, a good sense of business, and good instincts are the kind of commodities one has to possess. It’s not so different from the outside in that way—it’s the only way to survive.
I learned the value of Dr. Jones fairly early on. As my psychiatrist, she could prescribe medication. Medication was something I could trade. It didn’t take me long after that first attack to come up with a plan.
There’s a small space at the top of the mouth in between one’s molars, the bone and one’s cheek that makes for an excellent hiding place. Jailers are smart about this, of course. They don’t just hand you your medication without inspecting your mouth. That’s why you’ve got to shove it way, way up there. You’ve got to swallow convincingly, which is why sometimes, despite my best efforts, I don’t always get it right. It’s about sixty-forty. Forty percent of the time I have to haul ass back to my cell, position myself over the small sink, and force two fingers down my throat deftly enough that I can still use my hands as a filter. It’s a bit of an art form, if you want the merchandise in good condition. Not that it matters. Desperate people do desperate things. They’re just worth more whole, is all.
Saving my pills is the only leverage I have against broken cheekbones and all things unimaginable. Things which I seemed to be surprised by more and more as the days go by. That pipe—the one that was smashed against the side of my face—it’s used as other forms of punishment too.
Needless to say, I’ve gotten really good at delivering those pills.
Chapter Twenty
Laurel Dunaway
Journal Entry
I don’t know what possessed me to do it. I suppose it was natural, all things considered. On the way to see Dad today, exhausted and preoccupied, I made the instinctual mistake of turning left instead of right. It occurred naturally, the way it does when you start out driving to one place, but look up and realize you’ve ended up somewhere else altogether. I wound up at the office instead of the care home.
It felt strange pulling up in the parking lot. Something very simple, something I used to do on a daily basis, was suddenly foreign, as though it were a lifetime ago when being there made any sense.
James had been surprised to see me. He wasn’t the only one, in the end.
If only he’d had the balls to discuss the situation with me; then maybe it would have turned out differently. He knows me. Which means he should have known I’m not keen on surprises. Maybe if I’d been eased into the idea, maybe things wouldn’t have unraveled as they did. I plan to tell him as much tonight. The whole thing has me on edge, thinking about what’s to come. It won’t be pretty.
He should have consulted me. He should have mentioned he’d filled my role. To find my office occupied felt like a slap in the face. As I stood in the doorway to his office—our offices are only separated by a clear pane of glass—he softly said, “It’s just temporary. With so much on the line, with the potential sale, we needed the help.”
My jaw was practically on the floor. He didn’t leave me any room to respond. He stood and walked over to me, leveling himself so that we were eye to eye. He rubbed my forearms and flashed his best sales grin, putting all of that training we’d learned pushing pharma to good use.
My heart raced. It beat against my rib cage as though it might lurch its way up my throat and leap out of my chest. Thoughts swirled—too fast and too scrambled to come out coherently. Somehow they managed. “I don’t understand,” I said, even though I was beginning to.
