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There are old, crusted bowls and plates piled high in the sink. The same lace curtains as out front, gone brown with age, hang limp in the kitchen window. There’s brown sludge in the corner between the counter and the backsplash, and worn, ripped linoleum over the floor.
My apartment in Heart’s Cove was nothing like this place. Maybe I’m not like Slim at all. We came from the same place…but we’ve grown into very different men.
Slim belches, then cracks his own beer open. “Long time no see, brother.”
The word brother rankles, but I hide it behind a sip of beer. “My sister told me you were looking for me. I don’t appreciate you harassing her.”
Slim leans against the kitchen counter, his wrinkled, stained shirt riding up at the front. He nods. “Straight to business. You haven’t changed a bit.”
Suddenly, I feel worn out. I’m on edge in this space, worried about Slim and his cronies talking to my family, and my heart hurts from missing Jen. With a sigh, I put my beer down and spread my arms. “What do you want, Slim?”
“I invite you into my home, I give you a drink, and this is how you speak to me? Come on, man. I want to catch up!”
“I’ve got shit to do.” I cross my arms.
Slim holds my gaze for a moment, then laughs. “All right, all right.” He gestures to a rickety table and chairs. “Have a seat.”
He throws himself onto a wobbly chair with missing braces between the legs, and I sit much more gingerly on the seat across from him, half-expecting it to collapse. Slim slurps his beer and burps behind his fist again, and it takes every ounce of patience not to get up and walk right out.
But I need to know why he was haranguing my sister—and I need to make sure he’s not going to do it again.
Finally, Slim speaks. “I have a business proposition for you.”
“Not interested.” I make to stand, but Slim puts his hand out.
He waits until I’ve lowered myself back down onto my seat before speaking. “I heard from a few boys on the inside that you were visiting the Nevada State Prison earlier this year. Giving them some cooking lessons and shit.”
I’m not quite sure what the “and shit” portion of that sentence means, but I still nod. “Yeah. So? You got a problem with that?”
Slim throws his hands up and laughs again. “Nah, man. I think it’s good. Giving back and all that.” He leans forward. “But you know you could be making a killing doing that, right?”
“I could be making a killing teaching convicts how to cook?” I blink. “I’m not following.”
Slim snorts. “Brother. Not for the cooking lessons. For the supplies you’d bring with you to the classes.” He stares into my eyes, his meaning clear.
Slim wants me to be a drug mule to bring gear into the prison.
In that moment, faced with the idiot who caused me to go to prison, I feel a moment of clarity. Slim has wasted his life. His body is a broken husk, and his house is a contamination zone that has Biohazard stamped onto every filthy inch. The man in front of me is stuck in a cycle of crime—a cycle that I escaped.
I’m nothing like him.
We were convicted of the same crime. I, apparently, aided and abetted his robbery. When we were eighteen, our criminal record was almost identical—but we aren’t the same men now. Maybe we never were the same, even as teens.
I pled guilty, but I never felt like it was right. The prosecutor was a bull of a man with big, meaty fists he loved to lean against the steel table in the interrogation room. He knew the knife was mine—had irrefutable proof. He had photos of me with the knife, and witness testimonies that proved the knife had been my father’s before it was passed down to me.
In Nevada, someone who aids and abets a crime can be charged with the same offense as the principal. Robbery carries a sentence of two to fifteen years. Use a deadly weapon like a knife? Tack on another one to twenty.
The prosecutor told me he’d ask for the maximum for me unless I pled out.
I was afraid of spending my entire life in prison, and I let the prosecutor intimidate me. I pled guilty to a robbery that happened when I was at home in bed. The only thing I did wrong was befriend Slim and let myself be influenced by the appeal of a gang. I was a kid. I was fatherless. I was hurting.
For the first time in my life, what Nora was saying earlier today sinks in. My criminal record doesn’t define me. I moved on, made something of myself—something humble, sure. But I’ve lived an honest life.
Have I been punishing myself for decades for something that wasn’t my fault? Have I been holding myself up to an impossible standard?
Taking a deep breath, I look Slim in the eyes. “I won’t bring anything to the prison for you. If I decide to give more cooking classes to inmates, it’ll be so they can make an honest living when they get out. Not to give addicts their fix.”
Slim’s smile fades. His chair creaks as he leans back, the linoleum groaning underfoot.
