Page 55 of Jar of Hearts
“Sure he’s home?” Angela asked.
“His car’s parked on the street.” Geo rapped again, and a few seconds later the light above the door flicked on. Calvin opened the door, hair slightly disheveled, wearing an old pair of low-slung jeans and nothing else. He had a beer in one hand. The light reflected off his lean stomach, highlighting every ab muscle. He looked like a god.
Angela’s eyes trailed up and down his body. “Well, fuck me,” she said.
Calvin raised an eyebrow.
“So this is what you’ve been busy with,” Angela said, more toherself than to Geo. “I get it now. You gonna let us in, cowboy? Because it’s freezing out. You’re hot, but you’re not that hot.”
“That’s a matter of opinion,” Calvin said, standing to the side so they could enter. “Watch your step. Part of the doormat is sticking up.”
Angela went first, giving Calvin a knowing look as she passed him. Geo hesitated, her mind flashing back to Kaiser in the laundry room, the smell of those lavender sachets as he kissed her, the way he felt against her, loving and urgent and gentle.
Then she forced her best friend out of her mind, stepping carefully but purposefully over the threshold and into Calvin’s domain.
21
Geo’s new iPhone rings loudly, waking her from the first real sleep she’s had since Hazelwood. She reaches for it blindly and checks the number. It’s nothing she recognizes, but she answers it, anyway. An automated voice speaks robotically in her ear, the words pausing as the computer generates the sentence.
“You have a collect call… from…Cat”—Cat’s voice here, and Geo’s heart leaps—“at… Hazelwood Correctional Institution. This call will cost you… one dollar and seventy-five cents… and will appear on your next billing statement. To accept, press one. To decline, please press two or hang up.”
She presses one, and a moment later, Cat’s voice is in her ear.
“Georgina? You there, hon?”
“I’m here,” Geo says, and despite her grogginess, her eyes well up with tears. It’s only been a week, but it’s the longest she’s gone without hearing her friend’s voice since they met five years ago. “Goddammit, it’s so good to hear from you. Why haven’t you called sooner?”
“I wanted to give you a chance to get settled. Last thing I figured you needed was to be reminded of this hellhole.”
Geo can hear the low hum of Hazelwood through the phone. Voices bantering in different accents and cadences—Mexican, Polish, the melodic lilt of a woman who sounds a lot like Ella Frank, thebark of a CO telling someone to get back in line. She can picture Cat, dressed in shapeless prison sweats two sizes too large, standing at the bank of pay phones. There are exactly six, mounted to the wall, no dividers between them, no privacy. Not that privacy mattered, anyway. All calls are monitored in prison. The legal ones, anyway.
“How are you?” Geo asks. “And don’t bullshit me.”
“I’m shitty,” Cat says, and Geo stifles a sigh. But she wants to hear it, so she doesn’t say anything yet. “Oncologist said the cancer is spreading. I’ve got two new tumors in my femur—wait, is that the thigh bone or shin bone?”
“Thigh bone.”
“So yeah, femur. Doc still thinks another round of chemo is the way to go, but I gotta tell you, hon, I’m not sure I’m up for it. He wants to start next week. I already feel half-dead.”
“That’s because I’m not there,” Geo says, feeling about as helpless as she’d ever felt. She picks at a loose stitch on her floral comforter, wishing in that moment she could be there to have this conversation in person. But ex-cons, especially ones who just got out of prison, don’t normally make it onto the approved-visitors list.
“I do have good news, though. My parole was approved. I should be out Monday.”
“No fucking way!” Geo sits straight up on the bed, feeling like she’s about to cry. “And you waited a whole minute to tell me that?”
“I wanted to build the suspense.”
Ella Frank’s brother, Samuel, had come through. And even quicker than Geo had hoped. She made a mental note to call him later and thank him again, both for the gun and for his help “convincing” someone on the parole board to vote for Cat’s release. It had cost Geo a lot, but it was worth every penny.
“I have just enough time to get your room ready,” Geo said. “You’ll like it. It used to be my mother’s sewing room—”
“Hon, about that.” Cat sounds hesitant. “I don’t know if you really want an old woman living with you. I haven’t even met your father. Usually this kind of imposition is reserved for family—”
“You are family. And don’t insult me by insinuating you aren’t,”Geo says firmly. “I talked it over with my dad. We have the room, and I have the time. Besides, we won’t be here long, anyway. I’m working on getting a place of my own, and you’re coming with me when I do. Now, what time can I pick you up?”
There’s a silence on the other end of the line. From her old friend, anyway; the background is still filled with the din of prison life.
“Don’t pick me up,” Cat says, but Geo can hear the smile in her voice even from two hundred miles away. “I’m not going to make you drive back to this hellhole, and don’t bother arguing, because it’s not negotiable. I’ll take the bus, and maybe you can pick me up at the bus depot in Seattle.” Her voice chokes up. “Georgina, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this.”
