She shakes my hand and holds out a Ziplock for my phone and jewelry. I can’t remember the last time I took the lip ring out, and it takes me a minute, leaning over the side-view mirror of her Prius. Fucking Californians and their electric cars. The Bay Area is full of Teslas, but on a public defender’s salary, I guess you settle for the eco-conscious without the prestige.
Removing the little metal hoop makes me feel weirdly naked, like it’s someone else in the gigolo clothes. My hair is just long enough to keep me from walking in looking like a dressed-up skinhead, but I can’t totally hide the tats. Her lips purse at the ink crawling up my neck, but she doesn’t comment.
The last piece is giving up my phone. She looks at me expectantly when I hesitate, my fingers tightening involuntarily. Asmall thing, but it’s heavy with the weight of unanswered messages, and even though I’ve been ignoring those, I’m abruptly panicked at the thought of handing it off to a stranger. Like her car might swallow up the best piece of my life, even if it’s already over.
The last message from Gia said they were here in San Jose, holed up in some motel. Probably crashed out by now after driving all night. I swallow down the butterflies that accompany the thought. I can’t believe they fucking followed me out here. What it means is more than I can handle at the moment. Especially since I promised Celeste I wasn’t coming back.
“Mr. Shepard, you’ll get everything back after the visit, but there are no cell phones allowed in the facility,” the lawyer reminds me. She sounds like she’s trying to be patient, but maybe she thinks I’m stupid. She’s told me the cell phone thing at least three times.
I can’t remember her name, which makes me feel even more like an asshole than usual. If she hadn’t agreed to meet me here, I wouldn’t be going in today. The Santa Clara County Jail has some fucked online registration system for visitors, and it takes at least a week to get approval for inmate visitation without a lawyer present.
I let the phone drop from my hand and turn my head so I don’t see it disappear into the Prius’s glove box.
She has her purse and a basic leather briefcase. I have a wallet with my ID and 180 bucks. It’s the last of the money I talked Celeste out of after the plane ticket, the cheap airport hotel, and the crappy coffee that’s been keeping me on my feet since I got the original phone call. Still sitting alone on the studio floor last night, I’d seen the 510-area code and answered automatically, naively believing my life couldn’t possibly go any more to shit.
I was already on my way to McCarran when Lyot and then Gia started blowing up my texts, but I switched to silent and then to airplane mode and told myself they’d give it up. When I landed, I couldn’t help reading everything they’d sent, which was probably a mistake. I didn’t need to be questioning my decisions. It was 4 a.m. when I finally stopped torturing myself, waiting in the dark for the next notification to cast its pale light through the room, and turned the damn thing off.
Maybe I should have replied. I thought they’d have given up by now. I definitely never thought they’d be fucking crazy enough to drive out here. Now I’m gonna be thinking about my damn phone the whole time I’m inside, and I need to focus on Jamie. Jamie, whose life is even more spectacularly fucked up than mine right now.
“…keep it at simple possession…no weapons involved.” The lawyer is talking again. I drag my attention back to her, racking my brain for her damn name, as she leads me up the steps to the covered entrance. It doesn’t look like a jail—no razor wire or towers topped with rifle-wielding guards. It looks like any government office building, twelve stories of utilitarian concrete, with short, wide windows at regular intervals up the sides. The windows are a strange comfort, making me feel less guilty for no good reason.
The inside has that institutional smell I remember from too many hours in the Contra Costa CPS building, waiting on that month’s social worker to tell us where we were gonna live next.
“He’s going to ask you to bond him out,” Ms. Public Defender is telling me, as she drops her purse and briefcase on the X-ray and walks through the metal detector. She doesn’t flash a badge, and none of the guards give her a second look, like she does this every day. Maybe she does.
I get a much closer inspection, three sets of eyes watching as I remove my belt and drop it into the little tray with my wallet. I’m expecting a pat down or a recitation of the rules, but I guess coming in with a lawyer clears me to some extent.
“He seems to think you have access to the necessary funds?” Her skeptical lilt makes it a question, and I shake my head. Not unless Jamie has the rest of my money stashed somewhere, and he hasn’t already spent it all on drugs and whatever else he’s been doing.
“I’m going to try and push for a Pretrial Diversion—court-ordered rehab,” she clarifies at my expression. “It will keep him off the streets without jail time and give him some time in treatment to try and get his life together.”
“Is that gonna work?”
“This is his first offense as an adult, and all the juvenile infractions are minor and nonviolent. His addiction history has a clear track record, and with your testimony, I think it’s a real possibility. I could also try for probation if you’d prefer, although, in my opinion, that might be asking too much of both the judge and Jamie.”
“Probation, meaning he’d get out with a P.O. and no time?”
“And a fine. Not more than a thousand dollars, in this case, but if he violates the terms of the probation, next time his options will be much more limited.” She’s watching me expectantly as she tells me all this, the weight of responsibility making me uncomfortable. If I’d been worth a shit as a big brother, we’d never have ended up here in the first place.
“Are you asking me what I think the chances are of him keeping his nose clean for what—twelve months?”Zero.Weird that it still feels like a betrayal to tell her that.
“Six months of supervised probation, meaning he’d have to undergo out-patient substance abuse counseling and randomdrug testing. If he makes it through that, another year of unsupervised, where he still has to stay out of trouble.”
“Okay. I’ll talk to him.”
“Be extremely honest with yourself about his chances, Mr. Shepard,” she warns. “I’d seriously advise against trying for probation unless you are in a position to take your brother on full time.”
She eyes my clothes again, lingering on the leather Chelsea boots by some Italian designer that Celeste gave me for Christmas last year. Should I tell her my sugar mama liked dressing her boy toy up in shiny things, but that’s over now?
Maybe I can sell the shoes.
“I said I’d talk to him. Let’s get this over with.” Now that I’m here, facing the final repercussions of our slow, mutual betrayal, I realize Jamie is the last fucking person I want to see. All I want to do is get my phone and crawl between the cheap hotel sheets that hold the people who actually came for me.
The conversation with Jamie is like a scene from a movie, tragic and predictable.
He wants out. Apparently, he does have close to eighteen hundred dollars stashed at Zara’s that the cops never found.My money. I can turn him loose and try to keep him out of trouble until his court date. He’s convinced he’ll get probation. We’ll get jobs, he’ll be good—all the promises I’ve heard before.
“Why didn’t you call me?” I ask, interrupting his fantasy. He’s been inside almost a week, long enough to be through the initial detox, but the same old ghosts still ride shotgun in his eyes.
