Time Off for Good Behavior Read online

  Time Off For Good Behavior

  Lani Diane Rich

  Copyright © Lani Diane Rich 2004, 2012

  All Rights Reserved

  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, places, events, business establishments or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Second Edition: July 2012

  www.LaniDianeRich.com

  Chapter One

  The court date fell on the Friday of what had been a very bad week for me as an account executive at Hastings Channel 8. Any week in which you take people’s money and give them airtime is a bad week, but that week had been unusually degrading, seeing as I’d dropped my card off at more than thirty businesses and had, in no particular order, been screamed at, spit on, and called a bloodsucking leech.

  On that Friday morning, I put runs in two separate pairs of panty hose, was forced to wake up my landlady so she could get her nephew in 2B to give my crappy Hyundai a jump, and stained my favorite skirt with cheap, 7-Eleven coffee. By the time the bailiff escorted me to the witness stand, I was already in a bad mood and would have been snippy with Mother Teresa. As it was, the defense lawyer representing the sleaze-balls at Hastings Gas & Electric, who were responsible for the explosion three years ago that destroyed Whittle Advertising and nearly killed me, was definitely not Mother Teresa.

  Instead, he was a pencil-faced guy, the kind who couldn’t smile without sneering just a little. The sort of guy who had a membership at the most exclusive golf club in town but brought a calculator to restaurants so he could figure out a 15 percent tip to the penny. As a matter of fact, I was pretty sure he was the same guy I spotted at the Wal-Mart last year, demanding that the Salvation Army volunteer stop ringing that damn bell and write him up a receipt.

  “How are you feeling today, Ms. Lane?” he asked, looking up at me from the files on the defense table.

  “Never better,” I lied. The fluorescent lighting was giving me a headache, and I had cramps. But damned if I was gonna let Pencil Face know that.

  “Okay, then,” he said, approaching me at the witness stand. “Let’s get started. What time did the explosion occur?”

  “About nine in the morning.” I shifted in my seat and rolled my head to loosen my neck. The courtroom was eerily reminiscent of a motel convention room, and it smelled like the plastic covering you put down to protect the floor when you paint. The jury sat on orange plastic seats, most of which wobbled when they shifted their weight. I was sitting on a swivel office chair that squeaked if I turned to the left. I guessed comfortable courtrooms weren’t a huge priority when the Hastings, Tennessee, powers-that-be made out the city budget. Either that or someone was buying on the cheap and lining their pockets with the difference. Knowing lawyers and politicians, I’d bet dollars to doughnuts it was option number two.

  “And where were you immediately prior to the explosion?”

  “Sitting at my desk.”

  Pencil Face nodded, pacing in front of the witness stand in a piss-poor Gregory-Peck-as-Atticus-Finch affectation. I looked behind him and saw the HG&E reps leaning back with smug expressions and smoothing their five-hundred-dollar ties like they were out for drinks instead of in civil court for blowing up the building in which Whittle Advertising held a corner office. They were the same weasels who came at me in the hospital when I was still hopped up on Demerol and got me to sign papers promising I wouldn’t sue if they paid my medical bills.

  Fine by me, guys. I never said I wouldn’t testify.

  I glanced over at Faye Whittle and her lawyer, who were sitting at the plaintiff’s table with their arms crossed over their chests. Faye’s brown hair hovered like a bird’s nest over her thin, puckered face, and all appearances indicated that the tremendous pole she’d had shoved up her ass when I was working for her was still firmly in place. Her attorney was short, fat, and bald and looked alarmingly like a bullfrog.

  I turned my attention back to Pencil Face, who continued to toss out the questions. Did you notice anything unusual? Yes, I smelled gas. And what did you do? I told Faye that I smelled gas. And what happened next? Faye told me to stay at my desk and keep working, and she went across the street to call HG&E. There weren’t any phones in the building? No, it was a new building. That’s why the gas line was still being installed. What happened then? I needed some sticky notes, so I went into the supply closet and turned on the light. When my hand touched the metal plate on the switch, there was a shock of static electricity. And then...

  Boom.

  “Boom?” Pencil Face looked up from the notes he was flipping through at the defense table. My irritation surged.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Boom. The place went up. So did my hair, and the sleeves of my dress, which flamed up and burned my hands and my arms, although I didn’t notice so much because I was busy trying to figure out why my ass was suddenly wedged between the back wall and the filing cabinet.” I stared point-blank at one of the smarmy HG&E reps as I spoke. He never met my eye. Big surprise.

  “Ms. Lane, I think that word is inappropriate.”

  “What word? Cabinet? Or wall?” I blinked innocence, trying to grate on his nerves and, from what I could tell, succeeding quite nicely.

  “I think you know which word.” Pencil Face turned his beady, narrowed eyes from me to the jury and went on. “So you smelled the gas.”

  “Yes, I smelled the gas.”

  “And yet you didn’t leave the building? You chose to stay and work even though you knew you were in danger?”

  I shifted in my seat. It squeaked. “Faye told me to stay.”

  “But you smelled the gas?”

  “Yes,” I repeated through clenched teeth.

  “Well,” Pencil Face said with a well-practiced and humorless laugh, “I guess I’m just wondering why, if the smell of the gas was so obvious and strong, you stayed in the building.”

  I narrowed my eyes to slits. “Exactly what are you getting at?”

  “What I’m getting at, Ms. Lane,” he said, his tone thick with mockery, “is that you didn’t really smell gas, now, did you?” I glanced over at Faye and the Bullfrog, who showed no indication that he was planning on objecting to Pencil Face’s blatant badgering. Once again, Faye Whittle was proving useless to me. I looked back at Pencil Face.

  “Are you insinuating that I’m lying?”

  “Oh, I’m not insinuating anything,” he said, wisely backing away from the witness stand and turning to the jury. “I’m just saying it begs the question.”

  “Excuse me?” I stood up. The judge let out a heavy sigh. I ignored it. “Look, you little shit—”

  “Ms. Lane.” The judge’s tone was sharp, but I didn’t care. This was personal now.

  “Yes, I smelled the gas. But it could have been anything. It could have been next door. I could have slopped some gas on my shoes when I filled my tank that morning. I turned on a light, for Christ’s sake. It’s not like I smelled gas and lit up a goddamn cigarette, you pencil-faced butt munch.”

  “Ms. Lane!” I heard the judge slam down her gavel, but I kept my glare locked on Pencil Face. This was one of many moments in my life when it would have behooved me to remember the words my father repeated to me often while I was growing up: Wanda, sometimes a battle is worth fighting. And sometimes you just have to know when to shut the hell up.

  I leaned forward on the railing that enclosed the witness stand. “And another thing, jackass...”

  “Ms. Lane!” The judge was pounding her gavel.

  “…if I for one minute
thought that staying in that office was going to get me a front-row ticket to six weeks of painkillers and bathing in Neosporin, you would have had to nail-gun my ass to the floor to keep me in that place.”

  “…held in contempt of court if you don’t sit down...”

  “You wanna talk about poor judgment? Let’s talk about the fucking dipshits who left an open gas line piping into the building.”

  Pencil Face looked at me, his beady little weasel eyes glittering in the face of conflict. My chest was heaving with the force of my ragged breath. He moved in close and gave me an empty smirk.

  “Thank you for saving me the time of bringing someone in here to testify about your character,” he said, his eyes drifting down to my breasts and back up to my face, reminding me that I was a woman and he’d use that against me if I pushed him.

  I almost heard it, the pop and hiss as my fury erupted. I pulled my arm back and swung at Pencil Face. He’d turned to glance at his sleazy HG&E guys, so he didn’t see me coming. It was luck, and not reflexes, that made him move a smidgen to the left. There was a crack, and I felt the cheap witness stand railing give out underneath me. Pencil Face gave a girly screech and jumped out of my way as I fell forward. I can still hear the sound of my head as it slammed with a sickening clunk on the thin carpet that covered the floor, and I can still hear my father’s voice seeping up from my memory, laced with disappointment. Sometimes you just have to know when to shut the hell up.

  ***

  It took me a while to recognize the hospital room for what it was when I woke up. At first, everything was a pale blur, and as my vision returned, the pieces came at me individually. The tall swivel tray sitting by my bed. The IV pole at my side. The framed poster of a generic landscape. The window with Venetian blinds hanging halfway down. I took it all in, unalarmed, too groggy to put the pieces together and panic properly.

  A rhythmic squeaking noise grew louder and paused, and then the door opened. A nurse in pink scrubs entered, carrying an IV bag filled with clear fluid. She hummed the theme to Green Acres as she puttered around the room, and didn’t notice I was awake and watching her until she finished switching the bags on the IV pole.

  “Oh, Miss Lane!” she said brightly, her southern accent dripping with honey. “It’s good to have you back.”

  She had the largest smile I’d ever seen. It took over her entire face, her eyes barely showing under the pressure from her massive cheeks. I opened my mouth to say something, but only a harsh whispered “Unnnnhhh” came out through the sandpaper in my throat.

  “Oh, honey,” she said, putting her warm hand on my arm. “Don’t try to talk yet. Give yourself a minute to adjust.”

  She reached over and pulled the blankets up farther on my torso, making me feel like a preschooler at nap time.

  She smiled again. “Miss Lane... May I call you Wanda?” I gave her a small nod, which I immediately regretted as a sharp pain hatcheted its way through my skull. The panic began to form then, dull and throbbing in my gut. The nurse must have caught it in my expression because her smile waned enough for me to see the concern in her eyes, and she gave my arm a comforting squeeze.

  “Now, Wanda, I know it’s kinda scary waking up in a hospital, but you’re gonna be just fine, and my mama didn’t raise no liars, so don’t you worry.” She bit her lip and looked around the empty room. “Is there anyone you’d like me to call for you, honey?”

  I blinked and made a slight “no” movement with my head. There was no one.

  “Okay.” Her smile reappeared, tighter this time. That’s how people who have someone tend to react to people who have no one. She tucked a call button remote into my hand. “Well, my name is Vera, and I’m your nurse, so if you ever need anything, you just hit this button and I’ll come running, okay?”

  I didn’t want to risk the sandpaper, but I desperately wanted some water, so I flitted my eyes from the cup and pitcher sitting on the swivel tray back to Vera as she talked, hoping she would take the hint before the movement made my head explode. She followed my eyes to the pitcher.

  “Oh, honey, did you want some water?”

  I gave her a small, grateful smile. She nibbled on her lip. “Well, darlin’, it’s been a while since you’ve had anything in your tummy. I’m gonna go get Dr. Harland—he’ll be so glad to hear you’re awake—and we’ll just see if he says it’s okay, all right?” With that, Vera and her tremendous smile squeak-squeak-squeaked out of the room. I blinked twice and looked around again, trying to gain control of my focus, but it wasn’t worth the pain of keeping my eyes open, so I closed them and leaned back into my pillow. My arms and legs felt like deadweights, and while I could move them, anything exceeding a slight shift was more trouble than it was worth. There was a familiar tune playing, probably coming from the radio at the nurses’ station, and I tried to concentrate on it, but it faded away before I could place it. I thought about the cup and pitcher on the tray next to my bed, but unless I developed some telekinetic ability in the next few minutes, I’d have to wait for Vera and the good doctor.

  The door opened, and a short man in a white coat came in, with Vera squeak-squeaking behind him. The doctor smiled, sat on the side of my bed, and put his hand on my arm. It was warm. “Hi, Wanda. I’m Dr. Harland.”

  Vera stood behind Dr. Harland and didn’t catch my meaningful glances toward the water pitcher this time. I gave up and listened to the doctor.

  “We’re glad to see you awake,” he said. He was a tiny man with dark skin and deep-set eyes. He couldn’t have been more than forty, but smile lines radiated from his eyes and curved around the edges of his mouth like cheerful parentheses. I can handle cranky people, and I can handle antisocial people, but smiley people always put me on edge. In my experience, they tend to be irritating or crazy. Often both.

  Dr. Harland explained my condition to me. Apparently, the cheap Berber carpeting in the courtroom was laid directly on top of a cement floor, with no padding. Shocker. The sickening clunk had been the sound of my skull fracturing, and I had ended up with a concussion and some swelling of the brain. I had been in a light coma for five days. I would be on painkillers for a week or so and would probably experience some headaches, but overall I was a very lucky woman. I found the strength to nod, showing him I understood, but my mind stuck on the word lucky. Just went to show what he knew.

  Dr. Harland squeezed my arm. “I’m gonna go, let you get a little rest, but I’ll be back in to check on you in a little while, and then we’ll start on that recovery, okay?”

  I gave another brief nod. Pain radiated through my head. He flashed me one cheerful smile and left. I closed my eyes and rested my head on the pillow. The room started to spin. I opened my eyes again, and Vera was standing by my bed, sticking a bendy straw in the water. “Dr. Harland told me we could try some water. You ready, honey?”

  I parted my lips and drank. The first few sips went well, but I soon learned that it’s a bad idea to introduce anything quickly to a stomach that has been empty for five days, and I started to gag. Vera reached for the bedpan with practiced ease, and I proceeded to make a sterling first impression.

  “Aw, honey,” she said when I was done. “Don’t you worry. We’ll just give that a try again later, okay?”

  I tried to give another tiny nod but found just enough strength to rest my head back on the pillow. As it turned out, skull fractures hurt like a mother.

  “You get a little more sleep, honey, and I’ll be back to check in on you in just a little bit.” She reached up and checked my IV, then gave my arm another gentle squeeze and winked at me, her eyes succumbing to another tremendous grin. “And don’t you worry about a thing.”

  She squeak-squeaked through the door, and I was alone. I sank back into the pillow and stared at the ceiling. The familiar tune wafted back into the room, and I fell asleep trying to place it.

  ***

  “I’m fine, George. Really. Fine.” I held the phone away from my ear and leaned back on the pillows, thank
ing God for each and every one of the five thousand miles between Tennessee and Alaska.

  “I’m gonna take off work. Come down and see you.” George’s voice was competing with pay phone static and the sounds of oil workers passing through the hallways of the compound where they lived while they were on the slope. “I’ll get a job down there. I’ll take care of you. We can start a family, get a small house with a fireplace. Just like you always wanted. Come on, baby.”

  “We’re divorced, George. Don’t call me baby.” I put my hand to my forehead. My headache was raging.

  “But I love you,” he said. His voice was quiet. My stomach was turning. I looked at the phone cradle as the chorus in my head sang, Hang up, hang up, hang up.

  “Look, George, I’m fine. I’m getting out of the hospital soon, and I’m going back to work. I really don’t have time for a visit.”

  Silence. Silence was never a good sign with George. It could mean anything. He could be crumpling under the emotional strain. He could be plotting to kill me. Anything was possible.

  “Stay in Alaska,” I said finally. “Please. I’m fine.”

  The door to my room opened. A tall guy in a suit gave me a tentative smile from the doorway. He had lawyer written all over him, but I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he was from the local Bible college, visiting the hospitalized friendless, doing his Good Samaritan deed du jour.

  “George, I have to go. Don’t come down here. I’m sorry they even called you.” The last time I’d been in Hastings General, George and I were still married, and I’d put his information down on the “in case of emergency contact” sheet. A decision, like so many others, that was coming back to haunt me.

  “Baby, I love you. I’ve been going crazy up here, not knowing if you were okay. I need to see you.”

  I sighed. My stomach knotted up. Time to pull out the big guns. “George, the restraining order is still in effect. If you show up here, you’ll go to jail.” I looked up and gave a “What are you gonna do?” eye roll to the guy, whose tentative smile went swiftly south.