You are allowed a single electronic device—you have chosen a radio. You reach for the knob, a screech of static noise. The men in the surrounding cells often holler their requests, R&B or classic rock, but they know what will happen today. They do not protest when you tune to your favorite station. Classical. The symphony is sudden and shocking, filling every corner of the concrete space. Symphony in F Major. You adjust to the existence of sound, settle it in.
What are you painting? Shawna asked once, as she slid your lunch tray through the slot in the door. She tilted her head to squint at your canvas.
A lake, you told her. A place I used to love.
She was not Shawna then, not yet—she was still Officer Billings, with her hair pulled back in its tight low bun, uniform pants scrunched around the bulge of her hip. She was not Shawna until six weeks later, when she pressed her flattened palm up to your window. You recognized the look in Shawna’s eyes from other girls in different lives. A startle. She reminded you of Jenny—it was something in her wanting, so vulnerable and unruly. Tell me your name, Officer, you asked, and she flushed a harsh red. Shawna. You repeated it, reverent like a prayer. You imagined the nervous leap of her pulse, fluttering blue-veined from her thin white neck, and you became something bigger, a new version of yourself already stretching across your face. Shawna smiled, revealing the gap between her teeth. Sheepish, mawing.
When Shawna had gone, Jackson hooted his approval from the next cell over, teasing belligerent. You unraveled the fraying strings from your bedsheets, tied a miniature Snickers bar to the end, and shot it under Jackson’s door to shut him up.
You tried to paint something different, for Shawna. You found a photo of a rose, tucked into one of the philosophy textbooks you requested from the library. You mixed the colors perfectly, but the petals wouldn’t sit right. The rose was a blur of searing red, the angles all wrong, and you threw the whole thing away before Shawna could see. The next time she unlocked your cell to walk you down the long gray hall for a shower, it was like Shawna knew—she reached for the metal of your handcuffs and pressed her thumb to the inside of your wrist, testing. The officer on your other side breathed heavily through his nose, oblivious, as you shuddered. It had been so long since you’d felt anything other than gruff arms pulling you through cages, the cool ridges of a plastic fork, the boring pleasure of your own hand in the dark. It was electric, the thrill of Shawna’s touch.
Since then, you have perfected the exchange.
Notes, tucked beneath lunch trays. Moments, stolen between your cell and the recreation cage. Just last week, Shawna slipped a treasure through the slot in your cell door: a little black hairpin, the kind that peppered her slick bun.
Now, you dip the Popsicle stick into a smear of blue while you wait for her footsteps. Your canvas is arranged patiently at the edge of the door, corners aligned. This morning, Shawna will have an answer. Yes or no. After your conversation yesterday, it could go either way. You are good at ignoring doubt, at focusing instead on anticipation, which feels like a physical creature resting in your lap. A new symphony begins, quiet at first, before tightening and deepening—you linger in the rush of cello, thinking how things tend to accelerate, building on themselves, leading always to some spectacular crescendo.
*
You study the form while you paint. Offender Property Inventory. No matter Shawna’s answer, you will have to pack. Three red mesh bags lie at the foot of your cot—they will transfer your most essential belongings to the Walls Unit, where you’ll have another few hours with your earthly possessions before everything is taken away. You stuff them lazily full of the things you have hoarded these past seven years at Polunsky: the Funyuns and the hot sauce and the extra tubes of toothpaste. All meaningless now. You will leave it all to Froggy back on C-Pod—the only inmate ever to beat you in a game of chess.
You will leave your Theory here. All five notebooks. What happens to the Theory will depend on Shawna’s answer.
And still, there is the matter of the letter. There is the matter of the photograph.
You have vowed not to read it again. You have mostly memorized it anyway. But Shawna is late. So when you are certain your hands are dry and clean, you stagger to your feet, reach to the top shelf, and pull the envelope down.
Blue Harrison’s letter is short, concise. A single sheet of notebook paper. She has printed your address in slanting script: Ansel Packer, P.U., 12 Bldg, A-Pod, Death Row. A long sigh. You place the envelope gently on your pillow, before moving aside a stack of books to find the photograph, taped and hidden between the shelf and the wall.