Christine Zolendz & Angelisa Stone
Prologue
Twitter: That awkward moment when you wake up
in jail and you wonder what you did to get there. Then smile. #TripleX
A lone dimly lit light bulb sways gently from the jail cell’s
ceiling. It hurts to open my eyes toward
it, so I squint to try to ease the pain. A handful of loudly buzzing insects
fly wildly around the dull yellow globe and just the sight causes me to scratch
at my arms and neck madly. I loathe
bugs. And it's like Swarmageddon above my head right now.
Pulling myself up into a sitting position,
the throbbing behind my eyes turns sharp and shatters into millions of
razor-tipped tiny pieces of glass. I moan as I grab my head in pounding pain. The room spins, and I fall back with a
hard thud against the cold concrete wall.
I hear footsteps, heavy and impending,
walking along the rough cement of the hallway.
I peek through my fingers, but all I can see is the knotted hair of my
cellmate, my partner in crime.
The footsteps become louder, closer. Keys are jangling. Someone is whistling, and the screech of the
rusty cell door makes scorching bile burn the back of my throat. I swallow twice to keep it down.
"Stone.
Zolendz. Up-and-at-'em. Going before the judge," a deep voice
bellows. I hate the man instantly.
I believe I moan out some sort of
unintelligible sound, but I'm not sure. Who can be sure?
The dull bulb overhead flickers and makes a
sizzling sound. Damn, I'm in a place where even the bugs are killing themselves. "Come
on ladies, let's go," the voice yells.
It's closer now, and the body attached to it starts kicking the wooden
bench I'm sitting on. I think my head is
going to explode from the vibrations and violent crashes that echo through my
head. "What's the matter, not willing to offer up your goods this
morning?"
My head snaps up, "Excuse me?"
The man standing over me is older, in his
sixties with a long gray beard. His eyes
dance with laughter. "Well,
Ma'am. That's what you tried to bribe us
with last night when we put you in here.
Your goooooooods." He
kind of shimmies a little and gives a few humps into the air. I vomit a little
in my mouth.
"Oh my God. Seriously? Just don't...just don't pay any attention to anything I
said, okay?" I mumble my mortification.
"You mean to tell me, you'll be
cancelling our hot date tonight?" he laughs, snidely, mocking me. "Come on, Darlin' the judge is waiting
on you both. No harm done last night,
you both were quite intoxicated."
"Oh God, I think I'm going to be
sick." Slowly, I pull myself off
the bench, every bone in my body screaming for a few more hours of silently
sound sleep. And really, that stupid light bulb is annoying the Hell out of me;
someone needs to shoot it.
"Angelisa," I whisper and shake her
awake. "Come on. We have to go. A judge wants to see us."
"Blah...Ha. Ha. Very funny.
Lemme sleep," Angelisa
groans and swats her hand at me. It
falls to her side with a loud thwack against the metal rim of the bed.
"I can't. Clear your head and think about last
night. Think back. Go ahead," I urge. She doesn't. She remains motionless and
silent; all but a small, low snore can be heard. "You seriously need to
open your eyes right now, because we're in trouble," I hiss ominously.
Her head slowly turns toward me, eyes
blinking open. They dart around the room and widen; a bubble of laughter
escapes her lips. "We're in jail,
aren't we?"
I smile and join in with her laughter,
"We are indeed, waking up together in a jail cell."
"Damn it, I can't go to prison. You know
how horrible I look in stripes," she whispers as she climbs up to her
feet, grabbing onto my shoulder and using me for leverage.
"Quick," I look around the cell and
laugh, "anybody got a cell phone? I wanna take a cellfie."
And we try, we really do try not to fall back
down into a fit of giggles, but it's way too hard. We follow the guard down the hallway.
“Dude,
I could so be a violent criminal.” Angelisa mumbles. “Shouldn’t you cuff
me? Why doesn’t anyone ever want to
handcuff me, Chris?” she whines.
“Ummm,
she’s not violent. We swear. She’s
just…just…dumb.” I explain, nudging her.
“Seriously
though, how does he know I’m not packing an oozie in my girly stuff?”
“Ya know that is true. It’s kind of sexist that you don’t
think we could be hiding heat?”
“Ladies, the only thing you two are trying to hide…or
hide from is good old-fashioned middle age.
And quite frankly, neither one of you is doing a bang-bang up job of
it,” the son-of-a-slut says, pretending to shoot us.
“Is that what you
do now? Shoot blanks?” Angelisa quips, exploding in laughter that spirals out
of control until we’re both laughing like lunatics.
“Enough!” he shouts, trying to silence us before we enter
the courtroom.
The two of us are
still giggling like two immature
kids being brought in front of the principal. Matted hair, mascara-streaked
cheeks, and barefoot. I’m pretty sure I
even have an extra tattoo somewhere.
We're sworn in; big vocabulary is used. Case
numbers are brought forth, and I almost fall asleep. I’m just about to face plant into the table
with exhaustion when Judge Caroline Jacobson calls both of us up to the podium. "Ms. Zolendz. Ms. Stone. Approach the bench please." She has dark tired brown eyes, the kind that
are weighed down with darker brown bags beneath them. Her light blonde hair is pulled back into a
tight, painful looking bun. It's streaked with gray. I want to pull out all those
restraining pins. I want her to stop
feeling so tight and tense behind her bench.
I want her to feel free like me, like us.
Almost as if Angelisa’s reading my thoughts,
she mumbles, “Man, she needs to get laid…and needs to get those roots
done.” I can’t control the giggle that
escapes me. The judge eyes us sternly, and you can nearly hear our mouths snap
shut.
"As I hear, you both were found in the
fountains of the Bellagio last night.
Swimming. Naked," she
chirps.
"Yes, that's true," Angelisa
giggles, proudly next to me.
I nod my head in agreement, "Yeah, that
certainly sounds like us—well, the new
us, anyway."
The judge pinches her lips into a tight
pucker. Doesn't she realize that’s
exactly what makes those little wrinkles all around her mouth? She pulls
out an envelope marked Prisoner Property/Currency and unfastens the clasp. I
suck my lips between my teeth to stop myself from laughing, because this isn't
funny—at all. But if I remember correctly, the things in the envelope are.
She slips one dainty little hand in.
Angelisa and I lean forward to watch.
Two books of matches, fifty-six dollars, a
bent wedding ring, a fake moustache, a shoehorn, four glow sticks, two “Call
for a good time” prostitute cards, a tube of Ben-gay, and
an extra large rubbery dildo that flops
on its side when she places it on her desk.
"Do you want to explain to me why two
fully grown women, respected in their fields, would be caught in this
situation…with these items?"
Angelisa and I look and back and forth from
her to each other and back again. We
both shrug.
"Well, it all started with an apple
pie," I smile.
Angelisa nods next to me, "Yes,
definitely. That's probably where it all started, the apple pie fiasco."
The judge leans back and draws in a long
breath. She pulls her glasses off her fatigued
eyes and rubs them softly with her hands.
"An apple pie?"
"Yes.
A forgotten apple pie. I can tell
you every detail except for three or four days where I have no recollection.
Both of us can, it's what we do, tell stories."
The corner of the judge's lips curl up the
tiniest bit, "Come into my chambers ladies, this I have to hear."
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