women in prison flick
Prison, Adrian hated to admit even to herself, was comforting, in a way. Structured. Regulated. There were no questions of what was to be done; it had all been done already, and now there was nothing left to do but wait. In minimum-security, it was even moderately comfortable, as well, if not exactly overburdened with privacy. But she could adapt. She'd always been good at that.
There were nuisances, like there always were: the bad-tempered old lady who stood guard at the cafeteria, who drove one unfortunate new inmate, who had a bit of a weight problem, to the point of tears haranguing her about her choices at dinner; Adrian's cellmate -- April something -- a simpering little ninny with lip gloss and nail polish between her ears, who whined constantly to anyone who would listen that she'd never done anything and it wasn't fair, when she wasn't gone on her frankly inexplicable number of conjugal visits. Adrian bore with them patiently and quietly, went where she was told, did as she was asked. She limited herself as much as she could when it came to calling the number Ms. von Karma had left her, but when she did the young woman's cool, imperious, lightly-accented voice was always a rather similar comfort to the one that prison was. She met with the counselor every week, and the counselor told her at last that they were making real progress, might even reach a turnaround even in her short six-month sentence. She didn't beg to be told how she could do better, which she supposed was proof.
New resolve was one thing, but actual change was always slow.
Her cellmate's sentence ended perhaps a month after Adrian arrived, and she was moved to another of the glass-fronted dormitory rooms, her stack of spare uniforms and personal effects held before her in her arms as she followed the guard with head down. She never made much eye contact; she imagined the other women thought she was shy, if they hadn't heard otherwise from one source or another. The woman sitting on the lower bunk in the new cell, reading the newspaper, was tall, slim, and very pretty, with long brown hair that brushed the mattress at the ends. There was a red scarf tucked into the open top buttons of her shift. She looked up when Adrian entered, and smiled.
"Hello," she said, and set the paper aside; the guard, apparently satisfied, moved on behind Adrian, and she came another step into the cell, not really certain where to look. "You can have your pick; I've been on the bottom so far, but I don't mind changing."
It took an embarrassingly long moment for that sentence to make sense to Adrian, and then she cleared her throat and went to set her bundle down on a chair. "The top bunk will be fine, thank you. I don't mean to impose on you."
"...Ms. Andrews, isn't it?" Worse yet -- she actually jumped at that, whipping back to stare at the woman in shock and more than a little accusation. She only smiled again, with a touch of apology, and tapped the newspaper. "I hope you don't mind, but I was following the trial very closely for a while. I couldn't help but have my curiosity piqued when it drew back Miles Edgeworth."
Adrian pushed up her glasses, hoping to recover herself as nonchalantly as possible. "You know Mr. Edgeworth?"
The woman shrugged. "He used to work for me."
...As clichéd as it was, she was sure she couldn't have heard that right. "...I beg your pardon?"
That won her a smile, and the woman stood, brushing her hair aside, to extend her hand. "Oh, I'm sorry, I haven't introduced myself. My name is Lana Skye. I actually used to be Chief Prosecutor for the district; I suppose I might be again someday, although it doesn't seem all that likely just now." She waited patiently until Adrian gathered the wits to shake her hand.
"Well. I'm... honored. ...And you know who I am, apparently."
"Apparently." She hoped she hadn't lingered too long when Lana finally stepped back. "Celebrity news sometimes reaches the law enforcement world, but usually not the other way around."
"Probably not as it should be," Adrian agreed, with a bit of a smirk. After a moment's thought, though, she frowned. "But I think I might remember about the scandal, actually -- it made the national news, didn't it? The Chief of Police indicted for murder, and blackmail... ah." Lana was nodding, smiling ruefully, following her line of thought.
"That's the one, I'm afraid."
"But you seem so -- " Adrian blurted, and then caught herself, faltering back. "...I'm sorry. I'm prying, and I shouldn't."
"Not at all. What were you going to say?" Lana tilted her head on one side, her hair tumbling. "I seem so...?"
Adrian fumbled briefly, before being able to look up with a tiny, helpless smile of her own. "Calm," she said in a small voice. And Lana smiled more broadly than ever.
"Why shouldn't I be?" she asked, almost gently. "It's over now. Everyone who deserved justice has been brought to it; everyone I wanted to protect -- " this with a fond glance at a framed picture next to the lower bunk, which despite this troubling distance appeared to be of a younger Lana and a teenaged girl, laughing -- " -- has been taken care of." Her knowing smile was somehow not as bad as Adrian had been led to believe such things should be. "Don't you feel the same way?"
She thought of lying in bed with Juan, some night nameless months before his death, the sheet cool over her hip and turned back and the enormous bedroom seeming to breathe around them; some night when maybe he'd even thought she was asleep, when her glasses were on the nightstand on the other side of him and she stared blind into the darkness where somewhere far off, a clock ticked. Remembered how he'd spoken, staring at the ceiling behind her, his voice scarcely louder than the tick, and no stronger than the darkness. There was no note, Adrian, he'd said, so soft in the smallest hours. There was never any note. They made it all up from the start. You knew Celeste; even at the end, she wouldn't have done anything to hurt either of us that way. He had sighed. She'd felt cold all over, felt goosebumps walking up her bare arm to her collarbones, but she hadn't dared move to pull up the sheet. I still don't know what I would have done differently, but I am sorry about what happened to Celeste. I really am. She didn't deserve it.
He'd said nothing else after that, maybe even gone to sleep; but she'd lain awake until grey light had touched the windows, shaking like a wound-up toy with a spring of grief and rage turned too tight and unable to escape. Stopping herself from moving, from letting him know she'd heard; stopping herself, too, from flinging herself over, digging her hands into his shoulders or his throat, screaming, Liar! Liar! God damn you, where did you hide it? Because there had to be a note, she knew there had to be, why else his secrecy with her and the distance that always remained, and if there wasn't what was the point, what had she done all this for, why else had she come to his bed a virgin and only found any pleasure in any act of this ugly farce by closing her eyes and thinking of Celeste's dark lipstick on her laughing mouth, her gleaming smile, standing out in the studio parking lot with the sun caught in her hair --
But he had known all along; that was the thing, that was the bone that stuck in her throat. He had always known why she was there. And he had accepted her anyway, taken her anyway, because she was Matt's, Matt's agent, Matt Engarde's god damned property, and that was the only thing either of them had ever cared about. Juan, the second of her two monsters, maybe even the worse because he had always fancied himself the hero fighting the dragon. And then he'd had the nerve to tell her he was sorry.
In the hotel room, shaking, she had come to his body, and as she finally felt the resistance and yield of flesh as she struck the knife into it she had thought it with sudden savage intensity: Are you sorry now? I don't think you were really sorry then, not really, but are you sorry now?
At which point she had nearly ruined the whole thing by vomiting on the floor between his knees. Which also wasn't without a certain comic circularity, she thought; and then she had taken the button as fast as she could and gone, before she could finish that thought and really make herself sick.
She thought of her life threatened, and then saved. She thought of Matt in jail for the rest of his life, if they hadn't gone looking for a way to escalate his crime of solicitation to commit murder to a death penalty offense; she had honestly never bothered to check, or even to wonder. His life was over, either way. Most of all she thought of Celeste: that image of her in the parking lot she held in her mind, going to her car after their lunch meeting, her engagement ring on her finger, looking more beautiful, more happy, more alive than anyone in the world. She thought: Are you sorry now?
"Yes," she said, at last -- although really it had taken all of this no more than a few seconds to cross her mind. "I suppose so."
Lana smiled -- she smiled so much, for someone here, and it was hard to argue, she looked so radiant when she did -- and touched her hand. "Well, I think I understand a little, at least," she said quietly. "And if you need someone to talk to in all of this, I'm -- "
Beautiful, Adrian thought, and was instantly surprised at herself.
" -- always here."
It was funny, wasn't it, how sometimes even a short sentence could seem not quite long enough.