Andy Wants a Wife

It was a beautiful day when John left his apartment that morning. The stores around the neighborhood were open already, and people smiled at him on his way towards his car parked in front of the coffee place around the corner. Customers were already sitting at the tables, having conversations or doing something on their computers. He walked in, said hi to Stephanie—the teenage girl working part-time—and bought a big cup of black coffee to go.

“Have a nice day,” she said, looking at him as though it was the first time she had ever seen him when in fact, John had been a long-time customer. He wondered—not for the first time—if he had become invisible to women’s eyes.

He took the first sip from his drink and savored it with gusto. Nothing like a cup of hot coffee to start his day. He said goodbye to Stephanie, walked out of the coffee place, crossed the street, and got into his car. It was hot and steamy inside, not a surprise, the sunshine had been hitting it for a couple of hours now. John rolled down the window and took a deep breath before turning the engine on. It was Saturday, and the clock said it was nine past nine in the morning when he drove away towards the state prison where his little brother waited for his weekly visit.

It was a beautiful day indeed and the temperature was cool enough to keep the windows down and let the wind play with his hair while driving at forty-five miles per hour on the road surrounded by trees for miles and miles on both sides. He smelled the trees—they smelled green and brown as they did when he was a kid. It was the smell of fresh-cut grass and wet dirt. The radio station was playing good music from the sixties, some of John’s favorite songs like ‘Venus’ by Shocking Blues or Peggy Lee’s ‘Fever,’ which was the song playing when he turned to the right at the end of Lebanon Road, as he did every Saturday morning. Hell, the only thing missing that morning was the birds flying around and singing, but he knew that if he stopped the car and walked into the woods, he would hear all of the singing birds flying among the trees around the state prison at the end of the road.

John was a man of routines; he was the type of man who organized every single minute of his life, from Monday through Sunday, yet he never made peace with this part of his week. The visits to his brother felt like a parenthesis in his well-structured life. He couldn’t believe he was about to waste a perfectly good Saturday morning in the minimum-security detention center, where his little brother had been locked-up for over a year. He should have been in bed, looking out the window, thinking about the meaning of life or something, resting from a hell of a week, or preparing to go to his favorite bookstore to sit in one of the leather chairs with his large cup of coffee next to him on the reading table. The book of the week—was Avery Corman’s ‘Oh, God,’which was a funny story so far—in his hands while waiting for the woman of his dreams to magically show up to save his life from the boredom, and the lack of purpose that had settled in it since his divorce five years ago.

John stopped the car before the wired gate and waited for a minute until he heard the rattling noise created by the electric motor moving the chains to open the gate. He entered the perimeter, drove into the wide parking lot, and parked his car six spaces from the access door. He stepped out and walked toward the metal door, hit the buzzer, and looked up at the recording camera inclined at a ninety-degree angle above him. From inside the first security galley, the officer on duty pressed a button, and John heard the hum that preceded the rattle of the door before opening. Once inside, John wished the first officer he saw a good day. Before going through the metal detector, John placed the keys of his grey Impala along with his wallet and wristwatch into a plastic container.

In the visiting room, the now-familiar faces gathered at the plastic tables around the men in the orange uniforms--entire families with toddlers hugging and telling their fathers the anecdotes of the week. The wives complained about the bills and how their coworkers were a bunch of insensitive assholes who complained about them every day when they got to work late because the fucking nanny arrived late. The naïve girlfriends tried to understand why the lawyers were taking so long to get their boyfriends out of prison given that they were paying a lot of money for this and that.

John walked straight to the officer sitting at a metal table who was searching the room  for suspicious activity from any of the visitors, and waited for the man in the sky-blue uniform to notice him. The officer gave him a bored look, and in return, John gave him his brother’s full name. The officer wrote down the name, took his radio, and communicated in a lazy voice with the officer in Andy’s dorm room. John walked away from the officer and sat in an old chair at a table next to a wall that had a painting of the Statue of Liberty with the view of Manhattan. While John waited for his brother, he looked at the pretty girls in the waiting room—it was mind-blowing how many of those idiots had beautiful girls coming to prison for them when he had a hard time getting even one in the real world to go on  a date.

Andy appeared after a five-minute wait, while John was fighting the urge to stare in complete amazement at an inmate’s wife. The blonde bombshell, who could easily be on the homepage of a porn site asking for a guy’s age and credit card information. She’d always noticed his gaze and corresponded to it with smiles, but John didn’t dare take the next step and introduce himself to her, in the visiting room or in the parking lot when they saw each other sometimes before leaving the prison. It was a shame because every time he saw her, his blood boiled with the idea of taking her to some place where he could kiss her, smell her, touch her, fuck her. And even though she seemed like the kind of woman who does whatever she wants without ever thinking about the consequences, his moral compass would not allow him to take advantage of a situation where a man couldn’t fight over his woman, which was the case with the inmate.

Andy walked through the usual door, wearing his orange uniform (John had already forgotten what Andy Looked like in normal clothes) with a well-shaved face in contrast to his long hair. He walked to his brother's table and sat heavily on the chair before him.

“How fucking hot Blondie looks today,” said Andy, staring at the blonde with eager eyes. She—like every Saturday—had arrived at the prison looking radiant, wearing tight, high-waisted jeans and a loose, white blouse that made her tits stand out on guard under the cotton fabric. She looked too damn good! The whole atmosphere in the room was loaded with her presence. The women around her were unsettled in their chairs, and the men, well, all of them wanted to tear their eyes out to avoid losing track of their conversations. Andy looked at her with playful eyes, and she looked back at him and smiled a mischievous smile. “Bro, that ass is worth any kind of trouble,” said Andy. “If I were in your place, I’d invite her to dinner and then back to my place to fuck her brains out.”

“If you were in my place,” said John, “neither of us would be missing an important part of their Saturday.”

“It’s a shame this is not an important part of your day. I mean, it is important for me, my favorite part of the week, my brother’s visits.”

“The only thing you like about my visits is that you get to see some girls from time to time.”

“I can’t deny the truth behind those words,” Andy said and grinned. “But come on, even you should be able to see the bright side of these visits.”

“Which is?”

“You don’t get to see a piece of ass like that everywhere,” Andy said and winked at Blondie.

“You really have been in here for too long. I bet even the female staff in this place look hot to you.”

“If you only knew,” said Andy and laughed. “I have a huge crush on the mail lady. She’s so fucking hot. She’s elegant and has this contemptuous expression all the time towards the other inmates, like she knows that she is better than all of us. I love her.”

John couldn’t help himself; he had to laugh at every stupid thing coming from Andy’s mouth.

“Look,” said Andy, encouraged by his brother’s laughter. “I’m not kidding. I think she’s like fifty or something, but bro, she’s in shape. She’s always looking pretty; her nails are always well-manicured. She is always wearing a little make up, not too much though, because that would mean that she gets all dressed up for us to see her. That would be a little pathetic, and let’s be honest, she’s not a pathetic woman--far from that.”

“It sounds like you have been stalking her a little.”

“I have noticed her, which is different.”

“Do you talk to her?”

“Every time I get the chance. She flirts with me.”

“It’s a shame you can’t do anything more than that.”

“Tell me about it.”

Across the room, the expression on Blondie’s face changed, she was no longer smiling at Andy. Her husband had arrived.

“So, what's up?” Andy said to his brother once Blondie’s attention drifted away.

John shrugged. “Not much, same old shit. What about you?”

“As I’ve told you many times already, there’s never anything new here. Every day is a bland and unbearable repetition of the previous one. The most exciting thing that can happen here is when two bitches fight in the yard for another one’s ass or junk.”

John grinned softly. “I wouldn't be surprised if one of these days you tell me that you were the reason for one of those fights.”

“Me either,” said Andy with a new grin.

Both fell silent and stopped smiling while around them, the babies cried, and the adults had tense conversations.

“Look,” Andy said. “This whole mail lady conversation, and Blondie over there holding hands with her lucky husband, just reminded me that I need to ask you a big favor.”

“Sure,” said John. “What do you need?”

Andy put his elbows on the table and moved toward his brother in a I-got-to-tell-you-a-secret kind of way. John did the same.

“The other day, I was in the yard with some of my pals and the best idea came to me out of nowhere,” Andy said in an almost inaudible whisper, arousing John’s curiosity.

“What’s that?”

“I am going to get married.”

Andy’s expression was radiant, like he had just hit a million-dollar prize in the jackpot.

“You're getting married?” John said. Andy nodded with an almost childish smile on his face. “You're getting married?”

“Yes.”

“Who is the lucky girl?” John said, stifling a laugh. “Or should I ask for the lucky boy?”

“The lucky girl… and I don’t know her yet.”

“You don’t know her yet?”

Andy shook his head.

John suppressed a laugh. “How do you expect to get married when you don’t even know your bride?”

“That’s where you come in,” said Andy with a glare in his eyes, “you’ll get her for me.”

“Excuse me?”

Andy winked.

“I think I’m not understanding you,” said John.

“What aren’t you understanding?”

“Well… everything. I’m going to get you a bride?”

“Yes, I need you to get me a girlfriend.”

John sat straight in his chair and stared at his little brother’s grin for ten seconds. “Putting aside the fact that you've gone completely insane, how am I supposed to do such a thing? Enlighten me.”

“I have no idea,” said Andy, “you're the one outside. I don't even care if she's pretty or ugly. She can even be a pro, and I wouldn't care a bit.” Andy stopped dead and held his brother’s gaze as though he was prey to an epiphany, a revelation. “A pro. That's it. It's perfect. You go to the street, pick one up, and make the proposal.”

“What the hell is wrong with you?!” John said. “Is the confinement eating your brains? Are you crazy?”

“I've never been more sane in my entire life,” Andy said, shrugging. “What drives me crazy is knowing that this prison allows spousal visits, and I can’t take advantage of that.” Andy paused to watch Blondie slidin her hair off of her forehead. She looked adorable doing that. “I need you to get me a woman, John. I'm this close to becoming a pillow-biter. Do you want that? Do you want me to go around this place sucking people’s dicks? Is that what you want? Because I swear to God I’m very close to doing it. You're my big brother; you're supposed to take care of me and support me.”

“Not when we talk about illegal stuff,” John whispered. “Do you realize what you’re asking me? Do you have any idea of how many laws we could break with that crazy idea?”

“There can't be that many,” Andy said.

“I am the only person you have outside of this place; the last thing you need is me getting locked up, too.”

“Selfish asshole,” said Andy, before standing up to leave the visiting room. He stood there for a second, and with a whiny voice that reminded John of a five-year-old Andy, he said, “You have no idea what it’s like to be here, locked up; you may think you know, but you don’t.”

“I’m sorry, Andy, but I can’t—”

“She doesn’t even need to be pretty,” said Andy in a pitiful way, “as long as she’s not expensive, I’m fine. I’m not asking you a lot.”

“What you're asking me is crazy.”

Andy frowned. “Whatever, bro. Have a good weekend,” he said and walked away.

Andy was in the second year of a five-year sentence for fraud involving credit cards. From the moment he began the scam, everything was perfect for about seven or eight months until one day a surveillance camera in a mall recorded him stealing five hundred dollars from an ATM with a cloned credit card. Before getting caught, things couldn’t have been any better. He bought a brand-new BMW, expensive clothes, and accessories for his girlfriend. He spent thousands of dollars on big parties and trips to Atlantic City, where he gambled and lost everything he carried in his pockets. He never thought of the American Dream as something one had to work their ass off to earn, something one needed to sweat and bleed for. In his version of the American Dream, you could get everything with minimum effort. You didn’t need to get up at five in the morning to start a ten-hour day full of painful and annoying work. Ideally, you just got up at ten in the morning for brunch (to have breakfast was a working-class activity) and then went back to bed again because there were no obligations of any kind. The only thing he regretted was getting caught with money saved in the bank. According to his vision of life, he should’ve spent every dollar while he had the chance, but he overrated himself and his intelligence.

John left the visitation room with a bad taste in his mouth. Nothing good would come from a meeting abruptly ended by one of his brother’s tantrums. Every time Andy got angry at John for positioning himself against one of his crazy ideas, Andy usually stayed in a bad mood for several days, if not weeks.

John walked the prison corridors expecting his little brother to behave like a total, spoiled brat for the next few days. Andy’s tantrums had stages since he was a kid; the first was victimization (the phrase “It’s Mom and Dad’s fault I’m like this.” was one of his greatest hits during this stage), in which he tried to guilt John into believing that he was a bad brother. And then he would give John the ice treatment.  In this stage, Andy would ignore him first and then act as if John were his enemy.

John sighed when he stepped out of the prison, perfectly sure that the whole thing would end up as usual, with him doing whatever Andy had in mind in the first place and regretting everything later due to something going awfully wrong. He got in his car and turned the engine on. He sat there, waiting for Blondie to come out; he loved to see her walk toward her car in the parking lot. If he were locked up, he would love to get visits every weekend from a woman like her. Hell, he would ask her to marry him, so he could enjoy that trophy-worthy body during spousal visits.  He wouldn't mind if she was sleeping with whatever man she wanted to outside in the real world, as long as she didn't stop going to see him every Saturday morning. Poor, fucking Andy.

***

The following two weekends, Andy rejected both of John's visits. The second weekend when John returned to his car, he heard a voice behind him say “Hey”. He turned. Blondie’s presence surprised him. She was closing her car door, a row behind John’s.

“Hello,” he said.

“Are you leaving already?” She said.

“Yes. My brother is upset with me and… well, you can imagine the rest.”

“What’d you do to him?”

“Well, the problem isn’t what I did, but what I don't want to do.”

She laughed. “I get that. My boyfriend also gets in a special mood when I refuse to do one of the many nonsense ideas he has.”

John smiled. “My brother wants me to get him something a little bit more difficult to get than worn panties under the table.”

Blondie took both her hands to cover her beautiful mouth, then she blushed, and finally laughed. John thought she had the most beautiful laugh he had heard in years.

“Oh, my God,” she said. “Did you see that? My God, I’m so embarrassed.”

“Well, if I were your boyfriend, I’d ask you the same thing too.”

“I bet you would,” she said.

John closed the car door and took three steps toward her. She smelled like what angels must smell like and everything about her exuded sensuality: her red lips, her long blonde hair, her hands with long fingers that ended in alluring red nails.

“Let me ask you,” Blondie said, “what's worse than taking your panties off in a room full of strangers?”

“Hiring a prostitute to pretend to be your wife.”

“What the fuck,” Blondie said and laughed. “I thought you’d tell me something like 'he wants me to bring him a cake with drugs in it' or something like that.”

“I wish he’d asked me that. I mean, I wouldn’t do that either, but is the type of shit one can consider normal.”

“Your brother is something special.”

“Oh, you have no idea.”

“He really wants you to hire a hooker to pretend to be his wife?”

“Yeah.”

She laughed again, and boy, that laughter was like music from heaven. “You gotta give him some credit though; the idea isn’t bad at all.”

“No, no. The idea is the worst ever.”

“Oh, come on. It’s not that bad.”

“I'd like to see you doing something like that.”

“I think it would be worth a try,” Blondie said. “If you think about it, the chances of being caught are very low.”

John sighed. Blondie wouldn’t understand how easily Andy’s ideas always went south and how other people had to pay the consequences later.

She said goodbye and walked toward the metal gate. John watched her go, dumbfounded by the obscene movement of her perfect ass.

***

John couldn’t believe what he was about to do. He parked his car on 40th Road, ready to search for a woman beautiful enough to make his brother smile when he met her. If only he hadn't stopped to talk to Blondie the morning of that damn Saturday, he wouldn't be about to commit a crime. It tormented him the way she smiled at him when she said it wasn't a bad idea at all to hire a hooker to pretend to be his brother’s wife. At first, he didn’t buy what she said—it was ridiculous to agree to something like that—but as the days went by, he didn’t consider the matter to be that ludicrous. After all, faking marriage papers shouldn't be that complicated. Maybe expensive, but not complicated.

The things he did for that idiot.

“This is insane,” he told himself after putting his hand on the door handle. “I am insane, not Andy, me.”

John got out of the car and crossed the street. He planned to approach a girl (she looked young enough to be considered a girl, not a woman) outside of a barbeque restaurant. He had already seen her stationed in the same place on three consecutive nights. He watched her closely on those nights. She had a bored, but arrogant look in her eyes, like she thought more of herself than everyone moving around her. She was pretty—without being spectacular—and had slender, long legs that seemed endless, like Julia Roberts’ on the poster of Pretty Woman. At first glance, the girl looked like a blonde and her bronze skin made her stand out from the rest of the women on the street. If John had stopped to think things through for a minute, he would’ve realized that the woman he had chosen was more suited to his taste than to Andy’s, especially since he wasn’t sure about his brother's taste.

Was he sweating? Damn it.

They established eye contact. The girl saw him coming, he saw her waiting. She smiled when he passed by the other women on the street. He knew that she knew that he had left his car to approach her.

John stopped in front of her. His armpits were wet and hot; his blushing face itched out of shame.

Up close, she looked even cuter.  The girl had beautiful hazel eyes—owners of an intense, smart look—and divine lips, fleshy and heart-shaped, with which she formed a suggestive, sensual smile full of intention. Having her so close, mere inches away, John realized that he wanted her for him, not for his stupid brother. She was a classic beauty like one of those John had read about in history books but had rarely seen in person. Not only were her features worthy of a sculpture, but her legs… wow, her legs. John stared at them, bemused, invaded by an unbearable urge to touch them, run his fingertips along them slowly, then kiss them, imprinting his tongue with the memory of their taste and texture.

“Hello, handsome,” said the girl to a hesitant John in a deep, femme fatale voice.

“Hi,” said a nervous John. She smiled. “Look, I really don't know what I'm doing here exactly. I think this is a very bad idea.”

John took the first step to go back to his car, but the girl was faster than his doubts and held him by the arm. “What’s your name?”

John swallowed and told her his name.

“Nice to meet you, John,” she said before giving him her delicate hand. “I’m Lucy.” John shook her hand. “What’d you say if we go up to my room, here around the corner, and we talk about what you want? Maybe, if we’re alone you can relax a little and have a good time.”

His common sense told John he should turn around and get the fuck out of there. He should have been on a different corner, looking for a forty-year-old woman, someone desperate for the money he was willing to pay for his brother’s crazy, fucked up ideas. The problem was that everything about Lucy clouded his judgment.

As the girl led him down the sidewalk without letting go of his hand, John’s head tried to figure out what had pushed him to follow her down the street under the neon lights of the billboards, suffocated by the saturated stench of smoke floating in the air as a living component of the city.

The young prostitute led him into an old apartment building; they walked down a dark, empty hallway toward the stairs. The elevator had a NO SERVICE sign on it. John climbed the stairs behind her, his mouth dry whilst his wide-opened eyes stared at her legs and the seductive way she moved her hips on the way up to the second floor. John couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this nervous and anxious. Probably back in middle school, when his pimple-covered face flushed before Jessica Adams, right after she did a split in the middle of the high school field during the cheerleaders’ practice. Her movements were so gracious and sensual that an erection pressed John’s shorts to make his embarrassment even worse.

They entered an apartment mostly devoid of furniture. He only counted a set of armchairs, a coffee table, and two bookshelves full of paperback books. The place was small and impersonal, like a hotel room along the interstate. Lucy turned on one light in the living room and went straight into the bedroom. The bed was large enough to host two couples fucking throughout the night without any problems. John stopped in the doorway and looked at the pictures on the bedroom walls with genuine curiosity while Lucy stood in front of the bed. She invited him to step in. He complied. Once they were face to face, she came closer to John, who smelled a subtle and delicious aroma on the girl's neck. Lucy put her red lips on John's chin and gave him a wet kiss, causing a chill that ran through his body and bristled his skin. Her lips slowly moved to his neck and under his ear. “Does this feel like what you had in mind?” She said softly while kissing John again on the neck. “You like this?” John was frozen, his eyes closed. He was about to explode inside his pants. Lucy moved her hands over John's chest, making a scale on the buttons of his shirt, unbuttoning them with an expert hand and then she stopped at the belt and loosened it. “It’s fifty dollars for a blowjob,” she said in John's ear as he began to caress her slender body with anxious hands. “If you want to fuck for an hour, it's a hundred.” She kissed-bit his lower lip. “And for the whole night, we can negotiate a little.” John's mouth dried out of excitement. He moistened his trembling lips with the tip of his tongue before passing them along the girl’s long, elegant neck. Lucy sighed and pushed him away. She looked him in the eyes for the second time that night and knelt before him without losing the connection. She smiled coquettishly, like someone who is about to get what they want. She put her hand on her client's pants and unzipped them.

Common sense caused John to regain control of his actions. “Stop,” he said. She ignored him, her hand was exploring the erection under his pants. “Please stop.” John stepped back and stumbled, falling to his ass on the carpeted floor. “I'm sorry.”

“What’s wrong?” She said. “You don’t like me?”

“That's precisely the problem,” said John, “I like you more than I could ever imagine. I can't have sex with you, because I want you to like me, and I know that would be impossible-”

“But I do like you.”

John grinned bitterly when he heard those words. He stood up awkwardly  and zipped his fly. He took his wallet from his pocket and asked Lucy how much he owed her.

“We didn't do anything,” Lucy said and shrugged in a way that made her look lovely. She seemed slightly disappointed, and John could’ve fallen in love with her right fucking there. He knew himself that well.

“Sorry,” John apologized again. “I’m having some sort of moral breakdown, and I know I won’t enjoy my time with you if I go through with this. I’ll keep thinking about how wrong all this is from every point of view.”

John handed her a one-hundred-dollar bill before leaving. Lucy sat on the carpet with a confused expression, as though this was the first time something like that had happened to her.

***

The brothers saw each other again a month later. It was on a Sunday morning, the day after Andy called John to check on him. The taste left by Lucy's mouth, or the smell from her neck remained on John’s palate. He couldn't stop thinking about the intensity of her eyes and how her smile disarmed him. He didn’t see her again, but the desire, the need to go back to 40th Road, didn’t abandon him. Fucking Andy. It was all his fault. That Sunday, John followed the inertia of his routine as if it were any given Saturday. The only changed thing that was different were the faces in the visiting room. At the table where Blondie always sat with her boyfriend, there was now a beautiful girl with wavy black hair, sharp honey-colored eyes under thick eyebrows. Her frown let everyone know that she was not having a good day. John tried to understand the language she used to talk to her man in orange, it sounded something like Spanish or maybe Portuguese.

Andy appeared through the usual door. His hair looked short—almost monkish—and a beard of several weeks with some gray hair adorned his face. His looks worried John.

“Dude, are you okay?” John asked his brother.

“I’m fine.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

John stayed silent, analyzing his brother's image for a minute. Andy looked like someone who’s in the midst of a crisis and doesn’t know how to turn things around to get  back to their normal course.

“I don't come to see you for a couple of weeks, and the world is over for you,” John said to break the ice.

“I'm not in the mood for your jokes,” said Andy.

“Can you tell me what’s going on?”

“Nothing's going on,” Andy said, his eyes lost behind John. “How you been?”

John shrugged before giving the less boring details of recent weeks, details that didn’t include his excursions through the Red District in search of a fake wife for his brother. He told Andy that everything at work was on wheels and, overall, he couldn’t complain about life.

“Andy, I don't like seeing you like that,” said John, convinced that something was happening to his brother. More than twenty minutes had passed, and he hadn’t commented on the Portuguese-speaking beauty and that was odd. “Tell me what's wrong with you, please.”

“Leave me alone.”

“Is it because I didn’t come to see you? You're still mad at me, right?”

“I didn't even remember you were alive,” said Andy. “In case you hadn't noticed, the world doesn't revolve around you.”

“Talk to me, then. Help me understand what’s the matter.”

Andy laughed sarcastically. “As if you really care.”

“Try me,” said John, stung.

“Do you really want to know?”

“I'm your brother, of course I do.”

Andy filled his lungs with air and said, “They released Richard last week.”

“Who the hell is Richard?”

Andy grinned bitterly. “My boyfriend.”

What new nonsense was that? Instead of correcting himself in prison, Andy was getting worse, a bad joker. “What do you mean with ‘my boyfriend’?” John said. “What do you want to tease me with this time?”

Andy shrugged again, without changing the sad expression on his face. John looked into his eyes with special attention. His brother was not kidding.

“What happened to the whole ‘I want to get married’ stuff?”

“I was messing with you.”

John slumped heavily in the chair. He was suddenly exhausted. An awkward silence settled between the two brothers. At the table behind John, the Brazilian girl—he could bet that was her nationality—gave a beautiful smile to her convicted boyfriend. Andy had his eyes lost in the void beyond John and the girl who spoke Portuguese (he knew some Spanish and what she spoke was no Spanish). John thought of his brother and his sudden coming out. He didn't care at all about his brother’s sexuality, and Andy didn't seem to care what John thought about it either.

“So, what happened with this guy?”

“Well, he told me he would come to visit me, but so far he hasn’t yet.”

“Do you have a phone number or address for this Richard?” John said. Andy gave him an interrogating look. “I mean, if you have his info, I can give him a phone call or something and ask what the hell is he waiting for to come see you.”

Andy smiled for the first time. “You don't want to know anything about getting me a wife, but you're more than willing to go out and look for my ex-convicted boyfriend. You're a fucking weirdo.”

“And sometimes you think I don't love you.”

“I’ve never said such a thing.”

“Andy, please. You’re always busting my balls about how mom and dad never loved you the way they loved me and I don’t know what else.”

“You know better than to take me seriously when I’m angry.”

John smiled. “Yeah, I know.”

“What’d you think about the Brazilian?” Andy said, pointing at the girl with the thick eyebrows. “Isn't she pretty?”

“Oh, she's beautiful,” said John, relieved by his brother’s sudden change into his usual self.

“Definitely,” said Andy, his eyes suddenly attracted by someone else. “Oh, but the one that just walked in is even prettier.”

John turned on his chair to take a good look at the newcomer. His mouth almost dropped to the floor when his eyes saw the skinny girl with long legs entering the visiting room. Red hair covered her once blond head and, for the life of him, she looked even prettier. John didn't think Lucy (if that was her real name) could look more beautiful than she did that night, but there she was, proving him wrong. He made eye contact with her. She had the most beautiful hazel eyes he had ever seen in his life. Heart-shaped lips drew a surprised O first and then a smile, the same smile that had disarmed him one night not long ago. She mouthed a silent “Hi” with those lips of hers that John’s skin would never forget.

“Do you know that girl?” Andy asked.

“Kind of,” John said without losing sight of Lucy. He was about to make a serious mistake. He knew himself that well.

THE END