Chapter 1
I was in love with a girl who was a dealer.

I was afraid somebody’d come and steal her.

We never used to fight, but the phone rang day and night.

I was in love with a girl who was a dealer.

(Sure as hell, she got popped by the big guys.)

- Tom Petty, “Girl on LSD”


Right up until the night of my arrest, I guess I thought everything was just fine -- that I was fine. But deep down I wasn’t happy, and I was far from being all right. It’s strange how calm it is in the eye of a storm with all the mayhem swirling and roaring around. You’re smack dab in the middle of it all thinking, “How nice. How serene and still.” No one watching would ever describe it that way. When you’re in the eye of the storm, though, it’s hard to look at things objectively.



“Kirby, you need to clean house. Get rid of everything. And call Jill.” It’s my one phone call from booking after I’ve been fingerprinted, photographed and processed.

“You want me to wake her up?”

“Yes! I’m on call and someone has to take the phones. Will you make sure Andy gets ready in time for the bus?”

“Yeah. Are you okay?”

Of course I’m not okay! Why can’t you take care of me for a change?

“I’m okay. I’ll be arraigned tomorrow, and then we’ll know more.”

I don’t expect him to say, “I love you.” He never has, but it would mean everything to me just now.

As I hang up, the desk sergeant calls my name. I can’t believe this is happening to me. I’m thirty-eight years old, and I’ve just been arrested for a felony: possession of meth with intent to distribute. I’m embarrassed. I want to tell the officers I’m different. I’m not like the other people in here. I’m educated, own a home and pay taxes. I’m a bail bondsman. I don’t belong here. I should get to go home.

A female guard takes me to a room and tells me to strip. This is the worst part for me. I’m completely humiliated. Standing naked in the cold room, ashamed of being on display in front of this woman, I’m sobbing. It’s the first time I’ve cried since the police pulled me over. Everything I’m facing, everything I’ve been through tonight, and this is what undoes me. With my stretch marks showing and thirty-eight-year-old breasts hanging unsupported, the guard tells me to turn around and bend over.

“Squat and cough,” she says. This series of routine procedures is more humiliating than the arrest. I’m stripped of all my dignity -– all my identity. As a bail bondsman I’m well known around the jail. I have status in the underworld, too. All kinds of people know me and I have power, but standing here naked, it’s just me and I hate myself. I’m ashamed of my nakedness and ashamed that I’m crying. Stripped of all facades, all the outer layers that protect me, I’m vulnerable and exposed. The officer looks at me as if I’m a slug -- something she’d rather not see, but here I am anyway.

When I finally get my blue jail uniform I stop crying, grateful to be covered again.

A guard leads me and two other women down a long hall. One of them is talking non-stop to the guard. She’s obviously been here before. The guard leads us through locked doors and down corridors glaring obscenely from the overhead fluorescents. I have no idea what to expect in county jail. I’ve worked for Jill, writing bail bonds,for three years, so I know my way around, but it’s different on this side. Walking down the concrete corridor feels like walking into the abyss.

“Do not show fear,” I tell myself. “And for fuck’s sake, don’t cry.” Jesus. I can’t cry. That would be even more humiliating than being strip-searched.

We stop at a door, and a guard, on the inside, buzzes us in. The lights are dim in the dormitory. It’s the middle of the night, but everyone is awake. There are two levels of double bunk beds. I have no idea how many women are here. I can feel their eyes sizing me up. I look past the sea of faces. I know some of them recognize me either from bonding them out or because I’ve sold meth to them.

The guard is male, and he’s telling the three of us the rules, though I barely hear his voice. We each get a plastic cup with a toothbrush, trial size bar of soap, plastic spoon, sweatshirt, blanket and a sheet. He assigns us a bunk and points me to mine.

“Jesus. This is even worse than I imagined,” I think looking down at the skeleton of metal that is my bed. I start to put my sheet on it, when a woman comes over and stops me.

“This is it,” I think. “I just got here and I already have to deal with a bull-dyke.”

“You need to get your mattress,” she says. “Hey!” She yells at the guard. “She didn’t get no mattress!”

“It’s okay,” I tell her. “I can get it.” But she’s already dragging a thin, worn mattress up the stairs. She smiles at me and I can see she’s only got one front tooth. Great. Now I’m probably in debt to her.

She shows me how to slip the mattress into the sheet the same way I’d slide a sandwich into a baggie, and before retreating to her bunk a few feet away tells me if I need anything just ask her. Despite the guard’s intermittent warnings to shut up and go to sleep, the hushed chatter is constant. I take off my oversized Keds sneakers. They’ve removed the laces: they don’t want anyone hanging herself in here, although I don’t know how it would be possible. There’s absolutely no privacy. Even the toilet is exposed with only a half wall on one side so the male guards can’t watch the women drop their pants and squat down on the cold plastic.

I fold the sweatshirt into a makeshift pillow and lie down. I’m still in shock from the arrest. I can’t get my mind around the fact that I’m actually in jail. Lying there with my face in my arms, all I can think about is my son. I wish I were at home. I wish I could crawl into bed with him until morning. It’s so cold here, and I feel so alone. How easy it would be to get lost in the system -- erased from the outside world, forgotten with no one to remember me and no home ever again. Home. The word has never sounded so sweet. My tears flow silently into my make-shift pillow, and I drift into sleep thinking, “My God. What have I done?”

High-pitched giggling wakes me up. There’s a woman a couple of bunks away cackling insanely. The other women are telling her to shut the fuck up, but she just keeps on in a way that makes my skin crawl.

“Shut the fuck up, Lisa ‘ya fucking bitch!”

“What the hell’s wrong with her?”

“Fuckin’ tweaker.”

All of this drama plays in the background as I fade in and out of sleep with no concept of time. Lisa’s laughing that crazy laugh and the women are still trying to get her to stop. In the morning she’s gone. I’ve slept through breakfast, and the others are back at their bunks talking loudly or pacing back and forth across the length of the dorm. I sit up and listen without looking at anyone. I found out a long time ago that listening provides me far more information than if I were to ask questions. I hear that the guards have taken the laughing girl to the psych ward early this morning. I discover that many of these women have been here for months awaiting either trial or transport to prison. Many of them are young but there are women here who look as if they’re in their 50s or 60s.

In jail there’s no makeup allowed. Nor are hairdryers, curling irons or tweezers. It’s easy to tell which ones are in here on drug charges. They’re skinny, with sucked-in, scarred faces, sores on their arms and rotting teeth. They twitch and jerk because of damage to their nervous systems and pace back and forth like animals in cages. Eighty percent of the population incarcerated is here for drug-related crimes.

With some it’s more difficult to guess why they’re here. They look normal. I overhear one of them talking about her impending deportation back to Czechoslovakia.

There’s a woman in the bunk next to me who looks like she’s in her sixties. She keeps mostly to herself reading a tattered Harlequin Romance -– the only type of book available other than the Bible and the Alcoholics Anonymous handbook.

Eventually, someone else asks my name.

“Kim,” I say.

“Wadja do?”

“Possession of meth with intent, possession of paraphernalia and possession of marijuana.”

“Cool. How much did they get?”

“Just two rocks, my personal stash, my pipe and a little hash. I think they were disappointed they didn’t get more.”

A guard yells my name and takes me down to booking. Jill’s there on the other side of the glass waiting for me. I pick up the phone so we can talk.

“What happened?” she asks.

“I got pulled over right after I got gas. I was on my way to collect money from that guy. You know the one whose girlfriend skipped out on her bond? They pulled me over and said they saw something on the floor under my feet. They wouldn’t tell me what it was, but they dragged me out, brought in the dogs and searched the whole car.”

I don’t tell her about the drugs they found. Or the $1250. Or my ledger. Or my scale. Or the list of undercover cops and paid informants they found in a pocket of my bail bond bag. She doesn’t ask, so I don’t tell her.

“You’re going to be arraigned at 10:00 this morning. I called your parents and Larry and they’ll be there in court. I assume you want Larry, right? That’s who you used for Kilo and Kirby.”

“Yeah, thanks.” Larry always said if anything ever happened he’d be my attorney. He wouldn’t even take a retainer. He just said we would figure it out later.

“Good. I’ll post your bond as soon as they set it. Are you okay?”

“I’m okay. The cops were assholes last night, and it’s pretty weird in here, but I’m okay.”

“Kim, you have to be straight with me. Right now. Are you guilty? I need to know before I post bail.”

“No! I don’t know what they think they found on the floor. They wouldn’t show me. But I swear to God, there was nothing there.”

She thinks the whole reason for my arrest is because of something they saw in the car, but she’s owned the bail bond business for eight years. She has to sense that something doesn’t add up, but she doesn’t want to know, and I don’t want to shatter her illusion of me as someone who’s way too smart to be involved with meth. She’s also the only shot I have at getting out of jail. I know my parents would never bail me out. Just like I know that Kirby isn’t even thinking of how he could post bail even though I’ve bonded him out twice: once for possession of marijuana and once for failure to pay child support. All I know is that my son’s birthday is in a few days, and Jill is my only hope for being home with him. Right now, he’s all that matters to me.

When I get back to my bunk, a couple of the women come over to talk to me.

“Was it a bondsman? Are you getting out?”

“It was my boss, and yes, as soon as we find out what my bail is, she’ll get me out of here.”

“Lucky. What do you do?”

“I’m a bail bondsman.”

“What! Are you serious? Which company?” It’s a badge of honor for people here: which bond company they use, who knows which bondsman’s name, which company is most lenient and which ones will hunt you down mercilessly.

I tell them and word spreads quickly. Soon, they’re asking me all kinds of questions about my job. Everyone has a story about their bail or a friend’s or that of someone in their family. I answer some of their questions, then lie down and drift off again. I’m coming down from meth. I haven’t smoked in twelve hours. This is the longest break I’ve had from it in over five years, and I’m crashing. I barely stay awake through my arraignment and when I get back to the dorm, Morpheus seduces me.

Just before lunch a guard calls “Commissary! Line up! Bottom tier first!” The place buzzes with excitement. Two women come back with huge cardboard boxes filled with soda, noodles, packaged cookies, paper, shampoo and even underwear. Peanut butter seems to be a real coup. Another inmate walks back with one pre-stamped envelope, three small sheets of blank paper and a pen. It’s the same kind of pen I had to use in booking -- very small and rubbery and very hard to write with.

“Where did you get all that?” I ask the woman in the bunk across from mine. She eyes me suspiciously and shoves her loot into the plastic bin. Opening a tepid Diet Coke, she says, “Weekly commissary. You can order stuff off the list if someone puts money on your books.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“All kinds of shit. Here.” She hands me a sheet of paper with all the available items. On the front there’s a list of food: crackers, cookies and all kinds of snacks. The back is divided into three sections. One is for toiletries: everyday items like shampoo, soap, toothpaste, toothbrushes, combs and tampons. The next section is clothing: nightshirts, underwear, bras, socks, shoes, pants, shirts and sweatshirts. The last section is for miscellaneous items like writing paper and pre-stamped envelopes. There are prices and check boxes next to each item.

I turn to the older woman who’s reading and ask her about the list and why some people have so much while others have next to nothing. She puts down her book and sits up on her bunk. “If you got someone to put money on your books, you can order stuff once a week. If you don’t got no one, the county keeps you in soap and that crappy toothpaste you got there.” She points to the trial size toothpaste in my plastic cup. “About once a month they’ll give you a little paper and envelope so you can write someone. If you got someone to write to.”

“What’s the deal with the peanut butter?”

“You new here, aincha? Well, you spend some time here, you find out how shitty the food is. Even the peanut butter sandwiches are shit. They use that government peanut butter and you can’t hardly chew it. Fuckin’ food. You wait. You’ll find out quick.” She looks me up and down. “You look like you got people.”

“Do you have to buy clothes, too? Shampoo? Tampons? What if you can’t?”

“Other than what they give you last night, everything else you gotta buy. Or do without. You can’t afford panties, you got but one pair. If you bleed in ‘em you gotta just wash ‘em out and hang ‘em to dry. Laundry’s only once a week. If you can’t buy tampons they’ll give you these huge fuckin’ pads. You gotta ask the guard every time you need a new one. So you watch out. Make sure nobody don’t steal your shoes, or you gotta wait until next commissary day--if you got money on your books.”

“Thank you. I have no idea how this place works.”

“What are you doin’ here anyway?”

“Felony possession.”

“Of what?”

“Meth.”

“You? I never would have guessed that.”

“What did you think?”

“Well, I kinda was thinking you was a narc. You know, put here to spy on us. They do it all the time.”

Great. This is just what I need. In my head I’m picturing a midnight mob stealing my shoes, shanking me and writing ‘Narc’ on my forehead with one of those wobbly little pens. “No,” I say. “I mean, I’m sure that’s what everyone says, but I’m not a narc.”

“Why’d you get arrested for meth?”

What do you mean why did I get arrested for meth, I think. “What do you mean?” I say.

“You use?”

“Yeah.”

She’s squinting at me suspiciously. There seems to be a lot of suspicion in here. Probably because everyone here is a criminal.

“How’d you keep all your teeth?”

“I brush a lot.”

Meth mouth is rampant among users. It’s normal for people to be missing teeth. Any teeth left are usually gray and black around the gums. It happens when people are on a steady diet of chemicals, have poor hygiene and don’t drink enough liquids. Most of the people I know have meth mouth. From day one, I knew I didn’t want to end up that way, so I brush multiple times a day, use fluoride rinse and drink liquids constantly.

“Do you mind if I ask why you’re in here?” I feel like I may be starting to get on her nerves, but I ask anyway.

“Third time D.U.I. I’ll get prison this time ‘cause I don’t got no family. No money neither.” Her hair color has grown out. From the scalp about four inches down is pure gray. The rest is brownish red.

“How long have you been here?”

“Five months. Still waiting on the courts.” She lies back again with her book. Clearly, that’s enough talk for now.

My bail has been set at $75,000. Jill posts the bond, and my parents drive me home. We speak very little about the arrest, but my father has brought me red licorice. Mom and Dad don’t want to believe I’m a drug dealer any more than Jill does. The licorice is my dad saying, “Aw, Kimbo. Everything will be okay as long as we don’t speak about what all of this implies. Have some licorice, honey.” It’s his way of saying they still love me. I know they must be humiliated and disappointed in me, but in my family, we ignore the elephant in the middle of the room as much as possible. Things are more pleasant when we don’t acknowledge ugliness.

I’m home again and alone. Kirby is at work and Andy is at developmental therapy. They won’t be home for another hour or two. The police have taken everything: my money, my drugs, my bail bond bag and my keys. I break into my own house with my driver’s license. That and my two cell phones are the only things the deputies in booking gave back to me. I don’t even have cigarettes. The police left my car on the side of the road where they pulled me over, so I can’t get downtown to where my office is: where all my drugs are. I’ve been off meth for almost 24 hours so I need to make some phone calls.

“Johnny. Can you come over? Do you still have anything left from what I gave you yesterday?”

“Shit! I saw your picture on the Internet.” The damn Ada County Web site. Whenever the police arrest someone, their mug shot is immediately posted on the site along with the charges. Everyone I know is constantly monitoring the site. It’s a way to keep track of people.

“What happened? You okay?”

“I’m okay, but I need to get high and I don’t have anything. They took it all. Are you still holding?”

“I only have my personal, but I’ll help you out.” This means he has the best of what I sold him yesterday.

“Will you come over? I don’t have my car.”

“Yeah, I can be there in about an hour.”

“I need you to come right now. Kirby and Andy will be home by then, and I don’t want Kirby to know I have to get high. I don’t want to deal with it right now.”

He comes right away. Of course he comes right away. He’s almost out. He needs to re-up and I’m his source, so he wants to make a good impression. He probably thinks I’ll give him a break in price for doing this good deed but he’s wrong. I don’t tell him that, of course. In the first place, he still owes me $2500. In the second place, I need to get high RIGHT NOW.

He brings me a pipe and loads it. He lets me take the first hit; it’s protocol. I’m the “man.” It’s a respect thing. He puts half a gram or more in the bowl and I smoke and smoke until it’s almost gone, then I hand him the pipe. The smoke makes its way to the center of my soul. I feel serene and much more relaxed. I feel normal again. I feel nourished. I lean back against the couch and tell him the whole story.

“What about Mario? Have you told him yet? Are you still going to work?”

“I’ll call him tonight. I’ll have to see what he says. I don’t know if he’s gonna freak out or what.”

“Well, I’m out and I have people blowing up my phone. Can you at least get something?”

“Christ, Johnny! I just got out of jail. I’ll do what I can when I can, okay? It would probably help if you had money for me. They took everything last night. All my money. And I’m not getting it back. I collected from Mitt and one of my other guys too and now I have to eat the loss myself.”

“I don’t have it all. I got $1500.”

I take the money he owes me and smoke the rest of the meth he has with him. Then I dismiss him with the warning “Do NOT call me. I’ll call you when I know something.”

I have to call Mario, but I’ll do it later. Right now I want to take a shower before my boys come home. God, I feel so good right now--like I’m back in my own skin. The horror of last night begins to fade away. I have twenty-three messages on my phone--all since last night. I don’t want to deal with everyone right now, and I’m sure as hell not going to talk on my phone. I’ll use the other one when I’m ready to call people. It’s the phone Jill gave me to use when I’m on call writing bail bonds. It’s in her name and for some reason this makes me feel okay about using it for my business.

Kirby comes home as I’m getting out of the shower. I want him to wrap his arms around me and take care of me. I want him to tell me everything will be okay, but he doesn’t. Of course he doesn’t. Instead he asks about the hash: a present I got for him. He stopped doing meth two years ago, but he smokes pot daily, so the hash was a treat. My heart sinks. I don’t know why I still feel disappointed. I should know by now that he doesn’t love me, but every single day I hope against hope that he will. We’ve lived together for two and a half years, and every day, I still hope.

“I had the hash with me, and they took everything.”

“Bummer. Can you get any more from Kilo?”

“I’ll try,” I say. You fucker, is what I think. I don’t want to talk to him anymore right now. He’s ruining my high.

Andy comes home. I can’t wait to hold him and hug him. He doesn’t know what’s going on. At fifteen, all he knows is that Mom wasn’t here this morning to get him up for school. Again. He knows I’m gone most nights and usually get home just in time to help him get ready. He doesn’t understand or have any interest in where I was last night -- only that I’m home now. That’s one blessing about him having Down Syndrome. He has all of the good qualities of being human and none of the bad. He’s without malice or hate. He would never hurt someone’s feelings or steal or be violent. It’s not in him to be dishonest other than occasionally to tell me he’s brushed his teeth when he hasn’t. Andy is the best human I’ve ever known. With all the drugs I do, all the drugs I sell and everything that goes with the life, the only guilt I ever feel is because I don’t spend time with him the way I want to or should.

“Hey, bug!” I wrap my arms around him before he even takes his coat off.

“Mom!” I kiss his cheeks and nose and the top of his head. He kisses me back and hugs me.

“I missed you, bunny. I’m sorry I wasn’t here this morning. Did you have a good day at school and program?”

“Oh. Yeah.”

“What did you have for lunch?”

“Doh know. I’nna watch ‘Star Wars’?”

“Sure, honey. I’ll make you dinner. I love you, bug.” I watch him walk to his room. My heart aches. My God. What have I done?