Read Online Thief by Maureen Gibbon - Free Book Online

would have gone on staring at her, but she took her baton in hand and clumped and clicked out of the bathroom. I was left
     standing on my own in the cool green-tiled room, so I peed and took a while washing my hands so it wouldn’t seem as if I were
     following her. When I got out into the waiting room, I meant to listen to see what inmate name was called that would cause
     her to rise and walk to the guard’s station, but in the end I failed even to do that because I couldn’t keep the names straight
     as the intercom announced, “Visit for ——, visit for ——.” That’s the way the guards did it— they would call the name of the
     inmate or inmates who had visitors, not the visitors’ names. It protected the privacy of those in the waiting room and drew
     all attention to the men who were incarcerated. All I knew for certain was the young woman got called before the guards announced
     my “Visit for Breville,” and I watched her negotiate to have her drum major’s baton returned to her after she passed through
     the metal detector. What ever malady of ankle or foot she cited, requiring her to use a cane but still permitting her to wear
     high-heeled shoes, worked, and she tapped her way into the locked cage between the waiting room and the prison.
    Watching all of that unfold, as well as observing all the wives and girlfriends waiting to see what ever incarcerated male
     they’d come to see, did something to me that day. I thought,
You have become a joke, Suzanne, you have become like those women in supermarketmagazines who fall for convicts, who have so few prospects that they pick a prison suitor.
I felt so foolish I wondered if I should stand up and walk out of the huge wooden doors, more like doors to a church than
     a prison. But I did not get up and leave. That was another part of my foolishness. Still, I swore if I felt the same way at
     the end of the visit as I did at that moment, I would never come back to Stillwater state prison.
    I was still thinking that and doubting myself and my actions as I passed through the locking cage door and walked toward Breville
     and the taped square where we could embrace in front of the guards. Because we had hugged goodbye at the end of the last visit,
     it seemed we had to again repeat the gesture to greet each other today, and when I touched Breville, it felt utterly false
     to me, and I wondered why I was doing it. Breville’s shoulders and back felt odd, rigid and unknown, and why wouldn’t they?
     He was an absolute stranger to me. But I couldn’t stop myself from making the gesture— I didn’t know how not to. And in those
     seconds when we were embracing, when my arms were around Breville so woodenly and his were around me, he said into my hair,
     on the side of me that faced away from the guards, “You smell so good. Jesus Christ, so sweet.”
    And again I was disarmed.
    Even though the feeling of falseness and rigidity was still there, even though I did not feel any natural warmth for Breville,
     I was glad I hadn’t resisted the embrace, insisting only on a handshake. A refusal like that would have created an awkwardness
     that I didn’t want to put him or myself through.
    And oddly, within seconds of taking our places in facing chairs at the end of two rows there in the visiting room of Stillwater
     state prison, things began to feel more normal. Maybe because the moment in front of the guards was over, maybe because we
     were able to walk together that short distance, to the end of the rows of chairs— I don’t know. I just know that as I sat
     down, the roombegan to feel familiar to me, and it began to feel ordinary to be sitting across the aisle from Breville with the spider plant
     again touching down on my hair if I shifted too far to the left. What ever hesitation and misgiving I had felt in the waiting
     room, and what-ever uneasiness I had felt when I was touching Breville— those things had all passed. And I think they passed