The Weight of Stones by C.B. Forrest Page B

embarrassment. “I knew I should’ve stayed in bed today. My horoscope said something about all this.”
    It made her laugh just a little, but it was something. He tucked the note beneath the covers at his side. He was tired again, drifting. Jesus, what a mess of things I’ve made. McKelvey groaned as he adjusted his weight, a sliver of pain shooting through his torso. The painkillers were waning now. The real world was waiting for him. Run, Caroline…run.
    â€œI’m going to sit here for a little bit,” Hattie said. “If you don’t mind.”
    He mumbled something, then he was gone.

Eleven
    T he prisoner was seated on the hard bunk of his protective custody cell, eyes closed. He slowed his breathing, drawing a bead on a point of light at the centre of the blackness. This was something he had been doing since his first long stretch inside, back when he was eighteen and staring down a sentence of two years less a day. “A deuce less” is what the cons called it. It wasn’t much time, not when stacked against subsequent stints and now this, the threat of a virtual lifetime. But it had seemed like a lifetime to a kid back then. It was an older con named Gervais who had taught him all he’d ever need to know about making life work on the inside. It was all about pacing, not counting the days... Time is meaningless for you in here...time is for the regular citizens, the moms rushing home from work to pick up kids at daycare, the dads coaching little league. Sooner you forget about the clock on the wall, about the calendar on your wall, the pussy sitting at home all alone, the better off you’ll be…
    A voice broke his concentration. Visit up. Shackles and leg irons on the slow jangly shuffle to the visitor’s cubicles. It was his lawyer. Slick suit, slick smile. What he got paid to do, to look like. Called Duguay “buddy” until Duguay had told him not to call him that. But that was yesterday, and this was today. A few words, a little bit of Latin, and everything changed. The hemispheres flipped, revealing a bright new day. A smile and a nod of the head as acknowledgment of the continued sweetness of karma. The rat Leroux, it made Duguay smile to picture the motherfucker hanging by a bedsheet, his ugly face turned purple.
    Paperwork, appearances, signatures, and now Duguay stood on the street outside the courthouse, the air good on his face, and he looked around, half expecting it to come from out of nowhere as it always did, just something that hit you like the hand of God. Unseen, omnipotent. One of his own or a rival from the Quebec days, it hardly mattered. Get in line, take your pick. But there was nothing. Just the regular citizens in motion, trapped in their mini-vans and hum-drum, moving back and forth across the landscape of their lives.
    His buddy Danny there with the car, waiting. Good old Danny. Duguay jumped in and looked around, fully expecting to spot a surveillance vehicle. There was nothing. Not yet, anyway. Danny put a CD on and pulled out, slipping inside the stream of traffic.
    He said, “How was stir?”
    â€œRather do time back home,” Duguay said. “Least the screws speak the language.”
    Danny said, “Come on, let me buy you a special dinner. What do you want, a big fucking steak? Spaghetti? And I guess you gotta get laid. But you don’t need my help with that.”
    Duguay took the package of cigarettes from the console and lit one. He coughed at first, then sent a nearly perfect smoke ring floating towards the windshield. He watched it hover and glide then finally disappear as it met the glass. Like magic, how you could never be sure the smoke hadn’t just slipped right on through. One of many tricks gleaned in juvie hall. Fourteen years old and thrown to the wolves.
    â€œI want to see my dog,” Duguay said. “And find me a good poutine in this fucking city.”
    They settled on Greek,