his stuff now, and even though John knew there was nothing for her to find, he felt guilty, terrified she’d toss him back in prison. Guys back in the joint talked about parole officers, how they planted stuff on you if they didn’t like you, how they were especially hard on sex offenders, looking for any excuse to send you back inside.
She was holding a framed photo of his mother when he got back.
“That was taken last year,” he said, feeling a lump in his throat. Emily was standing in the visitor’s hall at the prison. John had his arm around his mother, the dirty white cinderblock wall behind them serving as a backdrop. It had been his birthday. Joyce had taken the photo because his mother had insisted.
“Nice,” Ms. Lam said. John always called her Ms. Lam, never Martha, because she scared him and he wanted to show her that he was capable of respect.
She opened up the back of the frame and checked it for—what? He didn’t know, but he felt himself sweating until she put the photo back down on the cardboard box that served as a bedside table.
Next, she went through the paperback books he had borrowed from the library, thumbing through the pages, commenting on the titles. “Tess of the d’Urbervilles?” she asked, pausing on the last book.
He shrugged. “I’ve never read it before.” He had been arrested the day after Ms. Rebuck, his English teacher, had announced in class that Tess would be their next major paper.
“Hm,” she said, giving the book a second, more careful inspection.
She finally replaced the book and put her hands on her hips, surveying the room. John didn’t have a chest of drawers so his clothes were folded and stacked in neat piles on top of the red cooler where he stored his food. He could tell she had already gone through the clothes because the shirt on top was folded differently, and he assumed she’d checked out the bananas, bread and jar of peanut butter in the cooler. There was one window in the room, but he had taped construction paper over it to block out the early morning sun. Ms. Lam had peeled back the edges to make sure there was no contraband hidden behind it. A bare lightbulb overhead illuminated the room and he noticed she had turned on the floor lamp beside the bed. The shade was askew. She had checked that as well.
She said, “Lift up your mattress, please,” then, as if they were old pals, she explained, “I just had my nails done.”
John took two steps into the tiny room and was at the mattress. He picked it up and leaned it against the wall so she could see the dirty box spring underneath. They both saw the back of his mattress at the same time. The bloodstains and some kind of gray circle of grime in the middle made her frown in disgust.
“That, too,” she said, pointing to the box spring resting flat on the floor.
He picked this up, and they both jumped back like a pair of frightened little girls when a cockroach scuttled across the dank brown carpet.
“Bleh,” she said. “No luck finding another room?”
He shook his head, dropping the box spring and mattress back into place. He had been fortunate to find this one. As in prison, even flophouses had standards and a lot of them wouldn’t take sex offenders, especially if the victims had been young. John was stuck in a house with six other men who were all registered with the state. One of them had a record for going after an eight-year-old girl. Another liked to rape old women.
“Well.” Ms. Lam smiled, cheerful again. “I guess the Pedo Arms will do for the time being.” She indicated the cardboard box by his bed. “Open this, please.”
“There’s nothing—” He gave up, knowing there was no use. He took the stack of books off the box and put them on the bed, then placed the photo of his mother on top of them, not wanting the frame to touch the dirty sheets.
He opened the box, showing her it was empty.
She went down her checklist. “Not hiding any Viagra in here, are you?” John shook his head. “Illegal drugs? Porn? Weapons of any kind?”
“No, ma’am,” he assured her.
“Still working at the Gorilla?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Anything changes, you’ll tell me about it first, right?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Well.” She had her hands tucked into her hips again. “All righty, then. Clean bill for today.”
“Thank you,”