out. And it was squalid and crowded and inhuman. It smelled of desperation and lost hope, of no future. Most of those surrounding her wouldn't make it. One by one they would go back. It was a fact of the life they had chosen. Few went straight, few made it out alive. And for Cassie, who promised herself she would be one of the few, the monthly immersion into this world always left her profoundly depressed.
By ten o'clock on Tuesday morning she had already been through the check-in line and was nearing the front of the pee line. In her hand she held the plastic cup she would have to squat over and fill while an office trainee, dubbed the wizard because of the nature of her monitoring duty, watched to make sure it was her own urine going into the container.
While she waited Cassie didn't look at anybody and didn't talk to anybody. When the line moved and she was jostled she just moved with the flow. She thought about her time in High Desert, about how she could just shut herself down when she needed to and go on autopilot, ride that spaceship back to earth. It was the only way to get through that place. And this one, too.
Cassie squeezed into the cubicle that her parole agent, Thelma Kibble, called an office. She was breathing easy now. She was near the end. Kibble was the last stop on the journey.
"There she is…," Kibble said. "Howzit going there, Cassie Black?"
"Fine, Thelma. How about you?"
Kibble was an obese black woman whose age Cassie had never tried to guess. There was always a pleasant expression on her wide face and Cassie truly liked her despite the circumstances of their relationship. Kibble wasn't easy but she was fair. Cassie knew she was lucky that her transfer from Nevada had been assigned to Kibble.
"Can't complain," Kibble said. "Can't complain at all."
Cassie sat in the chair next to the desk, which was stacked on all sides with case files, some of them two inches thick. On the left side of the desk was a vertical file labeled RTC which always drew Cassie's attention. She knew RTC meant return to custody and the files located there belonged to the losers, the ones going back. It seemed the vertical file was always full and seeing it was as much a deterrent to Cassie as anything else about the parole process.
Kibble had Cassie's file open in front of her and was filling in the monthly report. This was their ritual; a brief face-to-face visit and Kibble would go down the checklist of questions.
"What's up with the hair?" Kibble asked without looking up from the paperwork.
"Just felt like a change. I wanted it short."
"Change? What are you, so bored you gotta make changes all'a sudden?"
"No, I just…"
She finished by hiking her shoulders, hoping the moment would pass. She should have realized that using the word change would raise a flag with a parole agent.
Kibble turned her wrist slightly and checked her watch. It was time to go on.
"Your pee going to be a problem?"
"Nope."
"Good. Anything you want to talk about?"
"No, not really."
"How's the job going?"
"It's a job. It's going the way jobs go, I guess."
Kibble raised her eyebrows and Cassie wished she had just stuck to a one-word answer. Now she had raised another flag.
"You drive them fancy damn cars all the time," Kibble said. "Most people that come in here are washin' cars like that. And they ain't complaining."
"I'm not complaining."
"Then what?"
"Then nothing. Yes, I drive fancy cars. But I don't own them. I sell them. There's a difference."
Kibble looked up from the file and studied Cassie for a moment. All around them the cacophony of voices from the rows of cubicles filled the air.
"A'right, what's troubling you, girl? I don't have time for bullshit. I got my hard cases and my soft cases and I'll be damned if I'm gonna have to move you to HC. I don't have time for that."
She slapped one of the stacks of thick files to make her point.
"You won't want that, neither," she said.
Cassie knew HC meant High Control. She was on minimum supervision now. A move to HC would mean increased visits to the parole office, daily phone checks and more home visits from Kibble. Parole would simply become an extension of her cell and she knew she couldn't handle that. She quickly held her hands up in a calming gesture.