Rachel Ramirez was not only good looking, she was smart as a whip. She knew every answer in Hygiene class before Mrs. Carlsen even asked it. She never raised her hand, though. There wasn't anybody in our class she was even halfway interested in impressing.
Mrs. Carlsen had assigned the two of us to do a little project. But Rachel never wanted to work on it. I went over to her one evening in the day room.
"It's due the day after tomorrow," I reminded her.
"What's she going to do? Throw us in jail?"
"Come on. Why don't we just work on it?"
"I'll tell you what. You want to work on it so much, how about you do something for me first?"
"What's that?"
"How about you rip my clothes off, throw me down across this table, and fuck me like you mean it. I mean, if it's not too much trouble."
"Rachel!"
"You want to, don't you?"
"Right here in the day room? In front of everybody?"
"It's as good a place as any."
"What about the matrons?"
"They'll just have to wait their turn."
"What about your boyfriend?"
"He's done time. He knows how it is."
"Come on, Rachel."
She looked at me and yawned. "OK, Lover Boy. You wore me down. You talked me into it. Let's work on the dumb project. Let's shoot for the goddamn Nobel prize. Work now, fuck later. That's my motto."
---
The weather had warmed up quite a bit, and they finally started sending us out to pick up trash and clear brush along the county roads and open spaces. Everybody was happy to be out in the sunshine and fresh air. I even caught old Bulldog cracking a smile.
One evening, Dolores and I were lying on the top bunk. The sky outside our little window was clear and blue. We'd scooted down to put our feet up on the railing.
"You know what I saw today?" she asked. "It was on a bush. At first I thought it was a piece of tissue that had gotten caught there. But it was thicker, like maybe a napkin had gotten wet and then dried again. But it was kind of cobwebby, too, and when you looked closer you could see that it was attached to the branches, not just stuck there. It kind of looked like somebody had wrapped a napkin around their thumb to make a mummy, then tied it to the bush. But it was torn open, like the mummy had slit his way out."
"A cocoon!"
"It must have been, don't you think? And right after, I saw a butterfly! A yellow one, with a black border around its wings. It could have been the very one that hatched from that cocoon. Not hatched, but what-do-you-call-it-ed."
"That's pretty cool. I never saw a cocoon before."
"Neither did I, until this one."
---
One of the perks that Rachel had managed to secure for herself was to be in charge of the weekly inventory of the storeroom. Nobody really knew what went on in there except for Rachel and her lieutenants. But by the time that Tuesday rolled around, word had gotten out that I was to be her new assistant.
The girls weren't so sure how they felt about this. It upset the equilibrium. They didn't mind Rachel flirting with me as long as everybody knew I really belonged with Dolores. But now Rachel and I would be alone together in the storage room, beyond public scrutiny, for an hour and a half every Tuesday afternoon.
I too figured she must have something up her sleeve. But once we were in the storage room she was all business. There was a lot to be inventoried. The place was considerably more extensive than I had thought. There was all kinds of county stuff in there, not just for the Women's Facility. Rachel had me counting traffic cones, toner cartridges.
One of the things I came across was a whole stack of blankets, new ones, enough that none of us would have had to double up. It made me pretty angry. "Ah, little grasshopper," said Rachel, "who are we to second guess the beneficence of the county. Though it may flow through many channels, it all flows to the same ocean."
There was also was a big, half empty box of condoms. I couldn't understand what they were doing in the Women's Facility. Rachel explained it to me. "The maleficence of the county flows through many dicks, little grasshopper, and they're all pointed at somebody's twat. This is what the county gives you when they put you back out on the street. A twenty dollar bill and a packet of rubbers."
She kept track of everything on her clipboard, checking boxes and filling in numbers. When it was time to knock off, we hadn't quite finished, but she said it was enough for this week. "We got a lot done," she smiled. She hung the clipboard on the wall. Then she came over to me.
"Hector," she said, coyly, "remember our project about the food pyramid? Remember how hard I worked on it and how proud Mrs. Carlsen was of the two of us? Wasn't there something you were going to do for me in return? Didn't we have a little deal?" Here it comes, I thought.
