(Author's note: This story is an entry into FAWC (Friendly Anonymous Writing Challenge), a collaborative competition among Lit authors. FAWC is not an official contest sponsored by Literotica, and there are no prizes given to the winner. This FAWC was based around the theme of music, with four songs given to choose from. The songâand operetta storyline in generalâthat inspired this story was "Oh, Is There Not One Maiden Breast," from Gilbert and Sullivan's
The Pirates of Penzance.
)
* * * *
He was late. Or she thought so. Had she gotten the time wrong? She didn't think so. But she knew that they took their sweet time with this. She was in the system herself, so she knew how men got jerked around even at this point. They'd jerked her around too. She'd been here in Dannemora, in upstate New York, for three days, and only this morning had the powers that be at the Clinton Correctional Institution informed her of his release time. And that was eight hours ago. And she was a lawyer in the system. She wondered how family members learned where to come to pick their men up.
Family members. Did Frankie have family? Would they be here, thinking they were picking him up? She must have been through his paperwork a thousand times and couldn't remember there being any family. There certainly hadn't been any family that showed up at trial. Sometimes family members didn't, thoughâbeing too ashamed or too upset or too angry.
She hadn't gotten a reply to her message that she'd be picking him up. He didn't always answer her messages, though. Did that mean she sometimes came across as too needy, too pushy? Hell of a time to think of that now, though, she thought. There hadn't been much time for a reply to reach her. She'd look at it that way. She had always tried to look on the bright side where Frankie was concerned. That's one of the things he said he liked about her.
May checked the buttons on her blouse. Was it too tight? Was it expecting too much to wear the bra that hooked in front, between her breasts? Had she gained weight in the last eight years? She knew she had gained age and gray hairs. The hair could be dyed, but what other signs of age hadn't she been able to hide? Was the blouse attempting to be too sexyâor too dowdy? Was the skirt too short?
Well, there wasn't anything she was going to be able to do about that now. She looked in the rearview mirror for, like, the twentieth time since she'd been parked out here in her car. Would he like the car? She'd bought the Mustang just for him. A welcome home surprise. He wouldn't be able to get a license for a while, but he'd have a dream car to think about and look at while he was waiting.
It wasn't her, of courseâthe Mustang. The Corolla she'd traded in for it was more her. But she needed to try to change those things now. He wasn't even thirty yet. She wasn't behind the times, really, but she hadn't been in the age set he was in for some time. She wasn't even in it when they were together before. Before he was sent up. Before she hadn't been able to get him acquittedâeven when it was obvious that he was innocent and had only been forced to be along for the ride.
Was this the only gate, the gate where they all came out? Or was he already waiting at another gate?
She took the paper out of her purse and looked at it yet again, at the instructions for picking up inmates when they had served their time. When they were spit out on the street of some small town like Dannemora, with the clothes they came in with, if they still fit, and bus fare to New York Cityâin this state. And that was it. No wonder that it was only a matter of months before the men were inside again.
How had the eight years affected Frankie? He was so young and innocentâreally innocentâwhen he'd gone inside. Had the life hardened him, drained all of the faith out of himâeven in her?
And how would he feel about her now? Eight years older, the years hadn't been that kind. But she had waited. Waited just for him, just like she'd told him she would.
Out of the corner of her eye she caught that the gate in the chain-link fence into the prison was opening and that there were a couple of men standing there. She swiveled her head to see if he was there.
* * * *
The first time he fucked her, May had known that it was because he wanted something. But since she was over thirty, had never been fucked before, and had more or less maneuvered him into fucking her, she didn't care. Besides she had reasoned later that he was just scared, not much more than a boy, and in shock, and that he'd just been grateful that she had believed him. No one else hadâwell, not enough to keep him out of prison. Most of the "something he wanted," she told herself, was his need for comfort, for something real to hang on to, for assurance that someone in all of this was sane and on his side.
She had been on his side from the beginning. If he hadn't been so hunky and young and hangdog looking, would she have instantly been on his side, she sometimes wondered. But she didn't wonder about it for long, because what had happened had happened. The theory of it had no meaning for her.
It was all because of his girlfriend, April, the first woman, one two years older than he was and more experienced, who he'd ever fucked regularly. Or so he said, and May had been careful to tell him that she believed everything he said. And it was because of April's friends, the Manhattan street gang she'd run with. All rich, cocky snots, protected throughout life by Daddy's money and position, so that they thought they could get away with anything. Anything had included robbing a Brooklyn liquor store and, maybe unintentionally, shooting and killing the Korean night clerk.
Frankie's story was that he had been at the wheel of the car they arrived and left in. He'd just been told they were taking a nice ride. He hadn't been told they were taking the ride to a liquor store in Brooklyn, to rob the placeâor that their "ride" had been stolen. April was not so dumb as to be riding with them that night. Frankie wasn't from Manhattan. He didn't have a Daddy with money and position. So, naturally, Frankie took the brunt of the punishment.
When the Brooklyn police started to unravel what had happened, they hadn't given a shit that most of the young men were from wealthy families in Manhattan or that they weren't much more than boys. The shooting hadn't been in Manhattan; it had been in Brooklyn. They'd dared come to Brooklyn for their crime spree.
The Brooklyn cops built strong cases, which they turned over to the prosecutors, who continued the hardnosed pursuit of the perpetrators and maximum sentences. It only was when the cases, which had been separated, got to court that every one of the young men except for Frankie, all lawyered up with attorneys with national reputations, got hand slaps. With only a public defender, Frankie got eight years.
At least that meant the jury believed some of his claim of innocence. May had told him that, of course, but Frankie had been too young to appreciate the difference between eight years and life.
April never contacted him again after that night she asked him to be the designated driver, Frankie not knowing the others weren't just going to get drunk, but that they planned to get rich and also to acquire a trunk full of "free" liquor had gotten across to the jury, thanks to May's lawyering, enough to spare him the full rod.
May had been Frankie's public defender. She didn't just feel sad for the young manâor didn't just melt to him right away as a man, in a life in which few men had ever looked her way. She actually thought he was innocent by reason of not having a clue what the other men intended to do that night, even if they didn't intend on killing anyone in the process. All Frankie had done was to agree to be the designated driver for friends of his girlfriend.
May did everything she knew to do to defend his case. And it wasn't that she wasn't a good lawyer or that she had too many cases on her hands at the same timeâshe neglected the rest of her caseload to fight for Frankie. The police and the court system just had to have its pound of flesh for the offenseâfrom someone.