It doesn't take a very imaginative mind to figure out what a guy wants to do after being in close contact with a pretty woman for the first time in four years. Or, at least, the first time he's talked to a woman who isn't wearing a guard's uniform and looking slightly terrified or overtly malicious.

But a guy doesn't get a lot of privacy in prison. Not even when he asks his bunk mate very politely to take a walk. Especially when that bunk mate is a perpetually surly 6'2 gang-banger who doesn't know why a man would need privacy to do what I wanted to do. In my time living in close quarters with Dante, it's fair to say that I'd seen more dick than any straight man cares to see.

There's the bathroom. You can pretend you need to have a sit down. But you never know who's going to hear something and listen in on the other side of the door – some men are decent, but plenty of men in here aren't. Sick fucks are a dime a dozen on this side of the wall.

To make a long story short, I didn't get a chance to get Misty-Lee out of my system after she huffed away all distraught and offended. She stayed there, a spectral vision casting a fog over my brain. I tried to think about her old man instead, figuring it would remind me of the first times I’d met the girl. That just made me think of her at 18, the last time I’d seen her. And at 18, she was…well, it’s not quite fit to print.

I remember Millions watching me with an impressive amount of pre-emptive malice in his eyes when I looked her over that day... I wasn't going to shit where I ate, but he clearly didn't trust me on that account. I knew damn well if I’d have tried anything I never would have lived long enough to end up in this prison cell.

Things were different now… Millions was dead and buried, and there was nothing stopping me from imagining all sorts of wicked things my body could do to hers.

Not that it didn’t tear me up, knowing her old man was gone. Millions was a hell of a guy. Sure, he was a criminal through and through with zero respect for law and order, but he was literate as fuck and sharper than a Vermont cheddar. He demanded respect, and he earned it too.

And he loved his daughter.

Loved his daughter so much he didn't have room to love anyone else, I guess. He certainly didn't love me. But he liked me, even though I was a ratty teenager with a wide stance and a trouble-seeking dick. He saw me as a kid with some potential, I guess. He liked the way I talked. Said I was like Roosevelt. I made a joke about a big stick and he rolled his eyes, but he grinned all the same.

I never did cast any blame on him when I got thrown in jail. Why would I, when he was rotting away for the same damn job? We both knew the other wasn't the rat; that left Lucky Lenny, our third man on that gig. The cops let him run free, but the street wasn’t quite so forgiving. He tried to push his luck with a new crew and things didn’t go his way. Last I hear they were scattering his ashes into the river.

So much for being lucky.

That left me and Millions to wait out our time. We’d done half a dozen jobs together before the one that went wrong. It was my first incarceration. Amazingly, it was Millions' first time, too. Old man made it fifty years flipping a bird to the Department of Justice before they finally got something to stick.

Someone like that deserved an early retirement with topless nymphs massaging his feet, not a shank in the side and a bleeding death on the wrong side of barbed wire. It’s a shame, but I couldn’t act too surprised about it.

Live by the big stick, die by the big stick. Someone wanted Millions dead, and someone got what they wanted.

I knew it had to be a hit; Millions had enough connections on both sides of the gate that it couldn't have been your typical gang bullshit. I guessed whoever ordered the hit on Millions must be the one bothering his daughter, too. Millions had to be rolling in his grave, knowing Misty-Lee was in trouble and he couldn't do anything about it. I was only half surprised that his old friends weren't offering to help. Loyalty doesn't always survive a funeral. Especially not when the friends are getting old themselves. Any of them still enjoying their freedom were probably smart enough not to get involved. Why risk death and dismemberment for shit that won’t even pad your retirement fund?

Still, Slickboy, Tanner, Shark, and Millions had always been thick as, well, thieves. They worked together most of their lives, and worked well. On the few jobs I’d done with them, they’d proved to be an impressive team. Mostly because of Millions. He’d made rich men of all of them. You’d think some gratitude was in order.

Plus, Misty-Lee was everyone's little princess, wasn't she? Not mine, but I certainly knew the older guys doted on her damn near as much as Millions. Being good to Misty-Lee was a surefire way into Million's good graces, but that couldn’t have been the whole reason. She was a cute kid, pretty even, and more than any of that she was a good girl. The kind they all wished they had for a daughter. Stayed in school, did her homework, played the damn piano.

She was the angel sent to redeem every last one of them.

So where were all those fake uncles and candy-hander-outers when she needed them most? Hiding out in the barbershop or the pool hall, pretending they don't know her?

Cowards.

But was I going to be any better? If she came back – when she came back – what could I really offer her? I'd been young when I went in. Too young to know as much as she probably needed me to know. Too young to even know that I should be knowing things. That was something I only learned on the inside: knowledge is power.

Then again, maybe I could protect her. And in that way, we could scratch each other's backs. I guess she didn't know about me being up for parole at the end of the month or she probably would have mentioned it – or even waited until I was out to have our little chat.

How would she know? Nobody knew, because I didn't tell anyone. My connections might be good for a beer at the Piper, or a lead on a job (legal or otherwise), but they sure as hell weren't putting me up for a month while I got on my feet.

There was no woman waiting anxiously for my release with a warm bed to welcome me into. There was my brother, but he was too blinded by drugs that he couldn’t see me if I was standing in front of him wearing a day-glo dress. No parents to speak of either. Closest to it was an uncle abroad who didn't even know I was in jail. Mickey was my best chance, and he was a full-grown man who only had so much patience for another full-grown man showing up asking for a hand-out.

I was a lonely man about to enter an alien world.

But Misty-Lee might be my answer to all that. Maybe I couldn't expect her to let me into her bed, but she might let me into her house. She might let me into her life long enough for me to do some digging and figure out how to take care of the shit she was drowning in.

She might do it out of fear. She might do it because I knew her father, and she knew he trusted me. She might do it because even after all these years, she still saw the James Dean in me. I knew she saw it. I wasn't that out of practice. I could tell which of those female guards feared me, and which of them feared how much they liked me.

Anyway, there was a chance she might let me in the door, and I've always been a man who likes to take chances.

Hell, you don't wind up in Guvcheck for always doing the sure thing.