He winked at her and smiled.

"Thattagirl."

There was that tone again. And the wink. She was getting the idea that Ray was finally getting around to wanting to collect on all of his goodwill. He'd probably been waiting for her to hit a drought so she'd feel she had less choice in the matter. She knew he would make his move soon and that she should think about how to handle it. But there were too many other things that were more important on her mind. She left him in the office and headed back to her own.

THE offices of the California Department of Corrections, Parole and Community Services Division, in Van Nuys were crowded into a one-story building of gray, precast concrete that stood in the shadow of the Municipal Court building. The nondescript design features of its exterior seemed in step with its purpose: the quiet reintegration of convicts into society.

The interior of the building took its cue from the crowd control philosophy employed at popular amusement parks – although those who waited here weren't always anxious to reach the end of their wait. A maze of roped-off cattle rows folded the long lines of ex-cons back and forth in the waiting rooms and hallways. There were lines of cons waiting to check in, lines waiting for urine tests, lines waiting to see parole agents, lines in all quadrants of the building.

To Cassie Black the parole office was more depressing than prison had been. When she was at High Desert, she was in stasis, like a character in those sci-fi movies where the journey back to earth is so long that the travelers are put into a hibernation-type sleep. That was how Cassie saw it. She was breathing but not living, waiting and surviving on hope that the end of her time would come sooner rather than later. That hope for the future and the warmth of her constant dream of freedom got her past all the depression. But the parole office was that future. It was the harsh reality of getting 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.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Nothing's wrong, okay? I'm just having… I'm just going through one of those times, you know?"

"No, I don't know. What times you talkin' about? Tell me."

"I can't. I don't know the words. I feel like… it's like every day is like the one before. There is no future because it's all the same."

"Look, what did I tell you when you first came in here? I told you it would get like this. Repetition breeds routine. Routine's boring but it keeps you from thinking and it keeps you out of trouble. You want to stay out of trouble, don't you, girl?"

"Yes, Thelma. But it's like I got out of lockdown but sometimes I feel like I'm still in lockdown. It's not…"

"Not what?"

"I don't know. It's not fair."

There was a sudden outburst from one of the other cubicles as a convict started protesting loudly. Kibble stood up to look over the partitions of the cubicle. Cassie didn't move. She didn't care. She knew what it was, somebody being taken down and put in a holding cell pending revocation of parole. There were one or two takedowns every time she came in. Nobody ever went back peaceably. Cassie had long ago stopped watching the scenes. She couldn't worry about anyone else in this place but herself.

After a few moments Kibble sat back down and turned her attention back to Cassie, who was hoping that the interruption would make the parole agent forget what they had been talking about.

There was no such luck.

"You see that?" Kibble asked.