"I heard it. That was enough."

"I hope so. Because any little mess-up and that could be you. You understand that, don't you?"

"Perfectly, Thelma. I know what happens."

"Good, because this isn't about being fair, to use your word. Fair's got nothing to do with it. You're down by law, honey, and you're under thumb. You're scaring me, girl, and you should be scaring yourself. You're only ten months into a two-year tail. This is not good when I hear you getting antsy after just ten months."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"Shit, there's people in this room with four-and five- and six-year tails. Some even longer."

Cassie nodded.

"I know, I know. I'm lucky. It's just that I can't stop myself from thinking about things, you know?"

"No, I don't know."

Kibble folded her massive arms across her chest and leaned back in her chair. Cassie wondered if the chair could take the weight but it held strong. Kibble looked at her sternly. Cassie knew she had made a mistake trying to open up to her. She was in effect inviting Kibble into her life more than she was already into it. But she decided that since she had already strayed across the line, she might as well go all the way now.

"Thelma, can I just ask you something?"

"That's what I'm here for."

"Do you know… are there any, like international treaties or agreements for parole transfers?"

Kibble closed her eyes.

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Like if I wanted to live in London or Paris or something?"

Kibble opened her eyes, shook her head and looked astonished. She shifted forward and the chair came down heavily.

"Do I look like a travel agent to you? You are a convict, girl. You understand that? You don't just decide you don't like it here and say, 'Oh, I think I'll try Paris now.' Are you listening to yourself talking crazy here? We aren't running no Club Med here."

"Okay, I was just – "

"You got the one transfer from Nevada, which you were lucky to get, thanks to your friend at the dealership. But that's it. You are stuck here, girl. For at least the next fourteen months and maybe even further, the way you're acting now."

"All right. I just thought I'd – "

"End of story."

"Okay. End of story."

Kibble leaned over the desk to write something in Cassie's file.

"I don't know about you," she said as she wrote. "You know what I oughta do is I oughta thirty-fifty-six you for a couple days, see if that clears your mind of these silly ass ideas. But – "

"You don't have to do that, Thelma. I – "

"-we're full up right now."

A 3056 was a parole hold – an order putting a parolee in custody pending a hearing to revoke parole. The PA could then drop the revoke charge at the time of the hearing and the parolee would be set free. Meantime, the revisit to lockdown for a few days would serve as a warning to straighten up. It was the harshest threat Kibble had at her disposal and just the mention of it properly scared Cassie.

"I mean it, Thelma, I'm fine. I'm okay. I was just venting some steam, okay? Please don't do that to me."

She hoped she had put the proper sound of pleading into her voice.

Kibble shook her head.

"All I know is that you were on my A list, girl. Now I don't know. I think I'm gonna at least have to come around and check up on you one of these days. See what's what with you. I'm telling you, Cassie Black, you better watch yourself with me. I am not fat old Thelma who can't get off her chair. I am not someone to fuck with. You think so, you check with these folks."

She raked the end of her pen along the edges of the RTC files to her left. It made a loud ripping sound.

"They'll tell you I am not someone to be fucked with or fucked over."

Cassie could only nod. She studied the huge woman across from her for a long moment. She needed some way to defuse this, to get the smile back on Kibble's face or at the very least the deep furrow out of her brow.

"You come around, Thelma, and I have a feeling I'll see you before you see me."

Kibble looked sharply at her. But Cassie saw the tension slowly change in her face. It had been a gamble but Kibble took the comment in good humor. She even started to chuckle and it made her huge shoulders and then the desk shake.

"We'll see about that," Kibble said. "You'd be surprised by me."

CASSIE felt a weight lifting off her as she came out of the parole offices. Not simply because the monthly ordeal was over. But because she had caught a glimmer of understanding about herself while inside. In her struggle for an explanation of her feelings to Kibble she had arrived at an essential conclusion. She was marking time and she could do it their way or her own way. The open house in Laurel Canyon was not the cause of this. That was simply an accelerant; it was gasoline on an already burning fire. Her decision was clear now and in that clarity were feelings of both relief and fear. The fire was burning strongly now. Inside she began to feel the slight trickle of melt water from the frozen lake that for so long had been her heart.

She walked between the municipal and county courthouses and through the plaza fronting the LAPD's Van Nuys station. There was a bank of pay phones near the stairs leading up to the police station's second-floor entrance. She picked one up, dropped in a quarter and a dime and punched in a number she had committed to memory more than a year earlier while in High Desert. It had come on a note smuggled to her in a tampon.

After three rings the phone was answered by a man.

"Yes?"

It was more than six years since Cassie had heard the voice but it rang true and recognizable to her. It made her catch her breath.

"Yes?"

"Uh, yes, is this… is this D. H. Reilly?"

"No, you have the wrong number."

"Dog House Reilly? I was calling – "

She looked down and read off the number of the phone she was standing at.

"What kind of crazy name is that? No Dog House here and you've got the wrong number."

He hung up. Cassie did, too. She then turned around and walked back into the plaza and took a seat on a bench about fifty feet from the pay phones. She shared the bench with a disheveled man who was reading a newspaper so yellowed that it had to be months old.

Cassie waited almost forty minutes. When the phone finally started to ring, she was in the midst of a one-sided conversation with the disheveled man about the quality of the food service in the Van Nuys jail. She got up and trotted to the phones, the man yelling a final complaint at her.

"Sausage like fucking Brillo pads! We were playing hockey in there!"

She grabbed the phone after the sixth ring.

"Leo?"

A pause.

"Don't use my name. How you doing, sweetheart?"

"I'm okay. How are – "

"You know, you been out now like a year, am I right?"

"Uh, actually – "

"And all that time and not even a hello from you. I thought I'd hear from you before now. You're lucky I even remembered that Dog House Reilly shtick."

"Ten months. I've been out ten months."

"And how's it been?"

"Okay, I guess. Good, actually."

"Not if you're calling me."

"I know."

There was a long silence then. Cassie could hear traffic noise coming from his end. She guessed he had left the house and found a pay phone somewhere on Ventura Boulevard, probably near the deli he liked to eat at.

"So, you called me first," Leo prompted.

"Right, yeah. I was thinking…"

She paused and thought about everything again. She nodded her head.

"Yeah, I need to get some work, Leo."

"Don't use my name."

"Sorry."

But she smiled. Same old Leo.

"You know me, a classic paranoid."

"I was just thinking that."