“He…did that to you.” Tagen’s voice was harsh. Wounded by comprehension.
Daria made herself nod so she wouldn’t have to speak.
Silence. The clock on the kitchen wall ticked away the minutes.
“He went to prison for three years?” Tagen demanded.
“Almost three.” Daria’s eye was wandering toward the window again. She wondered if she asked Tagen, would he help her prune the trees? “His first conviction was ruled inadmissible at my trial, and the defense managed to prove that since Polidori knew the acid wouldn’t kill me, it couldn’t be called attempted murder. They could only try him for aggravated assault. He was sentenced to five years in prison and three months in a psychiatric institution to undergo counseling.”
She didn’t know how much of that Tagen could follow, but he didn’t ask her to clarify and she remembered again his fascination with Law & Order and realized he probably understood more about the legal system and its frailties than she did.
“Anyway, it doesn’t matter anymore,” she said, looking away to the window. “Another inmate stabbed him to death after almost three years. Do the inmates in your prisons ever kill each other?”
“Frequently.”
“Is it considered a crime?”
“Yes.” Tagen shrugged one shoulder. “There is even a second trial of sorts, during which the prisoner may make some plea in the event of self-defense or other extenuating circumstances. If it can be proven the prisoner attacked and killed another prisoner without provocation, he or she is removed to a solitary cell for the remainder of his or her life.”
“I guess there’s no point in having two life sentences when your prisoners actually serve their entire life, huh?”
“No.”
Daria looked out the window at her too-scruffy trees. “Dan left me.”
She wanted to say more about that, but even now, years afterward, she couldn’t think of any way to express the horrible glut of baffled emotion she felt. They used to talk about getting married, maybe. Maybe having kids. Vacations in Hawaii. They had lived together three years. They had bought so many things together. They were friends, they were lovers. There were so many things they always meant to do with all the time they had left to do it in.
He’d come to see her almost every day at the hospital, for about two weeks. Then he’d started coming in only the weekends. And then she didn’t see him at all until after her new eye was installed. He’d brought her flowers for that. And told her he was very sorry, but he just couldn’t handle this. It was too much, he’d said. He’d called once or twice after that, but that was the last time she’d seen him. He left all the stuff in his room. She could do what she wanted with it, he said. Sell it or give it away or anything. And she’d boxed it, believing with her whole heart that he would come back someday and unpack it.
“I sued Kruegar and Lauder for not checking Polidori’s record,” Daria continued after a pause. “They gave me a lot of money. And I spend it,” she added, shrugging. “I order my groceries delivered. I order my clothes. I order…everything. I don’t work any more. In fact, before you came here, I hadn’t left this house for six years except to pick up my mail or drive around sometimes at night. But I don’t stop anywhere. I never stop the car.” She slid him a dry, unhappy smile. “What would your people do about that?”
He was quiet a long time. “I would like to tell you we would not have allowed it to happen to you in the first place, but I know too well that Jota’s forces do fail its people. I do not know, Daria. It is likely you would have gone to live at a recovery center for a time, but it is my experience that such places are difficult to leave once one arrives. Like your home here, it is easy to make a prison of security.” He studied her gravely in the morning light as coffee-maker hissed and clicked. “It is a terrible thing that happened to you, Lindaria Cleavon. I regret that I have caused so much pain to bleed back into your life.”
He stood up then and went to put the peas back in the freezer.
Alone at the table, Daria stared at her hands and marveled at herself. She hadn’t cried once in the telling of it and she hadn’t lied to him. It hurt, but like the pain of a lanced boil, it had lessened some as it poured out of her. He was a good man, she thought. And he deserved a hell of a lot better.
“Tagen,” she said suddenly.
He turned, one brow raised inquiringly.
“It’s going to be hot,” she said.
His face darkened and his jaw set. “I know.”
Daria chewed at her lip.
Slowly, Tagen closed the freezer and faced her fully. “What are you thinking?”
She took a deep breath, her heart hammering as the enormity of what she was about to suggest struck home. She smiled shakily at him. “Let’s go for a drive.”
*
The middle of the afternoon on a Wednesday when it was 100 degrees in the shade meant that there just wasn’t anything for a girl to do when she was manning the helm at Luv-A-Lot’s adult novelty store except to line up the contestants for that night’s Vibrator Races. Janey Foxx was just changing out the batteries on the eight-inch jelly slim-line she favored (ribbed for traction!) when, lo and behold, the door opened. She didn’t know it yet, but she was about to have the strangest customer experience of her adult store career.
Janey popped her head up over the counter long enough to make sure her customers were at least eighteen, as mandated by federal blah blah blah, and they sure appeared to be. A guy and a girl. That was refreshing. Been a long time since she’d seen a hetero couple shop in here together.
Janey tucked the battery box away again and hopped up, slapping her hands on the countertop and trying to look perky and efficient in a we-sell-sex-toys sort of way. “How you folks doing?” she asked brightly. “Hot enough for ya?”
The couple exchanged a ‘look’. The man nodded once, somehow conveying a great depth of irony. “Quite,” he said, demonstrating with one word the kind of reverberating sexy growl of a man’s voice that could get any woman wet. He looked around—at the magazine shelves, the leather masks, the whips and paddles, the board games and inflatable demo-dolls—and he did not look a bit surprised at anything he saw. Not even when he saw the sheep. Clearly, a man who knew his way around a store like Luv-A-Lot’s.
The woman, on the other hand, was doing a pretty good beet impersonation. She, too, took a quick visual inspection of the merchandise, and then said, “I can explain this.” Her eye struck the inflatable sheep. “Most of this.”
“Ha.” It was not laughter, exactly, only a statement of dry humor. “We have porn on my planet, too.”
Or at least, that was sure what Janey thought he said. Maybe he was trying to be funny. Janey had once known a guy from Kansas who introduced himself as coming from another planet, and the big man did have a weird accent.
The women glanced at him, inched a little ways down the novelty aisle, and then came back to the counter. Her hands were wringing, and her face was practically in flames. “Can you tell me where, um, where you keep the, um…”
Janey grinned at her, leaning over the counter. “His or hers?” she asked.
“His,” the woman stammered. “The, um…the not gay…um…”
Janey pointed, and the woman grabbed her fella’s arm and ducked away. There was nothing else to do except watch, but at least Janey had the courtesy to use the mirrors.