“I need to ask you something.”

“I’m in the middle of a closing.”

“It won’t take long,” he said, then kept talking because he knew she’d cut him off if he didn’t. “What’s a credit score?”

She spoke in her normal voice. “Are you an idiot?”

“Yeah, Joyce. You know I am.”

She gave a heavy sigh that sounded more labored than usual. He wondered if she had a cold or maybe she’d started smoking again. “All the credit card companies, the banks, anybody who lets you buy anything on credit, report to credit agencies about how well you pay your bills, whether you’re on time, whether you’re slow, if you make the minimum payment or pay it all off each month or whatever. Those agencies compile your payment histories and come up with a score that tells other companies how good a credit risk you are.”

“Is seven hundred ten a good score?”

“John,” she said. “I really don’t have time for this. What kind of scam are you running?”

“None,” he said. “I don’t run scams, Joyce. That’s not why they sent me to prison.”

She was quiet and he knew he had pushed her too far. “I haven’t forgotten why they sent you to prison,” she said, the edge to her voice telling him she was having a hard time keeping control.

“What if somebody got my information and used it to get credit cards and stuff?”

“Then it’d wreck your score.”

“No.” He clarified, “What if they were paying off the cards and everything every month?”

She hesitated a moment. “Why would they do that?”

“I don’t know, Joyce. That’s why I’m asking you.”

“Are you for real?” she demanded. “What is this, John? Just ask me what you need to know. I’ve got work to do.”

“I am asking you,” he said. “It’s just that someone…” He let his voice trail off. Would this implicate Joyce in whatever was going on? Could she somehow get in trouble for having knowledge of this? He didn’t know how the law worked. Hell, last week he hadn’t even known there was such a thing as a credit score.

He didn’t know, either, if Ms. Lam tapped the phone.

He finally said, “It’s this scam some guys were running in prison.”

“Jesus.” She was whispering again. “You’d better not be getting involved in it.”

“No,” he said. “I’m keeping my nose clean.”

“You’d better be, John. They will throw your ass back in jail so fast you won’t even have time to think.”

“You sound like Dad.”

“Is that your way of asking how he’s doing?”

John realized he was holding his breath. “No.”

“Good, because he wouldn’t want me telling you anyway.”

“I know.”

“Christ, John.” She sighed again. He was upsetting her. Why had he called her? Why did he have to bother her with this?

He felt tears in his eyes and pressed his fingers into the corners to try to stop them. He remembered when they were little, how she used to play with him, dress him up in Richard’s clothes, pretend she was his mother. They had tea parties and cooked cupcakes in her Easy-Bake Oven.

He asked, “Do you remember that time we melted Mom’s present?” John was six, Joyce was nine. They had saved their allowance and bought a bracelet for their mother’s birthday. Joyce had suggested they bake it in a cake to surprise her, something she’d read about in a book. They didn’t realize the bracelet was costume jewelry, and when they put it in the little oven, turned on the hundred-watt bulb to cook the cake, the bracelet had melted into the rack. The smoke had set off the fire alarm.

“Remember?” he asked.

Joyce sniffed, not answering.

“You okay?” he said. He wanted to know about her life. Was she seeing anybody? She’d never been married, but she was so damn pretty and smart. There had to be somebody in her life, somebody who wanted to take care of her.

“I’m getting a cold,” she said.

“You sound like it.”

“I gotta go.”

He heard the soft click of the phone as she hung up.

The next three days were riddled with storms—the clouds spitting down rain one minute, parting for the sunshine the next—and John was basically out of a job until they cleared. He found himself wishing he hadn’t blown fifty dollars on that hooker. But then, sometimes he found himself wishing he had fifty more to give her. What question would he ask her this time? Maybe, what did it feel like to be in love? What did it feel like to hold somebody who wanted to hold you back? He wanted to talk to her again. He wanted to know about her life.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t afford it.

Growing up, John hadn’t had to worry about how to put food on the table or clothes on his back. His parents took care of everything. There were always fresh sheets on the bed, the toilet was magically clean and whenever he opened the refrigerator, it was filled with all the things he liked to eat. Even in prison, everything was provided for him. They had a strict schedule and firm rules, but as long as you did what you were told, you didn’t have to worry about anything.

During a good month at the car wash, John pulled in about a thousand dollars after taxes. Rent for his ten-foot by ten-foot roach-encrusted room was four hundred fifty dollars—a premium, to be certain, but no one else would take him in so his landlord felt entitled. Renting an apartment would have made things cheaper, but John couldn’t swing the hefty deposit, let alone the various connection charges and down payments utility companies required. MARTA wasn’t cheap, either. The city offered a Monthly Trans Card for unlimited bus and subway rides, but that cost around fifty-two dollars a month. Sometimes, John couldn’t afford to pay all that up front and he ended up shelling out a buck seventy-five each way in order to get to and from work.

Food, which mainly consisted of dry cereal, banana and peanut butter sandwiches and the occasional piece of fruit, ran around a hundred twenty dollars a month. John had to buy milk in small containers he could drink right away and stick with nonperishable foods. The cooler in his room was used to keep the roaches out; John couldn’t buy a bag of ice every day, especially in the summer when the heat would turn it to water before he could get it home on the bus.

For the privilege of being paroled, he paid the state two hundred thirty dollars a month. Rape and murder wasn’t cheap, and if he failed to make a payment, his ass went straight back to prison. The first money order he bought each month was made payable to the state.

This usually left him with a little less than seventy-five dollars each week for things that he needed. That was from a good week, though, and some weeks he pulled in considerably less. John forced himself to save money, skipping meals sometimes, making himself so dizzy from lack of food that he practically fell into bed at night. Once, in desperation, he had gone into one of the millions of cash-until-payday stores spotting the poorer parts of the city, but John couldn’t bring himself to pay 480 percent interest on a week-long loan. Even if he had been, they required you to have a checking account so they could wire the money directly to your bank. No bank in the world would give John Shelley a checking account.