Debbie wore a gray-green sack dress, prison issue, she had taken in and shortened. Fran told her she looked cute, he liked her hair clipped short like that. It was light brown today, at other times blond.

Debbie ran her fingers through her hair and tossed her head to show Fran that it wouldn't muss, saying she liked it, too, and called it a Sawgrass bob. They sat at a picnic table in the visitors compound surrounded by double fencing topped with razor wire. At the other tables were inmates with parents, husbands, boyfriends, some who had brought little kids to see their mommies.

"How're you doing?"

"Don't ask. Mary Pat and the girls with you?"

"At the condo. Mary Pat comes down to watch the maid vacuum, make sure she gets underneath the furniture good. The girls sit around waiting in their plastic inner tubes. I left, I don't remember if I told her I'm playing golf or looking at property. If I'm playing golf I stop at the club on the way back and change. But if I'm looking at property, why'm I coming home with different clothes on?"

"I wish I had your problems."

"What about your release?"

"Next Friday, if I don't kill a guard."

"You coming back to Detroit?"

"I might as well. You know what I'm thinking of doing? Try stand-up again. But with all new material from here, different situations you get into."

"You're kidding-prison humor? Like what?"

Debbie got up from the picnic table and held the skirt of the dress out to the sides. "I wear this in an extra-large with the white socks and the shitkickers? And model the latest in prison couture. I do a bit on forever standing in lines. Another one, getting hit on in the shower.

I'm bare naked and this sexual predator I call Rubella makes the moves. The usual stuff."