From:   lucky@lastcallpoker.com
Subject: You're A Squid
Date: October 1, 2005 4:03:01 PM PDT
To:   brian@netninja.com


Here's another card.

From:  Lucy Brown 
Sent: Saturday, October 1, 2005
To: Devon Brown
Subject:  You're A Squid


Dev-

Don't tell mom, but I got picked up by the cops because they thought I was holding out info on Robert's murder.  DON'T TELL MOM.  I was only in over-night, but she would freak and feel guilty.  
You always write me incredibly cool emails about squid and penguins and krill.  But nobody ever thinks you're a penguin.  I think you're a squid, but I've known you a long time.
The police picked me up around four in the afternoon.  I scored a place on the bench at about 2:00 AM.  A stringy red-head in fishnets crawled under the bench to sleep.  Clearly, a coke addict with no sense of smell.  If she could smell, she wouldn't have let her skin touch that floor.  She was there until the holding cell started emptying out in the morning when her pimp/boyfriend bailed her out.  
By 9:00 it's me and a black woman in the smallest pair of shorts you've ever seen.  She was drumming her fingers against the bench.  "He better get his ass down here," she finally says.  Then she looks at me.  "Your man taking his time too, I see."
At which point it dawns on me that she thinks I'm a hooker.  Which so sucks, Dev, because even if the skirt is short, it was DKNY and cost $130 on the clearance rack.  
I told her I wasn't waiting on anybody.
"You freelance? You crazy, girl."
I told her I have trouble following orders
The hooker laughed.  "Don't we all."
She was like, twenty-six going on sixty, needle-tracks, a tattooed V on her shoulder like a cattle brand.  If we were betting, she'd play angry and lose, because life has dealt her such crappy cards that she thinks that not falling down when you got the crap kicked out of you was winning.  
She perks up all the sudden.  "Hey, you want the name of a good bailbondsman?"  She pulls a business card from a stash under the rolled-down waistband of her shorts.  "This is the guy my man uses.  Don't tell nobody where you got it.  They'll start searching me in my private spots."  
American Eagle Bail Bonds.  Se habla espa–ol.
 I said thanks and even though it's a scary thought that prostitutes are doing me favors, I gotta admit, I was so tired and so weirded out, I meant it.  She was the first person who had been nice to me.
Then the CO (us insiders don't say 'corrections officers') says, 'Morning Shaylee' like you'd talk to someone at the coffee machine at the office.  
"Here's my ride," she says and stands up.  Then she stops, looks at me, and I swear, I swear, she says,   "Those are nice shoes.  You shouldn't waste 'em on work."
Kate Spade knock-offs.  And they made my feet hurt.  Shaylee was so right.

signed yr sister the criminal case