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Jo cursed out Apple Maps when she pulled up to what was supposed to be Brad's prison but looked like some kind of horrible golf resort. But as she swung towards the side of the road to turn around and maybe threaten Siri until she got the right address, she saw a discreet bronze plaque on the gatehouse with the name of Brad's prison and the words "correctional facility" on it. What the fuck?
The guard at the gatehouse took her name and Brad's name and waved her through to the visitors' parking lot. Hers was the only car that wasn't a Mercedes or a BMW or a Porsche or a Tesla or whatever. She hated it.
The prison was nicer than the state college she'd gone to. It was nicer than the hotel she'd stayed at in Milwaukee before her flight out to the godless hellscape of Southern California to accept an internship at Mythic Quest. She didn't know why after the parking lot and the green hills she was still expecting to get wanded and cavity-searched, but she was just made to walk through a metal detector and nobody stopped her when her keys and brass knuckle necklace set it off. Television, she realized, had lied to her about prison. The visitors' room didn't have plexiglass partitions or old-school phones screwed into the walls. It did have a little café to one side selling ridiculous hippie foods. The gate guard must have sent out a text or a runner, because Brad was already there, sitting at a table with a small quinoa salad. Ugh.
"Hi," said Jo. She got a steak sandwich that was so rare it was bleeding onto the compostable plate. It felt like the most power-y move she could make in here.
"Hi," said Brad. "Things go to hell at MQ yet?"
"I think I stopped David from committing suicide," Jo said. She couldn't help herself. It just came out.
Brad nodded with no sign of approval or disapproval, but she knew that in his soft little mousey center, he cared even if he'd never admit it. He kept on picking at the salad--with real silverware, no wonder the guards hadn't bothered to pat Jo down--and more and more of the story came out, culminating in, "I ended up spending the weekend helping him unpack. He got us Hawaiian pizza and sour beers. Sue was there. You know, she's not even from the Midwest? San Diego-born and -raised." She shuddered. "It was unbearable."
"No good deed goes unpunished," said Brad. He looked so fucking Zen. He was wearing all-white and everything. It wasn't, from what she could see of the other felons in the room, a uniform. They were wearing khakis and cashmere sweaters.
"So," she said, not willing to humiliate herself even further, "have you already gone up to the toughest guy in the yard and shanked him to establish dominance?"
"No," said Brad. "This is prison for white collar criminals. You go up to the biggest, ugliest, douchiest criminal in the yard and you network." He shook his head. "It's a good thing I kept you out of here, you'd have probably shivved three of JP Morgan's vice presidents and then we'd never be able to get financing."
Jo felt vaguely insulted but also vaguely touched that Brad was recognizing she was good at murder. She picked up her steak sandwich. It was actually delicious. And she'd been able to put it on Brad's prison tab, which made it even tastier. "You gonna get ink in here? Something aspirational and abstract in Sanskrit or Chinese that you don't actually understand and maybe actually says 'beef broccoli', that seems like the speed in this sort of joint."
"Now you're getting it," said Brad.
"Thank you," said Jo. Yeah, this place seemed cushy, but it would have been terrible for her. She'd have been better off in one of those places with barbed wire on the walls and no dropping the soap in the showers. She could cudgel her way through that. There was no cudgeling your way through this.
"Hey," said Brad, "mind if we wrap this up? I have tennis practice at three, and I want to get good enough to completely humiliate this pharma bro from Villa Block C before my sentence is up."
"Sure," she said. "I'll tell everyone back at MQ that you send your love."
"Ugh," said Brad, and stood up, and Jo stood up too, and turned to go--and then spun back around and gripped him in a hug.
Brad went rigid, like a Machiavellian ironing board. "Jo?"
In a TV show, this was the moment when a guard would yell "no touching" and force them apart, but nothing happened, to Brad's extended discomfort.
"Yeah?"
"This is the worst thing to happen to me in here since the guy two villas down got a Patek Philippe ankle monitor and he talked about it for three days straight."
She hugged him even tighter and smiled. "I know."