Free A Dangerous Affair by Jason Melby

abdominal muscles melded with his carved pectorals that flexed as he wrung out his soaking wet shirt in a bucket on the floor beneath a ceiling leak.
    "Does this always happen?" he asked the dark-skinned bunk-mate resting in the top bunk with a reading light clipped to a textbook on what appeared to be electrical circuit theory.
    Marvin Tate looked down at Lloyd. "Only when it rains." He wore androgynous features with a blue bandanna around his head. He dropped a fist and bumped knuckles with Lloyd. "Name's Tate. Marvin Tate. The ladies often mistake me for Denzel, but you know... sometimes you gotta play the cards you're dealt."
    "I'm Lloyd."
    Marvin adjusted the book-mounted reading light. "I saw you the other day when Varden gave you the tour. Stay off his radar or you'll be bunking with Montgomery in county."
    Lloyd stepped out of his wet jeans and settled on the bottom bunk. "How long have you been in this house?"
    "Eighteen days, twelve hours, and forty minutes give or take." Marvin skimmed the chapter summary. "How long were you in the joint?"
    "Too long," said Lloyd.
    Marvin slid his finger to hold his place in the chapter summary. "You don't look like the head-busting type. I figure you for manslaughter. Some dude groped your girl at a bar. You were drunk, got in a fight. He threw down first. BAM! You hit him back harder than you meant to. Dude croaks. You take the rap. I've heard it a hundred times. Am I right?"
    "Something like that."
    "I knew it," said Marvin. "I did four years on a B&E. Believe that? Judge threw the book in my face. I kept my mouth shut and did my time. I may be a lot of things, but I'm not a rat."
    "Good to know."
    "Why? You got something to hide?" Marvin stared at him, clearly gauging Lloyd's reaction. "I'm just messin' with you." His grin faded with the heated look on Lloyd's face.
    A door slammed from somewhere inside the house. The television in the other room went silent. Bits of loud conversation faded out of earshot.
    "You got family here?" Marvin asked.
    "My mother. And a brother." Lloyd rested the back of his hand against his forehead. Barely forty-eight hours out of prison and he found himself a gnat's ass away from violating his parole and losing the freedom he embraced. "What about you?"
    "I got a sister who lives in Kansas City. My folks live in Jacksonville, Missouri. I grew up there. Went to school. Got mixed up with the wrong woman. That's when it hit the fan. It always starts with a pretty woman."
    "Amen to that."
    Marvin propped his head on his lumpy pillow. "Life ain't the same as you remember it when you first get out. You see your reality check bounce when you fill out your first job application. When people discover you did time, they dismiss you like a bad juror. No one wants to be an ex-con. No one sure as hell wants to hire one either. You come out thinking you paid your debt, but once you're back in the real world again you learn your tab's never paid. People you knew look at you different, like you grew a third eye in the middle of your forehead. The ones that act like they're still your friends are lying to your face."
    Marvin's eyes were red. Lloyd wondered how long he'd been reading, then rolled on his side away from the leaking roof and the constant drip-drip-drip in the plastic bucket. "What's the deal with Varden?"
    "Varden hates everyone who comes through here. Black, white, red, brown—it don't matter. We're all the same in his eyes. And he knows things. In a weird way. Like he really can read your mind. I think he spent some time in the pen himself in a former life. God brought him back to work this place and remind him of what he used to be."
    Lloyd touched his ankle monitor and looked up to see Marvin staring down at him from the top bunk.
    "Don't mess with that," Marvin warned. "It's got an anti-tamper circuit wired into the clasp. You can trash it with a hacksaw and some serious elbow grease, but Varden will have you back in cuffs faster than you can say '