What he sees disappoints him. Gloria doesn’t look much like the pictures she sent him in prison, where her hair was long and blonde and she looked a lot like Faith Hill. Now her hair’s shorter, pulled back into a dinky tail except for what’s falling in her face. She’s older, too, way older than him. Should he bother? What the hell. He’s here and she’ll let him in, she was all hot to meet him in her pen pal letters.

His cellmate at Butner told him about PrisonPenPals, and though Ronnie didn’t think women would write to a sex offender, right after his ad went on the Internet, he got his first letter, then many letters sending him pictures and proposals for sex, love, or marriage. Since he never answered back, most of the pen pals gave up, but three of them kept on sending letters, every week for eight years. He kept their pictures taped to the wall next to his bunk. With her long blonde hair, Gloria was his favorite. She might even be glad to see him. She said to look her up when he got released.

Ronnie’s been out of Butner for a week. He’s sleeping on his sister Kristy’s sofa. She doesn’t want him there. The first day – Christ, the first hour – she shoved the Help Wanted pages at him and showed him a dishwashing job at the Golden Corral, seven bucks an hour plus a free meal. The free meal was why she wanted him to take the job. She doesn’t want to spend money on feeding him, that’s clear. His first meal as a liberated man? Kristy’s version of Taco Bell, bean burritos with Wal-Mart brand salsa, sticky tasteless crap that kept coming back all night. He got better food in jail. Last night she bitched at him for eating her Ben and Jerry’s. He bitched right back, that with her hips he was doing her a favor by removing temptation. So that’s how it’s gone, her on his case about a plan, a job, starting out right, and he woke up this morning with a bad itch for a new and different relationship.

He watches Gloria add soap and turn the dial, then he knocks hard on the window. She jumps, then sees him. He’s grinning hard as he can with his frozen face, just being friendly old Ronnie. He waves as she hurries out of the room and gets to the back door just as she does.

“Is it who I think it is?” says Gloria. She pushes her hair behind her ears and holds onto the door, not exactly welcoming him in. He keeps on grinning but she’s not matching his grin, in fact she looks worried, alarmed, even. Well, that’s all right. He sticks out his hand until she takes it with limp fingers. He explains his early release, wanting to call on her to thank her for writing and keeping him going all those years. Then she has to ask him in, just to be polite.

“You’re so tall!” she says. Her voice is high, shrill. He studies her face. It’s not like her picture at all, where she looked like a model, in high-heeled boots and a leather jacket, long blonde hair flowing over her shoulders. In person she’s mousy, with bags under her eyes and a wrinkly neck.

“You got your hair cut,” Ronnie says. “Looks nice.” He wants to put his arm around her, give her a little squeeze, but she keeps backing away. He’s pissed that she’s not more excited, that he’s having to do all the work.

“Sit, please sit! I’ll get us some tea.” She backs into the kitchen and Ronnie sits, glad to be where it’s warm even though he hates tea, it tastes like what you’d expect from dried leaves. He wants to change his order, get a beer instead, and gets up to follow her into the kitchen, where he sees she’s picked up the phone and is dialing. 9-1-1? No, too many numbers.

“I was just going to call out for a pizza, how’s that sound,” Gloria says. “Pepperoni and mushroom?” She orders the pizza, gives her address, then the teakettle is whistling and she pours water into mugs. She moves rapidly, reminding him of a hamster his fourth-grade class had, always scurrying around. He doesn’t want to be caught staring at her body but when she turns her back to pour the tea, he studies her, looking for curves under the baggy sweat shirt, feeling a rising tension like a zoo lion waiting for dinner. He’ll have to be patient, make himself invisible when the pizza guy arrives.

Gloria seems to know what he’s thinking. She’s flushed and nervous, patting pillows and humming. “How’s it feel to be out?” she asks.

“Good. It’s good.”

“What’s the best part about being a free man?”

He laughs. The best part, which he isn’t going to tell her, is the end of sex offender therapy group, finito, two hours of hell every day, listening to phlegmy I-Was-Drunk Franklin and Bible-clutching I-Only-Did-It-A-Few-Times Sid lie about controlling their deviant urges while the furry social worker drones on about denial, the blame game, and cognitive distortions. Every day Ronnie had to come up with his own lies, his own apologetic speeches, such bullshit because he’s nothing like the disgusting repulsives with their high-speed Internet and videos of Boy Scouts.

“Just being able to go where you want?” Gloria offers.

“That’s it. I can wake up in the morning, decide to visit pretty Gloria, and here I am.” He sips the dusty tea, then gets up to look at pictures on a bookcase, mostly school pictures of two kids, a boy and a girl. “These your kids?”

Both are light-haired with tight smiles like their mom’s, hardly showing any teeth. Maybe their teeth are crooked. In fact, the girl’s wearing braces. Those braces, that straight light hair, not blonde, just a satiny beige – she looks familiar. He shivers from a sudden chill.

Gloria grabs the picture and turns it face down. “Ronnie, you still look cold. You want a fire?”

So she doesn’t want to share her family with him, well, screw her. It bothers him that he can’t remember where he knows the girl. She wasn’t a pen pal, none of them had braces. No, it’s the picture he remembers, the smile with the wired teeth. It’s a high school graduation picture. How does he know this?

She opens the fireplace doors and pokes at the ashes. “We’ll need wood. Want to help me get some from the shed?”

“Fetch the wood? What else, wash the dishes? Walk the dog?” He smiles to show he’s joking but he’s always hated chores, working off the endless list every woman he’s ever known spent her livelong day composing for him.

Gloria shakes her head, smiling tightly. “It’ll just take a minute. Then our pizza should be here.”

Her nervousness is making him antsy, so he shrugs, he’ll go, he wants to move around. They pull on their coats. It’s stopped raining now, and Ronnie sees his breath cloud in the moonlight. He reaches out to the back of Gloria’s neck and squeezes the warm muscle until she stops walking. Her breathing is shallow and rapid. He feels in his jacket pocket for the cord he’s brought – it’s there. A long-lost strength enters his body and he gives Gloria a little push, gets her moving again.

The shed’s a crude log cabin with no windows and at first it’s hard to see, even with the flashlight she swings about, shining onto the wood pile. “There it is,” she says. “Watch out for mice!” As he leans over to pick up a few sticks of wood, the light goes out. “Oops,” she says in her squeaky voice. “Wait here, I’ll get another flashlight.” And then she’s gone. He realizes she’s shut him in.

He makes his way to the door. It’s locked. When he shakes the door, nothing moves. It’s a serious lock, probably a deadbolt, What kind of weirdo puts a deadbolt on a nothing shed? “What the hell?” His voice echoes in the musty dead-wood air. He stands there, waiting. Minutes pass. He sits down on the floor and hugs his knees.

A sliver of moonlight slips under the door. His eyes adjust to make out shapes. Not much in here but wood, a small mountain of it. He hopes Gloria gets over her stupid prank soon. It’s very cold on the floor so he gets up and moves around. His pants are still damp from the rainy bike ride and he starts to shiver. Something rustles near the woodpile. Mice, she’d said. Hope to Christ it’s not a snake.

Is she calling the cops? He’s not done anything, just dropping by to see a friend, someone who wrote him letters . So he surprised her, that’s not a crime last time he looked. It’s so freaking cold his feet are going numb. He left his gloves in the house. He pulls his hands up into his jacket and dances, shuffles, trying to keep warm.

“Ronnie. Ronnie.” It’s Gloria, whispering at the bottom of the door, the crack. “Are you cold?”

“What’s going on?” He’s going to be polite, at least until he’s got a hand on her scrawny neck again.

“Did you recognize her?” Gloria’s whispering makes his skin crawl. He knows who she means, the girl in the picture.

“Recognize who?” Then he begins to remember. The newspaper articles, the pictures of the four who died in the trailer fire. Neil, wearing a Padres sweatshirt and holding a beer. The three girls’ pictures from yearbooks, since they had just graduated and started college.

DNA evidence got him on the sexual assault charges, but Ronnie swore to the jury that Neil started the fire. And the jury believed him, they had to – there was no proof. The proof burned up and got their pictures in the newspaper. Yes, he thinks as his heart starts to pound out of his chest, one of the girls had shiny beige hair and braces. What. The. Fuck.

He can’t speak but he must. “Gloria? Sweetheart?”

“I’m just waiting for the others,” she whispers. The moon has gone behind a cloud, leaving darkness where Gloria’s mouth must be, at the bottom of the door. Something rustles behind him, behind the musty dry wood.

He shoves his hands in his pockets and touches the cord. “The others?”

“The other mothers. They’ll be here soon. Are you cold?”

“Well, yeah.” He chokes out a laugh. “You gonna let me out? Let’s have a talk. We have things to talk about.” He’s now shaking violently, dancing from foot to foot.

“Talk all you want. I’m just going to light my lantern here.” The scritch of a match, then a yellow glow under the door .

He scuttles to the door and crouches to catch any bit of warmth from the lantern He’s worried about what she said, the other mothers. He doesn’t want to ask though. Instead, “What’s going on?” he says.

“Don’t worry. It won’t be long now.” She pauses for a moment. “I used to pray for death, until we thought of this. What does a man like you pray for?”

“Right now, a key to the door.” His teeth are chattering so hard he can barely get the words out. “They said I wasn’t guilty. I did my time on the other.”

“You had a good lawyer, Ronnie. But there was no doubt, really. Wait. They’re here.” As Gloria walks away with the lantern, the glow disappears, replaced by swinging light from car headlights, then darkness. He hears the thunk of car doors closing, and then nothing for a long time. He thinks he’s going to freeze to death. It’s not a bad way to die, he’s heard, you just get drowsy and fall asleep. He’s not at the drowsy stage yet. He’s still at the violent shivering stage, all his bones rattling as he stamps the floor.

He feels around, disturbing a million cobwebs, until he finds a shovel. He whacks at the walls, the roof, looking for a weakness. The logs are fit solidly together. Someone spent way too much time building this goddam shed. He gets the shovel into a chink and leans on the handle. It snaps and he falls, smacking himself in the face with the splintered end of the broken handle. Goddam! It smarts like hell and tears come to his eyes.

Then he hears the whispering again. “Ronnie? We’re all here. It’s Cheryl and Jackie, remember us?”

“Let me out. Please. Please.” He’ll beg. Women change their minds when you beg, when you humiliate yourself. “I’m sorry for everything.”

“We’ve waited eight years, Ronnie. That’s long enough.”

He smells gasoline and hears the women murmuring, like prayer.