The commitments I've made to people during my life have been few - economical.  I've never married; there are no children.  There are other kinds of obligations.

I am an old woman.  I live in a wheelchair.  Granted, it's parked in a house, but I reside in the wheelchair, like a helpless chick in an egg; frail but content, for the time being, within a thin veil of security.

My friend Annie is in the next room.  She doesn't leave her bed much.  This story is about Annie.  And me.  And how much one person is willing to do for another.

"What do you mean, you're not going to the junior-senior picnic?"  I stood at the open, dutch-doors of the Piege's kitchen.  "Arthur Roland's gonna' be there, Steve Minetti, all the cute guys, Apples!  All guys like sweet, yummy apples!"  Annie blushed at this less-than-innocent invocation of her childhood nickname.  She laughed and covered her mouth.

I propped my feathered bangs off my forehead and blew a pink, Bazooka-Joe bubble half the size of my face, then pinched it until it sagged away.  "We waited to get our driver's licenses all these years, and now's when you're gonna' start hangin' out at home?  My mom's gonna' let me take the Firebird!  C'mon, Apples, I'm not gonna' have any fun if you're not there!"

Annie looked at her feet.  "T.J. wants to come over and watch a movie.  Just the two of us.  My folks won't be home until eleven, so we can be alone.  T.J. doesn't like goin' places anyway, says he likes to have me all to himself." She shrugged, unsure.  "You'll have a blast.  You can tell me all about it."

"I don't know about your new boyfriend, Annie . . . he seems like sort of a jerk-wad." Dejected, I started home but turned around to cajole her a final time.  "I'll miss you if you're not there!  If you change your mind, even at the last second, call me.  I'll come an' get ya'.  Without Teee-Jay." I drew the two letters with my finger and feigned a face like I was sick.  I didn't like the way Annie smiled back; it was a weak smile, intended to fool me.

I walked home, my thumbs tucked in the pockets of my cut-offs as I kicked a rock back and forth across the road, never making it go quite where I wanted.

I recognized the blonde guard from my previous visits.  "Ms. Fay Guirrera," he called out, grinning.  He was young, efficient; always pleasant.  Sometimes I'd flatter myself and imagine he had a little crush on me, despite our difference in age.  I moved forward, careful to stop my toes at the strip of red masking-tape on the cement floor.  I signed in, then looked up.

The large sign on the north wall read:  PRISONERS  -  CONFINEMENT ISN'T A BAD THING, AS LONG AS YOU'RE UNWILLING TO LEAVE, punctuated at the bottom with a smiley-face.  The sheriff's sense of humor at work.  I'd seen it a hundred times.  I stared at it until I realized the line was moving again.

Two men crowded me from behind; they mumbled and conspired, then laughed loudly.  What could've been that damned funny, considering where we were?  One of them wore dollar-store cologne so overwhelming it made me nauseous.  I fanned at my face with court papers, hoping to make the odor go backwards - return it to its source.

I peeked over my shoulder and did a quick scan of the room for my young guard.  One of his glances might have rescued me, taken my mind off the oppressive cologne that attacked me from behind, but he was looking the other way.   Disconnected and alone, I folded my arms and waited.

If only I'd changed my clothes after court.  The dominant fashion passing through the metal detectors at Salas County Jail's receiving-area was urban-dressed-down; jeans, t-shirts, flip-flops.  I still wore my conspicuous lawyer-uniform:  matching skirt and jacket, high-heels.   How I would've preferred, this time, to blend in with the masses.

Successful, Ivy League-educated lawyer - would I ever think of myself like that again?  The line moved and acid reigned in my stomach.

Before this, I'd lost only three clients' cases in five years as an attorney.  All of them were, in fact, guilty; one conviction resulted in just two years probation.  I could abide with those tiny blemishes on an otherwise Cover-girl-perfect career.

Client Annette Peige Jeffers' case was different, however.  She should have been found 'not guilty.'

"I'll get you off, I swear, Annie.  No jury will convict, not when I'm through with 'em.  Just let me take care of everything." I filled my client, my lifelong friend with confidence, hope.  I'd fought like a mother-panther for Annie with every bit of energy and guile I possessed.

I promised triumph; I delivered a calamity instead.

This would be the first time we'd seen each other since the verdict of four hours earlier:  guilty of second-degree murder.  Mandatory sentencing rules meant at least twenty years; Judge Melnik had no choice.  Annie would next see freedom as a middle-aged woman.

After flashing my bar-card and driver's license to another guard, I was pointed toward an empty booth.  I scraped a grey, metal chair into place and waited; massaged my hands, rocked my foot, rubbed my temples.  "Don't let her see you cry, Fay, gotta' be the strong one, give her something to hang onto," I whispered to myself.

Graffiti covered the walls of the booth, describing every bodily function imaginable; a misspelled volume of profanities.  Artfully scratched into the impact-glass in front of me were the words "you suck," a previous visitor's unintended yet prophetic message.

I took a sharp breath, unprepared for Annie's emergence from the steel door on the other side of the glass.  Out she walked in a Salas County, fluorescent- orange jump-suit.  That particular color of suit meant one was, in jail-speak:  'raw meat' - newly convicted of a felony, temporarily being held at County and waiting to be transported to a state penitentiary.  I'd joked with my fellow lawyers about other detainees in the same, sickening situation Annie was now in.

Steadying my trembling hand, I picked up the black telephone receiver as she did the same.  She held her eyes open wide, wider than normal, trying to appear alert and indifferent.  She smiled, but it was a tepid, helpless curve of the lips, an expression one forces on for friends and loved ones so they won't worry.  I'd witnessed that look before.

Raw meat.

"I'm sorry, Apples, I didn't do very well for you, did I," I asked. I coughed, couldn't swallow; my throat had dried up and tasted like the acid in my gut.

"You did great, Fay. I'm proud of you." She shook her head; relaxed a bit.  "Being here isn't as bad as waiting for T.J. to beat me up again, if you want to know the truth."

"How did I screw up, Annie?  I thought I had that jury of morons in the palm of my hand," I said.  "I've got a strong case for appeal, so to hell with them.  Be strong, Apples, I'm never. . . ."

"Fay," she interrupted, "I knew what I was doing. Just like I knew T.J. would eventually kill me.  I saw all of this coming.  You were a genius in court!  No one could've done better."

As the minutes passed, Annie looked baggy-eyed, wrung out.  "When I shot T.J., I knew there would be a price, that I'd be sent here.  But think about it, Fay.  When they lock the door every night, my chances are better to wake up alive than if I were with Teej'." Her glorious, cobalt-blue eyes stopped moving and focused on me.  She wasn't as upset as I was and at that exact moment had quit questioning the injustice that was her life, I could tell.

I stayed until four-thirty, end of visitation.  I reminded Annie how the appeals process worked ("be optimistic"), then asked her for a list of toiletries she wanted.  I told her I would see her the next day, the moment I was allowed in.

Annie looked so pretty.  It was her fortieth birthday.   She'd brushed on a little make-up and was wearing the pale-green cardigan I'd given her the month before.  She smiled as she walked toward me - her pure, absorbing smile, one like I couldn't muster.

I'd brought birthday cards, ninety or so from around the country, and a cake; chocolate, Annie's favorite.  I had the baker put two giant, frosting apples on top.  No candles were allowed, of course.

Annie had become a folk-hero.  'Ms. Magazine' and '60 Minutes' had done stories about her.  She'd had nine marriage proposals.  I finished her website that year and it had over forty-thousand hits in its first six months.

My practice closed a couple of years earlier; there was just too much to do for Apples and run a law office.  There were frequent visits to Wollstone Women's Penitentiary, the web site, letters to the governor - a holy crusade.

A commutation was Annie's only hope.  I ran out the appeals process four years prior.  I had a breakdown, then my office closed.  I attempted suicide that December, something I never told her about.

I admit, I adored those visits to Wollstone.  It was nice to get out of my dark apartment; my t.v. and stereo hadn't worked for years, anyway.  I could be around people, get some sun and fresh air.  Over the prison walls were two beautiful, snow-capped mountains.  I can picture them still, standing side by side, like eternal siblings.

Annie was stopped by another inmate, asked to stand in a picture with her.  She got that all the time.  She was a celebrity.

We hugged like we had every time since childhood.   "Hi, Fay," she said.  I always squeezed a little harder than she did, not wanting to let her go.

She was kind to indulge me, to remain my friend, considering my grave failure on her behalf.  All I wanted was for Annie to endure.

There's a steel-framed photo of us on the shelf above my headboard taken the day after Annie's release.  We celebrated at 'The Happy Cajun.' Annie had one beer with her dinner then fell asleep in the car on the way home.

Even at fifty, she'd remained striking.  Her hair had gone absolute-white and framed her perfect, slim face; she looked like a retired 'Breck-girl' from one of those old shampoo ads.  Men were attracted to her like bees to a garden.  She turned them all down, never going on as much as a lunch date the rest of her life.  She'd been stung enough.

I, though, started showing every day of my age early on.  My coffee-brown mane decayed into an un-manageable bramble of silver.  If not for her white locks, I think Annie might have been mistaken for my daughter.

We've spent these last, happy years together.  We found a little house on Chadwick Avenue; until a few years ago, I tutored English-as-a-second-language students.  Annie counseled battered women at a downtown shelter.

One overcast Sunday last spring, as Annie pushed me through the park, she asked, "Fay, how would you define friendship?' She stopped near a weather-beaten, wooden bench, turning my wheelchair to face her as she sat.

Two mockingbirds were perched on a maple branch near us.  One sang while the other pecked at its own wing.

"What a question!  There are different kinds of friends, I imagine," I answered, amused.  "The level of a friend-ship is determined by the amount of the sacrifice both people make, I think."

"I agree," she said.

I inhaled the wonderful smells of the park as she continued.  "Did I ever tell you the story about the first time I met T.J.?"

I remembered the day.  "I was there, Apples.  The three of us had Mrs. Brown's biology class, first hour, if I recall.  Brownie sat us in alphabetical order; we ended up in the same row.  Guirrera, Jeffers, Peige."

Annie looked straight ahead, past me.  "T.J. slipped me a note that day.  It said:  'Tell your friend Fay I like her.'"

I said nothing.  I'd never heard this.

"Our second meeting was later that same day.  He showed up at my house, about four in the afternoon, kept at me . . . about you.  Wanted me to put in a good word.  That, actually, was the first time he yelled at me.  He was quite obsessed with you."

"Oh, Annie. . . ."

"That went on for about a week.  I knew I'd never arrange anything between you two.  He was malevolent, Fay; so damn violent.  I saw it in him right off."

"I couldn't tell you; I knew you wouldn't be interested and I was afraid he'd take it out on both of us.  So I stalled, until I had an idea  - I made a pass at him, kissed him one day after school."

She didn't wait for me to respond.  "That diverted him, though he still went on about you.  One thing led to another between us, unfortunately.  Days became months, then years.  I grew used to it, if you can understand that.  I had to do it that way, though, Fay.  I wasn't strong, like you.  I didn't have it in me to just tell him to go to hell.  The story of millions of women, right?  But I had to keep him from you, in my weak way.  Thank God we never had children." She smiled and shook her head.

"One night, oh, he was so drunk . . . told me he was going to pay you a visit.  'Let's go see if our good lookin' lawyer friend wants a little tonight,' he said.  His eyes were like lifeless stones.  That was the night I killed him.  With the gun he always threatened me with."

"A jury would've assumed I shot him in a jealous rage - jealous over you!  And I didn't want anyone thinking we'd plotted his murder.  So I kept the details about that night a secret."

She lowered her gaze and said, "It was just the last time I protected you from him, dear."

I buried my head in my hands, struck by the realization of what Annie had sacrificed.  Just then the second mockingbird stopped pecking at itself and began to sing loudly - a wailing, manic lament for anyone who cared to listen.

"Don't cry, Fay," Annie whispered, but I couldn't stop.

It's a dark night.  Annie is asleep.  The wind is humming in the trees; its music passes through the cracks in the windows and the doors - a ghostly lullaby of oboes and flutes for my weary heroine.

I had to tell someone this story before I died.  About my precious Annie.

And both of us last still, locked together in this state of friendship we happened into long ago.  It has become a private place where, in the end, only the two of us are allowed.

Author Bio

Robert's writing has appeared in print in Canada's Storyteller Magazine and Atheneum, and on the web at Facets, Reality X, and Expression.