Before leaving the officer station, Tasìa grabbed a roll of toilet paper and she headed for the lavatory. Almost any emotional entanglement with others did a number on her guts.
In her teens, it made intimacy all but impossible. As an adult, she gave up on the idea of being with another person altogether when she joined the seminary and later on when she took her vows.
She walked to the farthest stall to get away from the unpleasant sharp toned music coming from the first one. Tasìa pulled down her pants. She sat down. As she reached behind herself, she grabbed the handle for water release and she kept it pressed down while relieving herself.
A customary ritual of cordiality practiced in correctional institutions the world wide. The flushing whoosh curtailed to some extent both the unpleasant sound and odor.
When she finally let up on the handle, a voice came from the next stall over.
"Midget, is that you?"
In the entire six months she had been incarcerated, Tasìa did not even bother to retain the woman's name. In her opinion, the woman was street trash in its purest and most unadulterated form.
Street Trash smack talked almost constantly without a whit of sincerity that could have possibly made her presence more tolerable to be around.
To hell with what that woman thinks.
Like many mestizas of South America, Tasìa was short. Her stature was far from atypical. She wasn't even close to being the shortest woman in the dorm. There were thirteen shorter, and six others of the same height.
Yes, she did take the time to survey. Not so much out of personal vanity, but a habit born out of her profession.
She noticed everything.
She was also proportioned with regular-sized limbs, and not small ones. In fact, they were a little long for her height, and they helped her earn her favorite nickname when she was a kid, 'spider-monkey.'
As a child, she would scurry up the bodies of adults in an attempt to rest her bum on their shoulders like the tiny monkeys did in the lively parks of her native barrio in San Pedro. In the dismal here and far bleaker now, Street Trash interrupted her pleasant memory.
"I can always tell that it is you," Street Trash called out. "You smell it up like a chemical plant has blown sky-high. Especially now, after that fucked up treatment that they have you on makes you smell so funny."
Street Trash was also right about how the chemo caused almost everything she exuded to have a metallic and sour odor about it. However, given she did everything in her power not to associate with the woman so unnaturally rude for a mature lady of their culture, Tasìa did not respond back.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
"What's the matter? You don't like me anymore? Well, just be that way, you little hateful midget."
Finally, after chuckling to herself, the woman shut up. The relief of this gave Tasìa a chance to just close her eyes for a moment to pull her thoughts together. She thought back to the conversation she had with Felicité in the break room over at Spore Isolation.
Tasìa urged the Argentinian, asking if they could execute their plan and make an attempt at an escape before the next treatment date.
Felicité smirked through a thin smile; her eyes cast low. To the Argentinian's ears, the question must have come across as a terribly naïve one for Tasìa to have even asked of her.
"We will need at least four days to map out the area between here and the tower. One day soon, I am shooting for next Sunday, we'll execute the plan.
"I get my breach work back to my friends. They contact their friends and -," Felicité pointed to the fences and the gates, "- they make some of those barriers go away. Sorry, friend, but you will have to go through chemo at least one more time. Possibly twice more, if they drag their feet. I cannot guarantee you that they won't."
In the several dozen break-ins where there were many varying levels of security involved, Tasìa never had to expend more than a single evening towards casing a marked area.
It was often dangerous to go back to the same properties on multiple occasions ahead of an operation. You only increased your risk of exposure. All too often, you did so without gaining anything vitally necessary to make the extra risk worth it.
In her opinion, Felicité's insistence that they spend so much time in the planning stage of the operation was driven by the Argentinian's youth and inexperience.
After Tasìa finished up, she made her way to the washroom where she stood in front of a sink. She cringed when she smelled a familiar raspberry scented shampoo. Typically, it was worn by Ria Javierra but few others.
The older woman walked over to Tasìa. A little self-satisfied smile creased Ria's face; her hands, she clasped together.
"As you may know, the lieutenant asked me about what occurred. He was very upset, but I told him that it was not like you to make waves like you did in the gym. You only want to get out of here on the best of terms like anyone else, right Tasìa?"
She watched the woman approach from the vantage point of the mirror in front of her.
Del Alma-Gris' face was stiff with anger; it took all of her effort not to glare back at the mafiosa dame.
Tasìa's lips puckered full and she waved her chin up.
"Don't worry about me," said Tasìa, "I'll be fine. I will land like a cat. I always do."
Her anger at Ria drove her to speak with a surety in her words that she certainly did not feel.
Ria paused before she responded; evidently, Tasìa's words were not the contrite ones that she expected.
"It's good that you feel that way, but you can always use a little help. I believe I may have talked the lieutenant out of doing anything rash. It all will likely blow over soon enough."
Ria spent only a few seconds washing her hands before she left.
Tasha thought it was peculiar for the woman to show up as she did. Which one of the stalls did she inhabit? There was only one other in use besides the two stalls Tasìa and Street Trash occupied. She was sure that the youth-oriented music that came from that stall was not likely to Ria's taste.
When Tasìa made it back to her cell, instantly, upon sight, she knew something was out of place.