Across my desk

He sits back and smiles a comfortable smile. She could tell this is not the first time he has told anyone of his secret. But it is the first he has shared his colorful past with her.
"I wasn't your typical..." and his voice fades away as if you could not admit aloud the name of what he had been before the girl had met him.
The well groomed man cleared his throat to buy time in place of unspoken words. She recognizes his habit and raises an eye brown and cocks her head smiling most encouragingly as she continued to grip the state issued radio.
"I always drove the speed limit and kept my car in good repair. I made sure my tail lights were working. I gave the cops no excuse to pull me over."
"Ralph. You surprise me."
"Depending on where the drugs would come from, I would drive for hours. Days if I had to go all the way to the coast."
She nods, exterminating his profile, knowing all criminals exaggerate and glorify their crimes. No one wants to be a two bit convict busted for doing something stupid. His silvery hair gives him a distinguished appearance that she admires. Unlike the others histories, she wants to hear his.
"At first I would just supply my boss. Buying for him, I could afford my own. Then I used the opportunity to make a little money. "
His blue eyes glisten with his memory and his soliloquy stops. He wants to be high right then, she can tell.
Ralph clears his throat and continues. The security check on her as inconspicuous as they can. They themselves a nosey lot, always looking to stir the pot and cause some excitement. She has long since stopped pretending anything else matters. Her computer chirps with incoming mail, the phone ignored.
"I worked down town then at the Hilton."
Most of the offenders claim to have job experience at fine restaurants. Closest the majority of them had was eating out of the dumpsters in back of the upscale establishments. But she believed Ralph. He had no reason to lie to her.
"I could really produce when I was tripping. That was the only way I could work so hard so fast and for so long."
"I drink a lot of coffee", the blushing girl injected trying to relate but unsure of the tone the conversation was heading.
"Until one night I was working a buffet and Donald Duck walked up to my station and I almost lost it in public."
"Donald Duck?"
"Yes. I saw Donald Duck but knew it could not be Donald Duck. He started out with a mans body and Donald's face and kept turning more duck like. But I saw him in a crowded people filled banquet and knew I had to keep my head straight and not freak out. I got through that night and driving to my friends house after work the city lights seamed wrong, way to bright. The city too big. I curled into a ball under the table at my friends and he helped me through it. I knew I couldn't drop acid anymore. I stopped the coke and weed after that."
"The girl took a drink from the Styrofoam cup and the man resembling Bill Clinton mimicked her action. The sound of the offender workers outside her office seamed farther away then. The curious faces that would peer in at them occasionally more distant.
"I would drive all the way home up north after I came down so my wife would not know. Mary would have left me had she known."
The girl knew it was against all policy to be drawn to a person of his standing, but she was a little disappointed he had a wife to share this intimacy with.
"But that was a long time ago. A lifetime." Ralph smiles and nods, ending his account, his eyes twinkling.
"Ralph. You do realize we are in a prison and I used to work in a rehab?" she teases.
"Yes, he replies standing and gathering his things. "Just be ready on Monday when I stop by in the morning and pick you up before we head out to train the Rush City facility.
"Can we light one up on the way over boss?" she asks the mans Stefano Ricci clad back.