When they let her out of prison she got on a bus and drove to her mother's house in the town she had grown up in. Her mother had died there, long ago. Now the bus she was taking took the same route of her old high school bus, before she had learned to drive, and oddly, the wet blank February day wasn't that different from those days when she had been a lonely and awkwardly tall teenager. Alex Vause was still lonely and tall and she didn't even have a car. She still wore glasses. She grimaced at her own reflection in the window and bit her lip.
Her mother's house stood cold and lonely like herself, the porch rickety, weeds growing through the floorboards and leaves gathering in the gutter. It had once been a nice house, one of the few Victorian houses in the area; she had bought it for her mother herself. Some shingles had come off the roof several winters ago. No one had come to clear them.
Alex opened the windows and checked the water taps. She let the faucets run brownish water in the kitchen and bathrooms and checked the damage done from seeping rain and lack of care. Walking through the old rooms, she kept calm and blank. She felt too old for crying, too worn out, too much to cry about.
The bed in the guest room gave off a cloud of grayish dust when she slammed her arm onto it. Alex sighed. She had no idea how to get all the dust out of things. The heaters clicked and groaned in the depths of the house as they were coming on. Alex sat down on the bed and looked at her reflection in the mirror over the dresser. A dark haired woman with glasses in a parka, half-scowling, an ex-con, she thought. She really did still look the same as she had that morning. Her hair was long, which was probably what made her look younger than her age. Maybe she should cut it. She laughed at the thought. In the closets, she knew, there would still be some cheap left over evidence of her more glamorous days. Then she glanced at the bed. It sat there, knowing things. Alex made herself not think of those things.
A grocer packed some beer bottles, mustard, cigarettes and hot dogs into a brown paper bag at the bodega a few blocks away. It was already well into the night. Alex had been surprised the grocer still was there. She shook as she counted out the coins. It was the first time using money since she had bought the bus fare. Why is a nickel larger than a dime, she thought. Then the door swung open and a woman walked in with a small white dog. She was wearing nice clothes, sweatpants, but nice sweatpants: clean and pink and cozy, maybe she had gone for a walk. Her figure was good, Alex noticed, and suddenly she realized she had been obviously staring at the woman's ass. Then the woman turned around and they were looking at each other. Alex felt her lip curling despite herself and her chin rising derisively.
"Hey," she said, "Jessica Wedge."
The woman mistook Alex's sneer for friendliness. She let her dog drop to the ground and said, "Oh my God. How have you been."
Her hair was a little lighter than Alex remembered, but her eyes were still pale. Her face hadn't changed much at all. It was freckled and child-like.
"Good," Alex lied, "I've been good."
"I've just been out for exercise. Trouble sleeping, I guess. Andy just retired," the woman said, "and Serena and Chelsea both go to Brown."
"Really," said Alex, never having heard of these people, "you must be so proud."
"Oh," said Jessica, "So proud."
She was grinning, and nodding, and staring at Alex with questioning, almost hungry eyes. For a sudden awful second Alex had a vision of soft wall-to-wall carpeting and a buzzing television set and static dust.
You must be bored out of your fucking bullshit yuppie ass mind, Alex thought. She headed for the door with her bag on her arm, nodding at Jessica. She sensed a sick feeling at the bottom of her stomach; a worry that made her want to cry and she couldn't quite identify it.
"You have kids, Alex?" Jessica called after her.
Alex guffawed. "Are you kidding me," she said.
"I'm sorry," said Jessica. It sounded like she was actually sorry about something, but what it was, Alex didn't quite know. She hoped it had nothing to do with kids. But she felt Jessica's loneliness seeping in every direction, and it made her stop in her tracks.
"Look," she said, though she didn't know why she said it, maybe she was lonely, maybe it was the rawness of being out of prison and having no one to celebrate with, maybe she felt sorry for the woman – "Would you like to have a beer? It'll help you sleep."
Jessica looked like someone had just asked her to jump out of a fast flying helicopter. Her eyes flashed miserably with excitement.
They shared the beers on the porch, despite it being late February. Alex brought out two dusty Adirondack chairs that must have colored onto their pants, but Jessica either refused to notice in the dark or she actually took it as part of the adventure of having a beer with Alex Vause.
"You're strong," said Jessica, when she saw Alex carrying the chairs. Alex only raised her eyebrows. It made Jessica laugh.
"So, Jessica," said Alex, removing her glasses and cleaning them with a piece of toilet paper, "how come you live in this God forsaken place."
"It's just how it happened," said Jessica. "I went to Rutgers, met Andy, then Andy actually got a job at the place here, can you imagine? It was a coincidence, actually, like, we didn't actually plan on coming here. Now Andy's got heart disease and retired early, two months ago. But, I mean, it's okay. I have my horse, Abby. And the kids. I mean, well, they're at school now, of course."
"Huh," said Alex. She lit a cigarette. She had meant to say, Why that really sounds fucking depressing, but instead she sat quietly for a while. Jessica's dog let out a farting kind of snore. Alex smirked and looked over at Jessica. There were tiny pearl earrings in her earlobes, miraculously like the ones she had worn back in junior high.
A bit of wind was playing with the dead leaves on the lawn. It was Alex's first night out of prison in eleven years.
"It's fucking depressing, actually," said Jessica after a while.
"Yeah?" said Alex. Her own voice rang raspy and smug.
"You know," said Jessica quietly, "they were always telling stories about you, the wildest things. There was one about how you had become a secret agent or something, traveling the globe, then in one you ran an international drug cartel and were swimming in money and a crazy life and in another you were in prison…"
"They?" said Alex, "You mean, like, They say faux-fur vests are in this season?"
She snickered. Jessica bit her lip and her eyes were watery with amusement. She is drunk on that one beer, just a few sips of beer, Alex thought.
"Sounds better than being called Sasquatch, though," said Alex. She paused, raised an eyebrow at Jessica and pleasingly sensed Jessica's discomfort in the dark. Then Alex added, "Anyway, you shouldn't believe the shit people come up with."
The worried feeling at the pit of her stomach lingered even after Jessica had left. Alex found some old sheets and made her bed in the guest room. The beer had mellowed her; the very dark, fizzing thoughts stayed away. But it was after she had lifted the mattress of that bed a little that she realized what the worried sick feeling was about.
Seeing Jessica had made her wonder about Piper, almost as much as if she had run into her ex-girlfriend herself. Over the years, Alex had pushed the thought of Piper further and further away, but now, suddenly, questions flooded her gut. Where on earth was she now? Was she happy? Did she have kids? Did she go running at night? Did she ever think of her?
Alex let the mattress drop, and threw two pillows in place. She stared at the bed. Her first, in over a decade - and it was that very same fucking bed she and Piper had fucked in, numerous times, special times when they'd come to visit Alex's mother. They had stifled each other's cries with pillows and the palms of their hands, she remembered. They had watched each other in that mirror over the dresser. They had come, reeling, clutching each other's sweaty skin, and pressing their mouths together and coming from the sheer necessity of keeping it down. Those had been such fun, such good times. They'd fuck all night and then they'd wake up to Alex's mother downstairs, making coffee, the radio blaring Wanda Jackson. If heaven were a place, or a time…
Instinctively Alex groped under the mattress, as if hoping to find evidence there of those moments. Nothing. "Well, fuck," she muttered, as she curled into the bed. It smelled of dust, but it was so comfortable it almost hurt.
Alex woke with the sun shining in her face and bits of dust dancing in the light. It was very quiet, and very peaceful. She realized with a start that she was all by herself. Her old watch said it was almost noon. Alex showered and dressed, then decided to take a walk and buy some proper groceries. She walked down the road in the direction of the town, past the car dealership that made her wonder how long it would take to save up for a car. Oddly, the thought didn't make her despair as it had in prison. It just was as it was. She would have to get a job eventually. She would call her old friends and talk to them. She would fix up her mother's place and then maybe sell it and move somewhere that had nothing at all to do with her past; somewhere she would never have to think about Piper. Germany, maybe. Or Canada. She would not hang out with sorry ass people like Jessica Wedge that gave her sorry flashbacks. Fuck people like Jessica Wedge and Piper Chapman.
By the time Alex was carrying her groceries back to the house she was already making a list of people to call in the next few days. There was Donnie, her old high school friend, her first boyfriend actually – until the night they had both tearfully and simultaneously come out as gay to each other. And there was Nicky, who had been out of prison for a few years now, and then there was Vic, a kind rather than good friend who had visited Alex in prison and sent books every now and then.
A car was parked neatly in front of the house. Alex glanced at it, but it didn't quite register. She stopped to open the mailbox with one hand and emptied out a thick wad of ads dating back to 2013, which she flung in the trash. Then she glanced at the car and glanced up and down the road. A cat hopped off the neighbor's fence and slunk away. Alex headed up the front porch, pulling her keys out of her back pocket. She thought of the pocket knife she had just bought herself, too expensive and of little use but so satisfying; it had felt like something she ought to have, both as a lesbian and then as someone who hadn't been near such an object for one whole long ass fucking sentence.
"Alex?"
Alex spun around. A woman was coming towards her with stringy blonde hair and darkish eyebrows. Oh my God, thought Alex, Oh Fuck, but she couldn't say anything.
"Alex – is this a bad time?"
Alex set down her groceries at her feet, then stood up and shifted her glasses. She wasn't sure whether to take them off, so she pushed them back up her nose. Then she realized she had been looking at the ground. She looked up again. She didn't know what she was feeling.
"I know," said the woman, gesturing hurriedly with her hands, "I know you said I couldn't come to you but, well, I overheard you were getting out around now so I drove by here to check, just to check…"
She sighed and dropped her arms to her sides. "Actually, I don't even know what the fuck I'm doing. I'm sorry. This was a bad idea."
Maybe a lot of time passed until Alex spoke. The woman had just been about to turn around and walk away.
"Well, you're already here, Piper. You might as well come in for a cup of tea or a beer or something."
Piper's eyes looked large and shocked and grateful.
"Just, don't give me that look. Jesus."
