On one uncharacteristically quiet morning in the Middleworth Men's Correctional Facility, Calvin Sweet at twenty-nine years old stopped to<i>really </i>take stock of his life for the first time since the trial ended. Almost overnight his carefully-constructed network of lies had come crumbling down, and with it he'd lost everything: family members wouldn't talk to him; old friends pretended they'd never known him; that overprice bachelor pad in L.A. was foreclosed on and the $110,000 BMW he'd kept meticulously clean in its garage was probably sitting in a police lock-up waiting for auction someplace. His name and face had been all over the news: some stations called him the<i>Casanova Con-Man</i>, or any other of a half-dozen other monikers, mostly alliterative, wholly unoriginal; a handful of the bigger newspapers relished in using his family name, opting for the simple:<i>Mr. Sweet</i>. Their incessant coverage had the sensibilities of reality T.V. and Calvin, who lived and died by vanity, finally realized there<i>was </i>such a thing as<i>bad attention</i>.<br/><br/>In a flash he was back out of the public eye, with nothing to show for a lifetime spent conning but a hefty sentence for multiple counts of theft by deception and a stack of love-letters from deranged pen-pals who'd been following the case from home. Nothing else remained. His entire adult life Calvin Sweet had inflicted loss on others, but now for the first time he truly<i>understood </i>loss. Which was fitting, as he'd always held one truth to be sacred above all others:<i>everything is fleeting; there can only be loss</i>. Blame entropy, or death, or maybe time itself. All was temporary and anything worth loving could be snatched away in a heartbeat. Someday the whole universe would burn out and everyone who'd ever dreamed a dream would be nothing. So,<i>really</i>, compared to the<i>incomprehensible </i>scale of loss experienced daily (not to mention the scale of loss<i>yet to be suffered</i>), the amount of damage any<i>one </i>rip-off artist or another could do was practically nothing. In the cosmic sense, it was peanuts.<br/><br/>At least these were the kinds of contrived revelations and mantras Calvin Sweet told himself so he didn't have (too much) trouble sleeping at night. Whether he believed them or not - whether he<i>knew if he believed them or not</i>- was another story altogether.<br/><br/>Long before his first swindle Calvin had been the kind of kid to root for the bad guys in old gangster flicks. He came from a broken home - single mom, disinterested older sister, trailer park upbringing - but not an abusive one. Hell, most of his childhood memories were<i>good </i>ones. If there was something wrong with Calvin Sweet (and it sure seemed there<i>must be</i>), it was because he'd been<i>born </i>wrong. Perhaps his arrival here at Middleworth had been simply unavoidable.<br/><br/>But what was past was past; Calvin had lost almost two million dollars and in its place were the jailhouse currencies of stampbooks and prepackaged ramen noodles. Out with the swanky neighborhood where he rubbed elbows with doctors and lawyers and actors, in with this cramped little shoebox of a two-occupant cell he shared with a low-level drug dealer named Spider. All the smooth talk and high-price suits hadn't been enough to save Calvin from himself. On his cross-country heartbreak rampage he'd stolen exorbitant sums from the wealthy and vulnerable, and all the paper trails pointed back to him. What struck Calvin as strangest of all was the way he had felt throughout the trial and continued to feel now: not upset, not angry, not depressed. Just empty.<br/><br/>Or maybe that's what being depressed was.<br/><br/>The loud buzzing of an electronic door lock snapped him back into the real world. The doors were opening up, inmates were milling out into the common areas. Calvin stopped for a moment and stood by the gunmetal gray toilet-sink combination to get as good a look as he could muster in its reflection. He was a good-looking guy (would've been damned hard to ply his trade if he weren't): broad-shouldered, strong jaw, smokey gray-blue eyes. About average height and weight; wasn't bulging with muscle, certainly wasn't fat. He'd been in better shape before the trial. At least prison would offer him an opportunity to get back to his workout regimen. He had dirty-blond hair, short-cropped at the sides and just a<i>titch</i>longer on top. His skin had been on the paler side of tan when he was on the outside; now that his outdoor time was rationed it was already starting to lighten further.<br/><br/>A loud rapping at the entryway to his cell. A guard stood, arms folded, ready to escort Calvin to the wing with a half-dozen nondescript medical offices that social workers and psychologists had to fight over for their weeklies. "Sweet," the guard said. "You've got your visit with the doc." Calvin had nearly forgotten. It was his understanding that all new arrivals to Middleworth underwent a basic psychiatric screener to suss out the suicide risks and the real psychos. He'd answered the questions honestly: no, he'd never thought about killing himself, no, he'd never been on any of their listed medicines; yes, he had an uncle who'd offed himself with a shotgun before Calvin had even been born; yes, he had a family history of substance abuse. In a joint like this, who the hell didn't?<br/><br/>Regardless, he'd been flagged for an additional psychiatric visit. Oh well. At least it was a chance to spend some time in a room that only<i>slightly</i>stunk of metal and piss and B.O., without the harsh dead little shark eyes of goombahs like Spider and his pals watching his every move for some sign of weakness. Calvin followed the guard out of his cell block and through several hallways towards the medical offices; a trip that should've taken no more than two minutes reached nearly ten thanks to the stop-and-go pace of those loud screeching doors. When they arrived at the visiting office Calvin took a step forward, reached for the knob - immediately the guard raised a hand and swatted him back, tongue<i>cluck-cluck-clucking</i>.<br/><br/>"Wait for the doc to call you in," he said.<br/><br/>Calvin grimaced. At least he didn't have to wear shackles to the visits. He'd seen a couple of guys who had to make the trip down to this wing in the full get-up: spit masks, ankle restraints, wrist shackles; real Hannibal Lecter treatment. One even had to be shackled to the wall during the visits themselves. Not Calvin. He parted his lips as if to defend his honor in some meaningless way--maybe he could tell the guard about how he used to date a senator's daughter, or maybe he'd talk about the standing reservation he used to have at the most sought-after steakhouse in the city. But those things would only serve his vanity -- and here, in a cage of concrete a thousand times removed from his old life, he was beyond vanity's reach.<br/><br/>So instead Calvin just nodded, and let his hands settle at his sides, and waited.