Lost December

by Richard Paul Evans

  The security guard looked angry. Paris all over again, I thought. Only this time there was no card to swipe. “I’ve got a problem,” I said.

  Dot grimaced. “I’m dead.”

  “Maybe if you try the card for a lesser amount,” I said.

  “How much?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe seven or eight thousand.”

  “I can try.” She came back a few minutes later. “It cleared for seventy-five hundred. That leaves a balance of two thousand three hundred and fifty-five.”

  I checked my wallet. All I had was $232. “I need to call some people. I need to go back to my room.”

  “You’re not leaving,” the guard said.

  “It would be best …”

  He cut me off. “The only way you leave this place without paying your bill is in a police cruiser,” he said.

  I pointed at Sean. “Why don’t you take him, he’s the one doing all the drinking.”

  “Cabana’s in your name, sir,” the guard said.

  “I got you seventy-five hundred dollars. I’ll get you the rest.”

  “It’s resort policy.”

  As I tried to think of a solution, I remembered my new Rolex. “Can you take my watch as collateral?”

  The guard shook his head. “We’re not a pawnshop.”

  “Can I take it back? It will only take me a few minutes.”

  “You can’t leave the resort, sir.”

  “Can someone come with me?”

  “We can’t leave the resort, sir.”

  I looked around, exasperated. I shouted to Sean, “Sean, do you have any money?”

  He was kissing one of the women.

  “Sean,” I shouted again.

  He turned to me looking annoyed. “What?”

  “Do you have any money?”

  “Yeah, right,” he said. He turned back to the woman.

  I didn’t even consider asking him to take my watch back. He was too hammered and I doubted I would actually see the money. “Let me call my girlfriend and have her return my watch.” I telephoned Candace, but she didn’t answer. I tried five more times over the next twenty minutes. The security guard was losing his patience.

  “Okay, maybe someone will buy my watch.”

  The guard followed me as I walked to the cabana next to ours. I pulled the watch from my arm. “I need to raise some cash,” I said loudly. “I’ve got a Rolex President I bought this morning. It’s a twenty-two-thousand-dollar watch. I’ll sell it for half that.”

  They all turned away from me.

  “I’ll sell it for seven thousand dollars.”

  “Get lost,” someone said.

  “Thirty-five hundred,” I said.

  “Thirty-five hundred,” a young man said. “Let me see it.”

  I couldn’t believe I was that desperate. I took the watch off and handed it to him. He looked it over. “How do I know it’s real?”

  “It’s real.”

  “I can tell,” another man standing next to him said. He held it up, studying its movement. “It’s real.” He handed the watch back to his friend. The man looked at it again, then handed it back to me. “I’ll give you twenty-eight hundred.”

  “Come on,” I said. “Thirty-five was ridiculously low.”

  The man shrugged. “Sorry, it’s all I got. Take it or leave it.” He turned away.

  I looked around. Dot and the security man were staring at me. “All right,” I said in exasperation. “Twenty-eight.”

  The man turned back and said, “Deal.” He took out his wallet and counted out a stack of hundreds. I noticed he had more bills in his wallet after counting out the money.

  I counted out $2,355 and handed it to Dot. She counted it out as well, then turned to the guard and nodded. He glanced at me and walked away. Dot looked back at me with indignity. “No tip?”

  I handed her a $100 bill, which was suddenly a fortune to me but did little to please her since she expected much more from a $10,000 bar tab.

  “A hundred dollars?”

  “Get the rest from him,” I said, pointing at Sean.

  She approached Sean. Sean said something to her I couldn’t hear, but I saw her throw up her arms, then walk away angrily. Sean must have tried to order a drink from her because he immediately approached me. “What gives, Crispy? She said they’ve cut off our bar tab.”

  “I shut it down,” I said. “I’m out of money.”

  “You’ve got to do something, man. The girls will leave.”

  “You didn’t hear me. I’m out of money”.

  “Then transfer some more into your account.”

  “There’s nothing left to transfer. It’s gone. All of it.”

  He looked at me as if I were speaking Chinese. “You blew through your entire trust fund?” he said, as if he’d had nothing to do with it.

  “You owe me money. You need to get it.”

  “I told you I’d get it.”

  “I need it now.”

  “I can’t get it right now,” he said. “Why don’t you just call your dad?”

  “Why don’t you call your dad?” I snapped back.

  “I don’t have one,” Sean said.

  “Then call your uncle. You need to call him now”.

  He looked at me with a bizarre grin. “I don’t have one of those either.”

  It was as if the scales fell from my eyes. For the first time I saw Sean for who he really was. I slammed my fist into his face and he dropped to the ground. “You stinking thief,” I shouted. “You lying, stinking user.”

  He held his hand to his bleeding nose. “You hit me.” He looked at me from the ground with a twisted grin. “You’re a hypocrite, Crisp. Where did you get your money? It was no sweat off your back, man. You used your old man—I used you. It’s the circle of life.”

  “You’ve got an excuse for everything, don’t you, you dirtbag.”

  Even with blood on his face he smiled. “I told you when we first met,” he said. “Cardboard soul, man. Cardboard soul.” He stood up, then stumbled off away from me.

  Up to that point I hadn’t realized I had the capacity to hate someone that much.

  CHAPTER

  Twenty-Three

  I have pulled the mask from Sean’s face to reveal the real man,

  only to learn that I preferred him with the mask.

  Luke Crisp’s Diary

  I had $577 to my name. I took a $12 cab back to the hotel—it was the first time in six months that I’d actually paid attention to the amount—and went up to our room. Candace was lying on the bed.

  “Hey,” she said as I walked in. “Sorry I missed your calls. I was in the shower.”

  “We’ve got to go,” I said.

  She looked at me quizzically. “Go where?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, sitting on the bed.

  She sat up. “What’s wrong?”

  “Sean’s gone,” I said. “For good.” I rubbed my fist.

  “Did he pay you back?”

  I grinned darkly. “Yeah, right.”

  “What about his uncle? Did he call him?”

  “Sean doesn’t have an uncle.”

  “What?”

  I looked into her eyes. “Candace, I ran out of money.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “My entire trust fund is gone.”

  She looked at me in shock. “We couldn’t possibly have spent that much.”

  “I didn’t have as much as I thought. And between the stock market, the five-star hotels, thirty-dollar martinis, Sean’s gambling and the exchange rate, I’m broke.”

  For a moment she was speechless. “What are we going to do?”

  I took a deep breath. “I don’t know. Do you have any money?”

  “Only a couple hundred. Where’s your watch?” she asked.

  “I sold it at the Rehab. It’s the only way they’d let me out of there,” I said. “Do you have any money at home?”

  “I’ve got a couple thousand in an IRA.”
<
br />   “That won’t get us far.”

  Candace looked terrified. “You have to call your father.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why?”

  I exploded. “Because, I can’t.”

  “So he won’t know you failed?”

  “He already knows I failed. I failed the minute I left him. And no, I don’t want him to see me like this.”

  Candace stood there mulling over our dilemma. Finally she said, “What are we supposed to do, Luke? Live on your pride?”

  “What makes you think he would even want to talk to me?”

  “You could at least try.”

  I sat there looking at her and then threw my hands up in surrender. “Fine,” I said. “I’ll call.”

  I took out my phone and dialed my father’s cell phone. I wasn’t even sure what to say. I didn’t have to find out. There was no answer except a recorded message telling me that the number I’d dialed had been disconnected. It made no sense. My father had had the same cellular number since cell phones were the size of lunch boxes. Few people had his personal number. I could think of no reason he would disconnect his phone.

  “He’s disconnected his phone,” I said. I dialed my father’s direct number at Crisp’s headquarters. A female voice I didn’t recognize answered. “Mr. Price’s office.”

  “This is Luke Crisp. Is my father in?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Is Carl Crisp in?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Crisp doesn’t work here anymore.”

  “What do you mean my father doesn’t work there anymore?” I said angrily. “Let me talk to Henry.”

  “I’ll see if Mr. Price is available. Who may I tell him is calling?”

  “Luke Crisp,” I said again. She put me on hold. It was a full two minutes before Henry answered. “Speaking of the devil,” he said. “How are you?”

  “Henry, where’s my father?”

  “Am I your father’s keeper?”

  “The receptionist said he’s no longer there.”

  “She’s my new assistant,” Henry said, “and no, he’s not. He retired, Luke.”

  I was speechless. “Retired?”

  “Isn’t that what you suggested? How do you not know this?”

  “I haven’t spoken with my father since I left.”

  “Then you don’t know about his surgery.”

  “What surgery?”

  “What surgery? His triple bypass.”

  “Wha … Henry, no one told me,” I said.

  “You broke his heart, you know. Maybe literally. I’m not surprised he hasn’t been in contact with you. You let him down and you weren’t there for him when he needed you. Now I understand why he said what he did.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He told me you’re dead to him.”

  The words hit me like a bucket of ice water. “He said that?”

  “His exact words were, ‘I have no son.’”

  For a moment neither of us spoke.

  “So what brings you back now—run out of dough?”

  When I didn’t answer, he said, “I thought so. Good luck, Luke. You made your bed, now sleep in it.” He hung up. I slowly dropped the phone to my lap. I sat frozen, Candace staring at me. My worst fears had been confirmed.

  “What did your father say?” she asked.

  “My father’s no longer at Crisp’s.” I looked down, fighting the wave of emotion that swept over me. “My father had a heart bypass.”

  “You need to go back to him,” Candace said.

  My eyes welled up. “I can’t. He’s disowned me.”

  Candace buried her head in her hands. After a few minutes I put my hand on her back to comfort her. “We’ve got to keep it together,” I said. “Everything will be okay.”

  She looked up at me, her mascara running down her face. “Are you in denial? What part of this will be okay? How will we live?”

  “Like the rest of the world does. We’ll get jobs. We’ve got M.B.A.s, we’ll do all right.”

  Candace didn’t say anything. She dropped her gaze and slumped forward, hiding her face in her hands. For the next fifteen minutes Candace just sat, crying. When she finally stopped, she looked up at me. “I’m sorry. I think, with how things are, we need to rethink things.”

  I looked at her. “What exactly does that mean?”

  “It means I’m not sure about all this.”

  “All this? You mean us?”

  “Yes. Us.”

  My chest constricted with anger. “There wasn’t a problem with us when I had money.”

  “Don’t make me into a gold digger. Did I ask you to go to Europe? Didn’t I tell you that you were spending too much?”

  “Then what’s the problem?” I said.

  “It’s this. Starting from scratch. I can’t do it.”

  “We can do it together. We’ll build a life together.”

  “And lose the best years of our lives.”

  “It doesn’t have to be that way. These could be the best years of our lives. We’ll be together.”

  “We’ll learn to hate each other.”

  I couldn’t believe what she was saying. “Why would you say that?”

  “You have no idea. I’ve lived through it. I watched it my whole life. I watched my parents sacrifice and scrimp and save until it destroyed their marriage. When they finally started getting ahead, my father left. That’s how it is.”

  “That’s not how it is,” I said angrily.

  “You don’t know.” She exhaled slowly. “I love you, Luke. But I never signed up for that kind of life—clipping coupons to survive. It’s not what I want. I don’t know if I can or can’t do it, but I know that I don’t want to.” She looked into my eyes. “I’m really sorry.”

  She got up and began packing her things while I just sat on the bed, watching her. When she finished, she walked to the doorway, then stopped. “I really am sorry, Luke. We’ll talk in a few days, okay?”

  I just looked at her. She walked out, closing the door behind herself. Something told me I’d never see her again.

  CHAPTER

  Twenty-Four

  The only thing more universal to the human condition than love is loss.

  Luke Crisp’s Diary

  I drank until early in the morning and slept through the rest of it, well into the next afternoon, when the room’s phone rang. My head was throbbing. I answered hoping it was Candace. It was the front desk asking if I was going to check out or if they should charge me for another day. I told them that I was leaving. Without showering or changing my clothes, I grabbed my suitcase and carry-on bag and left the room.

  Where would I go? I felt like a man who had just stepped over a cliff wishing to take back just a few steps. Even the $3,000 I’d spent on the cabana could have provided several months’ stay in a cheap hotel. What do you do when you have no place to go? I was in a daze as I walked out of my room.

  I took the elevator down to the lobby. The electricity and cash of the casino flowed around me, past me, like a river. I sat down at a bar and ate the free bar nuts and crackers and drank more and mostly just watched. Around midnight I fell asleep in the chair. The bartender woke me. “Sorry, sir, you can’t sleep here.”

  I got up. I dragged my luggage to another part of the casino, fighting my exhaustion. My thoughts rolled and bounced around in my head like a ball on one of the casino’s roulette wheels. The world looked different to me now. Changed. I realized that I had lived my life on a different level of humanity—one where money was both ubiquitous and intangible. Most of my life I didn’t even carry money, just magical plastic cards that got me whatever I needed—like a VIP pass to the world. Unlike paper money, the plastic never diminished. It did, of course, but not where one could see it.

  I never checked receipts; I rarely looked at price tags. I realized that Candace was right—I didn’t know want or scarcity. I had lived in a different world than most people. Now I was in their world. Actually, I was below
their world. I had no job, no home and no money. There was no safety net below me. How could I have been so stupid?

  I thought back to that dinner with my father when he suggested I go to business school. How ironic—he said he didn’t want me to have any regrets. That’s all I had now. Regret and hate. I hated Sean more that I could say. I wished that I had let the gamblers take their pound of flesh. But I hated myself even more for being taken in by him.

  What weighed just as heavily on me was Candace’s betrayal. I was in love with her. I thought she was in love with me. I had heard it said that men want beautiful women and women want beautiful situations. I didn’t believe it at the time. I did now. Is that really all I was to Candace? A lifestyle? The thought of it was like putting my heart between the hammer and the anvil.

  Here I was in a neon jungle just as helpless as if I were lost in the Amazon jungle. I took out my wallet. Worthless plastic and a little more than $500. Then I remembered Candace’s ring. It had cost nearly $30,000. I just needed to find a place to sell it. I would sell it in the morning. I felt some peace again. Thirty thousand was enough of a safety net to get me through this. I put my wallet in my bag, then closed my eyes and fell asleep. It was around three o’clock in the morning when a security guard woke me.

  “Sir,” he said.

  I looked up. “Yeah.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Sorry, I just fell asleep. I’ll go.” I slowly stood up. “Sorry.”

  I put my carry-on on top of my suitcase and dragged it behind me out of the casino. I felt like I was sleepwalking. Once outside the lobby, I looked around for a place to go. Despite the hour, the traffic on the street in front of the hotel was nearly as heavy as at midday. The strip stretched on for miles and I was too tired to walk. I just needed a place where I could lie down for an hour or two.

  At the end of the resort’s massive parking lot, there was a clump of trees. I crossed the parking lot, pulling my bags behind me. When I could see no one was looking, I entered the grove, lay my jacket out on the ground and fell asleep. I woke late the next morning to a light kick in my side.

  “Stand up, sir.”

  I looked up to see a police officer standing above me. “I haven’t been drinking,” I said.