“It’s…” I didn’t want to tell her. “I’ve just got some stuff to do. At the studio,” I lied.
Her eyes searched mine. “What is it, Christos? You can tell me.”
No, I couldn’t. Then everything would shatter around both of us. “It’s nothing, agápi mou. I promise.” Man, I was a fucking liar.
“Do you want breakfast?” she offered.
“No, I’m cool. I really need to jet.”
“Please stay.”
The look in her eyes tore me apart. I wanted to tell her everything. I wanted to tell her nothing, hoping my problems would go away. She didn’t need to be worrying about this.
“Please, Christos,” she begged.
“I have to go, agápi mou.”
“Okay,” she nodded reluctantly.
I felt like shit when I walked out her front door.
I climbed in my Camaro and drove east toward the Five. I stopped at a gas station before getting on the freeway and checked my message from Russell.
“Christos, the Deputy District Attorney has made a plea offer. We should discuss this face to face. This is a big decision, whichever way you go. Come by my offices tomorrow, any time.”
I cruised onto the freeway and lurched through traffic. I had plenty of time to sweat bullets in my car while I thought about whatever plea bargain was on the table.
My guts were churning by the time I reached downtown. Too bad traffic was so heavy. If the road had been empty, I would’ve floored it all the way there.
After I passed SDU, I noticed the same landmarks that had taunted me back on the day the cops had driven me to jail, the day I’d met Sam in September. The surfer mural in Pacific Beach. The humpback whale mural in Mission Bay. At least this time I wasn’t caged in a squad car. Just caged in traffic.
I considered sliding my Camaro onto the empty shoulder and flooring it. But it was broad daylight.
And I was out on bail for aggravated assault and battery.
Fuck it. I was tired of rolling through traffic like an old man. I dropped the Camaro into second and revved the engine. It rumbled reassuringly, ready to tear up the road as I diagonaled across lanes toward the shoulder on the right.
Samantha’s eyes filled my mind. The sad eyes she’d given me when I’d left her apartment a half hour ago.
Fuck.
I couldn’t afford to be stupid. Not like when I was younger and didn’t give a shit. I had something to live for now, someone who needed me.
Samantha.
I huffed out a breath and slid the shifter back into third. My Camaro remained in the slow lane as I continued to cruise along at the same sluggish pace everyone else was going.
Traffic turtled along all the way downtown. I pulled off on Front Street and headed toward Russell’s offices.
I parked in the underground garage and marched up the stairs like I was going to a hanging. Every step got taller as my boots got heavier. I felt like I was going to collapse by the time I reached the 20th.
I walked through the double doors into Russell’s offices.
“Good Morning, Christos,” Rhonda said. “I’ll let Russell know you’re here. He should be out in a minute.”
“Thanks, Rhonda.” I walked over to the picture window and stared out at the San Diego bay once again. It was shrouded in fog. Appropriately moody.
“Christos,” Russell said as he walked into the lobby. He wasn’t his usual jovial self. “Come on back to my office, son.”
Man, had somebody died? Or was everyone mourning my impending funeral?
I walked into Russell’s office and dropped into the chair. He closed the door behind us and sat down.
“How have you been holding up, son?” Russell asked compassionately.
“Holding,” I said with a half-assed laugh.
He nodded understanding. I’m sure he saw in my eyes the weight I was carrying. “I’ll cut right to it. The Deputy District Attorney is offering you twelve months in county jail for a guilty plea. With time off for good behavior, you’re looking at maybe nine months.”
I ground my jaw. Nine months of lock-up. Nine months of calling Samantha collect from a jail phone? Nine months of her making weekly visits with all the other inmate’s wives and girlfriends? Sitting in the visitor’s bunker with a wall of steel and glass between the innocents and the convicts? Nine months looking her in the eyes trying to pretend I wasn’t miserable and stressed and living in a stinking pit?
I’d been on both sides of that window wall. Good buddies of mine had been in the can over the years for fighting, DUIs, all that immature young men’s bullshit.
Watching your friends on the inside struggling not to rot away from the emotional squalor that took hold of the inmates was not fun. Wondering every time you visited if your good friend was going to have a bloody eyeball with a detached retina or maybe be missing some teeth he’d had the week before. Or maybe, your buddy might not even show up to get on the short phone because he was in the infirmary for getting his leg kicked in by three guys in the shower, and he couldn’t walk.
Yeah, fun shit.
If I got locked up, my time on the inside was going to be bad enough. But thinking about how miserable Samantha was going to be made it worse.
I didn’t want to put her through any of it. She needed to focus on good things, on her classes, on her art. Not my bullshit.
Maybe I needed to let her go.
Russell cleared his throat. “Christos, I want you to know I negotiated my ass off with the D.D.A. trying to reduce the offered sentence. But Schlosser would not budge. He thinks he has this case all buttoned up. If we go to trial, he’s going to nail you to the wall on reasonableness and avoidance. You’re in a tough spot, son. Nine months in jail on a plea bargain is still nine months. But if we go to trial, and the jury finds you guilty on all counts, you could be looking at up to four years in prison.” Russell took a deep breath. “I’ve gone head-to-head with Schlosser before. He’s tough as nails, and he’s chomping at the bit on this one. If he wins, he’s going to push the judge for the maximum sentence.”
I nodded silently.
“It’s a gamble either way,” Russell offered. He watched me carefully. “I wish I had better news, Christos. Take some time to think this over. Discuss it with your family. You don’t have to make a decision until a few days before the trial.”
Somebody wake me up and tell me this shit was just a nightmare.
CHRISTOS
I cruised homeward on the Five in my Camaro, keeping it to the speed limit. Master of Puppets by Metallica was pounding out of my sound system at concert-level decibels. If I couldn’t speed, at least I could give my ears a good pounding.
My phone vibrated in my pocket. I pulled it out to check the call. Fucking Brandon. I didn’t want to talk to him. Fuck it. May as well get it over with. I’d have to talk to him sooner or later.
I turned down the tunes on my MP3 player and pressed TALK on my phone.
“Hey, man,” I said.
“Christos, always good to hear your voice,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said curtly.
“How are the paintings coming along?”
Man, he asked me that at least once a day. “Great.”
“Do you have an estimated delivery date on any of them yet?
“The one of Avery is done. So are the ones of Jacqueline and Becca. Isabella is in progress, so is Sophia, and I started in on the one of Victoria and one of Hannah.”
“Only three are complete?” Brandon sighed. “We’re going to need a lot more than that.”
Did he think I didn’t fucking know that? I grit my teeth. “I know.”
“When can we expect to set a date for your next solo show?”
He said “we” like “we” were hunched over the fucking easel seven days a week. I’d squeezed in a seventh day of painting when it had finally sunk in that my trial was not going to wait for my ass to finish my paintings at a leisurely six-day-a-week pace.
�
�Shit, Brandon. I don’t fucking know. Why don’t you come down to the studio and help out. I’ll hand you a fucking brush and you can stretch canvases and paint backgrounds and shit, like Rubens used to have his studio grunts do.”
Brandon chuckled mellowly. “Point taken.”
Damn right, point taken.
Brandon sighed. “We can’t keep the customers waiting forever, Christos. Eventually, they’ll lose interest and move on to the next big thing.”
I twisted the steering wheel in my grip. If I wasn’t careful, I might rip the wheel off the fucking steering column and throw it out the window while I tooled down the freeway at sixty-five. “I’m working as fast as I can, Brandon. There’s only so many hours in a day.”
“I understand. How’s the painting of Isabella coming along? She’s an amazingly beautiful woman. I’m thinking your portrait of her will likely be the center-piece of your show.”
“It’s coming.” Too bad I thought it looked like a poster for a porno.
“What does that mean?”
I slid my hand down my stubbled face. “I don’t know how to say this, but I’m not liking it.”
“Do you want me to call New York? Or Europe? Find some more exotic models?”
Flying models out from the east coast or across the Atlantic meant escalating model fees. They’d need hotels, meals, pampering (we’re talking top-end models here), the works. All that shit would cost me an arm and a leg, and since I only had two of each, I was reluctant to start spilling more of my blood paying more bills. The L.A. models would have to do.
“No,” I said. “I’ll make it work. I’ll tweak some things on the Isabella portrait, maybe change up the background, and it’ll be great,” I lied.
“I don’t think changing the background will make much of a difference,” Brandon scoffed. “Are you having trouble capturing her likeness?” He hadn’t seen the painting yet, so he didn’t know.
“Fuck no.” It looked like a goddamned full-color holographic photo of her.
“You’re not going to find a more beautiful model on the west coast than Isabella…”
“I know.”
“…unless you can convince Samantha to sit for you.”
That again. I had to agree. But I didn’t think I could convince her. Not with all the shit she was juggling. She needed to focus on her art career, not mine.
“No,” was all I said on that topic.
“Fine. If you change your mind about the European models, let me know. I’ve been looking through some Russian agency books and there’s three or four stand-outs you might want to consider.”
“Email me the photos and I’ll check them out.”
“Terrific. I’ll do that as soon as we’re off the phone.”
“Sure,” I sighed. I never thought I’d say it, but I was fucking sick of hot chicks. I wanted to chuck all of them out of my life and make more room for the only one that mattered.
Agápi mou…
“Excellent,” Brandon said in a smiling voice. “Call me if you need anything.”
How about an all-expenses-paid trip to the nearest firing squad?
“Will do,” I said before ending the call. I just about threw my phone out the window, but stopped myself at the last second.
I cranked the volume back up on Metallica and drove straight to the nearest bar.
CHRISTOS
That night, I called Jake.
I needed a break from all the shit coming down on me. Jake was the perfect distraction. I picked him up from his place in my Camaro. I’d pretty much sobered up from hitting the bar in the morning.
Whatever.
At least I wasn’t on my bike.
Jake and I decided to head downtown and grab dinner at Dick’s Last Resort in the Gaslamp Quarter. The wait-staff at Dick’s treated the customers like shit, on purpose. It wasn’t a great destination for date-night, but was perfect for me and Jake to catch up.
After our obnoxious waiter had bitched us out and thrown our silverware, napkins, and paper place-mats at us, we ordered beers. The waiter brought them back a few minutes later, two Corona’s with lime wedges shoved in the necks of the bottles.
Jake and I clinked beers.
“Long time no see, bro,” Jake said.
“No shit,” I nodded. “I’ve been super busy.”
“That’s an understatement,” Jake said, pausing to gulp down some Corona. “Before I forget, Sebastian and his crew keep bugging my ass about bringing you out to hit some waves. Maybe go down to Ensenada some weekend.”
“Sebastian? You mean that military kid with a prick for a dad?” Sebastian was seventeen when I’d met him, so he would always be a “kid" at any age.
“Yeah,” Jake grinned. “Sebastian told me he had some score to settle with you about stealing his tube-ride last time at La Jolla Shores.”
I remembered the moment well. Me and Sebastian had shared a good laugh over it afterward. But that was a year ago. I chuckled, “I haven’t seen that dude in forever. He still with that MILF?”
Jake smiled. “You mean Caro?”
“Yeah. Her.” I smiled, picturing her in my mind. “She was a total fox.”
“Dude, Caro’s not a MILF. She doesn’t have any kids. She’s a HILF,” Jake grinned.
I almost choked on my beer. “HILF? That’s lame, man. What the fuck is a HILF?”
“Hottie I’d Like to Fuck.”
“Duh,” I smiled at my own ignorance, then nodded at Jake knowingly. “Total HILF,” I said, lifting my beer to clink bottles with Jake.
“To Sebastian and his HILF Caro,” Jake smiled.
Jake and I ordered burgers when the waiter returned.
While we waited for our food, my phone rang in my pocket, playing the chorus of Before Your Love by Kelly Clarkson. My new ringtone for Samantha.
“Dude,” Jake grimaced and smiled, “what kind of gay shit is that?”
“That’s my ringtone for Samantha,” I grinned.
“Dude, you’re so gone for that girl. Your only ringtone used to be ‘Battery’ by Metallica.”
“That was before I met Samantha.” I answered my phone. “Agápi mou. How are you?”
“Fine,” Samantha said, “now that I’m hearing your voice.”
“What’s up?”
“I’ve been trying to call you all day,” she said softly. “Is everything all right?”
“I’m good,” I lied. I felt like a total prick. Samantha was probably still freaking out about her parents. As much as I wanted to be by her side to reassure her that I would always be there for her, after meeting with Russell today, I couldn’t say it with a straight face. Not sober, anyway. “Just out with Jake,” I said casually. “We’re chillin’ at Dick’s Last Resort. Getting burgers and brews.”
“Dick’s Last Resort? That sounds awful. Is that a strip club?” Samantha snickered.
“No, it’s a burger joint in the Gaslamp.”
“You sure? I hope you brought lots of singles to tip the, uh, waitresses,” Samantha sneered.
“I promise, the fat guy with a double-chin who’s serving us is fully clothed,” I grinned over at Jake. He’d seen the guy.
Jake cocked me a smile.
“I hope so!” Samantha groaned. “Anyway, I just wanted to make sure everything is all right?”
“Yeah, I’m good, agápi mou. Are you okay?”
She sighed. “I’m fine. I just, I sort of needed to talk to you some more about my parents. I’m still freaked out, I guess.”
Fuck. She wasn’t going to let me off the hook. “Do you want to talk about it tonight? I can come over later, after me and Jake finish our burgers. How’s that sound?” I felt like a huge douche. I winced, wishing all my problems would go away so I could do the right thing by Samantha at that moment.
The sad truth was my problems weren’t going anywhere.
My shit was booming inside my head like thunderclaps. I really needed to pound out some of my stress, or I was going to explode. I wa
sn’t in any shape to listen to Samantha and be supportive. How could you listen to somebody else’s problems when you had your own thunderclouds shooting thunder and lightning between your ears every fifteen seconds? I had to deal with my own stress first, and I did it the best way I knew how at the time: drinks with Jake.
There was a long pause, then Samantha finally answered, “Okay. I’ll be waiting.”
Man, I felt like a shithead. “You sure?”
“Yeah,” she sighed. “It can wait. I’ll be okay. I’ll be doing homework at my apartment all evening, so if you want to stop by when you’re finished, I’d love to see you.”
“Me too, agápi mou. I’ll come by as soon as we’re done. I love you.”
“I love you too,” Samantha said before ending the call.
Thankfully, the waiter showed up with our food before I had to explain any of that to Jake.
After we ate, we pounded more beers at Dick’s before bouncing.
Outside, we strolled the busy streets of the Gaslamp Quarter. It was San Diego’s most active night-spot destination. You could walk from bar to bar all night and never hit the same spot twice. Perfect for pub crawling.
I was leaning toward getting hammered tonight.
“Where do you want to hit next?” Jake asked.
“First place I smell beer,” I said.
“How’s the trial shit going?” Jake asked.
I stopped on the sidewalk, threw my head back, and laughed. It was not a happy laugh. It turned into a roar of frustration.
“Sorry, dude,” Jake said. “Wrong topic.”
I sighed. “Don’t sweat it. It’s not like that shit isn’t on my mind twenty-four seven, now that my trial date is days away.”
“How you coping?”
“Ask me again when I have a beer in my hand.”
“Totally, bro,” he smiled.
We wandered along the block, passing people strolling the sidewalk in both directions.
“How about some frozen yogurt?” Jake joked, nodding toward a storefront.
“Yeah,” I laughed, “I could definitely go for some low-fat, sugar-free shit right now,” I said sarcastically. “My doctor tells me I need to take better care of my health.”
We found a dingy bar with hipster smokers hovering around the entrance. The kind of place with no windows, no sign, save the red-and-white plaque in the doorway that read “NOTICE: NO PERSONS UNDER 21 ALLOWED.”
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