by Nancy Adams
“Wake up,” I said to him in a hoarse voice, the words violently vibrating the intricate bones of my skull.
But it was no good; his large frame continued to rattle away with heavy snoring.
“Terry!” I cried out a little louder, this time cringing as my head pulsed from the blow.
Nothing. So I gave up for the moment. I surveyed my clothing instead and found that I was still fully dressed, still in my tweed suit, although now one of the inside jacket pockets was badly torn, along with a decent length of lining. Apart from that, the only other disaster was that I was only wearing one shoe, the sock of the other foot very dirty, giving me the impression that I’d lost it early on in the evening and that it wouldn’t be found within the tangled mess of Terry’s room.
“God damn it!” I groaned.
I searched my pants pockets and found my phone. When I swiped my finger across the screen, I saw that the time was almost one in the afternoon and I had fifteen missed calls. Looking through them, I saw the terrifying names of Holman, my father, and Sarah.
“Ugh!” I grumbled, striking my head with my hand and clawing my fingers down my face.
I decided I’d attempt to stand. So with all my effort, I raised my body upon my wobbling, strangely weak legs and slowly brought myself to full length, grabbing ahold of the furniture on the way up for support. Once I was standing, I had to close my eyes for a moment as my vision blurred due to the massive head rush of traffic that suddenly burst into life within the veins of my swollen brain. When that had settled, I shuffled over to Terry and shook his leg. With my remorseless touch, he eventually woke up with a series of grunts and snorts interrupting his cataclysmic snoring, until he rolled over onto his side and looked at me for a moment, his glazed eyes giving me the impression that he didn’t recognize me.
“It’s Josh,” I said sarcastically, pointing to myself.
A great idiotic grin brought his face to life.
“What happened last night?” I asked him.
But instead of answering, he merely held a finger out to me, signaling that he needed a moment or two to compose himself, and turned to his bedside cabinet behind him. He picked out a cigarette from a pack that lay among the debris of several empty ones, shoved it in his mouth, and lit it. Then he proceeded to cough as if his body wanted to eject not only the cigarette smoke, but his actual lungs along with it, each puff bringing on another outburst of fitful barks, his throat choking from the harshness of the early-morning smoke. Having taken several long tokes, coughing wildly after each, he stubbed the half-smoked cigarette out on the bedside cabinet before turning back to me.
The dumb grin returned to his face as the last of the coughs escaped.
“Fucking wild!” he remarked, accompanying his words with a pair of imbecilic thumbs-up.
However, instead of answering my question, he merely continued to stare at me with that stupid fucking grin pasted across his stupid fucking face.
“Come on, Terry, what happened?” I pressed on.
“We really done a number on you, didn't we?”
“What do you mean ‘a number’?” I asked, the weeds of anger growing rapidly inside of me.
“We took you out for a few drinks, and you was being Mr. Good—Mr. I gotta be home for my daddy. But then when you was on your second beer and insisting it was your last, you disappeared to the bathroom and we popped something in there to pull the monkey out of your ass!”
My fists tightened along with every other vexed muscle in my body. My face, so overcome with tiredness only a second ago, became bulging eyed and tight-mouthed. I could have burnt him down with the fires of my glare in that moment as I stood over him, my whole body swelling up with hatred, a heat surging through it and a prickly sweat breaking out all over me. What made it worse was that he continued to stare at me with that stupid idiotic grin and those vapid eyes.
“You fucking spiked me, Terry?” I burst out, hardly able to contain my rapid anger.
“Hey, what are bros for?” he foolishly put to me.
“For hanging out,” I spat back, “but not for drugging each other.”
He carried on with that merciless grin, and I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I lurched forward and took ahold of him by the scruff of the neck and was on top of him. He struggled under my mass, but even in my dilapidated state I easily held him between my legs, my arms way too quick and strong for him.
“I’m really trying to get better this time,” I snarled into his face once he’d stopped with his pretense of a struggle. “I really wanna get better and be better. And you go and pull a number on me.”
“It was nothing you wouldn’t have done yourself,” he cried back. “Only seven months ago you put acid in Bobby Doyle’s drink at his twenty-first birthday.”
“But that's not me anymore, Terry. I’m ashamed of that. I’m ashamed of what I did to Doyle and countless other poor saps that had the misfortune to hang with me, including you, Terry. I wanna be better.”
“Are you sick?” he asked with an incredulous frown.
I jumped off him and stormed out the room, down the corridor, and out the building. I couldn't see my car anywhere in the lot, and as I searched about for it, I stepped in some dog shit with my socked foot and hated the day even more than I had before. If the poor mutt had been around, I would have surely sunk that turd-covered foot right up the very hole the turd had come from. In the end, I gave up looking for my missing car, pulled the badly soiled sock off, and called a cab. Then, with a healthy amount of apprehension, I called Holman. I thought it better to square it with him first.
“Where have you been?” he asked the moment he picked up.
“Holman, I’m gonna come clean. On my way out of Charlie’s last night, a couple of college buddies were waiting for me and invited me out for one drink. So I went.”
“You moron” was his instant appraisal of this.
“No, hear me out. The fuckers spiked my drink.”
“That’s a crock of shit and you know it. Is that the best you can come up with?”
“Holman, it’s the truth. I promise you. I was stupid for agreeing to go out, that I admit, but I didn't have a choice.”
“They come armed?” he joked.
“Come on. They were a couple of buddies who’ve been trying to get back in touch, and I felt bad that I’d ignored them all this time.”
“Two buddies that drug their friends,” he retorted.
“I wasn't to know, was I? I’m on my way back now.”
“You driving in your condition? You sound groggy.”
“No. I don't know where the car is. I’ve called a cab.”
“And you’re gonna tell your father about you getting drugged? Because if I were you, I’d find a sweeter-smelling pile of horse shit if you were hoping he’d eat it up.”
“I’m telling you the truth. I’m even admitting that I was dumb for going out with them in the first place.”
Holman groaned into the phone for several seconds.
“Just get back,” he finally said.
“Is Dad there?”
“No, so you’re lucky. He’s flown to New York to arrange a deal there. He only left this morning, though, so he knows you weren’t back. He wants you to call him ASAP.”
My head throbbed at this news.
“I’ll call him when I get back,” I said.
“You should call him now” was Holman’s immediate response.
“Just let me get home.”
Holman didn't say any more and just put the phone down. When he had, I merely sat on the curb waiting for the taxi, holding my head in my hands. I felt like calling Sarah. I sensed I needed her to cheer me up. But at the same time, I didn’t want her to know about this yet. I’d tell her, of course, but all in good time, not when I felt like I did in that moment, head and gut aching, dog shit all over my foot.
Eventually the cab arrived, and I slumped heavily onto its backseat. As it cranked its way through the urban passages toward
home, I began to be struck with the hazy visions of the night before. Nothing comprehensive, only pale memories that gave me an idea of the vague night. Thankfully no women were involved, and even when I’d woken up on Terry’s floor, I knew I hadn’t been unfaithful to Sarah. There was no lingering guilt pulling at me, just a flock of self-recriminations at having so easily fallen from the horse.
No. All the visions were of a very ordinary nature—well, ordinary to anyone who likes to take partying to the extreme. There was a fight over some drinks that I’d knocked over, and I’d punched a man’s tooth out in the following debacle, as well as having my suit ripped. Then at the club, which was indeed a large underground bunker, someone had stolen a mixer from the DJ booth, and this had postponed the music set for some twenty minutes while they got ahold of a replacement. I seemed to find myself in the middle of this ongoing argument, even though I was never openly accused of the crime, and it had taken some time before I’d realized that they were actually blaming some barfly that Terry, Kane, and myself had picked up and taken with us, having met him for the first time earlier in an especially seedy little den around the corner. In the end, I’d paid the money for the purloined mixer, stolen by our sticky-fingered accomplice, who had also neatly escaped moments before his theft had been discovered. So all was resolved. I then recalled buying everyone drinks and throwing money about for the rest of the evening. It was obviously MDMA (the chemical composition of Ecstasy) that they’d spiked me with, as it always has a habit of making me very generous while under its euphoric spell. Also, the deep feelings of melancholia I was experiencing now, as I sat in the cab, told me that I was coming down. I felt miserable, the world outside looking gray and dead even though it was actually a bright sunny day. I simply closed my eyes and hoped that everything would be cool when I got home.
SARAH
Gazing blankly out of my office window at the vividly blue, translucent sky outside, I was a little worried, feeling the occasional figurative crow peck at my carrion stomach. I’d called Josh several times that morning, and he hadn’t answered. We usually spoke at least twice before lunch, but it was almost two now and there’d been nothing thus far. I was plagued by an indistinct feeling that something was up. A worm of doubt was eating away at me, whispering mischievously that he’d fallen into his bad old ways. I scolded myself for doubting him. But the worm still ate away.
A knock at the door plucked me out of my miserable reverie, and I turned my eyes to see Karl standing there.
“Come in,” I called to him.
He instantly stepped inside. It was my afternoon at work, and I was supposed to be going through more reports on the Miller case, compiling a chronological account of all the complaints from both existing and former tenants. The mountain of complaints I had was incredible. Twenty large boxes filled my office, leaving very little space for much else, and all of it needed annotating and registering.
Karl sat down opposite, his face as blank as the sky outside. Since I’d told him and my father about Josh’s explanations of Heather Todd’s death, he’d been silent on the subject, although I could clearly make out that something still seethed within him. Two weeks ago, when I’d finished giving Josh’s account to them in my father’s study, Dad had merely nodded and Karl had left the room. Our relationship had subsequently dwindled all the way down to the bare bones of professional colleagues, and a cold wind currently ran through our friendship.
“So how far are you with these complaints?” he asked without any sign of a greeting.
“I’m about a third of the way through. I was gonna ask Gary if he could come and help.”
“No, Gary’s too busy with the Coleridge deposition. The case is tomorrow.”
“What about Sue?”
“Sue’s on the Butcher case all on her own, when she should be with at least one other, and the rest of us are stretched on this Miller case. So I’m afraid that we can’t spare a single person.”
I simply gave him a weak smile and asked him if that was all.
“Not quite,” he said blankly. “There’s something that’s been bothering me for about two weeks now.”
“Oh! And what’s that?” I asked, knowing that I needn’t bother.
“You really believe all that bull he told you?”
“Not this again,” I snapped. “You have to leave this alone, Karl. For your own sake.”
“You and he slept together yet?”
“My word! You really are losing it over this. Of course we haven’t. And what makes it any business of yours?”
He simply sat there looking blankly across at me. Then with a withered groan, he got up from his chair and said, “Just get on with compiling those complaints.” And with that, he left, and I shuddered. This was the first time he’d mentioned anything since I’d explained it all to him and my father. But now here he was bringing it all up again. He was a wild dog on a rabbit and wouldn’t let it go, no matter how hard I attempted to shake it from his jaws. I believed Josh. He was telling the truth. I knew that. Nothing could stop me from believing him. His honesty had been in his voice, in his face, in his crystal eyes. I’d heard every drop of sincerity in the rains of his heart as they’d poured out of him in that garden. If Karl and my father could have heard him, if they could have seen what I’d seen, they would have believed him in a second and begged forgiveness for ever having doubted him. But they hadn’t been in that garden, and all they had was their rumors against my supplications, which neither seemed to believe. And do you know what? I understood why.
Karl refused to believe in Josh’s innocence because he was jealous and would rather see Josh as a murdering rich boy than the troubled boy in need of light that I see. It was better for him to perceive me ruining myself upon the cliffs of a misguided romance rather than imagine me truly lost to him, his rival an animal rather than a decent person. He was choosing the side of things that suited his bleeding, envious heart. As for my father, his reasons were solely down to his own past. Josh was a chain to that past, fettering Dad to his own former immoral actions, and he wanted to sever that link. It angered him that he would peer out of his curtains and see the car of Josh Kelly roll up outside and his own daughter stepping out. He felt that all his sins were sitting in that car grinning and winking at him. Neither of their problems with Josh had anything to do with logical reason; it was all pure egoism.
My only real issue with Karl’s outburst was its timing. That the very moment he’d brought it up was the very moment I’d been unable to reach Josh and was worrying about him more than ever. I felt as if Karl had sensed this weakness in me, perceived it through some hidden sense, and had then come into the office to expose it and taunt me.
However, my heart fluttered when my phone went off and I saw that it was Josh.
“I’ve been calling all morning,” I said the second I answered.
“I know, I’m sorry” was his answer, his voice sounding a little husky. “Last night I did something stupid.”
“Oh, Josh!” I exclaimed gently.
I instinctively glanced sideways through the window that faced the rest of the office and saw Karl sitting at his desk. As though he intuitively knew who was calling, he glanced over at me that very second and gave a sly grin, or at least what I perceived as one. I turned angrily away and faced the wall, exposing my back to him.
“What happened?” I asked Josh.
“Terry and Kane were waiting for me outside Charlie’s.”
“And then what?”
“I went for a few drinks.”
“Josh!” I let out. “Why?”
“It was supposed to be just a few.”
“It’s always supposed to be just a few. But I take it it wasn’t—hence the missed calls.”
“No, it wasn’t. But it also wasn’t my fault. They drugged me.”
“Really?” I said in a dubious tone.
“Fuck! First Holman, now you. Why doesn’t anybody believe me?”
“You swear you’re telli
ng the truth?” I asked him sternly. “You promise that this isn’t all lies to cover up your backsliding?”
He inhaled deeply and said, “Sarah, I swear on all that means anything to me that I was about to finish my second beer and say my goodbyes, but then everything dissolved into a blur. This morning I found out that the bastards had put drugs in my drink while I was away in the bathroom.”
“What else happened?” I inquired and, as I did, my heart trembled at the thought of possible infidelities.
“I tore my jacket, lost a shoe, and got into a small fight, but overall nothing too crazy. It was rather tame compared to old times.”
“No women?” I felt the need to ask.
“Sarah!” he exclaimed in a disappointed tone. “You don't need to ask that.”
“You promise me?”
“With everything that I am,” he stated firmly, “I did not even look at another woman.”
I took a while to allow the tone of his voice to resonate in my mind. Replaying his words in my head, I gradually sensed the determination in them.
“Do you believe me?” he impatiently wanted to know.
“Of course,” I answered. “But you have to promise me that you won’t see either of them again. They’re not friends, Josh. Not real ones anyway.”
“I know, I know,” he repeated. “I almost hit Terry this morning when he told me what they’d done. I guess I was so out of it last night that I didn’t mind that they’d done it.”
“Where are you now?”
“In a cab on my way home. I only woke up a half hour ago.”
“Where’s your car? When you left me yesterday to go to Charlie’s you had the car.”
