The rest of the evening spirals away into blackness. A blackness that he will try very hard to remember for a long time . . . but can’t.
11
There’s a pounding in his head that he can’t get away from. Someone is hammering nails into the base of his skull. A splitting headache like a hundred hangovers rolled into one comes charging through the noise, breaking through the barriers of murkiness and haze and dreams filled with shadowy figures that are wraiths and yet not wraiths.
He claws through the murk and tries to open his sleep-encrusted eyes. Shapes swim into being. A vivid red and gold pattern assails his vision, and he realizes that he is face down on his own lounge carpet. To be precise, his one hundred thousand Persian weave. The house-warming present from his billionaire uncle’s wife.
He raises his head. There is a persistent knocking on his front door. He groans. His body feels as though a steamroller has flattened it. He raises himself to his elbows.
The door bursts open and feet clatter into his apartment. Black boots, regulation style.
“Mr. Morton?” says an unfamiliar voice.
Brian squints into the light, dazed. Outside, the sun is streaming through the ceiling-to-floor glass windows. He holds a hand up to block out the light. He thought he had drawn the f**king curtains.
“Yes?”
“You are under arrest.”
The rest of his Miranda rights are lost in the drone of the officer’s voice as hands jerk his naked body up, and his wrists are cuffed behind his back. Brian stares in horror at the ruins of the evening. Broken glass coffee table. Scattered shards of glass everywhere. Smashed three thousand dollar lampstand. Torn curtains.
His clothes strewn all over the floor.
And a torn silken bathrobe crumpled in a heap beside them.
What? What? What? What? A ship is plowing through the mists of his brain – a flotsam of memories struggling to come to the surface, like a shipwreck victim clawing for air. And failing miserably to ascend.
Something cuts through his bare feet. He lifts his right leg up and stares at his sole.
Blood.
Embedded glass fragments.
And that’s not the only damage to his body. The bloody trails of four fingernails have been raked and imprinted upon his chest.
What the f**k happened here?
12
Brian is f**king her, gazing into her eyes oh so deeply and murmuring, “I love you, I love you, I love you” as his hips thrust and slam into hers. She can look into his large liquid brown eyes forever – those eyes of endless promise and discovery.
“I love you too, Brian,” she whispers, wishing this moment will last.
The bedside table phone rings. And rings and rings, even as he continues to f**k her.
Something pops.
Brian disappears and Sam’s eyes flutter open. Beside her bed, her cellphone buzzes insistently. The ringtone she has chosen for this particular caller is ‘Independent Woman’.
Sam sleepily reaches over for her cellphone. It momentarily stops, and then starts up again as she gropes for it and almost drops it. She presses the ‘Answer’ button.
“Yes?”
“Why the hell didn’t you answer?” Cassie’s annoyed voice compresses the Verizon sound barrier. “Caleb’s gone to the police station.”
“What for?”
“Didn’t anyone call you? Brian called his lawyer, and his lawyer called Caleb. So I’m calling you now. Brian’s been arrested.”
Sam sits up in bed. “What?”
“Get dressed and pick me up in thirty minutes.” Cassie sounds almost gleeful.
Sam is peeved. She knows Cassie doesn’t like Brian, but really – is that a good reason to gloat over someone else’s misfortune? Is there ever?
“OK.” Sam rings off, her mind churning. She is going to have words with Cassie about this. She supposes Cassie sees it as retribution for Brian’s collective sins – for f**king around, for ‘cheating’ on her when, really, all Brian has ever done was to be himself. And he has never lied to her, never promised her anything he couldn’t deliver.
What the hell has he done now?
13
The police interrogation room is claustrophobic – grey walls, metal table, four metal chairs, TV and video player mounted on a stand.
Welcome to the next level, Brian thinks with a grimace. Congrats, you’re going up the ladder. He has been arrested before for drunk driving when he was in college, but he has never been in an interrogation room. This is a whole new level of misdemeanor entirely.
Karen Sandler, his lawyer, is seated beside him. She is an attractive brunette in her mid-thirties with a no-nonsense attitude. And yes, he has slept with her. Once. She totally gets him – gets what he’s about – because she’s the same way too. She doesn’t believe in marriage or relationships or being shackled to a ball and chain for the rest of her life. She’s a woman after his own heart.
Shackled is a good word to use in this place.
He has told her exactly what happened.
“Don’t say anything unless I tell you to,” she cautions him.
That should be a first for him. He has never been one to keep mum on anything. He supposes it’s as good a starting point as any.
“I’ll try very hard not to,” he says.
“And none of your snide remarks.”
“Yes, Mom.”
Speaking of Mom, he hopes his parents will never find out about this. Or his uncle. Especially his uncle.
The two officers opposite the table are polar opposites. In fact, he’s certain they are going to stick the good cop, bad cop routine on him. One of them is a black officer with a badge that says ‘CUTTER’. The other is a hulking Norse god named ‘RILEY’.
Quaint.
Both of them have officious-looking folders on the table before them.
Officer Cutter says, “Now, Mr. Morton, tell us exactly what happened last night.”
“I will speak on his behalf,” Karen says.
“No, I’m OK about this,” Brian says. He ignores her glare. “I have nothing to hide.”
“Go on,” Officer Riley says.
Brian takes a deep breath.
“I was at the Galois, watching some opera about some ancient Egyptian people who have been wrongly accused.” Well, that was what he read in the program, not that he watched Act Three. “I was with my friends – Samantha and Caleb and Cassie.”
Well, Cassie is kind of a friend. OK, a friend of a friend, but spare him the technicalities.
“I received an alert on my cellphone during intermission that the alarm in my apartment had gone off.”