Page 37 of Last First Time
I turn to Abernathy. “Well, how did it go?”
His lips are pinched up and white with strain. “We got a bond set for you. Seventy-five thousand, cash only.”
I recoil. “What the fuck, Thom? How did that happen?”
His breath comes out in a frustrated huff. “I know, okay? Unfortunately, there’s nothing much I can do about it unless we get a bond reduction hearing set, which won’t be for three more days at least.”
“Thom, I don’t have that much cash laying around. I don’t know anyone who does.” I breathe heavily, wishing I had the extensive profanity vocabulary that Kar uses on these occasions. “What am I going to do?”
Thom looks off into space for a moment. “How much do you have on hand?”
I shrug. “Probably about a third of that, tops. I can get the rest, but it’s going to take a few weeks for me to liquidate the funds and turn it into cash.”
He nods. “Look, there’s something else. I checked the station and K.T.’s not here. Aaron went by to check in on her, and she was packing up her truck. She’s leaving town.”
I can feel my blood run cold. I am definitely going to be sick. This is all my fault. I did this to her, putting her into the limelight against all of her wishes and then creating a situation where the senator wanted to use her to hurt me. I know how fragile her trust is, and still I ruined things with us through my own carelessness.
“Can’t you call her? At least tell her I’m sorry. I’m going to be here for the next few days at least, and I’m not sure they will let me make another call to her, but—” My voice breaks, and I feel that itch in my eyes. I am not going to be that man right here. I am better than this.
Abernathy looks at me, then puts his hand on my shoulder. “Hey, I’ll call her. I don’t know if she’ll talk to me, but I’ll ask Aaron to call, maybe even Joe or Delilah too.”
“Okay,” I choke out. My voice cracks like when I was a teenager again. “Okay, Thom. Thanks for everything.”
Somehow, I end up being shuffled back into the cell with Weidenbenner right behind me. He looks me over. “You look like someone shot your dog.”
I force myself to stand up straighter. “The judge set my bond too high for me to go home for a few days, and it sounds like my girl is leaving town while I’m stuck here dealing with this mess.”
He gapes at me, then closes his mouth. “Wow. I’m sorry doesn’t even begin to cover it, man.” He waves toward the metal bedframe. “I’ll get you something to sleep on. Something without stains, okay?”
I try to smile, but it has been such a long, terrible day. How was it I kissed Kar’s perfect lips earlier this morning and now she’s left me?
“Okay,” I say, and close my eyes. I’m pretty certain this day can’t get any worse.
K.T.
My phone rings once I am about an hour out of town, and it’s the number for the jail. I look at my phone like it’s going to bite me, and then I decline the call. Then I press the keys to block the number, just in case.
I turn up the radio and roll down the windows. I drive faster than I ought to, and even above the noise of the music and the truck’s engine, I can hear the big suitcases rattling around in the back of the truck bed. Poor Towanda. She doesn’t deserve to bear the brunt of my bad feelings. I should save this mood for a bottle of whiskey later on, when I’m tucked into a cheap hotel room somewhere.
Shortly afterward, Thom Abernathy calls. I don’t take his call either. There is nothing I have to say to him, and I don’t want to hear about Reed yet. It would hurt too much. I know I’ve done the right thing for him by leaving, but I didn’t want to go. In fact, I wanted to storm over to the senator’s office and finish beating his face in, but even I could see that would only make everything worse.
I did briefly entertain a fantasy about getting arrested and Reed and I going on the run all Bonnie and Clyde style. But I’ve had a lot of fantasies about Reed that are never going to come true now, and us running away together to beat up our enemies is one more for the list. The list keeps getting longer as I drive. The night turns dark and cold, and I really start feeling sorry for myself. I want to turn around and head back home.
Instead, I turn off my phone and crank up the metal. Then I yell profanity out the open window in time with the loud, heavy guitar riffs. Tonight, I swear in Russian, Vietnamese, Finnish, and Farsi. “Khange khodah,” I scream until my throat aches. It doesn’t really help though.
Eventually, I pull off the highway and find a crappy motel that appears to be held together by junk piles and creeping ivy. The lady at the front desk gives me a very suspicious look when I check in, but it might be because I pay in cash and then sign the front desk book as Jane Doe. Well, screw her. I’m certainly not going to use my real name and leave some sort of paper trail for either Reed or his political enemy, Baron von Evil, to find me. It’s not like I’m running a drug lab or having sex for cash out of her crappy motel room.
Please. It took actual years for me to end my dick drought last time. I figure by the time this next dry spell ends, I’ll be so old I’ll likely break a hip next time someone gets spanky with me. No, I am definitely not having sex for cash or Bitcoin tonight. Honestly, I don’t want anybody to see me or talk to me tonight. Not even my sage-burning parents.
Their obvious pity has scraped the last of my nerves raw. Fat lot of good that whole sage smudge thing did. Maybe they should have busted out the crystals and the tarot deck instead. Then they could have warned me that an alternative meaning for the Six of Swords reversed was probably “beware of a rich geezer who takes compromising pictures and puts them in the national news cycle after getting your boyfriend arrested as part of an overarching and evil political campaign strategy.” Or something like that.
I unlock the door to my all cash Jane Doe motel room and lug both suitcases inside. Towanda is a great truck, but I can’t exactly leave my belongings loose in the truck bed all night and expect them to still be there tomorrow. After all, I’m not in Valentine anymore.
Even the thought of those words sticks in my throat, threatening to choke some tears out of me. But I never cry about my life. I’m certainly not going to cry today. Sure, I’ve lost my business, the expected loan money, my home, my best friend and boyfriend, and my privacy. It’s still a no-crying day. I made up my mind about this a long time ago, and I’m not going to go back on it now.
I have over three hundred text notifications, many of which aren’t numbers I recognize. I decide to spare myself the unsolicited dick pics and delete all the texts I receive from strangers. My voicemail is also full, but these are all from reporters asking for a comment after the arrest of Mayor Reed Harrington IV. Yeah, no thanks. Hard pass.
I turn on the television for long enough to spot Trip, Reed Harrington III, a.k.a. the biggest boiling sore on the ass of humanity giving some sort of speech on television about his son’s arrest. I’ve always hated Reed’s parents on principle alone. Trip Harrington is best known for buying up the exclusive rights to a drug that was effectively a cure for AIDS, then raising the price by over a thousand percent.
