Chapter Twenty-two

“I’m bored with you people. I don’t know why I bother having you over. If it wasn’t so depressing, I’d just drink alone.” Toby took a puff of his cigar and blew a smoke ring. The twenty-some guests around the table in his executive apartment laughed. But he wasn’t joking.

“At least one of you brought someone interesting.” His eyes locked with a blonde woman’s striking green eyes. She had introduced herself as Sarah. “Join me on the balcony?” he asked.

“The balcony?” Her eyes shifted around the table uncomfortably.

Toby stood and extended his palm. “To look at

the stars.”

“You can’t see the stars in Manhattan.”

“I have a telescope.”

“I’m here with someone,” she protested.

“Not anymore.” He turned to her date. “Get out,” he ordered without a flinch.

“Excuse me?” Her date was momentarily stunned by Toby’s rudeness.

“Frank, he’s drunk,” Sarah’s voice dropped in a smooth warning.

“You heard me,” Toby slurred. “You are dismissed.”

“Sarah, let’s get out of here,” Frank commanded heroically as he abruptly stood. He turned to face Toby and puffed out his chest, which was formidable in size. Multiple chairs scraped across the floor with a screech as the men around the table shot to their feet to intervene. Toby laughed, standing to meet the challenge. He rocked slightly on unstable feet.

He turned to Sarah. “That’s quite a fancy rough-and-tumble hulk that you’ve got there. Does he turn green, too?” His laugh was cut short by a thud, followed by an explosion of pain in his left eye. He toppled backward as Frank leapt forward in attack. Multiple layers of commotion overlapped at once: glass breaking, dishes falling to the floor, horrified feminine shrieks, the multi-toned hollering of men. It took the varied efforts of three men to pull Frank away from Toby, who had fallen into a crumpled heap on the floor.

“Get him out of here!” Toby yelled, wiping blood from the corner of his mouth.

“You have a mob to do your dirty work?” Frank yelled as they ejected him from the apartment. “Come out here and face me like a man, you dirty drunk!”

The three men closed the door and locked it to keep Frank from initiating a second round of brute force. He pounded on the door and hollered for Sarah to come out. Kelly, the brunette at the table, rushed to Toby’s aid. She held her cloth napkin to his bleeding brow.

Sarah looked at Toby. He read her mind clearly. She was disgusted.

“I think you’d better go,” he said quietly.

She grabbed her handbag and walked out. The defiant click of her heels on the wood floor echoed through the apartment, and the door was opened to provide her safe passage to the hallway.

Instead of seeing the faces of his eighteen remaining dinner guests when he looked around the room, he saw his most frequent nightmare flash before his eyes. His grandmother’s damning gaze, his father’s angry bellow, every person who hated him for manipulating them or using them for his gain. The angry mob of faces twisted with rage and yelled accusations as they closed in upon him until his heels were backed against the edge of a cliff, leaving him only two options—face his demons or jump.

He always jumped.

“I need a drink, Kelly,” he said to the brunette, pushing himself to his feet.

“What kind of drink?” she asked. Kelly was a recent addition to the same Manhattan social circle that Toby ran with. She was the daughter of some important congressman.

“A strong one,” he replied.

“I’ll be right back,” she promised, touching his face with concern.

He walked to the living room.

“Toby.” Charlie, one of his work associates, put his hand on Toby’s shoulder.

“Not now, Charlie.” Toby pushed him off and morosely sank into the brown leather chair.

Charlie sighed in resignation and joined the remaining guests as they politely tended to the broken glass and various dishes of fine food cast onto the floor. When Kelly returned, Toby took the glass and drank it in one long gulp.

“Better?” she asked.

“Not hardly,” he said.

“Why do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Make trouble for yourself,” she said, her forehead revealing just how grossly he had humiliated himself. He took a deep breath to clear his misery.

“I’m not sure,” he confessed. “Have you ever had a gun held to your head?”

“No,” she replied.

“I have.” He tipped his glass to take the last drop of whiskey in his mouth. “I’ve made a lot of good people mad at me.”

Suddenly, the air pressure in the room shifted. The room warmed and smelled like flowers. A tender and celestial female voice echoed around him.

It’s not your fault.

“What?” he asked.

“I didn’t say anything,” Kelly replied.

The maternal voice repeated, It’s not your fault.

Toby looked around the room wildly, seeking the source of this phantom voice.

All of the things that you have done were part of a destined process. You are a great man. More than anyone, you are a rare and precious gem.

He covered his ears to block out the voice. It didn’t work.

It is time to remember your true identity.

Pressing the spot between his brows, he concentrated to hear the voice more distinctly.

Sedona.

“Sedona?” he asked aloud.

“No—Kelly.” Kelly touched his temple, “Are you okay? You might have hit your head.”

Toby felt something hot pressing against his chest. He stuck his hand in his suit jacket and pulled out the thimble-sized bronze mirror that his grandmother had given him. It shone like a night-light.

“Pretty,” Kelly breathed. She reached to touch it. “What is it?”

“Nothing.” He closed his palm quickly. “I have to go.”

“Where?” She was startled.

“Sedona,” he replied.

“Why?”

“Because the voice told me to.”

“You’re kind of troubled, aren’t you?”

“You have no idea,” he confessed.

“I think you should lie down; you’re pretty drunk.”

“Darling,” he slurred, looking at his closed palm, from which the light from the bronze mirror peeked through his fingers. “I’ve experienced things that you could never fathom. I have to go to Sedona, now.”

“Why?” She was confused.

“To find out.”

“What?”

“Exactly.” He touched her cheek and rose from his chair. Before he knew it, he was walking the city streets. His face bore the bruises of the recent conflict but his heart bore the much deeper wounds of his life of unchecked excess. He felt like he was being strangled. He didn’t have space to think. He could hardly breathe. He had to get out of town.

He hailed a cab.

“Where to?” The cab driver set the meter.

“JFK,” Toby answered, using his handkerchief to scrub the blood from his face.