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Brett went back to his apartment. In times of great upheaval and stress, a man needed his home. His home was his castle. But when he heaved himself through the scratched white door that always stuck, the sight within was less than comforting.
“This place is a dump,” he said to the piles of dirty clothes and dishes in his path. He stood in the doorway, surveying his garbage can of a castle. Something inside of him snapped. He could either leave, walk away from his mess, and pretend it didn’t exist, or he could stay and deal with it. There was nowhere to walk to. He couldn’t handle Michel’s drama, and he’d burned his bridge to Lucille. The sad truth of it was, he had no one else to turn to. No other friends. His family—was he not speaking to them, or had they cut him off? Both were likely, and either way, they were unavailable.
He hadn’t noticed before that he lived in such squalor. Michel had told him as much a few nights back when he’d arrived to pick up Brett for their sleepover. This new awareness could be because, apart from the pain meds he’d left at Michel’s, he hadn’t had anything in the past twenty-four hours. Not a drop of liquor. He was perfectly, horribly sober, staring at the manifestation of his shitty life.
He began to clean. This wasn’t an eighties movie montage with friends and a great soundtrack. It was grueling, silent, and long. His iPod was broken and he was alone.
Once the clothes and dishes were cleared and the empty whiskey bottles and beer cans recycled, he found his layer of discarded drafts. The sequel to The Night Before the Apocalypse, now so long overdue he’d been dropped by the studio and his agent, abandoned by the few fans he had, and rejected by the girl he loved. The last didn’t have anything to do with his film, but it seemed fitting to include in his laundry list of life failures.
He stuffed the crumpled pieces of paper in a bag and tied it closed. This wasn’t one of those moments when he would unfold his work and begin to read with a heavy heart, only to find that the words on the page weren’t half as bad as he’d dreaded. That the script only needed tweaking to become the next great thing. No, this was one of those moments when he decided enough was enough. That script would never get written. He hadn’t written for days, and he didn’t miss it now. That had to be some sort of a sign.
By his bed he found a couple of condom wrappers. He couldn’t remember when they were from or who he’d been with. Great. He added banging random girls and not remembering it to his failure list.
On the bed were all of his books. At some point in his drunken slump he’d started sleeping with them, wrapping them around him like an uncomfortably hard and pointy-edged cocoon. Every zombie novel ever written. His collector’s edition of Frankenstein. Some contemporary mysteries, some classics, some non-fictions about travel and living in the wild. Plus his well-worn chemistry texts, beloved yet abandoned.
Brett put the books back on the empty shelves, turning over each one as he did. They were his grown-up teddy bears. They had been his only comfort when his life bottomed had out. It was time to be an adult again and put them away.
The sheets crinkled when he pulled them back. He almost vomited.
As he put the final touches on his cleaned abode, his cell phone rang. It was charging by the couch in the living room, and he lunged for it, hoping against hope someone had changed her mind and wanted him back. It was Michel.
“Where are you?”
Brett sank down on his couch with his disappointment. “I’m at my place.”
“Oh. Why?”
Brett shrugged. Stupid. He was talking on the phone. “I needed to take a step back, and it seemed like you and Simon had everything under control.”
“Hmm. We did until Simon disappeared.”
“Oh. He’s at Lucille’s.”
There was silence on the other end. Brett realized what he’d said and what he’d admitted to by saying it. He should make up an elaborate excuse.
“You fucked her, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And Simon walked in on you?”
“Well, yes and no.”
“Meaning?”
“Yes, he walked in, but we were mostly clothed already and Lucille was in the middle of stomping on my heart.”
There was the sound of running water on Michel’s end. “Sorry, bro, that sucks.”
“Yeah, wait, what are you doing?” Brett didn’t want to know. The words came out of him without his consent.
“I’m taking a bath.” This was accompanied by the sound of water swishing, no doubt as Michel climbed into one of his huge Jacuzzi tubs. Naked. While talking on the phone. To Brett.
“Dear God, why?” Brett held the phone away from his ear as though that would protect him from the image of Michel naked in the tub. No wonder Simon thinks Michel and I have a gay thing going on. He cringed.
“What else was I supposed to do? You guys all left. Simon’s not answering his phone. Lucille won’t answer hers. No one’s helping me find Sylvia—”
“What do you mean Simon and Lucille aren’t answering their phones?” Brett’s heart pounded. Even though Lucille had quit, Simon hadn’t. With a client like Michel, a fortune-making client, one or both of them should be always available. They were attached at the hip to those phones. It was a compulsion for them. If neither one was answering Michel’s calls... He didn’t know what it meant yet, but it wasn’t something good.
“I mean,” Michel was saying, “when I called them, it went to voicemail. So much for 24/7 spin doctor service. I’m in the middle of a major crisis here, and both of the people I’m paying to help me through it have disappeared. Well, I guess one of them was having sex with you, but what about the other?”
“What are you saying?”
“Does Simon Anton strike you as a little off?” Michel asked, splashing again.
“You mean the whole running from the law for eight years without contacting Lucille at all and then trying to blow me up and then helping us, no questions asked?”
“No, I mean, I think he’s gay. Of course I mean that!”
Michel was never as dumb as Brett gave him credit for being. Brett’s thoughts were reeling. He was trying to piece together everything that had happened in the last few days from the moment he’d stumbled in on Michel and Lucille in the hotel room. He got briefly distracted by thinking about the dress Lucille had been wearing that night but was soon back on track. Still, it wasn’t fitting together. It was like a small child’s puzzle with those huge wooden pieces that all should fit on the board but don’t. He was banging them against the board, over and over again, but with no luck. There was no doubt about it—he wasn’t destined for a career as a detective.
“Okay, yeah, that’s all kinda iffy. So what do you think is going on?”
His shoulder started to ache in its sling. Way to choose the worst moment, he told it sternly.
“I think,” Michel said from his Jacuzzi bath, “Simon is the one who kidnapped Sylvia.”
Brett, who’d been looking around for something to ease the pain, jumped up. “What? Really? Oh shit, I have to get to Lucille!”
“Um, why?”
“Because, you ass, Simon was with her when I stormed away! If he thinks she knows he’s the kidnapper, he may try to take her out!” Brett was pacing the room, yelling into the phone.
“Or they’re working together.”
Brett paused. It was true. They could be working together. “I’ll take my chances. I’d rather be on Lucille’s side than against her any day.”
“You want a reason to see her again.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Yeah, it is. But whatever. When you’re done being crazy, will you please come over? I want to take a nap, but I’m afraid to close my eyes in case someone drops a toaster in my bath or stabs me or something.”
With anyone else, Brett could have reassured them they were exaggerating and no one was going to kill them while they slept. With Michel, it was a legitimate concern. “Yeah, sure.”
“Hurry.” Michel hung up.
Brett grabbed his jacket from its reclaimed hook on the wall. He opened the door to find Sylvia standing on the other side, flanked by two large, sinister-looking men.
“Great timing,” she said. “And you’re all ready to go. Saves us a lot of work, you know.”
Brett was too shocked to do more than mouth words. “But, what, how, why...?”
“You have two options: you can either come with us quietly, or I can have these boys rough you up a little. What do you say, cuz?” She smiled as she spoke. For someone who’d spent the past few days hours kidnapped, Sylvia Stanton looked remarkably well. She was dressed head to toe in black, with smoky eyes and bright red lipstick. There were no rips in her clothes, no tangles in her hair, nothing to indicate she’d been held against her will.
Brett found a bit of his voice to say, “But why me?”
Sylvia smiled wider. “Isn’t it obvious? You’re the only person I know who’s an ordained minister.”