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  Easton looked around the conference table. Most of them, Lucille included, wouldn’t meet his eye. He spat on the table then stormed out, slamming the glass door so hard that it cracked.

  Chapter 9

  Easton woke with a hangover so brutal it could have made Satan weep. He struggled to his feet, no memory of how or why he was lying starfished on his kitchen floor, a smashed bottle of whiskey inches from his face. He felt very lucky to have not gotten any glass in his eyes, but otherwise, he was shaking uncontrollably and felt utterly miserable.

  His eyes burning and mouth dryer than the Sahara, he somehow managed to open the refrigerator. He had begun stocking up on Gatorade half-diluted with lemon water for such occasions, and he began to chug, probably consuming at least a liter and a half before coming up for air. He filled a large glass half-way with crushed ice and then filled that glass halfway with red bull and halfway with his mixture, then carried the glass with him. He paused before leaving the kitchen, rummaged through his pantry closet until he found bacon jerky. He chewed a piece and washed it down with his concoction as he walked gingerly toward the bathroom.

  The shower was too cold but he didn’t bother fixing it. He just stood there, letting the water pour over him in torrents. What the fuck is happening to my life? he wondered to himself.

  After his tepid shower, he stepped out, promptly puked his guts out in the toilet, gargled his concoction, brushed his teeth, then made his way to his bedroom. Easton decided to wear a suit; just because he looked and felt like cat shit didn’t mean he couldn’t dress well. He put on a dark grey Armani suit with a white shirt and a shiny, royal-blue tie. He slipped on black Salvatore Ferragamo Italia shoes and made his way downstairs. Popping a mint into his mouth, he hopped into the driver’s seat of his 2017 Acura NSX, and drove off.

  ***

  “You look like trash,” said Hayden. “You sure that I’m the one with cancer and you’re the, ahem, ‘healthy’ one?”

  “Things haven’t been especially great,” replied Easton.

  “So I’ve heard. You okay?”

  “I will be if you get through this surgery without issue,” said Easton.

  Hayden shrugged. “What’s meant to happen, happens. Everyone dies, not everyone truly lives, all that shit. But I think I’ve sure as hell lived. Don’t get me wrong, I would love to continue living, but whatever goes down goes down.” He whistled a moment, then added, “All that said, the doc seems super confident in my progress. I’ve responded well to the chemo, and after surgery, if all goes well, I’m pretty much in the clear, or at least as in the clear as I could be having had cancer.”

  The nurse came around the corner. Easton eyed her up and down; she reminded him of his college crush, but it was neither the time nor the place to make a move. “Mr. Cooper?” she said.

  “Yes,” both brothers replied.

  “Hayden,” she corrected. “Dr. Ross will see you now.”

  Hayden smirked at his brother. “Wish me luck.”

  Easton clasped his frail hand between his. “Always.”

  “Ciao, Fratello,” said Easton, as she rolled him away in his wheelchair.

  ***

  Hours passed. Easton faded in and out of sleep as he attempted to make it through the ending of We the Living. At one point he reached for his phone but then remembered that his personal phone had been stolen, and his office phone was forfeited when the board voted him out of his own company.

  Finally, the doctor emerged. “Easton Cooper?” he extended his hand. “Dr. Avi Ross, your brother’s surgeon.”

  “How’d he do?”

  “Well, he mostly just laid around all unconscious-like. He wasn’t very helpful. Me though? I did great. And your brother is solid as a rock.”

  Easton breathed a sigh of relief. “Never thought I’d say this but thank god!”

  Dr. Ross snorted. “Why does he always get the credit when I’m the one performing the damn surgery in the first place? Anyway, we have some post-op work to do, and while we normally recommend patients like this stay for observation for a few days, he already requested to leave if it went well, which we agreed to under certain stipulations. I’ll let you know when you can take him.” Easton hugged the doctor, who did not seem amused. “Oh, are we hugging now? This isn’t going to be a thing. That’s right, end the hug, there you go, see? Handshake! Handshakes are good.” He backed away awkwardly, and Easton found himself full of bliss.

  ***

  “You’re one of the richest men alive and certainly the youngest billionaire I know of,” said Hayden, “So why on God's green earth do you drive an Acura?”

  “Don’t be hatin’ my ride,” said Easton. “This Acura happens to be the most expensive hybrid car on the market.”

  “You and your hybrids,” muttered Hayden.

  “What? Is it wrong that I care about the environment?”

  “Do you though? Or do you just want to appear like you care about the environment?”

  “I’m allowed to do both!”

  “Of course you are. Okay, let’s go.”

  And so they drove. “So,” said Hayden. “What’s up in your life?”

  “Nothing much,” said Easton. “Alienated a woman I may have been falling in love with in favor of my business only to get thrown out of my business not long after getting mugged. The usual.”

  “Sounds rough,” said Hayden.

  “Dude, you just beat cancer. What you went through is ridiculous compared to my problems. I’ll be fine.”

  Hayden snorted. “My problems are getting resolved. Yours are very much in-progress.”

  “Maybe,” said Easton. “But you know why I know I’ll get through it? Because you survived. You made it! My brother’s alive and well. Well-ish, anyway. And with you by my side? There’s nothing I can’t tackle.”

  “Even with your empire crumbling around you?”

  “Screw my empire. I’ll build a new one. We will build a new one.”

  “Empires always crumble. Everything dies,” said Hayden.

  “You’re awfully pessimistic for a cancer survivor,” said Easton.

  “Maybe,” said Hayden. “I’m just reminded of this Shelley poem.”

  “Hmm?”

  “I mean, when I was in the hospital, I had a lot of time on my hands. And memorizing poems became a bit of a game for me. So here’s one I memorized that I think is rather appropriate for your situation.”

  “I’m all ears,” said Easton.

  Hayden cleared his throat, and began:

  “I met a traveler from an antique land

  Who said: ‘Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

  Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,

  Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

  And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

  Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

  Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

  The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.

  And on the pedestal these words appear—

  “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings;

  Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

  Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

  Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

  The lone and level sands stretch far away.’”

  Easton reflected on the poem. “So basically, what the poem’s saying is—” but he never finished his sentence, for at that moment, they were broadsided by an oncoming car. Glass flew everywhere and their bodies were rocked as both vehicles spun in a spiral of horror and blood and bent steel as the deafening shrieks and creaks haunted them.

  And then there was silence.

  Easton coughed, blood spraying the since-retracted airbag. Dazed, he looked to his right, seeing his brother’s lifeless face stare into nothingness. And past his brother, he saw the other driver, the one at fault for this awful wreck. Easton groaned. It was Dr. Avi Ross.

  The same man who just
hours before had saved Hayden’s life was now responsible for Hayden’s death.

  Chapter 10

  Easton awoke the day after the funeral bright and early. No hangover of any kind. Two nights prior he had driven around the worst neighborhood in driving distance and handed out free bottles of liquor, each hundreds if not thousands of dollars apiece. He wasn’t paying attention to who he gave them to, he just got rid of them. When he got home at three in the morning, he crushed up the painkillers he had received as a result of the car crash and blew them into the wind.

  Easton had always fled pain or complication his whole life. But now, all he wanted to do was live in the anguish, feel the physical horror of the pain, body and soul. He wasn’t going to drown one morsel of suffering.

  So all he did was stare, cry, and occasionally smash things more expensive than most people made in a year.

  This day, he realized that any further smashing was merely another means of drowning agony, so he elected to set it aside.

  He put on a pair of Amiri Indigo Mx1 classic jeans, a white Robert Graham button-down shirt, Giuseppe Zanotti men's embossed leather mid-top sneakers, Dita Eyewear Mach 5 sunglasses, and went for a stroll. Following the accident, he had purchased a new iPhone X so he could handle the funeral arrangements, so calls and texts were constantly streaming in, much to his chagrin. Many were from Alex. He ignored her calls and deleted her texts or voicemails before either reading or listening to them. About twenty minutes into his walk, his phone rang again. Oh what now, he thought, trying to compose himself as he answered.

  “Cooper speaking.”

  “Mr. Cooper, this is Detective Keebler.”

  “What, did some bad elves steal your cookies?”

  “What? Oh… yeah, never heard that one before. Mr. Cooper, we found the person responsible for mugging you not long ago.”

  Easton stopped walking. “Oh yeah?”

  “Suspect’s name is Reggie Rodini. Picked her up for a different robbery, found your phone on her.”

  “I’d like to come to the station,” said Easton, the wheels turning in his head.

  ***

  Reggie Rodini paced in her cell, bored out of her mind. There were six hundred and twenty-eight bricks making up the walls in her cell. There was a phone on the wall, but she sure as hell hadn’t memorized any phone numbers, so it just taunted her.

  She began to exercise. Twenty squats, thirty lunges, ten jumping-jacks, twenty push-ups, thirty crunches, ten jumping jacks, rinse and repeat. Once she had done five rotations, she began to stretch. Ten minutes stretching on her feet, then ten stretching on the ground. Then she repeated the whole process over again.

  After her third go-round, she was sweating and frustrated. She began pounding on the glass. “Yo C.O.!” she screamed. “I want some water! This machine’s broke!” It really wasn’t, but it barely dribbled anything, and she certainly didn’t have anything to drink with.

  Her screams went unanswered save for the voices of male inmates down the hall making some crude comments about what they wished they could do to her, so she gave up. She sat cross-legged and tried to control her breathing. When she was in high school, her counselor taught her to breathe in for half as long as she exhaled if she felt herself getting angry or anxious. So she inhaled for two seconds, exhaled for four; in for two, out for four; in two, out four; two, four. Over and over until she settled. Closing her eyes, she began to square numbers in her head. One squared is just one; two squared is four; three squared is nine; four squared is sixteen; five squared is twenty-five; six squared is thirty-six; seven squared is forty-nine; eight squared is sixty-four; nine squared is eighty-one; ten squared is one hundred; eleven squared is one-twenty-one; twelve squared is one-forty-four; thirteen squared is one-sixty-nine, uh, I think; fourteen squared is… what the hell is fourteen squared?! “Shit,” she said aloud. She controlled her breathing again and regained her composure. Okay, so she didn’t have fourteen squared memorized. Okay, imagine a chalkboard… fourteen on top of fourteen… four times four is sixteen, then one times four is just four but I add the one from the sixteen, so I’m at fifty-six, I think, then one times four is four and one times one is just one, so I guess that’s fifty-six plus one-forty, so maybe one-ninety-six? She was pretty sure that she was right, but didn’t feel like doing it again for fifteen, so she moved on to cubes: One cubed is itself, two cubed is eight, three cubed is twenty-seven, four cubed is sixty-four, five cubed is one-twenty-five, six cubed? Uh erm…

  She was started by a knock on the glass. “Rodini?” asked the corrections officer.

  She stood up sharply. “What you want?”

  “You’ve been bailed out. Still sorting a few things out, but you’ll be out within the hour.”

  She eyed the officer suspiciously. “Ain’t no one bailing me out,” she said.

  “Well, someone did,” he said, shrugging.

  Reggie stood there, baffled. She tried to remember what six cubed was but her mind was overflowing with questions. Giving up on using math to distract herself, she resumed her exercising.

  ***

  An officer led her outside. It was cold, especially in the crappy rags they gave her inside. “You know who’s picking you up?” Asked the officer.

  “Hell if I know,” she murmured. “Can’t I just leave?”

  “Supposedly someone’s coming for you,” the guard said, shrugging.

  “I’m nineteen and unless one of my kid siblings figured out how to drive ain’t no one picking me up!” she insisted.

  “Guessing you don’t know who bailed you out either?”

  She fell silent. What if it was an error? No one would bail me out so it must have been a mistake but I’d best haul my ass outside this turd before anyone the wiser.

  A limousine pulled up. The hell is this shit? thought Reggie.

  A man stepped out the back of the car. Handsome, built, dressed expensively, somehow familiar… oh shit! she thought to herself.

  “Reggie Rodini?” asked the man.

  “Who’s asking?” asked Reggie, staring at the sidewalk.

  The man faced the guard. “Give us a minute?”

  “Hell, I’m done here anyway,” chirped the guard, strolling off.

  Reggie looked the man up and down. “So. Who’re you?”

  “Easton Cooper. You and I met not long ago.”

  “No we dun’t,” she replied.

  “Actually yes, we done,” he said. “You mugged me, in fact. Though I admit that in the dark and with your face covered I assumed you were a young man. And your name made me think so too. Not many girl Reggies that I’ve known.”

  “Short for Regina,” she murmured in response. “So what, you bail me out to take revenge or something?” she asked hotly.

  “You think I bailed you out?” he asked.

  “Ain’t no one else got that kinda money that I know so I figure you bail me out and you’re planning on holding this shit over me if I don’t agree to go to your sex dungeon or some other creepy rich boy shit?”

  Easton got agitated. “Why does everyone—? Never mind. No, nothing like that, and again, I thought you were a guy until like a minute ago, so no, no sex dungeon for you.”

  “Man I don’t know you! What queers can’t have sex dungeons now? Half my ex-boyfriends bang other dudes and they go around thinking they ain’t gay so I don’t know nothin bout you or whatever crazy sex dungeon you got.”

  “I. DON’T. HAVE. A. SEX DUNGEON!” he exclaimed. A few people walking by on the opposite side of the street gave them dirty looks, and Easton blushed. “Look, no sex dungeon, no revenge, nothing weird, ok? But look… I’ve lost a lot recently—”

  “Don’t look like you lost much,” snarled Reggie, her arms crossed and lips pursed.

  “Yeah, I know, I’m getting to that,” he said irritably. “But I lost my company, I lost the woman I’m pretty sure I was falling in love with, and just the other day I lost my brother.”

  Reggie looked to the ground. “
Losing brothers sucks,” she said, voice trembling.

  “Indeed,” said Easton. “But then I got home from the funeral. No girl on my arms, no brother to watch the game with, feeling empty, and yet I still come home to a mansion that would give Howard Roark a wet dream, a car collection to make Jay Leno blush, and more money in the bank than the current orange-tinted occupant of the white house even claims to have.”

  “Trump aside,” interrupted Reggie, “am I supposed to know who those other two people are?”

  Easton scowled. “No. No you are not. Anyway, I kinda figured that I had just been accumulating and accumulating for no reason other than to have more. But a few weeks ago I get the shit kicked out of me by some kid I’ve never seen in my life. Figure he—or she, now that I know you—must have been pretty desperate. But then I forgot about you. Got buried in all of my own nonsense. Then I heard you got arrested and figured that this was my chance to give this a second glance.”

  Reggie stare burned into him. “So what, you’re gonna play the whole white savior thing? This is the ultimate alpha male fantasy ain't it? You get to play god, forgiving and saving like some wealthy-ass Jesus. Uh-uh, I ain’t about that.” She brushed past him. “Thanks for the bail money.”

  As she continued down the street, he called after her: “I’m not pressing charges. But give me five minutes of your time and I’ll take care of your other legal problems. And I’m guessing you’ve got people who depend on you. Doubt my motives all you like but I can have the power to make their lives a whole lot better. Even if it is just to play messiah.”

  She turned, sulky. “Five minutes?”

  “Five minutes.”

  “Fine. Talk.”

  “So I got tossed from my own company. Figured I’d start another one. But the idea was to staff it with folks who need a chance, be it a second or third chance, or even a first chance that lots of people don’t even get to begin with. I’ll hire ex-cons, or guys and girls on probation, then have at-risk youth as interns, you name it. But you’re right: I don’t know this world at all. So I’ll need a partner. So when you’re not mugging strangers, what are you interested in?”