AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“What lies before us, gentlemen….”
Alistair stands precariously on top of the pool table holding a tumbler of expensive whiskey. Behind him are floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over the blinding lights of the Las Vegas Strip, and in the distance is the gaudy replica of the Eiffel Tower.
“And what lies behind us,” —he makes a point to drag out the words so they sound much more ominous then they need to be, and it has its desired effect because the chatter in the hotel suite quiets, and everyone turns their attention to him—“are but frivolous matters.” He pauses for affect, a mischievous smile on his face. “Compared with what is in us!” he shouts victoriously, as if he’s just led an army into battle instead of downing a glass of whiskey.
The room full of people—some we hardly know, and some we wish we didn’t—explodes into chaotic cheers. Someone yells, “Dick,” and Alistair whirls around, teetering on the edge of the pool table, holding his hand flat above his eyes as he scans the crowd.
“Who goes there?” he says teasingly, right before tumbling off the edge and landing on the couch with a thud.
He’s gotten the quote wrong, but Alistair was never a good student. I’ve known Alistair Van der Walt a long time. During our tenure as fraternity brothers, we bonded over our love of fine whiskey and fine pussy, getting as much of both as we could. Brothers in our fraternity and brothers in mischief, we’d also bonded over being the degenerate sons of Washington’s upper-class. Even though we graduated years ago, we still hadn’t outgrown our love of fine whiskey, but at least we’d upgraded our search for even finer pussy. Alistair's search led him to getting caught with the daughter of a judge – a judge I was clerking for. Guilty by association—and the fact that I was in his home while Alistair was defiling his daughter upstairs in her room —I was promptly and ceremoniously fired.
To avoid the disapproving look of his mother and the wrath of his father, he called me and said, “What does one do when they are at the center of a scandal?” to which I promptly replied, “Why, create another scandal.” Which is how we ended up in Las Vegas.
Alistair looks up at me with his head in my lap as if he doesn’t remember how he got in this position. He turns himself upright only to lean forward to cut a line of coke on the coffee table in front of him.
“Only you could quote Ralph Waldo Emerson in reference to getting high,” I tease him.
“And they said we’d have no use for nineteenth century transcendentalist poetry in the real world,” Alistair laughs, flinging his head back as he inhales sharply and then settles further into the couch like a cat settling in for a nap.
“How much did your college diploma cost your father?” I take the line when he passes it to me.
When I open my eyes again, a familiar blonde stands in front of me with her perfect posture, like a debutante who was taught to balance a stack of books on her head.
We went to Georgetown law together, although she was just coming in as I was making my way out. Her family is old money, the kind that gets you into the Daughters of the American Revolution.
“Darren Walker,” she says, touching my arm. “It’s been a while.”
I pinch my brows together, and in my head sound out the names Miffy, Muffy... When I don’t answer right away, she gives me a reprieve. “Tiffany.”
“Yes!” I point my finger in the air as if I did in fact remember her name.
She shakes her head disapprovingly but laughs it off. “We had Constitutional Law together,” she goes on to explain. “Your debate on the Fourteenth Amendment was legendary,” she says this time with an approving smile.
“Ah, yes,” I say, tipping back the contents of my glass, draining the last of the whiskey.
“So what firm did you pick?”
“None,” I say. I’d only gone to law school to appease my father and make my mother happy, but I had no intentions of working eighty hours a week at some stuffy firm.
“None?” she blanches. “I thought since…”
“What brings you here, Tiffany?”
I can only assume she’s taken a position at a prestigious firm as a junior associate with a plush office in a high rise overlooking the Hudson—that is until she marries one of the partners and pops out a few babies, because that’s what girls like her do.
“I guess I wanted to blow off some steam,” she laughs nervously.
I smirk, pushing a few stray hairs off my forehead as I sweep my eyes down her body.
“And blow off steam you will.”
Standing to my full height, I dip my head to meet her eyes. I have nothing but time and money, and there is nothing better than wasting both on a beautiful blonde. When I lean in to kiss her, she presses a hand to my chest, and with wide eyes, looks around me and asks, “Isn’t that your father?”
I turn around, annoyed, expecting to find my father standing behind me, but he wasn’t there. Instead, he was on the TV. I didn’t want to watch a fucking news segment about my father, especially not while I’m high and trying to get laid.
“Who turned on the fucking news?” I yell, annoyed.
Alistair grabs the remote from the table presumably to turn it off, but as I stare at the TV, the scene causes me to hold up my palm to stop him.
