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“Damn right you’re sorry. I swear, Joel, if you ever, ever do something so stupid as to get yourself arrested again, I’m not bailing you out. Locking you up might do you some good. At least it would stop you making a fool out of me.”
“Yeah,” I say, just to make a noise. He’ll be madder if he thinks I’m ignoring him.
“You’re in all the papers, Joel! With your pants down! Don’t youeverthink before you act?”
“I guess not,” I sigh. He wasn’t this angry last time I got arrested. But I guess last time I crashed the car, and that’s a less exciting headline than making a scene in the middle of a casino. It’s all about the photo opportunity in the game of being a media darling, after all.
“Listen to me carefully, Joel. This is an order. You will not show your sorry face in public until the press have no interest in it anymore. You will hide somewhere, I don’t care where, and you will not spend any money. You will not go out drinking or gambling. You will sit quietly and be behaved until you can get a grip on yourself.”
“You’re grounding me?” I sit up in surprise. I’m thirty-two years old. I’ve screwed up bad this time, I know, but surely Dad can’t ground me as a grown adult.
“If that’s how you want to see it, yes. Don’t go into the office — I’ll see to it that things are covered there. And don’t stay in your apartment. It’s too hot for you there, I’m sure they’re already looking for you. Don’t go to a hotel either, it’s too traceable.”
“Hold on, if I’m not meant to go to a hotel or stay home, where the hell am I meant to go?”
“I don’t care, as long as it’s out of my sight!”
He hangs up abruptly and I let out a long groan as I flop back onto the bed, pulling my pillow over my head as if the soft down might suffocate me and solve all my problems. I hit myself on the forehead through the pillow. I’m reckless, not suicidal. I have to get out of this mood before I start drinking again. Who knows what might happen if I put any more vodka into my body.
I lie there for a long while, my head throbbing between the pillow and the mattress. Where can I go? No hotel, no home. Getting out won’t be a problem — I have a cellar entrance that I’ve always kept a total secret for reasons like this. It’s after that that’s the problem.
Maybe if I just shut my eyes and have a sleep then all of this will blow over by the time I wake up. Like hibernating. Bears do that, right? Maybe I could be like one of those cute little koalas and hibernate for three months. Do koalas hibernate? Do we even get koalas in this country?
This line of thinking is a welcome distraction but it’s delaying the inevitable. I have to make a plan.
I grab my phone and pull it under the pillow with me to keep pretending I’m totally okay. I’m going to search for koalas. The more I think about it, the more I realize I know absolutely nothing about them. Are they as small as they look?
The light from the screen blinds me and I yelp as I rush to turn the brightness down. When I can finally look at the screen, I see that I’ve opened the contacts list by accident. All these names of people I never talk to, who got my number for my name alone. I’m nothing but a business contact to most of them, or a one-night stand to the rest.
Wait a second, though! A plan is starting to hatch as I lay my eyes on the name of my old friend Ben. Nothing ventured, as they say. I stab at the screen and the ringer seems to last for an eternity, and it’s only when I’m starting to give up any hope of this being a good idea that Ben finally picks up. “Joel. What have you done now?”
“You mean you haven’t seen?” I say, shocked. I guess I can’t be the center of everyone’s universe.
“No,” he deadpans. “I’m in customer relations. I’myour headof customer relations. Of course I saw.” Somehow Ben’s disapproval is even worse than Dad’s. His opinion matters more to me. “I suppose you want something?”
“Um,” I stutter, throwing the pillow aside again in an attempt to feel more human. “Where are you right now?”
“Kyoto,” he says. “You’re lucky you didn’t catch me asleep.”
“We have an office in Kyoto? Where the hell even is that?”
“Japan. And we don’t, the office is in Tokyo. But when some nice Japanese businessmen offer to take you on a tour of their home city and buy you some of the best food you’ve ever had, you don’t turn that down.” He chuckles down the line, a crackly, warm sound. He always has this smile, even when he’s mad with you, that makes you feel like you want to do the right thing. Not that he’s nasty, not at all. He’s just the kindest guy I’ve ever met.
“How long you out there for?”
“Yes, Joel, you can stay at my place. Your dad’s hunting you for sport, then?” There’s a sting in his tone that makes me wince. Ben might be kind, but he’s also never afraid to take the moral high ground.
I sigh, “Yeah. He’s so mad with me. I’m grounded.”
Ben snorts. “Wow, dude. Way to go.”
“He says I can come back out to play when the press find someone else to chew up.” I’m trying to crack a joke but nothing about this feels very funny. I feel more like a kicked puppy running away with its tail between its legs.
“I might even be home by then,” Ben says, his wit as razor sharp as ever. “Unless you’ll have magically transformed into a model citizen?”
“No chance,” I say, grinning. “You’re a lifesaver, Ben.”
“I’m due home at the end of the month. I expect you to have got your act together by then,” he says sternly. I imagine the raised eyebrow and wagging finger.
