"Really?" I said. While Shawnie had been more than willing to share her observations on things or offer up a bit of down home country advice, she'd never really talked about her growing up in South Carolina except as an illustration of another point. "What happened?"
"He had a cousin in the county over that got in trouble with the wrong type of people. He agreed to help his cousin out by making a run over to the Myrtle Beach area to pick up a package and bring it back. Now, you know, I know, and yes, even he knew that nobody forgives a multi-thousand-dollar debt for running down to the Beach to pick up some doughnuts and maybe some crab cakes. But, he decided the risk was worth it to help out his family. So he took his car down there and picked up the package. He probably would have gotten away with it, too, if there hadn't been a drunk driver on the road behind him on the way back. They ended up crashing, and the cops found sixty pounds of weed in the trunk of his car. He got tabbed on a Class E felony, and even though he was eighteen and it was the first time he'd done anything, the judge was one of those hard-ass types who looked at kids like him and threw the book at him. Maximum sentence, ten years at Broad River. If he gets time off for good behavior, and a little bit of luck, he might be out right around the time you and I start grad school."
I thought about it, then shook my head. "So you're saying the next time he calls, I should pick up?"
She might have had a point, but then again, we weren’t talking about naively smuggling some drugs here. Dane took a man’s life.
Shawnie shook her head and brushed a strand of hair out of her face. "What I'm saying is that you should think about it before hitting that red button so hard or so fast next time. Is there something you don't know about this guy? Is there more to the story than what you know already? And also, more than anything, is there a reason you're still thinking about him weeks after you met him for only one night? Oh, and one more thing."
"What's that?" I asked.
"Are you going to eat that last pepperoni?"
Chapter 8
Dane
I was sitting on the couch that separated the bedroom area of the loft from the living room area when I heard the doorknob rattle, and insane hope flared inside me. In the time since my night with Abby, life had become painful at best. Each day had started with rolling out of bed, a desultory shower, and then off to find a job. My list of rejections was now standing at two hundred and thirty, the latest being at a soul food restaurant on Peach Street that had five customers along with one of the dishwashers in the back having gang tattoos when I'd put in my application. However, one look at the box and the details of my conviction, and the manager hadn't even given me the respect of waiting until I was out the door to throw my application in the trash. Instead, she had balled up the paper in front of me and tossed it in the trash can by the door. "Boy, we don't need your kind around here," she'd told me. "Now get out, and I don't want you here as a customer either."
I'd tried again afterward to call Abby, but just like she'd done the other times I called, it went to her voicemail. I'd left her a message, then went on my walks again.
That morning, though, I woke up totally broken. Lying there in bed, staring at the ceiling, the thought of trying to get out of bed, shower, and go out job hunting again was too much. Even the thought of going downstairs to the library and grabbing yesterday's copy of the Constitution-Journal just felt like too much effort. Even the time I spent in Iraq wasn't so exhausting.
So that day, I lay in bed until nearly eleven o'clock before my bladder chased me out of bed. I'd always been a guy whose body seems to run by an internal clock that rarely varied. I sighed. I had exactly five dollars left on me and not a prospect in sight. Still, there was no way I could face going out there that day, not after two hundred and thirty rejections. And especially not after Abby.
So I crashed on the couch, foregoing a shower for the first time in over five years, the first time since Iraq. Instead, I lay on the couch, watching as people with even more fucked up lives than I had yelled at each other over paternity tests, who was sleeping with whom, and who was going to kick whose ass later on. It helped. No matter how fucked up your life gets, no matter how low down the ladder of life you felt you were, you can always turn on daytime TV and find someone who is worse off than you.
I was watching a DVR-delayed celebration of Drew Carey giving away a new car to some co-ed from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo when the door rattled, and I sat up. The slight hope I had was squashed a moment later when I saw Chris Lake walk in. I mentally kicked myself, considering the Mayfair Tower is one of those types of places where guests can't exactly walk in and out without a lock code or being buzzed in by the front desk. If it had been Abby, I would have gotten a call.