Page 1 of Gross Misconduct

1

GRIFFIN

I’m in the middle of fixing the engine on a client’s Cessna plane when my boss alerts me that I’m being arrested.

As far as I know, I haven’t committed any crimes. I haven’t run any red lights or robbed a bank. I’m the most average of average joes. I stand up from my workstation and rub the grease off my hands.

“The po-po’s waiting for you,” he says. His pale, bald forehead creases with concern. Since I’m taller than him at six four, he has trouble meeting my eyes. Today, he won’t even try.

“Did they say why?”

He shakes his head no. “You better go in and see what they want. I can have Corrado finish up with the Cessna.”

My stomach feels leaden. Annabelle and June flash in my mind, their sweet, angelic faces crumpling to tears when they find out their daddy’s going away. But for what? What did I do?

I walk past my boss to the exit. I adjust my eye patch over my left eye. Hopefully, the patch either garners me sympathy or makes me intimidating to the officer. Both could work in my favor.

I venture through the cavernous space of the hangar to the narrow corridor of offices. I’m glad I never got a job that required me to sit in such a soul-killing setting. Although, now that I’m on the verge of getting arrested, perhaps it would’ve been the smart move. Guys who wear ties and sit in cubicles didn’t go to jail, or if they did, it would be to one of those Club Med-style jails with tennis courts.

I exhale a deep breath and shake myself out before I turn the knob to my boss’s office. The cop stands next to his desk, all business, all scowl, his uniform navy and crisp. He’s more slender than I would imagine a cop to be.

I’m a large guy, although my midsection has the inevitable gut of middle age. Guys subconsciously step aside when I venture down a sidewalk. I’ve got a few inches vertically and horizontally on this cop, yet that doesn’t stop me from gulping back a nervous lump.

“Officer,” I say. I wonder if I should try to shake his hand.

“Griffin Harper?” His voice is eerily monotone, as if he’s the Terminator or something.

“Yes?”

“Sit down.” He points to the chair across the desk, not the special ergonomic chair my boss got last year.

I do as he says, my heart thumping in my ears. My mom taught me to tread lightly when dealing with cops. “What is this about?”

“You’re under arrest.”

“For what?”

“For not joining the Comebacks. You’re a bad boy, Griffin.”

Before I can question why an officer of the law called me, a forty-four-year-old man, a bad boy, he throws on a pair of reflective aviator sunglasses and takes out his phone.

“And you need to be punished.” His surly stare instantly switches to a sneaky smile as he presses something on his phone.

The opening chords of the *NSYNC song “I Want You Back” fill the office. I can’t remember what I ate for breakfast yesterday, but my teenage lizard brain refuses to forget the shitty songs popular in my youth.

My arresting officer begins shaking his hips, thrusting his junk in my direction. He mouths along to the song and does some choreographed moves. His hand accidentally smacks against the office wall, and he lets out an expletive under his breath but soldiers on.

He pushes apart my legs and shimmies between them, sliding to the ground and springing back up. He drags his tongue across his teeth in a failing effort to turn me on.

The officer, if we’re still calling him that, spins around and grinds his ass against my junk before I scoot the hell back and out of the chair. I stand as far apart from him as this tiny office will allow. Through the window, I catch my boss and a gaggle of female coworkers ogling from the hall.

“What the fuck is going on?” I think now’s a good enough time as any to curse at an officer.

“I’m Officer Jasper here to tell you that the Wolf Pack wants you back,” he says, slightly out of breath as he continues to dance.

My eyes travel to the Jasper the Stripping Telegram Artist logo imprinted on his phone case.

“And if you don’t show up tonight, then you’re under arrest.”

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