Page 75 of Fade Out
“Can you get the bond back?” I asked.
“Pardon?”
“For whoever paid it. Can you get it back?”
He shook his head. “Doesn’t work that way.”
“That doesn’t seem right. I’m not guilty of anything.”
“Bond doesn’t have to do with guilt or innocence. It really just has to do with getting out of jail.”
“A hundred thousand dollars though. That seems punitive.”
“More so when you add my fee,” he said with a smile. “Just be glad you don’t have to pay it.”
“I might be glad, if I knew who put up the money.”
He just smiled and kept his mouth very shut.
* * *
“Oh my God, that’s fabulous!”Brian said when I finally got back to his place. “We need to celebrate.”
“I should go see Ross,” I said, guilt rushing through me. Why hadn’t I been already? Why hadn’t I found even a few minutes to go see him?
“Absolutely,” Brian said. “He’ll want to know you’re okay. We should have some champagne first though. Franklin! There’s some champagne in the fridge, isn’t there?”
“No. There isn’t,” he called out from the bedroom. “Remember, we drank it when they announced Reagan’s cancer.”
“Seriously?” I mean, I hated Ronald Reagan, but I wouldn’t toast anyone’s cancer.
Brian shrugged. “The laugh’s on us. He’s going to be fine. I’ll run over to Treasure Island and get some bubbly.” Then he called out down the hallway. “I’m going to Treasure Island.”
“Get some pop! Old Coke! I can’t stand New Coke!”
“Okay!”
After he left, I went and took a shower. I didn’t want to think about how disgusting I smelled; alcohol, vomit, stale cigarette smoke from the party, anxiety perspiration from trying to keep myself out of prison. Peeling off the stinking tuxedo I wondered why Brian hadn’t run the minute I came in the door.
The shower, hot and hard, felt wonderful. I tried to clear my mind—everything would be fine, I was going to be okay, my life would go on.
For some reason though my thoughts drifted back to Reagan’s cancer. Honestly, I couldn’t blame Brian and Franklin for celebrating. His own press secretary had been caught on tape laughing about AIDS—and wasn’t fired for it. Not to mention the religious leaders who supported Reagan calling AIDS ‘God’s punishment.’
Growing up Catholic, I was pretty used to that kind of double-gated logic. If someone Christians approved of died—no matter how painfully—that person was called home to God. Everyone else, though, they were being punished for their sins. It didn’t make sense. But if you pointed that out you were told to just have faith. Which I suppose really meant shut up and don’t think about it.
Of course, Joseph would point out that God didn’t really have anything to do with the craziness people applied to him. It was his belief that we should have faith that God didn’t have anything to do with those prickly contradictions. That God made sense even when Christians did not. I had a little trouble with that, too.
I turned the shower off and got out. My heart hurt just thinking about Joseph. I wondered if he didn’t think he was being punished now—he was certainly acting that way—if he thought he’d been given a sign, an indication that he was on the wrong path. It was human nature to retreat into religion when things got bad. Was that what he was doing? Or was it that this other guy, Alejandro, needed him more than I did? I had no idea.
I wondered if I should try and find out. Now that I wasn’t going to spend the rest of my life in prison, should I chase Joseph down and make him give me answers? If I didn’t like the answers, would I accept them?
Scooping up the disgusting tuxedo, I went into the guest room and got dressed in a pair of jeans and a T-Shirt that had a collection of cartoon fish on skateboards. An absurd idea; one that Brian had thought funny enough to buy the shirt for Franklin. Franklin didn’t think it was that funny.
I clipped my beeper onto my belt—I hadn’t actually left it at the tailor like I’d told Owen. I’d left it in Brian’s guest room, which was nowhere near as interesting.
I wondered if there was any point in having the tuxedo cleaned. I wasn’t sure it was salvageable. It certainly could never be sold as new. I was going to have to pay for it. That was a bummer. I didn’t need or want a seriously used tuxedo.
When I walked into the living room, Terry was sitting on the couch—his eyes and nose red, face swollen, a garbage bag full of clothes sitting next to him. He sniffed.
