Dani: The boys are alive and in good health, but this is an emergency so fucking answer your phone, you shitbag.
“I have to call my wife. Ex-wife.” I get up out of the bed and wrap a throw blanket around myself while simultaneously dialing Dani.
“Are you serious?!” She screams when she answers. She’s raging mad. “You have two children and you don’t answer your phone at eleven o’clock at night? I’ve called you thirty times!”
I feel like I’m having a heart attack. “What’s going on, Dani?”
“I just pulled your son outta the back of a freakin’ cop car. I’m bringing him to the apartment! Be ready for him,” she yells and then hangs up.
“Oh no,” I say to myself.
“What is it?” Kate says.
“I have to go. My son got in trouble. I have to go, I’m sorry.”
My good ear is ringing, which is making me ten times more anxious than I already am. Right before I lost my hearing in my left ear, there was a loud ringing noise just like this. I’m going to go completely deaf at the exact worst time in my life.
22
where are you?
Danielle
“Put your seatbelt on and shut up!”
I pull out of the driveway of the heavily littered strip mall that contains the Charminar Indian Restaurant, open twenty-four hours; a coin laundromat; a 7-Eleven; and, of course, the most impressive of them all, the headliner, the grand high poohbah, a Spearmint Rhino Gentlemen’s Club.
I’m driving in the opposite direction of our house, trying to stop hyperventilating. I’m taking Noah to the apartment to face his father after almost being arrested for loitering and then mouthing off to a police officer at ten-thirty at night when he was supposedly at a friend’s house doing thirteen-year-old boy things…whatever those “things” are that don’t involve committing crimes.
“Where are we going?” Ethan says in a timid voice from the backseat.
“Tohellif we don’t change our ways!” I scream.
I’m shocked that Noah is managing to sit stoically in the passenger seat.
When we get to the complex, I pull Noah by his ear all the way from the car to the apartment front door. Ethan is traveling a safe distance behind us in an effort to separate himself from the criminal I’m dragging.
When we get to the apartment front door I use my key, open the door, and announce, “The juvenile delinquent is here!”
The apartment is dark and quiet so I flip the lights on in the living room and kitchen.
“Alex,” I yell, not kindly. “Sit,” I say to Noah, pointing to the couch.
I’m confused. Where is he? I go to the bedroom…empty.
“Hi, Dad!” I hear Ethan say in the living room.
When I walk out, I see Alex standing in the entryway, looking disheveled. He’s sweating and breathing hard.
“Where were you?” I say in a calm voice.
Alex looks at me but doesn’t answer. He looks at Ethan, “Hi, buddy.” He then walks to the couch and stands over Noah, who is sitting with his arms crossed over his chest. “What happened?” Alex asks.
Noah is tongue-tied.
“Do you happen to know where Spearmint Rhino is?” I say.
Alex squints. “He was at a strip club?”
