“Holding,” I said with a half-assed laugh.
He nodded understanding. I’m sure he saw in my eyes the weight I was carrying. “I’ll cut right to it. The Deputy District Attorney is offering you twelve months in county jail for a guilty plea. With time off for good behavior, you’re looking at maybe nine months.”
I ground my jaw. Nine months of lock-up. Nine months of calling Samantha collect from a jail phone? Nine months of her making weekly visits with all the other inmate’s wives and girlfriends? Sitting in the visitor’s bunker with a wall of steel and glass between the innocents and the convicts? Nine months looking her in the eyes trying to pretend I wasn’t miserable and stressed and living in a stinking pit?
I’d been on both sides of that window wall. Good buddies of mine had been in the can over the years for fighting, DUIs, all that immature young men’s bullshit.
Watching your friends on the inside struggling not to rot away from the emotional squalor that took hold of the inmates was not fun. Wondering every time you visited if your good friend was going to have a bloody eyeball with a detached retina or maybe be missing some teeth he’d had the week before. Or maybe, your buddy might not even show up to get on the short phone because he was in the infirmary for getting his leg kicked in by three guys in the shower, and he couldn’t walk.
Yeah, fun shit.
If I got locked up, my time on the inside was going to be bad enough. But thinking about how miserable Samantha was going to be made it worse.
I didn’t want to put her through any of it. She needed to focus on good things, on her classes, on her art. Not my bullshit.
Maybe I needed to let her go.
Russell cleared his throat. “Christos, I want you to know I negotiated my ass off with the D.D.A. trying to reduce the offered sentence. But Schlosser would not budge. He thinks he has this case all buttoned up. If we go to trial, he’s going to nail you to the wall on reasonableness and avoidance. You’re in a tough spot, son. Nine months in jail on a plea bargain is still nine months. But if we go to trial, and the jury finds you guilty on all counts, you could be looking at up to four years in prison.” Russell took a deep breath. “I’ve gone head-to-head with Schlosser before. He’s tough as nails, and he’s chomping at the bit on this one. If he wins, he’s going to push the judge for the maximum sentence.”
I nodded silently.
“It’s a gamble either way,” Russell offered. He watched me carefully. “I wish I had better news, Christos. Take some time to think this over. Discuss it with your family. You don’t have to make a decision until a few days before the trial.”
Somebody wake me up and tell me this shit was just a nightmare.
CHRISTOS
I cruised homeward on the Five in my Camaro, keeping it to the speed limit. Master of Puppets by Metallica was pounding out of my sound system at concert-level decibels. If I couldn’t speed, at least I could give my ears a good pounding.
My phone vibrated in my pocket. I pulled it out to check the call. Fucking Brandon. I didn’t want to talk to him. Fuck it. May as well get it over with. I’d have to talk to him sooner or later.
I turned down the tunes on my MP3 player and pressed TALK on my phone.
“Hey, man,” I said.
“Christos, always good to hear your voice,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said curtly.
“How are the paintings coming along?”
Man, he asked me that at least once a day. “Great.”
“Do you have an estimated delivery date on any of them yet?
“The one of Avery is done. So are the ones of Jacqueline and Becca. Isabella is in progress, so is Sophia, and I started in on the one of Victoria and one of Hannah.”
“Only three are complete?” Brandon sighed. “We’re going to need a lot more than that.”
Did he
“When can we expect to set a date for your next solo show?”
He said “we” like “we” were hunched over the fucking easel seven days a week. I’d squeezed in a seventh day of painting when it had finally sunk in that my trial was not going to wait for my ass to finish my paintings at a leisurely six-day-a-week pace.
“Shit, Brandon. I don’t fucking know. Why don’t you come down to the studio and help out. I’ll hand you a fucking brush and you can stretch canvases and paint backgrounds and shit, like Rubens used to have his studio grunts do.”
Brandon chuckled mellowly. “Point taken.”
Damn right, point taken.
Brandon sighed. “We can’t keep the customers waiting forever, Christos. Eventually, they’ll lose interest and move on to the next big thing.”
I twisted the steering wheel in my grip. If I wasn’t careful, I might rip the wheel off the fucking steering column and throw it out the window while I tooled down the freeway at sixty-five. “I’m working as fast as I can, Brandon. There’s only so many hours in a day.”
“I understand. How’s the painting of Isabella coming along? She’s an amazingly beautiful woman. I’m thinking your portrait of her will likely be the center-piece of your show.”
“It’s coming.” Too bad I thought it looked like a poster for a porno.
“What does that mean?”
I slid my hand down my stubbled face. “I don’t know how to say this, but I’m not liking it.”
“Do you want me to call New York? Or Europe? Find some more exotic models?”
Flying models out from the east coast or across the Atlantic meant escalating model fees. They’d need hotels, meals, pampering (we’re talking top-end models here), the works. All that shit would cost me an arm and a leg, and since I only had two of each, I was reluctant to start spilling more of my blood paying more bills. The L.A. models would have to do.
“No,” I said. “I’ll make it work. I’ll tweak some things on the Isabella portrait, maybe change up the background, and it’ll be great,” I lied.
“I don’t think changing the background will make much of a difference,” Brandon scoffed. “Are you having trouble capturing her likeness?” He hadn’t seen the painting yet, so he didn’t know.
“Fuck no.” It looked like a goddamned full-color holographic photo of her.
“You’re not going to find a more beautiful model on the west coast than Isabella…”
“I know.”
“…unless you can convince Samantha to sit for you.”
That again. I had to agree. But I didn’t think I could convince her. Not with all the shit she was juggling. She needed to focus on her art career, not mine.
“No,” was all I said on that topic.
“Fine. If you change your mind about the European models, let me know. I’ve been looking through some Russian agency books and there’s three or four stand-outs you might want to consider.”
“Email me the photos and I’ll check them out.”
“Terrific. I’ll do that as soon as we’re off the phone.”
“Sure,” I sighed. I never thought I’d say it, but I was fucking sick of hot chicks. I wanted to chuck all of them out of my life and make more room for the only one that mattered.
“Excellent,” Brandon said in a smiling voice. “Call me if you need anything.”
How about an all-expenses-paid trip to the nearest firing squad?
“Will do,” I said before ending the call. I just about threw my phone out the window, but stopped myself at the last second.
I cranked the volume back up on Metallica and drove straight to the nearest bar.
CHRISTOS
That night, I called Jake.
