Page 27 of Bulletproof

The cold shower I took when I got home didn’t work, and I was just as hard and aching and miserable as I was when I got there. I had to pull out the big gun and watch Saving Private Ryan. Anyone who could do anything but bawl after the first five minutes of that movie, let alone keep their libido running, had a mad, scary sex drive. Mine shriveled up and died, and I fell asleep on the couch.

By Sunday morning, I was mad. There had been no call from Sam, no email, and no late-night booty call. His case—whatever it was about, strippers, drugs, all set to a Hans Zimmer soundtrack—was lost on me, but was obviously infinitely more important. I called and canceled dinner with Dane and Aja because I would be such horrible company. No reason to make them miserable too.

I stayed home and started cleaning, but never quite got any one thing completely done. I tended to be a little scattered with my projects around the house. Normally, the dishes got washed, but not dried. The laundry was folded, but not put away. The bathtub got scrubbed, but the floor wouldn’t get mopped. And that would all be okay, but I left whatever cleaning products spread in various rooms about my home. Sam had once found the Clorox wipes in the refrigerator because that was where I was going to next before I got diverted by whatever was on TNT at the time or by something VH1 was counting down. I was waiting for Best Rocker Hair, but as of yet, they hadn’t done it.

There had to be some sort of noise on in the background when I was cleaning—or just home for that matter. Silence creeped me out unless I was reading, but since reading normally put me to sleep, it all worked out.

So, Monday morning, before work, I was walking around, putting all the various items away—the vacuum still in the middle of the hall, the broom next to the front door, and everything else—when I got a frantic call from Michelle.

“Jory, honey, did you ask to be off the Fisher account?”

“No. Why?” I answered, yawning.

“Because you’re off of it and Fallon’s working it with me. I hate Fallon.”

I was confused, so when I got to work, I went straight in to see my direct boss, Becker Rowe, doing the fake-left-and-then-right maneuver to get into his office around his secretary.

“Jory?” he snapped irritably when he saw me, waving at Miss Shelton to kill her motor when she came charging into the room. “It’s fine,” he told her. “I have to see Mr. Harcourt this morning anyway. This is just somewhat earlier than I imagined doing this.”

Doing … this … uh-oh.

“Please, Jory, have a seat.”

Never ever good to be invited to sit down and have a talk with your boss first thing on Monday morning. I was so fired.

“I pissed off Mr. Fisher, huh?”

He squinted at me before he let out a long, deep sigh. “Yes, you did, and I must say that your antics this time were, by all accounts, completely and utterly unprofessional.”

Funny? Yes. Guaranteed to keep me my job? Probably not.

I wondered who had ratted me out.

“Mr. Fisher called and spoke to Nora and⁠—”

“Mr. Fisher called?”

“Yes.”

Hayes Fisher had called himself to bitch about me. What an ass. And he had complained to Nora Talbot, our operations manager.

“She said that he was incensed.”

Incensed? Really? I doubted that. Nora Talbot loathed me. Even if Mr. Fisher had only been really, really annoyed, he would have been “incensed” when the story was repeated to my boss. Not that I doubted that Mr. Fisher hated me. Apparently, whether or not Mr. Fisher wanted Dane to design a house for him was a nonissue in the big picture.

“Your complete lack of propriety has become an unwelcome burden on this firm, and furthermore⁠—”

“Sir,” I said, cutting him off, “you really don’t need to run down all my flaws. We both know there’re a lot, and neither one of us wants to be here all day. Am I right?”

I was. I was always right about bad stuff. It would be nice to be wrong once in a while.

Everyone was in the regular Monday morning meeting, except me. I was cleaning out my desk—no personal memorabilia allowed, only one family photo permitted—my final paycheck in the breast pocket of my suit jacket, and gone before anyone got out. Of course, I was looking at a picture of Sam as I rode down the elevator with my box. The security guard checked it on my way out, and that didn’t help.

What was worse was that I had no one to whine to about the debacle my life was at that moment.

Dane would be mad at me for going to see Eddie Liron after he told me not to. If I expected sympathy or a chocolate shake, which was what I really wanted, I would have to come clean. I was not in the mood to come clean or be a grown-up. The idea of covering Mr. Hayes Fisher’s front yard with toilet paper was very appealing. But Dane would cancel his appointment with the man for no good reason other than thinking that the guy was a dick for getting me fired. But really, I had gotten myself fired because I just couldn’t keep my big mouth shut. And that trait was technically Dane’s fault because he never made me keep my mouth shut back when I worked for him, but he was my brother, so …

It all whirled around in my head, but as I was trying to catch a cab with my box of nothing, except my framed picture of Sam, I felt like crap. And then it started to rain.