Page 32 of Total Exposure

But that’s not even true. I didn’t need bail money. I didn’t call him for help. And if I’m being totally honest here, I would’ve stayed in that cell until my court appearance, then pled guilty, and happily served my time.

It would’ve been like a vacation to me.

Because you’ve got nothing better to do, Ixion. That’s why.

Yes. That right there is the truth.

I have absolutely nothing better to do than sit in this stupid basement and watch some psycho fall apart because people might look at her.

Of all the stupid things I’ve heard in this life, this is right up there with I deeply apologize for my inappropriate actions and I’m seeking treatment for my sex addiction.

I stare at the screen. Willing her to get up and do something so I can stop thinking about my life and go back to feeling sorry for someone else.

The minutes tick off. She stays there, all crumpled up on the rug, playing with a string, or a piece of lint, or whatever the fuck she’s rolling between her fingers. And she’s chanting something. Like a poem, or a song, or something like that. I can’t really hear it, the microphones in that room aren’t the best. And I try to find a good angle to see her lips to try to read them as she mumbles. But it’s no use. Her long hair is mostly covering her face.

I’m a bird… in a song… and the wind…

Fuck, I don’t know what she’s saying. It’s a nursery rhyme, maybe?

Eventually she stops playing with the lint ball, and her lips stop moving, so the chant is over, and then one side of her stupid sunglasses falls away from her face and I see that she’s sleeping.

Guess I won that bet, right?

Too bad there wasn’t money riding on it.

Like I need the money.

Like the bet was with someone other than myself.

Like… I really need to get out more.

Sometime over the next several hours, she rolls over and grabs for a blanket draped over the arm of a couch, and tries to cover herself.

It’s one of those blankets that aren’t good for anything. They’re usually too thin, and too short, and too decorative to have any useful purpose whatsoever.

My mother used to have those things on all our couches when I was a kid. It annoyed me, even back when I was short, that they never covered enough to get me warm.

And then I start wondering if she’s cold.

Of course she’s cold. She’s sleeping in a giant mansion that can’t ever be warm enough because that’s the way of mansions. And she’s on the floor. And that blanket doesn’t even qualify as a blanket, so I press the button for the microphone in that room and I lean in, ready to tell her to get the fuck up and go sleep in a real bed because, you know, there’s like twenty-seven different things to sleep on in this place and none of them involve the floor and… I stop just in time.

Because I’m under strict orders not to talk to her. And if I do talk to her, she’ll know I’m a man, and she’ll freak the fuck out, and then she’ll walk out of here and call her therapist or whatever, and then… fucking jig is up, right?

Ixion and Jordan do what they do best. Fuck people up.

I don’t know where that just came from, so…

I glance over at the notebook, then notice I’m still fucking holding the pen in my right hand, and…

I’ll just write her a note. And quietly make my way up to the library, and place it next to her, and then kick her or something, so she wakes up and finds it.

Good plan, Ix.

So I turn the page in the notebook and think about how to put this.

You’re being dumb. Go to bed.

Probably not the best way to handle it. So I flip the page and try again.