Page 34 of Play Dirty

“Swamped,” my dad says. But he’s smiling. “Totally and utterly swamped.”

“And you love it,” I say.

“You know I do.”

I worry about him. He had a heart attack last year. We really thought he was gonna die. Triple bypass surgery and three months of recovery later and he was back in the office. My mother protested, as did his doctors, but you know my father.

“You should slow down,” I say.

“Why? So I can die bored?” He smiles at his joke.

“Take a vacation,” I say. “Go somewhere nice.”

“I’ve been everywhere nice.”

“Then go somewhere shitty.”

“Son, I’ve seen what I’ve needed to see. Now I just want to do what I was meant to do.”

Which means work. Being a lawyer was always a calling for him. Like the priesthood. No, that’s a bad example. Like… a soldier. Yeah. Like a soldier. He’s part of the army of justice.

I think he’s actually used that metaphor.

Law was never my calling, it was just my inheritance. He wanted me to be a lawyer so I became a lawyer. I don’t hate it. I don’t wish I’d chosen something else. Not really. What else would I do?

I’m just… “I hear you,” I say, replying to his statement. “Sometimes I feel like that too. And I’m only thirty-one.”

“You are the one who should take some time off to see things. I never spent so much time stateside when I was your age. I was always off doing things.”

By things he means Peace Corps and shit like that. Volunteer things. Good works.

“In fact, by the time you were born your mother and I were tired of traveling. Which is why we didn’t take you many places when you were young. I think that’s why you don’t have an interest in it now.”

That’s not why. But I don’t say that. I never followed in his humanitarian footsteps because… well, I’m selfish. I grew up in the Country Club neighborhood surrounded by other Country Club brats, went to Country Club private schools, and played on Country Club sports teams.

“I saw Chella Walcott the other day,” my father says.

Just hearing her name come out of his mouth kinda startles me. “She’s Baldwin now,” I say, just out of habit. “She got married to Smith Baldwin.”

My father nods, like he knew this but can’t quite get the name right. “Now that girl, she did things as a youngster. Her parents took her all over the world.”

I almost laugh. Because yeah, she did do all kinds of good works as a child. And it fucked with her head so bad, she ended up in a quad relationship with Smith, Bric, and Quin at Turning Point Club trying to put it behind her.

“So sad about her father. Did they ever figure out what happened to him?”

“They found his body up in the mountains,” I say. Without emotion. Which should make me pause and reflect on what kind of man I am, because I was the one who had him killed. But it doesn’t. Senator Walcott was a truly evil motherfucker. Taking him down was the least I could do for Chella.

And that reminds me of the check Smith slipped me. He gave me a million dollars.

One. Million. Dollars.

I didn’t cash it. I’m not going to cash it. I don’t even know how to begin explaining that money to my accountant. Besides, I didn’t have the senator killed because I wanted to profit from it. He just needed to die.

That thought makes me look at my own father. Who is still talking about Chella.

He doesn’t need to die. I don’t want him to die. He’s one of the good ones. He’s someone who came into this life with more than he should and used it to make a difference. He’s kinda like Smith, I decide. Ironic as that is.

And I am nothing at all like either of them.