Utopian Day

by C. L. Wells

  Mia had never been to such a party before. She had never even had a drink of alcohol. She wasn’t quite sure what to expect, so she brought along a few tools of the trade. A telescoping police baton was clipped to her belt, and a knife was strapped to her calf, just under her jeans.

  The night was proceeding without incident until an obviously drunken fraternity brother started making unwelcome advances towards his date.

  “Stop it! Let me go!” the girl protested.

  “Come on,” the man slurred, “let’s go upstairs where we can be alone,” he said as he began dragging her towards the stairs by her wrist. The girl resisted futilely, outweighed by about a hundred pounds. Mia quickly positioned herself on the stairs in front of the advancing man and confronted him.

  “Let her go,” she said as she put up her hand towards the man in a stopping gesture.

  The man looked up and laughed as he attempted to walk into and over Mia. Before he could touch her, Mia thrust her knee up into his solar plexus, grabbed his left hand while stepping behind him, placed her foot in the crook of his leg, and applied pressure to force him down onto the stairs. He was then left gagging for air, face-down on the stairs with his arm behind his back. Mia had her knee in his back so that he wasn’t able to get up. During the brief melee, he had released the girl he had been dragging up the stairs.

  Mia turned to the girl. “Are you o.k.?” she asked.

  The girl looked stunned and was rubbing her wrist. “Yes,” she replied, “thank you.”

  Mia turned her attention back to the man on the ground. “I’m going to let you go and you will leave the party now. Yes?”

  “Yes,” came the man’s strained reply.

  Mia released his wrist and took her knee off of his back while quickly moving up the steps and turning to face the man. The man stood up, rubbed his wrist for a moment, and then lunged at Mia without warning, throwing a punch at her face. Mia dropped down into a sitting position on the stairs and delivered a swift side-kick to the man’s groin. As the man dropped to his knees cursing, she leaned forward while still in a sitting position and delivered a forearm strike to the side of the man’s face, which was now level with hers due to his position on the stairs below. His head slammed into the side of the substantial bannister and he crumpled to the ground. Mia had already stood back up and was prepared to continue the assault, only to find that it was unnecessary, as her attacker wasn’t moving.

  “Bravo,” came a voice from the main floor below. Mia looked down to see a well-dressed male student leaning against the archway leading into the next room.

  “I don’t think he will be bothering anyone else tonight, except perhaps for the ER doctor,” the man continued.

  Mia eyed him warily as she walked down the stairs. The man pulled a business card out of his pocket and extended it in her direction.

  “How would like to come work for me?”

  Mia took the card and read it:

  Gaming Entertainment Enterprises

  Nicky B.

  555-724-9845

  “What kind of job is it?” she asked.

  “Oh, nothing you can’t handle,” he replied with a sly smile.

  From that day forward, she became Nick Bartonovich’s personal bodyguard and enforcer. It was good money and she liked the work. The job gave her frequent opportunities to take out her frustrations against her father on numerous unfortunate surrogates. Nick was amiable, and talkative – the exact opposite of Mia and Mia’s father. It was easy to know what Nick wanted because he told her, and he always smiled when she delivered. It was a perfect match.

  Now, as she entered her studio apartment, she stared into the mirror hanging on the wall, admiring the expensive necklace that Nick had just given her. She wondered for the first time in their relationship what it was, exactly, that Nick wanted. The possibility that he might be interested in her as a woman and not just a business associate caused her heart to beat faster. Many women her age had already married and had children, but Mia had such mistrust for men that she had never been comfortable progressing beyond a few dates with any potential suitor. Nick, however, was a man she trusted completely. She could envision a future with him. She noticed as she looked into the mirror that her cheeks were turning slightly red. She had never had this feeling before and it was confusing – but she liked it.

  Chapter Thirty

  J.T. got off the plane in Nassau and took a cab to the British Colonial Hilton, where he would be staying. He was nervous. He hadn’t met any of his former victims face to face since the trial, and then only a select few had been brought into court to tell their stories for the jury. Back then, he’d felt no pity for them and no shame. Since that time, he had learned to stop objectifying his victims and begun to see them as real people, even to empathize with them. As that process had taken place, he’d begun to feel ashamed about what he had done. Over time, he’d worked through the shame and accepted responsibility for his own actions. Eventually, he developed a desire to make things right, or barring that possibility, to at least own up to what he had done and apologize to their faces.

  He checked in to his room and deposited his suitcase on the bed, unpacking his clothes and hanging them in the closet. The sight of the suit brought back memories of the old days. Except for the ordeal at the Cayman Islands bank, he hadn’t worn a suit in almost eight years. It felt as if he was staring at a relic from the distant past.

  Once he finished unpacking, he grabbed the book he had been reading, Compelled to Control: Recovering Intimacy in Broken Relationships by J. Keith Miller, and headed down to the hotel restaurant for something to eat. The food in the restaurant was more than adequate. The wine he ordered was good, and he lingered at the table after his meal, drinking another glass of wine and reading more from his book. As he read, he came across a passage that hit home:

  …the shift from being in charge of all outcomes to one of doing our best and turning the outcome over to God puts many of us into a spiritual life, a life controlled by the reality and power of God’s Spirit instead of our own manipulations and controlling behaviors.

  He thought about how his life had changed this past eight years. He had gone from being a corporate big-wig who thought he had it all under control – who felt the need to have it all under control – to an ex-con who was trying to make amends for the wrongs he had done, and to let go of the perception that he was by any means in control of anything other than his own actions. He was nervous about the meetings he had scheduled for tomorrow, but he knew in the final analysis, he wasn’t responsible for what the other people did with his attempts to make amends. He was only responsible for what he did personally.

  He pondered this thought as he went back up to his room and went to bed, saying the Serenity Prayer before he drifted off to a dreamless sleep.

  The next morning, J.T. woke up and had breakfast on the beach at the hotel before heading back to make certain the conference room he had reserved was ready. Afterwards, he went back to his room and dressed in the business suit that he had brought for the occasion. He took out the disguise kit he had brought and began the practiced routine of pasting on the fake eyebrows and mustache, inserting the temporary dental implant, and putting the colored contacts in place. He had done this so many times in preparation for this trip, it was almost as routine as brushing his teeth. One last check in the mirror confirmed that everything was in place before he went back down to the conference room to await the arrival of his first appointment.

  His first two guests arrived on time. Mr. and Mrs. Thompson were a black couple in their sixties. The husband had worked for one of the companies that J.T. had sold off and which was subsequently liquidated. The man had suffered a heart attack the week after learning he was going to be let go and that his pension fund was insolvent. The wife was already retired at that point, but didn’t have a pension. The husband went on disability, taking social security as soon as he could in order to make the house payments which they were already behin
d on. When J.T.’s lawyers had tracked him down, they had been about to lose their house. Through the foundation that J.T. had set up a few years before to help his former victims, the house had been saved and they were receiving a check each month, which was worth about twenty-five percent of what his pension would have been.

  They exchanged greetings and J.T. introduced himself as Jack Smith – the alias he had chosen for the occasion. They exchanged small talk for a few minutes as J.T. asked them about the cruise and whether or not they were planning on shopping while they were on the island. They were a nice couple, easy to talk to, and J.T. felt horrible for what he had done to them. He let the feelings sink in, reminding himself that his worth wasn’t defined by his past actions, but that he was still responsible for the damage those actions had caused. It helped him gain perspective before he spoke.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Thompson, I arranged to come here today to talk to you for a very specific reason. You see, I am one of the primary people responsible for the demise of the company that you worked for and the failure of your pension fund. I’m here today to take responsibility for those deplorable actions and let you know that I am sincerely sorry for the pain those actions have caused you.”

  J.T. stopped and paused before he continued. He braced himself for their reaction. The old couple looked at each other in a bit of confusion and then back at J.T. There was silence that seemed to last for a thousand years before the old man finally spoke.

  “I appreciate you saying that, son,” the old man began. “You know, I was pretty devastated when all of it first happened. I had a heart attack and we almost lost the house – there were some pretty rough times. I was bitter and angry and it started to eat me up inside.” The man turned to his wife and looked at her with eyes full of love. He placed his hand on top of hers and they smiled at each other before he continued. “But my wife came to me one day and challenged me about my attitude. She asked me why I was letting some company take away our happiness, when all they really had the power to do was take away some things that were going to turn to dust one day anyway.” He looked back at J.T. and continued. “So I decided to let it go and move on. I decided to forgive whoever did it and move on with my life.”

  He reached across the table and patted J.T.’s hand. “So I thank you for your apology… and I forgive you.” He smiled at J.T. and tears began to form in J.T.’s eyes.

  “Thank you, thank you very much. You don’t know how much that means to me,” J.T. replied.

  They talked for a few more minutes before the couple left, and they ended up hugging each other before the man and his wife walked out of the door. J.T. went back to his chair at the conference table and sat down, totally blown away by what had just happened. He sat there in a daze for several minutes before a knock came on the door.

  He answered the door and introduced himself to an attractive woman in her mid-thirties. His briefing on her had indicated that her name was Theresa Borne of Toledo, Ohio. Ten years before, her husband had committed suicide after losing his job and his health benefits at one of the doomed companies that J.T. had helped to gut. Her husband had been on anti-depressants and could no longer afford the medication once his insurance was cancelled, being unable to afford the more expensive COBRA insurance. He’d committed suicide by slitting his wrists after getting drunk out of his mind. Theresa had found his body in the bathtub when she returned home from her job.

  After the introductions and polite banter, J.T. began his confession.

  “Mrs. Borne, I arranged to come here today to talk to you for a very specific reason. You see, I am one of the primary people responsible for the demise of the company that your husband worked for and…”

  Before he could finish his sentence, Theresa Borne threw the glass of water at J.T. and began cursing at him. The base of the glass tumbler hit him in the forehead. Blood began trickling down his forehead from the gash that had been opened. Theresa had gotten up by this time, stepped over to where J.T. was seated, and begun hitting him in the face, all the while cursing at him. J.T. managed to grab her wrists and prevent her from continuing, only to have her spit in his face and begin kicking his shins.

  The racket the woman was making had reached the front desk, and a security guard made it to the room just in time to see the enraged Mrs. Borne attempting to bite J.T.’s hands in order to get him to release her so she could continue to hit him. The security guard grabbed Mrs. Borne from behind, immobilizing her arms and pulling her back out into the hall.

  J.T. decided that going out into the hall would not be a good idea and sat down to compose himself and catalog his injuries. He went to the men’s room and cleaned up a bit before the next interview, re-applying a slightly sideways fake eyebrow that had been moved during the altercation. He made it back into the conference room just minutes before the next person arrived.

  All told, J.T. had ten different interviews by the end of the day. There were a variety of reactions that he experienced, but the best and the worst had been the very first two interviews of the day. He caught the plane back to the Cayman Islands that night, texting Laura when he was able that he was on-schedule with no mishaps. He was exhausted. He had experienced just a small portion of both the venom and the forgiveness to be had from all the people he had wronged in his past, and he quietly began to weep as the mixed emotions of gratitude and sorrow overwhelmed him.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Over the next several months after Nick had given Mia the ruby necklace, he began asking her to accompany him to an increasing number of lunches, dinners, and walks in the park that had nothing to do with business. It was quickly obvious that he was moving their relationship towards something more, but Mia was still unsure how to take all of the attention.

  In the past, when Nick had been romantically involved, it usually ended up in sex with the woman in question on the second or third date. Gifts and parties, taking the private jet to various events and exotic locations for romantic weekend getaways, all followed by the inevitable breakup about six months later, when Nick became bored with the girl or she became too demanding. Yet, none of that was happening between Nick and Mia. Apart from the ruby necklace, no other gifts had been given. He had not attempted to make sexual advances, and everywhere they had gone together, outside of business trips, had been in town, within driving distance of Nick’s house. It was unusual for Nick, but Mia was enjoying herself and decided to wait it out. She knew that Nick would tell her whatever he had to say when he was ready. Nick was nothing if not goal-oriented. She trusted him, and that was all that mattered.

  One evening, Nick was scheduled to attend an art gallery exhibition. It was a black tie event. Mia always accompanied him to these events as his bodyguard and followed behind him as he moved through the crowd in his trademark style, saying his hellos to friends and making new acquaintances. Mia usually busied herself looking for signs that someone may intend bodily harm to Nick, making sure no one with a score to settle showed up close enough to pose a threat, and going over possible exit strategies in her mind to keep from getting bored.

  In the past, events such as these would be where Nick would frequently find his next girlfriend. The interested female would usually wander over into his circle and at some point make it obvious that she was available and interested. One of two things would then happen. Nick might ask for her number and call her to arrange a date at a later time. If he was exceptionally taken with her and the woman was obviously willing, he would make his exit and take her back to his house, where they would usually end up having sex. Mia knew the latter because, on numerous occasions after dropping the two off at Nick’s house, the women had still been there the following morning when Mia had come in to work.

  The exhibition was following a predictable pattern. The champagne was flowing, Nick was working the crowd, and in between conversations, he was stopping to view the photography exhibits. This particular artist was focused on trees, specifically close-up shots of different parts of the trees,
like the bark, a leaf with rain on it, and an exposed root system. Mia personally preferred performance art rather than photographs or paintings. She supposed this was most likely due to her background in martial arts.

  A woman whose dress was showing entirely too much cleavage sauntered up to where Nick was standing and began talking to him about the photograph he was looking at. He responded politely and the woman stepped even closer to him, obviously flirting with him and attempting to get a response. Physically, the woman was Nick’s type. Young, athletic build, blond, and busty. Mia felt her face getting hot. Her breathing rate increased and her jaw muscles started tensing up. She realized with some alarm that she was jealous.

  All the dinners and walks and drives in the countryside with Nick over these past months had changed their relationship. She realized for the first time that, during this time, she had actually begun to develop romantic feelings towards him. She was falling in love and now this young woman was threatening that experience. Mia wanted to walk up and push her away from Nick, perhaps with a well-placed open-hand strike to the throat. But she kept completely still and watched, her gaze never leaving Nick and the woman.

  Nick took a step back and attempted to extricate himself from the situation, telling the woman to have a nice evening and turning his back on her to move on to the next exhibit. The woman took several steps, going around Nick, positioning herself in front of him, pressing herself into him again, obviously not the type to give up easily. When it became clear that she was not going to take the hint, Nick turned to Mia and gave her the subtle but practiced sign that he wanted Mia to run interference. Mia smiled slyly as she gladly stepped forward to handle the situation.

  Nick took a step back from the woman in practiced fashion just as Mia arrived at his side and slipped between him and the woman. Nick turned and walked away, leaving the two women alone.