Work today had been ferocious.
We'd been swamped long before Adam had come in and gotten drunk and then I had to avoid him on top of everything else. When the man sitting next to Adam at the bar had offered to walk him home I'd been a bit relieved, knowing that I'd have have an hour or two of peace to cap off my shift.
At 2:30, I plodded home exhaustedly after my shift ended. The air around me was humid and filled with fog.
Immediately after opening the door to the apartment, I tossed my keys into the bowl on the table next to the doorway, pulling off my shoes and stripping off my pants with the knowledge that Graham was out of town for the next couple of days.
Ever thankful for the 24-hour pizza place down the street, I ordered a small pepperoni pizza before jumping in the shower for a quick rinse. I pulled on clothes just as the doorbell rang.
There were only two delivery boys at Stoned Baked Pizza and it was impossible to tell the difference between them. The name tags on the front of their employee shirts had long been smudged into illegibility and, just to make it even harder on everyone, they were both in love with the girl who worked behind the counter at Stoned Baked - Savannah, a kind of ditzy blonde - who was completely oblivious to the two boys' obsessions.
One of the two boys stood at the door when I opened it that day, hours before dawn broke. I paid, tipping him for his ability to go without sleep as much as for anything else, and then walked back into the living room to watch a little mindless television before hitting the hay.
I turned on the TV and immediately broke out into a cold sweat.
On the news in front of me was a picture of the man who'd walked home with Adam. It was a picture that had clearly been taken when the man had been booked into a prison and the ticker at the bottom of the muted screen told anyone watching that he, Herold Nemioy, had escaped from a nearby prison yesterday afternoon. That he'd been convicted of more than twenty crimes, and that his rap sheet included several murders.
I called Adam.
"Turn your TV to Channel 5 News."
"Why?" How he could sound like he was still in that much of a stupor, I just didn't know.
"Just do it." I hung up. There was no reason to talk to Adam beyond warning him of the threat to his life, especially if he was still even a fraction of how drunk he'd been only a couple of hours earlier. I just hoped what I'd said had been enough.
No longer remotely hungry but knowing I needed to eat, I ate a couple of slices before heading to bed. Just as I lost consciousness, dawn broke and I vowed I'd check on Adam when I awoke, despite any weirdness between us.
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