Maliciously Obedient

Mike’s eyebrows shot up. He’d had quite enough of someone else’s body fluids for the day.



“Then you’re gonna go around the corner and then you’re in 237. Just let us know if you find any mouse droppings. We haven’t had a problem with em for-”



“What? Say that again?” Mike stopped, interrupting him. “Mouse what?”



“Mouse droppings, you know, mouse turds.”



“You’re telling me that you’re renting me a room that may be infested with mice and that your establishment's hallway has bums in it that urinate and that I may end up stepping in this urine?”



“Well, not if you’re careful.” The clerk looked at him as if he was the stupidest human being on the planet. A hand on his forearm made him flinch, the feeling like cold lizard.



“Hey, baby, I got a better room. I can take you to a place where there ain’t no mouse turds, I can take you to some places you ain’t neva seen,” the woman crooned. “You got fifty bucks? I got heaven for you.”



Mike snatched the key, plucked the paper back, and stormed upstairs. Indeed, Bernie the bum sat in a pool of his own urine and, although Mike tried not to actually examine it too carefully, probably his own vomit. The screams of some woman in the distance behind a door pierced his ears. He heard a smack and then a scream, a smack then a scream and realized that what he was hearing was not a fight between domestic partners – the smacks were not abuse – but were some sort of sexual game. Cringing, he worked to ignore every bit of sensory input from this place, breathing now through his mouth and approaching room 237.



His key slid in the lock and he turned and found that he had to jiggle the doorknob, pulling the door slightly toward him to get the bolt to turn out of place so that he could enter. He almost wished that the lock hadn’t worked and that he hadn’t succeeded because the bolus of odor that hit him upon opening the door made him understand the phrase knocked flat on his back. Lysol combined with vomit and urine and – his eyes lit on one of the outlets – some sort of Glade product of undetermined floral origin. No petroleum product was going to overcome the biological permeation of whatever cloth fibers or polyester imitations filled the room, absorbing an olfactory history of very human deeds.



Mike took a step back, crossing the threshold, his brain mildly aware of the sound of a gunshot, of squealing tires, and of a new scent. He turned and looked and there was the man he presumed to be Bernie, standing over the balcony railing facing the parking lot and urinating. When Mike looked down over the railing, following the trail of liquid, he realized that Bernie was peeing directly on the hood of his rental car, which Lydia had so kindly rented for him. It was a sprite can, quite literally.



Somehow General Motors had managed to convert a sprite can into a car.



Tongue twisting inside his cheek, jaw flexing, body tensed, he took note of everything around him. Bad flight. Bad car. Bad hotel. Bad travel arrangements.



Lydia.



What kind of game was this? He looked at his watch: 11:49 pm. Pulling out his cell phone, livid beyond belief, he punched in the number for work and then stopped. What good would calling her at work do when she wasn't even there? And what good, frankly, would calling her at home do – even if he had her number?



He had no reason to have it no matter how much he wanted to have it. Goddammit. That woman. What was she doing? Why would she punish him like – oh. Oh shit.



Following his request, she was economizing. He had told her to make the business arrangements for Detroit and to save money. Somehow, she managed to turn everything around so that whatever he told her to do, she did to the letter of the law.



Ah, so this was how she wanted to play? She was capable of more – he knew that. Social graces weren’t something she lacked. He’d been in the corporate world long enough to know that there were plenty of people who were competent at doing the actual work of the job but who had the social skills of a stuffed monkey draped with Mardi Gras beads.



Not her. So what was this game? Why on earth would she book him in the seediest, nastiest possible set of arrangements you could ever expect a billionaire to – hold on there.



Not a billionaire yet, and she doesn’t know you. Matt Jones, yes – but not Michael Bournham.



Mike leaned back against the railing, his hand sinking into something hard and wet, and then he heard a cracking sound, pulling back from the railing just in time before one of the rods – cheap wood faded by weather, sun, and time – popped off and fell to the ground with a rattle. A clacking sound as it made its slow, crooked path down to settle by the tire of his car pierced the night air, joining in the muted chaos of traffic, sirens, and machinery.



He had had enough. Enough of this game, enough of this place, and just plain enough. No matter what Jonah told him, he didn’t need to play the part of Matt Jones 24/7. And this? This entire situation made him think that being Matt Jones wasn’t worth it. The only thing that made it worth it was Lydia.



Who had booked him in a hotel with more germs than a bird flu research lab.



Grabbing his overnight bag, he stalked past Bernie, whispering, “Make sure you give it a good shake.” As he descended the stairs with more athleticism than he’d exhibited outside of a gym with a personal trainer in months, his legs practically running as he sprinted for the car, he stopped cold.



Fuck this shit. He wasn’t driving that thing. Grabbing the phone, he called Dom, who seemed to know everyone, everywhere in every major city. This wouldn’t be the first time that Dom got him out of a mess.



The phone was pressed up to his ear, Dom’s number ringing, when the prostitute seemed to materialize out of nowhere. His only tip off was her odor, which made him gag. A look to the left and he discovered her leering in his face, only inches away.



“Hey, babe.” She looked like she had a hit of something in the five minutes between seeing her last. Oh, God, he thought, Lydia must hate my fucking guts.



“Hang on, Dom,” he said into the phone, putting his hand at his side.



“Hey babe, you got some money? I need some money. I don’t.. you don’t have to do nothin’ with me,” she said, her nose covered in pimples, forehead shiny, eyes a faded, muted blue. He wasn’t quite sure if those were dimples when she smiled – or scars. She was rode hard, put back wet and about as appealing and fuckable as a dead zombie with lice.



“I don’t want no nothing, Ma’am,” he said, the last word a form charity.



“I’m just hungry, man. You got five bucks? Ten bucks? Something?”



Mike groaned on the inside. Some part of him relented, the good part that remembered his dad giving buskers money on the street. Or telling him that you never know what another person's lived and that we all walk through life with some level of trouble. If you could afford to be generous, be generous. Mike certainly could afford to be generous, especially if this deal went through at work.



Wallet in his back pocket, he reached back and pulled it out, opened it up, and handed her a twenty. Surveying the parking lot to make sure there was no threat, no one hiding in the shadows and about to mug him, he was about to climb in his rental car when a voice startled them both.



“Freeze!” The shout was aggressive, clear, and he heard it before his brain registered the light, the bright searchlight shining on him and the streetwalker. Mike looked around, frantic and confused, sliding his wallet back in his pants, wondering if this was some sort of mugging. Had the prostitute set him up? Was he about to get rolled? Hell, for all he knew Lydia did this. She was responsible for everything else that had gone wrong tonight.



“Freeze! Detroit police! Hands up, hands up in the air now!”



Aw, shit. “No, Sir, you misunderstand, mister...officer...I’m not...I haven’t done anything wrong...”



Slam! His face smashed into the glass of his car. He was shoved over the top of the hood, the remnants of Bernie's piss now burning into the side of his face, leaking into his eye.



Rough hands, strong, muscled and very accustomed to the movements that they were executing on him, frisked him. Plastic handcuffs tightened around his wrists and he heard the prostitute crooning, “Hey, baby it’s okay. We gon’ be fine. They’ll treat you right at the jail, just don’t clench up too much when they do that strip search and you’ll be good.”



Strip search? Mike fought to come up with the right words to explain. “No, no, no, no, no. Sir, sir, sir,” he argued. “I’m the CEO of company, I’m a...I...I am not here for-.”



“Yeah, right, bud, we’re all CEOs of a company.” He could feel a sharp elbow in his ribcage. He needed to go silent.



“Hello? Hello? Mr. Bournham? Mr. Bournham?” Dominick’s voice came from the cell phone that had clattered onto the ground.



“Dominick! Dom! Dom, I need your help. I’m in Detroit – ” Smash! A thick black boot sole crashed down on the glass surface of his smart phone, destroying it with one very carefully aimed grind.



“Oh,” said a man’s voice, presumably one of cops. Mike couldn’t see him as his face was currently more intimate with Bernie’s urine and the hood of the car than it had been with anything in months. “Oh, did I step on it? I’m such a klutz. I really gotta watch where I’m stepping. You know what, though, Mr. CEO? You ain’t gonna need that cell phone where you’re going tonight.”



And with that, Mike found himself hauled up by his tightly bound wrists, his head shoved down as he was pushed into the back of a police car, a police car that was a hell of a lot nicer than his rented sprite can.



Dom's alarming speed made Mike do a double-take, the thick, burly man appearing in the flesh at the local jail within hours. While Mike had expected a swift resolution to his arrest, and that freedom would be around the corner, he was nonetheless deeply impressed with Dom's efficiency.



Impressed and grateful. Give the man a huge bonus, he thought, his hand grazing something sticky on the bench he sat on in the holding cell.



For a guy who used to be part of the throng of the middle class, being in jail – however unfairly – triggered a sense of shame and outrage. The CEO in him knew this could be taken care of with a few bribes and a well-placed threat, if needed.



Mike Bournham, the geeky kid from Easthampton, Mass., the one who always followed the rules and who had paid the price for doing so, though, couldn't believe he was behind bars, with an open metal toilet that was currently occupied by the head of a drunk. Bugs crawled down the visible skin on the back of the man's head.



Note to self: get some RID. And a steel brush. And take a five-hour shower.



“Jones? You're free to go.” Three men stood up, none of them Mike.



“You forget your own name, man? Maybe Sunshine made you lose your fucking marbles?” the cop cracked, pointing at Mike. Jones – shit, that's right. His fake last name. Secret identities might be great for superheroes, but right now he was sick of it. Leave that shit to the movie makers.



Movie makers. Jonah. Fuck. Were they getting this on camera? For all he knew, they had someone tailing him. Or maybe Lydia was in on this somehow? If Jonah could give him a script with drama he needed to provoke, were they doing the same with her?