Stan

I heard a soft knock on the door and truth was I had been waiting for it since we all went to our rooms earlier in the night. I wanted it to be Eve and I was pretty sure it was her, but about the time I got to the door, I heard voices on the other side of it in the hallway and I waited to open it. She was supposed to be alone for what I imagined us doing.

“Eve, what are you doing?’’

“Oh, um, I was going to ask Stan something. You know, about court tomorrow.”

There was a silence and some muffled words that I couldn’t hear.

“Don’t bother him Eve. He’s doing all of this for us and he isn’t charging us so much that we’ve got to sell the house. Let him do his job and don’t make it any harder than it has to be.”

“I know Carl. I wasn’t going to bother him. I was just going to ask him a question, so I don’t say or do the wrong thing tomorrow and mess it all up.”

“Ask him in the morning Eve. The man needs his sleep. He’s done enough.”

I wanted to ring my friend’s neck now. He didn’t know what he was doing and if he did, I knew that he would proceed anyways. It was a wakeup call in a way. No matter how it played out, it would never be an acceptable thing as far as Carl was concerned. That was his little sister and I needed to get my happy ass to bed because nothing was going to happen tonight.

Trying to go to sleep was not as easy as it was in the past for me. I could only think about what I was missing and what Eve had been at my door for. There was a possibility that she really was going to ask me something, but I hoped that it was to have another round of lovemaking. That woman had taken everything that I could give her and still had wanted more. She’d only passed out from the sheer number of times that she had come. I don’t know how many for sure, but I do know that it was one after another, after another.

The smile on my face faded because I realized what tomorrow was. It was going to be the day of reckoning. Tomorrow was the trial and though I had faith in good things happening, nothing was guaranteed. I knew that, and it worried me because I wish I knew that it was all going to work out. Paying someone off wasn’t enough and we were going in there with no real understanding already set up. That bothered me. Most of the time when I went into a court room, I already knew what was going to happen beforehand.

Finally, I got to sleep when it wasn’t that far from being time to get up. I usually didn’t have a problem sleeping, but then again, I felt far more invested into what happened with Eve.

When I woke up, it felt like I hadn’t slept a wink and my reflection wasn’t looking much better. I had bags under my eyes and even after I got out of the shower, I still looked like I was just coming in from a late night.

Eve mentioned something about it once when she saw me, and I told her that I was fine.

“You don’t look fine Stan. You kind of look like shit. Should I be worried? Are you worried?”

Her anxiety level was rising as she was saying the words and I had to tell her to calm down because she was making herself sick. She didn’t seem to understand that it was all going to be okay and I didn’t have the heart to lie to her. I should have. I didn’t lie, but I gave her the best outcome I could think of.

“I’m sure when we get in there, they will hear your side of it and it will all be understood. You don’t have a record and you don’t do things like that. I think this is all going to be okay.”

I didn’t quite believe that, but if she went in there with big eyes looking like she was guilty, that wasn’t going to help either. There was going to be a camera or two in there and they were waiting for the best shot, the one that looked like she was guilty just like they had reported. I had to make sure that they didn’t get that shot but saw a girl that was just trying to enjoy Vietnam and had accidentally went over the border by several miles.

That was going to be the tricky part. Trying to convince them that they didn’t know that they were over the line. There were signs that led up to it that stated where they were, and they had not seen them or ignored them. Eve and Callie said that they don’t remember them. It was another point of contention and I was going to have to figure out a way to explain it. I was still working on that one when we called a cab and set off towards the small courthouse that they had nearby. This was the day that I would find out what was going to happen. I had to get back to work soon, but I was invested in what was going on here.

Carl was about as nervous as his sister and he kept asking me some of the same questions that she had.

“It will be fine Carl. Its going to work out. I just know it is. You called me to help because you knew that I could. Now you’re just going to have to trust me.”

I was trying to put on the face of optimism, but it was hard. I was still going in rather blind and the lawyer that I was going to be working with was late when we got there. My translator was able to ask for a continuation for a few minutes until he got there, but they threatened to go on without him if he wasn’t there in ten minutes.

We had been here not, but twenty minutes and I had the judge pissed off with me, telling me that I expected special treatment because of where I was from. That couldn’t be further from the truth, but it didn’t matter because the lawyer came in, huffing and puffing like he had ran the whole way there.

“Glad to see you showed up.”

He tried to apologize and explain but the judge snapped at us to get started. We’d wasted enough of his time. I almost made it clear that ‘we’ were here on time, but local council was the one that was late. Everyone there knew it obviously, but it felt like something that needed to be reiterated as they looked on at us with a disgusted look like we were the ones wasting their time. We weren’t. It was their laws that made me higher Sal in the first place, nothing else and he was the one that had caused the delay.

Nonetheless, I apologized again for my co-council and I tried to make it up to him but laying out my opening statement rather quickly and concisely. He wanted to get this done and over with and I could play to that. I could be very efficient when I had to be.

“So, as you see Your Honor, we would ask that the charges be dropped. She’s already spent almost two weeks in a jail when she merely took the wrong road that led to your country. We would all like our passports back and permission from the courts to leave peacefully.”

It was all so reasonable, and I literally couldn’t see it going any other way. Until the judge finally spoke and shook his head.

“No, you will not be leaving today, and I will not be dropping charges. These are serious crimes, and someone is going to have to answer for them. If leniency is shown, more tourist will show up and try to do more of the same, claiming ignorance when they are caught. No, an example to others must be made.”

I groaned inwardly. That was the last thing that I wanted to hear.