The Kafka Society by Ron Felber

Author:Ron Felber
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780942637298
Publisher: Barricade Books

Chapter Twenty-Two

Idon’t know why I didn’t head-out from Chinatown directly to the Ram Rod that night. Maybe I knew there was a 100% chance that a cadre of Special Ops-types were waiting for me and came to the conclusion that I wasn’t bullet-proof after all. More likely, the reason was that once I hit Mott Street on my way back to the Porsche, I felt overcome by fatigue. With the effects of the Benzedrine wearing thin, my body began to function the way an old-fashioned clock winds down, so by the time I made it back to my room at the Elysée it was 3 a.m. and I was very near the point of collapse.

With head spinning and a monster migraine on the horizon, I tossed the empty bottle of Glenlivet into the trash, forced to settle for three 4 ounce bottles of Smirnoff gathered from the mini-bar. I took them down in three separate gulps along with two Ambien and had stripped to my Jockeys before noticing the red light on the hotel phone flashing. The message was from Dougherty.

“Hiya, Jack,” it went upbeat enough for me to know he was calling from home with Annie within earshot, “I heard you were in town and thought you might like to come out our way for dinner tomorrow night. I’ve told Annie all about you, kids, too. So how ‘bout I send Douglas, our driver, to the hotel to fetch you at, say, six? And, Jack, don’t even think about bringing wine or anything like that. Just yourself, Jack. Annie and the kids are keen to meet the old high school chum they’ve heard so much about!”

I couldn’t help but chuckle as I hung up the phone, mind, body, and soul drifting high up into Cloud Ambien trying to remember if Dougherty and I were ever really as close as he seemed to remember. As broke as he was rich, the two of us had masterminded what came to be known as the “ring of thieves” amongst the student body at St. Damian’s, him for fun and me for money. During that time, I remembered, a small band of us would pilfer cologne, CDs, cigarettes, and liquor from department stores like Klein’s and Bamberger’s, and sell them from out of our lockers.

Then, one time after Tom had somehow gotten his hands on a cache of fireworks he asked me to store, someone blew up a toilet bowl in the boys’ room causing a flood that set every monk — Headmaster to Dean of Discipline — off like the Hounds of Hell to find the culprit. Now, it wasn’t me, that much I knew, but when that night every locker was searched and they found a case of M50s in mine, they had little appetite for explanations and off I went, expelled, no questions asked.

Five days later, after marathon meetings held between Father Mark, the school’s Headmaster and my dad, I was allowed to return but not without consequence. For me

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