They tried to grab my arms and I shrugged them off. No more manhandling. I can walk my damn self. They fell in behind so we walked the hallway like a flock of birds. We came to a double door and the men stopped me. We stood there for a few seconds and then I heard the clank of heavy locks disengage. The men opened the doors and we entered the access room to an elevator. Both men took turns punching numbers on a keypad for a solid minute. A green light flashed and the doors opened. We entered and the cabin descended, how many floors I don’t know. It stopped and opened onto a featureless antechamber with four plastic chairs and a single door on the far side. I was instructed to sit and wait. Life, I’ve come to realize, is mostly spent waiting for something else to happen.

Waiting is inherently boring. Combine it with existential terror, and it’s torture. No iPhone to surf. Not even an outdated Field & Stream magazine to read. Just my panicked mind with its worries over the past and future. Know what I did? Pushups. Jumping jacks. I shadowboxed a badass and won. Played air guitar to a packed stadium. Then I sat and pondered my predicament. Wondered if I had been imprisoned here and left to die of thirst. Down payment on my insurmountable karmic debt.

Sacrifice, they said? Isn’t that what I’ve done? Abandoned my life’s passion for a steady paycheck. Stayed in place long enough to establish roots. Why, though? Sacrificed for who? Could I still be a father and a rock star? Replace my addiction to alcohol with something that ignites my soul? There’s no happiness for me in the center of the road, so why stay there? Fear of disappointing some spit-shined version of myself I don’t even like. I’d been wasting my life. Mister O was right. What would I be returning home to but a dull fear more insidious than the extreme one experienced here? If I’m a vessel, it’s because I’ve become empty.

The door opened, and there stood Malia. My Malia, the younger one. My crazy mistress. She was dressed in a white lab coat that looked more like a priest’s robe. Her black hair washed clean of colored dye. Her face as plain as God made it. Or as Doctor O had. She came through and sat in the chair beside mine.

“You sure do get around,” I said.

Her mouth smiled, her eyes frowned. “More like I’m led.”

“You need to stop playing the victim. You said you’d help me, and you lied. Did you know they’d be taking my wife and son?”

She stared into her hands. “I knew that one way or another you’d wind up here.”