Utopian Day (19 page)

“
Try again,” she said to him as
she released him.

The big student flexed his shoulders up and down,
this time stepping forward and attempting to put Mia in a bear hug
to move her away from the table. Before he could step close enough,
Mia stuck two fingers towards the base of his neck between the
clavicle bones, pressing downward into the epiglottis. The move
stopped him dead in his tracks and he reflexively moved his hands
towards his throat, at which point Mia grabbed his wrist and put
him in a submission hold again.

The big guy backed off, dazed, and beginning to get
a bit upset that this little Chinese girl had stopped him twice. A
small crowd was beginning to gather around the table and Mia could
see from the look in his eye that he was thinking about taking a
real swing at her. She looked him straight in the eyes without
flinching.

“
Thank you for your help. You can
go now,” she said.

Something about the look in her eyes made the man
decide that twenty dollars wasn’t worth the effort, and that his
pride would be better off if he didn’t try again.

“
You’re welcome,” he said stiffly
as he turned and walked away.

Mia heard clapping noises from behind her as the
interviewer and a few other sorority members applauded her
demonstration.

“
I underestimated you, my dear,”
the interviewer responded. “You are hired.”

The party was a typical sorority affair. Lots of
girls, lots of guys, lots of booze. Mia’s job was to hang around
the main floor of the sorority house and serve as a bouncer if
anyone tried to start a fight or make a big scene.

Mia had never been to such a party before. She had
never even had a drink of alcohol. She wasn’t quite sure what to
expect, so she brought along a few tools of the trade. A
telescoping police baton was clipped to her belt, and a knife was
strapped to her calf, just under her jeans.

The night was proceeding without incident until an
obviously drunken fraternity brother started making unwelcome
advances towards his date.

“
Stop it! Let me go!” the girl
protested.

“
Come on,” the man slurred, “let’s
go upstairs where we can be alone,” he said as he began dragging
her towards the stairs by her wrist. The girl resisted futilely,
outweighed by about a hundred pounds. Mia quickly positioned
herself on the stairs in front of the advancing man and confronted
him.

“
Let her go,” she said as she put
up her hand towards the man in a stopping gesture.

The man looked up and laughed as he attempted to
walk into and over Mia. Before he could touch her, Mia thrust her
knee up into his solar plexus, grabbed his left hand while stepping
behind him, placed her foot in the crook of his leg, and applied
pressure to force him down onto the stairs. He was then left
gagging for air, face-down on the stairs with his arm behind his
back. Mia had her knee in his back so that he wasn’t able to get
up. During the brief melee, he had released the girl he had been
dragging up the stairs.

Mia turned to the girl. “Are you o.k.?” she
asked.

The girl looked stunned and was rubbing her wrist.
“Yes,” she replied, “thank you.”

Mia turned her attention back to the man on the
ground. “I’m going to let you go and you will leave the party now.
Yes?”

“
Yes,” came the man’s strained
reply.

Mia released his wrist and took her knee off of his
back while quickly moving up the steps and turning to face the man.
The man stood up, rubbed his wrist for a moment, and then lunged at
Mia without warning, throwing a punch at her face. Mia dropped down
into a sitting position on the stairs and delivered a swift
side-kick to the man’s groin. As the man dropped to his knees
cursing, she leaned forward while still in a sitting position and
delivered a forearm strike to the side of the man’s face, which was
now level with hers due to his position on the stairs below. His
head slammed into the side of the substantial bannister and he
crumpled to the ground. Mia had already stood back up and was
prepared to continue the assault, only to find that it was
unnecessary, as her attacker wasn’t moving.

“
Bravo,” came a voice from the
main floor below. Mia looked down to see a well-dressed male
student leaning against the archway leading into the next
room.

“
I don’t think he will be
bothering anyone else tonight, except perhaps for the ER doctor,”
the man continued.

Mia eyed him warily as she walked down the stairs.
The man pulled a business card out of his pocket and extended it in
her direction.

“
How would like to come work for
me?”

Mia took the card and read it:

Gaming Entertainment Enterprises

Nicky B.

555-724-9845

“
What kind of job is it?” she
asked.

“
Oh, nothing you can’t handle,” he
replied with a sly smile.

From that day forward, she became Nick Bartonovich’s
personal bodyguard and enforcer. It was good money and she liked
the work. The job gave her frequent opportunities to take out her
frustrations against her father on numerous unfortunate surrogates.
Nick was amiable, and talkative – the exact opposite of Mia and
Mia’s father. It was easy to know what Nick wanted because he told
her, and he always smiled when she delivered. It was a perfect
match.

Now, as she entered her studio apartment, she stared
into the mirror hanging on the wall, admiring the expensive
necklace that Nick had just given her. She wondered for the first
time in their relationship what it was, exactly, that Nick wanted.
The possibility that he might be interested in her as a woman and
not just a business associate caused her heart to beat faster. Many
women her age had already married and had children, but Mia had
such mistrust for men that she had never been comfortable
progressing beyond a few dates with any potential suitor. Nick,
however, was a man she trusted completely. She could envision a
future with him. She noticed as she looked into the mirror that her
cheeks were turning slightly red. She had never had this feeling
before and it was confusing – but she liked it.

Chapter Thirty

J.T. got off the plane in Nassau and took a cab to
the British Colonial Hilton, where he would be staying. He was
nervous. He hadn’t met any of his former victims face to face since
the trial, and then only a select few had been brought into court
to tell their stories for the jury. Back then, he’d felt no pity
for them and no shame. Since that time, he had learned to stop
objectifying his victims and begun to see them as real people, even
to empathize with them. As that process had taken place, he’d begun
to feel ashamed about what he had done. Over time, he’d worked
through the shame and accepted responsibility for his own actions.
Eventually, he developed a desire to make things right, or barring
that possibility, to at least own up to what he had done and
apologize to their faces.

He checked in to his room and deposited his suitcase
on the bed, unpacking his clothes and hanging them in the closet.
The sight of the suit brought back memories of the old days. Except
for the ordeal at the Cayman Islands bank, he hadn’t worn a suit in
almost eight years. It felt as if he was staring at a relic from
the distant past.

Once he finished unpacking, he grabbed the book he
had been reading,
Compelled to Control: Recovering Intimacy in
Broken Relationships
by J. Keith Miller, and headed down to the
hotel restaurant for something to eat. The food in the restaurant
was more than adequate. The wine he ordered was good, and he
lingered at the table after his meal, drinking another glass of
wine and reading more from his book. As he read, he came across a
passage that hit home:

…
the shift from being in charge of
all outcomes to one of doing our best and turning the outcome over
to God puts many of us into a spiritual life, a life controlled by
the reality and power of God’s Spirit instead of our own
manipulations and controlling behaviors.

He thought about how his life had changed this past
eight years. He had gone from being a corporate big-wig who thought
he had it all under control – who felt the
need
to have it
all under control – to an ex-con who was trying to make amends for
the wrongs he had done, and to let go of the perception that he was
by any means in control of anything other than his own actions. He
was nervous about the meetings he had scheduled for tomorrow, but
he knew in the final analysis, he wasn’t responsible for what the
other people did with his attempts to make amends. He was only
responsible for what he did personally.

He pondered this thought as he went back up to his
room and went to bed, saying the Serenity Prayer before he drifted
off to a dreamless sleep.

The next morning, J.T. woke up and had breakfast on
the beach at the hotel before heading back to make certain the
conference room he had reserved was ready. Afterwards, he went back
to his room and dressed in the business suit that he had brought
for the occasion. He took out the disguise kit he had brought and
began the practiced routine of pasting on the fake eyebrows and
mustache, inserting the temporary dental implant, and putting the
colored contacts in place. He had done this so many times in
preparation for this trip, it was almost as routine as brushing his
teeth. One last check in the mirror confirmed that everything was
in place before he went back down to the conference room to await
the arrival of his first appointment.

His first two guests arrived on time. Mr. and Mrs.
Thompson were a black couple in their sixties. The husband had
worked for one of the companies that J.T. had sold off and which
was subsequently liquidated. The man had suffered a heart attack
the week after learning he was going to be let go and that his
pension fund was insolvent. The wife was already retired at that
point, but didn’t have a pension. The husband went on disability,
taking social security as soon as he could in order to make the
house payments which they were already behind on. When J.T.’s
lawyers had tracked him down, they had been about to lose their
house. Through the foundation that J.T. had set up a few years
before to help his former victims, the house had been saved and
they were receiving a check each month, which was worth about
twenty-five percent of what his pension would have been.

They exchanged greetings and J.T. introduced himself
as Jack Smith – the alias he had chosen for the occasion. They
exchanged small talk for a few minutes as J.T. asked them about the
cruise and whether or not they were planning on shopping while they
were on the island. They were a nice couple, easy to talk to, and
J.T. felt horrible for what he had done to them. He let the
feelings sink in, reminding himself that his worth wasn’t defined
by his past actions, but that he was still responsible for the
damage those actions had caused. It helped him gain perspective
before he spoke.

“
Mr. and Mrs. Thompson, I arranged
to come here today to talk to you for a very specific reason. You
see, I am one of the primary people responsible for the demise of
the company that you worked for and the failure of your pension
fund. I’m here today to take responsibility for those deplorable
actions and let you know that I am sincerely sorry for the pain
those actions have caused you.”

J.T. stopped and paused before he continued. He
braced himself for their reaction. The old couple looked at each
other in a bit of confusion and then back at J.T. There was silence
that seemed to last for a thousand years before the old man finally
spoke.

“
I appreciate you saying that,
son,” the old man began. “You know, I was pretty devastated when
all of it first happened. I had a heart attack and we almost lost
the house – there were some pretty rough times. I was bitter and
angry and it started to eat me up inside.” The man turned to his
wife and looked at her with eyes full of love. He placed his hand
on top of hers and they smiled at each other before he continued.
“But my wife came to me one day and challenged me about my
attitude. She asked me why I was letting some company take away our
happiness, when all they really had the power to do was take away
some things that were going to turn to dust one day anyway.” He
looked back at J.T. and continued. “So I decided to let it go and
move on. I decided to forgive whoever did it and move on with my
life.”

He reached across the table and patted J.T.’s hand.
“So I thank you for your apology… and I forgive you.” He smiled at
J.T. and tears began to form in J.T.’s eyes.

“
Thank you, thank you very much.
You don’t know how much that means to me,” J.T. replied.

They talked for a few more minutes before the couple
left, and they ended up hugging each other before the man and his
wife walked out of the door. J.T. went back to his chair at the
conference table and sat down, totally blown away by what had just
happened. He sat there in a daze for several minutes before a knock
came on the door.

He answered the door and introduced himself to an
attractive woman in her mid-thirties. His briefing on her had
indicated that her name was Theresa Borne of Toledo, Ohio. Ten
years before, her husband had committed suicide after losing his
job and his health benefits at one of the doomed companies that
J.T. had helped to gut. Her husband had been on anti-depressants
and could no longer afford the medication once his insurance was
cancelled, being unable to afford the more expensive COBRA
insurance. He’d committed suicide by slitting his wrists after
getting drunk out of his mind. Theresa had found his body in the
bathtub when she returned home from her job.