Seriously, did this guy tell my parents to just blame everything on me and he’s feeling that guilty about it or is he just not much of a people person?
“Fine,” I tell him. “Can we go?”
“Of course,” he says and goes to the door of the room. “Did you notice?” he asks.
“What’s that?” I respond.
“They agreed to leave the door to this room unlocked while we’re using it,” he says. “The chief owed me a favor, and I felt that you should be the beneficiary of it!”
“Would you mind giving me a demonstration and then maybe showing me some more doors that you can open?” I ask.
“Of course,” he says and finally opens the door.
We walk back to the room with the actual exit and we leave the building. I haven’t even been in here a day, but I could swear the air actually does smell a little sweeter than I remember.
Maybe it’s finally being out of the urine room my parents’ favorite lawyer was so proud of getting for me.
“My car is the platinum Lexus on the third row,” Johnson says.
“You mean the silver one?” I ask. I know my parents’ crowd well enough to know that question is going to be going through his mind until he sells the car. Maybe it’s a mean thing to do, but I really just don’t like this guy.
“Actually, I brought in a friend who specializes in color palettes and he confirmed that the color was clearly platinum,” Johnson retorts.
“Ooh,” I mock, holding up my hands.
I’m in a bit of a mood.
We’re no less than twenty feet away from the car when I start to make out the silhouettes of people in the backseat, obstructed by the car’s tinted windows. I breathe in slowly through my nose and take as close to an equal amount of time exhaling through my mouth.
Either the people in the back of the car are my parents or they’re hitmen. I’m not sure which I’d be less enthusiastic about seeing.
I open the passenger’s door and take a quick glance to see who’s in there waiting for me.
“You’d think with all your money you’d be able to afford better disguises,” I tell my parents.
It’s bad. Dad’s wearing a bald cap with tufts of fuzzy hair-like matter in a horseshoe pattern along the sides. The edges of the bald cap aren’t quite blended properly, so it looks like my dad has a farmer’s tan under his hair, but nowhere else.
My mom is in a white pantsuit, wearing Elton John glasses and a voluminous and very curly redhead wig. Both of them are holding handkerchiefs to their mouths.
“What are you doing?” I ask, getting in the car.
“We can’t be too careful,” mom says. “The way they just went after you like that—we don’t know how long it’s going to be before they come after us.”
“Dear,” my dad chimes in, “you’ve got to come with us.”
“I’m not putting on a disguise like that,” I tell them. “I’d rather be back in lockup.”
“Darling, she’s speaking like an ordinary criminal,” mom says to dad. She doesn’t lower her voice or shield her mouth. She says it just as loud and clear as everything else she’s said so far.
“Would you prefer I was a bad one like the two of you?” I ask. “At least ordinary criminals seem to have some kind of sense about them. You two—”
“We’re leaving the country,” mom interrupts. “You know the way the US treats its wealthy. We simply cannot weather the PR.”
“On the bright side, they’d probably give you a job in government after you served your week and a half in the Palm Springs Luxury Resort and Detention Center,” I taunt.
“You know, that doesn’t sound so bad,” mom says, turning toward dad.
“She’s mocking us, dear,” dad explains.