The Three-Day Affair by Michael Kardos

punched.
    Nolan swiped the notebook and pen from me and stood over Jeffrey’s chair, staring him down. “Write the fucking confession, you son of a bitch!”
    “I’m bleeding!” Jeffrey said through his hands.
    “Write it!” He threw the notebook into Jeffrey’s lap.
    For the second time in five minutes I felt jealous of Nolan. Even more than wanting to throw a few good punches Jeffrey’s way, though, I wanted a signed confession. “Nolan,” I said, “get Jeffrey a roll of toilet paper from the bathroom.” When he didn’t move, I yelled, “Do it!” He left the control room without a word.
    “He fucking hit me,” Jeffrey said, and slowly lowered his hands. The blood covered his fingers, his teeth, and his lower lip, which was swelling purple.
    “Are your teeth okay?” I asked.
    He felt around them with his tongue. “I think so.” He wiped his mouth with the bottom of his shirt. The shirt came away with enough blood to make my stomach twist. He looked at the blood and shook his head. “I didn’t deserve that.”
    I had no response.
    “All I was doing,” he said, “was explaining how simpleminded it is to think this was all my fault.”
    “How about we don’t talk right now. Let’s just be quiet, both of us, until Nolan comes back.”
    “Fine with me.” He tested his teeth again with his tongue. Marie caught my eye and looked away. Had she seen the punch? If so, it would only confirm her fear that sooner or later, something brutal was coming her way.
    “Anyway,” Jeffrey said, “I didn’t see either of you guys rushing to set her free.”
    “We were trying to
protect
you.”
    “Yeah, well if you really wanted to protect me you would’ve ended this as soon as it started. You could’ve stopped the car or driven—”
    “Just shut up,” I said. “I don’t want to hear it.”
    Jeffrey winced, then reached into his mouth with his thumb and forefinger, and tugged. “This one’s loose. I can wiggle it a little . Man, he’s going to pay for that.”
    I couldn’t sit there any longer. “I’m going to see what’s keeping him.” Jeffrey seemed more interested in his face than my immediate plans. From the doorway, my voice under control again, I said, “I’m sorry about your tooth. But Jeffrey?” I waited until he was looking at me, his fingers still in his mouth. “Write the fucking confession. And make it good.”
    The bathroom looked like it was straight out of a 1950s high school. Blue tile, two stalls etched and inked with graffiti, stained urinal. Part of my job was to keep the bathroom clean. Now and then we’d hire an intern for minimum, some college dropout with fantasies of recording platinum records at the Hit Factory, and the first thing I’d delegate was bathroom duty. The interns never complained, because their fantasy always began with paying their dues in exactly this manner.
    Nolan was leaning over the sink, splashing water on his face. “Hand me some paper towels, will you?”
    I did. He stood up and wiped his face. Balled up the towels and pitched them into the trash. “I don’t blame you for sending Evan home, by the way. It was a decent thing to do.”
    “Thanks,” I said, “but maybe it was decent
and
stupid.”
    “This is really something, huh?”
    I agreed. It was something.
    “Think he’ll write the confession?”
    “After the punch you threw?”
    “Oh, come on. He’d made up his mind already.”
    “You knocked one of his teeth loose.”
    “Good.” He was studying himself in the mirror now. Even after a full day—this day—his hair was perfectly in place. His shirt looked freshly ironed. He could’ve walked up to a podium and given a speech, and nobody would know he had concerns beyond his constituency. Still, he must have seen some nuance I’d missed, because he frowned at his reflection and turned away. “Why now?” he asked. “That’s what I don’t understand. I was going to be a United States senator, Will. I was going to win that