You're Next by Gregg Hurwitz

smile.
    Mike made his way across the room and caught the bartender’s attention. ‘Can I get a Budweiser?’
    The bartender, a handsome aspiring-actor type, gestured at the bottles in the ice bucket behind him. ‘Only Heineken. You’re
     at the wrong party.’
    Mike took the cold bottle. The bitter beer felt great going down. The last two days had dragged out, made slower by how much
     he’d been dreading tonight.
    Gazing across the swirls of people, Mike spotted Andrés at one of the elegantly set tables by the dais. Carrying his wife’s
     purse and looking bored senseless, Andrés rolled his eyes, and Mike had to look away to hide his smile.
    The sight of the governor’s chief of staff holding court one table over made the half grin go brittle on Mike’s face. Catching
     Mike’s eye, Bill Garner offered him a head tilt that he couldn’t help but interpret as conspiratorial. Were other people looking
     at him that way, too? He couldn’t get a handle on his uneasiness. For a week now, he’d been jumping at shadows.
    At the far end of the room, floor-to-ceiling windows looked out across a sloping golf course, now dark. Mike angled his waythrough the crush, offering greetings to passing faces. Getting to the fringe of the gathering and having a view of the horizon
     calmed him a bit.
    Just as he’d started to unknot his concerns, someone collided into him from the side. Stumbling to regain his footing, he
     spilled beer down the leg of his trousers.
    A voice floated over his shoulder. ‘Oh, sorry.’ A wiry man with a patchy beard leaned in at him, gripping his arm. ‘I have
     CP.’
    The man had breath like a birdcage, his lips spotted with black flecks. Sunflower seeds? He reached into a ratty brown sport
     coat and withdrew a handkerchief. Mike took it and swiped at the wet mark on his thigh, but the liquid had already seeped
     through the fabric.
    ‘Cerebral palsy,’ the man said. ‘Bad balance, you know? Again, I’m real sorry for that.’
    ‘That’s okay. I hate this suit anyway.’
    The man’s sport coat looked like Salvation Army – corduroy, worn elbow patches, frayed sleeves. Mike offered back the handkerchief,
     and the man hooked it in a hand curled like a monkey’s paw. His eyes, set in a jaundiced face, twitched from side to side.
    A hulking man stood idly several feet away, not uncomfortable but not at ease – not anything at all, in fact. He was so detached
     that it took Mike a moment to register that the two were together.
    ‘I’ve had my Achilles tendon lengthened eight times, my hamstring five,’ the man in the sport coat continued. ‘Eleven tendon
     releases in my right foot alone. Forty-four surgeries in all. That don’t even count Botox injections into spastic muscles.
     Then there’s the seizure meds, then the meds for med side effects, and . . . well, hell, you get the picture.’
    Mike loosened his tie, wondering what the guy wanted. The big man remained immobile, looking at the draped walls, at nothing.
     Was he even listening?
    ‘And still the muscles tighten. I walk a little worse each year. Need a few more snips and cuts. Expensive as hell. Keeps
     meworking, that’s for sure.’ He brought a wineglass up to his chin and spit sunflower seeds into it. A soggy wad had collected
     in the bottom of the glass, steeping in a quarter inch of leftover red wine. ‘All this ’cuz I didn’t get enough oxygen when
     I was riding down that birth canal. No fault o’ my own. But I gotta pay anyways, day after day.’ He snickered. ‘Karma’s a
     bitch, ain’t it, Mike? Catches up to us all.’
    Mike studied the guy’s face. ‘How do you know my name?’
    The man nodded at the newspaper blowups. ‘Man o’ the hour.’
    ‘And you are . . .?’
    ‘William.’
    ‘William . . .?’
    William smiled, showing off yellowed teeth. ‘My kid cousin had scars like that.’ He nodded at Mike’s knuckles. ‘Old-fashioned
     fighting.’
    Mike slid his hands into his pockets.