Read an Excerpt
Vivian's Window
By Jason Dennis
iUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2012 Jason Dennis
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4759-5649-8
Chapter One
It hadn't always been this way. Carwyn hadn't always been angry at life. He used to be a lot more carefree, outgoing, and personable; and he used to take more joy from even the simplest things in life. When he got his journalism degree, he had been prepared to take the news business by storm. Despite traditional news media struggling to compete with the internet for the attention and dollars of generation Twitter, he was going to write award-winning news stories and uncover important truths.
Ha. Damn. How one year—hell, how six months—can throw one big fucking rusty old wrench straight into the heart of the ramshackle machine of life. (He also wished he cursed just a little bit less.)
* * *
By the time he had gone back to school for his masters, it had been eight years since Carwyn and Bret had graduated together from Royal West High School. Now here they were, about to cross another stage together: Carwyn Hillis getting his Masters of Journalism and Public Policy and Bret Hightower getting his Masters of Architectural Design.
They had been best friends since high school, where the happenstance of their last names had made them lab partners their freshman year; but they had gone their separate ways upon graduation. Carwyn, who had always been good with words, had gone to a big SEC school and walked on to the soccer team. Bret, who preferred doodling instead of taking notes or paying attention in class, had gone up to the coast to a small private school in New England and had almost run off with the dean's wife.
They had found it hard to keep in touch during their undergraduate days but had always managed to catch up over the holidays and share the most outrageous of their stories.
The two were alike on certain fundamental levels, but yet very different when it came to some of the most random things. In spite of their random differences, and likely somewhat because of some them, their friendship had always remained strong. They knew everything about each other—well, almost everything.
After they earned their bachelors degrees, they both worked for two years. Neither hit it rich, and neither liked his job. They barely kept in touch with each other during that time, as neither one moved home; but one Christmas, over a case of beer, they both decided that they hated their jobs and wanted to go back to school.
They eventually resolved to try to go to the same school or at least go to schools in the same city. In their minds, that narrowed the search down to New York City, Chicago, Boston, and DC. They decided not to live together, because they both knew that even the best of friends can often make the worst of roommates.
Chapter Two
Bret started casually sleeping with an MBA student from Philadelphia in the spring of his and Carwyn's first year at Northeastern. Carwyn had to admit that Rebecca was exceptionally hot.
During the third month of their fling, before things were even serious, Rebecca took Bret for an extended weekend trip to Las Vegas. Bret was a better-than-average poker player. By Friday night, he was up about five grand. Bret, however, had little to no restraint, so by Saturday afternoon he was playing at the high stakes tables and enjoying free drinks with top-shelf liquor.
By early Saturday evening, he was about five grand in the hole. He kept digging and digging, thinking he could dig his way out, but he only succeeded in digging himself deeper. And deeper. Bret ended up in a twenty-grand hole with no way to pay it back before he finally called it a day.
That night, as Bret and Rebecca were getting ready for the Cirque du Soleil show Rebecca had suggested they see, some nice gentlemen paid a visit to their hotel room. Before the nice little visit, Rebecca was unaware of the debt Bret had accumulated.
Bret was a smooth talker and might have been able to talk his way out of any roughing up or lesson teaching or message sending (yes, he really could be that smooth), but he never even had to open his mouth. Rebecca very matter-of-factly offered to pay off Bret's debt first thing in the morning if the gentlemen in almost all black would kindly leave and let Bret and Rebecca finish getting ready for their show.
That was how Bret first learned of Rebecca's inheritance. Rebecca had told him about her parents a couple weeks before. To Rebecca, that in itself was a big step. When she told Bret about the money, Bret knew it must be love. Seriously.
By the fall of Bret and Carwyn's second (and final) year, Bret and Rebecca were more than just casually dating, and by that December, it was legitimately serious. Carwyn had dated his fair share of girls, but whether it was him or the girls or both, none of his relationships had lasted very long. He had liked all the girls he had dated—or most of them, at least. He might have even loved a couple of them. Had he been in love? No, probably not. But matters of the heart (truly matters of subtle chemical variations in the brain) are definitely not an exact science.
In every relationship Carwyn had been in, despite heightened chemical concentrations and outwardly potent manifestations, whatever force had pulled Carwyn and a particular girl together simply did not last. The seemingly sweet serendipity of all the chance meetings during which Carwyn's life happened to intersect with the lives of the girls he had dated ceded to inevitability, and the chemicals, along with the feelings they triggered, subsided.
Whatever the state of Carwyn's relationship history, he was not at all surprised when Bret informed him that he had popped the question to Rebecca. And Carwyn was legitimately psyched when Bret asked him to be the best man.
The wedding date was set for the coming October, just about six months away. Carwyn was by no means an expert on the matter, but it seemed a bit quick to him—not that it should ever take that long to plan a wedding.
* * *
Rebecca's inheritance had come at a cost. She had lost both her parents in a tragic accident when she was about nine years old. The hefty inheritance was left in trust to her, and the trustee must have taken his duties very seriously and invested quite wisely, because when Rebecca had gained full access to the money at the age of eighteen, she had instantly become a multimillionaire (about a twenty-five millionaire, to be more precise).
Carwyn found it somewhat pretentious that Rebecca had decided to go back to school. Carwyn figured she was bored or else knew that she would quickly become bored if she didn't take certain steps to preempt the boredom. There were other things Carwyn didn't like about Rebecca, but he kept most of them to himself. Carwyn did, of course, make the requisite jokes about Bret being whipped and never getting to sleep with any other women, et cetera; but he never shared his real opinion of Rebecca. She wasn't really all that bad anyway. So it was set: Bret was taking the plunge.
Chapter Three
In late March of the last year of Bret's single life, Carwyn and Bret decided that there was no better way to celebrate graduating (along with Bret's engagement) than to fly to Europe right after graduation. Bret had actually never traveled abroad. He'd seen a donkey show in Mexico, but he'd never been across the Atlantic. Carwyn had studied abroad one summer in Paris and had been to England twice. The trip would double as an extended bachelor party. Rebecca was planning on splitting her time between an internship and working on a thesis all summer.
Bret had already secured a well-paying job, and of course he was marrying into a shit ton of money, so he didn't have to worry about the cost of the trip. Carwyn knew that he couldn't really afford the trip, so he just decided not to think about the cost.
The plan that developed was to go for ten days. They purchased Eurail passes and agreed to pick three cities each. The tentative plan was to stay a day or two in each one. It would be a whirlwind tour of sorts, and if they had any time left toward the end of the trip, they would play it by ear like true backpackers. Bret, who was somewhat aware of Carwyn's financial situation, offered to pay for their hotel rooms over the course of the trip, but as he told Carwyn, that entitled him to the bed if, because of last-minute bookings, they ever got stuck in a room with only one.
"You sure you don't want to cuddle?" teased Carwyn. "I'll even let you call me Becca bear."
"Dude. Don't be gay."
"Okay, your loss. I am one amazing cuddler."
After a couple of days of deliberation, Carwyn decided on his three cities: Stockholm, Moscow, and Barcelona.
"Moscow? Bro, that's barely Europe, if at all."
"It's Europe enough, and it will definitely be different."
"Yeah, well, maybe you can find yourself a bride there. That's about the only chance you've got: to pay for it."
"Whatever, ass, what are your three?"
"Munich, Rome, and Amsterdam."
"Amsterdam, huh? You would pick that, pothead."
"I picked Amsterdam for you, bro. You'll have the chance to visit with a nice prostitute ... by the way, you ever notice that Sweden looks like a dangling penis?"
"What?"
"A dangling penis. If you ignore Norway, Sweden and Finland together look like a dangly penis and wrinkly ol' ball sack. I'm tellin' ya, Italy looks like a boot; everybody agrees on that. Most people agree that Michigan looks like a mitten, and Scandinavia looks like some dick and ballage ... look at a map, bro."
So they pulled up a map of Scandinavia on Carwyn's laptop, which was open, coincidentally enough, on an IKEA table that had taken way too long to assemble. Carwyn had to laugh. "Well, I'll be damned. It does look like a penis."
They examined the map a little bit longer and tentatively settled on flying into Stockholm, taking a cheap flight to Barcelona, and then taking a boat of some sort from Barcelona to Rome. After Rome, they would take the train to Amsterdam and Munich before venturing to Moscow. They would fly home from Moscow.
Chapter Four
Carwyn had grudgingly agreed to provide Rebecca with their general itinerary.
What harm could it really cause anyway? And that way Rebecca would feel a little more comfortable with the trip. Bret told Rebecca he would call her every other day or so to keep her updated on where they were and what they had been seeing and doing.
Carwyn and Rebecca had the kind of love-hate relationship that is not atypical between a man's best friend and his fiancée. They got along fine, but in a quirky sort of way. They were, after all, competing for Bret's time—Carwyn for drinking beer, shooting pool, and watching action movies; Rebecca for going for coffee, shopping, and watching romantic comedies with Matthew McConaughey, one of the Cusaks, or even one of the Wilson siblings.
Bret and Carwyn's flight left on a Wednesday. They had a layover in New York and were scheduled to arrive in Stockholm around 5:00 p.m. local time. As the plane began its descent, a fat, pleasant woman seated next to Carwyn asked him if he was glad to be coming home.
"I sure am."
It must have been the blond hair and blue eyes. Bret had to hold back his laughter.
After they landed at Stockholm-Arlanda, they retrieved their luggage and decided on the Arlanda Express rail link over the Flygbussarna bus line. Once downtown, the first thing they noticed was that everybody was not tall and blond. They had about a three-quarter-mile walk to their hotel.
"I haven't seen any women that are Swedish Bikini Team material," commented Bret.
"You're an idiot."
"Fuck me. There's one."
"Whoa. You ain't kiddin' ... she's gotta be, what, six feet tall?"
"At least, with 36 Cs. And damn, bro, I bet those legs could sure keep my ears warm."
"Keep your ears warm? We just landed, and you're already talking about burying your head in between some random Swede's legs. Tell me, why on earth are you getting married?"
"I'm just saying, Car. I mean damn, I can look, can't I? I don't actually plan on visiting her Smorgasbord."
As Stockholm was the one city for which they new exactly when they would be arriving, they had two beds in their hotel room. When they finally got to the room, they let their luggage fl op to the ground; then they each flopped onto a bed.
When they woke, the sky was dark.
"Shit!"
"What?"
"It's getting darker outside. That must mean it's getting late. I think it stays light damn near forever in Scandinavia during the spring and summer months."
Bret checked the clock then looked out the window. "It's only ten after eight, bro. I think the sun just went behind a cloud or something. We have plenty of time to shower, grab a bite to eat, and then hit the town."
The plan was to hit up one of Stockholm's more fashionable nightclubs and then check out the Ice Bar. They were going to make it an early night so tomorrow they could do some sightseeing. Before they left the hotel room, Bret went rummaging through his suitcase.
"So, Car, idea: let me give you some of my business cards, you scratch out my number and e-mail address and put yours down, and that way you can give it to some attractive ladies and see if they call."
"You can't be serious?"
"Yeah. Why not, bro? It works."
"For douches. You actually brought business cards with you? You haven't even started your job yet."
"You never know when you might meet someone who has the potential to change your life forever."
"Oh, you mean like the type of girl a man would propose to? That kind of person?"
"Fortune favors the bold."
"So what, you're a horny, philandering fortune cookie, now?"
"No. I'm an opportunist. Are you takin' some or not?"
"Oh, for fuck's sake, give me some of the damn cards, but I'm putting my name on them too."
"That'll kind of screw up the whole effect," Bret said, but he gave Carwyn about a dozen of his business cards anyway. Carwyn scratched out Bret's name and number and wrote his in their place.
"Happy?"
"Very."
Bret and Carwyn looked up a few of Stockholm's swankier places on Bret's phone before they made their way out for the evening, but it didn't matter all the much. They couldn't get in to any of the places they tried. All the doormen seemed to have something against Bret's choice of footwear. They were turned away at East, Rose, Riche, Spy Bar, and Sturecompagniet.
"What the fuck?"
"You shouldn't have worn goddamn fl ip-fl ops!"
"But they're OluKai. They're like two-hundred-dollar flip-flops."
"Woopty shit. I don't care if you're strutting around in Jesus's damn sandals. Have you seen a single Swede in flip-flops? Hell, you wouldn't get into certain clubs back home in flip-flops."
"I haven't been starring at everybody's feet, bro. Why didn't you say something before?"
"I didn't notice before. So I guess the Ice Bar it is."
"Yeah, if they let us in."
"I bet your feet are going to be cold."
"Fuck off ."
The Ice Bar was located inside a hotel, and Bret and Carwyn actually got in. The cover charge was something like twenty bucks. Bret paid before Carwyn even had a chance to object.
The bar was smaller than they expected. They figured it had to be small for practical purposes. And it was cold. Duh. Neither Bret nor Carwyn had thought to bring a hat or gloves with them—not that they had packed any to begin with. Luckily the bar provided patrons with ugly silver space-age-Eskimo-looking hooded cape things to wear. They didn't do much good for Bret's feet.
The bar had a decent crowd of attractive people, but everybody seemed to be separated off into smallish groups, uninterested in the other groups around them. One of the two should have figured that a bar where you could freeze your ass off wouldn't be the best place to meet new people. The bar wasn't actually all that cold, but the people certainly were, based on Carwyn's sample size of one.
A sexy Swedish girl walked up to the bar, and on a somewhat uncharacteristic whim, Carwyn decided to introduce himself: "Hi, my name's Carwyn. Can I buy you a drink?"
The sexy Swede didn't give Carwyn her name; in hindsight that should have been his first clue that he was headed down a dead-end street.
"Okay, yes. I will have an electric orchid. That is very nice of you."
She spoke very polished English with a sexy accent, but Carwyn decided not to comment. He simply conveyed the order to the bartender.
"145 crowns."
Carwyn knew that was a lot. He wasn't sure exactly how much, but beers were only forty-five, so he knew he had just shelled out a shit ton of money for one drink. He couldn't really refuse to pay for it now, so he handed over his credit card. He wasn't even the buy-girls-drinks-and-pick-them-up-at-bars type. In fact, he had bought a random girl a drink only once or twice before, and he had never used it as way to take a girl home.
"Tack. Thank you."
"You're welcome. So do you—"
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Vivian's Window by Jason Dennis Copyright © 2012 by Jason Dennis. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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