Chapter One
It was the first act Carsteens didn’t struggle over since, well, before all that other stuff began.
He pivoted back through the open doorway, strode through the broken glass littered across the linoleum floor of the dingy Chinese take out joint to his half-eaten dinner of lemon chicken over rice congealing in its Styrofoam container, reached under the pink-checked plastic table cloth covering the next table, and plucked the dead man’s slim leather briefcase out from under the sterile white plastic chair.
The ability to chart a daily course, let alone a life, had proven elusive. Debilitation was damn tiring, frankly, Carsteens thought. So instead of trudging down any of the desultory paths he'd ultimately feared were all that were left open to him, paths he’d waffled at taking for days, weeks, months, years, knowing none seemed likely to do him any good, instead Carsteens quick-stepped through this warp in the fabric of his existence.
Convinced, for the first time, that no matter what came, he would deserve it. And he wanted everything he deserved...