The Hedonist (12 page)

The five students at the table cheered as Shawn passed around cards and Lauren began pouring tequila into the shot glasses. Shawn and all of the students made it past the first two rounds and it was during the third round that one of the students finally pulled out after getting a heavy hand. Another person blacked out and things became blurry for most of them as shot after shot was consumed.

Throughout the night, various students seemed to come and go. Some left for good while others arrived for the first time an hour or two after the party began. A couple of them moved about apathetically but the majority of them seemed to torpedo from room to room, collecting drinks and soaking up liquor like sponges.

Salacious and obscene are the descriptors that would be used by the masses to define the events that Shawn Stevens liked to orchestrate. But to him, these were the moments of bawdy and lewd merriment that high times were made of. He enjoyed every moment of living the way he liked, naysayers be damned.

Shortly after midnight, Lauren pulled Jessica away from a young guy she was dancing with and asked Jessica to get into her car. Due to the urgency in Lauren’s voice, Jessica swiftly followed her.

“Where are we going?” Jessica asked while they were both entering Lauren’s vehicle.

“To that guy’s place,” Lauren told her.

“What guy?”

“The one that threatened Shawn. Eric Pitts. I used my phone to find out where it is. See, look!” Lauren held her phone up to Jessica’s face. Jessica was quite dizzy from drinking and wasn’t sure what she was looking at. Nonetheless, she agreed to follow Lauren. So Lauren drove off in the dark of night- leaving the partygoers alone, none of whom noticed their absence.

After about twenty minutes of driving, they arrived in a middle class neighborhood and were parked directly in front of a one story house.

“I think this is the place,” Lauren said. “That’s what directory says, at least/”

She grabbed two ski masks, one for herself and one for Jessica. After placing on the masks, they quickly thought up a plan. Break in, scare Pitts, trash something he valued, and quickly exit the house. Lauren grabbed a baseball bat from her backseat and handed Jessica a stun gun. They left the keys in the ignition of the car and quietly walked to the front door of the house. Lauren tried to turn the doorknob but discovered it was locked, as expected. So she grabbed the baseball bat tightly and with one ram, she managed to break the door open. It caused a noise that seemed to wake the homeowner up.

“Who’s there?” he called out groggily.

Jessica and Lauren immediately ran to the voice’s point of origin. They were led into a bedroom while Eric Pitts was getting out of his bed.

“Are you Eric Pitts?” Lauren asked, her voice muffled behind the mask which didn’t have sufficient room for the mouth area.

“Yeah, what the hell is this?” he said bewildered.

Lauren smashed the lamp next to his bed.

“Don’t ever fuck with Shawn Stevens!” she yelled.

“Yeah motherfucker!” Jessica exclaimed as she shocked him a few times with the stun gun.

Lauren took to his room, destroying everything in sight with the baseball bat. She went on a rampage, beating his walls in, smashing his tables, and then using the baseball bat to smash his large television set.

“No, not my tv!” he yelled. At that point, Jessica had stopped stunning him in fear that she would kill him.

“Fuck your flat-screen, motherfucker!” Lauren continued beating the television over and over with the bat.

“Alright, that’s enough,” Jessica told Lauren before turning back to Eric Pitts. “This is what happens when assholes like you screw with Shawn Stevens. You ever so much as look at him again or even go back to that golf club, we’ll break you cuz we know where you live, bitch! Now we’re gonna leave and if you try to follow us, we’ll fuck you up even more. Got it!”

Lauren used the baseball bat one last time to destroy the one remaining light source in the man’s bedroom. Afterwards they ran out through the front door, jumped back into their car, and quickly drove off.

“That oughta teach that son of a bitch a lesson!” Lauren said as she pulled off the ski mask and drove back to Shawn’s place with Jessica to finish the party.

CHAPTER 11

The Sunday following the party, Shawn awoke late in the afternoon to discover the largest mess of cups, wasted drinks, and ripped clothing he had ever seen. An assortment of trash littered the entire house. But Shawn wasn’t well enough to be surprised by the state of his home, he only felt hung over as he hummed slight laughter. He even found various underwear lodged in the refrigerator.

It was Sunday and he was just recovering from a night of excessive partying. He was in no state to clean up an entire house. Especially a house that had been as trashed as his was from top to bottom. The only room that remained unscathed was Shawn’s bedroom. That was also where he hid his briefcase full of money. It was in a secret spot where he was certain none of his guests would search. On the other hand, Jessica and Lauren’s bedrooms had been ransacked during partying just as the rest of the house was. Their bed covers contained stains that Shawn wasn’t sure could even be cleaned. So Jessica and Lauren did away with their duvets by discarding them in the trash.

So Shawn, Lauren, and Jessica laid around the house all Sunday, taking a few aspirin and occasionally running to the bathroom to regurgitate the wicked concoctions of alcohol they had drank the night before. They were all sprawled along the cream colored living room sofas, surrounded by party litter.

“Maybe we can clean… the house… tomorrow,” Jessica said slowly.

“Yeah… maybe,” Lauren agreed.

Shawn laughed as he sunk his head into a leather pillow on the sofa. He wasn’t about to kid himself. Shawn knew he had no intentions of cleaning the house and given Jessica and Lauren’s work ethic or lack thereof, he didn’t want them to perform a sloppy cleaning job either.

So Shawn solved the problem in the same manner that he solved every problem: by using the money hose. On Monday, they were all due back on campus so on Sunday, Shawn called up the local Rent-A-Maid business and placed an order for three maids to clean his house on Monday. He dressed his best in the morning and allowed the three cleaning maids into his home before going off to work. When they saw the interiors of the house, the looks upon their faces were of utter shock to say the least.

“Take all day if you need!” Shawn told them as he dashed out the door and left them to work. Of course, he took his cash strapped briefcase with him.

He began his Monday morning on campus by teaching his first auditorium class. He spun a lecture from the top of his head because adhering to a textbook was never his style. He decided to focus his latest class on ethics by presenting his students with a rhetorical statement.

“What do you consider acceptable? Should laws be based on ethics or merely what is harmful? Should individuals be able to do as they please as long as it does not cause harm to others? Or should laws regulate our own well-being as well?”

He wasn’t sure how deep the statement was; he quite literally thought up each sentence as he went along. But there was one difference that Shawn felt. His students usually paid attention to him, but in this class he felt they weren’t listening to anything he had to say. When the class was dismissed, he couldn’t help but think that perhaps the students viewed him as too much of a peer. Perhaps they thought that they could show up whenever they wanted to and not take notes because quirky Dr. Stevens was the cool professor who gave everyone A+ grades no matter what they did.

These sorts of things typically didn’t bother Shawn much and he preferred to not think much of it. His preferred to remind himself that his current set of students would be gone in less than two months. After that, he’d get a new set of students and that allowed for a fresh start and a chance to make improvements.

But there were a few students who did not attend any of Shawn’s parties. They were his research students who met with him immediately after class and discussed the progress of the research work. After giving Shawn a general update, he thanked them and told them how excellent they were doing.

Then the thoughts of inadequacy entered his head once more. The only students that showed him any respect were the ones who were doing his research work and weren’t invited to his debauched outings. He decided he would make up for it by giving them stellar recommendations and making sure that they were acknowledged during the official conference in early May.

After a second class that consisted of virtually the same juncture, Shawn considered the day smooth sailing outside of feeling less than respected. During his office hours, he was visited by Dr. Daniels. She seemed more excited than usual when she asked him for her cut of the profit. He gave her ten percent of what he made from Saturday night and she snatched it up fairly quickly.

“You seem a little anxious,” Shawn told her.

“I think it’s because I’m on the Wilmot Golf Tournament committee. Things begin revving up this week and the president here, Dr. Rodriguez, is demanding perfection from everyone. You know, this is when the big rollers arrive.”

“I almost forgot about the WGT.”

“But now that you remember, you’re going to bring the very best to the Country Club, right? Over the next two-to-three weeks, you can charge double or triple as much as before.”

“I’m looking forward to it,” Shawn said solemnly as he slouched back in his chair.

Dr. Daniels was precisely on the money when she described the city’s anticipation and promotion of the Wilmot Golf Tournament. Celebrities from film and television arrived and golf players from years past to the youngest pros were making their way to the city of Ashmore. Throughout the week, the city called for additional landscaping. Every blade of grass in the county had to be shaved and sets of fresh pine trees were planted outside of the Wilmot Country Club.

The Wilmot Golf Tournament took place just a few blocks from the country club. The professional golf course covered several lush acres and was surrounded by a forest of tall trees. Unless you had tickets to the event or belonged to the Country Club, that meant you were unable to even see the action.

Television stations began broadcasting their coverage of the event. Reporters who worked for the local stations showed up with low tier equipment. Also on the scene were numerous reporters from various cable networks that covered sports. They brought with them large setups of polished state-of-the-arts equipment, vans, and cameras.

The practice rounds occupied the first week of the tournament and several of the highest ranking pros opted out. They would instead make their way to Ashmore the following week. But the golfers who were participating during the practice rounds were given complimentary access to the Wilmot Country Club.

After Monday and Tuesday, Shawn cancelled his classes for the remainder of the week. This came as good news for his restless students. They thought Dr. Stevens was being his usual liberal self and viewing cancelling class as his way to please his students. But the truth was that Shawn cancelled class in order to make his way to Carlucci Giordano- the drug dealer and friend from whom he would purchase several more kilograms of pure powder cocaine.

After resting up on Wednesday, Shawn made his way to Savannah along with his partners in crime, Lauren and Jessica. This time the trip was short on psychedelics and it made the ride seem twice as long. It was only when Lauren brought up their confrontation with the man who threatened Shawn that things became interesting.

“Should we tell him?” Lauren asked over an hour into their road trip.

“About what?” Jessica questioned.

“About what we did on Saturday night,” Lauren replied.

“Tell me what?” Shawn asked, “The party last Saturday?”

“No, I forgot to tell you but we left the party last Saturday around midnight,” Lauren confessed. “And we went to find Eric Pitts. Y’know, the guy who threatened you.”

“Yeah, what the hell did you do?” Shawn pressed on.

“Well… we, ugh…,” Lauren stammered.

“We put on masks, broke in his house, smashed up his shit, and told him we’d come to get him if he ever so much as looked at you again,” Jessica said shrewdly.

“Damn right,” Lauren agreed.

A short silence was broken by several minutes of laughter when Shawn told them Eric Pitts was an annoying misnomer. That episode was surely behind him. He simply warned Lauren and Jessica to be more careful the next time they defend him.

“Anything could have gone wrong,” Shawn told them after the admission.

Another hour and a half later, they arrived at the restaurant, “Giordano’s,” and Carlucci was quick to greet his old pal. They spoke for a few minutes on redundant topics before getting to the point. This time Shawn needed twice as much, or four kilos.

“Four bricks? That must be some clientele,” Carlucci was astounded.

They made their way down to the basement of the restaurant just as they did the first time and Papa and Mama Giordano were there to greet them. After a friendly Italian welcome, Papa Giordano began loading Shawn’s briefcase with four bricks of pure cocaine.

“Like last time, only the best for Dr. Stevens,” Papa Giordano smiled as he closed the briefcase.

“That’ll be sixty,” Carlucci told him. “And that’s quite a steal.”

“That’s why I come to you,” Shawn smirked.

Then he gestured to Lauren. She opened her backpack and pulled out piles of one hundred dollar bills. She handed three large bound wads to Carlucci.

“That’s sixty thousand dollars,” she said.

Mama Giordano took the money and counted it out onto the table she sat at. Before Wednesday, Shawn had far from sixty thousand dollars in cash but he managed to max out numerous credit cards and combine it with the rest of the money he made. He hoped to double his money and make somewhere close to one hundred and twenty thousand by the end of April. He could then pay the debt on his credit cards and still walk away with a large amount of money.