Chapter Twenty One

Karyn's phone was the one that rang, when Frank made his statutory phone call.

"Hullo?" Karyn inquired sleepily.

Frank knew that he wanted to put Karyn on the defensive, and spoke in an accusatory tone. "Where were you, yesterday afternoon?" he began aggressively.

It was a mark of enduring character, on Karyn's part, that she always reacted badly to intimidation. Frank was just a slow learner.

"I was on the phone with your mother, Frank, planning a Chicago performance of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream,' for 'Henna.'" Karyn knew that Frank's mother intimidated him.

Frank pulled in his horns. There was no need to involve his mother. His imagination lit upon an alternative theory of blame shifting. "Your friend, Bitumen, got me to try to buy some drugs for her, and now I'm in prison. I need you to come and bail me out."

Surprise startled Karyn awake, and she became concerned, without failing to relish the effect that an arrest must necessarily have on Frank's pugnacious attitude.

"Frank. If you haven't had a trial, you're in jail, not prison. I'll be down at county within the hour." Karyn hung up without waiting for Frank's response. It was an imposition, and she did not want to accept a cheap apology.

Fifty minutes later, Karyn was showing ID at the bail bondsman's office. Thirty minutes after that, she was presenting the county clerk with a check.

Frank came out of the holding cell, tired, dirty and cross. His cell mates had been crude, vulgar, intimate and rude. Frank was uncharacteristically grateful to his liberator. "You would NOT believe how crass those bastards in the holding cell were," Frank fumed. "They made ME seem cultured as hell, by comparison. I want to take a bath, just from talking to them!" he declared. "I can't believe those rent-a-cops at school had the nerve to throw me in with that riffraff."

"If you lay down with dogs, you wake up with the proverbial fleas, Frank," Karyn responded. Almost instantly, she thought of Terrell, and regretted her comment. It cut her, but her character cauterized the wound with pride in the same instant. I am better than that. I can learn from my own mistakes, as well as from those of others. I will never make that mistake again.

There was more than one kind of regret involved.

Frank's narcissistic response was typical. "Bitch," he spat.

Were ALL men dogs?