Breaking Point (Short Story)



  BREAKING POINT

  By Matthew Holley

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  CHAPTER ONE

  “Happy Birthday, Kathleen!” a small group of five sang out to their friend who had just turned twenty-one two days ago. At a round table inside the packed Sam’s Bar and Grill restaurant, Kathleen Clark sat in front of a large birthday cake that had a lit candle in the shape of the number twenty-one displayed in the center of the store-bought pastry. Kathleen smiled warmly at her friends before blowing out her candle. To Kathleen’s left, one of her best friends, Kelly Knox, picked up her bottle of St. Pauli Girl beer and held it high in the air.

  “A toast to the best friend a person could have,” Kelly said.

  The rest of the group held up their beer bottles, with the exception of Misty Bryan. She and her fiancée, Dick, who both sat directly across the table from Kathleen, were the wealthier of everyone else at the table. Misty considered herself a sophisticated lady, even though she was only twenty-two. She distinguished herself as a refined lady with manners and she felt that a real lady would never drink her alcohol from a bottle. Such a lady would only drink from a proper glass. So, in sharing in the toast of Kathleen, Misty held up her wine glass of sangria.

  “Thank you, guys. This was really nice of you,” Kathleen said. “It means a lot to me.”

  “We wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” Dalton West, sitting to the right of Kathleen, said. Dalton had known Kathleen for six years, since their sophomore year in high school together, and he had always had an attraction for Kathleen, but, to his disappointment, she never shared the same affinity for him. To Kathleen, Dalton was simply a good friend.

  “But, we could have picked a better place,” Misty stated. “There are so many nice restaurants in this town, but we had to come here. To this dive.”

  “We choose this place because it’s Kathleen’s favorite place to eat,” Kelly said. “I kind of like it. It’s quaint and cozy.”

  “Just like Kathleen,” Dalton said while blinking his eyes flirtatiously and smiling at Kathleen

  Kathleen just shook her head and couldn’t help but smile. After all these years, Dalton still persistently hit on her every chance he got. He so wanted to be more than just friends with Kathleen. In his eyes, there wasn’t a more beautiful girl ever born on this planet. Unfortunately, Kathleen didn’t share Dalton’s same admiration for him as he did for her. At first, she was flattered by all of Dalton’s sweet comments and terms of endearment, but, over the years, they had started to get nothing more than annoying. Kathleen didn’t think Dalton was bad to look at in a cute, cuddly bear kind of way and he was a nice guy, but she had always been attracted to more of the manly kind of man…the bad boys, as her mother always called them whenever Kathleen made the mistake of bringing one of her boyfriends home to meet her parents. Deep down, Kathleen knew her parents would never approve of the kind of guys she insisted on dating and part of her knew that was the very reason she dated them. Kelly’s rebellious nature as a teen followed her into her young adult years, but she was now more able to control the rebel living inside her.

  On the other side of the spectrum from Dalton, and sitting directly across the table from Dalton, was Steve Reese. Steve was one of those bad boys Kathleen’s parents had always warned her about. He was definitely the kind of guy Kathleen was attracted to. And the two of them dated for a year in high school, but, as often is the case for bad boys, Steve wasn’t faithful to Kathleen or to any other girl he had ever dated, for that matter. It took Kathleen months before she could forgive Steve for his infidelity and she was eventually able to start talking to him again. She knew she could never trust him again, but she couldn’t stand the thoughts of Steve being out of her life. She still had feelings for him. Probably always will. Steve was her first love. So, they remained friends and pretended it wasn’t awkward.

  Sam’s Bar and Grill was packed with patrons. Nearly every table, every booth, and every high-top was occupied. Over fifty television sets hung high on the walls, every one of them broadcasting a sports channel for the restaurant’s costumers to enjoy. On the many screens, they were showing golfing, car racing, bike racing, volleyball, soccer, tennis, Ping-Pong, basketball, baseball, and even a game of cricket. It wasn’t yet football season, so the place wasn’t being bombarded with the frequent eruption of loud cheers and jeers that always accompanies football fans. Still, the restaurant was filled with the sound of multitudes of people conversing, forcing everyone to have to talk louder than normal as they competed to be heard by the ones they were dining with.

  “What are we supposed to cut the cake with?” Misty asked with annoyance as she looked around the restaurant for their waitress. “We have no silverware. We have no plates. What’s up with our waitress?”

  As if on cue, their waitress walked up. The shy, dark-haired waitress was young, just turned eighteen, and this was the first time she had waited on a table without the assistance of a senior waitress. She was noticeably nervous and a bit scared, because, earlier, she had gotten everyone’s drink orders at her table wrong and Kathleen and Misty weren’t shy in letting the young waitress know their dissatisfaction in her. When the timid waitress spoke, she spoke softly, barely audible over the noise of the restaurant.

  “Can I get anybody anything else? Another drink?” the waitress asked.

  “Something to cut this cake would be nice,” Misty rudely said. “And some plates. Unless you plan for us to eat it like a bunch of paupers.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry. I’ll bring you a knife and some plates right away. Does anyone else need anything before I go?”

  “Another drink.” Kathleen said.

  “Me, too,” Kelly said.

  “I could use another one,” Steve rang in.

  “Okay. I’ll be right back,” the waitress said with a heavy look of concentration on her face as she ran the list of things through her mind that she was to bring back to her table. Trying her best not to forget anything. She returned shortly with the order and clumsily placed the drinks on the table in front of the ones who ordered them.

  “This isn’t what I’ve been drinking!” Kathleen said peeved. “It’s not even close! I’m drinking St. Pauli Girl. This is a Sam Adams.”

  “I’m so sorry,” the waitress apologetically said. “That was supposed to be his. He has yours.” She reached across the table to grab the beer she had placed in front of Steve by mistake, but she accidently knocked the beer bottle over on the table. Steve had to quickly move out of the way before the beer, running off the table, poured into his lap.

  “What the hell!” Steve exclaimed. “Do you have any idea how much I paid for these jeans? More than you make in a week! How can you be so stupid?”

  “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” the waitress said, trying to fight back her tears.” I’ll go get my rag.”

  “What about the knife and plates?” Misty asked snobbery. “This cake is going to be stale before we get a chance to eat it.”

  “I’m sorry! I forgot! I’ll be right back.”

  “I can use another drink,” Dick, with an evil smirk on his face, told the waitress even though his beer was still half full. He was finding entertainment in watching the young girl groveling over them. Watching her was like watching a car wreck and who didn’t get enjoyment out of seeing a car wreck.

  The waitress hurried off to get her rag, nearly running into another waitress w
ho had her arms full of plates. The frantic waitress had been told that she was always to have a rag on her just for situations like this, but she had forgotten to pick hers up when she started her shift.

  “Oh my gosh! She’s a dense one!” Misty said loudly. “How hard is it to remember a simple knife or get a drink order right? With the kind of prices this place charges, you would think they could hire descent help. What did they do? Pull her off the street and give her a job? Isn’t there some sort of requirement to be a waitress? Like competency?”

  “Hey, you can’t blame her,” Kathleen said sarcastically. “Did you catch her name?”

  “No, I didn’t,” Misty said, still not lowering her voice. “What was it? Something like Mary Joe or Billy Jean or Samantha Sue or Mary Ellen or some other stupid redneck name like that?”

  “It was Josephine,” Kathleen said with a snicker.

  Misty busted into a laugh. Everyone around the table joined her.

  “I was just joking about the redneck thing,” Misty spouted out. “Are you serious? Is that really her name? No wonder she’s so retarded. I bet her parents were cousins.”

  “And did you see that green hideous watch she was wearing?” Kathleen remarked. “It’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen. I hate green. I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing that tacky thing around my wrist. Whoever gave her that must have really hated her.”

  Just then, Kathleen looked up to see the young waitress standing at the table with a hurt look on her face. The offended waitress placed the knife for cutting the cake on the table and then broke out into tears. Embarrassed, she spun around and ran into the back.

  “You made her cry,” Misty said in an overly exaggerated sympathetically teasing voice. “Don’t you feel bad?”

  “Can’t say that I do,” Kathleen said. “Why should I feel bad about other people’s ignorance? It’s not my fault she’s a stupid redneck or that she has horrible taste in watches, or hairstyle for that matter. Misty, am I right or am I wrong?”

  “You’re speaking the truth, girlfriend. You’re speaking the truth.”

  “Why do you all have to be so mean?” Dalton asked. “She seems like a nice girl.”

  “Yeah. You can say that,” Kathleen said. “She didn’t get your drink order wrong or try to spill beer all over you. Right, Steve? Which reminds me. We still need our table wiped down.” Kathleen stood up and hollered across the restaurant to the waitress staff. “Hey! We need waited on over here! Our waitress ran out on us.”

  With an embarrassed snicker, Kelly took Kathleen by the arm and pulled her down into her seat. “I think you’ve had a little too much to drink.”

  “Why do you say that?” Misty asked Kelly. “Because she has the balls to say what she’s thinking? That’s not the alcohol talking. That’s Kathleen. She doesn’t give a damn what people might think of her. She says it like it is. That’s why I love her so much.” Misty held up her drink. “Me and you, sister.”

  Kathleen held up her beer bottle. “That’s right! Me and you.”

  Just then, a different waitress walked up with a towel in her hands. She began wiping the table down. “I apologize about this. Josephine is new. Can I offer to refresh everyone’s drinks? Perhaps some appetizers?”

  “I would like a slice of cake,” Misty contemptuously told the waitress. “Why don’t you be a dear and cut me a slice.”

  The waitress looked scornfully at Misty and picked up the knife. For a brief second, Kathleen feared the waitress was going to use the knife to slit Misty’s throat and, for a brief second, that’s exactly the thought that crossed the waitress’s mind, but she resisted the urge and, instead, cut a slice of the cake and placed it in front of Misty.

  “Would anyone else like a slice?” the waitress asked through clenched teeth.

  Everyone around the table said they did and a slice of cake was placed in front of them.

  “What happened to our other waitress?” Dalton asked.

  “She had to leave for the night,” the new waitress said. “She said she wasn’t feeling well.”

  “I doubt she’s going to come back...ever,” Misty said with a grin. “I think we scared her away for good. We had her crying and everything.”

  “And I’m supposedly the “bad one”,” Steve said. “Sometimes, you can make Marilyn Manson look like a saint.”

  “I choose to take that as a compliment,” Misty said. “Sometimes, being a bitch is all a woman has.”

  “Hey! I’m sitting right next to you,” Dick said to his fiancé. “You have me. What more could a girl ask for? I’ve got the looks and I’ve got the money.”

  “I’ve got more money than you have and, I hate to tell you, but looks will fade, sweetie,” Misty said why pinching Dick’s lips together and kissing them. “, but money is forever. Just remember that.”

  “It’s not your money, it’s your daddy’s money,” Dick said and kissed Misty back. “Knowing him, he’s most likely going to cut you off financially the second we get married.”

  “Then you best keep me as happy as father has.”

  “That sounded like a threat to me,” Steve said to Dick.

  “It wasn’t a threat,” Misty said. “My fiancé knows I expect a certain type of lifestyle. If he wants to keep me around, he must maintain that lifestyle for me. I don’t come cheap.”

  “You better believe that!” Dick said and chuckled.

  Kathleen looked over at Dalton and saw that he was fixated on one of the television sets instead of on her. She felt an unexpected sense of jealousy that the piece of electronics had Dalton’s full attention. She looked up at the television to see what was so interesting to Dalton. A female news commentator was talking about the recent rescue of a teenage girl from her captor of nearly two years.

  “Oh, not her again,” Kathleen huffed. “Every time you turn on the T.V. they’re talking about her. They need to just give it a rest. I’m tired of hearing about her.”

  “About who?” Misty asked.

  “Amber Lynn.”

  “Amber Lynn?”

  “That’s right. You’ve been gone. You haven’t heard. Some of us, and I won’t mention who, just got back from touring England for the last four weeks in celebration of their third year of being engaged,” Kathleen scoffed. “Well, while you two were gallivanting around with the Queen, you missed the “sensational” story everyone can’t seem to stop talking about. It was like almost two years ago, when this guy, who was a basketball player or something---.”

  “Bubba James. He was a baseball player, a pitcher, for the Arizona Diamondbacks,” Steve interrupted. “He was a hell of a pitcher. He had a curve ball no one could touch.”

  “Okay. Whatever,” Kathleen continued. “Anyways, Bubba had a daughter, Amber Lynn, who was kidnaped when she was like fifteen by some loser named Edmond Howard. They had a massive state-wide search for Amber Lynn, but they could never find her.”

  “I think I remember hearing about that a few years ago,” Misty said.

  “Well, about three weeks ago, Amber Lynn was discovered in Southern California and, get this, she has a one year old baby. She got pregnant by the man who kidnaped her. Can you believe that? Now, they won’t stop talking about it. Every day for the last three weeks, that’s all you hear about on television. Enough already!”

  “That poor girl,” Kelly said.

  “Poor girl?” Kathleen looked disbelievingly at Kelly “Why are you feeling sorry for her? That girl wasn’t a victim like the media is trying to portray her as.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “For the obvious question a lot of people like myself are asking. Why didn’t she fight to get away? You can’t tell me that for two years she never had the opportunity to escape? You can’t tell me her kidnapper watched her every day, twenty-four hours a day for two years? No. That’s impossible. She had to have many opportunities to run, yet she didn’t. Why? When Amber Lynn was found, she was shopping with Edmond Howard in a grocery store. There were p
eople all around. Why didn’t she scream for help?”

  “Maybe she was terrified.” Kelly suggested. “She was only fifteen when all this happened to her. It had to mess her head up.”

  “Then she’s weak and pathetic,” Kathleen said. “If it had been me, I would have never let that man touch me. I would have ripped off his balls and ran away. That would have never been me. But, if you ask me, I don’t think Amber Lynn was scared. I think she went with that man voluntarily. Have you seen what she looks like?”

  “No,” Misty said.

  “She’s not very pretty. Am I right, Kelly?”

  “Well…”

  “Come on. Admit it,” Kathleen urged. “She’s about as attractive as a crocodile.”

  “She is a bit on the homely side,” Kelly admitted.

  “You’re being kind,” Kathleen said. “She looks like the poster child for unpretentiousness. She’s built like a toothpick. She’s got that nappy hair and big teeth. She’s the very definition of redneck. I bet she’s never had a guy even look at her before Edmond did. I bet Edmond Howard was the first man to ever show an interest in her and I think she liked it. I think Amber Lynn went with him because she wanted to. She was starved for affection. I think she got pregnant by him voluntarily. That’s why she didn’t run away when she had the opportunity to. I bet, if given a choice, she’d go back to him. But, now the guy is up on rape charges.”

  “Even if it was consensual, it’s still statutory rape,” Kelly said. “She was a minor.”

  “Hello! I know that!” Kathleen said. “Remember, my dad is a lawyer and I’m going to be attending law school. I think I know about statutory rape. I just don’t agree with it. Not when the girl is old enough to know if she wants to have sex or not. Why isn’t it considered statutory rape when the sex is between two teenagers? Say, when the girl is fifteen and the guy is sixteen. The girl is still a minor. Why is the teenage boy not arrested for statutory rape? If a girl has sex voluntarily, it’s not rape. Plain and simple. Amber Lynn wanted it and now, all of a sudden, she’s the victim. That man wasn’t holding her against her will. If you ask me, the system is just tearing a family apart by putting that man in prison.”

  “Edmond Howard is in his forties,” Kelly said. “He nothing more than a sick pervert. What if it was your daughter? I bet you would feel differently.”

  “It would never be my daughter. I would never have such a frail, feeble, unintelligent, unattractive, daughter like Amber Lynn. She must have had some awful parents for her to have willingly chosen to stay with some forty year old rather than stay with them. It makes you wonder how hard they actually looked for her. They probably knew where she was the whole time. I’ve heard stories of how some of those hillbilly, religious freak types sometimes marry their teenage daughters off to older men just to get them out of the house. I wouldn’t doubt if Edmond Howard paid Amber Lynn’s parents money for their daughter. Now, her parents are cashing in even more because of all the media attention. That’s probably what they had in mind the whole time. Didn’t I hear that Amber Lynn’s father lost his job a while back?”

  “As a baseball player, he did,” Steve said. “He and a few others were poaching for bear from a helicopter up there in Montana. The helicopter had some sort of mechanical failure and crashed. Everyone survived, but Bubba James messed his shoulder up pretty bad. He was never able to pitch a baseball again. But he did open a sporting goods store, a few years ago, BJ Sports, and I believe now he has about a dozen stores across the country. He also opened that zoo, Wild Country, a few miles up the road. I don’t think he’s hurting for money.”

  “Misty and I have been to Wild Country,” Dick said. “Misty fell in love with the spider monkeys. I had to drag her away from their cage. I had no idea Bubba James owned the zoo. Does he live around here?”

  “I think I heard that he and his family had a place somewhere around here,” Steve said. “In fact, I think they’ve moved here permanently. Bubba James wanted to get his daughter away from the media piranhas where he lived in California, so he moved his family somewhere over here in southern Nevada. I’m not sure exactly where.”

  “I saw him and his wife on a talk show last week,” Dalton said. “I don’t remember which one. I wasn’t really paying that much attention to it, but I do remember Bubba James saying he was doing the talk show circuit to promote awareness of child kidnapping.”

  “More like to promote his name and business,” Kathleen said with skepticism. “He wasn’t running the talk show gauntlet for free. No one does something nice just for the sake of niceness. Everyone has an interior motive for everything they do.”

  “You’re always so suspicious of people,” Dalton said. “I’m nice to you all the time. What’s my motive?”

  “That’s easy,” Misty said. “You want in her pants.”

  “That is not the reason I’m nice to her,” Dalton insisted.

  “So, you don’t want in her pants?” Misty grinned cannily.

  “No…I mean yes...I mean that’s not why I’m nice to Kathleen.” Dalton was growing red from embarrassment.

  “Relax,” Misty chuckled. “I’m just messing with you.”

  “But Misty does concrete my point,” Kathleen said. “Everyone has a motive when they’re being nice to someone. And if you dig deep enough, you’ll find it. And nearly every time, their motive can be boiled down to self-satisfaction. Whether they are being nice to their boss to further their position in the company or simply being nice to someone to get what they want, it all comes down to selfish motives. I’ve sat inside the courthouse several times watching my father prosecute a case and I see the selfishness all the time. Everyone has a reason for what they do. My father says that the first lesson to becoming a great lawyer is to first identify a person’s motive. The rest will fall into place.”

  “It’s going to be nice having a lawyer in the group,” Misty said. “Especially for Steve.”

  Everyone laughed.

  “Hey, I haven’t had a run-in with the law in years.” Steve said in defense of himself. “And the last time I went to jail, it was a set up. That wasn’t my grass.”

  “Oh, it wasn’t your grass, but it somehow got into your shirt pocket,” Kathleen said. “You wouldn’t have gotten pulled over in the first place if you hadn’t been going sixty-five in a thirty-five mile per hour zone.”

  “How did you know about that?” Steve asked. “I don’t remember telling you all that.”

  “I read your arrest report. I know people. One of the perks of being the daughter of such a well-known lawyer. It gives you a certain amount of power over people.”

  “Yeah, especially when you threaten to have your father sue them,” Misty said.

  “If you were privy to getting what you wanted, it would be stupid not to take advantage of it,” Kathleen said. “It’s basically a matter of the privileged over the disadvantaged. The fortunate over the misfortunate. The strong over the weak. Ultimately, the strong will always prevail. We, sitting at this table, are the privileged. The strong.”

  “The rich,” Misty added.

  “Yes. The rich,” Kathleen said. “We were meant to be at the top of the food chain. Folks like our waitress or like Amber Lynn, well, they’re where they’re supposed to be.”

  “Meaning what?” Kelly asked.

  “Our waitress couldn’t even get our orders right. She’ll never amount to anything in life. And that’s fine. We need those type of people to fill certain positions in life that none of us here would be willing to do. Misty, could you see yourself waiting table? Of course not. Neither could I. Nor would any of us find ourselves in the position Amber Lynn is in. As far as Amber Lynn in concerned, she was just a lonely girl looking for someone to pay attention to her. The media is trying to portray her as a victim, but she was a willing participant.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Kelly said. “I heard some details about what happened to Amber Lynn. For one thing, her captor kept her locked in a basement fo
r months. They said Edmond Howard messed with Amber Lynn’s head really bad. A lot of psychological manipulation.”

  “Don’t you dare mention Stockholm syndrome,” Kathleen warned. “That’s a bunch of malarkey. It’s just another excuse for people who are weak and simple-minded. If all that is true about what Edmond Howard did to Amber Lynn, and I have my doubts, that just shows how weak she was. I would have never been so manipulated even when I was fifteen. I would have stayed strong and found a way to escape. I guarantee you that I would never become a victim in that kind of situation. He would have to kill me first before I gave into him.”

  “You can’t say that for certain unless you’ve been in that kind of situation before.” Kelly said, her eyes filling with tears, as she grew emotionally upset over Kathleen’s lack of compassion and insensitive attitude. “What if you were assaulted by someone stronger than you? What if he forced himself upon you? You try with all your strength to push him off you, but he’s too heavy. You try to scream, but his hand is covering your mouth.”

  A single tear rolled down Kelly’s left cheek. Her eyes were fixated straight ahead, looking into nothingness. If Kathleen’s senses weren’t so impaired by alcohol, she would have known her friend was talking from experience.

  “You pray for someone to walk into that room and save you, but no one comes. You feel him forcing your dress up and you know what’s coming next, even at such a young age, you know. And when it happens, when the monster is taking your innocence, you leave your body. You float above it and watch the assault on your body. Like it’s not really you it’s happening to. You don’t want to watch, but you can’t close your eyes. And afterwards, you are threatened not to tell anyone. And you are so scared and traumatized, that you never do. You can’t say what you’ll do in a situation unless you’ve been there. It’s easy to act brave sitting inside this cozy restaurant. Not so easy when you find yourself the victim. It’s only then when you truly find out how strong you are.”

  “I know how strong I am,” Kathleen insisted. “I could never become a victim of anyone’s.”

  Kelly looked with angry and disappointed eyes at Kathleen. She stood up from her chair. “I can’t believe how insensitive and mean you can be. You can make it hard to be your friend sometimes. There are times I’m actually ashamed of you. This is one of those times.” Kelly picked up her purse and stomped out of the restaurant.

  “What blew up her dress?” Kathleen asked.

  “Couldn’t you tell?” Dalton asked. “Kelly has obviously been a victim of an assault at some point in her life.”

  “Well, how was I supposed to know? She’s never mentioned it before. I don’t know why she had to get so upset.”

  “Because some of those mean things you were saying about Amber Lynn, pertained to Kelly too,” Dick said. “I think she took it personally.”

  “Kelly’s just too sensitive for her own good.” Kathleen rolled her eyes and finished her beer. “She’s needs to have thicker skin if she wants to hang around with us. I say what I feel. I’m not going to tiptoe around anyone’s feelings. She knows that.”

  “And they say I’m the nasty one,” Misty chuckled. Misty guzzled down the last of her drink, very unlady-like, and stood up. “Let’s get out of here. We’re supposed to be celebrating my girlfriend’s birthday. Let’s go have some fun. The night is still young and so are we. Let’s go do some club hopping.”

  “Now, you’re talking,” Kathleen agreed.