CHAPTER 11
THE ASSISTANT
Firecrackers went off behind my eyes as I rolled over in bed. The pain. I’d never had a headache like it. My memory returned in flashes—the cocktails, the rice pandas, duetting with Selena… Oh, hell. How much had I drunk?
At least it wasn’t light. I wasn’t late for work, not yet, but I’d have to drag myself out of bed as soon as Kamal turned his music on. I had three roommates, and we got along okay, mainly because we all worked long hours and never spoke to each other. But Kamal liked to listen to rock, and at some dim and distant household meeting in the past, eight o’clock had been deemed an appropriate hour for him to crank up Spotify. I didn’t mind. I just took it as my cue to get up.
But today, there was only silence and darkness, which meant I could clos
