From the Eyes of a Juror

  Chapter 36 – Fear of Falling

  Monday afternoon June 9, 2008 – 2:45 PM

  Frank Newlan took a deep breath as he navigated down the ramp that led to his deeded parking space in the lower level underground garage of the Medford River Park Condominiums complex.

  Even though the Breslin trial didn’t quite adjourn at 1 PM as Judge Gershwin had promised, Newlan’s laborious afternoon still ended much sooner than it would have had he been at work, which left his wandering-mind feeling as if there was at least one incidental benefit to be gained from serving on a jury; although, if given the choice, he would much rather have been at work any day of the week.

  As Newlan gingerly exited his automobile, he cautiously scanned the garage, searching for signs of a possible faceless murderer lurking behind one of the supporting beams…and then after giving himself the “all clear” signal, he flicked open the trunk with his remote and pulled out a couple of bags of groceries which he had picked up on his way home from the courthouse.

  For some incomprehensible reason, the garage had rendered Newlan with a case of the creeps from the very first day he moved into his apartment. And even though he had no rational reason for this very irrational fear, his anxiety had never quite dissipated. But rational or not, now that he was immersed in the details of the Breslin murder trial, including the jury’s visit to the eerie garage in Newton, he was more paranoid than ever when it came to his own condo complex’s parking garage. However, he was damned if he was going to let his demons get the better of him.

  You see, before Newlan purchased his condo, he had never been afforded with the luxury of a garage parking spot, and so regardless of how jittery and claustrophobic the enclosed garage left him feeling at times, he still treasured the convenience of pulling into his spot on a cold, wet, winter night; and even better, he was thrilled not to have to brush a foot of snow off his car and shovel his way out of an icy mess in the morning, after a typically brutal New England blizzard.

  And besides, after five years of living at the Medford River Park complex, Newlan had come a long way in conquering his fears, and so now after giving the garage a final once over, he lazily made his way up to his condo for what he hoped would be a pleasant, lazy, late-afternoon nap.

  As Newlan climbed the flight of stairs which led up to the lobby, he happened to notice that no one was manning the concierge’s desk. And even though this wasn’t too unusual of a situation, his legendary radar kicked into high gear in spite of himself.

  With his psychic beacon sending him signals, Newlan gingerly advanced towards the elevator and discretely glanced out beyond the adjacent glass postern which led to the upper level garage; and it was here that he observed Saeed Kahn gaping at the heavy, motorized garage door while sizing up the aperture with a tape-measure.

  When Kahn came to the realization that Newlan might be spying him, he covertly attempted to conceal the portable yardstick, and he nervously poked his head out of the open garage entryway while at the same time waving his arms, as if he were guiding an invisible truck into a tight space.

  Upon witnessing the perplexing doorman in action, Newlan could only shake his head disapprovingly and mutter; “What the hell is this lunatic doing? This is weird even for Saeed.”

  For the most part, Newlan considered Saeed Kahn to be nothing more than a harmless old man. But every once in a while Kahn would go through intermittent stretches of erratic behavior, which in turn would result in Newlan becoming quite leery of his Pakistani friend.

  Newlan was normally the type of person who tended to mind his own business when it came to his neighbor’s quirks…but not this time; no, this time his puzzlement got the better of him and he decided to confront Kahn.

  “Saeed, what the heck are you doing out here?” inquired Newlan as he calmly approached the shady doorman.

  “We are expecting a new tenant…large truck…antique furniture…very nice people,”

  Kahn mumbled. But his unnaturally high voice and twitchy mannerisms came across as conspicuously murky, which had Newlan’s internal antenna sending out frantic red alerts.

  Newlan didn’t say a word, for fear of arousing Kahn’s suspicions, but he wondered to himself what would cause the experienced concierge to react in such a fidgety manner over a simple move-in, when people moved in and out of the building all the time.

  “Why do you ask my friend?” cheerily probed Kahn. But as far as Newlan was concerned, something about his maniacal smile radiated treachery, and his beady eyes appeared to have an aberrant glint to them.

  “Oh it’s nothing…Just curious I guess,” casually replied Newlan, even though deep inside, his synapses were transmitting a meteor shower of foreboding tension.

  Although Newlan was fully aware that Kahn’s skittish behavior wasn’t completely out of character, his baffling antics had him on the defensive just the same. And in his present frame of mind, he preferred to make a quick retreat before the opinionated doorman went on one of his long rants about the state of the world. But unfortunately it was already too late for that because, in midstride of his attempted pullout, Kahn had heretofore transitioned seamlessly into a babbling conversation regarding the latest government crackdown back in his homeland.

  Newlan was generally a good listener, but at the moment he just wasn’t in the mood for one of Kahn’s soapbox diatribes, and so in a fit of desperation he attempted to change the subject.

  “Beautiful day isn’t it? The flowers in front of the building are blooming nicely,” offered Newlan. But his change of direction only seemed to magnify Kahn’s spooky stare until it took on the likeness of a laser beam boring a chasm into his cranial cavity.

  After a few more minutes spent painstakingly attempting to engage Kahn in small talk, the suddenly creeped-out Newlan excused himself by claiming that he had an errand to attend to.

  With his apology elucidated, Newlan ploddingly began to back away from Kahn. But he got no more than a few steps towards the entrance into the building when the cantankerous concierge noticed the Rolling Stone magazine with the photo of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on the cover, which he was carry under his armpit…and Kahn was none too pleased.

  “They are no good, either one of them,” growled Kahn as he agitatedly pointed at the picture, “and the Republican candidates are even worse.”

  The last thing Newlan wanted to do at the moment was to talk politics with the likes of Saeed Kahn, so once again he attempted a last ditch effort at changing the subject, if only ever so slightly.

  “Aren’t you a citizen now Saeed…and won’t this be your first presidential election?” wondered Newlan while at the same time doing his best to feign interest.

  “No…never will I vote for either of these dogs. Finally we have come to the end of the criminal Bush’s term, and now we must endure four more years of war and wickedness from these corrupt outlaws…never will I vote,” angrily railed Kahn.

  In all his time debating Saeed Kahn on every subject imaginable, Newlan had never once remembered him reacting in such an ornery manner. The derogatory remarks that were suddenly spouting from his yap, like sewage from a backed-up toilet, were seriously beginning to trouble Newlan. But that didn’t stop him from boldly proclaiming; “Well if you want to see changes made, then the first thing you have to do is get out and vote.”

  “Ah my friend…but there will be changes. Very soon, there will be immense changes, radical changes, dire changes, and the criminals will pay for their treason,” stoically replied Kahn, but all the while the expression on his face was duplicitous.

  At this point, Newlan had had just about enough already, and he slowly but surely backed away from the lunatic fringe ramblings of the condo complex’s faithful attendant.

  As Newlan forged his escape, Kahn’s preachy assault could still be heard, off in the distance, echoing through the lobby. And while the elevator made its ascent up to the 6th floor, an abrupt realization hit
him; Saeed Kahn’s glower emitted the guise of a terrorist arching from his evil eyes; Saeed Kahn’s protests set forth the words of an angry radical spewing from his polluted mouth; Saeed Kahn’s histrionic philosophies discharged a lethal chemical reaction straight from the depth of the dangerous madman hidden in his soul. And on top of that, his vile thesis sent his hatred sprawling out of his every fissure.

  “To think that we welcome people like Saeed Kahn into our country with open arms, and this is the gratitude we get,” groused Newlan. And as his bitterness crystallized, out of nowhere, he was jolted by the stabbing pain of a profound emptiness surging up from somewhere deep within the core of his being.

  “I don’t know why the hell it even surprises me, the entire planet is a fuckin’ mess anyway,” protested Newlan aloud to himself as he entered his condo. But it bothered him nonetheless.

  Newlan, he of the one-world mentality, was never a strongly patriotic person, nor was he anti-government either, and yet Kahn’s callous attitude toward their country angered him.

  And furthermore, the real Saeed Kahn, the Saeed Kahn that Newlan was seeing for the first time today, dismayed him beyond reproach.

  “I’m gonna keep an eye on that motherfucker,” Newlan promised himself as he collapsed on the sofa and squeezed his droopy eyes shut.

  Newlan was completely exhausted after enduring another day of testimony in the John Breslin murder trial, not to mention Saeed Kahn’s enervating tirade, and yet his mind still wouldn’t turn itself off.

  Try as he might to relax, Newlan just couldn’t seem to get the trial out of his head, and so he just laid there and wondered; he wondered where the prosecution was going with their case; he wondered how the defense would counter the attack; he wondered what the rest of the jurors were thinking.

  “All they have so far is that damned red car, and the fact that Sammy the Fox also drove a similar red car, but that doesn’t prove shit,” quibbled Newlan. And he kept coming back to the fact that he also owned a red car which closely fit the description of the vehicle that a handful of the witnesses described seeing at the scene of the crime.

  Newlan’s sleepless thoughts continued to wander back and forth from the trial, to the suddenly crazed Saeed Kahn, to Marianne Plante’s bewildering letter. And even though it was only 3 o’clock in the afternoon, his eyelids eventually grew heavy, and he gradually drifted off into a dark nightmare.

  Newlan dreamed that he was peering out the kitchen window of his condo, peering down at the entrance of the upper garage, when off in the distance he observed a red car approaching. And as the car grew closer he saw that it was his red car; he saw that it was his very own 1995 Mercury Mystique.

  In his dream-state, Newlan seemed to have been gifted with some sort of magical x-ray vision, and he could plainly see that his automobile was being driven by none other than John Breslin, and perched in the passenger seat was his high school sweetheart, the one and only Marianne Plante.

  Newlan’s visionary power went on to observe that his red Mercury was being directed into the garage by the condo complex’s trusty concierge, Mr. Saeed Kahn. And as he stood by the window in his hypnotically narcoleptic condition, he found the scene to be startlingly peculiar, and he became frighteningly alarmed by the bizarre sights that his slumbering mind was presenting him.

  Next up, another vehicle carrying Newlan’s now deceased parents made its way towards the garage as Saeed Kahn happily waved them in. And soon, car after car began arriving, with Newlan’s friends and family riding inside; Pat Horn and Bruce Reardon, Janis Barry, Officer Jimmy Leach, his sister Rose Marino and her son Joey, his co-workers from Tafts University, and on and on it went.

  As Newlan droopy eyelids observed the caravan, loaded with the dearest people from every stage of his life, filing into the garage as if they were all Grand Marshals in a pomp Memorial Day parade, he knew for sure that something wasn’t right. Even in his dreams he realized that something was terribly wrong. Even in his darkest hour he seemed to understand that he had to do something. And what’s more, he knew that he had to act now; spring into action immediately, or every person he ever cared about would soon be gone. Gone like so much dust in the wind.

  Newlan struggled to let out a scream, but couldn’t. By now he was half-awake, but no matter how hard he tried, he still couldn’t speak, he still couldn’t move. Somehow he was paralyzed by an unknown fear. Somehow his childhood nightmares were returning to haunt him once again; to haunt him in death-defying fashion; to haunt him in a spectacular flame-filled sky of an encore; a finale that would surely surpass even the most dazzling Fourth of July fireworks displays ever known to man.

  Newlan stood there helplessly by his kitchen window as he spied a monstrous truck approaching the garage. The truck backed up and maneuvered its trailer into the ingress, led by the deranged Saeed Kahn who was now playing the part of a traffic cop, right down to the wearing of an elaborate military uniform marked with a Nazi emblem on the sleeve. Once the truck was in place, the fiendish hissing of a gaseous substance intertwining with the ghostly screams of a holocaustic genocide congealed into a discernable racket, which was clearly emanating from the chambered garage, while at the same time Saeed Kahn took the form of the Devil and vanished into thin air…and somehow Newlan seemed to grasp the forgone conclusion of what was about to happen next.

  “Noooooooo,” he silently screamed as a mushroom cloud of an explosion sent him flying out of the collapsing building and into the atmospheric emptiness, where he began to fall from the sky…slowly but surely he was falling down, silently falling, down, down, down.

  In the past, whenever Newlan found himself trapped in one of his infamous falling dreams, somehow he always found a way to will himself awake before he hit the ground…but not this time. As much as he struggled, as much as he fought, there he was, plunging towards the Earth; plunging towards a certain death. And he was helpless to do a damn thing to stop his descent; helpless to do anything but hold his breath and brace himself for impact.

  However, just as Newlan’s life was about to come to its inevitable end, the phone rang, and somehow the ringing in his head cured his paralysis. Somehow he awoke from his nightmare; somehow he survived to live another day; somehow he survived to fight another fight.

  On the other end of the phone was Newlan’s sister, Rose Marino.

  “Hey, whatcha doing? You sound like you’re half asleep,” cheerfully asked Rose.

  Newlan was groggy and disoriented, and he was shaking all over from the aftermath of his terrible nightmare, but somehow he managed a faint reply; “Nothing, just taking a nap.”

  “I sent you an email at work today and I got your auto-reply. Your message said that you’re on jury duty…why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Sorry, I meant to call you, but I’ve been so busy that it slipped my mind,” answered Newlan in what was more or less a white lie.

  “So what kind of case are you on?” curiously wondered Rose.

  “Oh it’s just a boring civil lawsuit. Some old lady’s suing a big corporation because she slipped on a patch of ice in front of one of their stores,” explained Newlan. But this time his fib was even more of a tall tale. He may have been half-asleep, but he was still fully cognizant of the veracity behind his decision not to let his sister in on the factual details regarding his present jury duty assignment; plainly put, he didn’t dare upset the apple cart.

  When you consider the fact that Rose Marino’s son was currently employed by the very same corporation that Breslin once worked for, not to mention the fact that Judge Gershwin must have warned the jurors a million times already not to discuss the case with anybody, it’s no wonder that Newlan was forced to improvise; and so he was compelled to make up something quick; and so he was obligated to once again go drudging up the past; and so he was coerced into slyly resurrecting the civil case from which he got ejected so many years ago.

  “Why don’t you come over for
dinner tomorrow night, and maybe if you’re not too tired you can stick around and watch the basketball game afterwards,” invitingly offered Rose.

  “Sounds good, I’ll be over around 7 o’clock,” appreciatively responded Newlan. Even though he didn’t mind fending for himself, the confirmed bachelor in him was always more than happy to accept the offer of a home-cooked meal, regardless of how down-and-out he was feeling at the moment.

  After Newlan hung up the phone, he collapsed onto the sofa with his throbbing head in his hands, and he pondered the possibility of performing a revealing slice of self-analysis. Why, he wondered, was he having all these crazy dreams lately? He couldn’t quite figure it out. But dream or no dream, his resolution to keep closer tabs on Saeed Kahn was further reinforced.

  Within an hour, Newlan had calmed down to a degree where he was able to adjourn into the kitchen and broil up the steak tips that he had just brought home from the supermarket, along with a dozen fresh dinner rolls. To top off the meal, he whipped up a salad and uncorked a bottle of California merlot, and he had nice little feast for himself.

  “Not a bad snack. Maybe not as complicated a dinner as my sister Rose might put together, but still pretty good, if I do say so myself,” insisted Newlan as he drained down another glass of wine. He wasn’t a wine connoisseur, but he knew what he liked, and what he liked was to put on a good glow without spending a lot of money. And that being the case, he wasn’t one to go for an expensive label when a 10 dollar bottle suited him just fine.

  Newlan was feeling a lot better after dinner (it seemed a good meal always helped to cheer him up), so he decided to hunker down at the desk in his extra bedroom and power up his laptop. He figured that he’d surf the web for a while and get caught up on the news of the day, not to mention his ever-growing work email inbox.

  Like most people, Newlan was amazed by how, in this modern world, you could retrieve vast quantities of information at the push of a computer button. But on the other hand, at times he found the internet to be a tad overrated, despite the fact that he was a high-tech employee. And as if to prove his point, he recently asserted to his co-workers; “the internet is OK and all…but lately I find myself getting bored with the whole idea of cyberspace. I mean, there are a million websites out there, but it seems as if the only sites I ever surf are Boston.com and maybe a few sports websites.”

  In any event, regardless of Newlan decidedly underwhelming viewpoint regarding the World Wide Web, he realized that, strictly speaking, he probably shouldn’t be on the internet, browsing the local news at all, due to the possibility that he might stumble upon a story documenting the Breslin trial. But at this point in the apathetic glow of the evening, he wasn’t bothered by his predicament in the least, and in fact he did come across a slew of stories featuring the “Three Horrible Hubbys” spotlighted across multiple sections of the Boston.com website.

  Truth be told, there was really no way that Newlan could have missed happening upon the trio of sorry husbands, seeing as how their sordid tales were plastered all over the home page of his favorite news website.

  As had been the case since Day-One of this epic trifecta of courtroom dramas, most of the media’s scrutiny was fixated on the Neil Townshend case, which involved the tragic yet sensational murder of the slimy Englishman’s wife and infant daughter. But there was also a fair measure of attention being heaped on the “Hit Man Murder” case as the Breslin trial was referred to, and on the “Gatorade Poisoning” case as the James McMahn trial was dubbed, and as such, Newlan had plenty of reading material from which to choose from.

  After much deliberation, Newlan decided to go ahead and peruse one or two of the Breslin articles. And although he assumed that the majority of these random news accounts probably didn’t contain much information which he hadn’t already been made aware of, he wondered whether this surreptitious leak into his brain might nevertheless trigger a subconscious proclivity within him, either for or against Breslin.

  “The hell with it,” exclaimed Newlan in the end. But as he contemplated the inner workings of his knotty mind, his latest dream popped back into his head, and his curiosity took a detour. Instead of going on the QT to illegitimately investigate the Breslin case, he once again decided that maybe a dose of self-imposed psychoanalysis might better serve his needs. And with this task in mind, he figured that, in all probability, there was bound to be a bountiful array of internet sites out there in cyberspace which served as repositories for materials pertaining to interpreting dreams.

  With his thirst for knowledge peaked, Newlan navigated to Google and typed “dream interpretation” into the edit box…and he watched in wonderment as, in less than a second, the ingenious search engine did its thing.

  Despite the fact that Newlan was considered to be a highly regarded computer programmer by his peers at Tafts University, he still wasn’t quite certain what was going on under the hood of the amazing Google software which allowed it to respond so quickly to even the most inane search requests. But regardless, he was none too surprised to observe the voluminous array of hits that came streaming back to his computer screen in the blink of an eye. And now with a bevy of information staring him in the face, he randomly set his sights on a URL that offered to help uncover the true meanings of your dreams…and when he drilled into the website he actually found a hyperlink specifically related to “Falling Dreams”.

  Newlan clicked on the link and fervently scanned though the page-long explanation with much fascination.

  Falling dreams are fairly common, but contrary to popular belief, you will not die if you do not wake up before hitting the ground.

  “That’s a bunch of bull, and even if it is the truth, I still don’t want to chance it,” argued Newlan who thankfully always woke up before he hit the ground in his own version of the falling dream. And although he didn’t totally agree with what he was reading, he found the remaining text to be quite interesting just the same.

  As with most anxiety-provoking dreams, falling dreams are indicative of some sort of major upheaval that has taken control of your life. Someone or something has you feeling helpless and powerless, perhaps even despondent. Maybe you are having issues with a personal or romantic relationship, or perhaps you are having issues with your job, or maybe some other unexpected situation has arisen in your life which is dominating your thoughts of late. It is during those times when you are feeling the most vulnerable, and when you are struggling to keep up with the rigors in your daily life, that falling dreams are most likely to occur. When you fall in your dreams, you are admitting that you have lost all control and there is nothing you can grab onto to help ease your troubles.

  Whatever the issue might be, something has got you traumatized. You feel like a failure. You feel ashamed. You feel inadequate. You feel that everyone is against you. In short, you feel frightened and alone.

  If we interrogate the situation from a Freudian standpoint, your falling dreams might indicate some sort of sexual desire or longing which remains unresolved.

  Falling dreams are typically accompanied by muscle spasms which help us to awake ourselves before we hit the ground. This instinctive reaction has evolved over time like a dog chasing its tail to make a clearing in the grass before going to sleep

  There are even negative biblical references about how falling dreams signify that we are acting in such a way that is not in accordance with the will of the Lord.

  “Well, I’m pretty sure that I’ve had muscle spasms during my falling dreams...and I guess it’s possible that I might have some unresolved sexual desires. Oh who the hell am I kidding, this is a load of crock. This is almost as bad as reading a silly horoscope,” professed Newlan. Of course, when the mood struck him, he tended to believe in Freudian hypotheses; when the mood struck him, he tended to believe in the astrological vortex of Zodiac lore; when the mood struck him, he tended to believe in his own paranormal abilities; so in some ways you could make the ca
se that he was contradicting himself, not that this would be the first or last time he was guilty of such an infraction.

  “Fuck it, if I’m such a freakin’ nut job then why the hell should I even give a crap about anything?” grumbled Newlan as he spontaneously punched up his Google home page again and typed the words “John Breslin” into the search box, which likewise returned page upon page of malicious dirt attributed to the allegedly murderous jealous husband.

  Newlan hesitated, but he just couldn’t resist any longer, Judge Gershwin be damned. And so he honed his focus in on a news report dating back to the momentous day that Breslin and Fox were arraigned on charges of first degree murder in April of 2006, and he painstakingly reviewed the article in minute detail.

  John Breslin was so enraged that his estranged wife was seeing her high school sweetheart that he once told his kids he wished that the man would “drop dead” prosecutors revealed in court yesterday.

  One of the Breslin’s young children was so distraught, prosecutors stated, that she allegedly called the boyfriend/victim, Fred Miller, and left him a message that said, “I hate you and I hope that you die.”

  This morning, Breslin, 47, of Waltham and Samuel Fox, 57, also of Waltham were arraigned in Middlesex Superior Court on charges that they conspired to murder Miller, an insurance agent who was found dead, with a fatal gunshot wound to the head, on the morning of January 13th of this year in a parking garage located next to his office in Newton.

  Breslin and Fox each pleaded not guilty to all charges.

  Prosecutors allege that Breslin, who worked for Tex-Ray Defense Systems in Andover, paid Fox, a career criminal, at least $10,000 to kill Miller.

  The prosecution’s report stated that the two defendants met through a mutual friend at Tex-Ray Defense Systems, and that their conspiracy began to take root in the fall of 2005 and lasted until they were arrested yesterday evening.

  “Breslin refused to acknowledge that Fred Miller was not to blame for his marital problems,” documented prosecutors in their report. “Miller eventually became the target of Breslin's resentment and getting ‘rid of' Miller became a fixation with the defendant Breslin, which led him to pay Fox for the service of killing Fred Miller.”

  However, the lawyer representing Breslin claimed that his client had absolutely nothing to do with the murder. “John Breslin refutes the prosecution’s claims that he had anything whatsoever to do with the death of Mr. Miller,” said his family’s attorney, Joseph Catino

  A lawyer representing Fox, who is well known to local authorities for his involvement with organized crime figures in the Northtown section of Boston, was unavailable for comment.

  Miller's friends and relatives declined to speak with reporters yesterday other than the following statement from the victim’s brother, Cameron Miller, who watched from the front row of the crowded court gallery at this morning’s arraignment, choking back tears.

  “My brother was a wonderful person who was loved by many people, and these spineless cowards stole him from us without giving it a second thought. We are confident that justice will be served in this case and that these gutless excuses for men will spend the remainder of their lives in prison.”

  Prosecutors went on to describe innumerable phone calls that were placed between Breslin and Fox, and how they used pay phones, phone cards, and a friends' cell phone to hide their conspiracy. They also revealed how Breslin, who was acquainted with Fox before the ex-con went to prison in 2002 for illegally possessing a cache of handguns, became reconnected with Fox through one of his fellow Tex-Ray employees, Nancy O’Brien. O’Brien could not be reached for comment as of press time.

  According to prosecutors, Breslin decided it wasn't enough to intimidate or beat Miller, because Miller would be able to pin the attack on him, so he concluded that the only option was to have Miller killed.

  Tracy Breslin, who was in the process of obtain a divorce from John Breslin at the time of the murder, told the detectives that her husband repeatedly hinted that there would be trouble if she didn't stop dating Miller, whom she had known since high school.

  ``It won't be good for Fred's health," Breslin allegedly told his wife, prosecutors wrote in their report.

  Newlan distressfully pondered the implications of the article, and, more importantly, his serious breach of trust in the matter of his courtroom vow of sequestration. But it was only after reading and rereading the entire story multiple times did he acknowledge the pangs of guilt that had come over him for disobeying Judge Gershwin’s orders. And on top of that, he was buckled by the waves of another anxiety attack which had come crashing down on him; a delayed reaction, perhaps triggered by the inescapable nagging feeling that, literally and figuratively speaking, he was being forced to play a starring role in such a monumental life-or-death decision; a decision which he wanted no part of from the get-go.

  “Oh shit, maybe I shouldn’t have read this. Maybe he did do it...who the hell knows. All I know is that the State of Massachusetts is expecting me and the rest of the jurors to make the ultimate judgment, and I don’t know if I’m up it.”

  And yet despite his guilty conscience, Newlan was alluringly tempted to click on another Breslin article. However, this time, with the help of his illicitly-addled willpower, he resisted the enticement…and when he looked up at the clock on the wall he was shocked to discover that it was almost midnight, so he dragged himself off to bed where he tossed and turned for most of the night, wondering how in the world he ever got himself into such a mess; all the while knowing full well that sometimes, as Bob Dylan, the much celebrated voice of an entire emboldened generation, portended; it all boils down to…a simple twist of fate.