No matter what's changed there are some things that remain. (Hollie Seals)

Rehabilitation programs were my new obsession. It was the new flying. I missed my plane as much as I missed Christian, well, maybe not quite as much but nearly as much. I decided my gift to myself for getting out of this prison would be a new plane, a real jet plane equipped with luxury seating and a little bar. Then I wondered if I was still allowed to drink after rehab. I figured I would be, after all drinking was never my problem. The only addiction I ever really had was my addiction to power and that was just a repercussion of my blinding ambition.

A strange thing happened one Sunday while I waited alone in the tea garden for Christian: Tommy showed up. Not my father but the other Tommy, remember him? The ex-UCLA guy, he was my former partner in crime.

Tommy smiled and waved as he entered the garden. He walked up to me casually and sat down as if we were back at that apartment we had shared when we were partners. My God, that felt like a lifetime ago. Had it only been a couple years ago?

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Why hello Tommy, how have you been? Oh I've been great, Honey, enjoying my time on the California State Correctional Men's Football Team. And yourself?”

“Sorry,” I said. “I'm just confused, I guess. I didn't know you were out.”

“It's new.”

I smiled. He was half-funny. He looked different now though: not quite so skinny and he looked, I don't know, darker maybe. Yes, that was just the word for it: darker. He might have become uglier too. He was never attractive per se but he definitely wasn't now. He had a little mystery though. Troubled girls would be all over him. Coming to visit me had the potential to fill up his black book, if he had one. It was an oasis of troubled women.