***

Daniel slammed the empty liquor bottle down next to its peers and almost slid out of the airline chair. Jones kept yelling something at him, but he just ignored him. If Jones wanted him here, then there wasn’t any way he was going sober.

“Don’t let him have any more,” Jones said, motioning to one of his security detail.

“I don’t think you have the majority vote for that proposition, Congressman,” Daniel replied.

“And get him some coffee.”

The guard cleared off Daniel’s tray, and when he went to remove the rest of the unopened bottles, Daniel grabbed the guard’s wrist.

“Don’t. Touch. It,” Daniel said.

His teeth were gritted, the liquid courage the four tiny bottles of whiskey had given him on prime display. The security guard looked over to Jones, who shook his head. Daniel felt the guard pull back his arm slightly, and he released him.

“Run along now, little doggy,” Daniel said.

“It’s easy to act brave when you don’t have the coherence to zip up your fly,” Jones said.

Daniel twisted the cap off another one of the whiskeys but paused before putting it to his lips. The smell was starting to get to him. He’d never been much of a drinker, but the past few days had caused him to swim in it.

“What the hell happened to you?” Jones asked.

“What? Don’t like your handiwork?”

“I didn’t do this to you, Daniel. You did.”

Daniel snatched the rest of the whiskey bottles and moved to the back of the plane, away from Jones. He didn’t have to sit there and listen to Jones, of all people, berate him about morals. Who was he to judge? Jones had done more backstabbing vile actions in one year than Daniel had done in his entire life. And if drinking was what Daniel needed to do in order to get past all the shit pilling up around him, then so be it.

But when Daniel twisted off the cap to the next bottle of whiskey he was about to down, it stopped abruptly a few inches before reaching his lips. The sharp, oaky smell flew into his nostrils, beckoning him to drink it, but he couldn’t. Not now. Because for some reason, his son popped into his mind, and in his liquor-soaked state, he couldn’t remember the boy’s birthday.

He squinted his eyes shut, trying hard to sort through the corrupted files of data still stored in his mind. He knew it was in May, but he couldn’t remember the date. It was toward the end of the month. The twenty-fifth? No, that wasn’t it. What was it? What was it? What was it?

The tiny whiskey bottle wobbled in his hand. Some of the brown liquid spilled over on to his pant leg, but Daniel didn’t notice. All he could feel was the swelling of tears in his eyes and the lump growing in his throat. He dropped the bottle, and it spilled onto the carpet.

All of the things he’d done were for his family. That’s what he had told himself during every decision he made. But for the past few weeks, his family had been the scapegoat for his cowardice, not the foundation of courage. And now he was drinking away the memories of the same family he’d vowed to protect, to keep safe.

Daniel clutched his arms around his body, hugging himself as the waves of sobs left him. He didn’t bother keeping them quiet. He didn’t care if Jones heard him. He didn’t care what the security detail would think. It didn’t matter that he would have puffy eyes when standing face to face with the Mexican president and his vicious dog of a general. He couldn’t remember his own son’s birthday.