John woke twisted in his bed sheets and listened to the two crazy morning radio DJs. They were going through their usual spiel of "stupid news" stories and hanging up on callers. John hated to admit it but he liked the show and listened almost every morning.
His band had been working on new material late the night before. Coming in and falling across his bed at after two in the morning, it slipped his mind to turn off the radio alarm. Now on the day he decided to take off he was wide-awake.
The Tammy Goodchild case he thought was going to be mundane was starting to get a grip on him. That, he guessed, was a good thing. It proved that he still loved what he was doing despite the setbacks. The thrill was somehow still there.
He quickly turned and slapped the flat gray button on top of the radio to shut off the loud-mouthed racket. His apartment returned to the hazy silence his sleep had been engulfed in only seconds ago.
Now wide-awake, he dropped his legs over the side of the bed and sat there. His eyes felt like dried clay as he struggled to open them. He had never been one to sleep in, so what the hell, looks like he was going to work after all.
The apartment was hot, but it didn't bother him to wake up sweaty the way it had bothered Joyce. He could remember he instant bad moods that would follow her all through the day when she woke up hot. She certainly did have her ways. After cutting back a little on things such as air conditioning since his financial situation had taken a nose-dive, he had become used to the heat.
He ambled to the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face with both hands.
The two-bedroom apartment he occupied was only two blocks back from the ocean in a stucco horseshoe shaped complex. His balcony overlooked Nick's Seafood Restaurant and Raw Bar. The rent was damn steep but for an apartment it was par for the area. He had a sofa, love seat, and a TV that his mother had given him when he moved out of her house years ago. He won his formal dining room table and hutch in a business card drawing at Cal's Pizza only a year ago. He had planned to sell it on Ebay, but there it sat. It was the only new piece of furniture he owned.
His first call of the day would have to be to Brad. He wanted to set up something and pick his friend's brain. If people really did talk too much, he wanted to know it all. But before doing that, he snatched up the newspaper from the welcome mat just outside his door. He thumbed through the headlines as he waited for his black coffee to cool off.