How in the hell did I end up here?  he wondered as he walked down the brightly lit corridor.  Surveillance cameras bolted in the ceiling corners recorded his every move.

       Outside the San Diego County Jail it was a beautiful sunny day.  Temperatures were in the eighties.  An on-shore flow produced waves of three to five feet.  The beaches were packed with bathers, boogie-boarders, and surfers.  Instead of a fun-filled day at the beach, this day would be the start of the worst six months of his life.

       The floor shone from the recent waxing and buffing applied just the night before, and the portly guard’s black rubber soled shoes squeaked with each step.  Voices yelled out as the guard guided him past the rows of jail cells.  Curses, jeers, and whistles were all being thrown out at him.  He was being escorted with his hands handcuffed behind his back to his new residence for the next six months – a seven by fourteen foot cell with a bunk bed and a combination stainless steel sink and toilet.  Pee stains lined the toilet seat and a thick layer of dust covered the floor.  An army of ants charged downward from a crack near the ceiling in the cinder-block wall toward a smattering of tortilla chip crumbs in the far corner.  No doubt the crack was caused by a southern California earthquake and then left in disrepair due to a lack of county budget funds.  Fortunately, there was no roommate.  Yet, anyway. 

       At least some things don’t change, he thought.  Never at any of the national sales meetings he attended for Alsace Pharmaceuticals did he ever have a roommate.  Unlike some of the other Big Pharma companies that required all of their employees to share rooms at sales meetings, Alsace Pharmaceuticals believed in allowing single sleeping rooms for their employees when traveling. 

       “We spare no expense on our most valuable asset, our people,” the CEO would boast.

       The cell door slammed shut with a heavy metallic click.  The background noise was loud and obnoxious as the sounds of cussing, whistling, singing, and yelling bounced off the bare concrete walls.  An episode of The Simpsons blared out of a nearby dayroom TV.  This was not the white noise that he was used to hearing at his fancy office at the Alsace headquarters just a few miles away.

       “Welcome to your new home, pretty boy,” the guard hissed through teeth yellowed from years of smoking Camel Straights.