“BANG!”
I woke up in a cold sweat with a deafening noise and the sound of breaking glass coming from the kitchen. I got up and when I got to the kitchen and saw the absolute mayhem that Justin had created I just fell to my knees and started crying. He had somehow managed to unpack the entire fridge and had cut up the only loaf of bread we had in the house into a million pieces. There were crumbs all over the place and on top of everything else he’d broken a jar with jam right in the middle of the floor.
“Why are you crying mom?” he asked and looked at me with innocent eyes, “I’m just making myself some sandwiches like you said.
“Go to your room, please,” I said in a low, very unusual tone of voice.
“No, I’m still busy making myself some sandwiches,” Justin replied and looked at me defiantly.
“GO TO YOUR ROOM NOW!!!” I shouted and couldn’t give a shit if the goddamned neighbors heard every single word.
Justin’s eyes nearly bulged out of his head and he ran off to his room and closed the door behind him. I guess he’d never seen me in quite such a rage before and I think that I’d taken it a bit too far this time. I sighed heavily. This miserable life was taking the best of me. I wish I could tell how excellent and perfect mother I was but that would be far away from the reality. I absolutely adored my little boy but being a single struggling parent was sometimes too much for me. And I hated myself for it.
I cleaned up some of the mess and left the rest of it just like that. I went back to my room and fell back onto my bed. I would clean up the rest of the mess later after I’d had some proper rest. It wasn’t exactly as if anyone ever came around to visit us, so the sad state of the kitchen didn’t really worry me all that much.
***
When I finally drifted back to sleep I didn’t dream anything at all and just surrendered my tired body to the darkness of a deep and much-needed rest. Justin didn’t disturb me again and when I finally woke up around noon I stretched my arms out above my head and got out of bed to go and clean up the rest of the mess Justin had made.
I couldn’t believe my eyes when I got to the kitchen. Everything was spotless and all of the stuff that Justin had unpacked from the fridge was back in its proper place. When I turned around Justin was standing there with a guilty look on his face.
“I’m sorry I made such a mess mommy, but it’s all neat again now,” he said in a sweet little voice and I went over to him and knelt down to give him a long, big hug.
“I love you so much my big boy,” I said and battled to hold back the tears, “I’m sorry I shouted at you and I promise you that one day soon we will have a normal life again.”
“Is daddy coming back?” Justin asked innocently.
“No he’s not coming back, but mommy is going to make a plan…I promise I’m going to make a plan for the two of us. Why don’t you get your pack of playing cards and we’ll play gin rummy?” I suggested and Justine ran off to his room to go and fetch his cards. It was one of the very few things he had to play with, as I didn’t even have enough spare cash to buy him toy cars or anything else.
I fixed us each a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with the part of the bread that Justin had not totally obliterated earlier and we sat down to play gin rummy. I felt so proud of my boy for the way he’d cleaned up the kitchen and was happy to see things in his character that gave me hope. He had that one quality which his own father never had; he could admit when he was wrong and he said sorry when he needed to. In all the time I was married to Randall Trent he’d never once admitted that he was in the wrong; much less apologized for anything he’d done. This had placed a real strain on our already strained relationship as he always made me feel like everything that went wrong was my fault.
My parents were both old by then and my dad had diabetes. They also lived far away from us so I had no one to turn to when Randall and I had a fight. Randall’s parents always sided with him and they somehow blamed me as the immoral girl who’d led their ‘incredibly talented’ son down the garden path by falling pregnant. They still believed that Randall could have had ‘the entire world at his feet’. Exactly why Randall’s parents considered him to be such an exceptionally talented person I could never quite figure out. Perhaps it was his ability to fall asleep five minutes after dinner, or his incredible grasp of NFL football as he watched the games with a beer in his hand…like I said, I could never quite figure it out.
I know that many people would find this hard to understand, but I was almost grateful when Randall lost his shitty job as a security guard during our second year of marriage. This would force him to either get a better job and make something of his life, or it would spell the end of our marriage. I was not prepared to just carry on wasting away in a dead-end marriage with no hope of a decent future for me and my son while Randall carried on blindly as if being a security guard was the fulfillment of all of his incredible potential.
“Gin, I win!”
I smiled at Justin as he won another hand of gin rummy and thought back to the days when I still dreamed of becoming an actress. I used to practice my acting skills in front of the mirror and when they announced that there was going to be a school play one day I was so excited that I didn’t think of anything for literally days on end.
I tried out for the lead role in the play and landed the part without much trouble. I guess my acting skills were far superior to the rest of the girls in my 3rd-grade class and I felt like a star when I delivered my lines three nights in a row while the school play was running. My parents were so proud that my dad went and bought me a new dress to celebrate my first lead role and he soon became my biggest fan as I started taking acting lessons and continued to land the lead role in the school play every single year after that. One night a talent scout came to see me act and offered me a place in his theater group the following year. I remember thinking that my life was just about perfect and I believed that I was going to be able to fulfill all of my dreams.
It all fell apart, of course, when I got pregnant after the prom. To this day, Randall denies that it was he who’d spiked my drink at the after-party before banging me up and getting me pregnant. I still thought that he was lying about it, as the only drink I’d ever had that evening was the one he’d personally handed me. I still couldn’t remember much of what happened at the after-party; only that I got home late and felt terrible the next day. I started feeling sick in the mornings a couple of weeks later and eventually discovered that I was going to be a mother. That spelled the end of my aspirations to join the theater group and the rest, as they say, is history.
“Gin! I win again!” Justin shouted exuberantly and I smiled at his excitement and energy. He was a wonderful boy, as long as he got the proper attention he needed. I thought again about Ben Orwell at work and wondered if he had any children. What kind of a father would he be? He couldn’t be much worse than Randall who hardly ever made the effort of even speaking to his son on the phone. I realized that ending up in a relationship with a guy like Ben would be the easiest thing in the world for me to do but it would also be a kind of surrendering of my dreams. I would have to let go of any ideas I’d ever had of a blissful love relationship if I settled down with a man like Ben, as it would be no more than a comfortable arrangement. I didn’t even want to think what he would be like in the bedroom, as I simply couldn’t imagine him lying on top of me with his soft overweight body as we pretended to make love. I shook my head off. Stop those ridiculous thoughts, Emily! You are not one of those women, I told myself.
“Deal us another hand! Mommy is not ready to give up just yet!” I exclaimed and winked at Justin as he shuffled the cards.
Not quite ready to give up just yet…not ready at all, I thought to myself and banished all thoughts of Ben Orwell from my mind as I picked up my cards and prepared to continue playing the game.
NATHAN
The inside of the yacht was, perhaps, even more exquisite than the deck. All of the fitti
ngs were made of pure gold and I got the feeling that one of the door handles alone was worth enough money to pay for a year’s college tuition. Not that Janine had any designs on furthering her studies. She was quite content to hang around the shores of Malibu and to have these intermittent parties on her yacht. The rest of her time was spent shopping and traveling the world and further education was not exactly high up on her list of things to do.
“I want you to fuck me right here and right now,” Janine ordered and I could see in her eyes that she was not going to take no for an answer. I was just about to rip off her bikini when my phone rang and when I looked at the screen I saw that it was my father’s number.
I was going to just let it ring, but then decided it might not be the best idea. I was already late for my appointment with the Chinese guys at the airport and it would be better if I just quickly told my dad some fantastic tale and promised to pick them up in half an hour or so.
“Please don’t say a word, I’ve absolutely got to take this real quick,” I said to Janine and she rolled her eyes as I answered the call.
“Where the hell are you Nathan!? The Chinese delegation is waiting for you at the airport and they’re about to get back on their private jet and fly off without signing the deal!”
“I just got caught up in traffic, dad, I will be there in 20 minutes,” I lied.
“Traffic at this time of day? Don’t you lie to me boy! What is that music I hear in the background…are you at some kind of party while you should be at the airport!?”
“No, dad, don’t worry I’m on my way and I will be there in no time at all, I promise,” I said and hung up.
“Now can we get back to business?” Janine asked with her most seductive smile and took off her bikini top.
“Can you wait for me for just half an hour, baby? I’ve got to rush off to the airport real quick but I will be back in no time at all, I promise!”
“Boring,” Janine said with a sour face, “You’d better make it snappy or I’m gonna hook up with some other hunk for the evening.”
“I promise I’ll be right back,” I said and kissed her one last time before getting back onto the deck and jumping off onto the pier to get into my Porsche as quickly as possible.
As I raced off to the airport I kept thinking about the party and could just imagine what Janine Riley was doing at that very moment. She was probably chatting away to some other guy already and I would be lucky to see her at all once I got back from the airport. She wouldn’t wait around for me very long, that much I knew from experience. We’d never gone steady or anything, yet we’d always had a kind of silent understanding that we would always hook up at her parties and that we wouldn’t screw anyone else…at least not before we’d had a roll in the hay with each other first.
There was no traffic on the road whatsoever and I knew that my dad had not believed a single word of the story I’d told him on the phone. I would simply have to charm our Chinese guests and make them forget about the fact that they’d had to wait for me a while at the airport. Fortunately, that was my great strength. I’d learned, from an early age, to use my good looks and natural charm to get me out of difficult situations.
Like the time when I was arrested for driving 140 miles per hour in a 60 zone. I’d flirted and charmed my way out of it by inviting the female officer who booked me at the police station to dinner at a five-star restaurant. She eventually let me go without charging me with reckless driving and we ended up banging the living daylights out of each other in my dad’s mountain cabin for one entire weekend after I’d taken her out for the dinner I’d promised. That’s one thing about me; I always kept my promises…well at least most of the time.
My failure to make good on my promise to pick up the Chinese guys at the airport was a bit of an exception, I guess. But it was no more than a mere aberration. As a general rule, you could count on Nathan Edward to do exactly what he promised to.
I stopped in front of the airport and jumped out of my car. Then I rushed through the revolving doors and made my way to arrivals. I expected to see a group of slightly irate Chinese men milling around, waiting for me to meet them, but there was no such group at arrivals. I only saw one or two people picking up their bags from the roundabout and a security officer who kept a close eye on everything.
I had a sinking feeling in my stomach as I walked out of the airport and got back into my car. For the first time it struck me that I’d never even taken any thought about how I was going to transport five Chinese businessmen in my Porsche. My dad probably assumed that his brilliant boy had taken the staff bus to pick up the Asian contingent at the airport, but he was dead wrong. His boy had had other things on his brain when he should have been spending more time on the logistics of the task his dear father had entrusted to him.
“Oh well, they probably took a taxi or something to their hotel and I will just have to make up for all of this tomorrow,” I said to myself as I started driving back from the airport.
I decided to forget about the whole thing and just go back to the yacht party. I turned on my car stereo and put on some lively dance music as I pulled away from the airport. Everything felt a lot better already as I floored the gas pedal and sped back to Janine Riley’s waiting arms on the yacht, but for some reason, I was unable to shake a very uneasy feeling in the back of my mind.
EMILY
“Grant wants to see you in his office so you’d better go there before you start on your shift,” Jerry said as I punched in my card. I was on time for a change and was ready for another long night shift on the assembly line.
I put aside my overalls and ascended the long flight of stairs to Grant Belmont’s office. I looked back over my shoulder at the factory floor just before knocking on his door and it was quite a sight to behold the long conveyor belts running seamlessly and eternally to feed the various electrical components to the workers on the floor in a never ending dance of computer assembly. There were four identical assembly lines running through the factory; all four of them assembling identical computer components.
I wasn’t looking forward to my meeting with Grant at all. Whatever it was that he wanted to see me about, it could not be good news. It was never good news when Grant wanted to see you. He never ever gave anyone a raise and all he was interested in was raising production figures all the time in his quest for another promotion.
“Come inside but don’t sit down,” Grant said as I opened the door to his office. The swine had no manners and I had to force myself to keep my mouth shut as he continued without even having the decency to greet me. I looked at his face and wondered if he’d ever considered applying for any acting roles in movies. He would land the role of the rat faced servant at the large mansion every single time he applied for it, I thought with an inward smile.
Grant had rotten yellow teeth that somehow looked entirely appropriate in his large mouth. His ears were about double the size you would have expected and the whole ugly picture was nicely rounded off by his small insect-like eyes and pointy nose.
“I will cut right through the chase. Your assembly line is way behind the other three on total components manufactured this month and I want to see you pick up the pace.”
“I’m working as fast as I can so I don’t really know what you mean when you say I should pick up the pace,” I replied as politely as possible.
“What do you mean you don’t understand what I’m saying? Is your command of the English language not that good?”
“Not at all, that’s not what I…”
“Let me put it this way then so you can understand exactly what I’m trying to say here. If you don’t work faster I will fire your ass. That clear enough for you?”
“I’m doing my very best and I have a five-year-old son at home so I would ask you to be a little more considerate…”
“That’s all. Now get back to your workstation and get to work,” Grant said after he’d cut me off in mid-sentence for the second ti
me without even looking at me. I decided to just get the hell out of his office before I ended up saying something I would regret later. The temptation was great to slam the door behind me but I thought of Justin at home and how terrible it would be if I got fired right then. We were already struggling badly as it was, so I kept my raging emotions under control and closed the door gently behind me.
“Don’t you pay him no mind, he’s just a no-good bastard who landed in a management position where he never belonged,” Jerry said to me as I picked up my overalls where I’d left them and put them on before moving into position at my workstation. Jerry must have noticed that I was badly shaken as he brought me a steaming cup of coffee a couple minutes later.
Bad Boys Rule Page 42