The Belt

by Agatha Rae

  “How would you describe your relationship now?”

  “Now? You mean since he left mom?”

  “Precisely so.”

  “Indifferent. He met with me twice. Lied about where he was living. Doesn’t call, doesn’t come to the house. There’s actually one very positive thing about this whole situation, about the fact he’d left. My mom stopped drinking. Instantly. I guess she was so shaken by him moving out, that it worked better than any rehab.”

  “So, I guess I did at least one thing right,” said John and smiled bitterly. The creature with the stick came closer to the front of the cage, holding its weapon already high up, but the prosecutor reached out his hand in a gesture demanding it to step back to its place.

  “Do you have any idea why John Smith has failed you so many times?”

  “He always had an excuse as to why he was busy. There was always something in the way. And if not, he was then having a quarrel with my mom and neither of them wanted to see each other. I really don’t care anymore.”

  “Your honor, may I present you evidence showing that John Smith was actually seeing his lovers or his friend Paul. None of the things that, theoretically, should be more important than the only child waiting for a little bit of attention.”

  “What?” John asked loudly and got up. He immediately felt a powerful hit behind his knees, forcing him to bend them and kneel down. Mickey turned around, looked at him, and John could have sworn he saw a grim look of satisfaction on Mickey’s face. It was very short, almost invisible, but it was surely there.

  “Here is the list of John Smith’s whereabouts during the moments Mickey Smith was talking about. The reason why he missed so many games was very trivial; while the house was empty and the family was busy, he was meeting with his lovers, here you can see a picture of his car parked next to one of his lovers’, Miranda’s, house,” the prosecutor was giving the judges pieces of paper, one by one, as he continued to enlist, “here are his text messages exchanged with other women, Catherine, Hannah, Rhonda, and as you can see in each of them he confirms he would have two-three hours of free time, depending on how much time it would take Margaret to drive her son to the game and back. The dates, the numbers, it’s all there. Making perfect sense. To be fair, John Smith did have to work, and travel while doing so, many times, but he came to support his son only three times during all those years, and we know for a fact he was home much more often than that.”

  The judges were looking at the pieces of papers, reading and analyzing them, shaking their heads with disbelief, looking at John from a distance with disdain displayed on their faces. John realized the world before his eyes was turning pale, white, and finally, disappeared altogether.

  “Do you have any other questions?” the judge sitting on the left from the woman judge asked the prosecutor.

  “No, I think everything’s clear.”

  John woke up grasping the air in panic. He was breathing fast, while nervously blinking his eyes, trying to snap out of the nightmare as soon as possible. He reached his hand towards the night stand wanting to grab a glass with water, but it fell on the floor, and broke, and all of the liquid quickly soaked the carpet. John turned the light on and sat up. He was covering his eyes to help them get used to the new conditions and looked at the clock next to the bed. It was 3.30 a.m.

  When he felt his pulse coming back to normal, he walked to the kitchen, took a glass from the cabinet, poured himself some cold tap water, and when he finished, put it aside. He didn’t even bother to look at it as it fell on the floor, smashing into pieces. He bent over the sink and started drinking ravenously, straight from the tap. He then splashed some of the running water on his face and neck and finally put his whole head into the sink and allowed the cold liquid to soak it entirely.

  About half an hour later, John came back to the bedroom, but not to sleep, as he was sure he wouldn’t be able to catch another wink. He was too scared to even try. He came back to, as crazy as it sounded, check to see if the belt was lying on his bed. It wasn’t. No it wasn’t, not at four a.m. John did spot it, though, when he came back to the bedroom about three hours later. He looked at it, sat right next to it, and started crying. Uncontrollably.

  Chapter 11

  The dream appeared three days after Molly had left the apartment. Being alone at home certainly wasn’t helping in shaking off its awful aftertaste. John had no idea what to do. Even though he had to think about getting a new place to live, he wasn’t able to put his thoughts in one place and do anything constructive.

  John checked his bank account and had to admit, Cindy was right. Being jobless for such a long time had a devastating influence on his savings and he really wasn’t able to afford to rent the luxurious apartment anymore. Not by himself. Molly wasn’t any option to help, because one, she lived in her own condo, why would she want to leave it, and two, she wasn’t interested in being in any steady bill-paying relationship with him.

  John tried to call the company he worked for, but every time he dialed the number, all he was getting was information that the person he wanted to reach was currently unavailable. No matter if he called the office, or his boss, or the guy he sometimes worked with, all the phones were dead.

  After spending half of the day by the phone, he decided he needed to go there, to the company, and talk with the people personally. He walked to the bedroom, changed his clothes, and, just as he was about to leave, he spotted the belt lying lifelessly on the floor, in exactly the same spot he had left it in the small hours when he was crying like a baby, petrified of what was happening, and scared to go back to bed. The moment John saw the damn thing, he felt the pressure in his veins rising and he took a few brisk steps towards it, lifted it up and went to the kitchen. He left the belt on the kitchen counter, took out the biggest knife from the drawer and started ferociously stabbing the leather accessory. One by one, inch by inch, one stab after another. Single drops of sweat appeared on his forehead, his hair was a mess, but John didn’t even notice it as he was entirely focused on putting all of his frustration, anger and fear into cutting and tearing the belt apart.

  A few seconds later he was standing in the kitchen, breathing heavily, with a red face and visible forehead veins, and on the floor there were small pieces of what used to be an elegant and quite expensive belt. John spat on the remains and it wasn’t until then that he realized there were single drops of blood on the floor right next to them. They immediately caught his attention and he looked around first, trying to localize the source of the bloody leak, and then he spotted the knife lying on the counter with the edge of the blade covered with blood a bit. John lifted up his left hand, and realized he cut himself. Two of his left hand fingers were red, drops of blood were one by one falling down from their tops and he saw that a quite big piece of his middle fingertip was missing, and a small piece of the ring fingertip was hanging from the finger, connected to it only by a thin piece of skin. John hissed, and immediately put his fingers into his mouth, hoping he would be able to stop the bleeding in this way, but it was too intense; he felt his mouth filling up with hot blood. It was coming out of the wounds, and its metallic taste was instantly perceptible.

  He took a bigger step, to walk over the belt remains, and turned the tap on. A splash of cold water brought him some kind of relief, as it was cooling down the burning fingers, but it was also at the same time quite painful. Once the water became a bit clearer, John examined his ring finger more closely, and decided he had to cut the hanging piece off the tip; the skin stripe that kept it connected with the finger was too thin to help it attach back during the healing process. He sighed heavily, cursed under his nose, touched the piece of the fingertip and quickly tore it off. He hissed through his teeth and groaned when he saw the tiny piece of his flesh lying on the sink bottom and observed it being taken away by the water down the drain.

  Half an hour later, his fingers weren’t bleeding so much anymore, so John put a bandage around them both, and realized he had t
o change his clothes because both his shirt and pants were covered in blood stains.

  As he was doing his best to button up his new pants using one hand and preventing touching anything with the bandaged and horribly painful fingers of the other one, his cell phone rang. John thought that perhaps it was his boss finally calling him back, but the display showed Paul’s number. John sat on the bed, the pants were now hanging down from his knees, and he answered.

  “Yeah, Paul?”

  “Hi, John, how’s going?”

  John looked at his left hand, thought about the belt remains in the kitchen and only sighed. “It’s all right.”

  “That good, huh, ha, ha, okay, I see,” Paul laughed. “Listen, I am calling to ask if maybe you’d like to come to the club tonight, have some fun, you know, relax a bit. We haven’t seen each other for a while, and I’ve been wondering where you’re at, like, you know, what’s happening?”

  At first John wanted to decline, to say he wasn’t in the mood for any partying, but on the other hand, why the hell not? He was alone, Molly wasn’t around, he didn’t feel like spending the rest of the day having nobody to talk to, and, well, with all that shit the was happening around him, he surely did deserve some slack.

  “Yeah, sure. I’ll come; thanks for calling,” John said and for the first time in a few days he felt at least better. Uplifted. At least a bit.

  “Awesome, so I’ll see you here around eight? Sound good?”

  “Sounds great, see you there.”

  Eight o’clock sounded really good, because John had one thing to take care of before the party. He finally dressed up, took some Aspirin from the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, put a small package of Advil in his pocket and left the apartment.

  About an hour later, he parked his car in front of the office building where the company he worked for had its floor. He walked inside, called the elevator and, as he walked out of it a few seconds later, he immediately spotted two things. One was that there was no company logo hanging above the receptionist office anymore, and two that, basically, there was apparently no company anymore whatsoever. The whole floor was being redecorated, and there were men wearing uniforms walking around everywhere. There was plastic on the floors, protecting them from paint stains, and there was new furniture in the boxes, ready to be unpacked, and the smell of paint filled the entire space.

  Confused, and completely taken aback, John walked to one of the men, making sure he wasn’t stepping on anything moist and stain-causing.

  “Hi, excuse me,” he said.

  “Yeah?” the man turned and faced John.

  “Um, what’s going on here?”

  “Guess it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?” The man smirked and shook his head pointing to the area.

  “Well, yeah, but, what happened? When did you start doing this?”

  “About a month ago, we’re actually finishing. The floors are new; the furniture is here…” He was pointing at the new things with his index finger, “What, you used to work here?”

  “I did, actually, yes,” John said and nodded. He was looking around during the conversation and still couldn’t quite comprehend what exactly he was witnessing.

  “We’re only preparing the office for the new people. You should talk to the building’s administration if you want to know such things,” the man replied, shook his head and walked away.

  “Yeah, I’ll do that, thank you,” John replied not sure if the man even heard him. He took one more look around and decided to go down to the first floor and get some answers.

  Half an hour later, he stormed out of the building with his skull pulsing with anger. John came back to his car, rapidly opened the door and closed it with a loud bang. He then took out three Advil, swallowed them and closed his eyes. He leaned his head on the seat’s headrest and tried to put his thoughts together in one, preferably logical, piece.

  The company he had worked for didn’t exist anymore. The building administrator informed him that the firm disappeared about two months ago. From the administrator’s perspective it was a pretty big problem, because the company hadn’t paid its rent for months and left without squaring its debt. Now, John’s boss was wanted by the police not only for that, but also for not paying the bank loan for almost a whole year. He was also suspected of defrauding some large sums of money. Not to mention that there were anti-poaching organizations on his ass co-operating with suitable law enforcement bodies to get him for organizing illegal hunting trips.

  John couldn’t believe what he was hearing, couldn’t understand how the owner never warned him, never contacted him, never gave him a hint that soon there might be no job for him and for the rest of the people working for them. Now he really wasn’t able to pay for the nice apartment, and since there was almost nothing left of his savings, he wasn’t sure if he had any perspective of renting anything at all. What the fuck was he going to do now?

  John completely lost any appetite for partying, and was already reaching to his pocket to get his phone and tell Paul he wasn’t coming after all, but it occurred to him it might actually be a good idea meeting his friend that evening after all. He started his car.

  ***

  John arrived at the club just before seven p.m. The music was already pounding, but there weren’t too many people there yet, only some single clients sitting by the bar and a few small groups hanging in the lounges upstairs. John raised his left hand to the bartender, Scott, who waved him back and shouted “Ouch!” pointing at the bandaged fingers. John only shrugged his shoulders in a “what can you do” gesture, and went straight to the staff only area, to Paul’s office. He knocked on the door and walked in.

  “Hi, you’re a bit early,” Paul said, and walked toward him to shake his hand.

  “Yeah, I know, sorry about that,” John replied, took his jacket off and put it on the sofa next to the door.

  “What the hell happened there? What’s this?” Paul asked pointing to John’s bandaged fingers.

  “Nothing serious, I was just chopping my lunch a bit too passionately,” John said and they both laughed.

  “Maybe you should eat out more often; you know, for your own safety,” Paul said.

  “Maybe, although I don’t know what’s worse, having my fingers cut like that, or having my whole body contaminated with processed fast food.”

  “Ah, right; Molly is talking through you, I get it,” Paul laughed, “She’s getting under your skin.”

  John looked at him and thought he really did say something that Molly would have said. Maybe it was good they weren’t going to live together anymore.

  “Well, I’m moving out, so who knows, maybe this will save me, otherwise organic and bio-dynamic will become my number one adjectives. At least now I can still pronounce them with a slight shiver down my spine, so they’re not in my system yet.” John laughed and sat on the sofa next to the door. Paul got a bottle of whiskey from his small cabinet hidden elegantly in his desk, and poured them both a portion. The ice in the glasses clinked pleasantly when Paul reached out to John and handed him his glass.

  “You are? So fast? Damn, John, you’re getting faster and faster with this whole breaking up thing,” he said and drank a sip. “It must be a matter of experience.”

  “Thank you,” John replied, taking the glass, drank a bit and leaned on the sofa. His right hand was stretched on the furniture’ back. “Well, I need to explain myself why I am here so early and update you on a few things concerning my life.”

  “I’m listening.”

  John drank some more whiskey, licked his lips and looked at his friend.

  “The company I worked for is gone.”

  “Gone?” Paul raised his eyebrows.

  “Yes. It vaporized. Disappeared. Became non-existent.”

  “When?”

  “Officially two months ago, but I think it’s obvious it was all planned. The owner had major debts, and they weren’t paying bank loans nor rent for months. The building administrator said they moved
out within a day. Poof,” John snapped his fingers, “just like that. One big floor with four offices and an open space. Disappeared in one day.”

  “Jesus. How did you find out?”

  “I wasn’t getting any phone calls; I haven’t had any jobs from them for months. I realized my savings were vanishing, so I tried to call them, tried to find out what was happening. Nobody answered. I went there, and I met a redecorating company working their asses off to make the new owner happy with the new office design.”

  “Crap. I can’t believe this. And they never told you anything?”

  “Nope.” John drank two sips. “Nothing. If it wasn’t for me calling and going there, hell, I’d still have no idea when I’d have found out.”

  “What did Molly say?”

  “She doesn’t know. I don’t think she’d even want to know. She told me to move out, and I have about ten more days before she comes back home and I’m supposed to be gone by then.”

  “Why? What the hell did you do this time?”

  “Nothing. This time it wasn’t me. She said she wasn’t interested in a steady, normal relationship and that I was more fun when I was coming to her from time to time and that living with me is turning her life upside down a bit too much,” John replied with a mean grin on his face.

  “Oh my God, she beat you, it finally happened, you finally got kicked in the nuts!” Paul burst out laughing, “Oh dear God, you must have been surprised; man I wish I had seen your face!”