by William Bebb
The fat middle-aged executive wore a conservative gray suit while sitting on the edge of his high back leather chair and talked rapidly and loudly into his phone. “I don’t care how you make up the work! I don’t care if they don’t like it. Tell Pepe if he doesn’t like it he can come up here and swab my ass clean with his tongue!” He shouted then slammed down the phone so hard the plastic handset cracked.
Steven Keck was not a happy executive. He wiped his nose and saw blood staining his fingers.
“Not again,” he muttered and leaned back in his chair. Staring up at the ceiling of his office, he hollered, “Margaret!”
A few seconds later, the door opened and a lady dressed in a smart looking business suit came in holding a notepad. She stopped on the other side of the desk and slapped on a counterfeit smile, before asking, “Yes sir, did you call?”
“It's another damn nosebleed. Go get some ice out of my refrigerator and hurry.”
“Yes sir,” she said, walking to the bar in the corner of the office and prepared an icepack.
Margaret had just sent off another series of resumes and job inquiries moments before her boss bellowed and hoped to hear something soon. She'd been happy to get an executive assistant position at Beaumont Bio-Chemical Industries a few months earlier. At first she thought it was a dream come true. But while the job paid well, she would quit that very day, at half the money, if something else were available because her boss was a truly horrible excuse of a man.
“Hurry up. I’m bleeding to death,” he whined with an odd clogged nasal tone in his voice.
She stood beside her boss and held out the plastic bag of ice cubes.
He looked up at her and said, “You hold it on my nose. It makes my fingers too cold when I do it.”
“Yes sir,” she said, barely managing to suppress a sigh, and placed the bag on ice gently on his nose as he breathed hard through his mouth with his arms hanging out stretched on either side of his chair.
A few awkward moments passed before he asked, “Margaret, am I an unreasonable boss? Be honest.”
“No sir,” she lied while feeling her fingertips going numb while holding the bag of ice on his bloody nose.
“That’s what I thought. I work hard and provide jobs for hundreds of people at this plant. I pay a fair wage for an honest day’s work. And how do the ungrateful bastards repay me?”
There was a pause and she was uncertain if she should respond. She imagined saying what was on her mind and smiled. “Do you mean the bastards you pay slave wages to, most of whom happen to be working here illegally? The ones you don’t offer any benefits to? The bastards who get the privilege of washing and waxing your Mercedes every day on their lunch hour? The same poor bastards you sent home with a corpse just last week?” She shook her head while continuing to hold the bag of ice. She noticed his body trembling as he took a deep breath.
He saw her head shake and screamed, “They fuck me like a two dollar whore!” More blood dribbled from his nose. It ran down into his mouth and onto his chin.
She felt queasy and wanted to run away but stayed. “Mr. Keck, you should try to calm down. You don’t want to have another heart attack. Did you take your medicine this morning?”
“Calm down? I didn’t fire them all last Friday when not even one of them showed up or called in. But I have been calm and patient with them long enough. Every man has his breaking point.”
She looked at the smashed big flat screen TV, in the corner of his office and bit her tongue to keep from laughing. Keck smashed the television last Friday when he learned that none Juan's friends and neighbors had showed up for work. Margaret took a deep breath as he continued his rant.
“Someone had an unavoidable accident, and yes it was terrible, but for God’s sake I gave them a thousand bucks for his relatives. I didn’t have to do that. And how do they repay me?
The bastards all skipped work on Friday, and now after the weekend they all stayed home again today. I know damn well they're all getting drunk or high on drugs and sitting around laughing at me. Now, we’ve fallen so far behind the daily work quotas my supervisors are out for my blood.”
He took the bag of ice from her and said, “Go get Lopez or Guiteriz, over at the Sheriff's Department, on the phone. I want to make sure they got the message from my friends in Santa Fe.”
“Yes sir,” She said, and quickly left his office rubbing her fingers together trying to defrost them.
He tasted his salty, slightly coppery, blood that was dribbling into his mouth and grumbled, “No one fucks with Steven Keck.”