Laura frowns reading a woman's comment.
“Fuck, did he make that woman shit in his mouth? What kind of sick person feels horny about it?”
“Actually, it was several women,” Peter says, scrolling down the page.
“Okay, that's too much for me,” Laura says, pushing her plate onto the counter and getting up.
I pierce the pancake with my fork. I may have done a good thing, after all, I encouraged women to report cases of sexual harassment, even though the bastard is already dead.
You're not so different, says a voice in my mind. Have you forgotten that you raped a girl, too? And you destroyed her nails to the bottom and cut off her nipple and broke her knees and ...
“Do the police have any suspects?” I ask Peter.
“No, but they think some woman or husband did it for revenge. And if it depends on the people who are commenting, they will never let the murderer be arrested, even if the police find out who did it. They are treating this person as a hero.”
And with Steve working with me, the chances of someone finding me are even smaller. He has control over everything. He would never let them find me and end his game.
I believe I'm safe ... if I can speak in those terms.
*
Mr. Hopkins, my boss, watches me through the glass window of his office as I sit with my feet on the desk and pick up the phone to make my first charges of the day. The other staffs look at me strangely and whisper to each other.
“What are you looking at?” I ask, raising my voice. “Have you bastards never seen a man working?”
They turn their heads quickly and return to their tasks. I chuckle and select the first number of the day.
A man greets me with an annoyed tone, saying he won’t make the payment while I keep calling to piss him off with my mouth full of crap.
An old woman says that if she were my mother, she would have aborted me by putting a pair of pliers in her ass. And she say she’s gonna make me go back to my mother's womb and then abort me with her own hands if I dare to call her again.
A drunken woman says she has better things to do than listening to a son of a bitch like me. You big piece of walking dung, she says.
You fucker.
You prick.
You asshole.
You are the deformed fetus son of an incest.
You dirty cock covered with semen.
I sigh deeply and, still in the middle of the curses, I begin to speak, “I don’t give a shit about your fucking curses. And no matter how many times you curse me, I'll keep calling until you pay your fucking debt. If you don’t have money, then why do you buy? Just to piss me off with your shit? I can’t believe you're so dumb to the point of buying so many useless things just to stuff your ass. But you are, aren’t you? And that's why you're gonna take that fucking money I know you stole from your husband's wallet and hid under the mattress so you can buy alcohol, you'll go to the nearest bank and you'll pay your fucking debt. Because if you don’t, I have your address, and I swear I'm gonna tear your gut out of your anus and then use it to stuff your old pussy. Do we have a deal?”
She chokes on the words and the call is finished suddenly. Right now she will get the money, run to the bank and pay what she owes. Threatening someone's gut is the best way to get them to do something, believe me.
It doesn’t take long for Mr. Hopkins to come to my desk, watching me with his chubby face and round glasses. He twists his mustache disapprovingly and clear his throat. Behind him, the secretary in red skirt and lipstick holds a tablet. She watches me with attentive eyes, I can see her breasts rising and falling under the last two open buttons of the white shirt. I glance at her with a crooked smile and she turns her eyes to the floor, blushing.
“What do you think you're doing?” Mr. Hopkins asks me. Saliva flies from his mouth to my desk.
I look at the saliva and then I look at him again.
“I was doing my job until you interrupted me.”
All the staff are apprehensive. Mr. Hopkins looks around, squeezes his lips and says, “Have you been doing drugs, Mr. Gibson? Don’t forget that I am your boss and your behavior is unacceptable.”
“Really, you're my boss? Yeah, I guess I noticed that when you called your employees useless assholes and poured hot coffee in the old secretary's face just because she forgot you liked coffee without sugar.”
“Who do you think —”
I get up and push the fat guy in his suit. He stumbles back, his eyes barely believing what they see. The beautiful-legged secretary goes back, startled.
“Do you think you are something just because your fucking name's on a sign on the desk saying you're the one in charge here? I ask you, Mr. Hopkins, do you think you are something just because you wear more expensive suits and lighter shoes? You must think of yourself as the best, since you earn more than everyone else here working less and you use the money you make to fill your asshole with cocaine and fuck with prostitutes, cheating on your woman who’s now just a fat old woman with old tits instead of the hot girl you got pregnant decades ago and then you were forced to get married. But beware, Mr. Hopkins, because you're just a big piece of shit like any other. And your wife knows that. She always knew. And that's why she fucks the black gardener while you're not home. She rides on his big black cock in the fancy jacuzzi you bought and he gets her into his black lap until she can cum. And she sucks his black cock on the table you eat with your kids and begs for him to throw a fucking jet of semen against her face. Then she grabs the black cock with her hands and screams. Your wife screams until her face is covered with semen dropping to her tits. And after that she stays on the bed, the same bed that you sleep every day, and asks the black gardener to fuck her ass with his black cock using margarine as a lubricant. The same margarine you use to eat. And all this because she can’t bear to look at your fat belly or this fucking greasy mustache. Nobody can bear it. You're just a fat bastard who tries to humiliate others to feel a little less mediocre. And I swear to God I'm controlling myself not to punch your face here in front of everyone and then piss on you.”
Mr. Hopkins falls on me, grabbing me by the belly and throwing me on the table. Papers spread through the air, the phone falls and breaks on the floor and the computer is thrown off the table, spreading the shards of the LED screen. Mr. Hopkins screams, rips his shirt off, displaying the fat breasts covered with a black rug of hair, and pulls my legs. My pants go out in his hands. I roll over to the side, fall to the floor and hit my shoulder on the chair. When I get up, he rushes to attack me, breaking the plastic wall that separates me from the other attendant. Now Mr. Hopkins is on top of me, hitting punches in my face and howling like a bear.
“Open your mouth now, Jimmy!”
He hits a punch in my ear and a buzzing fills my head. Then he pulls the collar of my shirt with one hand, punches my chin with the other and my neck hits the ground. Mr. Hopkins' face is just a dark shadow over me as he hits my face and blood covers the knuckles of his fingers.
“Open your mouth, Jimmy boy! I wanna hear you talk now!”
He pulls me to my feet and I stagger back. Another employee pushes me back and the people around laugh. The laughs multiply, all those faces together having fun with the show. Mr. Hopkins lifts me over his shoulders as if I don’t have any weight and then throws me back against a table, wich breaks and takes me to the floor.
And it's only then that the security guards arrive, holding Mr. Hopkins and pulling him back.
“Where's your courage now, Jimmy boy?! Where the fuck is your courage now?!”
I start to laugh. Painful wounds cover my whole face, but I still feel an uncontrollable urge to laugh. My face is covered in blood, my lips are broken and my backside seems to have been trampled by a herd of cattle, but still, I don’t think I've ever felt so free.
Pain and wounds become pleasurable.
Mr. Hopkins looks confused, trying to get rid of security guards.
“Why is he laughing?
”
I'm laughing because I'm a free man.
“Why is he laughing?”
I'm laughing because I enjoy seeing my blood spilled.
“Someone makes him stop laughing!”
Mr. Hopkins is dragged through the office and my laughter echoes around. I laugh until my stomach aches, until my throat is dry and tears stream down my face.
With my back stretched out on the floor, my face covered with blood and everyone watching me, I laugh until my voice is a bizarre sound inside the office.
XIV
“Do you want to stop moving? I need to do this if you wanna heal.”
Laura passes an ointment around my swollen eye, with careful hands that still make the pain pound in the eyeballs.
“I can’t believe you did it,” she says, closing the ointment and sitting next to me on the bed.
“Someone had to do it, right?”
Laura laughs and touches my thigh.
“Shit, that was probably the best thing you've ever done.”
I touch her hand and I laugh too.
“Yes, I think it was.”
Our fingers intertwine.
Laura looks at me and then looks at the floor, a silence hanging over us. The morning light illuminates her face and highlights her fleshy red lips. Her wavy hair falls over his shoulder and her brown eyes have a special glow. I don’t think I've ever noticed how beautiful Laura looks when she's smiling.
“Come on,” she says. “We need to get at the Baker's cottage by seven.”
Of course, both I and Mr. Hopkins got fired. He promised that he would find me and we would get things right. I doubt that, though. I know he cheats on his wife, and even though she cheats on him too, Mr. Hopkins will not wanna lose his reputation of respected man in his club full of assholes wearing suits.
If you ask me what it feels like to be an unemployed, I can say that it's like leaving a prison after years. You don’t have to spend the day doing monotonous tasks just to pay the bills. No staff competing with each other to see who can get more from the boss's ass, make more money, and consequently have the most useless things in the house. No fake smiles and people pretending to care about your life. Sometimes walking aimlessly is the best way to get somewhere.
*
The Baker's cottage, according to Peter, was an inheritance of Phill's mother. She lived alone there in the last years of her life and refused to go to town with her son or, worse, go to an asylum. So her body was only discovered two days after she died. Phill reformed the whole house, which we notice as we follow the dirt road, and he changed all the furniture to forget that the sick mother had lived there her last years of life. Peter also said that Samuel and Mandy used to spend their time playing Total Life in the cottage because they hated family gatherings (which was everything that place was used for).
“Jimmy, old friend!”
Phill opens his arms with a smile as soon as he opens the door ... but the smile turns into an expression of embarrassment after watching me.
“It's good to see you too, Phill.” I smile at him with my fucked lips.
Behind him, his wife opens her scared mouth.
They lead us into the living room, where Samuel and Mandy sit with cell phones in hand. As soon as they see their friend, they put away the phones and wave with a half-smile. Peter sits among them.
As Laura sits beside me on the arm of the armchair and caresses my face carefully, the embarrassment between Phill's family replenishes the air.
“Peter told me a lot about you,” Laura says, trailing the nape of my neck. “You also went to law school, didn’t you, Susan?”
Susan, sitting with Phill on the other couch, opens her mouth to answer and the words don’t come out. Phill nudges her and Susan says, “Yeah, that’s right, law school.” She laughs nervously and tries to control herself. “But I ... Um, I didn’t finish it, you know. I got ... Um, I got pregnant when I was very young and ...” She shakes her head. “Damn, what happened to you?”
Phill runs a hand over his face and Susan starts biting her nails, waiting for an answer. Laura laughs, holds my hand on the arm of the chair and responds, “Jimmy had a problem with his boss, that's all.”
The couple stares at me in silence.
At the dinner table, the embarrassing conversation becomes an embarrassing silence. Everyone uses a knife to eat the meat except Phill and I, who eat with our hands and smear ourselves with the sauce. Mandy, sitting next to Peter — I imagine how she must be stroking his leg with her foot now — is the only one that seems to have something to say.
“Then we climbed up to the top of the hill and my father began to feel sick, putting his hand on his heart and saying that it was time to meet hell. And then I went like, ‘Why do you think you're going to hell?' And he replied, ‘If I went to heaven, my weight would occupy the space of at least another whole generation of people. And in hell at least they have fire to burn some of my calories and save space.’ Then we both started to laugh and my father even forgot that he was about to have a heart attack. The pain only came back when we arrived at the cottage and he found out that my mother had blown the credit card limit.” She takes a piece of meat to her mouth. “That's so good, Mother.”
Susan opens a forced smile.
Phill clears his throat and wipes his mouth on his arm.
“So, Jimmy, I imagine it was difficult for you to have this ... little problem with your boss. I'm sorry for this, buddy, you must be devastated.”
I shrug and bite my meat.
“Actually I've never felt so good. You know, the life of unemployed it’s not so bad. At least it’s not when you stop caring about money, status and how much envy you can cause in people or how many women you can take inside your new Mercedes. Besides, I now have plenty of free time for my wife. Our marriage has never been so happy.”
And this is true. The freedom of emptiness is amazing.
“You know, Peter and I have been thinking ...” Samuel says. “And maybe you guys wanna listen to us play something. You know, later, maybe. I brought my guitar. If you wanna listen, maybe it'd be cool.”
“We'd love it,” Laura says. She stretches out her arm and touches Samuel's face with the back of her fingers. “Besides being handsome, he's talented. Bet you must be full of girlfriends out there.”
I kick Laura's leg.
“And I bet it's not up to you.”
Laura glares at me and Phill laughs out loud.
“Samuel with girlfriends? Oh Lord, this one is more afraid of women than he would be if a serial killer were chasing him. One day we left him alone in the living room with a cousin and we hid to see what would happen. Do you believe that the girl even caressed his neck and he did nothing? Samuel didn’t say a single word.”
“Maybe he just prefers a real woman instead of a girl,” Laura says, looking at Samuel.
“I don’t really have time for these things,” he says. “I have more important things to worry about.”
“Well, that's a pity,” Laura says, and then she laughs.
I kick my wife's leg again and she throws the glass of juice on me.
“What the fuck, you wanna stop kicking me?!”
I throw my glass of juice on her, too.
“What are you gonna do about it?”
Laura picks up the knife and points at me, but Susan gets up from the other side of the table.
“Alright, enough!” She breathes, running her hand through her dress. “Maybe ... maybe we'd better listen to the kids play.”
“But I'm still eating!” Phil protests, his mouth full of meat.
Susan seems relieved when we all agree to watch the band play, looking at the rice dish with a sigh. Phill leaves the table still with the piece of meat in hand and the boys take the things in the car. The couple indicates to us the way to the room where the children usually play.
“The dinner was great,” Laura says as we pass the living room.
“It was excellent,” Phill says, sn
atching another piece of meat. “If we had dinner like this at home every day, Mandy wouldn’t be a malnourished girl as she is. Why are these young people today so thin, eh? I don’t get it, I swear to God. Mandy's life boils down to eating at McDonald's and yet she’s able to pass under a closed door if she squeezes a little.”
The kids soon put things in the room, connecting everything to a sound box that was in the garage. I remember buying an equal for Peter when he started playing the guitar, but then he put it aside and went on to the drums. Sometimes Laura would bring some friends home and the sound box would be resurrected from its grave, but after a while her friends would invariably decide that my wife was a slut and stop visiting us. One of them, a divorced woman over forty, came to me once. Laura found her touching the middle of my legs in the kitchen and kicked her out of the house so violently that maybe even today the woman didn’t touch any other cock.
“Do you wanna hear Mandy sing first, or do you want us to play something?” Samuel asks us, finishing to connect the guitar on the amplifier. “We could do both at the same time, but her throat is horrible and she won’t be able to keep up with the instruments.”
“Maybe you'd better go first,” the girl says, sitting down on the bed. “I'd rather wait a little.”
Samuel shrugs and Peter sits on the drums, his hair now fallen in front of his face as if to hide it.
I stand at the door, right behind Susan. Phill stands a little ahead of his wife, now eating the meat slower in order to make it last longer, and Laura sits on the bed. And when the boys start, it's clear that they are great. It's amazing how Peter looks free with his drumsticks in hands. In fact, smiling at Samuel from time to time and looking at Mandy, my son seems happy. And God knows how he deserves it and how rewarding it is to me, as a father, to know that I was responsible for uniting them and perhaps bringing some meaning to a life that I myself destroyed when I abandoned him.
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