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January 9, 2007 (revised November 28, 2007)
Ten minutes before quitting time that Friday night, my girlfriend Sheri walked into my office without knocking, closed the door, and said �I need to tell you something.�
�Sure,� I said. I was sitting behind my desk. �What is it?�
She didn�t say. She just stood there grasping the front edge of my desk with both hands. I looked at them. Only she could pull off turquoise nail polish in a professional business environment. After a few millennia, she finally said something:
�It�s over.�
I quit looking at her hands.
�It�s over, Mitch....It�s over between us. It�s been over for quite some time.�
�Was it over last night?� I asked.
�Consider that a parting gift. Anyway, I�m seeing someone else now.�
�Who?�
�Emil. It�s Emil. I started seeing him a few days ago�.It just happened, like on TV, ha ha�.I didn�t want to tell you, but you would have found out sooner or later, so...anyway, I hope this doesn�t affect your working relationship with me, or with him.�
�Uh-huh.� I picked up a document at random from my desktop. I lowered my head and started studying the document. Arabic has three noun declensions: nominative, accusative, and genitive. Wow, I did not know that. Normally, nouns take the ending bla bla bla, bla bla bla bla. I heard Sheri walk out of the office.
I waited a few millennia myself before putting down the paper. I waited a few more millennia before walking to her cubicle. She was standing up, rooting around inside her prancing-panda handbag for something.
�You dumped me for Mr. Roboto?!�
�Don�t start, Mitch.�
�What do you see in that fuckwad?�
�He�s smart and considerate��
�And jacks off to Heena.�
�Not lately,� Emil said in his usual slow, metallic voice as he walked up to us. He had a poster of that Japanese comic-book slut Heena hanging in his cubicle.
�Yeah, you have your first real-life girlfriend now. Isn�t that great? You realize you�re just a revenge fuck for her, right? She wants to piss me off, so she fucks someone worse than me.�
�I wouldn�t say that, my good man.�
�What would you say, Mr. Roboto?�
�He�s not a robot,� Sheri said.
�Then what is he�a retard who talks like Shakespeare?�
�I�m neither a robot nor a retard,� Emil said. �I shall probably regret telling you this, but I found out only recently that I have Asperger�s Syndrome�.It�s a neurological disorder? A form of high-functioning autism?�
�So you�re one step above a houseplant.�
�You don�t know shit, you know that?� Sheri asked me. �Come on, Emil.�
�Well, I do know you two losers shouldn�t bother coming back on Monday,� I said as they walked away. �Turn in your badges at the front desk when you leave. Oh, and Emil�I banged your woman last night.� They continued walking away, Emil in his usual jerky manner, bumping into Sheri once or twice, presumably not on purpose.
�I always seem to fall for the frickin� bitches,� I told Jenssen over beers later that night at Sluggerz.
�Well, O.J. had that problem, too, and we know how he solved it,� Jenssen said.
I laughed. Jenssen was the tech guy at our firm, but he hadn�t done much lately other than read his hospice book and send long, obscene, scatological e-mails to foreign spammers.
�No, seriously, the hell with her,� he said.
�It�s not that easy. I did love her. She knew a little about politics, and she had a rack so large and firm that, you know, it deserved its own website.�
�And don�t forget her heart-shaped ass. Not that I ever rode it or wanna ride it, of course.�
�Of course.� I sipped my beer. �So what are your plans for tonight?�
�Well, first I�m gonna drink forty or fifty more beers, then I�m gonna have dinner at my parents� house. And you?�
�Must be parents� night, cuz I plan to meet my dad here to undergo my monthly interrogation. Then I plan to hunt for new ass. I�d even settle for a feminist�you know, as a revenge fuck. Though I�d probably have an easier time getting any ass if I developed Ass-Burger�s Syndrome. Everyone loves nerds today.�
ROWAN
Priya�s husband called her on his cell phone to say he was �racing along like Speed Racer� on the interstate. The Weimaraner liposuction had cancelled, so Priya�s husband would be home early, as in about ten minutes. �Go, Speed Racer, go!� she said with the proverbial strained expression on her face.
Thus I had to leave her house early, and I�d arrived not a minute before his call. I hated leaving her under any circumstance, but I especially hated leaving her then, when she looked so luscious in those denim cutoffs. And I used to find denim cutoffs too white-trashy for my taste, not that either whiteness or trashiness applies in Priya�s case.
Anyway, I had to find something to do for the rest of the evening. So I drove to The Manor, the town�s latest strip joint. I�d never been to The Manor. It apparently considered itself classy; a sign out front called The Manor a GENTLEMEN�S CLUBBE, in wedding-invitation script, and anything Olde-English in that type of script obviously has class. Also, the fa�ade had a silver neon version of that nude, reclining woman silhouette you see on mudflaps, only the woman here wore a top hat almost as tall as a Cat-in-the-Hat hat.
And there was even a celebrity greeter standing outside the door: my brother Troy. He was the reason I hadn�t gone to The Manor until now, now that I was really bored, horny, and lonely. I hadn�t had any contact with him since he�d used that faux lezbo�s head as a pi�ata at his last job, as a bouncer at that yuppie sports bar. Now, a faux lezbo�s better than no lezbo in my opinion, but Troy had felt otherwise, or so he�d told the police when they arrested him. He told them he�d thought that woman was making fun of real lezbos, like yours truly. Uh, okay.
A few members of that local feminist group POWER NOW! (Pissed-Off Women Erupting Right Now!) had been picketing The Manor on-and-off since he�d started working there, but I didn�t see any picketers tonight.
I walked up to him. He wore a black tuxedo, sans top hat. At least he wore a real tuxedo. The last time I�d seen him wear a tux was twenty years ago, in 1987, when he wore a neon-purple one to the senior prom with his girlfriend�and my future girlfriend�Machelle.
�Hey Ro,� he said with no emotion.
�Hey,� I said with no emotion.
�How you doing?�
�Good. And you?�
�Good.�
He was out on bail. His trial for felony battery, with that questionable hate-crime enhancement, would start in less than a week.
We stopped talking. What could I say to my brother the batterer? Should I say anything to him?
Finally he said �You know, Ro, I have to say that whatever happened�whatever I did�I did it all for you.�
Yes, I should say something to him.
�Bullshit,� I said. �You did it because she had no interest in you, even after you got rid of that guy. That guy who was talking to her?�
�I thought he was bothering her.�
�Sure you did. It must have pissed you off that someone who looked like her would turn down a chance with the tall, muscular bouncer. Couldn�t she realize you were doing her a favor, brother dear?�
�You�re wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. I wasn�t trying to pick her up or anything.�
�Really? You must have been under the weather then. You�ll sleep with any woman who has a pulse.�
�Look who�s talking.�
�Well�at least my women don�t have sagebrush armpits.�
�You mean the woman in the bar?�
�The woman you beat to a pulp. A hairy pulp.�
�Ha ha. Say whatever you want. It won�t change the fact that I did whatever I did all for you. You�re my sister, and I love you.�
�Yeah, you love me. That�s quite a way to show you love me. Why didn�t you just buy me a new plasma-screen TV instead?�
�I dunno.�
�Because I could really use one.�
We stopped talking. I started looking at my feet.
�So,� he finally said. �You going in or what?�
I continued looking at my feet.
TO BE CONTINUED
The story gets less G-rated from here....Fiction, Home.
� 2007 David V. Matthews