my head from the table and slammed it down again. I could taste blood in my mouth. I heard my brother walk into the room, gasp, and leave. What a guy. “I do have a family. It’s supposed to be ‘a social unit consisting of one or more adults together with the children they care for.’ Mom is gone and you don’t care for me. The only reason you feed us is so you can keep us alive and the police away. You keep us under a roof so you don’t get wet when you beat us.” He released my hair and kicked the legs of my chair. My chin hit the table on the way down to the floor.
“Make sure the next words leave your mouth are a prayer,” he said as he stood over me removing his belt.
“You never talk about your dad,” I said to him. He winced. “Is this what he was like? Did he take his bad life out on you, pop? I bet he did.” He licked his lips and clinched his fists but did not come closer. “That doctor did say I was depressed. He said a lot of other things too. So did I. I told him everything about you and mom. He felt bad and gave me some medicine. It’s a delicious candy that you can sell in stores. They call them Tic Tacs.” I remove one of my “pills” from its bottle and flick it towards him. He sniffs it. “White mint. Try one.” He does not. “You know what you need to do?” My father shakes his head. “Sleep. You seem tired.” I slowly got up and walked towards him.
“What you doing?” he asked. I just smiled and turned the oven on. It was made decades before even my dad was born and didn’t most times. That day it did. It was full of pots and pans that were never used. The gas hissed but no flame ever started. I took my father by the hand, for the first and last time in my life, and brought him down to his knees.
“You need to do this,” I said while removing the pots and pans. “For yourself.”
“I do?” he asked. I nodded.
“Yeah” I replied. “Now just lay your head down…” I said as he stuck his head into the oven. My brother walked into the kitchen. Before he could speak I pointed my finger at him. “Don’t.” He walked out. I quickly headed to my room and grabbed a baseball bat. It still had the tag on it. Never played baseball with dear old dad. I brought it down in the center of his back causing him to gasp, sucking in a lungful of gas. I then grabbed a plastic sheet and threw it over him and the stove. I sat there for ten minutes until his body slid to the floor. I took the sheet and left it in the backyard. I then checked his back for bruising from the bat. None. Dad was pretty thick and I was just a kid. My brother called 911 and the police arrived to find me trying to wake my father up and sobbing.
“That was homicide,” Ira said as we stood on the rooftop smoking.
“Homicide is the killing of another human by another” I say as I exhale my smoke. “If I were to be arrested for that it would have been justifiable legally in that justified ‘…there is evidence to suggest that it was reasonable to believe that the offending party posed an imminent threat to the life or well-being of another.’ My father was the definition of justifiable homicide. What I did was self defense.”
“Is this why you and your brother don’t get along?” she asked me.
“No” I say while stomping out my cigarette. “He hates me because his first wife was my first client.”
ELEVEN
Ever since our conversation about my father Ira has been looking at me differently. She romanticizes life. Perhaps she thought that there was a small sliver of hope for me to become a caring individual. She is wrong, of course. We’re only good when we have something to prove. I’m healthy, independently wealthy, and can talk anyone into doing anything I want them to do.
I have nothing to prove.
So, why is it that Ira looking at me the way she has bothering me? Sitting at my desk waiting for my 1pm appointment, I start to get hungry. I consider asking Ira if she would like to get something to eat with me but one glance at her staring into space and thumbing her purse as a cigarette craving rages within her changes that idea for me. I have to call her name three times before she answers.
“Oh, yes?” she says. If she’s going to be like this I should send her home. I should but I won’t.
“I’m heading out for lunch,” I tell her. “Please call me if you need anything.” She nods. I would ask her if something is wrong but since I know that there is I’d rather just go out and eat. I’m not very pleasant to be around when I’m hungry.
I pass where Tony’s once stood. I don’t linger. There’s a new Korean place three blocks away. I pass two homeless men and one homeless woman on the way there. This is not good for business. In three weeks I have a client that wants to fight crime. I’ll steer him in this direction.
I walk into this restaurant and sit near a window. A waitress hands me a menu without saying a word. Not sure if that pleases me or not yet. A few moments later she places a glass of water with a slice of lemon in it in front of me and stands there with a pen and paper. The seeds from the lemon float freely in the water. She clears her throat to get my attention.
“What do you recommend?” I ask her. She sighs. “Can I have two servings of that?” She scratches her forehead with her middle finger. A subtle “fuck you.” Cute. American born Korean woman. About 5’7”. 135 pounds. Heavy around the hips. One child. Possibly two. 21 to 24 years old. Parents are immigrants. Studied sociology in college for two years before meeting Prince Charming. Gave up higher education for him. He left after the birth of child but not before cheating on her multiple times. Works here to pay the bills or until Prince Charming 2.0 arrives one day for a beef platter. No name badge. Two uneven blonde streaks in hair. Slight defiance at her own race and culture. Red nail polish. No lipstick. Part of Japanese tattoo sticks out of her shirt on right breast. A name. “There’s a place nearby that closed a while back. They had great rice…”
“One order of rice…”
“…and I can’t help but wonder if you could make it the same way they did. It was slightly burned but for whatever reason that made it pop.”
“We don’t have soda.”
“What is your name?” I ask her. She rolls her eyes. She thinks I am trying to hit on her. Little does she know that I have far too much self-esteem to ever bring a woman that looks like her into my bedroom. Or car.
“Soo,” she says.
“And what is your real name?”
“Look,” she sighs. “I’m just trying to get through this shift without some asshole attempting to get in my pants, okay?” She waits for a reaction from me. Shame. Guilt. She’ll get neither from me.
“What do you want most in life?” I ask her. She bites her lip and scoffs. “Have a seat.” She looks at the chair opposite me as if it may be spring loaded. I motion for her to sit. She does.
“What do I want most?” she asks herself. “To be free.”
“Be more specific.”
“Independent.”
“Go on.”
“What do you mean go on?”
“Do you have a plan to get this freedom and independence?”
“This is it.”
“Seems like a bad plan.”
“Who are you to judge?”
“I’m Cyrus Tatum. I know that with what you make working here that you could never afford my services. So here’s a deal.” She looks at me skeptically. I can’t really blame her. “I come here every day for lunch at this time. You give me a free meal. I help you get what you want most.”
“How?” she asks.
“That’s the wrong question,” I say. “The question is ‘Why?’”
“Okay. Why?”
“Because I can.”
TWELVE
There will never be a female president of the United States. No, it is not because men would never vote for one. Any woman that uses that as the reason is one of the reasons why. I believe that men would gladly hand over the keys to the country to a woman just to sit back and say “Not so easy, is it?” No. There will never be a female president because women hate women. When women see a female candidate all they think of is themselves on their worst day but with the ability
to start wars with other countries, not just each other. And that scares them.
Soo is sitting in my waiting area participating in a standoff with Ira. I decided that our first consultation would be here and not at her job. And by the way her name is not Soo. It is Leanne. She arrived four minutes late so I am letting her wait a bit. Plus I’m having fun watching her and Ira visually challenge each other. I call Ira and have her send Soo in. She sits down and rolls her eyes as she scans my office. She is wearing a too short black skirt, knee high red boots, and a white belly shirt.
“What?” she asks me. I say nothing. “Why are you staring at me?”
“I find you interesting,” I say. And I do. She should not be as confident as she is yet there she sits sure everyone wants her.
“I knew it,” she says and starts to grab her purse and leave. “This is some sort of weird sex thing for you.” I laugh and she stops just as she is at the door. “What the fuck are you laughing at?”
“The fact that you believe I want to sleep with you,” I reply. No matter how unattractive a woman is she believes that any man wants to sleep with her. And this is true. All women, technically, can have sex with any man. But none of them want to hear that a man does not want to sleep with them even if they have no plans of reciprocating.
“Why don’t you want to fuck me?” she asks.
Got her.
“You’re not my type,” I say while tapping a slow rhythm on my desk. She