by Peter Marks
Wright took a deep breath, ‘Personally,’ he continued, moving back to the desk to type RETRIBUTION on the keyboard of the I.B.M. and smiled sinister when the word leapt on the screen in neon affirmation, ‘I doubt you’ll have the money for the fare when your wife is told of your heinous exploitations,. God man you’re 41 not 20, you’re not attractive, not moral, not Casanova and not divorced. Wake up....to penury if you like because your wife will take you to the cleaners in a court that I’ll rig when she learns of your dabbling with MY piece of Australiana while you were here..” Wright sneered, again gazing out the window of this fortieth story office looking out into the murky gloom of another smog filled London evening.
Futa remained silent, was shell shocked and dazed then stammered that he loved Kelly but his wife would screw him for every penny he had anyway without aid or assistance from Wright and he just couldn’t afford divorce. Wright kept his eyes on the horizon, heard the man squirm desperate behind him. Wright loved every torturous minute of it.
‘There’s a ten-twenty flight from Heathrow tonight,’ Wright said quietly, pausing as he turned from the window to wander over to a frightened Futa to confront the flustered enemy, and spit orders.
‘You’re booked,’ he spat, ‘and your wife has a telegram informing her of your imminent return. There’s a job and a family waiting for you in San Fransisco and I suggest you accept my offer before I turn nasty,’ Futa nodded mutely, ‘and breath a word of this to any-one, Kelly especially, and Bangladesh will seem like paradise compared to where you’ll end up,’ Wright threatened through clenched fangs.
Daniel P. Futa didn’t argue.
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Luggage tumbling from sloped shoulders, Futa, slightly jet lagged and thoroughly Wright’d, explained his rushed exit this way to the youngest of his children the next day as he was retrieving more luggage from the carousal at Terminal Three of L.A. International. Pride not completely extinct, said:
‘Daddy is so important Peggy Sue darling that his company has put him on the first flight out of London because only daddy can fix up the awful mess in the Los Angeles Office.’ Futa fibbed, chest proudly filling, ribs expanding faster than a helium balloon. Told little Prue, little strung out, coke sniffing Prue: ‘Yes,’ he said sternly, ‘daddy’s home to help right wrongs.’
Wright would have liked that.
Futa’s wife was curious but didn’t ask any embarrassing questions. His spouse was too busy trying to figure out how she and J.P. Morgan, Vice-President of the L.A. office could continue their affair now that hubby was home.
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An ocean away, hours earlier Wright had watched Futa’s Pan Am 747 SP lumber into the dark sky. Smiling the cut throat smile of the rich and vicious, and contentedly sipped a glass of the most expensive champagne he could find, he thought that money certainly had its uses. The power for malice for one.
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At the Ritz, closeted in his penthouse room a few weeks later, Wright received the phone call he’d known would come. It was Kelly. She was lost and lonely; rejected and dejected. Crying mournfully, she explained that Daniel had deserted her without explanation and that she’d been fighting with him ever since Nathan’s visit. Sniffling, she told Nathan that it didn’t really matter anyway because she’d told Daniel the night before he’d disappeared that she wanted to see Nathan again. Whispered that she now realised she could never forget him. Cried that she was so sorry and begged him to forgive her. Then admitted she loved him. Wright smiled a sinister smile.
Kelly, taking a deep breath between the thin tears that slid in errant streams down her despair ravaged face, asked again that he forgive her for the hurt she knew she’d caused him.
‘That’s God’s territory,’ Wright snarled and hung up.
The final victory was his and he savoured the moment.
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Hovering above the desk, his hand still on the slammed receiver, he waited for the momentous victory to sink in; for his face to smile in vengeful satisfaction, but it wouldn’t budge. Remained a set frown. This is the ultimate victory, what you’d planned and waited for. You’ve done it, gotten her to beg to come home then thrown her back as dismissively as an undersized Trout. You’ve done it, you’ve won he told himself, loudly telling himself how thrilled he should be that she’d taken the poisoned bait. How much he’d enjoyed the revenge of sending her away. But it hadn’t worked, he couldn’t shift the sadness, didn’t feel as heady or ecstatic as he’d presumed. Totally disillusioned he collapsed on the bed and put a pillow over his head - realised that if this was victory, it was so shallow as to be empty.
He felt awful. Felt empty, felt grubby and guilty. Felt homesick and nostalgic for the first time in recent memory. He thought about Kelly and found that no matter how hard he tried he just couldn’t picture the heart addicted features of her lovely face.
She was blank mystery, a scrambled signal that refused to focus so he attempted to build her piece by fragile piece like some cosmic jigsaw puzzle. Lay there alone, disturbingly unimpressed by his conceited cleverness. Pillow over head he wrestled with his manner of revenge for hours as the sun went down and the darkness descended
Nathan searched for her in the mists of his memory until she suddenly materialised. Suddenly he could picture her in the screen of his mind almost as clearly as if she were there in the room standing calm and beautiful before him. With him. Holding his hand telling him everything was alright.
But she wasn’t there, it was only a figment of a desperate imagination. He winched as he recalled her, hurt as the vibrant memories cascaded through him, lay back and remembered fondly his past with her, that part of his past he now recalled as being the only time he’d been wholly happy. Remembered with fondness the lingering waft of the perfume she always wore, recalled with salacious pleasure the soft taste of her welcoming lips, wished again to smell the pleasant welcome of her long blonde hair when it was freshly damp and just shampooed.
Memories of Kelly coursed sad and sentient through his every fibre.
Then the phone rang.
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He surrendered to the sensations. An hour after having done everything to make it plain he never wanted to see her again - he saw her again. He was on her doorstep, the two of them crying and wailing in joyous reunion. Two hours later she was holding his hand, kissing him gently. Holding tight to him and whispering that everything was going to be alright.
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Who said you couldn’t buy love? Or purchase a happy ending.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
FINITO
WELL, THERE YOU HAVE IT. You were warned. I never said it was the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But it’s close enough.
The rest is history. Future history. Perhaps he’ll marry and settle down on 200,000 acres of his ever expanding ego. Maybe they’ll drop the big one and he and I will become mere particles. Maybe he’ll survive the death cloud and have kids with a mutant mistress - three twin headed gremlins and a dog - and the perfect post nuclear family.
Maybe not.
Perhaps life won’t end that well. Perhaps Nathan really will get married and have three cute kids and a lovable dog and let the wife mutate him as surely as radiation would. She can make him normal and I can relax because I won’t have anything to do. My work will be complete. I won’t have to talk or remind how inadequate he is. I can become diligently unemployed.
Finally forget about being the Voice and the heckling crowd.
Then again, if things get that dull I can always put the demons back in Wright’s head and watch her divorce him. Or perhaps God will intervene to snatch the lives of his three children and the prized pet. Have them run over by an out of control school bus driven by Blind Alley or an avenging Daniel P. Futa. Possibly.
Remember, be ever vigilant, life is harshest on those who think it’s a piece of cake so d
on’t be fooled. It’s just a recipe for disaster.
So what will happen? What does the rich tapestry of strife have in store for he, and therefore, me? Will our future be good, bad or indifferent? Will Wright’s socks find true happiness and a powerful deodorant in the afterlife? Who cares.
Maybe I’ll simply fuse Wright’s emotions so that no woman will last long enough for him to marry, or sire anything aside from another disastrous episode with the curvaceous Kelly. Maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll let him suicide - let the dopey shit marry if that’s what he wants. Let him learn the hard way when, during the wedding feast, Kelly will confess all and tell the Australian Wright there’s small American cooking in her baby full belly. Yep, yet another recipe for disaster.
Maybe, maybe not. Who knows? (God does, but you know what a miserable buggar she is when it comes to divulging destiny).
P.S. While you’ve been wasting your time reading this dreary epic, I took my advice. Now I’m completely illiterate. Now, praise be to the miserable buggar, I can’t even read what I wrote.
Peter Marks © 2018
