Author’s Note: This unseemly chapter was found in the trash. Gab had chewed it
a bit, but it was mostly still readable and I thought you might want to be able to fill in
the blanks on this missing part of the drama. These pages were apparently written as part
of chapter 4, the day and night of Dar’s resignation.
Disclaimer: This is a fake update. The poor maligned Ms. Good had nothing to do
with it.
Subtext Warning: Implied, but sadly, not described.
Violence Warning: Not enough.
Odor Warning: you might find it necessary to wear nose plugs or have a can of Glade
nearby while reading this update. I’m not saying this update stinks, but be warned.
Dessert Warning: No dessert offers for this update. It is too distasteful. There is
far too much evil Steve in it.
Steve returned to his office, gloating to himself. Once there, he laughed out loud as he
relived hearing Dar, beaten, saying he had won and she would resign. God what a sweet
victory!! He had finally beaten that bitch! The smile faded slightly as he thought of
having to forgo the pleasure of pressing charges against her little pet, but, he
brightened, any means to an end. Too bad, Cupcake, you should have stuck with a real man!!
What a stroke of genius hiring that photographer had been, he congratulated himself.
Though they had stayed on that damn island most of the time and getting anything
incriminating had been slow in coming. Ha! Les would realize he had done the company a big
favour by getting rid of Dar when he saw them. He looked around his large office, thinking
it too small for someone of his talents. Smirking, he thought over his plans to next
remove that boob Jose and take over his corner office. Hell, play his cards right and in a
few years he could have Les’s job!
He walked over to his desk and sat in his very comfortable chair, rising again rapidly,
swearing. Damn, he just couldn’t get comfortable!! What a fiasco that retreat had
turned out to be. And here he was with poison ivy in all the worst places. What a mistake
it had been to put his shorts back on inside out! But he had decided it was better he not
draw attention to it by taking them off and getting them on right in front of those
company sharks. He had hiked all the way back to the main camp like that, oils from the
plant rubbing in. Frustrated, he dropped his slacks and pulled a bottle of calamine lotion
from his desk drawer, practically pouring it down his pants. He breathed out a sigh of
small relief, and redressed. Too bad he was reduced to wearing his worst shorts.
They’d been a joke present in the first place and they’d seen better days, even
before the pink lotion stains. He’d put everything in the laundry before coming to
work and forgotten to pop it into the dryer in his excitement to expose Dar and present
her with his ultimatum.
Somewhat relieved by cold pink ooze, he squished over to his office door and opened it, to
see Dar on crutches heading towards the elevator. It restored his sense of triumph. Damn,
he felt good!! Oh, how the mighty have fallen!! He would have watched longer but he needed
to close the door and scratch again.
So what to do to celebrate??? He had called several women he had met recently. None were
free tonight apparently as they were all either: washing their hair, suddenly gotten
married, decided they were gay, moving tomorrow out of state, or throwing up with that
“bug” going around. Even Skippy, the camp counsellor, had told him she was going
in for the first of her sex change operations. But he was used to hearing such things and
knew that women had these types of problems all the time. It was a wonder to him how
anyone ever had the time to go out on a date since he never caught them at a good time. Oh
well. Maybe he’d call his old buddy, Bob, no, what was his name?? Oh yeah, Dick.
Dick, um, Masters, um McMasters, yeah, that was it.
There was a knock at his door, drawing him out of his self-appreciation, and before he
could reply, the door swung open and a red faced Jose stomped in. Steve leaned back in his
chair and steepled his fingers together, watching his boss. “What can I do for you,
Jose?”
Jose was still red in the face from shock at Dar’s resignation. He huffed out a loud
breath and shouted at his assistant, eager for someone to blame, “What the hell did
you think you were doing?? Do you think you can run this company?? Do you know why we can
sell all these god damned contracts?? It is because they are buying her, you idiot!!!! I
can charge a 10% premium across the board, just because we have Dar Roberts!! And they
know that means we will get the job done. Correction, HAD Dar Roberts. I hate that puta,
but she was our puta!! You were supposed to make her play ball, not take our best player
out of the game. You are an idiot!!! I want to know why I shouldn’t just fire your
slimy ass right now!!!!”
Steve was shocked. He thought Jose, at least, would be happy to have that bitch out of his
way. His resolve to pick off Jose next tightened and he said, “Because I’ll sue
you and this company for everything you’ve got.” Silence. He watched Joses face
get redder and his eyes widen. He softened his voice and tried to woo his boss back into
complacency, “I did you a favour, Jose. That little plaything of hers is going to
have to fill in, and we can over-ride her. We can get the hardware we want put in,
increase our sales, and commissions I might add, and get past this roadblock Ms. ‘I
think I know better than everybody’ created.” He saw Jose’s normal
colouring start to return and he went in for the kill, “You’ve got a family,
Jose. You have expenses, children to send to college, responsibilities. Someone like her
can’t understand that. You’ve worked hard to make something of yourself, against
the odds. Here she is, a mockery of the things we believe in, lording it over us, rubbing
our noses in her deviance and expecting us to believe it is normal. I don’t know
Jose. I think she hurt us more than she helped us.” Jose was nodding his head now. He
had risen to his current status against the odds and he was damn proud of himself. Steve
came up next to him and put his hand on his shoulder. As he escorted Jose to the door he
said, “A man like you doesn’t need someone like her, Jose. She was holding you
back.” A final pat to Jose’s shoulder and he closed the door behind him.
“Boob” he said to the closed door.
After another dose of lotion and a call to his now-remembered, best pal, Dick, the door
again swung open to admit the Personnel VP, holding a manila inter-office envelope which
she tossed on his desk. “I’ve come to give you notice of action against you Mr.
Fabricini. You best take those home with you and maybe contact a lawyer. I think
you’ve done about enough here today.” Not waiting for a reply, she turned on her
heel and left him alone. Steve nudged at the envelope with a pencil to make sure it
wasn’t about to go off and then opened it. His ears turned bright red. His blood
pressure rose 50 points. He slammed his fist down on the desk and screamed in pain.
Jerking his injured hand back up, he smacked himself in the already-broken nose and almost
passed out. It was the itch that finally distracted him from the stars dancing around his
head. Dazed, he reached to scratch himself again, forgetting he still held a pencil and
stabbed himself adding insult to injury. This time he did pass out.
Eleanor stormed into Steve’s office to find him face down on the desk, clutching his
crotch and obviously, to her, passed out from some obscene autoerotic activity. Indignant,
she ran out, heading for Mari’s office to file a complaint. She was horrified that a
woman of her breeding should be expected to work with animals like this. Well, she’d
see him fired. Imagine!!! Doing that at his desk!!! And she imagined it all the way to
Mari’s office.
When Steve woke up, he gathered the memos of complaints against him, now bloody from his
nose, and threw them into his briefcase. He’d go home and clean up. Screw them all.
He picked up his briefcase and limped to the elevator. The offices seemed very quiet, but
it meant he didn’t have to ride down with anyone, which suited him fine. Of the
people he did see, no one spoke to him. When he got to the garage, his brand new Porsche
was sitting on it’s rims. The tires had been slashed and the paint keyed. He screamed
to the empty garage, “I’ll get you for this you bitch!!” still blaming Dar
for his misfortunes. He thought he heard snickering, and then a motorcycle revving up and
zooming away. He went back in and used the guard’s phone to call his road service. He
had waited for over 60 minutes and then they had towed his car to the nearest tire store.
He was there now, waiting. There was a tallish woman sitting across the waiting room from
him. She was typing into a laptop and snickering to herself.
“Mr. Fabricini? You car is ready. Shame about the paint. If you just pay the bill,
we’ll get you on your way.” For some reason the Visa hadn’t worked, and the
clerk had kept it and cut it in half right in front of him. After he did the same thing to
the American Express, Steve dug out his wallet and paid cash. That depleted his wallet, so
now he’d have to stop at the ATM before meeting up with his buddy, Dick, for drinks.
Still snarling about incompetent clerks, he unlocked the door to his
all-leather-interior-pride-and-joy and was hit by the most foul smelling stench
imaginable. Guys from across the tire bay yelled out ‘Jesus, what is that!!??’
as the smell wafted out of the hot closed space. Steve couldn’t hold his nose without
making it bleed again, so the rankness was unavoidable as he reached into the backseat and
pulled out a rotting fish. The guys made him carry it to the covered trash bin on the
other side of the lot to throw it away. He then gamely rolled down all the windows and
drove out of the bay, heading for home to clean up.
The reek had settled into the leather and Steve’s clothes, and he knew he’d
never get it out. He was driving too fast, and he tried to tell the policeman who pulled
him over that it was the smell and Dar Roberts that was to blame. The damn cop had given
him a ticket anyway. Now he was finally home and left the windows down on the parked car
as he went upstairs, half hoping someone would steal it. What a day. It had seemed so
promising, but he was surrounded by ninnies too stupid or gutless to do what had to be
done. He patted himself on the back again for his winner’s attitude and unlocked the
door to his apartment. The reek of mildew and rotting fruit bowled him over. Oh God, the
laundry!! It was probably alive by now!! If the smell of mildewed clothes had been any
stronger, it could have walked over and opened the door to let him in. He took a deep
breath of air and entered, heading for the air conditioner and fans. NO Electricity!! He
hobbled back outside and got another breath and contemplated his options. They were few.
He went back inside, his eyes watering from the pungent odours. He opened all the doors
and windows. He threw out the fruit. He opened the stilled refrigerator to the smell of
rotting broccoli and slammed it shut again. Damn. He was afraid to open the washer for
fear the smell from the ruined clothes would get even stronger. He’d run the washer
again after a shower. He headed to the bathroom hoping a shower would at least relieve the
constant itch from parts unmentioned. Stripping, he hopped into the stream of water and
leaped back out. COLD!! Damn, the water heater must be electric too.
The neighbours heard all the yelling, saw the wide-open doors, smelled the stench and
thought someone had died in the apartment. They called the police. By the time the police
arrived, a crowd had gathered. The officer called for backup and urged the crowd to stay
back. When the back up arrived, they drew their guns and cautiously entered the house,
holding their noses with their free hands. A young officer, not familiar with the stench
of a decaying corpse, was throwing up in the parking lot. Unfortunately, he hadn’t
noticed that the windows were open on that Porsche he’d vomited on, well, into. While
reflecting,"eeeewwwwww, gonna be hard to get that out of the leather." he
noticed that the car had a reek of it's own. He alerted his Sargent. After checking the
plates, they knew they had the vehicle that had transported the imagined corpse. The
registration showed it matched the apartment they were entering. He told his guys to take
the idiot in there yelling like cats mating into custody and they’d sort it out at
the station.
Steve found himself, itching, and wearing a borrowed Dade County orange jump-suit, in a
holding cell. Realizing he had left the apartment wide open, he had jumped the first guy
who came around the corner into his bathroom. He had him down and was pummelling him
before he realized he was naked and straddling a cop, and there were other cops with guns
drawn, levelled at him. Despite his protests, he’d been handcuffed and taken naked
out to a squad car, then transported here. The young rookie cop had taken pity on him and
thrown a towel over him. The worst part of the handcuffs was he couldn’t scratch.
Dressed only in the towel, he’d been put in the holding cell with 3 other guys. They
were all brawn, bearded and with beer bellies. They had made smacking noises at him and
pulled off his towel, probably only to intimidate him, but he was plenty scared just the
same. They’d seen whatever they’d seen and started to laugh. The towel had been
thrown back at him. He told himself it was the rash they were laughing at.
What a rotten day this had turned out to be. The victory turned to bile in his throat.
What a way to celebrate. Somehow he still thought this was all Dar’s fault. And he
only hoped she was as miserable as he was.
About that time, Dar pulled Kerry into a warm hug and kissed her. She had Kerry in her
arms, Les had given her everything she wanted and tomorrow she would fire Steve. Life was
sweet.