Little Squirrels Can Climb Tall Trees by Michael Murphy Read Free Book Online Page B

empty room. “I knew it was too good to be true. All men are scum ! Even the ones who look like that .” I was so pissed. I kicked a piece of the newspaper that was in my way. I paced a bit before grabbing a cold beer from the refrigerator. Maybe I should get drunk. Maybe that would help. But I knew that getting drunk didn’t solve anything.
    I was still awake at 2:00 a.m., my anger a little tamped down by that point. I crawled into bed at two thirty ready to sleep, only to notice that I could still smell Kyle on the sheets of my bed. A new wave of sadness washed over me to replace the anger from earlier. Had it been earlier in the evening, I would have gotten up and changed the sheets, but as it was, I wasn’t gonna get much sleep anyway, and I knew that getting up to go to work in the morning would be a royal bitch.
    “Thank you for that, dickhead,” I said aloud as I closed my eyes and tried to get some sleep.

Chapter 6

     
    F OUR hours later my alarm went off, pulling me from a deep sleep. Waking off-cycle was never a good thing, especially when it capped off a night of too little sleep. I hauled myself into the kitchen and made a cup of extra-strong coffee—and nearly fell asleep standing at the counter while I waited for it to brew. I desperately needed caffeine, so I took a quick gulp of the hot black liquid. “Fuck,” I spit out when I tried to drink too much too fast and burned the hell out of my mouth. “ Son of a fucking cunt! ” I swore at the pain. Okay. So much for coffee.
    I made my way into the bathroom and turned on the shower, taking care to adjust the temperature to avoid scalding myself before climbing under the water. One burn that morning was enough. When I finished my shower, I checked the coffee that I had left on the counter and found it substantially cooled off. In one long swallow, I downed the strong but cold liquid before heading off to get dressed for work.
    If the day before had been one that wasn’t my most productive, then this one had promise to do that one better. Today not only would I be distracted, sore, and pissed but also sleepy. Okay. Combine, shake well, and stand back so no one got hurt. And may the Lord take pity on anyone who wandered into my way or pissed me off—it wouldn’t be a pretty picture. It wouldn’t take a lot of imagination to find images of carnage and mayhem—there would be fresh memories from up-close-and-personal experience.
    On the walk to work, I must have exuded hostility and anger, because people stepped around me and steered clear all the way to the office. The same effect continued at the office, partly, I supposed, from simple word of mouth after I yelled at someone first thing in the morning.
    The next casualty of my mood was the computer keyboard. Apparently I was typing a little aggressively, almost pounding the keys, and one of the letters popped off the keyboard and went flying to the floor. Rather than be mad—okay, more mad—I simply sat back and closed my eyes, muttering, “You fucking blond-haired pond scum fucking freak of nature!” as the image of Kyle flashed into my mind.
    As if on cue, a moment after the image of Kyle appeared in my head, my cell phone rang. Since I didn’t recognize the number, I was half-tempted to just ignore the thing. It had gotten bad now that telemarketers had started calling cell phone numbers. It used to be that one’s cell phone was sacrosanct—you knew that if someone had your cell number, it was someone you wanted to talk with. No longer. Now there was no place that was safe from telemarketers, people conducting surveys, and people that had the latest and greatest thing to sell to you.
    “Yeah,” I said by way of greeting the unsuspecting caller.
    “Joseph?” I heard Kyle’s voice, a little more hesitant than I remembered.
    “Yes.”
    “Still mad, I see. I can’t blame you one bit. I apologize for last night. I’m so, so very sorry.”
    “Kyle, this is not a good time,” I lied.