Radio Belly by Buffy Cram Read Free Book Online Page B

simple,” I said. “I’m more of an overseer really.”
    She waved her hand around. “So this is all just files and stuff? There’s no actual money here? This office is more about paper pushing?”
    â€œWell, Hez, I suppose it is,” I said and then I gave her the number of my brother-in-law, the investment banker, before showing her out.
    I stopped by Dan’s office.
    He squashed his blunt finger up against the Schmidt file, a couple of eighty-year-old artists who had managed to evade property tax for more decades than I’d been alive. “Might I inquire when you were planning on dealing with them?” he did, indeed, inquire.
    My tongue was fat and lazy in my mouth.
    â€œEven the sweet and the old have to pay their taxes, Henry,” he said, “but that’s not what I really wanted to talk to you about.” Looking grim, he pulled out another file, one I’d never seen before. “Well, Henry, in keeping with the new Recession Measures Act, our friends over in collections have given me a heads-up about your parking ticket situation.” He cleared his throat. “Are you aware,” he asked, “that you received a summons to go to court several weeks ago?”
    I was not aware.
    â€œAnd are you aware of the new ministry-wide zero-tolerance policy when it comes to matters of financial delinquency?”
    I was not aware of that either.
    â€œJesus, Henry,” he said, rising from his chair and looking about as sorry as a grown man can look, “if you’d come to me at any point, any point before now, we could have dealt with this reasonably. Like adults.”
    And so, in the end, it wasn’t the Schmidts. In the end it was the parking tickets. Dan insisted that within the office, my “termination” would be strictly referred to as a “leave of absence.” He insisted I would receive a respectable severance package.
    On the way out the door I saw Rhanda gossiping by the copy machine. Hiss-hiss-hiss, she was saying, while glancing over her shoulder at me, which is why I was inclined, against my own better judgment, to walk right up to her and rustle my own pants. One minute I was heading for the door and the next I was thrusting up while reaching down. I was scratching and rearranging and jiggling my bits at her. I was calling her “a man-faced skank.”
    CHERRY LANE WAS still, except for a small fleet of charity vans idling by the curb. I hadn’t been home at that time on a Monday for decades. The “hybrids”—as the media were now calling them—had gotten into the rest of the Large Garbage while everyone was at work. I stood on my doorstep watching the staff recover items from under bushes, off lawns and out of gutters. Where’s the money management in this? I wondered. How exactly can these people afford to be volunteers in this day and age? I briefly considered helping but I was overdrawn, expired.
    I called to my wife and daughter from the foyer, but it was just me, man alone. I instinctively went to the den, kicked off my shoes and clicked on the TV, but it was hours until prime time. I turned it off and that’s when I caught a whiff coming from the couch pillows. It was gamey, oniony, slightly animal—a smell some part of me enjoyed, but a smell that had no place in my home. I lifted a pillow to my face and sniffed deeply. I must’ve drifted away for a time then, for I woke in the afternoon with that pillow sitting on my face, smelling more scalpy than ever.
    I sat up with a start and noticed that all of the couch pillows were mussed, that the carpet was showing signs of heavy traffic—and yet, since Lucinda had left, my Kathy had been so diligent, one might even say obsessed, with these kinds of things. She was always making sure the carpet pile went the same way.
    I went from room to room then, sniffing, checking the window locks.
    In the kitchen I found cheese and cracker