By Scot Walker

Charlie was more than morose that final Monday morning. As a mid-level manager, he was the man in charge of hiring security guards for the Cooksey Management Company and it seemed to him that his nightmares would never end. As he lingered on the Washington beltway in a six-mile backup, his stomach wrenched. He had already sat in the mummifying heat for an hour and a half, and as he watched the thirty-eighth car pull onto the shoulder and race toward the exit, he decided he couldn‘t wait any longer so, in a quick jerking motion, he shifted his car into second, turned his wheels toward the shoulder, jammed on the accelerator and threw the car into third before he spotted the blue and red lights behind him. Just my luck, Charlie thought, just my stupid luck . . . to be the only man the cops nab the entire day.

Charlie lost another thirty minutes while the man-in-blue examined his license, his registration, his tags, and all the stickers on his windshield. The officer even checked the Sea World and Disney stickers on his rear bumper before kicking Charlie‘s low front right tire three times.

Charlie was ready to scream! His gas gauge read empty and he knew he had to get to work fast or he‘d be fired. He‘d been late too many times already and he had no clue as to what lie he could tell this time. And now he had to pee, God, did he have to pee. He was exploding inside and out. He knew he had to get to his office fast or he‘d have hell to pay. Charlie grabbed his cell phone, but he‘d forgotten to pay last month‘s bill and all he heard was dead air, not even static, he thought, just death. He reached down for his cup of 7-11 coffee, which was room temperature now, too tedious to drink, but he fumbled for it anyway, like an infant fumbles for a set of bobbing car keys, knowing his victory would be pyrrhic, but too pissed at the officer to go without at least one more quick shot of caffeine. And as he fumbled, the coffee slopped out of the cup and ran down the right leg of his trousers and now all he could think about was how desperately he needed to pee. He smooshed his heavy right hand down, trying to push the cup to the passenger‘s seat, bursting the cup, as the rest of the coffee soaked into his crotch making it look as if he‘d wet himself, as if he‘d peed himself like a three-year old. Charlie cursed himself for buying the extra 32 ouch size as the deluge continued to drip down his left pant leg, filled up his left boot and saturating his sock.

The cop smiled when he returned with the ticket—obviously pleased he‘d made Charlie pee his pants. It wasn‘t even ten o‘clock in the morning and Charlie knew it was going to be another one of those damned days.

 

Charlie walked boldly into the office lobby and smiled at the blank chairs where the security guards should have sat and watched. Charlie knew he was in for it. His only function at C.W. Cooksey was to hire security guards. He didn‘t have to train them or supervise them—just make sure they were at their desks from midnight ‗til eight each weekday morning. Charlie‘s boss, Ian McGregor, was pedantic about that—McGregor wanted to see security guards on duty. Somewhere in his Libertarian mind he was convinced that the DC cops spent all their time hanging out at Starbucks and the only way McGregor could protect himself (when he was sleeping) was to stash warm bodies at the entrances to his buildings. It was a long story, however, and Charlie didn‘t want to think about it. He was still fuming about his citation. The fine was two hundred and fifty dollars, which was two hundred forty-six dollars and nineteen cents more than he had in his entire bank account.

Charlie needed to hit the bathroom fast and when he dug into his pants for the key to the men‘s room, he realized he‘d worn his commando pants—the ones he first designed when he was in seventh grade—the ones with a fist size hole cut out of the right hand pocket, his private pool hall, he had called it—and he played more than most men thought. He reached deep inside and fiddled, realizing he‘d left the key and all his cash at home. He knew he had slid his money clip in his pocket and could only imagine it mixed up with his dirty drawers and socks next to the bureau. Now he‘d have to skip lunch and bum ten dollars off his secretary just to pay for enough gas to get home. ―Adding insult to injury,‖ Charlie mumbled, ―just adding insult to injury.‖ Charlie wanted to kick in the God damned bathroom door—he wanted to Rhett Butlerize it and storm in on Scarlet—and piss and whack off and tell the landed gentry where they could all go. And then the first few drops oozed out of his penis. And Charlie thought he would die—die with the pee and the pain—and the humiliation until Bob Dotson exited the men‘s room and held the door open for him. Like Melly, he thought, just like Melanie Wilkes her lonesome self.

―I hope you make it,‖ Robert smirked. ―It looks like you‘ve had . . . . a little trouble.‖ Charlie felt Robert‘s eyes running up and down his trousers like he was ironing a wet bathing suit. Robert smiled one last time as he starred at Charlie‘s coffee-stained pants before he silently walked away. Charlie didn‘t say a word. He just rushed into the men‘s room. After he finished and stood by the sink to wash up, he noticed the three small coffee blotches on his Van Gough Starry Skies necktie and sighed, ―Damned day, it can‘t get any worse than this.‖ Then his zipper stuck and he ripped his shirt, the one he‘d bought at Target with the twenty-dollar gift card his niece had given him . . . and he laughed. Maybe it can, he thought, maybe it can. His life seemed to pass before him as he stood in front of the mirror, Lady MacBething his hands over and over again thinking about what his life should have been. He had graduated at the top of his class from the University of Maryland, taken his master‘s at George Washington and was on the road to success—or at least the fast track—before he started drinking so heavily. My drinking‟s not that bad…at least I‟m not AA material. Sure, I‟ve lost four jobs in the past two years, but that‟s because my bosses never gave me a chance. The longer Charlie stood there feeling sorry for himself, however, the more he knew it was going to be a truly horrible day!

Charlie took the elevator to the fifth floor. Normally he walked, but he was so pissed and exhausted and hot and sweaty and tired and frustrated and angry and nearly demented that he needed a chance to cool down, reorganize his zipper, and let his pants air dry before facing the scowling faces of the ghouls he worked with.

The entire fifth floor applauded when Charlie got out of the elevator. Obviously Robert M. Dotson, III had shared the story about Charlie‘s wet pants and there they all stood there, grinning like Cappuccino spider monkeys, clapping their little paws together as if Charlie was just another hickory-dickory ten-o‘clock scholar showing up with damp pants, wet socks, and a misguided zipper two hours late for work. He would have pissed his pants if he hadn‘t already stopped off at the john, but at least he was able to avoid their smirks. He waved once, as if he were the king of England and they were parade attendees, barely looking at them as he trudged off to his desk. They obviously knew what he had suspected all along, what he wanted not to know: he was going to be fired—loudly—today.

Charlie was never able to figure out how he got into so much trouble. He was a quiet guy, he drank alone, and he almost never started fights. All he wanted was to be left alone with his little bottles lined up in a long row in his office. He just wanted everyone to stop bothering him with their petty, inane, stupid requests. He just wished the company would mail him his paycheck and let him work from some quiet bar in Georgetown or Capitol Hill. He‘d been working in an office for a dozen years now and didn‘t know how much more he could handle. They want to work me ’til I snap. They want to work me ’til my nerves are raw and I snap like a God damned string bean!

Charlie opened his bottom desk drawer, took out a bottle and swung it to his lips, but the bottle was empty. He mumbled a curse and slipped the bottle inside his briefcase; he didn‘t want the night crew to see another. Charlie suspected they‘d already reported the dozen or so he chucked last week. Charlie walked over to the bookcase, pulled out a copy of his favorite book, Winston Churchill‟s American Cousin and Other Tales by Scot Walker, and looked for the bottle of whiskey he‘d hidden behind it. Charlie always hid a few extra bottles in case of an emergency and if ever there was an emergency, this was it.

After taking a long swig, Charlie reviewed his phone messages. The first, from his boss, Kent McGregor, was worse than he suspected. The guards he‘d hired yesterday had walked out during the night and McGregor was furious. He wanted to see Charlie first thing in the morning and, of course, ‗first thing in the morning‘ had ended two hours ago. Charlie took another swig of whiskey and another for good measure and then walked to the other side of his office. He opened his filing cabinet, pulled out a bottle of Scope, rinsed his mouth for twenty or thirty seconds and spit into the dead plant sitting on the window sill. Used to be such a lovely green thing, Charlie thought as he took another mouthful and spit at it again.

Charlie walked back to the elevator, avoiding everyone‘s eyes—knowing they were waiting like the big-eyed gorillas they were. Charlie pushed the number ten and waited while the elevator rose slowly to the top floor. The boss and owner of this and dozens of other offices, Kent Clark Janus McGregor, IV, (like an IV dripping poison sumac, Charlie thought) kept the entire tenth floor for himself and his personal staff where he housed nineteen big-breasted, blond-haired, nimble-fingered secretaries, a Swedish masseuse, a twenty-something straight out of college personal trainer, a queer computer geek, a Hun who posed as McGregor‘s personal receptionist, and a dozen or so others whom Charlie was never quite able to identify, although he figured they were McGregor‘s long lost relatives—well-fed, but lost. All he knew for sure was that he had hell waiting for him on the other side of McGregor‘s hand milled mahogany doors and he wasn‘t prepared to enter those doors—not just yet anyway.

Charlie wanted to stand up straight—to be a man—but his knees started to shake and he could feel the sweat dripping down his armpits. Finally, after thinking about the pile of unpaid bills on the TV tray in his apartment, and gathering up his whiskey courage, he walked around the corner and said, ―Good morning, Susie,‖ smiling as cheerfully as he dared to McGregor‘s twenty-two year old blonde haired, blue eyed, 48 inch-busted Hun. (Hun for honey? He thought, or Hun as in Atilla? His stomach tossed hoping he‘d never find out the truth. The truth shall set you free—or kick you in the nuts, depending on which way the Hun blows and I bet she blows the old man a lot. Susie was busy filing her nails and didn‘t bother looking up. ―You‘re late. Mr. McGregor wants you to report to Rebecca. You‘re supposed to wait in her office until Mr. McGregor summons you.‖

Rebecca was the female version of Osama Bin Laden—somber, tight-lipped, ultra-efficient and a person who knew how to use everything and everyone to her advantage.

The CIA should hire Rebecca, Charlie thought, then again Rebecca probably is the CIA. If I was a guy at Langley, I’d sure as hell jump through her hoops—and her nooks and he crannies.

Rebecca was typing and Charlie tried to read the document as he stood behind her—he couldn‘t see much of it, but the portion he saw wasn‘t good. It was a report of last night‘s activities; the security cameras had watched Charlie‘s guards and now Charlie was going to have hell to pay.

―Here, take this to Mr. McGregor. I‘m sure he wants to read your latest report.‖ Rebecca flicked the back of her hand at him as if she were dismissing a preschooler, ―Go!‖

Charlie barely had time to glance at the remainder of the three-page document as he walked the few feet from Rebecca‘s desk to McGregor‘s office.

McGregor sat behind his twenty-foot table smoking a cigar. ―Give me that document, Gordon,‖ he said; McGregor never used formalities when he gave Charlie hell. If he referred to Charlie as Mr. Gordon, Charlie could count on a ten to twenty minute lecture. But if he just called him Gordon, Charlie knew he could expect the reaming to go on for at least an hour, and that ultimately everyone in the ten-story building would hear McGregor’s rants.

McGregor sucked in so much breath that the heather shook in Scotland, ―You asshole!‖ He screamed, ―You‘re late again … and you‘re drunk out of your God-damned mind! I‘m tired of you screwing up my company! You have the simplest job here at Cooksey. All you have to do is

sit at your desk in your own private office and make a few telephone calls. Interview a few men. Give them badges. Get them uniforms. Issue them guns. Put them in your car. Drive them to work. Prop them up in a chair. Tell them to sit. Sit like a god damned dog. That‘s it. Is that difficult?‖

Charlie knew better than to answer McGregor‘s rhetorical question, so he looked down from his belt buckle to the floor—somewhere in the ‗safety zone‘ of McGregor‘s kneecaps—trying both to be seen and not see at the same instant. Charlie felt somewhat like he did when he was a thirteen-year old boy being reamed by his dad. In those days, his dad would have strapped his bare butt, hugged him and then, that would have been the end of it. With McGregor, however, it was different: McGregor screamed, then he yelled, then he ranted, and then he paced and rambled. In between the tirade and the invectives, the crude language and the humiliations, Charlie picked up one small detail after another. Charlie would have to hire two more night watchmen. The previous two had skipped out sometime during their first night on duty. The cameras watched them as they spent the first half of the night wandering aimlessly up and down the hallways of the vacuous Myra Breckinridge Office Building Complex. McGregor was pissed because he knew that wasn‘t their job. They were hired to sit—just sit—not talk—not walk; they were just supposed to sit and look pretty for the camera. McGregor was punctilious about that! He wanted watchmen who‘d watch from the confines of their easy chairs behind a vinyl-covered counter. In case anyone broke in, he wanted his men to be seen and that was all. He didn‘t want his men to do anything. Last year, he‘d been indicted as an accessory to murder after one of his watchmen killed a man, and Mr. McGregor never wanted that to happen again! He just wanted his watchmen to be seen. And, of course, they couldn‘t be seen if they weren‘t there! An hour and twenty minutes later, McGregor was still screaming, still giving Charlie hell. Then he stopped suddenly, grinning like a stumping politician, ―Boy,‖ he said, ―you have until Friday to solve this little problem. This is your final warning—either you hire men who can sit without moving—without drinking—without eating—without even going to the john—or I‘ll kick your ass out the God damned door faster than I can exhale. Now get the hell out of my office!‖

 

Charlie was so exhausted when he left McGregor‘s office that his palms sweat and his underarms were as drenched as the Ecuadorian rain forest—even his feet were clammy and he swore he felt fungus growing in between his toes. McGregor had made Charlie stand at attention for the entire time and now Charlie was shaking so badly that his boxer shorts felt as if they had slipped to his knees.

Charlie couldn‘t afford to lose this job; it paid twice as much as anything he‘d made in his entire life, and the work really wasn‘t that difficult, at least not when things went well. And most of the time, McGregor was extremely fair to Charlie, allowing him time off for personal problems, even overlooking the stupid puerile idiotic things he did. Indeed, Charlie had known worse bosses; he‘d even been a bad boss himself, so he knew that sometimes bosses need to scream, to rant, to release the uncontrollable pressure that consume them. Charlie just wasn‘t used to being yelled at for such an intolerably long period of time. For the amount of money he made, however, he was willing to put up with it one more time, and now that he understood the problem, he‘d solve it. Charlie needed his weekly paycheck and was willing to push the rock harder than Sisyphus in order to avoid any future meeting with McGregor. Charlie was exhausted and as he stood trembling outside Rebecca‘s office, trying to regain his composure, he decided he‘d sneak down the back staircase to his office. He knew it was rather fruitless because everyone in the building must have heard McGregor, but Charlie couldn‘t face another Cappuccino monkey tirade.

Charlie‘s eyes were so tired now that they started to bug and, just as he reached the eighth floor landing, his right contact lens slid deep inside his eye. Charlie blinked several times, held his eyelid and looked down. He was sure the damned lens had slid all the way inside his brain. He thought he could feel it pressing against his eyebrow as it slid toward his medulla oblongata. It was way up above his pupil, scaling Katmandu‘s tallest peak, climbing faster into the dead zone and Charlie only knew what not to do: he knew not to panic. Charlie stood calmly; blinking until he cried, until slowly, very slowly, the lens slid back in place. Relieved, Charlie stepped out onto the fire escape and hurried along the outside of the building until he got to his office. He quickly slipped into the window, opened his desk drawer and poured himself another shot of whiskey as he tried to empty his mind of meaning. The more he tried, however, the more he began to understand.

Charlie reviewed the surveillance tapes McGregor tossed at him during his reaming and watched his men prance around the empty building as they modeled their brown uniforms in front of the floor-to-ceiling hall mirrors. He watched them polish their silver badges as the lolled on the newly reupholstered Victorian furniture in the lobby. He even watched them smoke marijuana and gnaw on beef jerky.

Charlie wasn‘t sure why he couldn‘t hire the type of men McGregor wanted, but he did know he was tired of hiring new men every day. Charlie poured himself another drink and wondered what he could do. After several more drinks, Charlie started giggling to himself. After several more, he was laughing riotously.

When he woke up, it was past midnight and he was crawling on all fours toward his desk, dragging himself up off the floor. He stumbled out of his office and went home, falling asleep on his bathroom floor in a pool of fluids he refused to admit might have come from his own body.

The next morning, red-eyed and disheveled, Charlie headed back to work. He called a few agencies and told them he needed to interview some serious applicants for a security position. He even placed an ad on the Internet. He had to have two reliable men by Friday evening or he‘d lose his job. He spent most of Tuesday drinking calmly in his office, trying not to think.

Wednesday was a waste! By one p.m., Charlie had interviewed half a dozen men, but most didn‘t want to work the graveyard shift and none wanted to work for a measly ten bucks an hour. Charlie had a shot of whiskey. Then he had another and another and a couple more for good luck. He decided to take money out of his own pocket and raised the ante to fifteen bucks an hour. The extra five bucks lured job seekers from everywhere. He saw four applicants an hour and by five p.m., Charlie had interviewed a total of sixteen men, three women and two transgender persons (no one could ever say that Charlie was prejudiced. If you could sit at a desk for eight hours, dressed in a uniform and look like a guard, Charlie would hire you). To be safe, Charlie hired six—two of each. Better safe than sorry, I‟d rather have all six show up and lose a few than to hire two and lose my job.

The graveyard shift didn‘t start until midnight, so Charlie dashed home for a quick nap. He didn‘t wake up until well after two the next morning and that‘s when he panicked. He jumped into his pants, slipped into his brown penny loafers, grabbed his car keys and raced out the door. When he looked through the huge plate glass windows at the Myra Breckinridge, Charlie wasn‘t surprised to see that the seats in the lobby were empty. Charlie used his passkey, entered the building, sat down at the front desk and cried. He had never really cried before—not as an adult anyway—and it was a new experience for him. He felt more worthless and hopeless than he had in his entire life. He wished he had a drink. He didn‘t know what to do.

Charlie wiped his eyes and went back to his apartment. He poured himself a double. Downed it and followed it with a triple—his own term for a knockout. He hit the bed with his keys in his pocket, his brown penny loafers on his feet, and slept until ten the next morning.

On Thursday Charlie raised the ante to twenty-five dollars an hour and called the best security outfit in town. He needed topnotch watchmen. His job depended on it. The agency could only afford to send Charlie two men, but he hired them both on the spot and told them he‘d give them each a $500 bonus at the end of their first week—as long as they worked on Friday.

The men had known each other for several years and figured something was wrong with anyone who‘d pay them that much for such an easy job.

―They‘re obviously being threatened by someone,‖ the first man said to his friend, ―It don‘t make no sense to me at all.‖

―Probably terrorists involved one way or another, don‘t you think?‖

―That‘s more than I want to handle; life‘s too short, let‘s get out of here.‖

The men nodded at each other in tacit approval as they headed toward their cars. ―I‘m heading back to the coast,‖ the first man said.

―I‘ll be at my mom‘s in St. Louis ‗til everything quiets down.‖

There were no other sounds that night, except for the squealing of wheels as the two experienced security guards hit the road.

Meanwhile, Charlie left his office and went home for a decent night‘s sleep—assured that he had finally solved all McGregor‘s problems.

By early Friday morning, however, Charlie knew his job was in jeopardy when once again he discovered that his security force had walked out on him. Charlie worked all day to rectify the problem and by four, he realized the thought of working the graveyard shift must have gotten to his prospective employees. ―Graveyard, graveyard, graveyard,‖ Charlie sang over and over to himself until everything became clear. That‘s the answer.‖ Charlie took several more slugs of whiskey and continued singing loudly to himself. ―If I had a shovel, I‘d shovel in the morn-or-ning, I’d shovel in the even-ning, all over this land… ‖

Charlie slapped cold water on his face and hopped into the shower in the fifth floor men‘s room and that’s when the solution came up like a shovel and whacked him in the head; it would be a risky, but it was attainable.

―I‘ll go to the graveyard and dig up cadavers, then I‘ll bring them back to the building and prop their carcasses up at the security desk and no one will ever be the wiser.

Charlie sobered up quickly under the freezing cold water and realized how much work it would be to go to the cemetery at twilight and dig up two or three cadavers.

―I could just drag my butt down to the morgue and wheel away a couple of stiffs,‖ Charlie thought more aloud than to himself. ―That‘s what I should do, just go down to the morgue and wheel away a couple of stiffs. I bet no one would even notice.‖

At eight thirty that evening, Charlie went down to the county hospital. He was wearing his security uniform so no one paid any attention when he walked in and strutted down the hall pretending to be a hospital guard. When he saw a small storage room, he slipped in, stole some hospital greens and quickly changed clothes. He didn‘t want anyone to identify him as a security guard sneaking into the morgue, but if someone saw a guy dressed in hospital greens, no one would say a word.

As he walked down the hallway looking for the entrance to the morgue, Charlie wondered if he could get away with it. But he knew he had to do something desperate, otherwise he‘d be lying somewhere in a gutter with nothing more than a bottle of Woolite to drink.

At 8:48, Charlie found a gurney, walked into the morgue and loaded it up with two very cold bodies.

Charlie pretended to be a little crazy as he slid the bodies onto the gurney. He saw the security camera but he didn‘t know if it was loaded with film or not. If it was, Charlie wanted the viewers to think he was a John Hinckley type or some other loony who‘d escaped St. Elizabeth‘s Mental Institution. Charlie didn‘t want to think he‘d be watched and identified.

As soon as Charlie left the morgue, he pushed the gurney to the storage room and changed into his security outfit. He covered the bodies on the gurney with a bed sheet and headed down the corridors of the Edgar Allan Poe General Hospital as though he had worked there for years. He was even drunk enough to whistle, ―Pray for the Dead and the Dead Will Pray for You,” as he pushed the cadavers to the front entrance . . . but no one got his little joke. He left the hospital unchallenged and continued out the door to his van where he loaded the cadavers and headed to the alley behind the Breckenridge Building.

Slowly and awkwardly Charlie dressed the stiffs in their brown and white uniforms—tying full Windsors and fitting their swollen feet into dress shoes was the hardest part. Then Charlie dragged them to their assigned positions and propped them up in chairs within sight of the camera and the huge glass windows at the front of the building before heading home for the best night‘s sleep he‘d had in years. At five Saturday morning, Charlie was awakened by a telephone call from the Washington DC Police Department. They ordered him to report to the Myra Breckinridge Office Complex immediately. The cop on the other end of the line refused to tell Charlie exactly what the problem was but Charlie assumed someone had broken in and robbed the place.

By the time Charlie got within a block of the Breckinridge, he saw dozens of cop cars blocking the street in front of the building. ―God, I hope McGregor doesn‘t fire me.‖

Lieutenant Mills Brooks escorted Charlie into the main lobby. There, propped up in the chairs in exactly the same position in which he had left them, were his two guards.

―Your men were strangled with their neckties last night, they were . . . they were . . . Oh my God,‖ Brooks broke down ―killed in the line of duty. They were such brave lads—so brave—so very brave. They sat there protecting your boss‘s property. They didn‘t even put up a struggle; they just did what they were hired to do. I‘m so sorry,‖ Officer Brookes fumbled for the right words, but he was unable to think of anything new to say, so he kept repeating, ―I‘m so sorry, so sorry . . . so very, very sorry. I never know what to say when officers are killed in the line of duty.‖ He suppressed a sniffle. ―The coroner was just here and said they looked like they‘d been dead for days. They were such brave lads; they must have been killed late last night. Look at them, they didn‘t even put up a fight; they must have let the perpetrator take anything he wanted. They were such fine lads. We must make sure that everyone knows about the heroic deeds of these fine young officers—these men who gave their lives as they sat all night long . . . and watched.”

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