"Another drunken episode," he said to me, wearing that same shit eating grin I've seen plastered to the face of so many other trust fund kids. The smile they think is bullet-proof... the eyes though are a mix of shame and... something else. Something I've yet to accurately define. I'd say indifference, but it's deeper, like a light has gone out inside and he doesn't care. He prefers the dark.
I take another long drag of the cigarette I promised myself I wouldn't bum off the maintenance man on my way upstairs. I took the elevator anyway, so I wouldn't be reminded of why I was trying to quit. I feel the smoke hit my lungs and think to myself that I wish it would do it's worst. Anything had to be better than cleaning up another born into wealth sociopath's mess. If I am quiet, and listen really hard, I think I can hear my lungs dying.
If only.
He sits there silent, as if he's waiting for me to yell at him, punish him the way his daddy never did because he was too busy taking a conference call from Asia or banging the gardener's wife while the poor bastard was being made to trim the rose bushes yet again. Mom never disciplined the brat either. Hell, this little shit never met his mother. Just a poor shell of what was left of her after a vodka and Vicodin breakfast.
I know why he does it. His actions have never mattered to anyone. No one has ever thought he was important. He's never gotten a rise out of anybody.
He's not going to start now. Not after what he's done. I won't give him the satisfaction.
The cigarette burns between my two yellowed fingers on a hand that looks much older than I recall it ever looking before. I pretend in my mind it's a trick of the light, some weird shadow that you make an excuse for in a photograph. It isn't. I'm old. And as the cigarette burns down, closer and closer to the filter, I take another breath, this time of clean air. Or whatever passes for clean air in this rank building. The cigarette will eventually burn out. It's inevitable. It's short and pointless life will be extinguished, and it will have served it's purpose in doing nothing but damage to someone it had no personal grudge against. It will leave behind nothing but a stink and a stain on the already disgusting ceiling tiles of this cramped and crumbling office. It will be unremarkable, indistinguishable, and forgotten as one of a million cigarettes smoked by a million people that day. Unimportant.
Goddamn, my hands look old.
"So what do we do?" he says. We. The word makes my stomach turn. To share a pronoun with this little bastard when it's all I can do to not jump across my desk and strangle him. Then again, who am I kidding? Killing this kid is one of those things you think about on your way home after the fight. The thing you tell yourself you should have done, when deep in your mind you know you never would have. I pretend it's out of some moral high ground that he's not lying in a puddle of his own face right now. That if I killed him, I would be like him. He should be thanking my conscience and my great upbringing. The truth is my upbringing wasn't anything to write home about. And I wouldn't mind being like him. I'll bet he can sleep at night.
The truth is, I'm a chicken shit coward.
Without a word, I look at the manilla envelope in his hand. It's thick, folded over. It's supposed to have $30,000 in it, but of course I'll count it, and of course it'll be short. He passes it over, along with the keys to his daddy's car. I tell him to report it stolen when he gets home.
The next four words he says make me hate myself more than I thought possible. Not because of what they mean, not because of what I'll have to do. But because it's just another day at the office. The shitty, broken down, cramped and crumbling office. Because of the word "We."
"She's in the trunk."
He checks his text messages on his way out the door and laughs, maybe at some stupid joke a friend made, maybe some racist picture on Facebook. Who cares. The little shit. The door closes, but it doesn't latch. The maintenance man said he'd fix that last week. And the month before that.
The cash sits on my desk. The cigarette is still stubbornly burning in the ashtray, refusing to go out. In my mind I beg it,
"Please..."
but I can't even finish the thought. What's the point? There's no mercy. Not for me. Not for the girl in that trunk. Whoever will be missing her will be begging "Please" too. They deserve it. I haven't for a long time.
His eyes. His soul is gone. It died behind them somewhere along the way. Maybe it was seeing his mother passed out topless on the front lawn. Maybe it was his father letting her slip away in favor of whatever woman he could force himself on. I'll bet the $27,000 on my desk the rich little bastard doesn't even remember when it happened.
We have that in common.
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