Zach VandeZande

I

People are always asking me what I do for a living. This is the first bullshit question in a series of bullshit questions. It’s a manageable piece of information— a quick and easy categorization. Where are you from? Come here often? All of them, bullshit.

Anyway, these bullshit questions are designed to determine one of the following:

A) Whether or not they should fuck me.
B) Whether or not they should even be talking to me.
C) Whether or not they should turn and run. Run until their legs are jelly and their bones ache. Run until they can’t see anymore and their heart is pumping pure death and they bend double and vomit on their shoes. Away from me.

I always tell them I’m a janitor.

If you’re really going to read this then I need to warn you about something: I am going to ruin some things forever.

You’ll never ever see them the same way. You’ll be on the phone or walking down the street and you’ll wonder if it’s me on the other end or bumping into you. And it will make you sick.

It’s because I know all the modern horror stories.

And I know one about making money.

Of course I’m going to be dead long before you end up with this in your stupid hands. Another copycat suicide in a long chain that might end at me. I’m really just guessing. Are you reading this, Brian? Is it all sinking in? I’m sure you are; you were always one step ahead of me.

If the story cuts off before the end it’s because I decided to die.





Let me paint a picture for you. A picture of my old job.

I’m sitting at a desk inside a little gray cubicle with high walls and one plexiglass segment about midway up that faces the hallway. All I see through it all day is asses walking back and forth. And occasionally The Fourth, but I’ll get to that.

So I’m sitting at this desk and waiting. Waiting for someone to die. They call me a Life Consultant, because it has a better ring than The Guy You Call When Your Dad Dies. I have busy work to do, filling out forms and some shit, but if I don’t do them they get done anyway, since it just all gets rotated between all the Guys You Call When Your Dad Dies.

My new job is much better except for the smell. Brian told me that once I start I can’t undo it. That no matter how hard I screw my eyes shut it will still be there in the darkness. He was right. But the worst part is always the smell. It punches you right in the face.

The phone rings at my old job. Someone has eaten it. Kicked the bucket. Dropped dead. Bitten the dust, or whatever. At this point all these expressions are still pretty hollow because I haven’t smelled it.

Eventually, all of you will end up talking to me. Or maybe you’ll get lucky and one of your loved ones will. It doesn’t matter.

I put on my little headset that I always thought looked so professional when I was a kid. Now it just feels like a dunce cap.

I push a button on my phone and my rehearsed greeting just falls out of my mouth.

“Good morning, this is Jonathan. How can I help you?”

Can I tell you a secret? My name isn’t really Jonathan. It’s a pseudonym. Lots of us use them. You’ll never know the difference because you’re just a voice and so are we.

The voice says, shakily, “Hi…”

When I was in training for this job, the taped calls we listened to always went like this:

“Good morning, this is ___________.”
(in a shaken voice) “Good morning _________, my name is _________. I’m calling to report that my father has passed away, and I want to know what we need to do to claim his life insurance policy.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that, __________. I can certainly help you through this difficult time.”

In real life it’s always “Hi…” and then the long pause. Or sobbing. Or hanging up. That last one’s my favorite, because it means I’m back at the end of the rotation in the phone system.

Of course, I could hang up on this voice. That’s called clearing the queue. Or I could put myself on unavailable when the phone rang and then take myself off again, which we call bumping. But those things are tracked, and you don’t get to be the best Guy You Call When Your Dad Dies by doing things that are tracked.

Can’t these voices have their lawyer’s voices call? It would be easier for everyone.

You might call me cynical, but I have a good reason.

“Hello?” I say, “Are you there?”

I try to sound empathetic. The voice lets out a squeak. I don’t know if it’s a man or a woman at this point. My computer screen is asking me this question.

There’s another moment of silence before the voice says, “I’m here.” It’s soft and weak and ruined. It sounds like it’s coming from underwater.

“What can I help you with?”

“My husband died.”

So it’s a woman. That’s helpful. I fill in the Title field and I go into automatic. Collect information. Begin workflows. Never, ever, ever, give out beneficiary information. This is a terminable offense.

Whenever the voice starts asking questions about money or benefits or anything, my answer is always I can’t tell you.

It’s such a great job.

I picture her husband, all fat and bloated in a hospital bed, his fingers greasy from fried chicken or cheeseburgers or something. His man-tits point down towards his distended belly and he’s sweating. A lot.

I have no idea why or how he died, but I always like to picture some fat ass in the hospital eating himself to death. If they did it to themselves it’s fine.

“Can I place you on hold for a moment?” I ask as the fat husband licks his fingers. I don’t even wait for a yes.

In my mind, the hold music is always some pseudo-depressing monster rock ballad. Something like November Rain or some equally hacky shit. If I ran this place it would be much more ironic.

I get up to go get a soda. Yes, we do this. You were right. The flashing hold light blinks at me, waving goodbye in four-four time while Axl Rose sings in my mind.

I’m humming down the hallway and the fat husband is staring at his arm, wondering why it’s so tingly. I’d better hurry.

Oh fuck, there’s only Diet. I settle for water.

Back at my desk the fat husband is clawing at his chest and his IV has come loose. He’s coughing up soggy chips. His heart is doing six-eight time, then nine-eight, then twelve-eight, like it’s some kind of experimental composer, contrasting it with the four-four of my blinking light.

What can I say? I’ve got a lot of free time to think of these things and a mind for metaphor.

I get back on the phone. The voice is too upset to be upset that I took so long. This is what is called a perk.

I ask some more questions and click a few check boxes on my computer, and Mr. Fat Greasy Hospital Bed is officially dead.

Now I’m thinking of quitting my job. Maybe starting a band. Living on the streets and leaving poetry on bus stop benches. Knocking out a vagrant’s teeth for a sandwich.

No really, it’s a great job.

There is one question I am NOT supposed to ask before I get off the phone. This one blank spot on the computer that we are only supposed to fill in when the information is offered. Whatever I do, I should not ask this question.

“How did your husband die?”

I hate leaving that spot blank so much. Call it attention to detail. But it always ruins my little one act play of the Fat Husband Who Had A Heart Attack.

She chokes out some answer about a car crash. I don’t know, I’m mostly just a conduit of information. Now Fat Husband is crumpled over a steering wheel with blood dripping from his matted hair and yellow-white bone showing from his ruined face. But I don’t know what it smells like, so it’s ok.

This is about how every call goes. I do my ending bit and hang up.

You might call me heartless, but at least I don’t feel it.

It’s such a great job.





So I’m sitting at my desk at my old job (and I’m still painting this picture) and I look up to see two gleaming white ass cheeks pressed up against my little plexiglass window.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Carter Preston Bradley IV, heir apparent to the Bradley Insurance Group. Carter Preston Bradley IV comes from the kind of family that likes to give their sons three first names, or three last names, or whichever. Carter Preston Bradley IV comes from the kind of family that owns an insurance company. Carter Preston Bradley IV comes from the kind of family you and me call “old money” and “stuffy” and “what’s wrong with this country.” Unless you and me are rich, of course.

Carter Preston Bradley IV is a permanent fixture in these halls and a permanent fuck up. He keeps things interesting. He’s such a great friend.

The ass cheeks slide back and forth on the plexiglass— two big creamy pinkish ovals that are much worse than any car crash or hunting accident. After all, nobody pays my mom a big settlement when this happens.

“Oh dear God,” I mumble into my bottled water. The butt cheeks disappear, leaving cloudy smears behind. The Fourth comes around to the open end of my cubicle while he buckles his tattered woven leather belt with one hand while holding a generic soda in the other.

You wore this belt in junior high. It made Carter Preston Bradley III furious, but it’s within the dress code, so in The Fourth’s words fuck it. After all, The Fourth only works security right now. He’s working his way up to CEO on the installment plan.

“And how’s my favorite Reaper today?” The Fourth asks. This is what he calls us, loudly in the halls when clients are visiting. He sits down in the spot on my desk I keep clear for the very purpose.

I put an index finger to my head and pull the trigger, doing the noise I learned in childhood that blows spit across my monitor: schpeeeww.

At the time, I didn’t know what that looked like yet. I do now.

This is the morning routine. Sometimes he puts something else on the window. It doesn’t matter.

“Hey man,” The Fourth says, “Quality is going to be listening in from 3:15 to 3:45 today. Just thought you would want to know.”

This is how you get to be the #1 Guy You Call When Your Dad Dies at Bradley Insurance. Get to know the burnout son that has access to every file in the company. Get to know when the bosses are looking, and when they are looking the other way. Get your initials on some of the work other people do. Most of this is done for me, because The Fourth likes keeping me around.

“Thanks.”

“No problem.”

The Fourth pulls a tiny flask out of his back pocket. He opens his soda can with his teeth and pours a little of the flask into it. I think it’s probably Everclear or vodka but he never mentions it or offers any. “Hey, Burton’s doing it again. Right now. Want to go see?”

“Yeh, no thanks.”

Burton is a middle-aged salesman who works on the third floor and likes to jerk off in the men’s room up on five because five is being perpetually renovated and no one ever goes there. The Fourth knows a lot of things about a lot of people in this company. He’s kind of like Big Brother, but all he wants is amusement.

If you point the tiny security camera with the state of the art directional microphone just right you can hear the heavy breathing and the hurried, ashamed sound of skin moving. It’s pretty disgusting. I know because The Fourth likes to pipe it into my phone line when I put people on hold.

I also get to hear Linda Farley crying softly about her aborted baby and the anti-depressants that were prescribed to her on Bradley’s insurance plan.

I also get to hear John Samuelson telling his boss to eat a shit-stained cock when the door to his office is closed. I also get to hear the janitor, Terry, mumbling drunkenly under his breath about killing an underage prostitute in Vietnam. Just putting his sidearm to her forehead and letting it loose.

I could go on about the modern day horror stories if you want, but I’m busy telling the one about making money.

Carter Preston Bradley IV knows what you do when not even God is looking. And he’s going to make damn sure you keep getting away with it.

He’s up at the office late nights, tucking away little nuggets of Truth about Terry and Linda and John and the rest, tucking them away where they won’t be found by the rest of the security team and the IT team and the management team. He laughs at your tracks as he drags the broom behind them.

He’s such a great friend.

“Ohh-kay,” he says in mock disappointment, “how about lunch?”

“Done,” I say, and log out of my computer and phone. The Fourth opens up my only drawer and takes out a report full of policy numbers and next to that social security numbers. He’s always stealing this kind of thing from my desk. I’m fine with it.

On our way to the elevator he puts it in the copier, breaks off the tab from his soda, and jams the start button down. The machine starts its rhythmic hum as we’re pushing the little down arrow. When the elevator dings the stack of copies starts falling to the floor. And we’re gone.

This is all a huge security breach because the company was supposed to stop identifying our participants by social security numbers some time last year, but The Fourth has probably disconnected the camera for that hallway and replaced it with a feed from last week. His seemingly spontaneous acts of corporate self-destruction are always planned days in advance, and his day planner (the one he only shows me) is always booked full.

At the time I didn’t know why, but I admired his tenacity and careful planning just the same. It wasn’t my inheritance. Now that I know, maybe I wish I didn’t. Of course, I wish I didn’t know a lot of things.





After lunch I’m sitting in a meeting (still painting, still painting) being led by an old turtle of a lady with the kind of plastered on smile that is part of the uniform in a place like this. She’s going on about being sensitive to a customer’s emotions or some such bullshit, and all I can think about is the sloppy old lady’s bazookas are staring at me.

Right now I’m thinking about dumpster diving in the back of a pizza restaurant and picking the cheese from the cardboard boxes because I’m just that poor and hungry.

It’s cold in here.

She’s wearing black pants and a navy blazer and it’s hanging open on one side and I started picturing her dead with her son who never calls her anymore, he’s on the phone with me balling. The doctor said it was coronary trauma.

The doctor said it was ugly.

No, really, it’s a fantastic job.

Now might be a good time to go over the code words, since the turtle is using so many of them while she blathers on and on with that creaking veneer of happiness beginning to show some cracks that only The Fourth and I know about.

She sends email forwards to her family of inspirational dancing puppies. None of them write her back.

Anyway:

That’s plan specific.
I have no fucking clue.

Working on that project should be an experience.
You would jump out the window if any of them opened.

We’re a lot of fun in this department.
You should apply for a handgun license now to plan ahead for when you want to kill them and then yourself.

You should say all this with that fucking smile on like the turtle lady. She’s in Quality Assurance. QA is the worst at this. Corner one of them in the hallway one day, and they will tell you stories about how fucking terrible their lives are. When they sit down with you to tell you how bad you’re doing at your job they are all sugary smiles and stern words. They don’t have to fake it, because they’ve learned to enjoy keeping people from their raises and checking the “least effective” box on their little scale. They won’t tell you this, but you’ll just know.





While we’re here, can I tell you something? If you’re planning to die on a business trip, do it alone. I know you’ve heard about how it pays out big time, but if your plane goes down with twenty co-workers aboard, the cashout is split between all of you. They are stealing food out of your baby’s fucking mouth because they didn’t have the decency to miss the 9:30 to LaGuardia.

Anyways, were you really going to hold your boss close to your breast and tell him it would all be all right? Were you going to tell him about how you diddled his secretary on his big mahogany desk? Were you, for once, going to tell him how you really feel about, let’s say, the company’s super-generous 2% 401k match that he would shitface grin about at every fucking new hire orientation?

I didn’t think so.

Life insurance is a beautifully wrong idea. Cash for your life. Break it down to a number. This is what you are worth. This is your wife’s secret relief. Your death as an investment election. A reallocation of funds.

Brian knows all about this.

So this is my old job. It’s really, really, really great.

You might think I’m sarcastic, but I have an absolutely fantastic reason.

II

Everything started going wrong with the most violent murder seen in this town in the last twenty years. Then an old lady slipped in the tub and who knows how long it took her to die, but I know how long it was until she was found. After that there was some bad chicken, and then the lady with the cats. The hospital job was a bad one. Then there was that sexual predator that committed suicide. That’s when it started to get really much worse.

Over beers The Fourth said the phrase “sexual predator” made him think of a Tyrannosaurus with a hard on. If it weren’t for the stumpy arms he’d be able to get off and there wouldn’t be any problem. We laughed hard but more people died anyway.

Eventually it was all suicides. Suicides are selfish because no one gets any insurance. Suicides in this town are like performance art. Suicides, no one ever sees them coming. Suicides are funny that way.

Everything started going right, really right, at a laundromat. Let me go ahead and paint another picture if you’re going to keep reading.

The weird thing about a laundromat is how it can somehow be disgusting and sterile at the same time. Maybe the yellow stains on the floor are from detergent, maybe the way the walls are gray at the bottom isn’t them molding on the inside, but I just don’t buy it. It’s all a façade.

Everything at a laundromat is depressing. It’s the kind of a place that you fight your whole life to get out of. It’s the kind of place where you see veterans and amputees and illegal immigrants and you don’t make eye contact with any of them, ashamed that you’re normal. Ashamed that you didn’t rent that stackable unit that fit so snugly in your apartment for fifty a month.

Today at a laundromat it’s just me and an old lady who smiles a big toothless grin at me while I load my bedsheets and Amie Lee’s underpants. She was staying over more and more often lately. I smile back weakly at this old woman because this is what I always used to do when I worked at Bradley Insurance, which at this point of the story I still do. I would always give the smallest possible amount of human interaction, just like I was checking off my boxes that would pay her kids considerably less for each year she lived.

Maybe they’re praying she dies while her insurance will still pay for a decent coffin. They don’t want to keep her on the mantle in the second least expensive urn they could find.

It used to be that I didn’t respect death. Maybe I still don’t, but I understand it better now. I understand that it’s not the slow motion drama or the sickening bloodbath that most of us want it to be. Of course, it’s also both. Death’s a funny thing that way. When you see it, if you see it, you’re not sure you really saw anything at all. Just violence or silence with no point at all. It’s about time I got to the fucking point.

This strange looking old dude walks in with an overstuffed garbage bag and heads straight for the big front loaders in back. I never use them because I always thought they were dryers. Every place I go is full of quiet embarrassments that I don’t tell people about.

He’s wearing an old flannel shirt, this dude. It’s all blues and greens and has cigarette burns. Underneath that is an old t-shirt he got for free at a fun run. It says “book it” and has a picture of a library book with legs and a headband, sweating like crazy. I’m hoping it’s laundry day.

Shit, that was stupid.

This old dude, he looks like he’s lived a shitload more than his years. His skin is dark brown and leathery and he has a shock of white hair stained yellow from smoke. He’s wearing big black-framed glasses that focus his eyes into lasers. He would fit perfectly in this gray place if it wasn’t for the eyes.

They’re not lost or blank or empty. They’re black and deep, and they could cut me right in half if I’m not careful. They’ve seen more than any of us and they still held on.

I find myself staring at him as he starts rummaging through his bag, loading things into the gaping maw of the machine. He holds up an old yellow shirt that looks like one I bought from a thrift store in high school and gave back to the same thrift store when I graduated from college. Maybe it is that shirt, but now it’s covered in dark brown or maroon spots. I never know what color to call dried blood.

He mutters something under his breath and he wads it up and throws it in with the others like it was nothing.

I keep staring at him, like he were some fucking case study, and in my head I’m taking notes. At some point the old lady leaves with her little basket held under her arm.

Talks to himself, but not deluded.

Jeans have bloodstains also.

See also light blue shirt in laundry.

The old man closes the door and fiddles with the dials. He turns around and glares at me while I’m sitting on the washer that’s sloshing around my dirty sheets and my emotional baggage.

His big fucking eyes grab mine hard, and I don’t know what to do.

“Hello,” I mutter. It is almost like I haven’t said it at all, like when I respond to the greeter at Wal-Mart and then keep walking wondering if I even said anything. I must have.

“Hey.” His voice is both dejected and triumphant and this is where I realize that sometimes, no matter how hard you want it, you’re not really the main character. Suddenly I’m wishing I’m far away. The old man takes a few steps forward and leans on the row of washers between us.

Right about now I’m wishing I never went to college. Right about now I’m wishing I put heads on Barbie dolls for a living for the equivalent of a dollar an hour. Hecho en Mexico.

“How do you do?” he asks me this as he reaches into his pocket for a cigarette, but over the washers I hear something else.

I tell him I’m in insurance and I put my hand in my pocket to play with my keys because I’m nervous. This is before I got the idea to tell people that I was a janitor. At this point if anyone asked I would always tell them insurance. This is the last time I tell someone that. This moment right here is the beginning of my big long suicide note.

“Oh really? What company?” he asks, and his eyebrows lift over his glasses and they’re suddenly much smaller and fit his face right.

His eyes have lost their hard glint and are now soft and interested. Clearly he has complete control over himself. I move through my keys with my fingertips.

“Bradley,” I say, and I look over my shoulder to make sure my car isn’t being broken into.

Right about now I’m wishing I was sitting under a bridge shivering over a burning newspaper.

“I know them. What do you do there?”

This is starting to turn into what I hate, and so I do my best to end the conversation.

“I make sure the recently bereaved get the least amount of money possible.”

“Well,” he says as he lifts himself off the washer and turns back around to watch his laundry, “That must be depressing. If you ever want to kill yourself, it would really help me out.”

Attention: A shark is loose in the kiddie pool.

He didn’t say another word, and he didn’t have to. I was fucked from the start. I stood there leaning against my washer, trying to puzzle out what he had said. He didn’t even look at me after that. He just watched his laundry go around like it was magic.

III

So now you know this isn’t my diary. This is my suicide note. I didn’t really start it with that in mind but I think that’s probably how it will end. Shotgun to the face? Slit wrists in the living room? Maybe I could disembowel myself on a ferris wheel, right as I’m cresting the top. I would rain down all over the families and their funnel cakes and their cheap stuffed animals and it would break each and every one of them. A monument to the life I lived— the biggest mess I can make.

Is it melodramatic yet? Brian told me that if you want to see the world end you need to get to work. Alright, let’s get to work.

This town, this town is big enough for a Starbucks but too small for an independent coffee shop to survive. I hate it just like I hate every other little thing in this story. But I sit here and I drink my grande skinny caramel machiatto because I get a discount and because I hate it. Bradley handles their medical insurance.

Some departments of Bradley Insurance Group do good in the world. Me? I don’t believe in that shit. I believe in the words between the lines of the mission statement. I believe behind the buzz words and the marketing terms. I believe in money.

Anyway I’m sitting in this shitty ass Starbucks with a chess board in the corner and little high school girls and boys with the thin veneer of their customer service philosophy. They are learning to fake a smile. I am waiting on The Fourth.

We’re going to pound back a liter or two of caffeine and then go to work all night on his pets and be finished in time to sleep for a few hours on the couches in the executive washroom. It’s Friday night.

He comes in the back door and shouts my name. I look up and smile my little half-interested smile.

The Fourth is always loud and disruptive to the other static patrons. The couple on a date. The youth group in the corner. The guy on his laptop writing some great American novel.

“Hey shithead,” he shouts as he walks past me to get his coffee. The leader of the youth group looks up with his clean cut goatee and his balding but “hip” haircut like he’s going to make an example out of us. Luckily he’s a chickenshit— he turns the other cheek.

The Fourth comes back with his to-go cup and too many packets of sugar and he sits down across from me. Each packet is shaken loudly and then poured into his Sumatran bullshit blend.

Give me coffee that’s gas station tar and causes cancer. In fact, just give me cancer.

“What’s the ladyfriend doing tonight?” the Fourth asks, not as pleasantries but because he knows I generally have something negative to say about her.

Right about now I’m wishing I was sleeping on garbage bags that fill an abandoned papazan chair in an alley somewhere.

“I don’t even want to know what that bitch is doing.”

I’m not in the mood to complain about Amie Lee. She’s why I came tonight. She’s why I come every night.

Amie Lee’s real first name is Aurora. It’s the kind of name that parents give their children when they expect a lot of them. She goes by Amie, which she spells with an ie, but not in a trashy way she says.

Amie is the kind of beautiful idea that not even Amie can live up to. A high powered, successful businesswoman who does some who-knows job and spends half her time on charity work. The kind of woman who never fails and makes sure you fucking know it. The kind of woman whose parents are just SO PROUD. The kind of woman who’s secretly on methamphetamines, but then everybody knows that but me.

She had told me that she used to be on it in one of her bitchy aura-cleansing confessions that almost always makes me feel like the bad guy and never gives up all of her little fibs, like how she’s still using and how she’s been paying for it by putting men between her lips.

I can fill in the details now while I’m painting pictures, but I can’t do anything about them because at this point in my little story I don’t know it. When I say “I don’t even know what that bitch is doing,” I mean she’s probably raising money to feed the whales. God knows what’s really going on in my apartment right now while I’m at Starbucks.

She’s why I come every night.

“So, what are we working on tonight?”

“Just setting up some new cameras and pulling the feeds, seeing if anybody new is losing it.”

“Thrilling.”

“What, you don’t like our little games?”

In a way I did, if only because it made me feel some sort of kinship with my coworkers. They were all pretty fucked up in their own ways. Like little broken puppets with the strings cut.

“Would I be here otherwise?”

“Oh, you just like hobnobbing with the rich folk.”

“I wouldn’t call standing on a ladder with my hands over my head for an hour hobnobbing.”

“Well then I guess you’ve got a lot to learn about being rich.”





I stand in the alley clutching my thermos of coffee like a baby or a drunk would his bottle. My breath is thin and white in the early winter cold. The Fourth was inside lying to the security guard at the front desk.

And this is how I live my life. This is the result of a four-year degree. An entry-level job and a piss-stained back alley for life.

And in the cold I’m thinking of fucking Amie again. Not verb fucking, adjective fucking Amie who eats vegan and wears leather. Amie who used to smile at me, sometimes. Amie the beneficiary calling in and getting me on the other end.

I messed up her paperwork so she would have to call back. She asked me if I’d ever had phone sex at work.

I guess it was never a normal relationship.

I hear a click and the back entrance to Bradley Insurance opens, cutting the alley with blue light.

“You ready?” the Fourth asks from inside.

“Yep.”

I’m really not. I’m still lost with this Amie shit. Maybe it’s because getting rid of that phone sex call was the first time I came up to Bradley after hours as part of the Fourth’s security task force.

He had called me into his office and said Balls, man. You’ve got balls. And my heart sank like a lead weight. Then we left work early and went to get a beer, and I distinctly remember sweating in the cold and not saying a word.

Now we’re in the Fourth’s office and now he’s my best friend and he’s pulling electronics out of a brown shopping bag. Tiny cameras, directional microphones, and flash drives. The Fourth rigs the cameras up to output to the flash drives, so all we have to do is swap them out with a fresh one. It’s not cost effective, but he doesn’t much worry about that. He doesn’t worry much about anything.

Later we’re sitting on someone’s desk looking at a picture of a horse and a lady (wearing nothing but snakeskin boots) on that someone’s computer and The Fourth says “I honestly don’t think that’s how you ride one. The horse is supposed to be beneath the lady, right?”

“Well, it’s between her legs, at least they got it partway right.”

And The Fourth prints the picture and puts it in a stack of payroll reports on the desk. If the owner finds it first, he gets to keep his secret. That’s standard protocol for animal porn on office time.

You see, we’re all broken in some way. We’re all bad people. This guy likes horse willies. That guy beats his wife. His wife can’t stop coming home again. This other guy shoots heroin between his toes because his five-year old daughter asked about the marks on his arms. We all learned how to do this stuff from our parents and our presidents and our friends and acquaintances. The Fourth just likes people to know that it doesn’t go unnoticed.

Me? I just like to watch, so I don’t feel as alone.