How Bizarre, How Random, How.....

Chapter II - Of Family and Misfortune.

Owing to the smallness of the town, he was back home in under ten minutes, by which the time the pain had suddenly grown unbearable, so he went straight to the living room and landed flat on his couch.

“What happened?”

“Pain…”

“Oh…..is it hurting?”

“Pain hurts, that’s why its called pain.”

“I wanted to ask you how much, but never mind.”

“Yes, it hurts a lot. That’s why I’m writhing with pain on my goddamn sofa instead of…oh, fucking hurts…”

Joyce came with a glass of water and a pill on her hand.

“What’s that?”

“Something Kavita gave me?”

“Who?”

“You know, that Asian woman. She says it really works. Better than traditional medicine, that’s what she says. Where she comes from they use it all the time…..”

“If where she comes is so good, why doesn’t she stay there?”

“Bernie, that’s so unlike you. You’re talking like a racist. And I never said….Oh my God…”

She said the last in response to her husband almost falling down on the floor. She hurriedly put the glass aside and tried to stop him from falling down. She could barely hold him up.

“Listen,” he said, hoarsely, “ is there anything you want to tell me?”

She looked at him for a minute, confoundedly.

“What?”

“Things you’ve hidden from me, things that could be important. Is there anything like that?”

“Of course, there are things that I’ve hidden from you. I’m under no obligation to tell you everything about my life.”

“Look, if there’s something really serious, like a....robbery or…heck I don’t know, something that could land you in jail, you’d better tell me.”

“In jail? What are you talking about?”

“The truth. That’s just what I want to know. Here, give me the glass of water. The water only, please, not that damn pill, God knows what’s inside that. The water……I fucking don’t want the pill, okay, give it to your friend and tell her to shove it up her ass. Just the water, please.”

He drank half of it at once.

“Look, its that creep Hermann…”

His wife froze.

“He says he’s got something on us and he’s using that to blackmail me. Don’t let this get out, okay. At all. Or we’ll be screwed. I just asked you for formality’s sake. He says he’s got something on one of us. Could be anyone. You, me, our two sons. Now I know for sure that its not me, its very likely not you, so its got to be one of our boys. Frankly, that doesn’t sound like its too outrageous.”

“Our boys doing something that could land them in jail? That’s outrageous.”

“Maybe not. Today’s kids, you never know what they might do. And my sons, they weren’t the brightest of the bright, if you know what I’m talking about. Who knows what they did, putting me in misery like this. Fuck.”

“Stop swearing. I don’t like it when you swear.”

“We’ve got a big problem here, and all you care is whether I swear or not?”

“What if he’s bluffing?”

“He’s not. I saw it in his eyes. Or he may have been, but I think he wasn’t.”

“What did he want?”

“Oh, he just wanted to get back in the force.”

“And for that he was blackmailing you?”

“He really wanted to get back. And he’s blackmailing me because he wants to make sure I do my best trying to get him back in. He says he’s going to find out whether I did my best or not.”

“How’s he going to know that?”

“I don’t know. But he gave me such a face that I believed him.”

“Oh, my God, Bernie, did he hurt you?”

“Yeah, he did. He got me in this damn wrestling position that I should have seen coming. Totally got me in a hold. I couldn’t move or do anything.”

“IS that why you’re hurting so much?”

“No, that just made you unable to do anything, but it didn’t really hurt as such.”

“ I think he’s bluffing. I still do.”

“Because you can’ t bear to think of your children as having done anything that could land them in jail. Wake up. It’s the real world. This is 2005.”

“And you’re so quick to believe what that creep said.”

“It makes sense, what he said…”

“You hold your sons in such low esteem that everything he said made sense.”

“I don’t hold them in low esteem. They hold themselves in low esteem and never want to improve.”

“They’ve gone to college, both of them.”

“Which college? Everyone goes to college these days. Gives them a chance to shirk responsibility and smoke pot.”

“You didn’t go to college.”

“So what? I didn’t sit around doing nothing either.”

“Our boys are good, Bernard, and you know it.”

“They’re aimless, a bunch of hippie wannabes who sit and smoke pot all day. You remember how much Mike embarrassed me the last time he came? So high he couldn’t do a thing. And then he’d give lectures on why marijuana should be legalized, not that he made a bit of sense, every sentence ended with a ‘dude, but you’ve got to legalize that shit’”

“That’s just a phase. He’ll get over it.”

“Okay, okay, lets not have this conversation anymore. They’re good, it’s a phase, they’re fucking going to graduate with honors and end up in…..I don’t know, Harvard, Johnny might become a heart surgeon or something, who knows such good boys what they’ll do.”

“ I think that creep thought better of our sons than you do.”
“I have a murder to solve, you know.”

“I know. I have knitting to do.”

Which brought a sharp look from husband, at least as sharp as one of her knitting needles, which really weren’t very sharp at all, being but knitting needles.

Yup, he gave her a sharp