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Thoughtless (423 hits)

Category: UberMadness! Entry
Labels: fiction

Rating: 2 on 3 reviews (Rate this item) (V)

Submitted by Corn Nugget (View user info) at 2005-08-01 00:15:43 EDT

This post was an official UberMadness! entry. Click here to view the original matchup.

He pushed his way onto the train, jostling a pregnant woman, causing her to drop her bag of groceries. He barely noticed as she stooped to pick up a few stray tomatoes and muttered angry words at his feet. When he arrived at the office he brushed past his secretary, ignoring her greeting, and slammed the door in her face.

He sat down in his leather chair, reached over to turn on the computer, accidentally spilling yesterdays coffee on the stack of mail that had been there, unread, for two weeks. "Sarah!!" he swiveled his chair around to face the door, shaking the cold coffee off of his hands.

Sarah scurried into his office with her head hung low and her eyes down. She stood in the doorway while he chastised her for leaving the coffee on his desk, for not greeting him properly in the morning, for failing to have fresh coffee ready for him when he arrived, and finally, for being too timid. She profusely apologized, retrieved a fresh cup of coffee, and worked around him to clean up the mess on his desk.

She went back to her desk in the atrium and buried her face in her hands. She cried, angry with herself for working for a man like Mr. Edmunds, angry with her husband for dying and leaving her with no money to care for their son, and angry with the world, because it would surely corrupt her son.

She heard a tick-tick-tick sound approaching. She hurried to wipe the wetness away from her eyes, coughed slightly, and sat up straight. A blind man came around the corner, his cane thrust out before him, helping him feel his way along. She smiled, grateful that he would not be able to see her disheveled appearance. She could see his lips moving as he approached her, apparently counting his steps. He walked directly towards her, as if he could sense her appearance.

"Miss?" His voice was smooth as silk, deep and lovely. His skin was a radiant chocolate color, and it contrasted beautifully with his cream suit.

"Yes, sir?" She held back her annoyance at his assumption that a woman would be the secretary. They lived in an age where men were almost as likely to attend to busy offices as women. Normally she would have kept quiet, but her morning had made her bitter, and she found herself addressing the issue before the blind man could tell her what he wanted.

"Excuse me," she began. "Why do you assume there is a woman sitting here? Do you also assume that your nurses are always women, and your cab drivers are always men? Surely you've noticed that gender roles are changing, and even if they weren't, it's extremely rude to make assumptions about who does what!" she paused to breathe, and started up again. "I could just as easily get a job in a factory!! You wouldn't assume I was a woman then, I'm sure!"

He stood, rooted in his spot, with his cane resting gently at his side. His smile was as beautiful as his voice, "No, I smelled your perfume... not many men wear such sweet scents. But you are right, it isn't kind to assume you are a woman simply because you smell lovely. Perhaps I was just hoping I'd have a chance to chat with someone sweet before having to face the gorilla that sits in the office behind you. Accept my sincere apologies."

"Oh." she was hot with embarrassment. "Should I tell Mr. Edmunds you're here, then?" He smiled and nodded.

***

The blind man surprised her the next day. She didn't hear the ticking of his cane, nor the soft fall of his steps. He politely coughed to announce himself to her.

"Did you forget your cane?" she asked.

"No, it's here, in my pocket." he reached inside his jacket pocket, flipped his wrist, and the cane snapped out, long and straight. "I didn't need it today- I simply followed the scent of a beautiful woman through the building." Sarah's laughter came out in a hoot, and she stood up to show him into the inner office.

"You counted your steps, didn't you?" she asked him, with a silly grin spread across her face. He chuckled and nodded. They both stepped into Mr. Edmunds office, chatting and teasing each other.

The men stayed in the office the entire day. She brought them lunch, and shuttled full coffee cups in, taking the empties out. At the end of the day she found herself in an uncomfortable position. Mr. Edmunds had never stayed later than 4:30, and now it was 5:00, and she had to pick up her son within the hour. She wondered if she should just leave, or if she should ask to leave, or perhaps she should just tell him she was leaving. She stood outside of his door, contemplating her options, and she heard them arguing.

She leaned in a bit, to hear better. She stood before the door for a few moments before coming to her senses and opening it. The blind man was already standing, facing her. Her boss jumped in surprise, thrust out his arm, pointed at the door, and bellowed, "GET OUT!".

Sarah quickly told him that she was leaving for the day, retreating as she spoke. Mr. Edmunds looked as he always did- angry and bitter, oblivious and stupid. He continued to yell at Sarah, accusing her of being all of the things that were really only alive within himself. "You are such a stupid woman! I'm doing business here, and you're oblivious to the world around you! You're just bitter with men, isn't that the problem? You angry, bitter, stupid oblivious bitch. You leave now, and I don't need to see you back here. Ever again. I won't stand for this!"

She stood in the doorway, looking at the two men, with surprise on her face, and hot words in her mouth. Before she could retort, the blind man approached her, took her hand in his own, and led her from the building.

Sarah started to cry. Not because she had been fired, but because she was touched by the kindness of the blind man. Silent tears rolled down her cheeks, and he offered his handkerchief to her.

"My name is Marcel" he said as he pulled them to a stop at a busy intersection.

"How did you know to stop right there?" she looked around for clues. "Oh, I'm Sarah." she added.

He explained that he could hear the patterns in the traffic and could feel the gentle downward slope in the sidewalk.

"Marcel, you must always be thinking. Analyzing what you hear and smell... isn't it overwhelming?" she noticed that they still walked, hand in hand, and she noticed that she enjoyed the dry cool feel of his palm in hers.

"I'd rather be thinking too much than too little. Your old boss is thoughtless in many senses of the word, but it is insulting for me to tell you this, as if you didn't already know he was such a man. I'm sorry for what he did to you, Sarah." he gave her hand a gentle squeeze, and they began to cross the street. "And before you ask, I knew we could cross because I heard the traffic stop, and also because these lights are all timed the same, so I knew it was time."

They were walking towards the train station, when Marcel paused, pulling her to a stop alongside him. "You have to pick up your child? Is that it?".

"Yes, but how would you have known that? You can't smell things like that!"

"It doesn't take much thought to know a young woman who is in a rush to leave work at a particular time has something important to attend to. If it were another woman I might wonder if she had a boyfriend who threatened to strike her if she didn't arrive home at a certain time- but you are not a woman like that. Do you have a son or a daughter, and more importantly, are we walking in the direction of this child?"

Sarah laughed, and pulled him towards the station, "Yes, I take the train to the southside, that's where he is. And you? Where do you go?"

He explained that his loft was on the north end of town, near the park. As they walked, he described the sounds in the morning, the birds that stood on his sill to wake him, the children laughing in the park, dogs barking as they chased squirrels. They parted ways with her thanking him for his support and kindness, and him thanking her for her curiosity. "Not many people ask me how I know things, and how I think. You make me feel special, Sarah."

Such a statement would have usually made her ill at ease. It seemed cliché and overly-sensitive- too soft. Hearing Marcel say it only assured her that he was a good man, who thought enough about life to appreciate the small things that most people took for granted.

Her thoughts stayed on Marcel as she rode the bumpy train through the city. She picked her son up from daycare, and told him stories of the blind man as they walked the two blocks to their apartment.

They ordered Chinese for dinner, stayed up late watching movies, and slept in the next morning as a forced celebration for her having freedom from her job. The phone shook her awake. She wiped the sleep from her eyes, scooted her sons small body to the side, and reached for the phone.

Mr. Edmunds voice boomed in her ear, "You're not here! I have no coffee! Behavior like this isn't to be tolerated in this office, Miss Kline!"

Anger shook her voice as she told him that he had fired her. Annoyance peppered his words as he scolded her for taking things too seriously, "If you make a man angry, you must expect for him to speak in angry terms, Miss Kline. Are you really stupid enough to think that you were allowed to take the morning off?"

"The morning off? You fired me!" she was astounded by how thoughtless he was. He fired her, then yelled at her for... being fired?

"You have ten minutes to get here, or you have no job!" he hung up, and she kept the silent phone to her ear.

Of course she needed the job, she no longer had the luxury of being a stay at home mom. She hurried to dress, woke her son, and they headed out the door. She kissed his head as they arrived at his babysitters house, and ran for the train station.

Thirty minutes had passed by the time she arrived in the office, out of breath, sweaty, and defeated. She made a pot of coffee, and took a few phone calls. When the coffee was ready, she poured a cup, added exact amounts of cream and sugar, and entered Mr. Edmunds office.

She was surprised to see Marcel sitting in his usual spot, talking with Mr. Edmunds. Her boss accepted his cup of coffee, and ordered her to leave, as if she had grand plans of staying to chat with the two men. She turned and asked Marcel if he'd like a cup of coffee, but before he could answer, Mr. Edmunds spoke up again, telling her to get out. Marcel gave her a kind smile and shook his head.

She pulled the office door shut behind her, and leaned against the wall. She could hear them talking, Mr. Edmunds bumbling along, saying things without thinking, Marcel with his calculated and controlled replies. Curious as to what business these men had, she stayed near the door for over an hour. They seemed to be speaking of the past, of the future, of family... The tones of their voices sounded business like, but the words sounded as if they were of personal nature.

At the end of the day, Marcel came from the office, and asked if he could walk her to the train. She blushed and smiled, and said she'd like to walk with him again.

Their conversation stayed general until they reached the station. Before they parted ways, Marcel offered her a job.

"Your boss is a thoughtless man, and he has tried to ruin many lives, including my own. I know you work for him because you have few options, so I'm presenting you with a solution. Come work for me." His voice was steady and low, his face serious, his body rigid.

"Why do you do business with him, if he has tried to ruin your life?"

"Why do you always seem to ignore my questions, and instead ask me questions about the less relevant things? Will you work for me?"

Her brows furrowed, she was not used to kindness like this, and found herself distrusting of it. True to his nature, he sensed her unease, and invited her to talk it over during dinner. They made plans to meet at The Centurion for dinner, at eight.

Sarah hurried to the daycare and asked the old woman if she could watch her son overnight. Then she hurried home, showered, changed into a light dress, and headed towards the restaurant.

Marcel was already seated when she arrived. He was wearing a burgundy suit, and sipping on a glass of wine of the same color.

"Your wine and your suit are exactly the same color" she said, as she sat down.

He smiled and nodded, "Red wine is rich and smooth, and so I'd like to be. I'm too blind to be rich, and too caring to be smooth." Sarah laughed, but then she wondered if he was smoother than he'd like her to realize.

She wanted to know more about this job, what it was, and why he was offering it to her. He could sense her impatience with their small talk.

"I know you want to know about this job. To be honest, Sarah, I don't know what I'd have you do, but I won't have you working for him any longer."

The statement bristled Sarah, "That's very kind, but you must understand how cliché this whole situation seems. The poor woman who is widowed early in life finds a rich blind man to save her from her lowly job and awful boss. It's almost like Cinderella, but less believable."

Marcel's chuckle rose deep from his belly and filled the restaurant. People at nearby tables turned to look, smiles washing over all of the faces. This did nothing but anger Sarah, reminding her of the shame that her boss made her feel on a daily basis.

Her voice rose as she repeated herself, "Marcel, I will not be a character in a clichéd story! I will not be the fool who walks the expected path!"

His laughter stopped, and his tone turned serious. "My brother caused my blindness, he led my mother to her grave, and he will ruin your life, as well. He doesn't do these things after careful plotting and planning, he is thoughtless."

"Your brother?" she asked.

He pulled out his wallet and handed her his business card. "Sarah, my name is Marcel Edmunds."

She read his card, surprised at his name, his relations, and his title. "Psychic" she read, looking up at him. "You're a psychic?"

Again he chuckled, "No, of course not. I'm perceptive, and I pawn it off as a special ability. It makes money, and it allows me to offer help to people without having to sit through classes on psychology. My title is 'psychic', but my ability is really an affect of empathy and perception. I imagine that's true of anyone who says they are psychic, but I can't be sure."

"And you're Mr. Edmunds brother?"

"Yes."

"He made you blind?"

"More or less, yes."

"How?"

Their waiter came over to take their dinner orders. Marcel ordered steak, Sarah asked for the same.

"Sarah, his thoughtless behavior as a child... I was 5, he was 9..." he sighed, obviously impatient with the telling of the story, but when Sarah didn't allow him to dismiss it, he carried on. "We were playing with squirt guns, he filled his with bleach from the housekeepers bucket, and squirted me, multiple times, in the eyes."

"You can't be serious." she really didn't believe what she was hearing. Her thoughts immediately shifted away from Marcel, and to her own son. What if he was playing in bleach right now? What if the old woman had fallen asleep and allowed him to toddle around the house playing with rat poison? "I'm sorry, of course you're serious," she corrected herself. "And your mother?"

"He left her in a hot car."

Sarah sat still, barely breathing, fearing that she might laugh at such a ridiculous statement. Any question that she could ask about it would surely expose her doubt, and maybe even reveal that she found humor in the situation, so she stayed quiet.

"I know it seems ridiculous, but I assure you, it did happen. He left her in the car while he visited his financial planner. The windows were all rolled up, and they believe that she could not figure out how to get out."

"Why wouldn't she just open the handle?" Sarah was grateful for Marcel's blindness at this point because she knew her face was awash in disbelief.

"Sarah, she was an old woman in a car that was advanced beyond her understanding. She lived in an era of simple things. She simply didn't know."

"And why wouldn't he have gone to jail, for killing her?"

"Because she was an adult, because the family insisted that she had been ill, because my brother is a man of influence. It could be any of those things, or all of them. The point of this dinner is not to bare my family secrets, but to convince you to work for me."

Sarah had accepted the invitation to dinner, hoping it would make things more clear. Instead it made things more obscure and unbelievable. She sat back, closed her eyes, and let her mind wrap itself around the things she had just been told. She heard a great shuffling, and when she opened her eyes, she was surprised to see Mr. Edmunds pulling a chair up to their table.

"Marcel. Miss Kline." he greeted them as if he weren't surprised to see them together. His fat head swiveled around, looking for a waiter. He waved his arm and called out when the busboy passed by. "I'll have a gin and tonic, and be quick about it if you expect a tip!"

The waiter came by with the drink, took Mr. Edmunds order for steak, medium well, with a side of vegetables- Not Potatoes!- and two pieces of toast with butter. He called the waiter back to add a side of coleslaw to his order.

When the food was served, Mr. Edmunds insisted that he got his meal, first. He reached past Marcel to get the salt, and spilled the wine on his brothers lap. "Sarah! Get a napkin and clean this! We can't eat with wine dripping from the table!"

Marcel excused himself, and went to the bathroom to clean himself off. Mr. Edmunds used Marcel's knife to cut his steak. He ate his food quickly and noisily. When Marcel came back, he felt around the table for his silverware.

"Mr. Edmunds used your knife, Marcel." Sarah offered her own knife to him, but Mr. Edmunds was quick to hand Marcel's knife back to him- blade first. Just before Marcel's hand wrapped around the sharp blade, Sarah jumped up to intercept.

"How thoughtless! You might have cut him!"

"What? What? Maybe you should leave. I make it a point not to socialize with anyone who works beneath me." Mr. Edmunds wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and shoved another bite of steak into his gaping maw.

Marcel gently told his brother that Sarah was staying, she was his guest, and he wouldn't have her be dismissed.

Mr. Edmunds angrily released his fork and knife, shoved his chair back, and said, "That's fine. You can take advantage of the poor woman. You can hope she wants to fuck an ugly blind man. I won't get in the way of that!" He left in a flurry that was unusual for a man of his size.

Sarah asked Marcel what she'd be doing, if she worked for him. He told her that he needed her to manage his household, buy groceries, fix dinner, keep things neat and organized. She told him that she didn't need his generosity, but she did need his friendship, so she accepted.

***

Sarah and her son moved into Marcel's grand house. Her son loved running through the tiled corridors in his stocking feet, sliding from room to room, filling the house with his light laughter. Things went well for a month.

One month to the day, things started falling apart. It started with a knock on the door. Sarah opened the door, and stood face to face with a large old woman who claimed to be Marcel's mother. The woman didn't seem surprised when Sarah displayed disbelief. "Marcel's mother is dead" Sarah announced.

"No she ain't. Where's he at?"

"He's working. Would you like to leave a message or come back later, ma'am?"

"You tell dat boy to stop his lies, and to come see his ma when he has time!"

Sarah heaved a huge sigh and sung the heavy door shut in the old womans face. The woman knocked again, and Sarah hesitated before opening the door once more.

"Hey girl!" the woman bellowed.

Sarah swung the door open, and she stood before the woman again.

"Dat man is thoughtless, so don't go a-fallin' in love with him. If you wanna man you can love, you should meet my other son. He da nice boy of the family. Not manipulatin' like Marcel. He ain't too smart, but he ain't evil, neither. You gotta watch out!" Her large bosom heaved up and down with her laughter. "Listen here, girl. Marcel is a thoughtless man, full of trickery!"

Sarah shut the door again, refusing to or believe the woman on the stoop. She imagined Mr. Edmunds had sent her in another one of his thoughtless acts. When Marcel got home that night, she told him about what had happened, and his hearty chuckle assured her that the woman was lying.

A week later the phone rang. Mr. Edmunds was trying to keep his voice controlled, but she could still hear the anger peppering his sentences.

"Listen here, Miss Kline. I'm not the type to get in someone elses business, especially since it's not my job to make sure stupid people don't do stupid things, but my mother told me you were living with my brother, and I'll have you know that it's a bad idea! He's been a bitter man since the day he was born!"

Sarah felt her anger rush through her veins, "Easy for you to say, isn't it, Mr. Edmunds? Don't you have any regret? How does it feel to go through life knowing you blinded your brother? And Marcel already told me about your mother!"

"Blinded?"

"YES!"

"He's not blind, Miss Kline. That's thoughtless of you to assume such a thing. He's just a little clumsy. Blind! Ha!"

Again, when Marcel came home, she confronted him.

"How thoughtless of you to accuse me of not being blind!"

"But that's what your brother said!"

"My brother killed my mother!"

"Your mother was here!"

"Did she bring pie?"

"No."

"Then it wasn't my mother."

"But I thought your mother was dead!"

"She is dead. Would you make some pie?"

"But-"

"But nothing. I'm not paying you to think. I'm paying you to do what I need. Remember the position you were in, just last month? Please go make some pie." He patted her gently on the shoulder and retreted to the den.

User Reviews

Submitted by Brdn_Nkd (user info) at 2007-12-14 15:16:07 EST (#)
Ranking: 2

that was intentional by the way. Because that's how I felt. that's it? That's the end? You've got this great set up, this fantastic build up and leave us to drop on our faces like that? was there supposed to be more to it? either way great stuff.

Submitted by Brdn_Nkd (user info) at 2007-12-14 15:14:55 EST (#)
Ranking: 2

i really enjoyed reading this but then I got to the end and was left feeling

Submitted by FunnyAsCancer (user info) at 2005-10-30 05:25:05 EST (#)
Ranking: 2

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