Wolf on the Lamb
I've been on the run from the law for seven straight days as of now. I'm starting to feel like a man in a Johnny Cash song.
I've been shuttling from safe house to safe house, staying three steps ahead of the cops and two meals behind the norm. Do breakfast when they're doing dinner. Do lunch while the late shift is shooting the shit, waiting for drunks in to pour out of the bars. Do breakfast when the cook knows you're the only one there to do breakfast. It wins you that sly grin, that eye wink from the waitress, that extra helping of overdone bacon.
It's a formula that works if you keep an eye on society and the way predators and prey dance. It's the way the fringe of society knows you need a break, and they're always willing to grant it. Helps them stay sane, too, I guess. Either way, the cops still think I'm pretending like I'm still in the town like I'm supposed to be. Mainly because I dance in and out of city limits just enough for them to think they have me cornered. Making people of artificial authority think what you want them to think is pathetically easy.
I got a dozen houses, a few of your cooler, wiser, older cops and a couple of cab drivers on my side. It's the modern Underground Railroad for people on the run from the law. The law calls it a felony, we call it justice thou art be. It ain't much and it's tiring. But it's there, it's real and I'd be lying if I told you I wasn't getting yet another thrill from it all.
I get 45 minute cab rides for 15 bucks and a pack of smokes. I get free smokes at the 7-11. The Hispanic women at Dunkin Donuts feed me as if I were one of their own. They read the tired in my eyes and a maternal instinct kicks in, I guess. They sit me down in the back, pour coffee and bring me donuts and backrubs. I go to the Hess station and get tips on where the cops are hiding, not to mention full tanks on credit. Plus a pack of smokes or two and all the coffee one can drink. Underground Railroad is aided evasion with benefits.
*
I got into this situation because I'm a genius compared to most zombies wandering through the mechanisms of life. I see a certain set of data points accumulating, say, potential dishonesty, disrespect, disregard and I read them. I put them together to make a coherent and persuasive argument out of them. I'm always right. I get paid for it professionally by analyzing data and spinning it into persuasion. I make something of it personally because it is my nature. I see facts aligning. I see intent gaining steam and I react. Pisses the hell out of people because they know I read their minds. I'm not reading their minds. I just soak up more signals, perspective and transmitted guilt than the average person. I connect data points correctly. 'Tis a curse and a blessing.
*
Y'all might now be wondering what got me into such a pickle that I'd be running for a week now. I'll tell you what I did as long as you promise not to tell. Everyone else promised so far and I haven't been caught up with yet. Would hate you to be the one who got me nabbed? Trust me, you would. The Underground Railroad will spit in your food for ever and ever. Not a threat, that's just the way it is. That's why cops don't go to McDonalds. That's why they shouldn't go to Dunkin Donuts. Ha ha.
Truth is, I'm in love with a cop's wife. I made the stupid move of telling him she fucks my brains out, too. I asked him to take his watch and look at it for five minutes. Then look at it for the next three hours and 55 minutes. That's the difference between his boner and mine, I said. Suffice to say, he wasn't too happy about that. The Underground Railroad is probably still laughing, though I was discrete enough not to give the cop's name. So much for small favors. Doesn't matter, I guess. If he's driving a squad car with cherry lights on top, he's already consumed his bellyfuls of fine ground Hispanic urine coffee.
Why did I tell him? All was going well enough; we were having a magnificent affair. But things kind of stagnated and we forgot we were having a secret affair. It was transforming into an open secret. The openness took over the secret part and all hell broke loose. She told my boss. I told her husband. Total soap opera nonsense. I jumped on the grenade while she was whisked off to Vermont by him to escape the situation. They went to his parent's house and fucked. The worst five minutes of her life, she later reported. I can't blame her for at least making a go for it, but I sincerely hope he wore a rubber. I hate sloppy seconds.
The ride up to all of this controversy was because of gossip hounds at work, at work. As in those who worked at the place of employment she and I shared. They played her, my love, out to be a player looking for a piece of meat to satiate a loveless marriage. They insinuated that our boss was out to embark upon a lesbian relationship with her. That baited my hook toward doom. Blame me for biting. But the truth is, to her, the following:
If anyone ever said to you that I regarded you as a piece of meat, they were sorely and retardedly mistaken. I may have had liked you from day one, but I watched you and let my opinion of you evolve over many months. When push came to shove, when we had our first dinner at La Pastoria that morphed into crush and from crush to kiss to hip grinding all within two hours time. You are much more than a select cut from the butcher's case, my love. You are a human being I have connected with in the deepest and most passionate of ways. I never would have approached you as a mere lay. Too easy for me. The challenge was to engage you on a level beyond sex from the outset. Hence my no fucking policy on our first date. I knew you could be the special one I've been looking for all my life. I did not want to ruin that pursuit with wet sheets and an awkward morning. I wanted to extend the romance over months, not minutes.
This story is incomplete, but it is a reaction to all that I love about her. I still have a strongly networked underground railroad to whisk me in and out of corners. And I still have her love, which means the most of all. It's midnight now, which means time for breakfast and a cab ride out of the county. Sweet dreams, my love.
As my lectures bring me from industry to industry, I find myself amazed by just how little fun most people are having. Whether separated from one another by policy, competition, or cubicle, the last thing that seems to occur to people is to have fun together—when it should be the first priority. Instead, managers feel obligated to reign over employees; executives think they must hoodwink their shareholders; sales believe they must strong-arm their clients; and marketers assume they must manipulate the consumer. All for the life-or-death stakes of the next quarterly report...
