the gentleman at the next table
Coffee with a tree in the foam, a table in the sun, the Sydney Morning Herald – he’s reading it from the back to the front, just flicking over the sheets doing a page by page headline scan. Big print little print. That’s an executive habit. We’ve had these blokes on the other side of the boardroom table, seen it done.
They like a threatening silence as they flick through the documents; read spreadsheets and reports and hard-fought for data that took six months to find, six to research and a frenzied day to write print and bind. In colour. With a little cardinal and myrtle hidden away in there for the Rabbitohs. In this trade, which is serving these stone-hearted bastards stuff that makes them happy, you take what you get.
He likes Bruce Springsteen. There’s a Volvo in his history, he golfs.
He’s here in Lennox, ^ the executive. He’s sitting three feet away and doesn’t know you behind the beard that hides you.
Speaking of watches he’s wearing that glittering steel and diamond sonofabitch guillotine timepiece that still rules about three hundred thousand lives worldwide. Moguls work eternity backwards, when they dump you you never existed, ever.
A little scratch at the back of his neck, flick flick with the newspaper, the wife arrives. Has to be. Same age, good jewellery, slim, dark trouser suit and even the Lennox hairdressers are good enough for her money. This place is her taking a break from real spending. The mogul hardly looks up, and he’s scratching again.
The mogul is clothed up for the coast, there’s his linen slacks, a soft cotton shirt and a cashmere wool pullover slung over his shoulders. Scottish. His nails are clipped, clean, pink, he flicks to the front page and puts the paper down. Folds it he’s that anal, who reads a newspaper twice? He’s a big fellow, kraut-grey number two bomber haircut, and there has to be lacquer on his nails. This bloke shaves every day of his holidays.
And the itch has begun to show its doggedness, the next scratch ends in a deep dig and a sharp fingernail pinch at the fast disappearing grass tick that has made his home back there. They like to dive into warm soft flesh do those little bastards. They bite and suck their way in. Layout the little chemical squirts. That itch.
The wife. She talks, he listens, he digs at the tick and then swings his fingers around and has a sneak suck at the tips. A couple of times. There might be blood.
Enough.
You get up from the table and walk into the cafe, ask the happy lady behind the counter for a steak knife. Thanks. Then you walk back outside and over to the exec’s table, you stand behind him and drive the sharp point very hard into the little red speck on the back of his neck. Until the blade buckles on some bone buried in there.
Got the little fucker!
He screams like a donkey, she falls out of her chair in shock and Goya was on the money.
nightmare pic by goya, worker devouring the mogul
petebowes.com 
Happy holidays Pete.. if only in your head – I feel that blade going in. Guilty pleasures.
just catch some waves bearman … leave this old tripe to us