spacious skies - 27. bill and henry

by american joe

part 27 of 40

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albert jones was not a bad person. but his neighbor bill smith was. the country was being torn apart. back in the dark ages al and bill had gotten along all right and their wives said hello to each other at mcdonalds and when they were out running. but everything comes to an end. a fire was slowly smoldering in bill’s brain. it only needed some gasoline to get it going real good. bill had a friend named henry brown at the branch of the morningside bank where he worked. bill and henry did not have much to do at the bank and it was only a matter of time - a few months at most - before they were terminated. they did not call attention to each other by speaking to each other out loud in the human voices they had been born with. so they spent their days texting and e-mailing to each other, mostly about sports. henry gradually inserted politics into the conversation. bill had always been bored with politics, even though he was a natural born bad person. and bill’s genetic inclination was to take things one day at a time, and not worry about the dread future looming up in front of him. when he would have to be supported by his wife, who did not really like him much and might very well leave him and not support him. there was an epidemic sweeping across the land of men losing their jobs and not being supported by their wives who never really liked them that much and had only married them because the obsolete patriarchal culture had taught people that marriage was necessary to hold the social fabric together. a hotshot lawyer from chicago named chuck dobbs had made billions by advertising online and urging men to claim alimony from these high and mighty wives. millions of men took advantage of mr dobbs’s services but there were still millions, like bill and henry, who were old school and resisted this proceeding as unmanly under the old tarnished code of patriarchy. so - one sunny morning, with the specter of disaster hanging over their heads, bill texted henry as to his thoughts about the cardinals’ loss to the cubs the previous evening. next