7/7 (Paul)

Part I

When everything was said and done, Paul looked himself in the mirror one morning while shaving. As he lathered up, he paid careful attention to his extremely muscular, six-foot-four stature, to his deep-blue eyes and his thick, blond hair. An outside observer would immediately say that there was something wrong with Paul today. The somber look in his eyes was one that no one, not even Paul himself, had ever seen before. Something had clicked that seemed to have changed him overnight.

The week leading up to this morning, Paul had been the shining pinnacle of a go-getter young man who was the apple of everyone’s eye. He was a man who led life on his own terms, no matter what; he had never not been in control.

In his college years, Paul quickly become the kind of guy who could pick up any girl at a bar (and he did). Hand-in-hand with this attitude, Paul expressed himself with such confidence that many people over the years perceived it as cocky. Frankly, Paul was pretty cocky. It didn’t help that Paul didn’t know the meaning of the word modesty. As credit is due where credit is deserved, however, it should be noted that Paul indeed was an exceptionally eloquent talker (when the occasion called for it): he always looked his target in the eyes, never flinching, and whether he found himself at a bar with his friends bellowing out a list of chicks he’d banged with that week, or if he was smooth-talking his friends’ fathers into giving him an internship for the summer, the attention in the room always gravitated towards him. That was what he liked and that was how he commanded his audiences. Any group of people who he couldn’t attract in such a manor, Paul found wasn’t worth his time and he frequently disregarded them as “pussies,” or “hipster douche-bags.” It goes without saying that Paul was a tiger of a man: he was by nature aggressive and at the top of his game.

Paul’s go-in-for-the-kill personality came about initially because he was adopted at the age of eighteen months. His adoptive parents raised Paul as their own and they loved him more than anything. Now, Paul did in fact have an older sister that the adoption agency had pleaded with the adoptive parents to take as well, however, being relatively naïve and set in their ways, the couple was steadfast in their belief that they wanted their son to be an only child so that their attention towards him would never be divided. Even as far as he ever made it into his adulthood, Paul never knew about his sister.

Despite the incident with his sister, one could say he had the ideal childhood. Paul's parents showered him with affection and support. He grew up learning to solve his problems and always to strive to put himself in a better situation with every step he took in life. Things always worked out for him and he was very proud of all of this. As far as his parents were concerned, their son was as good as they come. Consequently, Paul’s self-esteem into his early teenage years was his strongest attribute. As he drifted off to sleep some nights, he would stare at the posters on his bedroom walls. He wanted to be just like all of his heroes: Indiana Jones, Batman, Jesse Owens, and the like. What greater image of strength and masculinity was there, Paul wondered. It’s not hard to see why his subconscious planted the seed that he himself would one day be just as great as these characters.

Back to the more-relevant present. In and after college, Paul’s the concept of “always put yourself in a better place” had begun to take a new form. Because he always succeeded in his realistic, global endeavors, such as getting a perfect score on every test and being more physically fit than his peers, he started searching for more subjective means to succeed. In that, Paul sought after impressing and helping out his friends. He did this not because he enjoyed it, but he found that this provided the most natural route to get people to like and support him. Over the years, Paul did everything from enlist key members into his college fraternity, to secure jobs for people who already admired him, to simply leaving big tips for waitresses who were nice to him.

It worked. Paul every morning when he admired himself in the mirror, he felt stronger and stronger. The world truly was his oyster and he always found pearls. More than that, though, it's as if he told the pearls where to go so that he could pick them up. Again, Paul was  always in control. It’s not hard to imagine how somewhere along the line after college, Paul developed something of a God-complex. It was only natural for the world’s MVP, he believed in the deepest part of his subconscious. If one ever stopped to think about what would happen if Paul were to get dealt a poor hand in life, one would realize that the end of the game would be disastrous. Paul wasn't a loser.

Part II

As far as the dating world was concerned these days, Paul, naturally, was at the top of his game. One night in particular, he brought a model home from a bar. Frankly, he was only interested in sleeping with her because she was a model and he wanted to prove to himself how well he could do. In fact, it wasn't a challenge for him; he had seduced her without even thinking about it and unfortunately for Paul, he never stopped to think that maybe he should have given it a second thought. The model, Gaëlle, on the other hand, wanted show him off to her coworkers in order to gain a leg up on her competition. In fact, that’s how Paul landed his new job the very next day. When he drove Gaëlle to work the morning after they met, she invited him inside the agency for a cup of coffee and succeeded in introducing Paul to one of the higher-ups in management. As his eloquence and confident demeanor supported his every aim in life, Paul made such an impression that he was hired on the spot to work as an entry-level junior manager. It was effectively a commission-based position; the better Paul did with his assignments, the more say he would get in the company. Paul was a natural. During his first week, Paul was even assigned to manage Gaëlle’s portfolio. Naturally, he awarded her a few extra shoots that week.

Soon, Paul met Gaëlle's roommate, Eva. He ended up spending a few weeks with her because she was very attractive and also intriguingly-sly. Even though she was certainly the most cunning of all the women he’d been with of late, he eventually found out that she came from a very rural family in Kentucky. A back-woods girl wasn't going to cut it for him. Dating a redneck certainly wasn't going to make him proud when he showed her off to his friends. He dumped her that evening.

What Paul didn’t realize, however, what that Gaëlle had given him HIV on the night they met.

Part III

The week after Paul had started his new job, he realized just how many perks there were to it. With his combination of physical beauty, his tiger-like approach to life, and his professional power over the girls he represented, Paul eventually slept with two-thirds of the models with whom he worked; he also found that when he went out to bars, the line “I’m in the modeling industry. I might be able to get you a gig, if you wanted,” worked every single time.

Part IV

Several weeks after starting (and excelling) at his managerial job, Paul woke up on a Tuesday morning with a bad fever. He hadn’t had a fever since he was a kid, and the flu wasn’t going around or anything like that, and so he called in sick and went to the doctor. The doctor seemed to recognize Paul’s symptoms and recommended an immediate blood test. In the mean time, Paul was given the standard advice that he should drink plenty of fluids and take some Tylenol. Paul’s fever went down the next day and he went back to work. The next week, he got a call from the clinic. They asked him to come in at his earliest convenience to meet with a nurse regarding the results of his blood test.

Part V

On the morning after he found out about his condition, Paul looked himself in the mirror while shaving. As he lathered up, he paid careful attention to his extremely muscular, six-foot-four stature, to his deep-blue eyes and his thick, blond hair.

It didn’t matter him that he had spread HIV to twenty-two girls, including Eva and the many people it would spread to from there. It didn't even matter to Paul that he was going to die. What Paul couldn't cope with was the simple fact that he wasn't going to die on his own terms. Something else– something bigger and stronger– was now dictating Paul's fate. He didn't know what it was like to be out of control and starting that morning, it began to tear him up on the inside.

In one week, Paul's depression will get the better of him and he will quit his job.

In two weeks, Paul will wake up with another fever. He will look at himself in the mirror again, anguished, and notice the deep-purple circles that have formed under his eyes from stress.

Within six months, Paul will completely have dropped out of touch with his friends and colleagues because he will be too ashamed to explain himself. His peers will hardly notice his absence.

In a year and a half, Paul will realize what he will have to do to take back control of his life, or at least end it on his own terms.

6/7 (Eva)

Part I

One hot summer’s day in West Bourbon County, Eva looked up at her big sister, Scarlett, with bewildered puppy-dog eyes. College. Her big sister was going to go to college. No one in her entire family had ever gone to college. Eva was so proud of her big sister, and as the days got closer and closer to when Scarlett finally was going to leave West Bourbon County, Eva found herself more and more anxious. Her anxiety was a mixture of pride, second-place esteem mentality, and competitiveness. She also found herself, incidentally, slightly out of place as she struggled to find her identity (she never did end up finding it, but we’ll read about that later). Eva’s sister had passed the benchmark and now what was Eva supposed to do?

Their parents were naturally extremely warm and welcoming; they loved each of the two girls for the individuals they were and there was never any comparison in their eyes. In Eva’s eyes, however, this meant that her parents had relatively low expectations for her. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, actually, because it made Eva grow up with an incredible drive and motivation to do just as well as Scarlett.

And that’s precisely what happened. When it came time for Eva to go to high school, she went in with the idea cemented in her mind that Scarlett had succeeded with flying colors with her 3.2 GPA. All Eva then wanted was a 3.2. High school was tough for Eva- there was no question about it. She had naturally been the more social of the two sisters, and she came to the harsh realization during her freshman year that maintaining any kind of social life was a full time job for a 15-year old girl. The newest fashion, the new mindset, the subtleties of working your way up the social chain, the fine line of being popular with the boys while at the same time not coming off the wrong way to the girls…. Eva could barely keep her head above water during her freshman year. By the end of it, her report card indeed made her parents proud, but it just wasn’t good enough for her. She needed that 3.2.

Two things happened by Christmas Break of her sophomore year: in chronological order, Eva learned that she was to become an aunt. The details at first were a little vague, but Scarlett was definitely pregnant. The second big event was that Eva was pulling a solid 2.75. Again, this was absolutely fine as far as everybody else was concerned. Why do any better? West Bourbon County was the kind of place where everyone knew where they would end up even before they started. As far as her grades were concerned, her current situation still wasn’t good enough. Eva needed to switch gears; she would do whatever it took to get her 3.2.

During the two-week Christmas break, Eva came to the rather mature realization that in order to accomplish her goal, she would have to give up something else. By the time school started again, she started the habit of spending more evenings at home studying and ignoring the text messages from her girlfriends. They would only slow her down. For the first week or so, this sudden antisocial behavior was acceptable in her clique because she made the excuse “my phone was broken,” followed by “the moron at the shop lost it.”

As is natural in high school, the girls expelled Eva from their group. They gossiped behind her back, saying that she was a bookworm and a slut because she was just trying to get the handsome math teacher to notice her. No matter. Eva was glad to be let go; there was less in the way of her goal.

Somewhere along the way, Eva’s drive and motivation began to spark a tiny flame of darkness inside her. She knew she was capable of doing just as well as anyone else, but that wasn’t good enough. Eva was also coming to know how good it felt to be better than everyone else, and this fruit was just too sweet to turn away.

Towards the end of her senior year, Eva had surpassed her Scarlett’s 3.2 with a 3.44 and set a new family record. This was trivial, however; to Eva, this wasn’t about greatness: it was about outdoing her sister. Prom was also coming up, and although Eva didn’t particularly care about the dance itself, there was one thing she wanted to take care of: the quarterback of the football team had clearly had his eye on Eva’s ex-best friend. That just wouldn’t do for Eva- that girl needed to be punished for her behavior a few years back. Stealing the date was easy enough. She even let him have sex with her in his car after the dance.

Despite her path through high school, college had no appeal for Eva. She knew Scarlett had made it there and frankly, Eva knew she could do better if she wanted to. No. She wanted something else. Something greater.

Next stop: California.

Part II

While Eva knew she was a little in over her head once she got there, she wouldn’t admit it. She decided to get settled in by working at her uncle’s restaurant. Her uncle, Tim, had been living out in California for the past fifteen years or so working up to a managerial position at one of Anaheim’s finest dining establishments. With the bit of money she had saved up, Eva was able to put a down payment on an apartment she found online, rooming with an intimidatingly beautiful young woman named Gaëlle. The very next day, Eva put on her prettiest face and went to her uncle’s restaurant, The Pearl, to meet him for lunch. Lunch was quite impressive, and The Pearl was certainly the nicest place at which Eva had ever eaten. She and Tim decided that she would start training as a waitress the very next day.

Part III

Right around this time, we start to see a further darkening in Eva. She was no longer the puppy-eyed little girl with a charming, small-town accent. Eva was now a young woman with a malicious habit. Whatever it was that sparked her drive and motivation on that hot summer day back in West Bourbon County, it was something that she couldn’t control anymore. In fact, it controlled Eva. She no longer wanted what others had; she wanted others not to have… at all costs. That's why she began sleeping with her roommate's boss, Paul: she knew that her roommate had had her eye on him for one reason or another. She considered all this a healthy competitiveness; it frightened others, however, because they had never actually seen such a high level of malicious jealousy.

The weeks flew by. Since Eva had (at one point in her life) been something of a social butterfly, she knew how to get along with people. More than getting along with them, however, Eva was particularly successful at manipulating them, their thoughts and ideas, and even their moods. Because of all this, she left work every day with more than twice the amount in tips as the next highest-earning waitress. While this was nice, it no longer interested her. She became complacent as a waitress, and soon felt like there was no competition; there were no other coworkers left to beat. Eva had hit a sort of irritating glass ceiling.

During all this, there had been one thing that kept eating at her. Like her ex-clique in high school, Eva’s ties with her family back home were only slowing her down. The thing that she couldn’t shake was her uncle. It started with his accent; it still reminded her of her upbringing, and that just wouldn’t do: he was one more person that she needed to outdo.

One day towards the end of that summer, Eva waited on a particular customer who caught her eye for some reason. There was something about this young man that intrigued her; she didn’t know what he was after, but she knew that she had never seen such drive in anyone besides herself. Perhaps she had seen him before..? He seemed to recognize her. When he left her a four-cent tip, Eva saw that as an excuse to follow him into the parking lot and see what was going on.

The young man–who’s name turned out to be Wayne– was hesitant at first, but Eva pulled out her charm and disarmed him. With a little coercion, she got him to tell her what he was actually after. Eva grinned as she saw this as a perfect opportunity to accomplish her own new goals. She realized that as the head waitress, she would be a shoe-in for the manager’s position… if only the job were to open up.

Eva would never ask Wayne why he had it out to destroy Tim; she didn’t care. And Wayne would never ask Eva who would replace Tim; he didn’t care. Their mutual interest lay in seeing Tim lose his position as manager.

Part IV

The plan was set. The bomb was going to go off on the Saturday before Labor Day. It wasn’t a real bomb, of course, but in fact was something much more destructive to a high-class restaurant such as The Pearl. Wayne did all the plotting and calculating and Eva was the inside-man.

At approximately six-thirty in the evening on the Saturday before Labor Day, The Pearl was forced to close down early when several customers found dead mice all over the establishment. Eva acted surprised (although she had gone so far as to advise Wayne on the most strategic drop points).

That evening, the California state health department had The Pearl shut down for an entire week. That evening Tim, as manager, was held responsible for the company’s loss of over forty-five thousand dollars in revenue. 

5/7 (Wayne)

Part I

            Meet Wayne. Wayne was always the odd one out. Although he had terrific parents who supported all of his endeavors, he never had any confidence to speak of. He was always bad at sports, the girls never noticed him, he had terrible acne in high school, he was timid and didn't have a lot of personality, and overall, he was just an easy target for bullies. He was still a virgin by the time he finished college. Eventually, things evened out for Wayne, although he was always wary of things from his childhood.

These days, Wayne looked just like any other recent college graduate during the Great Recession. He had finished college with a strong GPA and a handful of great professors who would be more than happy to write him letters of recommendation, and now he was screwed. Fresh out of college, there were no credible jobs to speak of; he’d applied to over forty of them during the first month after graduation. It didn't help, of course, that he was terrible at interviewing. The clash of his comfortable home-life and the world around him had always left a sour taste in his mouth and now that he was an adult, he was quickly becoming very, very bitter.

Fortunately, he wasn’t entirely out of options: as a last resort, his friend Paul from college had been able to set him up with a job as a waiter at a very upscale restaurant in the city called The Pearl. Wayne figured he’d go that route until he was able to get on his feet and land a real job.

Wayne didn’t really know how credible Paul’s connections would be at The Pearl because apparently he hadn’t worked there since high school. However, Paul must have impressed the hell out of the manager, Tim, because Wayne got hired on the spot.

“Come back tomorrow afternoon to fill out the paperwork and we’ll make a schedule for you,” Tim said with a hint of a southern accent. Wayne breathed a sigh of relief on his way out into the parking lot; at least he could earn a bit of cash and occupy his spare time now. To make everyone proud of him, Wayne was determined to take the job seriously.

Training Day was long. He arrived two hours before The Pearl even opened so that he could get a crash course on all the ins and outs of the place. “These are the three chefs and those are the cooks,” Wayne’s trainer explained in a curt and aggressive, almost condescending tone. “This is the freezer and that’s the deep-freeze freezer…. This is table 1 and that’s table 26.” Wayne looked at two tables that were right next to each other. “This is how you place an order in our computer system, which will get sent right to the cook over there. Do it this way unless it’s a special order, such as ‘no salad dressing,’ in which case, it will get sent to the other kitchen for the chef’s approval before he sends it to the cooks’ kitchen.” Wayne had gotten an A in his calculus class in college, however, that was all a breeze compared to the complexities of the restaurant industry. “Here’s the training manual. Read it over night and you’ll be tested on it next week.” He took a sixty-six page manual that, as he would find out later, was mostly the autobiography of The Pearl’s founder. No matter, this was all part of the job, and just his parents had always told him, anything worth doing is worth doing well. Wayne stayed and shadowed the other wait staff until well after The Pearl closed that night. That was the first time Wayne had ever spent fourteen straight hours on his feet.

Wayne was well-prepared for the next day: he had studied the majority of the manual, and memorized the restaurant’s menu from their website. His shirt was pressed and his shoes were shined. His only goal for today was to impress Tim.

“Hey, Wayne, come here for a sec,” Tim said as he saw Wayne walk in the front door. Wayne figured he’d have a sit-down with Tim and work out his weekly schedule. He was eager to go see the other wait staff again.

“Wayne, we’re gonna have to cut you. You’re done here.”

“For the day? But I just got here… I’d be happy to just keep shadowing if there’s a scheduling conflict.”

“No no, you don’t understand, you’re cut. It’s not working out. We’re over-staffed, and our policy is last hired, first fired.”

Wayne was shocked and confused and his mood changed instantly. It had actually been a long time since he was rejected so outwardly, but it was still a familiar feeling.

Four minutes after he’d walked in the door for his first real day of work, Wayne walked out of The Pearl. As he crossed the lobby to go out to the parking lot, he was replaying everything in his head. All of a sudden, he saw a bubbly, pretty brunette who looked about three years younger than himself skip in through the revolving door. She walked straight toward him, sticking out her hand with a big smile. “Hi! I’m Eva! You look like you work here!” Wayne looked up, noticing that this girl had the same southern accent as Tim. “Can you show me which way Tim’s office is? I just got hired. He’s my uncle and said that if I ever needed a job, there’d be one waiting for me if I ever came out to California!”

“Tim’s office is right over there,” he gestured. “Good luck, Eva.”

This was quite a bit for Wayne to all take in at once. He sat in his car for a minute or two trying to process everything. He was starting to lose it. “That fucking piece of trash,” Wayne cursed. He felt the familiar sting of the world giving him a punch in the face, and, feeling secure with himself in his car, he returned the punch by slamming the steering wheel before he drove home.

Part II

Wayne wasn’t able to get another job for the next month and a half, and while he knew that that was no one’s fault, he was still upset with Tim. Wayne spent the rest of the summer stewing in his frustration over The Pearl. Frustration turned to anger and one day he decided that until something better comes along, he would start relieving some tension and go pay a visit to The Pearl.

Ire does a funny thing to a man. It changes him in a way that nothing else can. It fuels a unique kind of strength and aggression; it gives a man purpose.

The following Monday, when The Pearl had the fewest people on shift, Wayne stopped by the restaurant for a late lunch. Unsure of himself at first, Wayne told himself over and over that he just had nothing to lose. He figured a Monday afternoon was his best chance at seeing Tim pick up some of the slack. Sure enough, the hostess sat Wayne in the section of the restaurant where Tim was indeed serving a few patrons. When Tim came to the table to take his order, Wayne ordered a bowl of soup, a house salad, and a cup of coffee. Tim complained, averting his eyes at first, that his soup was too hot and had Tim bring him a different salad, saying that he’d been given the wrong dressing. Of course Wayne was giving him a hard time, but it was impossible for Tim to argue; it wouldn’t have been professional. After his meal, Tim came by to drop off the check in one of those fancy black booklets. Wayne took his time, staying another half-hour or so. When he was ready to go, he put his credit card in the booklet and stood it up on the table. Tim ran the transaction. Wayne signed the receipt, writing “gratuity on table.” Still unsure of whether he could go through with it, Wayne forced himself to go with his plan: he put four pennies in his empty coffee cup and walked out the door. It actually felt pretty  good.

He had similar meals on the following two Mondays, rationalizing to himself that Tim had ruined his summer. It was easy, too, because restaurant policy dictated that the customer is always right.

These interactions at The Pearl made Wayne feel like he was in control. This confidence was an unusual emotion for him, and he soon learned to love it. Finally, Wayne felt the power of being the bully for once (although leaving insulting tips was just bullying in his own way). Falling in love with being able to affect others but still not satisfied, Wayne decided to step things up a notch. Eventually, he came to The Pearl during the evening for dinner wearing nice khakis and a freshly-ironed polo shirt (The Pearl was a very fancy establishment, and Wayne of course wanted to fit in). This time, Eva was his waitress and Wayne felt a little bad. It wasn't fair that Eva would have to suffer the consequences of Tim’s irresponsibility that night, but still, Wayne had to prove his point. After a fifty-six dollar meal, Wayne again left his tip on the table. Four cents. Tim gave him a dirty look as he walked out that night.

A dirty look. The audacity of that son of a bitch had, giving a look like that. Wayne maintained his composure and pretended not to see Tim.

A dirty look. It was another punch in the face. This one was the attack that finally ignited Wayne’s fight or flight response. Enough was enough.

Now was the time to take off the gloves and stand up for himself once and for all. Tim’s dirty look burned in Wayne’s mind, fueling his rage. He needed to give it his very best shot and prove to himself and the world– which had delivered so many wrongs– that he was ready to fight back. He just needed something more creative this time than shit tips.

Part III

The pet store sold Wayne two mice and a rat. Now, Wayne of course had never been the type of sadist to torture animals; he in fact found that sickening. Nonetheless, the young man wasn’t quite Wayne anymore. The world was beating him up: still no job, no girlfriend, no blue skies in sight, and no ambition other than the drive to get even with his bully, Tim. Wayne decided that he was finally ready  to step up and rise to the occasion.

He gently put the two mice and rat– all still alive– inside three separate Zip-Lock bags and buried them in the basement freezer in his parents’ basement. Next Monday would be Labor Day, The Pearl’s busiest (and most profitable) night of the season. That Saturday, Wayne defrosted his furry little martyrs and donned a sport coat (as he needed several pockets).

Wayne ordered a steak when he got to The Pearl. Practically a regular these days, he figured that his server must be new because he couldn’t recognize him. Just before dessert, Wayne stepped away from the table to use the restroom. Once in a private stall, he took the two dead mice from his coat. He removed them both from the plastic bags and placed one carefully behind the toilet, making sure it was just visible enough to be noticed. He took the other and put it up his sleeve. Wayne washed his hands and pocketed the baggies on his way out of the restroom. Once seated again, Wayne kept his hands under the table as he took the rat out of the third plastic bag. He dropped it on the ground between his feet and waited for an opportune moment, during which, he quickly kicked the rodent’s body under the table to his left. Wayne felt a little bad for his new waiter, and so he left a thirty-percent tip, telling the boy to enjoy his holiday weekend. He still wasn’t done yet though. On his way out, Wayne let the last mouse fall from his sleeve as he passed of the revolving door.

He went to bed that night with a level of confident satisfaction that he had never known. On Monday– Labor Day– he drove by The Pearl to find the lights off and an official-looking sign in the window: By Order of The California State Department of Health, This Establishment Will Be Closed Until Further Notice. Wayne drove away, cracking his knuckles and grinning.