Five
Matilda had homework. Eugenio found it hard to understand how a six-year old could have so much homework, but she loved it, especially since it mainly involved drawing, coloring and copying letters. Matilda was a reader and a writer and had been from very early on. Already her handwriting was more legible than his, which admittedly wasn't saying much. As he noticed this, sitting by her side as he always did - a Matilda nightly requirement - he thought again of Richie's notes, scribbled in a scrawl as terrible as his own. He would have to read more, but later, after all the women in his life had gone to sleep. He was a little frightened of what he might see, but silently laughed it off. His new mantra was to stop being such a pussy about things.
He wasn't actually a pussy about things. He was strong enough, and had worked enough tough jobs to prove it. He was dashing enough. Hadn't he secured the permanent lifetime partnership of the lovely Janelle? Everyone had wanted Janelle back in high school, but she would only have him, and it stuck. They'd been together more than thirteen years, had their baby girl, built a solid life. Sure, his own family was a pain in the ass to her, and her family was a pain in the ass to him, and they could have used more money for stuff, and she wouldn't be complaining if he could hold a steady job for once, but then he wouldn't mind not hearing about the same sorts of teenage assholes from year to year, with only their names changing but not their attitudes or their problems or the things you wouldn't believe they said to her.
Matilda was the best, with her curly black mop and her big bright eyes and her endless enthusiasm and joy. He was happy to sit by her while she focused on her school work, and he was happy to read to her every night like he'd done since she was an infant, and he was happy to sit in the dark and listen to her breathing while she drifted off to sleep. He didn't want to leave the room until he knew she was out for the night, and then he tiptoed out and closed the door as quietly as he could. Janelle was still in the kitchen, finishing up her paperwork. She had some administrative duties as well as grading and planning to do. She worked at least fourteen hours every day, sixteen often. He didn't know how she did it, but partly she could do it because he did almost all the cooking, and almost all the cleaning, and almost all the child care too. She had always wanted a child, and she loved Matilda dearly, but the dull chores of daily parenting were really not her thing.
Eugenio waited for her to finish and together they prepared for bed. His routine took a mere fraction of the time as hers, so he sat with the lights on and thought about the papers still stuffed in his sweatshirt. If I had a phone book, he thought, I'd try to look up that guy, but he didn't have a phone book. He wondered if they even made them anymore. Almost everyone had cell phones. He only had the one at work, and that one belonged to the company and had to be shut up in a locker every night. He wondered if there was anything on that phone, if Richie had left any other clues there. Tomorrow he'd check, he decided, if he could figure out how.
He waited, and waited for Janelle and when she was finally done with whatever it was she did, she climbed into bed, turned out the light, and fell right asleep. So that's that, Eugenio thought. He hadn't had any other expectations. Weeknights were often like this. He thought maybe a brief conversation, possibly a kiss goodnight, maybe a further inquiry into the details of his day, but nothing. She was beat and snoring like mad within moments. Eugenio climbed out of bed and stepped back out to the living room. He rummaged through the sweatshirt, pulled out all the papers, then carried them into the kitchen, closing the door behind him so the light wouldn't sneak under either of the bedroom doors. He sat down at the table, and spread them out at random.
He counted seventeen pieces of paper. Two he'd already glanced at, so he set those aside, and started to read the others from left to right. Fortunately, they were not all rantings about the other people in the office. Some of them were, though, and Eugenio tossed those into the crazy pile as soon as he classified them. Others were more curious. It seemed that Richie was a paranoid bastard. He was certain that Dave, for one, was spying on him. He was convinced that someone named Mitch ran the entire company and only pretended to be a call center floor boss. He hinted at a scandal that was bound to come out, trees that were never planted, or even worse. He suspected that some of the trees were being planted north of the Tropic of Cancer, which everyone by now knew for a fact was making the global climate situation worse, by blocking the snow cover which reflected the sun's heat back out into the atmosphere. A full three point two of the eight degree Celsius warming of the past twenty years was directly attributed to well-intentioned tree planting in North America, Europe and Asia. Eco None, Richie insinuated, was not only a part of the problem, but deliberately so. They wanted the ice caps to melt, in his opinion. They wanted sea levels to rise. They wanted more droughts, more super storms, more blizzards. Why did they want these things?
Because Eco None was in fact owned by FedCorTron, the vast corporate octopus that owned nearly every major crisis service industry in the Western Hemisphere. Did he have proof? No, there were shadow companies and shell games in which they covered their tracks. Richie was certain, though. Eco None was not only fraudulent, it was criminal, and he was going to prove it.
Sheesh, Eugenio thought. The guy had it bad. No wonder they fired him. Or did they? He realized he had no idea what had happened to Alejandro Martinez. Well, it was none of his business, anyway. He just hoped he didn't end up going over the deep end like that. All he had to do was answer the phone, sell people some stuff to keep them from having to pay even more for the penalty, and just do whatever he had to do to keep Gabby happy and off his back. As for the rest of it. God, he hated that fucking place. The office smelled bad, like rotten garbage, and the carpets were probably filled with vermin, and those burritos were going to kill him if the coffee didn't do it first.
I've got to relax, he told himself. I've got to make it through the days. At least I get to come home to my girls, he thought, and for the thousandth time that day he wished he could turn back the clock and go back to the time when all he had to do was look after Matilda and the two or three other little kids he used to watch for their folks when he had his unofficial day care service going. He'd heard he could get a license for that kind of thing, but he didn't believe it would work out. People didn't want strong and healthy young men looking after their kids. It was one thing with the neighbors, who knew him and knew how good he was at that, but as a business proposition with strangers, he thought it would never fly. If only it could, though, he sighed as he folded up the papers, turned out the light, and carried them back to the bedroom, where he stashed them in the nightstand drawer before climbing back into bed and tried to remember how to breathe well enough to get at least a few hours of sleep.