Disciple (Crosstown to Oblivion) by Mosley Walter

Author:Mosley, Walter [Mosley, Walter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2012-11-13T00:00:00+00:00

Mr. Tryman’s work habits are sloppy and his comprehension of the projects is below standard. He’s usually on time to work and he stays late when his projects are behind (which is often) but many of his sick days come on Mondays and Fridays or before a holiday and he doesn’t get along well with his fellow workers …

Not once had he recommended me for a promotion and I never received one. Twice he suggested my termination but his supervisor, a Lillian Porter, overrode the suggestion before it made its way up the ladder.

I read my file obsessively. Hugo did not report the days I stayed late to finish jobs that he’d bungled. He never even suggested a pay raise. I wasn’t real to him. I could tell by the clipped language he used to describe me and my work. He resented taking the time to compose an evaluation.

Of course why shouldn’t he look down on me? There I was plunging into middle-age without anything positive to say about what I’d done or where I’d been. My life was not even on the level of ordinary. I was a lonely creature wallowing in a hole I’d dug for myself.

In Lessing’s Personal File there was a list of eight women’s names. Of these I recognized two: Trina Mallory and Dora Martini.

I moved a hand-shaped cursor via a tiny mouse pad to Dora’s name. After a moment her name flickered and then an edited film began playing; an amateur film made with hidden cameras.

It was in Lessing’s office. Dora was leaning over his desk with her red dress hiked up over bare buttocks. Lessing was behind her with his pants down and an erection so stiff that it was pointing up toward the ceiling. When he pressed himself down and into her the POV switched to another hidden camera so that the focus was now on the young M.I.T. graduate’s face. Her humiliation changed quickly to pain. Lessing was fucking her hard enough to make her body jolt from the successive impacts.

I don’t know how long it went on because after half a minute of her degradation I turned off the recording and deleted it along with the other names.

Lessing’s chair felt tainted, diseased. I climbed out of the space-age egg and went around to one of the visiting thrones. I had been allowed a glimpse into a torture chamber, a place I was not supposed to see. Bron had, overnight, created an overview of the shallow scum that we lived in. We preyed on each other just like we preyed on the planet and all its myriad life-forms.

I got behind the desk again, not sitting in Lessing’s chair.

“Trina?” I said into the intercom.

“Yes, Mr. Tryman?”

“Are you busy?”

“No, sir. I mean I’m working here but—”

“Could you come in a minute please?”

I went back to my Chinese throne and when Trina came in I indicated for her to sit across from me. She was wearing green that day. My heart thumped and I felt guilty.

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