Company of Foos by Paul Davidson

Author:Paul Davidson [Davidson, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Paul Davidson

It was a feeling, but not one with any real data or evidence to back it up. It was like all those poor souls sitting in dark cars, unaware that someone with a disfigured face and a horrific backstory that had driven them to kill dozens of innocent victims, was seconds away from vaulting over the backseat and gutting them completely. I tried to explain it to Jess, laying there next to her in the blistering sun at the local park, texting her how I felt. Despite the troubleshooting mode we were in on Memphis, the algorithm was still very hungry for data. Everyone was doing their part.

​“You’re likening the politics at work to Friday the 13th?” she texted. Ding.

​“It’s an allegorical metaphor,” the writer part of me texted back. Bloop. “I’m saying that I can feel something coming.” Bloop. Jess was more amenable to my crazy work requirements, but there was always a line in the sand. After a few minutes of dinging and blooping, she always got fed up and retreated back into the world of verbal communication.

​“Don’t write a check for a bill that may never come,” she verbalized, channeling the latest string of Instagram self-help mantras. “Deal with it when it happens. Until then, what can you do?”

​“I can obsess.”

​“And you are doing a bang-up job of it, Cam.”

​We paused for a moment as we both scanned the playground for Kate. Every park conversation included a pause every two minutes for the “where is our child” query – it was always a given necessity. I located Kate at the far end of a sea of wood chips, ascending one of those kid-friendly rock-climbing walls, competing with a trio of children all desperate to get to the top like mice fleeing a rapidly filling bathtub.

​“She’s over there,” I pointed out, nudging her. “Still here.”

​“That’s two for us, zero for the kidnappers,” Jess jeered back, then she went right back into the conversation that had preceded it. We were true parents in that sense – we could start a thought, handle a potential kidnapping crisis, skull fracture or Lego ingestion, then get right back into the meat of it all. “I mean, do you really think Romy was behind the sabotage?”

​“Beckham’s Razor,” I reminded Jess in her own ragmag-focused terminology she would understand. “The simplest answer is always the right answer. Who else would want to see me fail so completely?”

​“Oh, I don’t know,” she thought, “what about all those people now looking for jobs from MediaMesh?” It was a valid point. Damn.

​“Do you think all of those people are out to get me, too?” I worried, rubbing my weekend stubble as I imagined angry townspeople, torches and my glorious house as a medieval castle.

​Jess pushed me back on the blanket. “I think you should just enjoy the beautiful weather. And your wonderful, problem-solving wife. How about getting out of your head for five minutes and doing just that?” She leaned down and kissed me. I looked up at her smile, sunlight passing through her hair as it blew gently in the cool breeze.

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