Vernon Subutex Three by Virginie Despentes

Author:Virginie Despentes [Despentes, Virginie]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Quercus
Published: 2020-06-25T00:00:00+00:00

“YOU’RE EITHER THE BUTCHER OR THE CATTLE.”

Men kneeling with their hands tied behind their backs have their throats cut, one by one. In all seriousness, Dopalet wonders: is it better to die by having your throat slit by a cannibal or to have your entrails devoured by a horde of zombies? He has set his laptop on the kitchen counter while he defrosts Cantonese fried rice in the microwave. Without taking his eyes off the screen, he opens a bottle of Coke Zero and pours it into a glass of crushed ice. It’s one of the typical questions raised by “The Walking Dead”: decapitated or disembowelled? You really have to be a hardcore masochist to watch such horrors – the whole show is a series of unbearably tense moments set against a bloodbath of slaughter and evisceration, peppered with pathetic metaphysical dialogue written by some geek who’s probably spent his whole life holed up in his bedroom feeding on doughnuts and comics. But Dopalet is fascinated by “The Walking Dead”. He is watching it for the second time. Every time he thinks, that’s it, I’m used to it, I’m not terrified anymore, some atrocity comes and he is once again a frightened child, teeth clenched, delighted and appalled.

He did not go into the office today. He did not go in yesterday either. He calls his assistant. He says he has lumbago, the doctor has said to rest up and not to move for a couple of days. The simplest things are becoming complicated. Only at home does he feel alright, he finds it more and more difficult to go out. He needs to get help. He doesn’t know who to turn to. All of his therapists have let him down, he doesn’t want to call them. He is literally consumed with terror at the very thought of opening his e-mail. When he manages to force himself to do so, he forwards every message to his colleagues – he tells himself he needs to learn to delegate. But he simply cannot bring himself to answer them himself. He deletes all his voicemails without listening to them. Just swipe left on his phone and everything is gone.

Lately, when he went into the office, he would fake it. As he pushed open the main door, he would automatically plaster a smile on his face. No-one could guess how he felt. He let nothing show. He would chat to a few people for five minutes, then go into his office with orders not to be disturbed. He would spend hours on YouTube watching old videos of McEnroe, wearing a headset so no-one would realise that, on the other side of the door, the C.E.O. is at the end of his rope, he is at a complete loss. This is the least that he owes his team: the illusion that someone is at the helm. In the late afternoon, he would emerge, make up a meeting to justify leaving early. He knows what is happening. He knows that things are not right.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.