All That Glitters - Chapter Two

 I've tackled a couple of short stories recently, and now I'm trying my hand at something a bit longer.  Every day this week I will drop one chapter of a five-chapter story I have written.  It is a globetrotting crime caper in which a young dreamer finds it difficult to distinguish fantasy from reality.  Here is the second part of "All That Glitters."

CHAPTER TWO

A harsh clanging sound, followed by the angered cursing of his coworkers, startled Jan out of his reverie.  

“Jesus Christ, Jan!  You fucking blind or something?  Goddamn it, now I gotta finesse this fucker, try not to get my ass sued again … no thanks to you, you sleepy fuck.  I dunno what was louder, your snoring or the hole you just made in the FUCKING WALL!!!  Try not dozing when you’re operating heavy machinery, you fuckwad!”  Max spit out a chaw of tobacco, adjusted his genitals through his dirt-caked denim jeans, and continued his profanity-fuelled rant.  “Just … just … get out the VE-hicle, you summabitch!  You’re lucky your mother knows her way around this here footlong or you’d have been gone a long time ago!”  

Jan rolled his eyes, jumped out of the faded yellow, rusted-out backhoe, and slapped his stepfather on his sunburned arm, making Max wince.  “Whatever, Maxie Max … from what I hear tell, you’ve got more of a Hedwig than a Jared,” he sneered as he sauntered off into the shade.

“Hedwig?  Jared?  The fuck you on about?  Hey … hey, come back here boy!  I didn’t dismiss you.  Hey – mother FUCKER!” Max kicked the backhoe’s stagnant shovel as Jan walked away, flipping him the bird.  Max looked to his left to see Karolina, the project supervisor, laughing uncontrollably.  “The fuck you laughing at?”

“He just made fun of your dick, Max,” she snickered.  “Said you’ve got an angry inch rather than a footlong.  Humor’s his way of dealing with discomfort and embarrassment.  You’d know this if you spent any time with your stepson.”  Max’s crimson face blanched at the aspersion, and he quickly turned and walked away, looking for another minimum wage labourer upon whom to unleash his still smoldering wrath.

Heading towards Jan, Karolina quietly chided, “Maxie’s got a right to be angry, you know.  This isn’t the first time you’ve fallen asleep on the job.  What’s going on?”

“I dunno, K.  Just … seems to me there should be more to life than this.  Like, what am I doing here?  Operating a backhoe, sweating my ass off twelve hours a day for my piece of shit stepfather, and for what?  I could do what he does!  Stand around in the sun all day, scratching my balls and yelling at people.”

Turning him around to face her, Karolina grabbed Jan’s face between both her hands, looked into his eyes and said, “That’s not fair, Jan.  He built this company from the ground up.  It’s his whole life he’s got invested here.  To you, he stands around doing nothing.  I can tell he’s hanging around to make sure his plans are followed to the tee.  He’s a perfectionist.  A crude, uncouth one, to be sure, but still.  And he has every right to be livid when his stepson loses focus and destroys someone else’s property on the job.  Maybe you think this job isn’t good enough for you.  In that case, move on.  You’re twenty-four, extremely intelligent, and you went to university in Paris, for goodness sakes!  You can do anything you put your mind to.”

Jan kicked the gravel beneath him absentmindedly.  He had been crushing on Karolina ever since she joined the company four months ago.  Should he tell her the truth?  That he’d never left Texas?  Never seen the Eiffel Tower or studied by the Seine?  That he’d actually matriculated at a junior college in Paris, Texas, an hour and a half northeast of Dallas?  Or that he had taken a course in gemology only because he walked into the wrong classroom and was blinded by the bling?  That he was summarily dismissed by an eagle-eyed teacher who apprehended him attempting to purloin some “samples” from class?  

Should he open up to the nice young woman he was infatuated with, who just wanted to help him make sense of his life?  She seemed to be the only person other than himself who was looking out for his own interests.  He looked at her, considering.

“Thanks,” he said.  And walked away, leaving a bemused Karolina in the windswept Texas dust.

To be continued ...