A Part of Becker

An unfinished novel or short story, I haven't decided yet. Prose piece.

Kyle Klevitz is the officious hangnail to my mental well-being.

Most of the time I get up at nine in the morning (just before the maid with the spurious French accent makes her way to my door with the exact arrangement of knocking. The first knock is light and simple in matter, just a scant little tap against the oak door followed after a few seconds - three to four- I've counted numerous times with a cigarette between my fingers taking my place in a leather chair that finds residence in the left corner, the dimly lighted room of 178, the only light comes through the white curtains from the mid-morning daylight - the second knock comes into tuition, which is more considerable in noise as it makes its acquaintance with the oak exterior of the door, a more concrete thump that can be heard across the room. By the mid of the third knock I’m always up with half of my face in the middle of a white pillow covered in indistinguishable spots ranging from a dark red to a pale yellow - half of them mine from long nights of splattered memories, like a Picasso painting in my mind - the other half - from the slew of privileged white girls living off their parents trust funds that I find prowling the nightclubs at night. I looked over my left arm to see if one was there, usually starch naked and snoring, the kind that (if you had the strength, which if you’re me, then this is hypothetical) you would take the stained pillow beneath you and cut their oxygen off with, just for a moment’s rest. (This is the thirteenth knock, by now the persistence is rhythmic).

I stand up. Stretch. Yawn. Meet the maid at the door.

The spurious accent is conducted by Kellie Klint (which she makes sure every single resident acknowledges with a large name tag with the beginning phase printed in a bold, italic font). Kellie stands between 5’3 and 5’4 with an angular face with a sharp nose in the center between two oval-shaped eyes with a light-blue color, although this precise appearance will change when she leaves my room. As by the time she leaves - trash-bag half filled with aluminum cans and glass bottles - her light blonde hair will have awn half of these features as she steps through the doorway.

The spurious accent is never mentioned, never questioned, never hinted at. I open the door.

“Kellie, how’s the children?”

Kellie has seven children, each with their own robust pitfalls ranging from what I understand the oldest, Kenneth, being an alcoholic, twenty-five year old military school dropout with a deficiency of any true redeeming qualities who spends half of his time at a crack-house in a small town in Colorado, teaching Crackheads magic tricks in the middle of their enlightenment to the youngest flaws of Kenny, who left his wife and three kids for a 17-year-old he was having an affair with who he met at a gym one November morning.

“Mr. Becker,” cue the accent, “Kenneth, my oldest I've told you of, was murdered recently with one of his plastic wands shoved up his a*s. The police man in charge said it was the strangest thing he saw, they found him in a ditch beside a highway completely naked with his a*s in the air and right there, in the middle, a wand sticking out of his a*****e…”

“A wand? In his a*****e? Are you going to be fine?”

“Oh yes, yes...:”

“But your first born son is dead….with a rather pointy object.”

“Mr. Becker, Kenneth wasn't my favorite. I've got, like, six more of these b******s roaming around. Kaylee was just arrested recently for prostitution. You know how much she was whoring herself out for?” I nod with hesitation. “One dollar and fifty cents for a hand job. Three dollars and eighteen cents, this is tax by the way, for a blowjob and officially, all for the touchdown, five dollars and ninety-nine cents for a f**k.”

“Was there a pamphlet or flyer that she hung on public buildings?”

“No, that would require literacy and a sense of dedication, never could take anything slow.”

“So, what happened with Kenneth? Was he shot or…?”

“The sheriff never told me. I flew thousands of miles just to be greeted with a ‘my deepest apologies...’ speech and the fat f**k just sits there stuffing his face in telling me about the plastic stick jammed in my son’s rectum.”