It’s late and my attempts at purging what refuse I had digested this evening hasn’t developed into a meaningful report. It’s all in pieces and I can’t make sense of it. That’s not a good thing, sir. Not making sense of madness is ok, but really, being the cause of that madness is quite another. I’m drifting, I don’t even know what I’m saying.
I had the shelling of my life this morning. It brought me back to my senses, and I wanted to throw punches. Throw punches. The last vestiges of decency cast aside for one, pleasurable smackdown. I was on the verge today, with him. But I took it out on a 3.30pm appointment instead. He sat down and I sat down and I dispensed with small talk.
I told him: “You’re over-charging”.
It devolved from there. It was like watching a piece of toast decay on the counter, only in fast-forward. The mould develops, then consumes the baked amalgamation of flour, sugar and machined indifference. He didn’t care about what I had just said.
His small mouth enraged me. I sat, detached from our conversation, and stared at his mouth. It looked plastic, it looked… it looked like a burn-victim’s mouth. Stretched and peeling, shiny, like the skin was pulled over a weak, shapeless cast. I wanted to hit him.
I won’t change my price, he said. Sure, you asshole, you won’t change anything will you? There was room for more flak, and I won’t be able to avoid it this time. If I had a chopper on hand, I would’ve told him that in the face. Go for something more elemental. Go for the chopper, or go for a piece of furniture.
“You’re overcharging and you know it,” I said.
“There were four people,” he said. He didn’t spread his hands, he didn’t shrug, he didn’t engage in all those little ticks one records diligently in the head for filler material when writing post-hoc conversations. That bastard.
“But not your people!” I screamed. I lost it while he was mid-sentence. He lied, after vacilitating between truth and lie, lie and truth.
“But I have to pay them also, mah,” he continued. He was unperturbed. Unperturbed, that little bucket of turd. By then my subconscious must have taken over. I didn’t know what I was saying.
“Are you going to lower your price?” I said.
“No,” he said.
“No? You’re overcharging by RM 7,000. Do you admit that?”
“Yes”.
“But you won’t change your invoice,” I said. It wasn’t a question. It couldn’t have been a question, now could it, since he wasn’t answering any of my questions. Not a question from him about quantums, prices and such. He banked on the fact that he was merely a contractor. Ah, retreat. I made him say it three times, just so I got what he said. I got what he said, I just wanted to intimidate him with my bulk and cold, hard stare.
He didn’t budge and I felt myself dashed against rocks. The phrase ‘you’re overcharging’ kept ringing in my head like the bell of my alarm clock, banging about ‘you’re overcharging’ at high speed. I heard that phrase in my head go over and over, and I winced. It was painful to hear the phrase repeated over and over; it was like a high-pitched whine.
I wasn’t listening to him anymore, I was watching the construction going on outside. I thought of the small little excavators cavorting through the mud, and I felt they must’ve been having fun. My 3.30 appointment becomes my 4 o’clock appointment in a matter of heartbeats and window-gazing.
I remembered thinking, “There’s something wrong in the heart of everything today”. I found myself sinking into comforting melancholy, my last resort. It’s like sinking into the dross of mediocrity everytime I wax sentimental about my current state of employment.
I lost grip on reality for a moment, and then packed to leave.
