Chapter Four
The entire house was in on his interview, and even Chester had come out of his cave to see what the buzz was about.
“I can’t believe it’s him,” Rhianna spat. “Vicious, bloodsucking bastard.”
“Rhi, lay off,” Sandy begged. “He needs this.”
“How much is the douche paying you?” Chester asked before dipping his spoon into a pint of rocky road.
Rhianna changed her focus to him and glared as she asked him, “You know who Lee Madison is?”
“Slure,” he mumbled through the ice cream in his mouth. After he thankfully swallowed, he added, “Fucker wants to mark certain games pornographic and take them off the market.”
“Of course,” she sighed. “Well, he has a point there, though that may be the only time I agree with him.”
“Really? You’re for censorship?”
“When a game has a guy running over prostitutes and then bashing them with a bat to get their money? Sure!”
Eli looked to Sandy for help, which he gave. “You two stop. He’s freaking out enough.”
That was help, sure, but he didn’t need to tell them he was freaking out, though it was true.
“How much is he paying you, Eli?” Rhianna prodded. “That will tell you what all you can expect.”
“How?”
Sandy explained, “If it’s a lot, then you’ll for sure have to keep secrets, and probably, I don’t know, get him hookers or drugs or something.”
“What? You’ve got to be kidding me! I don’t know how to do things like that!”
“Church boy over here,” Chester commented. “That’s not hard, Eli. Jesus, next you’ll say you’ve never gotten high.”
“Pot, sure, but I didn’t much like it.”
Sandy assured, “We can help you with that kind of thing. I know some people who know some people. Anyway, yeah, how much?”
“Well, uh,” he started, not sure he could even speak the amount. “Twelve grand.”
Rhianna immediately got defensive of him. “That rich piece of shit is probably going to have you running all over and making him smoothies and wiping his ass for twelve grand. I make more than that at the library!”
At first, he didn’t understand, then he realized, they all thought he meant twelve a year. “No, no. Twelve thousand…a month.”
Silence fell over them as their mouths hung in absolute shock of the amount, then Chester started giggling. “Jesus H Christ. That’s…” he calculated quickly in his head. “That’s three hundred grand a year! Fuck!”
“Eli, are you serious?” Rhianna asked him. “You didn’t hear him wrong?”
“No. He said it, and he said I’d earn it. He also added there were bonuses and benefits, whatever. And…and I’ll be living there. So, if I take it, you guys will have to find someone for my room.”
Sandy was the first to tell him to take it, but Rhianna was skeptical. “That’s a lot of money for getting a guy coffee and answering his calls. What did he mean by saying you’d earn it? Did he give you any specifics?”
“No. I admit, I find it shady, but can I possibly turn that down? I have debts that will drown me if I don’t find a job. Plus, I’ll be making connections. You know, a lot of the people the politicians hang out with are on the boards of the big colleges. This could be great.”
“And it could be a nightmare,” she warned. “Whatever, it’s your life, Eli, but you’re a good guy. I’d hate to see that world eat up all that’s good in you.”
Later, in his room, seeing the clock turn to three in the morning, Eli got up and turned on his bedside lamp, letting the yellow glow fall on his journal.
He’d gotten into the habit years before to jot down random thoughts that sometimes turned into larger musings. It wasn’t written in often, but that night, he needed it.