The One Percenters Read Online Free Page A

playing cards. Makes you feel like more of a man, I guess. I needed to feel masculine that night.
    It wasn’t too long after Poker Night One-andOnly that I decided it was time to bail. The city was eating at me. The media wasn’t all over me anymore, but there were reminders everywhere. For Christ’s sake, I don’t know how I stayed there so long, being that my wife was killed across the street. A lot of alcohol, I guess. I also felt obligated for a while, like Jill would have wanted me to stay. Then I realized that was just a bunch of horse shit people say when they’re despondent.
    Jill had been out planting flowers, of all things.
    At least I think that’s what she was doing. My mind is hazy, and now that I think of it, autumn isn’t a planting season. I don’t think it is, anyway. Fuck. Regardless, she was out doing some kind of planting/weeding/
    digging thing when she was murdered. It wasn’t even on our property. She was prettying up the curb area across the street. Town property. That’s the kind of person Jill was.
    I was sick that week, and was watching game Page 17
    shows when she was killed. Fucking game shows. That little fact gave me quite the guilt complex later on. But I didn’t do anything wrong, damn it. I realize that now.
    Just because I didn’t happen to be outside at the time doesn’t mean I did anything wrong. Time of death was set at 6:30 p.m., give or take. I fell asleep around 8:00, and didn’t wake up until midnight. I was concerned when I didn’t see Jill by my side, so I threw on my jacket over my pajamas.
    My Jill lay there for five and a half hours in the rain, body exposed to the world. It took me a half-hour after finding her to compose myself enough to call the police. Detective Morris and I actually had our first chat while I was in my pajamas. I’m sure he gets that all the time though. Cops and priests, I guess, have the most entertaining stories.
    Priests can’t share their tales of course; that’s got to be a bitch. No, I take it back. They must tell other priests. No one could resist that kind of temptation, I’m sure of it. No one could resist a good laugh, even at the expense of someone else. Especially at the expense of someone else. They probably trade stories like some people trade baseball cards.
    When I proposed to Jill, there were no nerves. I felt completely at ease, which some people might say is a bad omen. “No fear, no future”—that’s what I’ve heard.
    But Jill and I were right for each other, and marriage was only an afterthought. I gave her a ring. She made me take it back, almost angry at the fact that I had given her it. Jill wasn’t into pretense or love-proving or hokey traditions.
    We spent the money from the ring on our honeymoon—a hokey tradition, for sure, but a damn fine one. I wouldn’t have thought there was a woman in this world who would turn down a diamond ring, but I found living proof that I was mistaken. We ended up buying her a faux-silver serpent ring which she wore in a sarcastic fashion, poking fun at normalcy. There’s no fun in normalcy.
    I remember a guy at work once telling me he fell in love with his wife because she was sane and had good moral values, whatever that means. Those things Page 18
    make for a good coworker, but should be assumed in a life partner. You don’t marry someone simply because they’re not evil fucks. And maybe your spouse should be a little crazy. Just a little though.
    My coworker—the one with the moral wife—
    was a real animal. I mean a total slob. He left a trail of dirt behind him at all times. It was like he’d never evolved. Probably had himself an os bone. You know what that is? It’s a penis bone, and apparently all the other mammals or primates or some crap have ‘em.
    People argue why we lost the damn things, but I figure it’s all a conspiracy by those erection people in the lab coats. Couldn’t be selling their little pills if we were all walking around with bones in