Just one of those days...

[Anti Federalist]

Just One of Those Days

By P.J. O'Rourke

The alarm went off about half an hour late, and I pulled out the old Smith & Wesson 9mm automatic I keep under my pillow and squeezed off a couple of rounds at the $#@!er. I didn’t even have my eyes open yet but I still managed to nick the snooze button. Kee-rist, I hate to get up in the morning, but I swear they’re going to kill me if I’m late to work again. They killed a couple of other executives just last week—hauled them into the freight elevator and shot them in the head. But I would have gone back to sleep anyway—really—if it hadn’t been for this old bitch in the apartment next door. She was putting her cat out for keeps. She must have taken six shots at the thing and the sucker just wouldn’t die. It was howling bloody murder. I threw a couple of slugs through the wall in her general direction and then hit the deck and bellycrawled to the kitchen while she returned fire. Using the dishwasher for cover, I made myself a cup of coffee and then I slipped out onto the fire escape and popped a white phosphorus grenade through the old bat’s window so I could shower and shave standing up.

Then I couldn’t find any clean shirts. And when I did find one it took me twenty minutes to disarm the plastique charge the $#@!ing Chinaman had pressed behind the shirt cardboard. I finally had to set it off in the sink. It was a brand-new shirt too. And the explosion about wrecked the kitchen. The apartment was a mess anyway. Good thing the cleaning lady was coming and a double good thing I had the cleaning lady’s kid tied up and booby-trapped in the hall closet or she’d never do windows.

So I was all dressed and ready to go to work, but my date was still asleep, lying on her back with her mouth open, snoring. Even with all the sirens and the fire trucks and the commotion next door, she hadn’t stirred. I don’t know, somehow this really pissed me off, so I picked her up and threw her through the window. My place is only on the third floor so she probably lived. I’ll call her next week and apologize.

The mail hadn’t come yet either. The doorman said there was a company of Marines trying to get through with it, but they were pinned down in Murray Hill somewhere. The doorman was as surly as usual and would have slit my throat if I hadn’t judo-flipped him and kicked him in the solar plexus first.

I was going to drive to work but then I remembered the parking garage up by the office was still under siege. A dozen spook parking attendants were in there holding about thirty school kids from the suburbs. The kids had come in town for the circus. I don’t know why they bothered. Some Puerto Rican meat hunters had got all the elephants already. Anyway, I couldn’t get in to park even though I’ve got a monthly slot. Besides, day before yesterday, the spooks put some of the school kids in this one Cadillac, set it on fire, and drove it off the garage roof. I guess about ten pedestrians were killed when it landed.

Now, I had my favorite little personal-defense unit out of my briefcase and ready as soon as I hit the street. This is a Walther MPK 9mm submachine gun I had special-ordered with selective fire. It doesn’t pack quite the punch that an Uzi does, but it’s the most compact automatic-fire weapon made in the world, at least in 9mm. I’m a real bug on 9mm ammo. It’s kind of my hobby.

By this time, the morning rush hour was in full swing and I couldn’t even get a cab in my peep sights, so I had to take the subway. I hate taking the subway—all those kids that spray graffiti all over the place. The cops ought to tie them up and cut their noses off, which is exactly what the cops are doing except they don’t catch enough of them for my money. Plus it was a regular $#@!ty morning outside, raining and cold, and bombs were dropping in the next block. And I bet twenty snipers took a shot at me between my building and the subway station. I don’t know why those people are allowed out on the streets—they can’t hit a goddam thing. Although one did get a bag lady right by the newsstand and got brains all over my raincoat, which I had just got back from the cleaner’s. And that wasn’t easy either. In fact, it took a midnight raid on the manager’s house in Rego Park, where I picked off all four of his guard dogs with the help of a starlight scope. So there I was with brains all over me and then I had to beat the $#@! out of the blind guy at the newsstand before he’d give me a paper.

I shot my way past a couple of transit cops at the token booth, jumped the turnstile, and got a train to stop by pushing some lady out on the tracks. It’s surprising, even a hundred-pound woman can derail those babies when they’re going at full throttle, so they generally try to stop if they can. On the train a pack of $#@! teenagers was terrorizing everybody, ripping gold chains off women and taking wallets at knifepoint, so I joined them for a while and picked up a little, you know, cab fare. Then I forced everybody, including the conductor, to get in the last car, and I pulled the pin and left them back in the tunnel. Sometimes that’s the only way you can get a seat. Almost got my butt kicked for that, though-who would have thought one of those kids would be carrying a wire-guided antitank missile? Good thing it bounced off a signal light and ricocheted right back at the kid with the launcher or I would have been hurting. I mean it.

I was late for work for sure by now. The subway was running way behind schedule, and I had to help the engineer for a while when we ran across an armored train. It must have been from over on the IND line. Anyway, it was shooting up the 34th Street station. Fortunately I’d planted some radio-detonated Claymore mines under the litter baskets in that station just a week back. And I had the transmitter in my briefcase. It’s great; it doubles as a digital travel clock. The mines killed all the people on the platform and brought a big section of the tunnel roof down on those guys from the IND too.

Well, by the time I blasted my way through the reception area and raped my secretary and piled up the desk and some chairs to barricade myself in my office, the “old man” was really fuming. He was over on the roof of the building across the street with about twenty guys from accounting, and all of them had M-16s and tear-gas-grenade launchers. He was giving me a real talking-to over the bullhorn, telling me to come out with my hands up or forget about that raise. I got my gas mask on and pulled the Browning automatic rifle out from behind the file cabinet and gave him a little argument. But I couldn’t keep that up for long. I had to take some calls and dictate a bunch of letters and it was a real pain in the ass giving dictation to a secretary who was coughing and gagging from the CS gas and threatening a sexual-harassment suit.

Then I had the Peterson contract to straighten out. They manufacture designer jeans, and what a bunch of hard-nosed sons of bitches they are. Their CEO had been on the horn to me all week threatening to nuke our Tarrytown office if he didn’t see some action soon. Here was a client who was definitely hanging by a thread. And I knew if that Peterson thing fell through my ass would be in deep $#@!.

I didn’t have time to go out for lunch, so I just had a deli owner and his family killed and some sandwiches sent up. I was working like a bear and by 3:00 I was pretty sure I had all my ducks in a row, and then wouldn’t you know it—fifteen megatons right in the parking lot of our suburban branch office. You probably read about it in the papers. It broke half the windows in Manhattan, and I’ll bet it takes weeks to decontaminate all the radioactive fallout $#@! all over the place. And that wasn’t the worst of it by any means. Right after Tarrytown goes up in a mushroom cloud and the Peterson account goes with it, the boss finally breaks through my office wall with a Bangalor torpedo and tells me he’s promoted young Donovan over my head to group vice-president. That means I’ll have to go all the way out to Donovan’s house in Darien and poison his kids. Well, that did it. I decided to toss a Molotov cocktail into the mailroom and knock off early.

A couple of the guys and I took our secretaries down to Clark’s for a few drinks, raped the girls again, and then gut-shot one of the waiters and bet on how long it would take him to die. I guess I had a few more than I meant to because I was really bushed. So I thought I’d just have a burger in the back room. I wanted to carve it right out of the cow myself but the $#@!er wouldn’t hold still. Finally I had to hit it with a tranq gun. Then the guys and I tried to take some det cord and wrap it around the cow’s ass and make chopped steak like that. But the det cord gave the whole thing a really rotten taste. After that I just said $#@! dinner and had a couple more drinks and decided to go back to my place and spend a peaceful night at home for a change.

It was still raining outside and I had to call in an air strike to get a taxi. One of the A-IE Sky raiders finally spotted a Checker on Park Avenue and strafed the hack until he chased it over to me. I held the MPK on the driver all the way back to my place and shot up his gas tank for a tip. Then the doorman tried to kill me again and I had to toss a fragmentation grenade at this lady in the lobby to keep her dog from jumping up on me. So I ended up outside waiting around in the rain while one of the building porters cleaned her guts off the elevator door, and then what the $#@! do you think I saw? A goddam parking ticket on my car! Jesus, I was pissed. I mean I’m sure it was one of those Jewish holidays when the alternate-side-of-the-street parking regulations are supposed to be suspended. I mean I’m pretty sure all the Jews aren’t killed yet. I would have complained to a cop if he hadn’t shot first. And then when I finally did get inside, $#@!ing Carson was on vacation again and that $#@! Letterman was hosting The Tonight Show.

Man, it was just one of those days.

[Anti Federalist]

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[Swordsmyth]

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