Excerpt
The Message
Hong Kong
April 22
Here he was again. The start of another shitty day. As he lay
in bed this morning, there was only one thing that could
distract him from the pukey feeling rumbling deep in his stomach
and the piercing pain in his head. If he had the story right, he
had been fired the day before. Him. The consummate professional
engineer. Once the senior engineer that everyone at
Empire had come to count on over the years. And now? Now he
had been “relieved of his responsibilities,” as the letter of dismissal
so clearly stated. The letter. Yes, there it was on the floor.
So then it must be true. For the first time in twenty-five years Joel
was waking up without a job. And knowing how soiled his reputation
would be after word got out about his dismissal, he probably
wouldn’t want the kind of maritime engineering jobs that
would be offered to him now, even the scraps that new grads
wouldn’t accept. And maybe he wouldn’t even get those.
Yesterday was pretty much a blur. He remembered being
fired. He remembered walking back to his apartment through
the crowds and the humidity. He remembered stopping at the
street-level bar just around the corner from his place. He
remembered the first rum and Coke. He remembered the
woman, or maybe she was a girl. But that is all he remembered.
The rest was a blur. God only knows where he went and what he
did from there. Somehow, he had made it back to his apartment,
alone and not mugged. The streets of Hong Kong, or any city …
Libros Libertad 