Free My Mother-in-Law Drinks by Anthony Shugaar, Diego De Silva Page A

material came to hand. You didn’t even notice that they were in your class at all until February or March. When the teacher managed to track them down, we’d watch them being questioned as if they were fugitives from the law finally brought to book. I can remember a couple of them, but I still have no earthly idea what their names were.
    â€œYou understand me, asshole?” Matrix upbraided him, seeing as Matteo the deli counterman was showing no signs of life beyond pure astonishment. “Put the gun to this piece of shit’s head and get these cuffs off me,
now
!” he commanded.
    â€œWhat?” I asked in Matteo’s place.
    If you were to ask me what I considered to be the low point of that whole absurd episode thus far, I would have to say: when Matrix ordered Matteo the deli counterman to get ahold of the pistol and use it on Engineer Romolo Sesti Orfeo to get him to uncuff him. Worse than the capture itself, worse than the pulling of the gun, worse than the struggle, worse than the annoying old lady, worse than the reality-show ambush. Only if you hold your fellow man in such low regard to the point that you take his absolute obedience for granted could you assume the right to impart such an order. Because to talk to another human being that way, you have to put him on the scale somewhere below shit.
    â€œDo what I tell you, you’ll be better off,” Matrix added, after letting fly another ankle to the engineer’s belly.
    â€œGo fuck yourself,” I blurted out, pointing my finger straight at him. And I bent down to grab the pistol, with the vague intent of using it in some way (glossing over the minor detail that I’d never picked up a gun in my life).
    Matrix glared back at me, nonplussed, but he didn’t have the time to process the meaning of the disruption before Engineer Romolo Sesti Orfeo whipped around and slammed his elbow straight into the middle of his face.
    Matrix’s nose erupted spectacularly, knocking him backward and roughly unhinging the corporeal structure erected with such diligence atop his enemy’s back.
    I think that I recoiled out of sympathy. Reaching toward the pistol as I was, in a not-entirely-wholehearted attempt to get my hands on it, I lost my balance. Luckily Matteo the deli counterman was behind me, and he promptly seized both my arms and kept me from falling. Whereupon I released a couple of pathetic kicks into the air, in the instinctive search for solid ground upon which to plant my feet (more or less like toddlers do when their mothers place both hands under their armpits and lift them up to teach them to walk). Finding that attempt unsuccessful (that fucking floor seemed amazingly slippery), I threw my hands back behind me, harpooning the shoulders of Matteo the deli counterman. We remained in that position, each gripping the other, like a couple of drunks staggering to their feet from the sidewalk after the bouncer has done his job.
    Even before getting back onto his feet, Engineer Romolo Sesti Orfeo immediately lunged for the gun, beating me to the punch in that respect, wobbly though my attempt had been; then he stood up, waved the weapon around in the air in our direction (and we paid practically no attention to it, so hardened were we to all threats of danger at this point), and returned his attentions to Matrix, who was partially unconscious, semi-invertebrate, dangling from the hand rail of the deli case. But he did so without haste; in fact, with a perceptible and distinctly unsettling calmness of demeanor, almost as if regaining control of the situation had given him a desire to take his time.
    He kneeled down in front of Matrix, the pistol pointed right at his face, waiting for his captive to take a closer look at him, just to remind him who was in charge.
    Matrix opened his eyes with effort, blinded by his own streaming blood, humiliated by the defeat.
    â€œToo bad,” commented Engineer Romolo Sesti Orfeo,