Free My Boss is a Serial Killer by Christina Harlin Page A

of
wine.
    Gus began to work efficiently in his kitchen.
From his refrigerator he gathered steaks, mushrooms, and the simple
ingredients for a salad. He refused my offers of help. He chopped
vegetables so quickly with the biggest knife I’ve ever seen that I
flinched and gasped a couple times. “In college,” he said, the
knife rapping like a woodpecker down the cutting board, “I worked
in a Chinese restaurant, and they teased me for being too
slow.”
    Over the frying pan he said, “I was married,
actually, but only once. And she’s still among the living, if you
can call Omaha living. I have a son named Doug who lives there with
her most of the time. You?”
    I confessed very briefly to one previous
marriage and no children. I asked about Doug, which seemed to be
the polite thing to do, but Gus wasn’t ready to share Doug with me
yet. I was shown a picture of a boy around ten built thick and hard
like his father, with a leaner face and green eyes, but the same
curly hair and cupid’s bow mouth. I wondered if the boy was blessed
with the Haglund family smile,. I learned that Doug was Gus’s on
alternate weekends, four weeks out of the summer, and rotating
holidays, and that Gus missed the boy in a constant but bearable
way. “With my schedule,” he said, “It only makes sense for him to
live with his mother.”
    That was all I got of Doug that first time
around. That was okay.
    “ So tell me about television,” said
Gus, to get the topic away from his son.
    “ It’s a box, about so big,” I motioned
with my hands, “and it shows these things called
programs.”
    “ You told me that you watch it almost
constantly.”
    He remembered something I’d said. Another
gold star. Let’s see, that totaled about five stars thus far, and
we hadn’t even eaten yet.
    “ That’s right, I do,” I said, refusing
to be ashamed of my habit, “But I have standards. No reality
television, no game shows, no entertainment-based gossip
crap.”
    “ And no lawyer shows.”
    Ding. Another star.
    “ I won’t say it’s a complete boycott,
but they have to be very good. But you don’t watch
television?”
    “ I can’t manage it any more. Now
everything that’s on has long story arcs. You have to watch them in
order, and you can’t miss an episode or you won’t know what’s
happening. My schedule is all over the place. And I can’t stand
missing parts of a story.”
    “ Dear boy, you don’t have to be a slave
to your schedule. I watch TV shows on DVD. I am the master of my
own fate.”
    “ Back in my youth,” said Gus dreamily,
“an episode was an episode, and everything at the end was back to
the status quo. The next week, they started fresh as if nothing had
ever happened.”
    “ I remember those days. What a romantic
notion, starting fresh every week.”
    Gus chuckled at me, looking unexpectedly
pleased.
    We were eating strawberry shortcake before
Lyvia made an appearance. She peered around the corner of the
kitchen and said, “Sorry, can I just come through for some
tea?”
    Gus motioned her in. He had some whipped
topping on his lip that rendered me momentarily speechless, Barry
White music floating into my fantasies again, but unfortunately he
wiped it off before he said, “Lyvie, do you want some cake?”
    “ Hell, yes,” she said.
    “ Sit down with us,” I offered
sincerely, able to summon coherent thought now that the whipped
topping incident had passed. “Take a break. I have been trying to
explain to your brother why lawyers are required to bill so much
for their time.”
    “ He told you about the letter, didn’t
he?” asked Lyvia. She sat and helped herself to a double portion of
strawberry shortcake. At her age, she could probably do that
without immediately gaining twenty pounds. In a fairly good
imitation of her brother she said, “That guy charged me two hundred
dollars for writing a letter that I could have written
myself.”
    I shrugged good-naturedly; Gus had mentioned
the complaint