Some Assembly Required Read Free Page B

top five. Or top two thousand, for that matter. If he had to spend all of eternity somewhere, could it at least have been Tahiti? He’d worked out the theories hundreds of times. Too many CASA meatballs before bed seemed like the most plausible one.
    It was like he was living the punchline of a joke but didn’t know what the joke was supposed to be. Now, he strutted about with his dick out for all to see.
    He dodged a harried mother carrying her toddler to the nearest restroom. She muttered under her breath to her husband that the poor little girl had messed herself. The husband nodded and hurried with their overfull shopping cart of items that they’d never find a use for.
    Turning a corner into the living room displays, he saw little old Agnes sitting primly on the GENOA sofa. Her tiny silver bifocals sat at the proper angle on her sharp snooty nose. Her knitting needles flew fast and furious as she knitted and purled her way through yet another scarf. The woolen baby-pink scarf flowed from her needles to her feet.
    He felt the scalding jab of her judgmental sideway glance.
    He stopped next to her and looked out over the showroom as a young woman considered sofa coverings and her husband wilted with her unending indecision.
    Agnes didn’t look up from counting her stitches. “Patrick.”
    “Agnes.” He watched the couple.
    “Don’t you have work to do?” She knitted another row.
    “Always.”
    The young woman thrust the fabric samples at her husband, forcing him to act remotely enthused.
    “There’s someone in the café,” she said and then counted the stitches again. “He’s a darling.”
    “Darling, eh?” Patrick crossed his arms. “That code for something?”
    Agnes looked up at him over the rims of her bifocals. “Meaning you better not be inappropriate.” She shot a pointed glance at his crotch. “Well. More than you already are.”
    Patrick smirked. “Of course. I’ll take a shower, at least.”
    “You’ll need more than a shower.” Agnes resumed knitting, the universal gesture of old-lady dismissal.
    Patrick continued on his way. “Agnes.”
    “Patrick.”
    Over his shoulder, he extended his middle finger in the universal gesture of “screw you.”
    Lisa from Kitchens stepped through the entryway of the employee lounge as Patrick stepped past her, barely brushing shoulders. She shivered and recoiled from the slight touch and then hurried on without a word.
    On his way to the showers, a young, freckle-faced teenager practiced his greetings in his locker mirror. “Welcome to CASA! How may I help you? Did you find everything all right?” He tried his most chipper smile.
    Patrick winced. So perky it resembled Barbie’s dead-eyed Cheshire grin. He checked the kid’s name tag. “Tommy,” he told himself, committing the name to memory. “You poor bastard. You haven’t succumbed to the depravity of rabid consumerism yet.”
    Tommy tried smiling again in the mirror, and Patrick appraised his new effort.
    “Better,” Patrick said, thumbing his chin.
    “I can do this.” Tommy clapped his hands like a wrestler ready for a match. In the case of a skinny eighteen-year-old, it just appeared adorably dorky. “I got this.”
    “Totally got it, bro.” Patrick waved behind him and headed into the showers.
    He bit his lip as he forced the stubborn faucet to turn. Patrick was rewarded with the deliciously scalding and delightfully high-pressure water. Mist rose from the floor and banished the chill of the overworked air-conditioning.
    Patrick groaned deep in his throat as the water hit just the right spot between his shoulder blades. He reached for the shampoo dispenser and took more than enough for his short hair. Eyes closed, he imagined a place in the tropics with a cabana and drinks with little paper umbrellas. He worked the suds into his hair and let himself drift into the space of a dream within a dream.
    “Shit!” Tommy screamed and burst into the showers.
    Patrick startled and jerked