Karma

The biggest deal I ever brokered was worth 20 million dollars. Can you imagine? When it finally came through I felt like a million bucks myself, even though my retail price was only  $3,995 back then. Not everyone could afford me, but those who mattered did, and they made quite the exclusive club. Politicians, bankers, CEO’s and CFO’s… All connected and just a call away. Ah, the conversations we had! Riveting, world-changing! Sometimes a bit shady, but no one made an omelette without cracking a few eggs, right? That’s how the real world works. Important people talk and make deals with each other. And I was there for all of it. Or a good part of it.

I’m not sure when exactly did it stop. Through the years I traveled to work and then back, I was there for every trip, I was on every night, available 24/7. Then, one day, I stayed home, and that was that. I saw my replacement. Slimmer, smaller. I felt like a first wife. Old, heavy, and discarded. Maybe it was karma. After all, it was partially my fault something like this happened to an actual wife. Many late-night calls were not “professional” in nature if you know what I mean. Though, unlike the wife, I did stay at the house. In the home office to be exact. I could still listen in on some of the conversations, to witness the work of my successor. They got the job done, but they had none of my style. 

I would have been satisfied with the home office. Just staying on the shelf, calmly observing the process when the work happened at home (and since the wife left, it often did). Unfortunately, the office had to be remodeled and I got stuck behind some files at the bottom of a drawer. I barely heard anything, the sound quality was terrible. And just when I accepted that this would be the rest of my life, a cramped tomb filled with dust, a small hand picked me up and brought me to a completely different place. A kid’s room. I could have sworn it wasn’t there when I was still going to work.

Everything was bright, colorful, and loud. Loud toys, loud TV, loud kid. He held me up to his ear and started talking about how he had to call Dr. Butt about a dire farts situation. 

Dr. Butt?! Farts?!

I brokered deals worth millions of dollars, and now I was calling Dr. Butt, who, I’m pretty sure, didn’t even exist?

I would say it was too much to bear, but over the next month, I had to “call” Dr. Butt five more times, as well as Director Bum and his friend Mister Booger. All the conversations were one-sided and they were always about something disgusting. My humiliation knew no bounds, but that was only the beginning. A few days after my last consultation with Dr. Butt the kid picked me up for what I thought was another call, but instead, I got saddled with an action figure and I became its mighty spaceship, the U.S.S. Dynamite.

U.S.S. Dynamite?!

Calling imaginary figures was tough, but I least I was still doing what I was made to do, or pretending to do what I was made to do. I was not made to be a ship. No matter how rad its name was. 

The one upside to being a ship was that I could leave the flashy room and venture into far-away lands, including my previous home, the office. It looked different, not only because of the remodeling. There were fewer papers, and a new device was placed on the desk - a computer. I’ve seen computers before but they looked different and usually, they stayed at the actual office. I wondered if this square piece of wonder would also end up as a spaceship for an action figure one day. I was wrong of course. It was too big to be a spaceship. I was way more aerodynamical, even if a little heavy. 

During one of the space visits to the office, the kid’s mom entered the room, and I recognized her voice from the many unprofessional, late-night calls. Boy did it change! It was sweet before, and you would mostly hear about what color her underwear was, and now it was hoarse, probably from all the screaming. As it turned out, the kid was not to set foot in the office. What a shame. 

I remained a spaceship for months, but then the heaviness I mentioned became a problem. You see, just as I wasn’t meant to be a spaceship, I also wasn’t made to be thrown around. So, when the kid decided that U.S.S. Dynamite got “turbo boosters” and he flung me across the room, I went straight through the window, breaking it. Maybe the window itself wouldn’t be a problem, but I landed right on the mother’s head, who was outside, carrying elegant shopping bags into the house. She screamed and fell and they had to call an ambulance. Perhaps it was also karma. 

It was the last voyage of the U.S.S. Dynamite. The kid did spare me a furtive glance when the housekeeper brought me back inside, but he kept his mouth shut. Probably for the best. Though I admit I had a little bit of fun calling Dr. Butt, we were never a good fit. I was placed in the mother’s room, in the middle of her vanity table, to await punishment for causing a mild concussion. The housekeeper must have been too scared to throw me into the trash can herself. And so I waited.

The mother returned after a day, tired and irritated, but she didn’t notice me. She didn’t even close the door, and right after she entered the room, a man followed. The dad. My purchaser, my keeper. He looked even more irritated than her. He kept apologizing for not making it to the hospital, and she started crying. I knew his tone. He apologized like this many times, to the first wife. I don’t know how she ever believed it. This one, the second wife, was smarter. She said she knew where he was, and who he talked to at night. He denied everything and got angrier instead. The word “golddigger” was used and that wasn’t even the worst one. He closed in on her and practically shouted in her face. The second wife didn’t have a good verbal retort. She looked frantically around the room, and finally noticed me, there, in the middle of the vanity table, heavy but handy, waiting. Right next to her. 

She knew what I could do, she felt it herself just a day before. To her I was no longer a phone, but a brick. She grabbed me and hit the man on the right side of the head. He stumbled, and there was blood on his hair, and on me. Before he could respond, the wife hit again. And again. He fell, but he didn’t scream. She screamed instead and tried calling 991, because now that the harm was done I was a phone again. I wanted it to work, to make that last call, but it was impossible. I fell out of her hands and she ran out, panicked. The man who had once made a 20 million dollar deal with me laid on the floor, barely lucid, not able to form a sentence. I didn’t want to see him like this, but then I noticed something sticking out of his pocket. A phone. Not my successor, but a new one, a different brand! 

Suddenly I didn’t care how he looked or if he would ever talk again. I heard people running on the stairs, I saw heavy boots on the expensive carpet and hands lifting him up, checking his pulse. There was none.