Episode 5: The Harem

for a preface, see the home page of my work stories: Paradise (aka The Job)

Mr. Placemats, as mentioned in an earlier episode, is moving away. He's going back to his house, newly vacated by the previous renter. At breakfast the other day, he was announcing this to the people at his table.

"Oh, where are you moving?"
"Well, to my house," he replied in the most condescending tone imaginable.
Then they told him they would miss him. After he's been so rude?

Then they began asking what he would do about cleaning and cooking and laundry and all the things that are currently done for him by staff.
"I tell ya what, honey, I'm a Big Boy."

"Big Boy" had only minutes earlier asked me to fetch his breakfast for him, though he is fully mobile and was only seated three feet from the breakfast bar.

Later, when a coworker and I stopped for lunch, he came and sat near us to whine about his junk mail.
"My wife died three years ago," he confided, "and they still send me junk mail in her name."
That's sad. I felt a twinge of compassion. Poor guy lost his wife.
Then he told us that his house has three spare bedrooms.
"So I just need to call around and start a harem."
A harem? Like, a group of women to see to his needs? Gag me. What would his wife say? Maybe nothing. She must have been an angel to tolerate his crap.

"They'll cook and clean for me," he declares, in that slurry voice that makes him sound perpetually drunk.

My feminist ire gets up just enough to embolden me. "So what do they get out of the deal?"
"Do you want me to tell you?" he grins.
"No, I don't really want to know," I say, repressing my shudders of disgust until he's gone.
There's not enough money in the world to buy him even one woman with that little self-respect, much less three.