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Trust

He leaned back in the lounge chair and sighed.  You just have to gain their trust.  Most people don’t realize how important trust is until their trust has been violated.  But the sharks, the competent ones, they know all along.  Trust in the market, trust in relationships, the one who succeeds is the one who can manipulate both.

It hadn’t been quick, getting to this lounge chair.  But he was aware.  He knew to always question whether the chair would hold his weight.  You don’t even need to be smart, just conscious.

He tried to picture what his brother, Tom, was doing back home in California.  Tearing his hair out, no doubt.  Tom was helpless now.  It was a good feeling after everything Tom had put him through when they were growing up, stealing his girlfriends, “borrowing” his money, and ratting him out to their folks when he used to get high behind the middle school.  He laughed thinking of how Justine must have shaken when she told him they’d lost everything.

Justine was an only child.  Her parents knew something about trust.  They’d established a beefy one for their anxiety-ridden daughter.  But they hadn’t planned on a shark getting to her once she’d been married off to Tom.  It had been so easy, the nervous lily shivering under his advances.  She certainly had a wild streak Tom never noticed.  All he had to do was get her to trust him enough to liberate herself.  The affair had lasted two years before he asked her for the first loan.

“I know I could get Tom to give it to me, but it’s really your money, and you should decide where it goes.  Plus, you’re a better decision-maker than he is,” he said.

Touched by his recognition of her intellectual prowess, she handed over a $25,000 check for his Internet start-up.

The rest of his plan executed within six months.  Once someone trusts you enough to hand over that first check, you can take it all.

Of course, he had to get her to mistrust her husband.  Marks must always feel they have been betrayed; it’s the only way for them to get motivated to change their own circumstances.  That was the easiest part.  A few falsified bank statements and photos of Tom kissing a strange woman was all it took.  She had no way of knowing how old the photos were; seeing Tom kissing his old college girlfriend was enough.

 “Hey, get me another one of those rum drinks!” He called in the direction of one of the helpless hotel workers.

The Aruban breeze combed through his hair, caressing his scalp.  It was a good day to be a shark.

The Chair

     The chair had seen better days.  Worn leather cracking around its curves held up his aging frame.  She watched her husband bent over the desk scribbling from the doorway.  He had insisted the desk be flush against the windows so he could look out over the yard while he worked.  The chair creaked, a sound she knew so well after 30 years of watching him from behind.  He used that chair for everything.

     In their younger years, she had slipped into the office at night to seduce him, slipping her fingers under his collar until he responded in kind.  That old leather chair had seen a lot of action.  Squeamish at the sight of blood, he sat there waiting for her sister to call him from the hospital and announce the arrival of their daughters, Sara and Michelle.  While she writhed in the agony of labor, she pictured him sitting there, hunched over the desk, smoking in silence, every noise setting him on edge.  It comforted her.  But those years were long gone now.

     The chair used to be like her, vibrant and shiny, but time had wrinkled them both, removing the glossy sheen of youth.  She wasn’t sure if he loved her still, but she knew he loved the chair.  A new chair was out of the question, too expensive, he claimed, when she tried to replace it with a high-backed ergonomic model a few years ago.  She held back her laughter thinking of him in a new chair; he was right, it was impractical.  He did everything in that chair, read to his daughters, signed his will, and retired from his job as a computer programmer.  The chair had become a part of his body.

   She slinked up behind him, just as she had done years ago.  She pressed the cold metal barrel up against the back of his head and whispered, “you deserve to die here,” as she pulled the trigger, sending bits of his forehead onto the photograph of him with his secretary at an office party from five years earlier, the daughter he fathered by her clinging to his other arm.