Doctor Fly

He had been watching the fly all morning. It was too hot in his office. And he hadn't taken a shower in two days. His scalp smelled like a grandfather's baseball cap. And he was unbearably itchy. The fly did not make this better.

It had been two hours and thirty-two minutes since he had walked in. Put his things on his desk, a wooden dark affair with a computer and a frame with a picture of his sister in it. She was wearing a sweater and she was standing in front of a mountain. A mountain range, really. She seemed so cool and cold. The picture seemed so refreshing. It worked well to convince him that the broken air conditioning unit was no big deal. But then the fly would buzz somewhere and he'd lose concentration and his neck would tick and he'd try very hard to kill it without getting up from his chair but it would never make itself that easy. If he stood up, he would know immediately that he had lost. And he wasn't about to lose to an invertebrate.

It was probably a house fly. If it was a doctor fly, it would have probably bitten him by now and he would have killed the damn thing. He'd only been bitten by a doctor fly twice since arriving in this equatorial hell hole, and he hadn't enjoyed either experience. They were large and purple and yellow. But usually, after being bitten by one, they were soon dead. Guts and innards, escaping the thorax onto whatever killing device he had swatted at them, like the colored and artificially flavored corn syrup they put inside Gushers.

This was just a house fly. He'd been re-working the draft of his speech for days now. There really wasn't much else to do. If he didn't stay on the premise, they wouldn't pay him. But he didn't have any work to do. He wondered if he should be manipulating a third world government in such a way. But then he'd walk past the fat post master whose private office was only a few hallways away, and briefly peering in at the ornate cultural decorations lining his wall, the Jay-Z albums, and the signed New York Yankees jersey he'd framed, and knowing that his postmaster salary couldn't possibly cover any of that, he'd feel much better about himself. He'd wave at the gentlemen, piled into his probably designer suit, bulging a bit at certain seams, and say hi with a smile, but really, when he walked away he'd think to himself that a fat fuck like David would never make it in America. Then he'd smile for real and get back to his office and pretend to be working some more until 5 when he could actually go home.