Zippy Zamazda gets that job with Rico Soiree’s School of English. Plans takeover
After being offered a job by Soiree, teaching English to upwardly rising and globally minded Ukrainians at Soiree’s Stately School of English Languages, Zamazda asks Soiree if he can be made a partner right away, to which Soiree answers that it’s not that kind of a business.
I mean, Soiree says, a little nonplussed by the apparent presumptiveness, the school is incorporated as a closed joint stock company, with private shareholders – it was never intended as a partnership, with equally shared profits, and so on. The best I can do is start you off with the title of Associate Instructor and after a year or so, or, depending on, well, depending on a number of factors, actually – the economy, your performance – I may be able to promote you to Course Manager, and we can get someone else to do most of the teaching.
I see, says Zamazda, curling his lip ever so perceptibly and tilting his head up and to the side in what appears to be a show of arrogant disdain, as if everything Soiree has just told him was either irrelevant or untrue. Zamazda’s wife sees this and secretly nudges her, um, her husband (for lack of a better word under the circumstances, as unlikely as it may appear to observers from a saner world – perhaps some other planet), so that he again seems filled with obsequious wonder and sycophantic fawning.
Zamazda reverts to his deferential obeisance, saying, Gee, Mr. Soiree, that’s great! Oh, by the way, he adds, as though innocently, is it your company, I mean, or, well, you see, you said there are shareholders, so I was just wondering, um, if there’s more than just you, or if there’s someone behind it, although you run the show, or appear, I mean, seem to, I mean –
No, no, Soiree says good-naturedly, as though it were a normal question and not off-putting in the least, that it would immediately raise alarming questions in Soiree’s head regarding Zamazda’s motives – a question that he didn’t mind – it’s all me. Ha, ha, haaaaa! I’m behind me, and I’m in front of me, and I run the whole damn shebang! Ha, ha, ha, haaaaa…!!!
You see, Zamazda had already been planning to go to whomever stood behind Soiree as soon as he started his job as Associate Instructor and convince them of Soiree’s incompetence, thereby taking over the Stately School of English Languages, and so Zamazda doesn’t like this – he feels – smug reply of Soiree’s, and not believing him, he is already bent on revenge, saying in the grinding teeth of his own mind, as his wife looks worriedly, yet lovingly and proudly, on, at her fierce, um, warrior spouse, that he’s going to ‘get you, you haughty old arrogant obnoxious greasy bastard, one way or another, I’m going to get you… With MY education, and MY superior intellectual abilities, and MY talent – I’m better than you, you bastard, I’m better than you!!!’
But then he says, Wow, that’s great, Mr. Soiree. So, when do I start?!
Just then, a large cake is wheeled into the middle of the ballroom floor. One set of Ukrainian oligarchs and their goons stand behind the cake facing a table seating another set of oligarchs and their goons. The one set sings the universal “Happy Birthday” song to the other set, and then a gunman pops out of the cake and mows everyone at the table down. Blood spurts and sprays everywhere together with pieces of flesh and bone. All this is seen as though filmed through a gauze, a blurred hazy vision out of another world, producing the uncanny and pleasantly warm déjà vu-like effect among the foreigners sitting at all the other tables that they’ve seen this somewhere before, triggering a spontaneous wave of uniform commentary from table to table, replete with knowing head-nodding, that Ukraine today is like the Chicago of the 1920s, proving the 20-year-old analogy to have been right all along.
The excitement dies down and the guests return to their table-specific Valentine’s Day carousing, as waiters rush to the site of the massacre to clean up the whole godforsaken mess, making no big deal out of it, either.
And then Soiree says, Hey, that’s great… aaahh… Zippy, was it? Well, Zippy, you can start right away!
Gee, that sure is great, Mr. Soiree! I can’t wait! Filled with joy, Zamazda’s, er, wife, leans into his substantial squat girth, pressing his arm after finding it in the overlapping folds of his flesh – the flesh that she just loves so damn much (or maybe it’s those dreamy, expressive eyes, or sensuous mouth).
Yeah, says Soiree, and there’s only one, maybe two, other things…
Oh? What’s that, Mr. Soiree?
Well, it’s just that, well, you’d get me a drink once in a while, maybe light my cigar; a couple of other things like that.
B-b-but – desperate to repress his rage, head pounding with risen blood, the wind knocked out of him, nearly hallucinatory and faint with confusion, with just enough and auspiciously salvaged presence of mind not to lose consciousness, Zamazda stutters and babbles – that’s not my, I mean, I refu… um, um, I mean, that’s, that’s…
But leaning in close to his fat, skillet-like ear, Zamazda’s wife says, O, honey, this is your big chance – just for a month or two, and then, you know…
Okay, Mr. Soiree!, Zamazda exclaims, I’ve got absolutely no problem with that!
Good, Zippy! That’s veeerry, veeerry good! Ha, ha, ha, ha, haaaaa…!!!
Continued in Part 3
Filed by Jack Step, April 5, 2013