HATING GEORGE CLOONEY, A NOVELLA
A little envy, a little hopelessness, and all manner of things become possible. Things that should have stayed unthinkable. Robbery is the least of them.
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THAT WORD – PRISON – IS ELECTRIC. AROUND THE TABLE, MUSCLES QUIETLY CONVULSE. THE SERVER, ON HER WAY OVER FROM THE KITCHEN TO CHECK IN, THOUGHT BETTER OF INTERRUPTING AND CHANGED HER COURSE.
Times are as tough as they have ever been for Danny. The Baby Cloud crib factory in Tionesta Pennsylvania has closed, leaving him with a pink slip and no way to pay the mortgage. Worse, after eighteen months of trying to hold the marriage together, Danny’s wife, Janice, has finally left him to live with her sister. She’s taken their dog, Juni, and there is no sign of them ever coming back.
The trouble started long before Danny lost his job. The trouble started with the neighbors, Matt and Amanda, comfortably ensconced in the large, expensive home tucked back into the trees at the top of the long driveway at the end of the cul-de-sac. Gorgeous, the pair of them – she, an artist and he, the owner of a furniture factory – a study in vital, unassuming sensuality wrapped in, for all appearances, a perfect relationship. The chemistry within the foursome had been satisfyingly close; supportive and intimate, fueled by innumerable dinner gatherings that Danny and Janis had taken to calling the Matt-and-Mandy Happy Hour. And then one evening, having decamped from dinner into the sueded, overstuffed cushions of Matt’s den, Danny had observed Matt lay his hand on Amanda’s naked ankle. Such a casual gesture. It should have meant nothing. But that’s when Danny had felt everything inside his chest slip a little. That’s when it all started to change.
Now Danny sits at a bar eating a burger on the brink of ruin, his life in shambles. Up on the corner television, George Clooney is sipping an espresso. Janice loved George Clooney. She loved George Clooney, apparently, more than she loved Danny. The comparison between the two men in that moment could not have been harsher, leaving Danny angry and amenable to especially bad ideas about the next few steps to take in his miserable life.
Cue Ross, an old acquaintance of Danny’s who works as the manager of the Foley’s Got-It-All General Store up in Franklin, right near the US-62 almost to Oil City. Ross still has a job. He also has a made-to-order bad idea and impeccable timing.
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