The Barbary Coast

Predator Press

[LOBO]

I’m not sure who Barbarossa’s “real” parole officer is, but once we get that sorted out I’ll bet he and Barbarossa will both be eternally grateful to me.

But until then -with no guarantee of financial compensation- I oversee his attempt at reformation almost exclusively when Barbarossa and I can both benefit from it.  And that is most often when I am in an evil, spiteful mood, and need to kick someone around for a few hours.

-The first fifteen minutes of which he has been sitting across the desk from me as I stare, arms folded, wordless and stern.

“So no job yet, hm?” I says, finally breaking the uncomfortable silence.

“Didn’t you just get a job a few days ago?” he replies.

“I’m not the one on parole, am I?”

Barbarossa fidgets anxiously.

“No sir.”

“Ah,” I says. Deliberately, I let my eyes fall to the giant Red Button on the desk between us. It’s not hooked up to anything and we never discuss it, but Barbarossa is terrified of it. Shaking my head, I shrug and sigh, and slowly lean forward to reach for it …

“Please!” pleads Barbarossa. “I have been applying for jobs like crazy!”

“How do I know you have been applying for jobs at all?”

“I have an application in my pocket.” Standing, he procures and frantically unfolds it. “Look.” Setting it before me (at a wide berth of the Red Button), he pats the document twice, flattening it. His nervous smile reveals all of maybe six teeth total.

“Red Lobster,” he beams.

Reading, I scowl into it. “You filled it out in gibberish.”

“That’s Spanish,” he explains.

I roll my eyes. "Oh Christ that’s even worse. Nobody is going to hire a Spaniard. You people are all pirates!"

A single bead of sweat rolls down his forehead.

“They wanted someone bilingual.”

Eyebrows furrowed, I bite my lower lip in thought. “Why would they want someone with an, eh, ‘alternative lifestyle’? What the hell are they doing to the lobsters? Jesus I don’t think I’m going to eat there anymore.”

“That would be a shame.”

“You didn’t circle ‘M,’” I point out.

“Excuse me?”

“Under sex. You didn’t circle ‘M’ for ‘Male.’ You wrote something in.”

“I wrote ‘raras veces.’ That is Spanish for ‘seldom,’” he explains. “I am married.”