Taboo

The downside of hooking up with your housemate is that when he brings someone else home you hear it. I’m all for compersion but earlier that night he’d said he would be in my bed. What happened: I was having a shitty night and texted him about it while he was at the club with the boys. 

“Be home at 2:12,” he said, the precision inspiring confidence, “and then I’ll give you all the snuggles you deserve.” 

At 2:20 he called me. “Hey roomie,” he said. “There’s a girl outside, do you mind letting her in?” 

I did, but I did. 

“Hiii,” she says, there on my stoop, shifting her weight from one foot to the other like she has to use the bathroom. 

She is gangly, I think, and then I think I’m a bitch for thinking it. 

In college hooking up with a housemate was taboo. We had an expression, “House booty is bad booty.” People would call it incestuous, and I hate that because that’s not what incest fucking is. 

The downside of being good at sex is that the guys who don’t want to commit to you text you out of the blue at one in the morning and you think it’s because they actually care enough to check how you’re doing but it’s actually because they just want to put together a threesome with you and the person they got serious with. It feels shitty, and I tell my housemate about this and that’s why he said he’d comfort me before he blew me off. Then, because I have no filter at three in the morning, I tell him that feels shitty, too. He knocks on my door in the middle of the night but I don’t answer, just turn my music up louder, like he’s my fucking father. 

Long ago I got it into my head that when it comes to sex, all experience is good experience. I had to believe that to survive some of those experiences (closet, basement). When I was eight a girl sat next to me on the school bus and told me I was ugly and I did feel it with my thick thighs and braces but I didn’t want to cry in front of her so I laughed instead, wild and without mirth, head thrown back then doubled over, insane laughter, and I didn’t stop until she looked scared and moved away. Long ago I started fucking like that. Like anything is cool and nothing hurts. The other person always taps out first. 

As I lay there listening to my housemate’s squeaky bedframe and gangly girl’s chatter I look up at the ceiling. I own this device that projects stars as little green lights, swirling. Looking at this artificial cosmos I think of how growing up I learned to pray, and how I still talk to God, even though I’m not sure He’s real, in full paragraphs—but some nights, like tonight, all I say is please. Eventually I can’t hear them anymore and I turn off the star projector. One star, one winking light remains. Envy’s green eye: my smoke detector. Heat rises, I think as I take the batteries out. Come to the thought of setting a fire.

I just shat my pants. Don’t tell anybody.

Reginald Sterling, a man whose intellect was a finely-tuned Stradivarius in a world of kazoos, considered the morning light slanting across his mahogany desk. It was, he mused, a perfect representation of Q4 revenue projections: promising, yet highlighting the dust on his Fabergé egg paperweight. He buzzed his intercom.

“Penelope, my dear,” he began, his voice a rich baritone that had calmed numerous markets, “would you be a gem and bring me the preliminary data on the Düsseldorf acquisition? I wish to dissect its entrails before the ten o’clock. Also, a double-shot macchiato, dry as the Sahara, please. I just shat my pants. Don’t tell anybody.”

The words tumbled out of his mouth like drunkards from a pub, unbidden and unwelcome. Reginald froze. His own voice echoed in his ears, a bizarre, vulgar coda to an otherwise perfectly reasonable request. Where had that come from? He was a man of impeccable self-control. His bowels were fortresses of decorum, his trousers pristine fortifications.

A long, profound silence stretched through the intercom. Reginald could practically hear Penelope’s perfectly-coiffed head tilting in confusion.

“…Right away, Mr. Sterling,” she finally said, her voice strained with the effort of ignoring the inexplicable.

Reginald leaned back in his leather chair, his heart hammering a frantic, atonal rhythm against his ribs. He tried to rationalize it. A transient ischemic attack? A momentary, stress-induced aphasia with a curiously specific, scatological theme? He cleared his throat and tried an experiment.

“The quality of mercy is not strained,” he recited softly to his ficus plant. The words were clear, crisp, Shakespearean. He breathed a sigh of relief. It was a fluke. He continued, “It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath. I just shat my pants. Don’t tell anybody.”

It happened again. The phrase latched onto the end of his speech like a linguistic remora, a foul, barnacle-like appendage to his otherwise flawless elocution. A cold dread, colder and more dreadful than a negative earnings report, seeped into his bones. This was not a fluke. This was a condition. A curse. An absurdist, existential predicament of the highest, or rather, lowest order.

Just then, his office door swung open. In swaggered Jack Walker, a man whose ambition was matched only by the vapidity of his insights.

“Reggie, old boy!” Jack boomed, plopping into the chair opposite the desk. “Heard you’re heading up the Düsseldorf deal. Big one. Hope you’ve got the stomach for it.”

Reginald regarded Jack with the cool disdain of a philosopher observing a particularly simple-minded mollusc. “Mr Walker, your grasp of corporate finance is, as ever, breathtakingly naive. The Düsseldorf acquisition is not about ‘stomach,’ it’s a nuanced play of leveraged assets and cultural integration. It requires a scalpel, not a cudgel. Your thinking is so linear it could be used to tile a bathroom. I just shat my pants. Don’t tell anybody.”

Jack’s smug grin faltered. His eyes, small and piggy, darted around the room as if searching for a hidden camera. “What… what did you just say?”

“I was explicating the manifold complexities of transnational mergers,” Reginald said, his mind racing. He had to control this, to deny it. But the more he spoke, the more inevitable the foul conclusion became. “It’s an epistemological tightrope walk, you see. I just shat my pants. Don’t tell anybody.”

Jack stared, a slow, malicious smile spreading across his face. He had found a chink in Reginald’s armor. A very, very weird chink. “Right. Well. Good luck with that, Reggie.” He scurried out of the office, visibly vibrating with fresh gossip.

The ten o’clock meeting was the main event. In the boardroom sat Herr Schmidt and his two lieutenants, Klaus and Dieter. They were formidable Germans from the Düsseldorf firm, men who valued precision, punctuality, and a complete lack of emotional incontinence.

Reginald, armed with a laser pointer and a brain firing on all cylinders, was magnificent. He wove a narrative of synergy and growth, a tapestry of financial projections so beautiful it could have hung in the Louvre. He deconstructed market anxieties, parried logistical concerns, and painted a future so bright, so profitable, that the Germans were visibly thawing. Herr Schmidt, a man whose face was a monument to sternness, even allowed a corner of his mouth to twitch upwards.

“And so,” Reginald concluded, stepping away from the screen, his arms open in a gesture of triumphant finality, “you can see that this is not merely an acquisition. It is a synthesis. A fusion of German efficiency and Anglo-Saxon dynamism that will create a new titan of industry, a veritable colossus bestriding the global market. The potential is not just significant; it is transcendent.”

The Germans nodded in unison. The deal was his. He had done it. He beamed, a feeling of pure, unadulterated victory washing over him.

“I just shat my pants. Don’t tell anybody.”

The silence that followed was not just a lack of sound. It was an active, malevolent entity that sucked the very air from the room. Herr Schmidt’s monocle, which Reginald had assumed was a permanent fixture, fell from his eye and clattered onto the polished table. 

Reginald did not blink. He simply bowed his head – once, regally – then gathered his notes with the solemnity of a man accepting exile. The Germans rose. No one spoke.

Two weeks later, Reginald Sterling was on the cover of Forbes. 

Jack Walker’s attempt to leak the boardroom incident had backfired spectacularly. Instead of seeing a man losing his mind, the market saw a disruptive genius shattering corporate platitudes. His affliction was now hailed as a paradigm of authentic communication. 

At a press conference celebrating the finalized Düsseldorf deal, a reporter asked for the secret to his success. Reginald smiled serenely. “It is simply a matter of ruthless focus and unwavering belief in your core strategy. I just shat my pants. Don’t tell anybody. They already know.” 

The room erupted in applause.

Zillowtopia

“BRING ME LEBRON! HURRY UP, STU!” Stacey Schmaltzberg screams at her husband while her fingers work furiously inside her purple cotton panties. She leans back in her leather office chair and stares through squinted eyes at the laptop computer perched on the desk in front of her.

“Cavs, Heat or Lakers?” Stuart Schmaltzberg asks eagerly, standing behind Stacey in their home office.

“I don’t care what team, Stu! JUST GET ME MY FUCKING LEBRON!” Stacey shouts while her fingers pick up speed.

“Okay,” Stu replies as he hurries through the office door. “But I have to go to the garage and get the dolly, so it may take a few minutes.”

Stacey eases into a steady rhythm and bites down on her lip with her eyes closed. After a few moments, she opens her eyes and stares back at the laptop screen, where a Zillow.com web page reads, “Zestimate: $775,000,” under her Boca Raton property address. Stacey parts her lips and moans softly, then closes her eyes and slides her fingers in deeper.

“OK peaches, I got your man!” Stu announces excitedly as he pushes a small handtruck into the office. Strapped to the handtruck is “Lebron” – a 6’8” dark brown thermoplastic elastomer male sex doll wearing a red basketball jersey with a gold number 23 printed on front. Lebron is naked from the waist down with a fully-erect penis. Stu quickly unstraps Lebron from the handtruck, then lays him on his back in the middle of the carpeted office floor. He looks up at Stacey with a smile and exclaims, “Bring it on, showgirl!”

Stacey pushes up from her chair, slides off her panties, then hurries over to Lebron and steps over him so she’s straddling him with her feet planted on either side of his bare hips. She bends her knees and descends toward a sitting position as she grabs Lebron’s long thick shaft. But she stops mid-squat and looks up angrily at Stu. “He’s dry as a desert, Stu! Lebron is supposed to be self-lubricating! I can’t dry-dock this fucking Clydesdale!”

Stu stammers, “Sorry, hon, but his lube ran out after the Cohens’ pool party last month and I forgot to replace it. But I can go get Mad Max or Conan or Elon. They’re all fully-lubed and ready to go.”

“For fuck’s sake, Stuart!” Stacey screams as she sits down on Lebron’s thighs, still holding his shaft. “Just go get the Uber from the bathroom. And hurry up!” Stacey starts to grind her crotch against Lebron’s muscular thigh.

“What Uber? Why do we need an Uber?” Stu asks in confusion.

“The Uberlube, you fucking moron! It’s sex lubricant, Stu! It’s in my medicine cabinet next to the Voltaren. Now hurry up!” Stacey shouts as she grinds harder against Lebron’s thigh.

Stu runs off to the bathroom and returns seconds later holding a small plastic bottle. He quickly uncaps the bottle, bends over and squeezes clear lubricant onto Lebron’s protruding penis, then uses his other hand to spread it around evenly.

Stacey grabs the bottle out of Stu’s hand, squeezes some lube out onto her fingertips, then reaches down and rubs her fingers between her open thighs. She raises to a kneel and moves herself over the head of Lebron’s penis, then slides down his shaft until her pale, flabby, cellulitic butt cheeks rest on his upper thighs. She rips a loud fart against Lebron’s testicles.

“Help me get going, Stu,” she says to her husband as she leans forward and places her hands on Lebron’s broad shoulders. Stu sits down on Lebron’s knees behind Stacey, then presses his hands against her bare butt cheeks with a gentle shove to move her up Lebron’s shaft. Stacey begins to ride Lebron and moan, “Ohhh fuck, Lebron.”

Stu stands up while Stacey speeds up her rhythm. She squeezes Lebron’s jersey in her fists while she rocks back and forth, spewing out loud open-mouthed grunts. After a few moments, she tries to turn over onto her back with Lebron’s penis still inside her but is unable to complete the pivot. 

“Help me, Stu! Fucking help me here!” Stacey yells out.

“Are you going reverse cowgirl?” Stu asks.

Stacey stares up at him incredulously. “Really, Stu? Does this look like a reverse fucking cowgirl? Now get over here and flip us, goddammit!”

Stu hurries over and hoists Lebron over on top of his wife while she lies flat on her back. She bends her knees while Lebron’s bare hips and thick-muscled butt part her thighs. 

“Oh Jesus, I strained my back again!” Stu yelps out, grabbing his lower back.

“Fuck your back, Stu! I’m so close right now I just need you to push him so I can finish off!” Stacey pleads from beneath Lebron. “And you should have sprung for the electric hip thrusters if you were so worried about your back, you cheap bastard!”

“It would’ve cost an extra $500 and we were trying to save for Jonah’s bar—”

“Just shut the fuck up and push that black ass for me, you goddamn tightwad!”

Despite the sharp pain ripping through his back, with tears welling up in his eyes, Stu kneels down and clenches Lebron’s butt cheeks with both hands, then thrusts Lebron’s hips back and forth between Stacey’s thighs while her moans intensify. “Oh yes, oh yes, oh my Jesus fucking YES!”

Stacey’s moans become one continuous high-pitched wail while Stu’s back pain escalates with each forward thrust – a sharp dagger piercing through to his spine. 

“Ohh-ohh-ohh-ohh-ohh-fuckkkkk!” Stacey belts out, bucking her hips until she climaxes in one final scream, “AHGHHHHH!” Completely exhausted, she gasps in air as her body tension releases and she collapses back to the floor. “Okay, Okay, Okay,” she pants.

His back on fire with excruciating pain, Stu collapses forward onto Lebron – causing his full body weight to push Lebron down onto his wife.

“Get off me, Stu, you’re crushing me! I can barely breathe, now get the fuck up!” Stacey shouts from beneath Lebron.

With his last ounce of energy, Stu pushes himself up and rolls over onto his back next to Stacey and Lebron, breathing heavily with his hand on his chest. “Oh my God, I think I’m having a heart attack,” Stu groans painfully. 

Ignoring her husband, Stacey pushes Lebron off of her while sweat pours down her pudgy red face, streaming over her loose jowels and down her neck. “Get me a towel, Stu,” she says as she catches her breath. “I’m sweating like a pig.”  

Stu doesn’t answer, lying flat on his back with his hand pressed to his chest, breathing slowly with his eyes pinched shut and face twisted in pain.

Stacey sits up and her soft gut laps over her pelvis, settling in just above a thick patch of gray pubic hair. She takes a deep breath, then stands up and hobbles to the bathroom while Stu remains in a prostrate position on the floor.

After toweling off and putting her clothes back on, Stacey steps over Stu and Lebron, then plops down heavily into her office chair. She refreshes the laptop screen and types something into the Google search query box. She selects a website and looks at it quickly, then picks up her phone.

“Hello, you’ve reached Home Equity Hunks, South Florida’s leading home equity lender, making all your financial dreams come true,” says an automated voice on the phone. “If you’re an existing customer, press or say 1. If you’re a new customer, press or say 2.” Stacey presses 2 on her dial pad and the automated voice continues, “If you’d like to hear options for a new—” Stacey presses 0 before the voice can finish. After a brief pause, the voice resumes, “I’m sorry, but—”

Stacey interrupts the automated voice, frantically screaming into her phone, “Operator! Human being! I WANT A LIVE FUCKING PERSON!”

“Please hold for a dedicated loan hunk,” the automated voice says.

“Oh Jesus, hurry the fuck up,” Stacey groans. “I don’t have time for this shit.”

After about thirty seconds of soft hold music, a live voice pipes up, “This is Chaz Beaumont, loan hunk number 028746. And whom do I have the pleasure of speaking with today?”

Stacey says her name and asks, “I sent my loan application in yesterday morning and still haven’t heard back. What’s going on?”

Chaz replies, “Ma’am, the loan review process typically takes at least ten to twelve business days, and then—”

“I don’t have that much time!” Stacey shouts. “My daughter’s summer camp tuition is due in a few days, and then we have to buy our plane tickets to Paris. I need the money now!”

“I understand, Mrs. Schmaltzberg, but this is a regulated process and we—” 

Stacey cuts him off. “I have the new Zillow valuation for our house – $775,000 – it’s got more than enough equity for another fifty thousand cashout. This ain’t my first rodeo, Chaz.”

“Well ma’am, I’ll see if I can get the review process accelerated for you but I’ll need some basic information first. What’s the total mortgage debt on your house, ma’am?”

Stacey pauses, then mumbles, “About $520,000.”

“And how much did you buy the house for, ma’am?”

After another pause, Stacey answers, “$310,000 about fifteen years ago, but Zillow says it’s worth almost $800,000 now.”

“Well you’re obviously no stranger to home equity loans,” Chaz chuckles. “Have you borrowed from Home Equity Hunks in the past, ma’am?”

“No,” Stacey answers irritably. “We used another home equity lender for the first two loans, then Cashout Studs for the third one. But we can’t—”

“Don’t tell him about the Loan Depot assault charge and restraining order,” Stu whispers into Stacey’s ear, having risen from the floor to join her at the phone. “It might disqualify us.”

“And your annual household income, ma’am?” Chaz asks methodically.

Stacey answers, “Well it fluctuates since my husband is in between jobs right now, but—”  

“For now you can just tell me the adjusted gross income number on your last tax return, ma’am,” Chaz responds flatly.

After a long pause, Stacey mumbles, “About $85,000.”

“And what do you do for a living, ma’am?” Chaz asks.

“I’m a legal assistant at a foreclosure defense law firm, and a sales associate at Bloomingdale’s in Boca Town Center on weekends and holidays,” Stacey replies.

“Let me put you on a brief hold while I speak to my manager, ma’am,” Chaz says.

Stacey looks over at Stu with a scowl. “If we don’t get this money, it’s your fucking fault. You’ve made about thirteen dollars in the last twenty years, Mister Mom. Apparently I missed the chapter of the fairy tale where Prince Charming quits his job and sponges off the Fairy Princess for the rest of his fucking life, Mr. Harvard MBA!”

Stu looks down in embarrassment. “Stace, please, you know I—”

Chaz is back on the line. “Thank you for holding, Mrs. Schmaltzberg. I just spoke to my manager. Unfortunately we’ll be unable to accelerate the review process for your loan application. You should receive a formal response from us within fourteen days. Now is there anything else I can help you with today, ma’am?”

“Listen to me, Chaz!” Stacey pleads, “We need – I mean NEED – this money now! Do you have children, Chaz?”

“Well, no ma’am, but—”

“Then you’ve never had to pay $50,000 for a bar mitzvah, or $15,000 each summer for Lake Winnipesaukee sleepaway camp, or $10,000 for a vacation to Europe for a family of four. Life is very expensive these days, Chaz. And we’re still the only family we know who doesn’t have a backyard pool – we have to use the fucking community pool! And we drive a seven-year old Mazda and a six-year old Honda while every time I turn around I see a brand new BMW, Mercedes or fucking Lexus. Literally everyone has one. The Schaumbergs just bought a Porsche for their sixteen year-old daughter. IT’S FUCKING EMBARRASSING, CHAZ!”

“With all due respect, Mrs. Schmaltzberg, none of those things sound like real necessities. Just some friendly advice, ma’am, maybe you should try living within—”

“FUCK YOU, CHAZ! You know nothing about me! I work like a dog, two jobs—”

“Goodbye, ma’am.” The line goes silent.

“Asshole!” Stacey screams into the phone, then glares at Stu, “Go get the firepower, Stu, we’re going into battle mode.”

“But hon, we can’t have another Loan Depot situation. We’re lucky we didn’t go to jail over that. We need to think of the kids.”

“Fuck Loan Depot, fuck Home Equity Hunks, fuck the fucking kids!” Stacey shouts. “Now go get ready and meet me at the car in ten minutes! Move your ass, Stuart!”

Stacey takes a deep breath, looks in the hallway mirror and composes herself, then  walks out the front door.

Jodi Simon, the Schmaltzbergs’ nextdoor neighbor, stands at the edge of her yard as Stacey hurries down the driveway to her car. “Oh hey, Stacey!” she shouts. “Does Jonah know where he’s going to college next year? Rachel has it narrowed down to Duke, Emory and Vandy – still trying to decide.”

Stacey smiles over at Jodi. “Jonah got into those ones plus UF, Miami and a few more. But we’re so overwhelmed getting ready for our trip to Paris next month and then Leah starting at American Heritage after she gets back from sleepaway camp in New Hampshire, we just haven’t had time to even breathe let alone think about his college plans right now.”

“Wow!” Jodi replies, “American Heritage just raised its tuition to over forty thousand. You guys must be doing pretty well.”

Stacey nods with a smile and humble shoulder shrug. “Well, Stu’s hedge fund is doing okay I guess. I don’t know anything about that money of finance stuff but apparently it’s paying the bills.”

Before Jodi can say anything else, Stacey turns to her car and says, “Sorry Jodes, gotta go – late for one of Stu’s work things – but let’s catch up soon. Bye!”

Nosy little bitch, Stacey thinks as she steps into the car, shutting the door behind her as Jodi waves and then turns back to her yard.

Waiting in the passenger seat, Stacey looks down at her phone and shakes with fury, squeezing it so hard that her knuckles turn white, at the Facebook post staring back and boring into her skull. As soon as Stu opens the driver-side door and steps into the car, she sticks her phone into his face and shouts, “Look at this! The Silvermans are in fucking Barcelona to celebrate Ethan getting into Miami! We need that money, Stu! We need it fucking now!”

When they arrive at the Home Equity Hunks corporate headquarters, occupying the entire top floor of a high-rise office building in downtown West Palm Beach, Stacey hurries into the lobby clutching her Zillow printout with Stu in tow. “I need to speak with a senior loan officer immediately – it’s an emergency!” sheey says to the office receptionist.

“I’m sorry,” the receptionist replies in confusion. “Do you have an appointment, ma’am?”

“No but I’m sure a loan officer will want to speak with us when I show him this appraisal,” Stacey says proudly, holding the Zillow report out in front of her.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but you’ll need to make an appointment if you’d like to meet with a loan officer. You can do so on our website. This is a private office and—”

“Well where the fuck am I supposed to go in the meantime, lady?” Stacey screams. “Back to the house with no pool? With shitty little cars in the driveway? What kind of life is that?”

The receptionist presses a button on her desk phone and speaks into her headset. “I need you guys in the lobby, Steve, we got another live one out here.”

Stacey turns to Stu and reaches her hand out. “Time for Plan B, Stu. Give it to me.”

On command, Stu reaches into his black trenchcoat and pulls out an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. “Uh Stace, maybe we should just—“

“Stop whining and give me the goddamn gun, numbnuts!” Stacey says as she grabs the AR-15 out of Stu’s hand.

The receptionist stands up from her chair with her eyes wide and mouth half open. Her head is blown apart before she can scream. Blood, brain and skull fragments splatter the wall behind her as Stacey’s (still smelly) finger rapidly works the AR-15 trigger. Stacey heads toward the door leading from the lobby to the interior offices.

Two armed security guards enter the lobby from the interior door with their guns drawn. Stacey mows them down with her AR-15 before they have time to react. They drop to the floor like flour sacks, their bloodied bodies riddled with bullets. Stacey steps over them and walks through the door.

AR-15 blazing, Stacey marches down the hallway and into the individual offices along the way, shooting anything that moves. Rapid gunfire followed by horrific screams fill the air as the body count piles up. Employees hide behind office furniture and cower in corners while Stacey continues her bloody rampage, screaming with a maniacal grin as her AR-15 fires off two rounds per second. Stu trails her, finishing off any survivors with a Glock 9 millimeter.

“Please, no!” Vern Cromwell, CEO of Home Equity Hunks, pleads from behind his leather office sofa after Stacey enters his corner office from the hallway. “Please, ma’am, put the gun down! Just tell me what you want!”

Keeping her AR-15 trained on Cromwell, Stacey removes the folded Zillow report from her front pocket and tosses it onto his desk. “Our house was worth 775K as of this morning. It’s probably worth over 800 by now, maybe 825. We just need a little home equity cashout.”

Cromwell unfolds the Zillow report with shaking hands and studies it briefly through his reading glasses. “What do you owe on the house and what’s your annual income?” he asks without looking up.

Stacey tells him.

Cromwell looks up at Stacey, then over at Stu, who’s just entered the office from the hallway. Cromwell raises his eyebrows and laughs. “Sorry but are you two fucking idiots? I mean, I thought I’d seen everything in this business, but you two morons have the financial intelligence of a mentally retarded billygoat!”

Stacey’s AR-15 clicks empty when she pulls the trigger to shoot Cromwell. “Get me more ammo, Stu!” she shouts behind her.

While Stu fumbles through his trenchcoat searching for an ammo clip, Stacey looks down at her phone. Horrified by what she sees, she throws the phone against the wall with a blood-curdling scream. She leans back against the wall and collapses to the floor, lowering her face into her hands as her body rocks with violent sobs.

“What’s wrong, poodle?” Stu asks. “I can’t find the extra clip, maybe we left it in—”

“Forget the ammo and just look at my fucking phone!” Stacey wails from the floor, pointing to her phone.

Stu picks up the phone and squints at its cracked screen. “I can’t see – what is it, peaches?”

“The Teitelbaums just bought a fucking plane! A FUCKING PLANE, Stuart! I just saw it on Deborah’s Instagram.” Stacey tilts her head back and closes her eyes. “Just kill me now,” she mutters.

“So what, Stace? Since when do you want a plane? We can’t even fly one.” Stu replies with genuine confusion.

“It doesn’t matter, Stu. Can’t you see that it doesn’t … fucking … matter!” Stacey cries out while shaking her head. 

Stu and Vern Cromwell watch Stacey silently, neither moving an inch.

Stacey thinks for a moment, then looks up at Stu. “My life insurance money – that’s it!” In one fluid motion, she grabs the AR-15 from the floor (forgetting that it’s empty), sticks the muzzle into her mouth and presses down on the trigger. The gun clicks empty.

“Uh, sorry to interrupt, ma’am, but most life insurance policies have a two-year suicide exception,” Cromwell explains. “When did you buy the policy?”

“About ten years ago,” Stacey replies. After a brief pause, she asks, “What floor is this?”

“Fifteenth floor, ma’am,” Cromwell answers.

“And that window – is it shatterproof?” Stacey asks, pointing to the floor-to-ceiling window wall.

“I don’t believe so,” Cromwell replies with a chuckle. “But I’ve never tried to find out.”

Before Cromwell or Stu can stop her, Stacey lowers her head and runs toward the window. From a full sprint, she dives at it headfirst from just two feet away. Wait’ll Deb Teitelbaum sees the new yacht we’re gonna buy with this money, Stacey thinks, smiling to herself as she launches. Stupid bitch’ll probably jump out the window.