Dominic could pine away like the best of them. Heavy sighs, the back of the head on the forehead, the near swoon – but no one was there to see it. So instead he glared at the phone angrily.
Ultraboi was his name, and Dom had done some digging in PRIMUS. He found where this guy worked and staked out the place, watching him from a distance, almost, but not quite, getting up the nerve to talk to him during his work hours. After work hours was way too late for him – he had a real job that he had to get to in the morning.
Weekends, he would don the heroic outfit and look for Ultraboi on the streets to no avail. He dug a little more at PRIMUS but they wouldn’t give him his home address unless he had a damn good reason. Wasn’t getting laid a reason enough?
He had shyly passed his phone to another man to pass to Ultraboi, about a week ago and there was no call. Nothing. Not a buzz except from telemarketers and bill collectors, usually the latter. Dom admitted to himself that his vice of picking up original art in galleries every time his paycheck came in was a bad thing, but who’s to say that these artists wouldn’t be the next Picasso? Or other modern artist? He was making an investment.
Meanwhile the rent was due, he was living off of ramen noodles and peanut butter, and his mother kept calling him to find out why she couldn’t get satellite TV anymore since she had cosigned a loan for him for a car that he had gotten repossessed six months ago and didn’t have the heart to tell her.
There was a knock on his door. Nobody came to visit unless they wanted something so he ignored it. “Hey,” yelled a man, “I know you’re in there.”
He moved to the bedroom so he couldn’t hear the banging. It stopped soon enough, and he burrowed into the bed. He heard someone moving about his house. “Keeps it clean, anyway,” someone said. “Look in the kitchen, I’ll go upstairs.”
A man’s heavy footsteps went up the stairs. Dom could hear him get closer. He muttered a spell that would make him invisible, but doubted it would work with all the worry he had in his head. Someone stopped at the foot of his bed, then walked around to the head.
Someone whipped the blankets off. “There you are,” said the man.
“Don’t hurt me.” Dom looked up. It was his brother-in-law, Joe.
“Donna, he’s up here.” He waited until his sister Donna came up the stairs before sitting up.
“Dominic,” said Donna, looking very concerned, “What’s wrong with you?”
“Just leave me alone,” he moaned, and tried to grab the blanket from Joe. He held it fast and wouldn’t give it to him.
“You haven’t called or anything, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing!” Dom instead grabbed the pillow and put it over his head. Joe wrenched it off.
“There is. You’re doing it again, aren’t you?”
“Doing what?”
“Giving away your money to stray people, aren’t you?”
Donna sat at the edge of his bed. Dom put his arms over his head, not wanting to think about it, but her mentioning that brought it all to light. He would give money to hobos, people on the street, anyone begging. Not just a dollar here and there, but twenty, thirty, fifty dollars. He would buy almost anything that was on sale on TV. If it was on TV, it must be true.
He had gone into therapy for that, and thought he was cured. But he realized buying the artwork from what he termed as “true artists” was another version of what he had gone into therapy for. He buried his head as much as he could into his worn mattress, and moaned in agony.
“There, there, Dom,” said Donna, rubbing his back. “We’re here to help, right Joe?”
“Yeah,” Joe grumbled. He wasn’t here to help, Dom could tell by the tone of his voice.
Dom said, “Then give me –”
“No, we’re going to do what we did last year, remember? You’re going to give me your money, I’m going to give you an allowance. I’m going to pay your bills and you spend your allowance on anything. If you run out of your allowance, too bad, you don’t get any more money.” Donna grabbed his arm and pulled it away from his head. “Come on, grow up.”
The phone rang, and Dom immediately jumped. “It’s him!” he cried, and lurched to the nightstand and picked up the cordless phone plugged in there. “Hello, hello?”
There was a pause. “Hello. This is Time/Warner Cable Company with a special offer for–”
He hung up. Donna watched him. “Dom,” she said quietly, “I think you need to go into therapy again.”
“I might need a little financial help again,” he said, “but I’m fine otherwise.”
“Don’t deny it,” said Joe. Joe was an avid believer of therapy, having gone through it since he was 12.
Dom was quiet.
“When do you get paid?” asked Donna.
“Friday,” he said.
Donna patted his leg. “We’ll come back on Friday. Cash your check, and don’t hold anything back.”
She got up. She pulled out a twenty and left it on the bed. “This should last you the week. No bums.”
“No bums,” said Dom.