Charles the Man

“Learn to kneel, Proxy, and we'll make this go smoothly. Just one night, and we’ll have 'em dead as roadkill, I can promise ya’ that”.

Charles N. Furmo was about as stand up a guy as anyone without a spine could be.

He wore plain clean clothes bought cheap but new, white dress shirts and dark grey slacks. If they ever got a stain, he would run a wash ahead of schedule. The guilt of wasting water however, demanded he spend the night without heat, for Mother Nature's sake of course.

For lunch every day, he unwrapped cleanly folded tinfoil from around a white bread turkey sandwich, crusts all absent just as he liked it.

“Got your wife cutting the crusts ey’ Furmo? Hah! And they say I'm high maintenance”. Detective Red would choke up his gruff laugh on multiple occasions at his secretaries expense, “Or wait, gotta be your Mama right? Young guys like you aren't getting married anymore”.

“Parents live down south, Florida sir.” Charles spoke to the sandwich, his direct and candid tone contrasting the downward gaze, “I cut it”.

The wall of an old man was left in awkward pause as his subordinate began to enjoy his modest meal, “Geez Furmo, can’tcha let slide a bit of levity every once in a while?”

That evening he’d walk home from work, his bike preferring to hibernate under its tarp on these Snowy February days. Turning the corner from the agency into a trail path, Charles dropped his pale frame into the only slightly paler snow, sinking into the drift bag and all. “Geez is right Charles, good lord! Seriously, what is my deal, do I want them thinking I'm some kind of prude?”

But he didn’t take the issue to heart, because Charles didn’t worry about life. He would practice being sociable with his boss, he would get better. Life was a series of tasks to be solved, and that made Charles happy.

When his pale skin began to rash from the Florida sun, Charles moved north to cloudy New York. When he needed a job, he called in to the first number he found in the papers. When they asked him to learn the in’s and out’s of their new computer system, he did it.

And when he wished to understand his boss, the esteemed Detective Kingsly Red, he began to research what the man enjoyed.

Charles kept the world small, and he was happy with it. His apartment was tiny, but his blankets were warm. His pajamas were cotton, but they were comfortable. He brushed his teeth for the third time that day, drank his third glass of water that hour, and for three minutes planked on the wood tile floor.

But part of his routine was adaptation, so instead of his usual programs, tonight Charles flipped onto the channel he often saw frequent the Detectives office television. The grey tones of light escaped from the brown box’s screen, and a dark handsome voice lulled the man to sleep.

“Tonights program is a particularly disturbing one, one of intrigue and confoundment. But first-, a word from our sponsors, a delicious mint peanut candy.”