When last we left our hero, he had been downsized from his job at a small industrial cleaning concern. As is typical of businesses run by the uneducated, they had not the wisdom to recognize that an industrial cleaner with a law degree was worth two—or in this case twenty—industrial cleaners without. Delton was hardly fazed by the development, though he was introspective, as all sexy men are.
Delton drove back to his Manhattan apartment, stopping outside the DA’s office as the sun crept above the horizon. He did this every day. He parked and raised his eyes to his old office window on the sixth floor, high above the bustling streets.
He missed the job. He missed the order, the potential for justice. Since he was a boy, working out, excelling at sports, mathematics, literature, botanical kinesiology, philosophy and breaking records in thinking, sprinting, long distance running, weightlifting, wrestling, basketball, baton-twirling, tennis, football, baseball, sailing, swimming, diving, cooking, knitting, skating (ice and roller), skiing, ski-jumping, unicycling, juggling, life-saving and baking while building advanced hydraulic systems for the underprivileged, he dreamed about becoming a DA.
After an hour of deep, yet humble personal reflection, he started his Hummer hybrid and drove home to get some sleep. He slept two hours at most, which was plenty for him. He needed the rest; he would be having dinner with Angela again tonight.
Angela, he thought. She was beautiful; voted the most beautiful person in a contest of most beautiful people. That’s why they ate in her penthouse apartment. They couldn't go out, because she was too beautiful and Delton too handsome.
By herself Angela was so beautiful that people, including women, would get dizzy and faint, some would lapse into vertiginous yodeling. But when Delton and Angela were together, the public was so taken aback, so unbalanced by the sheer might of the combined beauty of Delton and Angela that many individuals were stricken with intestinal discomfiture of Ancient Roman proportions. It had happened several times in their favorite restaurant.
Finally, after the waiter had called for the fifth cleanup of what had been excellent scampi, the manager of the restaurant approached Delton and Angela wearing a blindfold lest he, having just enjoyed fettucine alfredo, succumb to similar dietary instabilities that had stricken the other diners. He humbly asked that they place bags over their heads until he could ask the other patrons to leave.
Delton, humble and selfless as he was, insisted that he and Angela would leave immediately, but not before singing a Pepto-Bismolic medley of Ukrainian lullabies for the remaining patrons. Even with a bag over his head, Delton's medicinal vibrato caused the diners to smile and sway like cherubs on a cloud, forgetting the negative side-effects of too much beauty.
The couple dined in private since. Delton, selfless and humble, knew that for public health and welfare, it was the right thing to do. Still, they got gussied up on each occasion as if they were going out.
As he walked to his third floor apartment door, a woman opened her door and displayed her breasts for him.
“Hi Sheila,” Delton said.
She licked her lips and closed her door.
Arriving at his own door, Delton fished in his pocket for the key, all the while surveying the threshold for inconsistencies, as was his custom.
He noticed something different about the door.
It was still rectangular and had a knob, but a small chip of paint, no larger than the pinky nail of a premature poodle’s pinky paw toe, maybe even smaller, had been scraped from the edge and lay on the tiled floor.
Delton looked left, then right, then moved slowly down the hallway to the stairwell door. He raced up the steps, three at a time.
When he was with the DA’s office, he was city champion in stair running. In less than twenty seconds, he burst through the roof door thirty-six stories above the street. He ran to the fire escape and performed a flawless firemen's slide down the thirty scaffold ladders until he was next to his kitchen window.
He peered through the glass, through the kitchen doorway, out into his living room. A large man sat in his lounge chair, and another one was pacing. Delton didn’t recognize them.
His blood ran cold, like really cold ice cubes. He wiped his forehead with his muscular arm. He ran back up the fire escape, remembering a roll of tape he had seen on the roof as he ran by earlier. He retrieved it and returned to the fire escape, outside his kitchen window.
On the other side of the fire escape landing was Delton’s bedroom window. He spread tape all over the glass, then gave it a shove with his index finger. His flexed bicep ripped his favorite shirt, but life changes priorities sometimes, and Delton knew this was one of those times.
