Zoey Punches the Future in the Dick (Zoey Ashe #2)

by David Wong

The man who greeted her on the sidewalk was named Hank Kowalski. He was bald and had the eyes of a man whose favorite joke is just a shrieking child falling down a flight of stairs.

Will was an unreasonably white man in his late thirties wearing a suit the color of a wet sidewalk and the expression of a man who’s just realized the wetness is piss.

Will “suspiciously fake-sounding menacing surname” Blackwater

Kowalski took another bite before speaking, as if he preferred to talk while he chewed.

Will said hostage situations were like bad marriages, one party trying to subtly force the other to surrender, inches at a time.

Budd said, “We were here before Tilley. Been tailing him all day.” “You were tailing him, but arrived before he did?” “You do your homework,” Budd said, “and you can tail from in front.”

The first time she’d seen one of the shirts, she’d been eating at a cafe with her mother and bodyguard. She had rolled her eyes and snickered and actually made it all the way back to the car before she burst into tears.

No, this requires finesse. Andre, send in the giant robot monster.”

Someone told her the technique was called “gaslighting.” Zoey assumed they called it that because it really confuses people, just like if you stopped in the middle of a conversation to suddenly light a fart.

“You people say ‘business,’ when you mean organized crime.” Zoey said, “It honestly isn’t that organized.”

every one of those girls is praying they can get their lives to a solid place before society declares them invisible. Meanwhile, a guy can get old and ugly and still pick up prom queens as long as he’s got his life together.

“Because I believe that giving people second chances pays off in the long run, regardless of whether or not they deserve them.”

This life, Dexter, it crashes in on you.

a bodyguard who hides and shoots from fifty yards away is probably being a bit too proactive in his duties.”

“Not shooting at the client is actually one of the very first lessons they teach you in bodyguard school.”

If you care about the lives of innocent people, really care, you take away the financial incentive to hurt them. Otherwise you’re just creating a bill that somebody else will have to pay.”

“Well, I’m going to go soak in my bathtub until I fall apart like a corned beef.”

Thus, the man whose high school class would have voted him Most Likely to Leave a Giant Smoking Crater When He Dies had such an award or his high school actually existed, did exactly that.

sometimes, the story of your life gets so jumbled and messy that you just want to erase it completely.

I wish this house had a machine that would make my bra go flying off the moment I walked in the door.” “If such a device existed, Ms. Ashe, I’m certain your father would have had one installed long before you moved in.

“Can you smell me? I feel like I smell bad again. I think I was sweating all night.” “I would say you are within range of how you normally smell.” “That is an amazing answer.”

It was still seven minutes until meeting time, so neither of them were late, but in Will’s mind the meeting started whenever he happened to get there. He’d ask after whoever wasn’t in the room when he arrived as if they were missing, no matter how much time was left until the actual appointment.

Andre made himself a cup of coffee from the machine in the back of the room. He returned to his seat and opened the big pink donut box to reveal that it contained exactly one donut. He picked it up and took a bite.

Zoey had decided that if/when the peasants finally rose up to overthrow the rich, she’d just put on some of her old clothes and quietly go join them.

That’s how he spends his life. Throbbing, desperate arousal, no relief. Rage and frustration but powerless to get revenge.

My dude, do you realize that instead of going to a cuddle house to get blue balls you can literally go to any brothel or even "massage truck" and get those rocks off? No sympathy, none.

So I become everybody’s puppet. I have this need, like an addiction, so they use it to control me.

Fucking incels, man...

The trolls who occasionally showed up to yell at her, they were always smiling or at least smirking. Common bullies, having fun, members of a loose hate group who barely believed the slogans they scrawled on her buildings. What she saw on the face of this guy was something completely different: rage on a level that could only be called a kind of madness. She got the sense that if someone slid a big red button to that man and said, “If pressed, will destroy the entire planet,” he’d have hammered it. All sense of consequences gone, a fury that blots out the future.

You’re asking me if this was your fault because you want to know what emotion you’re supposed to be feeling right now. Are you supposed to be beating yourself up? Well, that’s the wrong question. The world doesn’t care about your emotions.”

Two weeks ago, Tilley was seen speaking to an employee of Titus Chobb.” There was a silence across the call. Zoey said, “The Titus Chobb?” Budd said, “Yes, ma’am.” “I’m just kidding, I have no idea who that is.”

“Otherwise we’ll end up like Tilley,” said Zoey. “Disorganized.” Echo said, “What do you need us to—” “Because he was missing his organs!”

“And what exactly do we need to be bringing to this meeting in the way of backup? This Chobb guy has an army, right?” “He’s just a businessman who happens to own a private security firm,” said Will. “He’s ruthless but he’s not some kind of supervillain.” “All right. So, where do we find him?” “He spends his time floating above the city in a huge black zeppelin.”

His eyes said he was being interrupted from something he’d much rather be doing and Zoey guessed that he wore that expression twenty-four hours a day, even when sleeping.

“A long time ago, a capable, strong man, perfected by millions of years of natural selection, emerged from his cave.” Zoey thought, Oh, god. He’s one of these guys.

the man’s empire was built on gunmen who, in a sane city, would have washed out of a police academy.

“Will you listen to yourself? You just keep adding things! You know, it’s almost a compliment to how clean of an operation I run now, that you’ve had to make up something that sounds like it came from a B-horror screenwriter just before his heart exploded from a coke overdose.”

They rolled along, passing sidewalks full of bystanders who now had turned their eyes skyward, anticipating the conflict, as usual grossly underestimating what constituted a safe distance.

Gravity is what keeps our children and pets from flying off into space, but it is a jealous, jealous mistress.”

So, do you people take a vote every time to see who has to come talk me down?” “Eh, somebody usually volunteers.”

“There are things people actually believe,” said Andre, “and things they only pretend to believe because it’s convenient. But over time it don’t matter which is which, it all just blurs together. People are like that.”

It’s because they think they can get to you, that they’ll see some kind of victory, feel strong again. That’s why half the time they talk like you’re an all-powerful, all-knowing mastermind and half the time act like you’re Trailer Park Barbie. To serve their purposes, they need you to be both.”

Still, everyone has a blind spot that they avoid so strongly that they don’t even feel the blade slipping into it.

“All right, let’s move before Will says anything else that makes him sound like a Bond villain.

“It looks like a nice place, I see why you like it. You can’t have a severed head throne in real life without people asking all sorts of questions.

Will is going to have ‘I told you so’ etched onto my tombstone.”

“This is my fault. If they kill you, it’ll be because of me. And Wu, he could already be dead. Oh my god.” “No, if they kill us, it’ll be their fault.”

“I don’t think I could find the Philippines on a map.” “Yes you could, the maps have all of the countries labeled. That’s literally what a map is for.”

Will? I know you don’t sleep but this whole house was designed for cranky men to drink and brood in.”

I would take it one step further and say that a psychopath is nothing but someone who is pathologically bored, to the point that they would burn the world just to break up the routine.”

“I’m exhausted.” “Get some sleep.” “No, I mean … in general. I wake up exhausted. Every day.” “You are twenty-three. If you can stick this out and push through, you will find it gets a lot worse.”

“The bad people can hurt me or not hurt me, but I’m not going to imprison myself. That’s doing their job for them.”