The Adventures Of A Uncommon Man

Chapter 7 Blissful Ignorance

The traffic began to get heavier the nearer to Stoke I was. The usual home rush traffic is always the same and just driving through Burslem is a challenge in itself. There are two main roads that run through the town with four way traffic lights in the centre. It's always busy at every hour of the day and rush hour is the worst. I don't even want to describe what it is like when there is a football match on. Myself and Natayla live next to the football stadium of Port Vale and when the team are playing at home, the influx of traffic is an absolute nightmare. I confess that I am not a fan of football nor an expert. Yet I've heard many at my work talk about the game, the many clubs and players and managers. They demonstrate amazing knowledge about the ins and outs of the game, yet try to talk to them about things that really matter in the world, even the nature of reality and they look at you as if you have gone stark-raving mad. It takes me over ten to fifteen minutes to get through the traffic in the town centre and I'm now travelling down Hamil Road past the Vale grounds to my house in May Street. I don't know what I want for tea. Natayla has not even bothered asking me what I want. She never does. As a matter of fact, she has not texted me at all today. Usually I get the odd text message from her at breaktimes during my working day asking me how I am doing and giving me a brief explanation of how her work day is panning out. It was always nice to get texts from my wife asking how I was. It shows how much she cares and she is a good listener if I'm having problems and would offer me a sympathetic and supportive shoulder to lean on. I wish I could say she is still doing this. But to describe how sour things have gotten between the pair of us is a understatement. It's been more than obvious to me how distant she has become. I also feel that she has become secretive around me. She always seems like she is on her guard whenever she is around me. And the amount of times I've seen her on her smartphone and tablet is literally every night. She practically lives on the social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. When I ask her about it, who she talks to, she tells me it's just friends. She surprised me one time when she told me that it was none of my business when I asked her for the millionth time.
What's even more alarming to me is that at weekends, she goes out clubbing and is sometimes gone for hours on end, turning up in the early hours of the morning looking the worse for wear. She never comes into our bedroom and I sometimes find her sprawled out in the spare bedroom, still on her clubbing clothes which consists of a short blue dress and high heels. Talk about revealing clothing. I never liked clubbing, all the noise and dancing. Spent two hours in a nightclub and left with a stinging headache that took days to clear. I don't see the point either in social networking sites as I find them a waste of time. They are artificial and fake much like video gaming. I admit, I use to be an avid gamer in my day but when I realised large chunks of my life had been spent living in a game to get to its very end I knew then the absurdity of wasting my time and energy on something you get nothing out of. Now I'm not knocking social networking sites. They are a good way to stay in touch with anybody anywhere. I have a Facebook account myself, but I hardly go on it. I just realise the addictive effects it has on people who spend vast pockets of their time online. Like I said, life is too short and we really don't know how much time we have left. The problem is that nobody lives up to their true potential. With all the mass media entertainment, drink, drugs and sex that is rampant in society, there is enough distractions to keep us from living for the rest of our lives.
I feel my deep line of thought has got me down. It always does whenever I ponder over things. There is a time and place for that and right now I need to start thinking about what I want from life and go about planning how I should get it, before making it happen.
As I pull up in my street and power down the car, I check my phone for any text messages from Natalya. There's still nothing from her. I find this very strange especially her behaviour this morning. She was practically chatting to someone on Facebook first thing in the morning and not bothering to get ready at all, before saying she was having a lift from a friend. I've never really met any of her friends and I'm curious to know what she gets up to with them.
When I arrived back at the house, I found that it was all quiet. Usually, on certain days, Natayla gets the bus back to Hanley and another bus back to Burslem. We do it to save money on petrol. I mean, it's bad enough having to travel to Winsford and back. Having to go those few miles to Hanley to pick her up from the bus station soon cuts the fuel down even further. I only pick her up if the weather is bad or she isn't feeling too good (that time of months for instance). But most of the time to help me out, she finds her own way back by either getting the bus back or arranging a lift with a friend. The second option I mentioned, she always prefers. She always likes it when someone is taxi-ing her.
On this particular day, she should have been back before me, but the house is strangely deserted and quiet. I call out her name, thinking that maybe she would be upstairs, but get no answer. I pick up the post from the floor by the letter box, and turn on the hallway light before making my way to the dining room and kitchen. To my dismay, the breakfast I prepared her this morning is still on the dining room table, together with all her supplements which I had laid out for her. Even the coffee which I made has not been touched and Natayala always swears by a coffee every morning. Her energy fix as she likes to call it.
I feel a sharp pang of anger and frustration upon seeing this, knowing that my wife had not even bothered to touch any of the healthy stuff I had lovingly prepared her this morning. She would have had plenty of time to have her breakfast if one of her friends had come to pick her up, so I find it somewhat strange that she would leave everything here.
I check my watch. It's just after six and she is missing. I check my phone for any messages left by her but find none there. So I decide to phone her determined to get to the bottom of this and find out what is keeping her.
I wait as it begins to ring, my heart beating fast. Then, after a minute or so, the answer phone kicks in. I shake my head in disbelief at what I'm hearing. It seemed apparent that Nataylas phone was one but she did not bother answering it. I try again and this time I am told by an automated voice that the person I want is unavailable. This tells me that Nataylas phone is now off and to confirm that, I send a text which asks her where she is. My phone is already set up to receive delivery reports and the one I sent to my wife is pending.
I put my phone down, my thoughts racing, trying to determine what is going on. Whether Natayla is running late or something has happened to her. This was so not like Natayla to not answer my call and then switch her phone off. Something was not right and I could feel it. It wasn't what I needed right now. I already had a bad day, nearly got sacked, dressed down by my asshole of a boss and depromoted. I did not need any more problems, especially with my marriage.
So I sat down on a sofa in my lounge and waited, fiddling with my phone as I did. I ended up looking up a lot of random stuff on the internet involving problems with marriages, the signs to look for to say it was in trouble. I also looked up stuff to do with what to do if your boss has it in for you in your job. My job was boring and mundane as it was and Bradshaw only went and made it worse by depromoting me to sanitation duties as if that was all I was good for. It was obvious he hated me but was unable to fire me because of friends I had in the company who stuck up for me. I had a feeling that was Josh's doing yet Josh would never admit to that. None of the other people at management level would have lifted a finger, let alone batted an eyelid to speak for me. They were either so far up his arse or too pally pally with him. And you can bet your last pound that any female boss at my place had been in his bed. Bradshaw was a proper Jack-The-Lad. I don't know what women saw in him. Maybe it was his looks. He has a mediterranean look about him with his light olive skin. And long dark hair. He works out a lot in the gym and claims to be a martial arts master, in...wait for it....seven different martial arts. He's got money, power and the kind of charm which he most likely modelled from his icon character, James Bond. The guy practically oozes over-confidence. To describe him I would say he's narcissistic, egotistical and arrogant with psychopathic tendencies. Not the murdering kind, more control freak, exerting power and dominion over people. And women lap this up!
He tried one time to chat up my wife, Natayla. That was when we attended one Christmas party for the company around a year ago. We only went because it was at Crewe Hall, which was less than fifteen miles for us and me missus likes Crewe Hall. I can still remember the way Bradshaw kept looking at Natayla, as if he was a predator stalking his prey. He chatted to her a few times when my back was turned, when I had to nip the loo or get her a drink from the bar. It was only when I left her side that he was there right up next to her, right in her face, pouring on his charm, waving his wealth in her face like he had just pulled out his appendage to woo her with its size. I can only hope he had not gotten to her, but I do feel the reason he mistreated me and has it in for me is that he's jealous I am married to her.
Depromoting me was probably his way of punishing me. He could not fire me so he decides to make me suffer instead. Make my experience at my workplace truely unbearable so that I quit on my own accord. I know this is not the first time he has done this. There have been others and all of them have left simply because they had enough of the craps Bradshaw was dishing out.
Thinking of Bradshaw was making me angry. I could feel all that pent up frustration and hatred towards him boiling up inside me, like a nuclear reactor threatening to go critical. I knew I had to distract myself with something else. Internet browsing was simply not helping me in the slightest bit. Besides, the answers I was getting was only confirming what I already knew...that if I didn't like my job, if it was unfair to me, if my boss was an aashole, I should just simply look for something else. Easy said than done. But with this economic climate, good jobs were few and far between.
Tp allieviate my frustration and anger I dug out my PlayStation Vita. It was a small handheld gaming console. It's graphical capabilities were amazing, almost to the level of a PlayStation 3. Most of the games I had were fighting ones. My favourite being Injustice Gods Among Us; a kind of superhero battle royale with famous names like Superman, Barman, Green Lantern, Arrow, Wonder Woman amongst many others battling each other. I always loved to play this game simply because it was a brilliant time-waster, a way for me to get out my frustrations and stresses. I could easily get completely engrossed in it and end up playing it for hours on end, losing complete track of time. It was only when I heard a door slam next door that I felt myself being jerked out of my trance-like-state. I had not even noticed how dark the room had become or that over an hour had elapsed. And still, there was no sign of my wife. I turned off the PS Vita and went into the kitchen, taking a look in my fridge and freezer for any food worth eating. There was nothing much other than some ingredients to make a salad with and the freezer contained nothing but frozen chips and some mixed vegetables in a bag. I hadn't realized how low we were on food and it's usually Natalya who keeps an eye on the food we have in stock. She use to be so good at it, knowing just by heart all the stuff we kept in the fridge and freezer and pantry, the use by dates of all our stuff and even the dates we opened all our condiments. She would make sure that we were adequately stocked up and would plan each meal we were having on each day of the working week. Lately she has let that go.
Grumbling in frustration, I go back to the lounge, pick up my phone, track down the number for a Dominoes Pizza in Stoke and then order one, a three cheese n tomato. I know I shouldn't be having one. Natalya thinks they are too unhealthy and she would practically kill me if she found I had one. But I don't care. Right now, I just feel like having the whole night off. Screw my writing and what Josh had told me to do. I'd get a bottle of beer and continue to play on my PS Vita and wait for my wife if and when she decides to turn up.
So I grab a bottle from the seven month crate I have stuffed in the pantry and crack it open with the bottle opener on my fridge, affixed with a magnet. Then I head into the living room again for more high flying and fighting mayhem on my PS Vita. The pizza comes in about half n hour of me ordering it and I put it beside me. It's a big twelve inch one cut neatly into slices which I enjoy. The taste is almost heaven, the toasted dough and the cheese which is practically dripping off it. I easily finish it in fifteen minutes, downing each mouthful with a swig of my beer. This to me feels like the closet thing to heaven. If I were a millionaire, I'd be eating pizza all day and drinking beer. Sounds just like the perfect, idle, lazy life. One great way to stick two fingers up at society and say 'screw you, I'm gonna do exactly what I want'.
I had only just made my way three quarters through the game when my phone goes off. I pick it up quickly, thinking it could be Natalya but find that it's a text by Josh, asking me how things are and whether I had finished my list of what I want in life. I answer his text with....