Dr. W. A. Frost's Ides of Revolution

Waiting outside the door on the weathered, splintering porch, Robert took a deep breath. He was ignoring the various this and thats which littered the old veranda now covered in snow. A well to do gentleman like himself, college educated and next in line for partnership in his father’s property development firm, he couldn’t help but stifle the immediate gut reaction to the working class accommodations he was surrounded by. When he’d met Penelope, she was just some bartender at a local haunt. He never expected for things to escalate between them past a simple one night thing. Four months later, and countless late night calls to her, he found himself preparing to have dinner with her and her father. While he certainly could have anticipated the socioeconomic level which she resided in based upon the caliber of bar she worked at, as well as the countless hours she needed to work to merely break even, it was still a culture shock which he was neither prepared nor interested to foray into. ...

  Looking to the corner of the gym, Nick stared with poignant malice at the hispanic twink. Taking selfies in the weight room mirrors was already a no-no at the Texan’s “Manly” gym, but that thing was a bad hombre from cocaine-infested Mexico. The kid had only recently joined the gym, and from what the desk manager had spilled, he was “potentially” undocumented- which in Nick’s mind meant: illegal. The kid was lean, tan, perhaps a bit scrawny. He walked in every evening at 8:30 wearing the stereotypical laborer uniform of a dirty, sweaty white tee shirt, heavy cargo pants, and beat up old work boots. For the red-blooded, all-white-meat American man, this kid needed to realize just where he was. Nick continued his workout, lifting insane amounts of weight thanks to the copious amount of steroids in his system. As soon as the kid finished his final set at the abs machine, he took his water bottle and quietly walked into the locker room. This is exactly where Nick wanted him to be. He...

  “Clint, you’re fucking two days behind schedule. You promised me the place would done at the end of the month. There’s seven days until that happens. One week, Clint. I’m not paying you to sit around and sweat all over my new floors. You and Devon need to pick up the pace.” In the typical, whiny, over the top bitchy voice that had become characteristic of Robert, he smugly stared down at the contractor, confident he’d made his point. The property developer and notorious slumlord had gotten slapped with fine after fine from the city after some journalist had done an expose in the paper two months prior. The city had made it clear: fix the houses up, or they will be condemned. In the end, it mattered not- he simply evicted the low income tenants and once the reno was done, he could charge whatever he wanted for the luxury apartment. Perhaps even an AirBnB. But it would all be for nothing if Clint and his partner didn’t get the place finished by the deadline. Thus, after the ass rea...