Curtains, Inc.

Danny sat on his couch, getting ready to dig into his organic pizza rolls. He felt good about his dinner choice; felt, in fact, a little superior to the chumps who had chosen normal frozen pizza or mac and cheese for their dinners. Of course the semi healthy dinner was only a pretext for the pint of gourmet ice cream that he was going to plow through afterwards.

The phone beside him began to ring. He hit mute on the Twilight Zone marathon he was watching and picked it up.

"Yello?"

"Daniel Masters?" a voice which sounded remarkably far away asked.

"Yes?"

"This is Darryl from Curtains Incorporated. I understand that you were mugged at the corner of Fourth and Central last week.”

“Um…”

“I just wanted to follow up with you regarding the quality of your experience.”

Danny closed his eyes as if a massive migraine had just come on.

“I’m sorry, who is this?”

“This is Darryl, from Curtains Incorporated. We are an independent, third party. As I said, I just wanted to follow up with you and make sure that the incident was handled appropriately.”

“Well some junky made off with my wallet and… Seriously, who the hell is this?”

“Would you say that you have now experienced a zen-like state because of this? Where you realize the spiritual folly of possessions?”

“No, no I wouldn’t.”

“Um-hm, okay. Would you say that you have a new viewpoint on how precious life is now that yours has been threatened?”

“No! Why are you…”

“Would you rate your displeasure at street denizens who might perpetrate this sort of crime as say… high?”

“I’m gonna fucking hang up now, you’re freaking me out!”

“All right, can I give you a number to call us if you have any questions?”

“No!” Danny yelled as he slammed down the phone. He was breathing hard as he turned the volume back up on Rod Serling. He popped another pizza roll in his mouth and tried to calm down.

There came this sudden feeling that would end up haunting him for the rest of his days: he should have gotten that number.