The beginning of a new Harold Story, and some randomness at the end

Once upon a time, Harold Crowley got up every mornng at 6 AM sharp. He had a rigid routine, first to the bathroom, take a piss, hop in the shower, dress himself and run down stairs. Jessica, Harold's maid, would have been awake for some time by then. She would have needed to press his pants and shirts, pick out a tie and jacket, arrange for a car and start breakfast. She had originally resisited Harold's endless demands, but soon saw their necessity, at least as far as her obedience as concerned. Harold saw her change, maybe she could understand that his was a life meant to be conducted by two people. There simply was too much to get done.

The kicker about Jessica, and this was the thing Harold liked most about her, was that she was more than just a maid. Harold reffered to her as a maid, but only in the mornings, and only because her duties were that of a maid. That was until he had found another usage for her. He walked in on her reading one of his case law journals, and figured her for inquisitive. This was when she was not living in his apartment, merely a passer by. Harold had never been one for marriage and could have honestly cared less one way or another for the affections of females, but Jessica's quiet demeanor suggested a profound and hidden agenda.

He did not waste time thinking about her reading of his journal, for longer than it took time for him to notice that the event had occurred. He was merely that type of person. Self centered, though with a purpose. Harold had once considered his work of the utmost importance, that is until he met Bernie Madoff.

Jessica had never met Mr. Madoff, had only very briefly overheard conversations between him and Mr. Crowley. One day, at random, Harold approached Jessica and asked her, “Jessica, what is it that you want to do most in life.”

She responded, “what you do, but I never could.”

This did not shock Harold, rather lent itself to his internalized curiosity. “Why is it that you think you could not do what I do?”

“Because you have brains for it.”

“And you do not?”

“I do not care much for the language.”

“Legal language is hard to decipher. How can I help you?”

“You cannot help me. I have no desire to learn, only to dream of learning.”

This did not shock Harold either. “Should you ever change your mind, I'd be glad to make time for you. On another note, I need a lady to appear with me tonight. I have a meeting with Mr. Madoff and I need a bit of eye candy. Something for him to ooh and awe at. I've arranged for a conservative dinner dress. I'd like you to come along.”

Jessica folded her arms across her chest. “But I am only your cleaning lady.”

“That's exactly the problem. I'd like you to become more for me. I need an assistant, someone to help me plan out and run my life. Someone I can trust in my business affairs. I saw you reading one of my legal journals once, and it had me thinking that I'd like you to help me out more.”

Jessica smiled and brushed her hands on her hips. “and how do you suppose I should go about doing that Mr. Crowley?”

“For starters, if we work together it's first name basis, second off, I want you to get your paralegal's licence. I need you to know at least an ounce of what I know otherwise this will never work. And if you think, even for a second that I'm wasting my time on you, I am and I'll ask you to leave. Is that understood?”

She had looked him in his eyes, those cold business man's eyes. “And if I refuse?”

“I will fire you as my maid, and you'll go down as one in history for all I care.”

His curt demeanor said it all. Maybe she figured she had no other choice, maybe she recognized that no one else was going to help her along. Whatever made her say yes had been irrelevant in Harold's eyes, and since then Jessica had proven the worth of the human female infinite times over. A brilliant young mind hidden behind the exterior of a good cook. Harold used her for all sorts of projects, various research, calling high profile clients, even work at the clerk's office and dinner with bankers and investors.

Some day she would leave, and she often told him that when he would lose his temper with her, but while the two of them worked together, there was nothing Harold couldn't do. She did not seem to care for men, or the pursuits of other women, over the years Harold watched her grow into a shrewd business woman with eyes like a Hawk. A sharp legal editor that could assemble one hell of a defense over a weekend.

Harold trained her, honed her skills, while he worked on his dealings. The life of an investment attorney is a busy schedule, from 9 to 9, easily. She would leave for hours throughout the day and though Harold never liked it, she said she was visiting her family so he tolerated it. Harold wanted a family, he simply had no time for them, and no desire to raise them. He was content watching the families of others, appreciating them from afar. Both his parents had died when he was young, and Harold had no other siblings.

It was acceptable, even enviable to imagine Jessica off at some cafe drinking coffee with her mother or out shopping with a brother or sister. Even seeing a young man for a drink or making time for friends. He liked to imagine her youth, her spirit, but rationale told him that she was probably at home catching up on sleep. Harold routinely worked her very hard, and she seemed to share his enthusiasm, but her body and mind were not conditioned for the intensity of 12 hour days five days a week.

When he had first started, when he had got going rather, the days would end so quickly and leave him in a daze. Often he'd slump down into the couch and not say anything until he passed out, usually in the suit he was wearing that day. He could not imagine what his regiment did to her, but he knew that guiding her was the right thing to do.

Harold would not have been very rich, by any standard of modern definition, but he had achieved a massive amount of money. Enough to put Jessica through paralegal school hundreds of times over, enough to invest in whatever he saw fit.





For a long time, there were no words. There was only the thin piece of paper sitting delicately in Harold's hands. Where she had gone, or what became of her was already an irrelevant concern, but he couldn't thrust his mind from its confining grip. Somewhere, she was out there, maybe thinking of him, of everything she left behind.

Harold had never felt much for women. A deep void that they could never fill and only seemed to contribute to. Jessica had been different. Timid at first, but she unfolded into something indescribably lovely, a woman, a machine capable of men's work. Business demeanor, the confident stride that only comes with a delicate mastery. A woman utterly and completely able in every way to stand by Harold'd side.

It's true, his life had become too much for the weight of one person. Where did she go?

None of that was important any more. Harold wanted to go for a drive. Parked outside his porch was a sleek black BMW 5 series, it's clean interior, his Glenn Miller would put a troubled mind at ease. For this day would be a day of mourning. Harold needed to deal with his loss, needed to face it, would have to come home to listen to the empty halls of his home.

Harold stepped outside and shut and locked his door. Movies of the mind played sequences of driving home, south of Ventura into the hills of Mullholand, to dinner plates and quiet meals. Did she ever like the music he played? His Beethoven, his Bach, his Gershwyn? He had thought her too young, incapable of much more than food preperation. Harold held little hope for the coming generations. Theirs was a culture of text and incomprehensible words. He wondered what the Oxford Dictionary looked like these days while he watched kids walk down the streets of the Civic center. He's watch them skateboard with an odd fascination that came from not contempt, but pure honest curiosity. This culture seemed to have a death wish. To live and to die in extremes. It wasn't memorable if your skull didn't crack open.

And every other word out of these kids' mouths would be f this or that. The names they called each other didn't even betray whether or not they were meant as insults. Guys who led groupd of these kids around the city with names like Krotch, and Point Five Oh. The kids who were not kids in the eyes of the law. The kids who were not kids when Harold prosecuted them, one by one for their bank robberies and their murders and their auto theft and their desecration of public property. Their eyes held a sense of hidden madness, an agenda that seemed to suggest from the shadows that more was always to come. These children, these men and women, they knew full well what they were doing.

The hardest were the fourteen and below drug addicts. They were crazy enough to do anything because they think the state won't try them as adults. 9 times out of ten, they're right. (fact check)