The Diary of A Rich CEO

Welcome To South Ville

Chapter 4:

That afternoon I arrived home shortly before 5:00 PM. The sun began to prepare its warmth; the clouds gathered around, sharing hugs with it, and creating a warm family atmosphere. The wind settled lightly on skin, while faces elevated and admired its gentle touch.

I stood there for at least thirty seconds wondering how dumb I had to be to have locked my car keys inside the car. Immediately my toe ached, as if it were the rim on the tires’ fault that I had kicked out of frustration; I squirmed and held my pain like a man I was supposed to be.

I went inside the house, and I stared at my laptop as it was still generating the 500-thousand-word story that I had prompted my AI Chabot to generate before I had left to go pick up my lunch.

“72% completed”

“Checking part 33 for repetitiveness before beginning part 34”

As I read the notification on my laptop screen, “Perfect, at least my life isn’t completely falling apart,” I uttered deep inside my mind, while on my way back to the surface I remembered Daisy, from when I had seen her at the food shop that afternoon, and instantly the unusual feeling of fullness took me over, but I hadn’t yet touched my food, nor had opened the lunchbox. I thought to myself what a strange encounter the feeling was, but I remembered that they always said that faith felt like a warm sunny evening when the clouds congregated for worship.

I resided in South Ville for a consecutive two and a half years by that particular date, a time period that I spent settling in and getting to know my surroundings, but I was a broke investor who was working offline part-time and the rest of the time that I had, I was gave to random online task that were perfect for earning, but I was lacking deep focus and true fluency in interpreting the Internet’s financial languages. However, I was very good at writing, a skill that I was using as a trusted asset at the time.

I traveled around the city seeking jobs, but it always proved to be a challenging task to take on, Jamaica’s equatorial heat will cook even the pots themselves, especially in the summer season. Rumor has it that if you hold an egg up to the sun in midsummer here, it cooks faster than if you had boiled it. I did most of my traveling on foot at the time, the streets were always alive, and cars sometimes had to walk to their destinations while people on foot collected speeding tickets. Sweepstakes lottery scamming was as a successful money laundering scheme in the City, car owners became as popular as your four-year-old casually affording to purchase a real Porsche, just for crashing into his real Mercedes.

While I, on the other hand, “Mr. Good Samaritan” still walk around in my good old reliable Toyota Corolla like it was just a regular day being poor, broke, and too caring to scam someone of their hard-earned salary. The city beamed with possibilities, people made money in numerous ways, and it was a city that showed high ambitions and intense gravitational pulls towards success. People never ran short of money, the shortage came down to where to spend their money first. I only stayed broke because the type of money that I set my eyes on is capable of feeding generations of my bloodline without them having to work a single day in their lives.

Yet, I still lacked the perfect woman who was expected to be there to motivate those ambitions. As a single man, I survived without having dinner on any given night, I never prioritized excessively caring for myself, but with a woman in the picture – I would never want to see the table without food for an hour; and those things eat.

It was now Friday morning, my appetite was crying out for a cooked meal instead of a snack as I would usually have, “I was such a big baby” I still am.

The kids still hide their snacks underneath the cushions on the couch whenever I walk in.

I headed out to my regular food shop to grab some cooked breakfast, I never called to order that morning, I had previously freed my key from inside the car. Coincidentally, I found my spare key in the garage while I was looking for something to pick the door lock like YouTube had suggested.

“Honk-honk!”

Thomas: talking quietly to himself while he looks in the review mirror “You can drive over the top if you see space in front of me”

“honk-honk-honk!”

That was angry Joe, angry Karen’s best pal, always in a hurry more than anyone else.

The school children covered the sidewalks seeking taxi cabs to take them to school even though classes had already begun, they were wearing uniforms that were too short for acceptance, yet they wore them anyway, khakis almost skin tight, constantly keeping their school shoes clean every 30 minutes; the poorest children still wore the most expensive fits.

“Keek-keek!” I urged one set of school kids to make way for me to enter the food shop compound.

Random School Children: “Sir be careful, because if you hit me with your old car it won’t end pretty this morning.”

Thomas: “I’m running on the Mount Al route. Are you guys ready?”

Random School Children: “No, our hot car is coming to pick us up, we don’t drive in old cars like those, plus you’re a robot taxi, next thing you don’t even know how to drive.”

Stingie they were, but they were right. True Jamaican school kids wouldn’t say anything less, but are all being very playful, of course they already knew who I was, but there she was; sitting on the same bench, underneath the same umbrella taking shape from the already burning 8:45 AM Summer Sun.

It was Daisy, as if destiny had brought us both back to the food shop coincidentally.