Everybody's An Idiot But Me

By Adam LeJardiner

"Everybody's an Idiot But Me" is Bernie's mantra for his comfortable, predictable life. These idiots around him constrain his greatness in all things, refusing to recognize his talent, charm and potential for vast wealth, fame and fabulous sex. Of course, Bernie cannot realize the biggest idiot is the one in his mirror until one fateful day when his world implodes and he loses everything. 

 

Bernie's desperation leads to a great personal discovery, a talent he didn't know he had: a perfect golf swing. He embarks on a sex-filled, carefree and outrageous quest to win the U.S. Open Tournament. Only an idiot who's never played the damn game in his life would think such a thing was possible. Even more ridiculous is the great possibility that Bernie could find love despite all his troubles.

 

Only fate has one last tragic card to play during the Open. One last crushing blow as he's cheered on by fans who admire his sudden rise and improbable chance of victory against staggering odds. Will he find love? Could he be the next U.S. Open Champion? Will fame, sex and money follow him to victory? Maybe two out of three?

 

Only an idiot believes in happy endings... 

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sportscar Projects Ltd.
• Release date: Mar 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215676011

Adam LeJardiner

Adam LeJardiner enjoys a healthy relationship with his partner of over forty years. In his life, he has witnessed and interviewed many couples who have enjoyed happiness and suffered from tragedy and emotional distress. He is a chronicler of paradise, that magical pairing of soulmates who build, grow and blossom in their own garden of eden. He hopes his readers find true love and a lifetime of happiness.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Bernie was dying. He could see his body, still and surrounded by spectators, on the green grass. He wasn’t breathing, just lying as a growing crowd of concerned faces stared down at him.

Do something, you fucking idiots! he yelled, but no sound came from his mouth. I’m fucking dying here!

He tried looking around, but couldn’t move his head. He stared up at the blue sky and white clouds. So peaceful. Is that heaven up there somewhere? Where is his guardian angel? That fucking Sammie! Sure, quick to criticize me all the time. Fuck, the one time I really need an angel and he’s fucked off!

Maybe he isn’t real, after all. Just another imaginary being conjured up from his subconscious. He hasn’t been himself lately, for sure. But dying like this? With an audience? What the fuck?

Where was he, anyway? Is this a golf course? Is he lying in the middle of a fairway? Shit, he’s never played golf in his life! Why is he here? What the fuck?

He heard music, like a chorus of angels. Is this it, the last journey to the light? In C major? Is that Hallelujah? Dying to Leonard Cohen? And not even the original, but some shit acapella version?

No, no, no! It’s the fucking alarm clock! Another dying dream...

Bernie reached over and hit the snooze button. He sank back onto his pillow and wished he was dead. Would it be better than another day of work and home and sleep and repeat? Another day surrounded by jerks, idiots and stupid people?

Something had to change, but Bernie wouldn’t be the one to break out. He didn’t have it in him, the risk-taking gene that grabbed adventure by the balls and ran into the unknown.

No, Bernie needed outside forces to push him around. He didn’t know it, but those forces have been ready to act for weeks now. Today was the day his life would change. There would be no going back. Why?

Bernie would kill someone today.

For seven years, his bedside alarm lit up oldies radio stations, like today’s Cohen spiritual. Bernie lay as the snooze feature he dearly loved played on, finishing the final chorus and then moving on to another song, one of his favorites. The Animals. The House of the Rising Sun.  Bernie knew every note of the organ solo and he raised his hand to air-play it, eyes closed and fingers dancing along an imaginary keyboard.  He jammed the power chords hard and wiggled his fingers fast on the triplets before ending angry on the broken chord progression from the Am to C to D to F.

He opened his eyes when Eric Burden sang ‘to wear that ball and chain’ and shut off the alarm.

Fuckin’ right, muttered Bernie as he rolled out of bed towards the bathroom, to start the worst day of his life.  As he stood over the sink, he could not see his future in the mirror - just a middle-aged, comfortable, predictable face staring back. 

Everybody’s an idiot but me, he said, to his face in the mirror. A phrase from his morning ritual, all designed to get him out of bed and on the road to work. The job he loved. Ironic, really. He turned on the taps and reached for the soap. 

The same hands washing his face would soon smother another human being with a soiled pillow with an embroidered vista of the Grand Canyon pressed tight over his victim’s mouth and nose.  When the weak thrashing of limbs ceased, he tossed the weapon into the corner of the bedroom. 

Bernie understood the underlying philosophy of life expressed in two words: shit happens. He experienced adversity in small daily doses but never on the tsunami-like scale about to sweep over him today and fuck him up badly.  In hindsight, committing murder would not be his fault.  Cosmic karma, man

Today would be Bernie’s day of infamy, his Pearl Harbor where everything would go wrong, as bad as a sudden invasion of Japanese bombers and fighter planes hurling a hard rain down on Destroyer Row.  It would be his family and friends in the cockpits of those planes, flying low to torpedo his comfortable life in wave after wave of sudden savagery.  He would suffer and survive, submerged and struggling for air.  He would make it through this day and kill his first victim. 

Shit happens.

He stood in the shower, deep breathing the damp steam from the euro-style shower nozzle he installed two years earlier.  It mimicked the romantic showers of Paris where lovers strolled the cobblestones snuggled under umbrellas and groped each other in dark alleys behind the cinema.  Bernie heard a Parisian accordion, but it was his own breath wheezing in and out of his congested windpipe.  This imagined glimpse of Paris would be the high point of his day.

Bernie dried himself with a plush Egyptian cotton towel that could have covered the Great Pyramid twice with a bit left over.  His wife Cher bought them at Pier 1 and carried them home in great triumph.  However, all Bernie could observe from his vantage point was that six fluffy towels cost him $350.  It made you damn sorry for those Egyptians. 

Bernie walked back to the bedroom and into the walk-in closet where he selected gray flannel pants and a Harris Tweed jacket, white shirt and gray striped tie.  His reflection in the full-length mirror held no surprises after 39 years of the easy life.

Bernie was a tall man, six-foot-two when he stood straight up, with a full head of brown hair and two prominent features that set his face apart from his closest peers in his age group.  His piercing eyes, wide and alert.  They made Bernie appear intelligent and aware and explained why he rose to the executive level in the local government.  That and his other distinguishing feature.  His mouth always appeared to smile.  No matter how he felt; his natural pose was a smile and a rock-steady gaze.  He came across both relaxed and intense.  He was now near the pinnacle of his career, with the title of Assistant Deputy Minister in the provincial government of British Columbia, on the West Coast of Canada.  Canada is a cold, barren land with a ribbon of civilization hugging the southern border with the United States.  People made fortunes cutting down, digging up and shipping out stuff like trees or minerals or oil.  Otherwise, you worked in administration, keeping track of exactly what stuff people cut down or dug up and collecting taxes, duty or royalties on the blessed event. 

Bernie Richmond lived in Victoria, located a half hour’s flight from Seattle to the south and Vancouver to the east. It was home to old people, rich people and government workers.  A sleepy island city full of pedestrians, umbrellas and complete isolation from the world’s troubles.  It enjoyed the mildest climate in Canada, a criterion worth mentioning to other Canadians every February when the first flowers bloomed while elsewhere, people shoveled snow. 

Bernie munched his cereal while he breezed through the local newspaper.  It was an excuse to print advertisements between stale news reports and local commentary on the weather and outrageous lack of government subsidies to support every damn part of daily life.  Bernie read it daily just in case his ministry made the news, and he had to attend another dreadful ass-covering meeting to prepare a response. 

He worked for the Ministry of Water, Air and Forests.  He was the Deputy Minister in charge of tracking exactly how much fucking water there was in British Columbia.  His responsibilities stopped at the ocean.  He monitored lakes, rivers, glaciers, streams, brooks, swamps and any other standing, flowing, or frozen reservoir of fresh water within the borders of British Columbia. 

Bernie put his bowl on the counter.  He heard the water flowing upstairs.  Someone was in the shower.  He glanced at his watch: 7:16.  He paused, thinking what a bloody miracle it was that someone in his family was awake.  It was a special day.  He rinsed his bowl in the sink and placed it in the dishwasher.  He brushed his teeth in the downstairs bath, slipped on his weatherproof black trench coat, picked up his briefcase and walked to the garage.

At 7:24 he backed out of his garage in his Volvo sedan. Turning onto Monterey Avenue, he joined the maelstrom that was Victoria morning rush-hour traffic.  Bernie lived in Oak Bay, an independent municipality to Victoria and an enclave of the complacent and the comfortable, of which Bernie was an avid member.  Oak Bay was best imagined as a Shire, full of happy hobbits enjoying the easy life.  If Gandalf were to enter Oak Bay and attempt to muster up volunteers, he would first have to sit for tea and biscuits and take a lovely walk along the seashore. 

The daily commute from Oak Bay to downtown Victoria was hell.  First, there was the desperate drive down Oak Bay Avenue with the gauntlet of pedestrian crosswalks where old people threatened to walk across with total oblivion to annoying things like cars passing by.  Bernie stopped twice for old people crossing the street.  This delayed him by thirty seconds as the old spines hooked their way across in front of him. 

Shoot me before I get that old, muttered Bernie as he waited for them to pass by or pass away, whichever was fastest.

He traveled down Hell’s Pipeline, or Yates Street; a one way artery into downtown where bike lanes and cars flowed harmoniously into the great maw of the city. Bernie raced down Yates in a group of fifteen cars, pausing at stoplights and darting ahead of each other.  It was frenetic for six blocks and then it was over.  Bernie turned up Douglas Street and along the Gorge to his office on Jutland, a cluster of office buildings reclaimed from industrial waterfront.  By the time he slipped into his underground reserved parking lot under the majestic four floors of the Ministry of Water, Air and Forests, all of twelve minutes had passed, door to door.  He took ten minutes to grab a cappuccino at the nearby Sunshine café and carry it, with his briefcase, into the Ministry.

At 7:51 he flashed his security pass at the guard at the front door, hit the elevators and walked to his office for 7:54.  He sat down, signed on to his computer and accepted his first instant message by 7:58.  His coffee was a daily treat to himself that he savored even knowing that if he put the $4.25 that he spent on it into a savings account and invested it at 10%, he’d realize over ten million dollars by the time he was seventy-five. 

Bernie had no plans for the future, other than hazy images of cruise ships, backyard barbeques and long, lazy afternoons with Cher in the Shire.  Retirement would be easy, with his government pension, his house paid off, his sons long gone and his dear wife well preserved after years of blissful inactivity.  He had no experience of the unexpected.  Bernie lived, until now, a life of calm expectations realized without a great deal of effort on his part.  His life was a cruise missile on auto-guidance, sailing along not realizing his true purpose, which was to blow up.   For years, he skimmed above ground, whistling under the radar, on course and enjoying the view. 

At 8:48, the first ripple of his day of infamy reached shore.  Claire Yonuger, his executive assistant with her trim body and efficient disposition opened his office door.  Her blonde hair spilled over her too-cute face and she brushed it back, sparking several wonderful fantasies for Bernie, all flashing before his eyes in milliseconds.  She winked at him, as usual.  It was her way, that conspiratorial wink. 

Summons from the Chief.  She wants you ASAP, said Claire.

Oh Christ, replied Bernie, shaking his arms in mock-terror.  I’d better get moving right away!

Claire rolled her delicious eyes and shut the door.  Bernie took one last scan of his emails and instant messages, in case there was something there that would warrant a trip to the Chief.  There was nothing.  He grabbed his phone and stood up, straightened his tie and walked out of his office.

The Chief was Deputy Minister Paula Martell, a veteran bureaucrat with more connections than a home theater system.  She was the top civil servant to the Minister of Air, Water and Forests, the Honorable Jerry Ungersill. 

Paula was a trim, severe woman with a blunt hairstyle wedged from below her chin to the back of her neck like an axe blade.  She had thin lips, a button nose and big blue iceberg eyes.  She had a sense of humor, in that she knew what humor was but had no ability to entice it from her personality.  Paula’s voice was her greatest asset, best described as an intense whisper.  You had to listen closely to catch her words, which gave her the advantage in any conversation of substance.

She kept a crisp desk, a leather portfolio and a laptop, displaying the day’s agenda, which she prepared the night before. 

Today, as she waited for Bernie to arrive, she scanned her summary page with a one-word title at the top and a list of names along the left with a series of numbers against each name. Top of the list was Bernie Richmond.  As she waited, she tapped on her laptop to pull up the Ministry phone directory.  She found a number and dialed.

Yes, this is Paula.  I’m starting now, with Bernie Richmond, she said, into the phone.  Are your people ready?  Good.  Half hour and out the door.  No exceptions.  All the badges to me.  No, that’s it.  Thanks.

Paula pressed the call termination button as Bernie knocked and entered her office.

You rang? asked Bernie, with a smile.

Yes, whispered Paula, pointing to a butter-leather armchair across from her desk. Sit down, Bernie.

She waited as Bernie slid into the chair, crossed his legs. 

Let me have it, Paula, said Bernie.

Paula hesitated for a split-second and Bernie tracked the first blip of enemy planes on his personal radar. 

Okay, Bernie.  Here it is.  You’re being let go.  She stared at him, with those iceberg eyes. 

Let go, as in fired? he responded, not as calm as he would have liked.

We’re forced to cut back in every area, with the new budget.  Including some in the executive suite.  Like yourself.  Nothing to do with performance.  A numbers thing.

I’m a numbers thing?

You’ll get a fair severance package, six month’s salary plus counseling and job search help.

Well, isn’t that fantastic!  Thank God for job counseling, Paula.

Smart-ass to the end, Bernie.

She reached into her top drawer and pulled out a white legal-sized envelope.  On the front was Bernie’s name.  She placed it across the desk, near Bernie.

This is for me, I take it?

All the details, said Paula, standing up.  She walked around her desk and held out her hand.  Bernie stood and shook it as he picked up his envelope.

We have strict rules about employees we let go.  You know the drill, I believe.

Get me off the premises immediately.  No chance for anything unpleasant.

You have a half hour to gather your things.  The counseling is available, off site at their offices.  It’s all in the package.  There will be a security guard outside to escort you to your office and down to the lobby.

What a day to leave my gun at home! said Bernie, with a laugh.  Paula did not join him.

Goodbye, Bernie.  It has been great working with you.

Not that great, apparently.

Victoria was a small town.  He would run into Paula many times in the future.  As he got to the door, he turned and whispered, Keep working on your people skills, Paula.

Get out, Bernie.  Paula turned to walk back to her chair.

Yeah well fuck you, Paula, said Bernie, as he opened the door.  He didn’t look back.  He heard the bombs dropping from above, onto Destroyer Row.  The radar was right.  It was a surprise attack, coming in low with a whisper as Paula launched her torpedo.  He was taking on water, listing to port.  The good ship Bernie was turning turtle with him trapped below in the engine room.

Chapter 2

Outside Paula’s office , an enormous security guard stood with two cardboard boxes in his arms.

Hi George, said Bernie, walking past him.  Are you going to help me pack or just watch to make sure I steal nothing?

Giant George grunted as he followed Bernie back to his office. 

Bernie was always efficient with his energy, so he packed up in fifteen minutes.  He carried one box and George had the other as he left his office.  Claire was outside, waiting for him.  She stood with a funny smile on her face, attractive as always.  She had a slip of paper in her hand.

Bernie put his box down on Claire’s desk.  He reached out to shake her hand, and she opened her arms for a hug.  They embraced, her hot breath on his neck, the pressure of her groin on his.  She tucked the paper in his breast pocket.

Call me sometime, Bernie, as she pulled away from him.

Bernie looked at her, surprised.  Call you?  Have a coffee together?

Oh, more than that, said Claire.  Now that you’re not my boss, we can act like real people.

Bernie picked up his box and turned to leave.

Thanks, Claire.  I’ll try acting like a real person again.  I’ll call you.

Don’t wait too long, okay? said Claire, waving.

Okay, said Bernie, turning the corner and looking back one last time at Claire.  She was attractive, always had been.  Now she was no longer his assistant, but one hot lady with the greatest of features, a come and get me smile.  She winked at him and he knew for sure.

Bernie walked past the worker bee cubicles with George at his side.  No one looked up.  The news was still secret.  They waited for the elevator.

Bernie was a natural talker, so he took the initiative.

Busy day today, with all the changes... he said.

George shrugged.

How many people are they letting go?

I can’t talk about that, Mr. Richmond.

"But I expect there will be quite