The edges of the mind

               For Jake, the day he had waited for so long had finally come. The day he worked for, hoped for,sweat and bled for, the day for which he had competed with over 600 men. The selection pool for the experiment was wide: men from across the country, of all ages and all walks of life: lawyers, pilots,economists,as well as plumbers, construction workers and a few losers like him. "Loser" had been the word his wife Clara had used when he told her he was quiting his day-job to become a freelancer.

                "Freelancer? Is that what they call losers these days? You better go back tomorrow and beg for your job back. I ain't supporting no loser!"

                 He hadn't gone to beg for his job back the next day and that was, of course, the straw that broke the camels back with his shacky marriage, but hey! you can't make an omelette without breaking the eggs, right? He was sick with Clara anyways, sick of her fits, sick of the boredom she called "family life". Sure, at first he thought he was going to lose his mind,when he saw her packing half of the little they had and drive off that autumn day, but he found he did not miss her group of gossiping lady-friends always around the house, or her constant nagging. It took him months to realize how much it helped him not seeing her dissappointed look every day, to understand how good it is not to hear about somebodys husband who made that much money or that he is not man enough for her or that she could have done so much better than him. It took him even longer for the idea to form in his head that HE could have done a lot better than her, that HE could have done more with his life, had he not married her. But if he really changed, and grew, and left all that behind, how come that now, in his hour of glory, he cannot help but think of what she would say if she could see him? Why does he keep imagining the look of surprise on her face, her jaw dropping, her envy even? He even knows what he would say :"Hey baby!Who's the loser now?"

              No! He had to forget about Clara, forget about her completely, concentrate on a small detail,until she was no longer a person, but an abstract concept, like gravity or supernovas. That worked during the tests. Of course, he was afraid they would see through him, that they will see what a weak man he was, how little will-power he had. You don't go through months of psychological tests without exposing a few skelletons in the closet, like your failled marriage. If these guys sniffed out that he still had moments when he could kill her with his bare hands , that would be the end of the road for him. But he played it smart: whenever they brought her up, he remembered the blond hair in her eyebrow. He had noticed that hair on their first date and found it adorable. Later on, he came to hate it: who did she think she was, lecturing him about stuff, with her single blond hair in her black eyebrows, beneath that mop of long,curly,black hair? She irritated him so badly when she talked (and man! the woman never shut up!) that the only way he could protect her from his rage was to stop listening. He would stare at that blond hair, tuning her out, until her words no longer made sense, they were just sounds, without any particular meaning. That's what he did during the trials too: he called back her image and stared at that hair until his anger passed.

               At this time, Jake had no way of knowing that he wasn't fooling anyone,really. They had sensed his rage, his hatred even, but what had made him qualify was exactly the plasticity of his mind, his ability to distance himself from his own feelings, even the ones that were so intense. There had even been a controversy in the psychologists team: some of them were convinced that at some point he was going to crack under pressure, but the more they poked and probed him about Clara, the more effective his mechanism was. At some point, the idea of bringing him face-to-face with her was on the table. It was eventually cast aside, because it was obvious the woman could not be the monster she had become in his mind. She was far more effective as a memory, a pressure point they could always push to flare his anger.