I was waiting for him to begin. We all were. A meeting at 5 o’clock in the afternoon! In the middle of July! All good Christians were drinking in a pub and I was sitting in this room with broken air-conditioning. Sitting and waiting. Waiting for what? We all were waiting for him to speak and tell us why we were there.

He had a big fat head attached to a short fat body. He was fat like a pig. He even looked like a pig. Victor, our manager. But nobody called him Victor. We all called him Pigtor. There was no place for political correctness in our company. Oh no, there wasn’t.

I was sitting at one side of a long meeting room desk. Mary was sitting on my left. She was closer to the windows. Closer to Pigtor. Jerry and Billy were sitting on the other side of the desk, opposite Mary and me. We all were waiting, but Pigtor was saying nothing.

The silence in the room was terrible. And the heat! It was so hot that I didn’t feel like moving a finger. And the air-conditioning was broken. What a day!

‘I…’ Pigtor opened his mouth and with that he also opened the meeting. And then he fell silent again. At first, I thought that he was weighing his words, but one minute later I changed my mind. I realised that he wasn’t weighing them. He was looking for them. Yes, Pigtor couldn’t find his words!

The silence was interrupted by a few loud hammer blows. The lift in the corridor was being repaired. And then the silence returned again.

‘I…’ Pigtor tried to speak, but he lost his words again. The subject of his sentence was out. Twice. Now, we all were waiting for the verb and the object. But they were not coming. We were sitting and waiting for the first full English sentence of that meeting. Waiting and sweating.

“Killing me softly with his words…” I remembered the song and laughed in my head. Jerry had his hands on the desk. His head was down and he looked like he was praying. Maybe he was praying for this terrible meeting to end. The question was who was listening to him – God or the Devil?

Billy wasn’t praying. He was looking at the wall behind my back and he was sweating. He was sweating terribly; like a pig. He even looked like a pig. Yes. Pigtor 2.0. He was sweating badly, all over his body. His sweat was everywhere – it was running down his cheeks and his neck. It was on his eyebrows, on his eyelids, even on his eyelashes. Drops of sweat were falling from the tip of his nose. Poor Billy was sweating and waiting for the verb.

‘I…’ came the subject again. And then a loud sound of a fall. Pigtor was down. He was lying on the floor.

Jerry stopped praying. ‘Somebody, call the ambulance!’ he cried out and went down on his knees to help his boss.

Mary ran out of the room to call the ambulance. Few moments later, she came back with a glass of water for Pigtor in her hand. Billy looked at the glass and a few tears appeared in his eyes. Or maybe it was his sweat…

‘Where are they?’ Jerry was beginning to panic. ‘We are losing him! The man is dying!’ Jerry was shouting at us.

We didn’t reply. We all knew that Pigtor was not dying. Pigtor was dead.

The meeting was over.

attached /əˈtætʃt/ – pripevnený, pripojený

even /ˈiːvn/ – dokonca

hammer blow /ˈhæmə bləʊ/ – silný úder kladivom

pray /preɪ/ – modliť sa

appear /əˈpɪə(r)/ – zjaviť sa; objaviť sa; javiť sa

look like – vyzerať ako / že..

fell silent – zmĺkol

I changed my mind – zmenil som názor; rozmyslel som si to