Mostly it was cupcakes. Sometimes all day cupcakes. Sometimes a whole week of cupcakes.
Yes, computer programs work out your electricity bill, yes, pretty boring stuff, they also count cupcakes.
Monika sold software, which Hank wrote, to count cupcakes. Using the sales data from the supermarkets the software could work out which cakes were selling well, where and when, and guess what the future sales would be. This was very useful to the cupcake company – how many cupcakes to make for next week, one million or five million, and week after week.
Monika sold the software to food companies, she could always find new customers, and find new ways to count the cakes or sausages and analyse the data. And Hank programmed it all.
The cupcake company always wanted more. I helped Hank with the software and slept with Monika.
Hank taught me a lot about software. He was only interested in programming and eating and drinking. Everything else was not important – Monika was not a woman for him, but someone who talked software with him.
The three of us went eating and drinking together every evening – no one wanted to cook. It was a good time. The software sold well, our software, I was now part of the team.
The cupcake company always wanted more. There was always plenty of work to do – Hank and I were always busy.
The cupcake company always wanted more, they sent big boxes of cupcakes to keep us happy. The cupcakes cannot be described – they were so awful – worse of all were the orange coloured ones – they didn't taste of orange – they were just orange coloured – they were the worse.
Soon the bungalow was full of boxes of cupcakes – we couldn't eat them – we wanted to stay alive. A big box of chocolate coloured cupcakes burst all over the carpet like an exploded latrine. We hired a truck and took the cupcakes to an old people's home – weren't we kind?
The pain came straight after the meal. OK, it was a takeaway, it was pretty greasy, but it tasted good. Hank bent over double. We had to help him home. After an hour or so the pain went. Hank slept badly.
The next day Hank was OK. Must have been something I ate. But immediately after the breakfast of bacon and eggs, Hank was in pain. The doctor said hospital. The hospital said pancreas.
The next day Hank was dead.
Monika fell to pieces, she did nothing for days. I could do nothing, I couldn't do the half that Hank did, and nothing that Monika did. After two weeks she sold everything with the computer and the software to the cupcake company. Now I understood better.
You always loved Hank!
We never saw each other again.