Greenies

comes from coffee though.'

'Coffee?'

'Check the closet,' she told him slyly.

He walked over and opened it. Where their clothes had once been stored were now over two hundred one kilogram sacks of premium WestHem coffee beans. The smell was potent enough to cut through the funk in the room. 'Jesus,' he said.

'We're fuckin' rapin' the employed pricks on that shit,' Belinda told him with a laugh. 'They're paying six hundred dollars a kilo for the shit. Can you fuckin' believe that? And we don't even have to deliver! They come into this shitty ass neighborhood and come begging at my door just to get some of my coffee. We're fuckin' rich, you ungrateful slob! You oughtta get down on your knees and eat my scummy pussy for this.'

His anger started to rise. 'You're sitting here on top of all this coffee, all that booze, and all those smokes when those of us who put our asses on the line for this planet had to make do with two beers apiece? That's fuckin' criminal, Belinda! It's a fuckin' atrocity!'

'Oh save your bleeding heart shit for the fuckin' MarsGroup bitches,' she said. 'This is the most money we've ever had in our lives — and we get free booze and smokes too. You're just jealous you didn't think of it first.'

'Get dressed,' he told her, picking up a filthy pair of shorts and an even filthier shirt from the nearest pile. He tossed them at her. 'We need to talk.'

'Why don't you give me a fuck first?' she asked, lying back and spreading her legs a little. 'Galen's been hosing me while you been gone but his reproductive block is in place. Yours is still off, ain't it?'

'Yeah,' he said, ashamed to find himself actually considering her offer — even if it was only for the briefest of seconds. 'It's still off.'

'Well let's get to fuckin',' she said. 'I'm fuckin' ovulatin' right now and I still want me that two bedroom apartment.'

'I'm not having a child with you,' he said. 'I'm not doing anything with you anymore. I came here to tell you we're finished. I'm filing for divorce tomorrow.'

She looked at him and then started cackling. 'Divorce?' she said. 'Are you shitting me? Why the fuck would you wanna divorce me? You got something better lined up?'

'That's not any of your business anymore,' he said. 'I've grown up, you haven't. I'm fighting for this planet and you're profiteering from it. I never loved you or even liked you very much, and I never will. This is the end, Belinda.'

She was shaking her head through this entire speech. 'You ain't divorcing me,' she said. 'I'm not gonna have my welfare benefits cut because you're all fuckin' caught up in this independence bullshit. Now get over here and fuck me. You know you want to.'

'You'll have to find someone else,' he said. 'We're through. I'm filing the forms first thing in the morning.'

She stood up, wobbling a little at first but eventually finding equilibrium. She pointed her finger at his chest in little stabbing motions. 'You are not divorcing me!' she told him. 'Not now. You are gonna fuck me until I'm knocked up first and then you can leave if you want. I won't give a shit then. They'll keep my welfare where its at if I have a kid.'

'You're disgusting,' he said, turning away from her. 'The greatest thing that's ever happened to this planet is going on all around you and you're sitting here trying to make money off of it and pretend it's going to go away.' He started to walk toward the door.

Something hit him in the back of the head hard enough to stun him. It was a vase that had been propelled from Belinda's hand. It bounced upward and then shattered on the floor at his feet.

'Don't you walk away from me!' she shouted. 'Nobody walks away from me, motherfucker!'

He turned around, anger in his eyes but his emotions still in check. He reached up and felt the back of his head. There was already a bump starting to form there. She swung a roundhouse at him but he blocked it easily. He pushed her back toward the bed, causing her to fall onto her ass on it. 'Don't ever hit me with anything again,' he warned.

'Fuck you!' she spat, leaping to her feet and rushing at him, her fists clenched, murder in her eyes.

He pushed her back again, this time hard enough to make her roll off the backside of the bed. She got right back up, this time picking up a lamp. Before she could throw it at him he kicked the bed, pushing it at her and knocking her feet out from beneath her. She landed prone on the mattress where she began hitting it with her fists.

'You can't leave me until you knock me up, asshole!' she kept yelling, over and over again. 'Nobody fucking leaves me.'

'I am,' he said. 'Now do you wanna talk about this like adults or do you want to keep acting like a spoiled little bitch?'

'Fuck you, motherfucker!' she yelled. She got to her knees on the mattress and reached for the nightstand, where the remains of a chicken dinner from the welfare mart were lying. She picked up a steak knife and charged him, raising it over her head and fully intending to stab it into his chest. He caught her wrist and twisted it, perhaps little harder than was really necessary. The knife dropped to the floor but not before he heard and felt a sickening crunch from her forearm.

Now her screams were from pain. She held her arm out before her, the wrist angulated at an unnatural angle. 'You broke my fuckin' arm, asshole!' she screamed. 'You motherfucker!'

'You were trying to kill me,' he said, his anger peaking once again. 'You fuckin' deserved that, bitch!'

'Get me to the fuckin' hospital!' she cried. 'I can't believe you did this shit!'

He didn't get her to the hospital. He did what any ghetto inhabitant would do under the circumstances and called for the dip-hoes to take her. They showed up fifteen minutes later, accompanied by two Eden police officers. In that time she continued to rant and scream and cry but she did maintain enough sense of propriety to at least put her clothes on.

'So what happened here?' one of the cops asked while the dip-hoes went about the task of putting a splint on her.

'He broke my fuckin' arm!' Belinda screamed. 'He twisted it until it popped!'

'Is that true?' the cop asked him.

'She was trying to stab me with a steak knife,' Jeff replied. 'I grabbed her arm and twisted it until it dropped. Her arm broke while I was doing that.'

The two cops looked at each other, and then at Jeff, and then at Belinda, who was still ranting about abusive husbands.

'You just came home from the line?' the first asked.

'Yeah,' he said. '17^th ACR. I came to tell her I was through with her and she didn't like it very much.'

'You fuckin' liar!' Belinda screamed. 'He's a fucking cook in the MPG! He was never near the line! And he came home and tried to fuck me after being away for months! When I told him no he broke my fuckin' arm just to hear me scream!'

The cops ignored her. '17^th ACR huh?' the second one asked. 'You were in the gap?'

He nodded. 'Infantry,' he said. 'I've spent the last eight days in a biosuit in the trenches killing Earthling marines. This is my welfare wife, the one I was programmed to marry before Laura Whiting. I don't want her anymore and I came home to tell her that. She didn't like it much. I didn't mean to break her arm but she was throwin' shit at me — look at my head.' He turned so they could see the large goose egg that had formed on his skull.

'That's a nasty bump all right,' the first cop said.

'I was trying to fight him off when he started beatin' me!' Belinda yelled.

'She threw a vase at me,' Jeff went on, ignoring the interruption. 'I pushed her off me a few times and then she picked up the knife and was trying to kill me with it. That's when I broke her arm.'

'He's a fuckin' liar!' Belinda yelled. 'He came back here looking for some pussy after cooking for the rear echelon motherfuckers and broke my arm when I wouldn't give it up! I wanna press charges against his ass! Take him to fuckin' jail!'

Jeff was angry again. 'She's lying, officers,' he told them. 'But maybe you oughtta take