He stretched his sinewy arms and shoulders and checked his flat stomach for any unwanted fat, but little was there. As far as Dan was concerned, he was a pretty average-looking guy, nothing to talk about. He just never understood why women seemed to stare; what was wrong that would draw such looks. Maybe they don’t like my brown eyes. Maybe that brown reminds them of a dog's eyes or something.
He left the bathroom as clean as when he started, and stepped into the bedroom. He opened his chest of drawers and pulled out a neatly folded pair of blue jeans and a white cotton polo shirt. In ten seconds he was dressed and ready for the day. Slipping on his tennis shoes, he slid open the sliding-glass door to his balcony. The smell of flowers and chlorine was in the air in addition to some suntan oil. From his 2nd story apartment, he had a clear view of the swimming pool, which showed little activity for such a sunny day. Only a few young ladies were sprawled out, half-naked on their benches, sweat and oil glistening off their darkening bodies.
He bobbed his head as he took in the view. Gotta love college towns. It was nice, living near the campus and picking up some extra classes. It was even better being close to the stadiums, even though things did get loud and rowdy sometimes.
“Hey Dan! Are you coming to the pool today?” said a young woman in her early twenties, looking up his way. She wasn’t alone either; the two other women that accompanied her were all smiles and looking at him, too.
“No, I’ve got work to do, Sherri. Shouldn’t you be in class?”
“On a day like this? No way. Now, are you gonna come down, or will we have to come and get you?” she said, putting her hands on her bikini-clad hips. The other girls were giggling. The three of them were something to behold, all in a master’s program of some sort. And, as far as he could tell, they were pretty promiscuous, based off all the guys that came and went from their room.
“Maybe later,” he said. “I’m in the middle of something right now, and I’ve got to go to work later.”
“Aw, come on. You always say that," Sherri pleaded, beckoning him with her arm. “Come on, Danny Boy. We want you to come and play.”
His mouth began to dry as he started to back away. It was something he wanted to try, to make up for all of the opportunities he had missed. But, he was still married, and he had a son. He couldn’t justify it, no matter how hot they were.
“I gotta go,” he said, backing through the door. “I’ve got to work on my invention.”
“But—”, Sherri pleaded, but the door closed just as another girl said, “He’s weird and old.”
Sherri replied as they walked away, “He’s not that old, and he’s damn good looking, too.”
“Can’t fault you there, but any man that fine must have something wrong with him.”
“We’re living proof of that, aren’t we?” Sherri said, as they laughed and headed into the pool.
The coffee pot had finished brewing in the kitchen, and with a very shaky hand he poured some into his mug. He needed to get his mind off those girls. It took everything he had to not head outside. He dangled his coffee mug over his crouch.
“Don’t make me do it,” he said to himself.
“Think of work. Think of work. Think of work,” he said, over and over.
What he had to face at work in a few hours was more than enough to quash his desires. He didn’t have to burn his crotch after all. He slurped down his coffee and closed his patio door blinds, looking at the floor the whole time.
He headed for the extra bedroom, his study, where many gadgets were lying on a desk and table. He sat in front of the computer and booted it up. He was getting close to putting the finishing touches on his invention when he had a mental block, so he sat there drinking coffee for the next few hours. Before he knew it, it was time to go to work.
“I’ve gotta get this invention to work; anything to quit my job.”
CHAPTER 7
Pod City, that’s what Dan called it. It was an office building filled with over three hundred of the most miserable people in the city. His job was to keep them under control, and the easiest way to do that was to somehow convince them that their jobs were worth doing. They weren't, though, not like they used to be. Nowadays, the phone company was more obsessed with choking the dollars from its customers than actually providing the services they needed.
Dan had the pleasure of monitoring the lines, making sure the services they offered, ranging from Caller ID to satellite television, were sold. The guys and gals he supervised had to put up with some of the most dreadful people on the planet: anywhere from backward hillbillies to the nickel-hugging kook next door. The job paid well, but there was a price … your sanity. Decent people started at the phone company filled with hope for a comfortable retirement and a promising career, only to see it all turned into mush after a few years. Some became depraved, started smoking, and got bitter, obsessive, and needy. Others turned a fortune by remaining dedicated within the rigid interior of their cubicle. Every day, Dan got to hear it all. It was up to him to get the socially depraved and purposeless to function as a single unit. He had been at work less than an hour when it started.
As he overlooked the expansive 5th floor room filled with micro-cubes, things seemed to be in order. Headsets adorned a variety of heads: some bushy, some bald, some red, some white, and a few with hairdos he couldn’t begin to describe.
“Good morning, Dan.”
“What’s up, Dan?”
“How was your weekend?”
“Why didn’t you come out with us Friday?”
All of the courtesies were extended, and he greeted them all with a smile, all but one.
Here she came. Dan felt his entire being recoil. Already? I just started. She was the one worker to whom professionalism had no meaning. The one who knows nothing, fears nothing.
Dan needed to make a move, but his knees locked at the sight of her sudden emergence in the aisle. Their eyes met; there wouldn’t be any avoiding her demands now.
He said in a low voice, “That’s what you get for sticking your head out and saying hello.”
“Dan! Hey Dan!”
He started backpedaling to his office.
“Don’t you try to slip out on me, dammit!”
Heads were popping up from behind the cubicles, and hands began to cover their mouth pieces as the raging bull stormed his way. He could hear one woman cackle. He caught her eye and she covered her mouth, ducking away, but the cackling was still there.
“Dan! I want to talk to you … NOW!”
He held his hands out.
“Hush Loreeta! Callers are on-line,” he pleaded.
“Do you think I give a damn? Do you! Now, get in your office; we gotta talk.”
Loreeta was a big woman, closing in on six feet tall and two hundred-fifty pounds. Her stirrup pants and sweat shirt did little to enhance her fuller figure, but the five-dollar flip-flops weren’t helping much, either. Her hair looked like the grass you used to fill the bottom of an Easter basket, and her glasses needed to be bigger. She was on Dan’s heels as he led her in through his "office" door. The folding metal chair in his cubicle groaned as she sat down. He took a deep breath before he turned around to face her. Have courage, Soldier.
Loreeta was peering in and out of his slightly larger cubicle "office". She was stroking her sweaty neck, which made her plastic neon bracelets keep jangling up and down her pasty forearms. It was an annoying sound and gesture that she did all the time, and he never got used to it.
“How can I help you, Lor—”
She slammed a document on his desk and said, “Why don’t I have no commissions, Dan? Why? I’m here just like everybody else! They get BIG commission checks; I don’t. Why, Dan? Why? Why-Why-Why!”
“Loreeta, I’ve tried to tell you, you’ve got to meet the quota. You don’t. If you’d just let us work with you—”
“How am I supposed to sell services t
o someone that’s on house arrest? Huh? Explain that! How is it you want me to sell stuff to people who don’t have any money?”
He kept up his smile and softened his voice; it worked for the other women.
“Now Loreeta, plenty of people get those sales. Look at Larry; his sales are always good. Why don’t you talk to him some?”
“I’m not working with that fool! He keeps looking down my shirt,” she said, pinching the neck of her lime green sweatshirt.
Absurd. I don’t think the mirror would look down your shirt if it didn’t have to.
“You aren’t being harassed again … are you?”
“No—YES—by all of these effin’ customers. All of em’ out there jobless, harassing people with a job and acting like we owe them something ...”
It was humorous as well as unpleasant. Dan was used to it, and if he had the time he could have written a book about it. He leaned back, nodded his head, eyes leading her to believe he had compassion, which he did, just not with her.
“… please take me off line Mr. Hall. Please! I’ll do anything. I’ll vacuum, clean up all the cubicles, just take me off line! Them people are crazy on the other side. Mean, nasty …” she sobbed.
Oh crap! He pushed over his box of tissues.
“… just look at me, Dan. Look at me! When I started here ten years ago, I used to be a beautiful woman, now I look like this …”
I’ll be needing photographic proof of that.
“… My children steal from me. My boyfriend couldn’t find a job in a job factory. Snif. I can’t do this no more. I can’t make it to retirement. I’ll die first. This job’s killing me! Sob. You hear them callers. You hear what they say. I can’t help it if I hang up every time they cuss at me, and then I get in trouble …”
It was true, every word she said―except perhaps the part about being beautiful, he’d have to ask around about that. Working for the phone company was a cruel and unusual way to make a living, but at least you got paid for being miserable.
“Loreeta, I know how you feel.”
“The hell you do! You sit back here all day long, Mr. Charming, sipping coffee and bossing people around. Why don’t you change me jobs? A few years of doing what I do will do wonders for that pretty little face of yours.”
Pretty? I’m not pretty.
“Tell you what: give me your best over the next four hours, and I’ll see if I can get you a slide today. So, whaddaya say? You can get home an hour early and relax.”
“You mean it?”
I’d say anything, truth or lie, to get you out of my office.
“I mean it.”
“Do I have to go home?”
“You can go wherever you want, Loreeta. You’ve had a rough start today, and you need something to look forward to.”
Her sagging face brightened slightly as she wiped the mascara from her eyes.
“Well, I’m going to Happy Hour then, because being at home is almost as bad as being here. Thank you, Dan. I’ll be thinking about you when I order that first round.”
“I appreciate it,” he said, standing up and watching her flip-flop away.
“It has to get better this week, doesn’t it?” he said, just as his co-worker Ruth walked by with a sassy smile.
“You know that’s not gonna happen,” she said, walking by with a tray full of cupcakes in her hands.
“Whose birthday are those for?”
“Huh?” she said, “These aren’t for a birthday. I sell them to make money to buy Lotto tickets. One day, I’m gonna win and quit this hell-hole.”
Dan rubbed the back of his neck as the cackles and cheers followed her back to her cubicle.
And to think: that’s my best employee.
CHAPTER 8
The work week didn’t finish any better than it started, but it was over. Dan was cruising down the road, hair-band rock blaring, a content look growing upon his face. It was time to pick up his son. During his separation, the judge only allowed him to have custody two weekends a month. The judge might as well have driven a stake through is heart, but he made do. He and his boy, Clyde, could talk and text all they wanted, despite all of his wife’s paranoid delusions. He had given his son a smart phone for his 7th birthday. Clyde was a big boy; he could handle it. This had infuriated his wife, Ann.
He checked the laundry list of texts on his phone.
“We gutted a frog at school today.”
“I just saw a purple butterfly.”
“Johnnie’s pants are unzipped, and I didn’t tell him.”
“Mom forgot how to wash my clothes.”
“The neighbor’s dog was eating poop, and I gagged.”
“When are you getting here?”
“I’m hungry. Can we go to Pete's?”
Clyde was the only person he knew that texted in complete sentences. Clyde was bright, outside of the box, different. It was hard not being around his son, more like torture, but Dan would get it all to work out. He had to.
He pulled into the driveway of his former home. It was a two-story brick colonial in a decent suburban neighborhood. One of the hardest things was waving at the wary neighbors. There was no telling what they had been told, and he was never around to defend himself, but after ten years of living there he figured they understood.
Clyde bolted out the front door with a twenty pound backpack on his scrawny shoulders. The undersized boy had a full head of sandy hair and translucent chicken legs that were almost hidden beneath his baggy shorts. Dan was just closing his car door when Clyde rushed into his arms.
“Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go!”
“Easy, Son,” Dan said, hugging him, “I need to check with your mother first.”
“Aw, I want Pete's Pizza!” the little boy said, slinging his backpack into the back seat.
“What do you have in there, Clyde?”
“Everything!” he said with a smile. “I’m gonna help you with your invention. I have some ideas.”
“Clyde, get back here and give your mommy a hug,” a drab voice intervened.
Ann stood in the doorway with her arms wrapped around her shoulders, slouching a bit. She was still an attractive woman: long brown hair pulled up on top of her head; dark eyes penetrating, inquisitive, and judgmental. She used to be something, but it wasn’t as easy to tell these days thanks to the fluffy pink robe she wore, looking like she had been sleeping for a week.
“I see you’ve been busy today,” he said as he approached.
Clyde showed up between them and gave his mommy a warm hug as she kissed him on the cheek. Dan noticed she also whispered something in his ear, sternly, and looked at him. What is she up to? Clyde disappeared into the car.
“It’s been a long week, Dan, don’t start. I’m not like you, sitting around listening to people talk on the telephone all day.”
He laughed.
“You work for the federal government. You don’t have any work to do. You get like fifty days off a year.”
“And I need them. I have to take Clyde to school, buy his clothes, take him to practice, and to his friends'. Things you never understood. Plus, I’ve got this house to deal with, lawns to mow and gardens to keep.”
“Oh save it. I’ve heard it all. And, as usual, it doesn’t look like you’ve been keeping up with any of that this week.” He spun around, studying the yard. It looked bad, and it was bothersome. “Wow, looks like you actually did something in the yard: you grew more dandelions. Wow, and to think, you didn’t even have to get up off your ass to do that. You still have it mastered.”
“Oh, shut it! I needed a break from doing things. I work all day long, cook, clean. And what do you do, Dan? Go to work, go to your little bachelor pad, loaf at the pool, and diddle with your invention; your invention that you spent hours working on and never telling me about.”
A set of yippy dogs came out of the front door, tiny, barking, and annoying. She p
icked up the fluffy black one and nuzzled it into her robe.
“Ah, I see you have been busy. Your entourage is growing, and that’s not all, judging by that robe you're wearing.”
“Shut up about the robe. It’s fluffy; it’s perfectly normal that it adds ten more pounds.”
“More like thirty,” he said, holding his chin and looking her up and down. “And you’ve got matching four-legged pillows, too. How nice.” He couldn’t help it. “And, I guess you and the gang share the same dinner table, too.”
The little dog was licking her face.
“At least this gang loves me unconditionally, unlike you.”
“Oh, so you’re the unconditional one now, are you? The one who filed for separation because … because why?”
“You know why, you lunatic: you and your crusades! What did you expect? You honestly think that I can handle being married to an arsonist?”
The words hurt. Nothing hurt like that, not coming from someone you loved. He patted his hands toward the ground.
“Will you keep your voice down? Always so dramatic. You know that’s not true; I never set anything on fire. I was never convicted, never even charged with anything,” he said, taking a pleading step forward. “Will you let that go? Ever?”
Ann took a couple of steps back, holding her little rat-faced dog out in front of her. It growled, while the other two clawed at his legs with joy.
“Stay back, Dan. I don’t want to have to call the police.”
The blood ran up his face then back down as he was emptied. He had no idea what had happened to Ann, or why she had turned on him. The only thing he ever tried to do was the right thing, because it was the right thing to do. Was being the key word, because acting on the right thing seemed to be a thing of the past nowadays.