Short Fiction: Immigrants and Out of Towners (Portland Prelude)

They rode four in the car, three and a driver. It was late, just after one in the morning on an April night where in Maine things seemed wet no matter what you touched or where you were.

They crested on to the Casco Bay Bridge, a billion dollar-project that spanned over the mouth of the Casco River and emptied into Casco Bay. It had four lanes, two going in each direction, and could be opened in the middle to let large ships up river. You got on in Portland and got off in South Portland. If the bridge was down, it took you about three minutes of driving at 55 mph to cross it.

The city lights from the buildings and rigs and ships beneath them shined like cats’ eyes, and the water was still. No one was on the road except a Mazda R6, silver in color that was stopped at the red light in the middle of the bridge, because the gate was starting to slowly climb up.

Watercraft that required the bridge to open for them were usually sent a notice to only enter port between the hours of 2100 and 0400 Mondays through Fridays. Being that this was a Thursday night, the men in the Volvo wagon which was drawing up behind the Mazda, were fully aware of the shipping and bridge schedules.

The Volvo stopped and idled and the driver put it into park and waited. The men seated around him drew masks over their faces and checked their weapons. The man sitting front passenger turned slightly towards the men in the back and spoke through his balaclava.

“No reloading, just empty the gun into the car, and get back here. Julio will keep the Volvo just a few yards up from the Mazda. Charlie will do the finish shots and confirm the kill, ok?” And the two in the back, clad in black ski masks nodded silently. The man in the balaclava turned back and checked the chamber on his German-made G3 7.62x54mm.

They waited for the bridge to finish going through it’s mechanized motion and start it’s decent. The driver put his vehicle back into gear and once the light turned green, he pulled out wide in front of the Mazda, screeching his tires. The lights on the Mazda, which had been red, went out and then pumped back into place as the crazy Volvo wheeled around it.

The Volvo came to a halt just in front of the Mazda, and the men all climbed up, except the driver. With the battle rifle on his hip, the man in the balaclava opened up first into the silver colored coup, spraying fully-automatic gunfire into the windshield and engine block. His two counter parts came by him, and with an AK47, 7.62x39mm and an AR15 5.56mm they joined in on the kill. The blazing gunfire deafened the still night, yet it seemed that there was no sound at all. The car took all eighty rifle rounds to it’s driver’s door and windshield. And when all the weapons were empty, the man in the balaclava turned, dressed in his leather coat and twill pants, and ran back to the idling Volvo, followed by the man who was sitting directly behind him.

By the time the two got back to the car, there were two short pistol pops from behind them, and then more footsteps. Once they were all back inside of the vehicle, they sped away, no one looking back.

They were deep into South Portland, in a little neighborhood called Manor Gates, at a Hannaford’s parking lot when the one with the pistol broke the silence:

“He wasn’t in the car,” he said evenly.

“What?” Came the driver.

“He wasn’t in the car, it was just a female by herself. She’s dead now,” he finished and looked out the window. The four sat in silence.

The front passenger side door clicked open and the passenger stepped out, peeling his balaclava off and leaving his G3 in the car.

“Fuck,” Jimmy Dreamer said under breath, while wiping the sweat off of his face. He walked towards the Hannafords, and through the back alley, ditching his mask in a dumpster along with a pair of leather gloves. On the other side of the alley was a parking lot for an Osco Drug, and that’s where he found his Jeep Cherokee waiting for him.

He checked behind his back, looking around, and then shined a small LED flashlight into the interior of the vehicle, as well as under it. When he was satisfied, he took one more look around, and climbed in.

Short Fiction: Immigrants and Out of Towners (Brooklyn Prelude)

They sat in a booth towards the back of the diner in Brooklyn’s Red Hook district, the rumble of a train under them rattling the dishes at their table. Both the men, in their early thirties wore track suits stained in sweat, black hair short on top of their pasty heads. The first of the two, who was sitting with his back to the door, sipped his coffee and played with a lighter.

“I’ll tell you this much Jimmy,” started his friend across from the table, who was looking out the window at the night time street, “there’s no fuckin’ way I’m working for a piece of fucking cooz, especially a piece of fuckin’ cooz from Canada.”

“Yeah,” and Jimmy turned the lighter over in his fingers absently.

“I mean, what the fuck are they thinkin’ you know?”

“Yeah,”

“Hey, I’m talkin’ here!” And he slammed his palm flat on the table top, making all the china jump. Jimmy looked up tiredly.

“I know, it’s all you fuckin’ talk about Mikey.”

“Well!” And Mikey gestured with his hands in the air to further explain his point. Jimmy just went back to looking at the lighter in his hands, spinning it over his fingers. Mikey shook is head and looked out the window. “I mean, this is our livelihood, you know? This is how we earn. And now some broad is gonna come here, and tell us how to run shit in Brooklyn? Are you fuckin’ kiddin’ me?”

“How about you shut that big fuckin’ mouth of yours, I’m startin’ to think you’re the woman here,” Jimmy said. The waitress came over and refreshed their coffees and asked if there was anything else they wanted. Mikey asked for a lemon cream donut and Jimmy shook the waitress off.

After the waitress left, Mikey leaned back across the table.

“This is how we earn. I’ve been doing this since I was fuckin’ twelve years old, sellin’ smokes out of stolen cartons man. Ok, I’ve been around to see the shit go down with Gotti and the Gambinos, the whole fucking federal RICO shit, everything. We’re a fuckin’ dyin’ breed Jimmy. And now they want to bring in some fuckin’ piece a”

“Cooz, Canadian cooz, I got it already, Jesus, you’re a broken fuckin’ record over here,”

“You know what I’m sayin!”

“I’ve been hearin’ it all fuckin’ week, shit,” and Jimmy pulled a cigarette out from his pocket and lit it up. The diner was no smoking but these two being known soldiers of the Capasso family, the proprietors of the diner let them do what they wanted.

The Capasso Family was New York’s last real “family” that still “earned.” The former Five Families of New York, The Gambinos, the Columbos, Geveoneses et al were either all dead or in prison never to see the light of day. The Italian-American Mafia was driven underground to it’s very roots, falling out of the collective eye sight of most Americans. No longer were alleged Mafia bosses paraded in front of the public on the fronts of tabloid newspapers or television. There were no super stars of the Mafia world, no pop culture icons, no John Gottis, no turf wars.

If anything, the Mafia was struggling for air in an increasingly crowded room of organized crime. There were the many black gangs, with no solidarity amongst themselves, each one clawing for a street corner in a neighborhood they didn’t even live in. Then you had the Latin Kings and other splinter organizations that were comprised of various Spanish ethnicities. The Russians controlled all the chop shops in NYC and New Jersey as well as a strangle hold on the flesh trade. The Chinese had control of all the Laundromats, hole in the wall TexMex joints and bootleg DVD productions. This left the Italians very little to hold on to.

Long ago, back in the 90s, the Irish which were the second to last white organization in the city left to consolidate their forces in Boston. The Italians largely felt the same way, all knowing but not saying that NYC was no longer a “white city.” Hell, even the Arabs ran bootleg cigarettes.

But the Capassos were determined to rise again, after spending enough time laying low. They ran a few underground gambling joints in the Meat Packing District in Manhattan, as well as Sanitation routes in the city, mostly Queens, and a had the ear of the Livery Unions. And don’t forget the construction job no-shows.

But the bottom line was that the Italians had very little of the real earning power they once held. No more drug trade, which was shut down in the 1990s when too many Mafia bosses were being wrapped up in drug charges with dealings with the blacks and latins.

Of this, the most powerful Capasso boss, Don Luis “Dollar Bill” De Luca had just received a life sentence for narcotics trafficking and intent to distribute two weeks ago. Since then, the Capasso family has been rudderless, with very little internal leadership rising to the top. Mostly, the Capasso family was a pack of heavy hitting meatheads that solved problems by breaking heads and fingers.

Hence the rumors that Don Giovanni Capasso was looking to go outside of the family for new leadership. The Italian Mafia in Montreal, Quebec Canada was strong, almost bursting at the seams with it’s money generated. This could be contributed mostly to it’s levels of leadership and little competition. They had their blacks, but the blacks worked for them. They had to deal with the latins, but they were easily controlled with drugs and the idea that they controlled certain sections of neighborhoods. Basically, those the Italians in Montreal couldn’t control with money, they simply killed. Things in Montreal were a lot like they were in NYC twenty years ago.

De Luca was looking at bringing in a young lady from Montreal who had been gutting out the old regime in favor of new money making vantages: Internet gambling, credit card fraud schemes, phishing technology, bootleg software, internet porn, and the list went on. She was also rumored to be totally ruthless, stories surfacing that she personally cut the eyes out of a rival for something said on an internet social networking site.

All this at the age of 24.

The two Capasso soldiers didn’t pay their bill for their coffee and pastries, but left anyway, both smoking while standing out front of the diner. A light drizzle was falling and there was fog on the street.

The neighborhood was quiet, which was unusual for a Friday night. The two soldiers huddled under the awning, pulling their track tops closed, zipping them to their necks.

“Man it’s cold out here,” Mikey said. Jimmy just blew smoke out of his nose and looked down the street.

“Hey, I hear Tony Sausage is having some girls over at his poker game tonight, wanna go check that out?”

“Girls at a poker game, you gotta be kidding me. Doesn’t he know that’s bad luck?”

“I don’t give a shit, if they’re hot I’m gonna fuck one of them,” Jimmy said and dropped the butt of his cigarette on the ground and stepped on it. Down the street there were footsteps slowly approaching. Both turned to look, squinting into the fog. A young man appeared wearing a light jacket, with his hands tucked into the pockets. Both men watched him pass without a word, but the tension was too thick to go unnoticed.

“You know that guy?” Mikey asked his counterpart.

“I ain’t never seen that guy before,” Jimmy answered. They both turned after the man walked by, following them with their gaze.

“Hey buddy!” Mikey called out and the man stopped some twenty feet away. He did a slow turn and faced the two Mafiosi.

“What?” He said in an accent neither had ever heard before.

“Who the fuck are you?” Mikey asked. The man pulled his hands out of his jacket and shrugged, but it was too late.

From around the other side of the diner, behind the two soldiers, another man appeared with a small black automatic pistol and squeezed two shots into both men’s heads. They both fell to the ground in a heap on top of each other, and the shooter dropped the gun on the ground next to them. Both the shooter and the man with the accent looked at each other and then jogged over to a blacked out GMC Denali across the street and got into the driver’s and front passenger’s seat respectively. The driver then looked into the rearview mirror into the big round sunglasses of his boss, Martina De Rossi.

“Well, what’re you waiting for, go!” She yelled at the driver. He put the truck into drive and squeaked the tires as he took off, leaving the two bodies clumped on the ground.

Martina De Rossi, of Montreal, Quebec, Canada flipped open her sleek slim cell phone and punched in a text message using her long white nails. It simply said “those loose ends have been snipped,” then she shut the phone, tucking it back into her light black rain coat, and watched the gray city go by out her window.

So I Should've Been Eating Grapefruit Every Day For Lunch?

Or, you say 'fuck it' pack everything that will fit in the back of your truck, and drive the four hours back to Maine and emotionally breakdown at your parent's doorstep.

Hardly A Non-Conformist

So I went to bed last night for a few hours, and in typical fashion I set the timer on my tv for about half an hour, and rolled over the other way to start drifting off to sleep.

Suddenly I was jerked out of my semi-conscience state when I overheard something that I knew couldn't be true.

It was an ad for McDonalds, where the dickhole on tv was like "I'm a non-conformist, I eat at McDonalds!"

....I find this direction in advertising very discomforting.

Ok, first off, where the hell does Mickey D's get off on playing the "non-conformity" card when they proudly advertise that they've served literally BILLIONS of people since their inseption into Main Stream Americana back in like, 1955?

Bitch, your great-grandfather has probably eaten a McDonald's fish sandwich, is what I'm saying.

Has "non-conformity" totally lost it's meaning in today's society? People are so demanding of a non-conformist state, to fight back and bite the hand that feeds them, that it's now spread into the most conformist medium of all, advertising?

The very idea behind advertising is to get as many people as possible to "conform" to one idea or product. This is how companies generate dollars so that the people who work for these companies can drive home in their expensive cars to their expensive houses and get 'luded up on expensive prescription drugs.

In other words, advertisers think we're all sheep. And for the most part, they're right.

Another great example of the non-conformity trend in advertisement is that AARP or ... fucking... whatever Dennis Hopper's shilling for lately. Here's this iconic symbol of perpetual non-conformity in the form of an actor who got his start being the ultimate non-conformist in the film "Easy Rider," telling wisened baby-boomers to conform to a special interest group so they can save on medicine and afternoon movie tickets. All the while there's some catchy 60's pop hit playing in the background, and footage of some graying old guy carrying a surf board across the beach. I can only imagine the numbers of achy-jointed retirees being like "hey, I still got what it takes, I can get out there and show the world I'm not done yet! I won't conform to these standards set upon me by society in general, half expectant of me to slowly and quietly die in my own feces stained boxer shorts with baked beans running down my chin in my favorite Laz-E-Boy! No! I'll give them what-for!"

You and everyone else, grampa.

I'm just tired of this game that advertisers want to play with Americans because they (by and large) think we're collectively dumb bovines being lead to the slaughter floor. McDonald's is probably the most culturally significant icon in America and for them to say their customers (myself included) are non-conformists (all like, 80 billion or whatever) is ludacris. This makes as much sense as them selling customer's fucking salads.

Just stop feedings us lines of shit (both literally and figuratively) and come out and say "hey, if it was good enough for four prior generations of obese Americans, it's good enough for you too," and I'll be happy. It's not like when I was living in NYC that I never saw some skinny hipster kid eating a Quarter Pounder with Cheese...

There is no such thing as a non-conformer anymore. Everyone conforms to the same ideas because there's no new ideas to be had. No one thinks for themselves anymore. We're spoon-fed opinions by different media sources and we align ourselves with which makes us feel more empowered.

The other night The Lady and I were out on my porch drinking scotch and talking politics, which was uncommon, but probably due to our mutual inebriation. She brought up the fact that people no longer have their own opinions and that we collectively do what we're told by whoever. Sadly she's right. People don't take the time to digest information anymore. We're literally traveling down the road to a place where we're told what to think.

I'm serious.

The solution to all of this is that we need to stop not conforming. If the powers that be are happy to let us think we're all special and unique individuals, they'll keep pandering to us as such. If we can prove to them that we're one cohesive body with our own opinions (conforming behind one original idea or belief) we're a harder stone to push, and maybe America can un-stick itself from the toilet it's been trapped on as it tries to finish digesting sixty years of Chicken McNuggets.

Pooped

I don't want to say I'm "officially" out of ideas, but I'm feeling pretty tapped.

I got nothing.

SO... what I'm going to do is leave it up to my readers. What do you guys want to see me write about? Whatever topic, I don't care. Give me your ideas and check back in a few days to see if I flesh something out of it.

I dunno, it's like 4 am on a Saturday, and as of right now, my brain's having a hard enough time piecing together sentences, let alone article topics.

On The Road: Expensive-ass Laundry

So I had to take my truck into work this morning instead of my bike. I had to do this because I had to haul in my laundry, mainly because I desperately need clean sheets. I also had to put 30 dollars into my trucks tank to get it into work.

That's some expensive-ass laundry.

Of Raging Cunts

There's a lot of give and take in relationships. You have to be flexible or the relationship will die on the scene, and be left under a white sheet while a pack of uninterested EMTs, firemen, and cops mill about, chit-chatting about their kids or the wife or whatever...

I feel like trash and there's no real reason for me to feel this way. If The Lady were to find this out, she'd probably feel like trash as well, for making me feel like trash. It's just the way it goes. She's being a moody bitch, taking it all out on whoever's nearest (which would be me) and I'm dumb enough to keep stepping out in her path, as if she's some tornado ripping across the country side, tossing trailers and livestock across the landscape.

I have a Hero Complex. I want to solve everyone's problems. I want to swoop down, chase away the dark and restore all that is right in the world. I want to weild that power. I've always been this way, and probably will be til the day I die.

However that's incredibly unrealistic, one, and two, stupid. It's unrealistic because most people, myself included, when we brood we want to be left the F alone. I want to crawl into my dark little place, and not ever see the light of day again. If I expect people to accept that of me, then I should be able to return the favor.

It's stupid because in the end, I'm the one who gets hurt by it. I'm not emotionally bullet-proof; not anymore at least. I can't step into the path of an on-coming highly emotional train of a girlfriend and expect not to take some injury. Hard as I try, I do what I can not to get pulled down into anyone's bad mood. But like a drowning swimmer, you risk getting pulled down when you try to help.

Again, it's my own damn fault, and in an hour or so, I'll feel fine again. My mind will wander to work-related tasks (on watch, which would be weird) and I'll become preoccupied.

I just hate feeling useless.

An Open Letter To My Girlfriend's Pre-Menstral Cramps:

Hey Cramps,

It's about that time of the month again; where you guys show up, kinda uninvited, but expected, as usual, and make me and my girlfriend's lives a living hell for about a week. Not unsimilar to the in-laws just showing up.

Hey, I for one, love it when you guys come around. It tells me something, it's good to see you, and honestly, it doesn't bother me all that much, not as much as say, The Lady. But then again, she's the one who has to put up with you for a week, while I luckily get to work all week here at the station. She gets to be the mascot for the couple, the face on the packaging, whereas I get to hunker down and wait out the storm far, far away.

But I was wondering if you could do me a favor? While your visiting for the next week or so, could you at least keep it down a little? The Lady has hard enough time getting to sleep at night, so the whole "bloaty, fat and ugly" feeling your giving her, isn't helping that situation much. Also, she won't complain directly to you guys for making her feel like a swollen wallrus, but she'll complain to me, ad nauseum, for the next couple of days - she'll gorge on chocolate and lay dispondently in bed resting her mac book on her uterus as a heating pad.

I don't mean to make light of your stay with us, and like I said, I'm all for you guys being here, especially since we tend to engage in condomless sex all the time, but is there anything you can do to not be such a hard-on to The Lady? Like, ease up a little bit?

When you get down to it, I just don't want to end up like Ritchie in the second season of The Sopranos, and be pumped full of holes by my girlfriend and then chopped up in a butcher shop by a junkie and a zip, never to be heard from again.

Also, not being able to bump uglies for a week is kinda a bummer.

Thanks, and see you next month (hopefully.),
Jim.

The Things My Roommate Says, Vol 2

A whole new batch of insane mutterings from my 19 year old Las Vegan roommate:

-Dude, I'm going to be a *whispers* spy! No one would expect me!

-You know what, you're Sundown. You're the black dude with the aviators. You're not even Iceman or Goose. No, you're not Sundown, you're Hollywood. You never even made it to Top Gun.

-I couldn't sleep last night. I watched something on the news about these kids that got involved in a drug deal and the deal went bad. So the one kid took out a Samurai Sword and chopped off the head of the other kid. That's why I couldn't fall asleep.

-(At Wendy's, opening up his burger and inspecting the contents) Does this look like drugs? I think someone's trying to drug me....

-Let me borrow your sunglasses. No? Ok, let me borrow one of your black t shirts. And your leather jacket. The brown leather one. ...And your bike. For like five minutes.

-I dropped my waterbottle outside on the ground by my truck and then I sipped out of it. Do you think that'd make me fail a drug test?

-I need a cross bow to protect myself. (Someone asks him 'from what?') Ninjas.

-I'm gonna go to the movies. I'm getting two tickets, one for me, and one for Dr. Kenneth Noisewater. (I ask him who that is) That's my dick. I'm going to the movies with my dick and I'm going to buy him popcorn.

-Hook me up with your girlfriend's sister. She's going through an emotional transition right now and needs a guy like me.

Finding The Balance

I've never had an easy time balancing best friends and girlfriends. I want to say that I've always been the "bros before hoes" kinda guy, but in reality, it's always been the girl over the guys, and luckily for me the guys that are still my friends understand that and accept/respect it.

But the situation I find myself in lately is that between me and The Lady, there's the RM. Normally this wouldn't be such a big deal, only the RM has ... no one else to hang out with. All his other friends are the guys we work with, and he's not of age to go hang out at a bar or anything. Basically it kinda becomes baby sitting.

...it's kinda sad when The Lady and I retreat back into my bedroom to have some private time together that he kinda follows us. And I feel like a total heel closing the door on him. IAt the age of 26 and 23 it's like we've become the parents to a fully grown 19 year old.

I realize I'm under no obligation to hang out with him or even be nice to him, but the poor bastard is pretty much my best friend here on the Hook. We laugh our asses off at stupid shit and he's a genuine kinda guy. This all adds up to me feeling like an asshole for wanting to blow him off to spend time with the girlfriend.

I present this case to the court: The RM wants to go to Fenway tomorrow afternoon to get some Military-only Sox tix to see them play the Brewers at 1905. Normally this would be a no brainer, and we'd go. Only thing is, that A) I'm pretty burnt out from this week. B) I have barely spent any time with The Lady, who's stressing out over "life shit" and really could use my physical support right now. 3) I can only stand the RM for maybe a handful of hours before I want to slowly choke him or hold him under water in a porcelain tub until the bubbles and thrashing stops. 4) It's going to make for a long day (in hindsight, this should've been "C"), The RM wants to get to The Fens at like 1300 and get a bite to eat and walk around Boston for a bit, where we'd do nothing but WALK, because he can't get into a bar. And by the time the game's over and we're back on The Hook, it's going to be probably after midnight, providing the game runs it's usual 9 innings and nothing spectacular like extra innings goes down.

Plus I have a doctor's appointment here in town, AND, I want to do some work on my bike and maybe try to get in a ride before the weather turns to shit this weekend, as it's being forcasted to do.

So what do I do? If I take my RM up on his plans, I shirk The Lady and my own physical/mental well being. If I pass, I look like a douche to the RM and to Red Sox Nation.

Argh, I'm building a fort in my bedroom and never coming back out.

More Obnoxious Than That Couple From "The Hills."

Sadly, this is a very typical conversation for us...

me: well what about the place in Yarmouth?
The Lady: no dice
bc of Cali
me: Beause of Cali?
The Lady: her cat
me: I thought they said small pets were ok?
The Lady: evidently, she lied
me: or were they talking like... fucking fish and hamsters
The Lady: fucked if i know
i'm getting a little frustrated Sent at 12:56 PM on Tuesday
me: I don't blame you
I went through this exact same thing when I was looking for a place back whenever
it sucks
like, in nyc... there's more than enough places..most of them are shitholes, but...I had a new apt lined up in a week
here it took me a month
The Lady: well...this is the cape..yea
me: the cape is ghey
The Lady: yup
me: so we had an awesome ride
absolutely awesome
I got up to 90mph
The Lady: dont tell me that
me: ok.
The Lady: ugh
me: I was NOT doing 90mph.at all.,
The Lady: and dont lie to me
me: does it count if my father lies to you as my proxy?
The Lady: yes
no
i mean
me: ...
The Lady: just dont tell me when you hit a speed that will kill you
ok?
i dont need the anxiety
me: heh, ok
The Lady: ]well
me: no no, I'm sorry, .... you're right
The Lady: you can tell me if we get married and i get benies if you die
me: but I am sitting here with the world's biggest shit eating grin.
The Lady: hahaha
me: and that's fucked up.
The Lady: what
no its not
me: so suddenly it's ok if we're married
and...I'm like "Oh, I'm going to go jump out of a plane this afternoon..."and you're like "have fun! Don't pack a chute!"and then you cackle menacingly
The Lady: well, its not like you wouldnt be slightly set if i died
unless, my dad some how manages to drain my trust fund even more by then.... Sent at 1:04 PM on Tuesday
me: so I should be encouraging you to do more vodka snooters then?"no no hunny, c'mon, like a champ!"
The Lady: if you want me to kill myself, then sure! Sent at 1:06 PM on Tuesday
me: ... no I don't
because then I'd be left with no one to impress
and I'd gain a shit-ton of weight
The Lady: i'm sure you could find someone else
me: Sure. But they wouldn't be you.
and you're all I want.
The Lady: i'll keep that in mind when i'm inspecting my food for ground up glass
me: heh... that's some prison-y shit
I saw them do that on"Oz" back in the day
The Lady: heh
me: that was a great show, if not for all the man on man butt-rape
The Lady: my buddy crash made me watch a couple episodes
he loved it
i could have cared less
me: like, it was cool an all, but... like eventually they just ran out of ideas
because honestly, how many stories can revolve around the same dudes sitting in a yard all day
The Lady: some of it was kinda disturbing
me: I mean, sure, add a new character but it's all the same
The Lady: like getting encased behind a brick wall Sent at 1:11 PM on Tuesday
me: 'hey,did you take down your profile on wordpress?
The Lady on blogger yea
me: oh. cuz my dad was just in here and wanted to see a picture of you
so I clicked over to your blog
and there's fucking... Amy Crackhouse
The Lady: thats a crap pic anyway
HAHAHA
me: and he goes "Jesus Jim!"
sigh...
The Lady: awww, i feel bad
not really Sent at 1:14 PM on Tuesday
me: oh yeah, duh, faebook
The Lady: my boyfriend everyone....hes brolliant
and i cant spell
me: yeah, pot calls kettle black, more at 11
The Lady: fuck you
me: me: Yeah, this is her facebook page...
Dad: she's cute!
Me: She's not blonde anymore...
Dad: well as long as the drapes match the carpet.......and you wonder where I get it from?
The Lady: my jaw just hit the floor
me: yeah, that's my dad.
The Lady: oi vey
me: Shhh!! Don't do that, he'll think you're jewish or something...say something catholic-y, quick
The Lady: ummmummm
me: hurry!
The Lady: a priest molested my ex boyfriend
me: ....I was going to suggest "hey, do you have anymore of those Jesus Waffers around here?"
The Lady: dont put me on the spot like that!!!!
YOU ASS
me: My ass is made of vanilla, btw
The Lady: jeff says congrats
me: on?
The Lady: keeping my interest for more than a week
he just asked who i was g chatting w
me: oh, I thought he was going to congratulate me on having a delicious ass.
The Lady: i said james, he said "wow, still? tell him congrats!"
me: tell him that I love being hung up on...because it makes me feel like a winner.
The Lady: he hung up on you?
me: well
not really
I was like "can I talk to The Lady?"
and he goes "she's busy right now"
and I go "well ok, this is Jim, can you just have her call me back?"
and there was nothing... and then click.
so I was like "well alright then, nice."
The Lady: yea
hes not too keen on pple calling me at work
when my sister calls and i dont pick up she pretneds she dialed the wrong #
me: heh
nice
ok... I'm going to attempt to load my bike before dad rips up a doob... so...I'm going to post this as a blog
and then be on my marry way
The Lady: this conversation?
me: this conversation
and I'll alter your name
The Lady: ok
me: I'll call you when I get in... or email... whatever
smoke signals
You'll know when I'm in town.
The Lady: ok love you n shit
me: roger that! Sent at 1:25 PM on Tuesday

New Short Fiction: The Lies We Tell, Part 2.3

The hired killer and his handler met the next day at a downtown, upscale, although wholly vacant pub at 11 the next morning. Already seated at the bar, Casing – the handler – wore a tan over coat, eye glasses and a somewhat conservative blue suit. He sweated miserably, fidgeting with a glass of bourbon scotch in front of him, occasionally glancing over his shoulder towards the door.

Roughly ten minutes after he arrived, his agent, an athletically built, top-heavy young man walked in wearing sunglasses, a black jacket and jeans. He sat next to Casing and said nothing, and when the bar tender finally came over, he simply ordered a water with lemon.

“Helluva night last night, huh?” Casing offered after a long and agitating silence. The man next to him said nothing, only picked up his glass and sipped, looking forward at the rows of bottles in front of him. Over their heads a tv was playing on low; an anchorman from some sports network going over highlights.

Casing reached down and pulled up his brief case and set it on the bar top. The man next to him glanced over at it as Casing opened it and pulled out a copy of the Globe, unfolding it and laying it flat on the bar in front of his hired killer. On the front page, center above the fold, a full color photo of the narrow alleyway behind the club, the shot up SUV, body bags, blood, blown apart bricks, shattered glass, all front page news. The headline: BAGHDAD IN CHELSEY?!

“When my clients look to hire you,” Casing started. He glanced down at the other end of the bar, and the bar tender - a 12 year veteran of pouring drinks over shady meetings – was well enough away and acting uninterested in the conversation. “When my clients hire you,” he continued “they come to me expecting some level of professionalism and quality work.” His voice dropped down to just above a seething whisper, “they don’t expect sloppy messes that make headlines!” The killer flipped the paper over to under the fold and scanned the headlines there. He then removed the Sports section and started reading an article about Red Sox pitching prospects.

“Yeah, be a cool character, see if I care when my phone stops ringing for you,” Casing said as he sucked down the rest of the bourbon.
“Where’s my eighty,” the killer says from above the Sports page. Casing rubbed his face and loosened his tie. “You know, they should give me a bonus for doing this guy way ahead of schedule.”

“Ha, you didn’t do anything worth a bonus. We could’ve hired a crackhead, given him a hundred bucks and a machine gun, and he could’ve done what you did. And he probably wouldn’t have lived long enough to have to pay,”

“But you didn’t hire a crackhead,” and the killer put his paper down and turned in his stool towards Casing. He took his sunglasses off and stared straight into the eyes of his handler. This made Casing extremely uncomfortable and he shifted on his stool. “You hired me, and I’m known to get the job done, now where’s my eighty?” Casing took out a pen from the brief case and jotted down a series of numbers on a bar napkin and handed it over to his agent.

“Call your bank and have them set up a wire transfer from that account at St. Henry’s Bank in Glasgow,” and he pocketed the napkin into his jacket pocket and took another sip from his glass of water. “And there’s another job waiting for you,” Casing said with a thick voice. “Same client.”

“Oh really, are you sure they don’t want to hire a crackhead with a machine gun?” The killer said. Casing looking at him for a long pause and then continued.

I don’t have a file, however you’re to fly to London, England and meet with a Scot by the name of Gideon Madden, who will clue you in on the score. You have five days to get to this address in the West End,” and Casing slid another piece of paper over to his hitman. “Call that number when you get there, he’ll set up a meeting,” and the killer slipped that into his pocket as well.


***

She hates the guns.

When we first met, she approached me, if you believe it. It was a bar thing, I was alone at the end of the bar watching a Red Sox game on the over head television when she sat down next to me and ordered a glass of wine. I kinda glanced her from the corner of my eye and noticed she was checking me out. I shifted a little on my stool and cleared my throat and asked:

“So you like baseball?” There was a long pause, she even took a sip of her wine before answering.

“No, do you?” And I mean, what could I say, I’m a huge baseball fan.

“No. Wanna go someplace?” And from there, we were together.

It never bothered me that I had to change who I was to fit in to certain situations. I mean, I do it accordingly for my job, it’s who I am. You need a guy to kill a prominent local celebrity, I can be whoever you want and go anywhere I want.

But with her it was different. I liked her, so I changed. It wasn’t until a few weeks into seeing each other she caught me basically red handed with a gun.

We were going out to dinner or something like that and she walked into my bedroom from the living room and saw me half dressed in a suit, stuffing a chrome .380 Sig Sauer into my pants. She kinda blinked and said something like

“You’re kidding, right?” I looked up, feeling kinda stupid about the whole thing, cleared my throat and came back with this gem:

“What do you mean?” She rolled her eyes and walked out of my room. With the gun still at my waist I followed her out into the kitchen.

“What kind of banker carries a gun around with him?” She asked as she poured herself a glass of wine.

“A very successful banker,” I say back. She’s got an ice cold stare and she’s not even meeting my eyes.

“I just don’t like guns. If you’re around me, I don’t want you to have it,” and I compromise again. I pluck the weapon from my hip, by my finger tips, and let it dangle downward. I lay it on the counter top and keep my steady gaze on her face. She still won’t match my eyes.

“What’s the matter,” I say. I tilt her chin up and she’s got that hate in her eyes, a hate that makes me burn for her in ways that I don’t think I’m comfortable sharing with anyone, even her. I bite my lip and press my thumb against her chin. “Talk to me, luv,” but she won’t.

Dinner is tense and I feel like a total asshole the whole night. But she knows that and is probably glad. What she doesn’t know is that when I get up to go to the bathroom halfway through our meal, I kill the man sitting in a booth on the opposite side of the restaurant with some carefully placed cyanide powder in his chicken l’orange.
***

My flight was long and uneventful. It gave me plenty of time to watch a tiny-ass movie on my ipod, sleep, and read this book I’ve been meaning to finish (when I picked it up from my night stand there was a perfect ‘footprint’ of a dustless rectangle left in it’s place). The flight lasted just over eight hours, so I was grateful to deplane and get my bag.

I met with my contact and picked up a cheap looking – and feeling – nickel-plated pistol and a chopped to hell double barreled shotgun. When he handed over the weapons and the case file on the target, I looked at him for half a beat before saying:

“You’re serious with this?” And I hefted the shotgun. He looked at my blankly and shrugged.

“Mate, shooters are hard to come by in these parts,” and frowned. I signed and packed the guns, which I was dubious of their working condition, into a small bag and made way to my hotel in the middle of touristy London.

After getting accustomed to the room, and that means checking all the windows, the closets, the bathrooms, under the bed, for anything out of the ordinary, I gave her a call back stateside. It’d be about 9pm on the east coast, and she’d be just getting out of the shower.

She picked up on the third ring.

“How’s London,” she says to me. In my mind I see her wrapped my robe, hair up in a towel, wet and lose. I’m sitting in the middle of my king-sized bed in my trousers and nothing else.

“London’s London,” I tell her. “There’s not much too it.”

“How’s the weather,” I pause, knowing that this is the type of question someone asks when they have nothing relevant to add to the conversation and are desperately seeking some conversational turn of topic.

“Do you miss me?” I say into the phone. There’s a pause on her end now.

“Of course,”

“You sure, you don’t sound sure,”

“I’m sure James,” she says back. She’s the only one who calls me James. No one calls me James. She started calling me James the night we met. I even introduced myself as ‘Jimmy,’ but she didn’t bite.

Just then she starts talking about her day, working at the place she works and I half pay attention; the other half of my attention spent on the tv at the end of my bed. BBC4 is airing something about the Chechens and I wonder if my target is watching the same thing right now at his place. There’s footage of a building being crushed by a tank and suddenly I’m hit with a flashback.

I contracted out in Iraq during the war. Well, it goes back slightly further than that. I was a soldier and I was damn good at what I did. So good that my name got floated around to the people who would go on to hire me to do contract work in the region when my enlistment was over, and that’s what I did. I was so good at doing contract work that I started to see offers to do contract work in other areas of the world, mostly the US and Canada, with the occasional jaunt overseas. My life basically transitioned from killing insurgents to killing Iraqi and Iranian VIPs, to killing lawyers and businessmen.

“James?” She says into the phone.

“Hrm?” I say back. “Sorry, there was something on tv that caught my attention for a sec, I’m sorry sweetheart,” and she huffs on the other side.

“I guess I’ll be getting to bed then,”

“Ok, well, I’ll call you tomorrow, ok?” And she says bye, love you, and hangs up. I click my phone off, turn over and go to sleep. It was almost morning.
***

I walk into a barber shop on Dutching Street, in the middle of what most Londoner’s consider to be the Russian neighborhood. Little Odessa.

The place is traditional in the sense that there’s a stack of well-read newspapers piled on an empty chair printed in Cyrllic, two old men in the corner talking about something in Russian while hovering over a chessboard, the barber, about fifty-something years old patiently cuts a few strands of loose white hair off the top of some other Russian’s head, and they too converse in Russian.

In other words, they have me pegged as a fucking yankee the moment I walk in the door. This obviously isn’t good.

I’m well dressed, black suit tailored well enough that the tiny nickel-plated pistol is concealed on my hip and doesn’t bulge when I sit down away from everyone and pick up a copy of The Mirror. I glance the four men in the tiny barber shop where they’re only two chairs, two big mirrors, one sink, and a heating duct over everyone’s head. It’s the last place you’d think a master of the Red Mafia would be hiding out.

He’s the barber, my target. He’s Mikail Grasnav, file says he’s fifty-seven, rapist and murderer and according to the file, big in the white slavery game. The client asserts that when Grasnav was only 16 he killed his first prostitute after raping her repeatedly over the course of a few days. He likes knives. That’s all I know.

Oh, I also know that they’re watching me. All of them. And they seem like a group of old men, but I’m fairly certain that these three other men, … well two of the three at least, are probably armed body guards, despite their appearances.

“Be right with you,” says Grasnav in heavily accented English. I look up from my newspaper and smile from over the rims of my eye glasses. In short fashion he finishes and dusts the loose hairs away from his patron and clears the seat for me. He gives me a grandfatherly-like smile and invites me to sit. I do so, leaving the paper behind. “So where are you from,” he asks as he sets the apron around my neck. He tilts the chair back to start a shave. I tense a little, feeling myself go backwards like this, puts me at a disadvantage, but it’s too soon to blow my own cover. My back’s towards the two chess players and I can’t see them in the mirror. I have to wait this one out.

“I’m from the States,” I say. He nods and goes to the counter top by the mirror and selects a straight razor. I use this time to pull the tiny cheap crappy pistol from my waist band and set it flat on my thigh in my loose grip.

“And you have family here?” He presses on, sliding his straight razor across the leather strap by the counter. I lie and say I do.

“What are they’re names, maybe they come here, and I cut their hair, yes?” He asks. I think quickly and mentioned the name of the kid I killed a few days ago. Grasnav tenses for a second at the sound of the name and turns slowly holding the blade in his hand.

He walks past me, mumblings something in Russian to the two chess players as he dispenses some hot lather on to his free hand and then proceeds to apply it to my face and neck. I can hear the two men getting up from their chess board. I tense as well.

“We give you nice shave to start, yes?” And he begins to lower the blade to my Adam’s Apple. My hand tightens on the pistol. I tense and he’s looking back towards the wall where the other men had been sitting a second ago. That’s when he strikes.

He yells something in Russian, loud and guttural. I feel hands grasp down on my shoulders and arms surprisingly tight and strong. He, Grasnav, goes for my throat with the straight razor.

Here’s a tip, if anyone’s ever trying to cut your throat: Most often than not, they’re not going to do it the right way: The proper way to slit someone’s throat is to jam the point of the blade into the side of the neck and thrust the blade forward, effectively cutting the jugular and windpipe at the same time.

No, more often, the guy cutting your throat is going to do what this old Russian asshole did, which is to start on the far left hand side of your neck, and try to drag the blade across your Adam’s Apple. To defeat this you need to crane your head back into the cut so you protect both your throat and the jugular vein and all you get is a deep gash on your left neck.

That’s what I did and spun in my chair, trying to fight off the old men grabbing me and holding me down. Under the apron, feeling the blood start to course it’s way down my neck and under my shirt, I point the small barrel of the pistol away from me and let off a shot.

This was enough to startle everyone in the room and buy me just enough time to wrestle free of their grasp. I pop up from the chair, tossing the apron over my shoulder and fire again at the barber, catching him in the elbow. The gun is cheaply made and the trigger pulls hard, but I fire again from my hip and lodge a small caliber round into the solar plexus of one of his body guards, knocking him backwards. I turn slightly to my right and find the other older man charging me with a fucking shoe, so I shoot him in the chest, my right arm fully extended, and he goes down in a heap.

The barber is back to his feet, holding the razor in his left hand because his right arm is all fucked up from the elbow down. He has this crazed look in his eye that’s pure life-saving adrenaline. I’ve see the same look in coke addicts. He charges me slashing the razor in a giant X through the air and I try to pump some rounds into him but the fucking gun jams so instead of mindlessly trying to work a broken trigger assembly I simply whip the gun end over end at the man like I would a throwing knife. The handle of the small pistol catches him over his left eye and he stumbles but keeps up his charge, now with a fresh cut oozing blood into his eye.

We lock together by the big mirror and his counter full of instruments. He pushes me hard back against the mirror and it smashes around us. I grunt, finding him somewhat stronger than I expected, but it’s only because he’s trying to save his life. I switch my grip and jam my thumb into his blown apart right elbow and he howls in pain, slashing harder at my suit, turning it to ribbons like a thresher. I kick at his balls but nothing's stopping him, not even the blood running into his eyes and mouth. I cut my hand on a large piece of glass and pick it up, slamming it into his spine over his shoulder. He starts to gasp and curse in Russian, and his breath smells like cabbages and tobacco.

I break the glass shard off into his back and kick him away.

He’s going to charge again and I see my own blood on the razor blade. My body burns and I can’t get enough oxygen into my lungs. All I can taste is the lather that's still on my face and blood. He comes again, only this time I’ve picked up a pair of shears and when he closes in, when it’s too late for him to stop short, I ram the scissors into his chest, driving him up on to his heels and back into the chair I was once sitting in.

I don’t stop there. I keep ramming the scissors home, screaming a death scream. I lose complete control over my professionalism. It’s total rage as I dig a four inch hole into another human being’s chest.

When it’s over, he’s leaned back gaping at the ceiling and I’m wiping a sweaty mess, a mix of tears, blood, lather and sweat from my face with a butchered sleeve. I leave the barber shop shaking, and find a quiet spot in a back alley where I puke.

Special DMX Two-fer

Often times I wonder if celebrities can be this stupid. Thank god there's Dark Man X to rise to the occasion and answer that question for me.

Both links are from HuffPost.

...Because no one would recognize you in a bright yellow classic car with a big yellow 'DMX' sticker on your windshield....

And

"Michael Vick's lawyer is on line two, X"

The Bigger Picture

No one likes feel good stories, except for when they're depressed - and even then there can only be a certain level of "feel good" in the story, or it becomes sappy...

Or it becomes "The Pursuit of Happiness" starring Will Smith.

Anyway, this story has a little, small, four-minute-half-life of feel good to it, so I hope you enjoy.

I was feeling pretty shitty all day, (see post below) and the RM picked up on it. He's somewhat intuitive like that, like a puppy. A puppy will know when something's bothering it's master, and my RM is no different than a beleagured puppy.

It started off when I was on watch earlier today and he wandered in to the Comm Center and looked at me behind all the monitors. He kinda cocks his head to the side and goes,

"What's wrong dude?"

"Nothing," I say dismissively. He presses me.

"Dude, something's bothering you,"

"Nothing's bothering me, I'm fine, leave me alone."

"No dude, you got that look on your face... like the fucking... your eyebrows are all pushed together in the middle of your face and it looks like you have a long dook stain across your face," This gets a small smile out of me.

"Get out of my watch room, RM"

"You need to open up more, bro, you'll die from a heart attack if you don't." And he leaves. He's right, I do need to open up more, but not to him, not to no one, not any time soon.

So fast forward to later in the day. The RM is out raking up some crap from in front of the building and he's cursing. I'm listening to my ipod and standing over him, supervising his raking and nit-picking it like a prick. He looks up at me, stops working and pulls out a cigarette.

"You know what I can't stand?" He says as he lights.

"What's that?"

"Hypocrits,"

"Hypocrits?" I repeat. He looks over my shoulder back towards the main building.

"Like certain people tell you one thing, and then they themselves go and do what they just told you what you couldn't do,"

"I know what being hypocritical means," I tell him. He goes on to tell me that he's been told he can only smoke twice a day for intervals that last roughly fifteen minutes. This was told to him by my chain smoking twenty-one year old dickheaded boss. "Welcome to the military," I tell him again. He gets frustrated and slams his rake to the ground.

"It's bullshit,"

"Dude, seriously, given everything in life, if being told when you can and can't smoke is the biggest thing eating you, you've got shit pretty well under control. Cuz ..." and I trail off for a second and he reads my face like a book in big type. "Cuz," I continue, "There's a bigger picture, people all around you can be dealing with shit that makes what you've got eating you seem rather insignificant. You gotta try to see everything," and as I'm speaking these words, I actually listen to myself talk and take some of my own goddamn advice for once.

There's a lot more going on out there than my own little petrie dish of an exsistance. And my problems are somewhat minor considering the state of the world we live in. I have my legs, I have my health, I can still get up most mornings next to a beautiful woman who simply adores me, there's a lot of things going good for me. I have no real excuse to get down on myself for anything.

I tell my roommate all the time that he needs to find something he can take confidence in; to think about when he's being challenged, that would give him a pyschological advantage over his advisary.

For instance, when I'm feeling like I'm being pinned down, I think of the times I've had sex with two women at the same time. Not many people can boast that, and I look the other guy in the face and know that he hasn't. It's not a "well maybe he has" because well, maybe he has, it's a "no he hasn't," that I focus on, and I ended up crushing my enemy. I think about being a cop, because not too many people can say they were a fully sworn police officer at the age of twenty-one. I just find things that make me unique and use them to my advantage.

An example of this went down the other day: The Lady took me to her favorite coffee place a few towns over, where her former paramour frequents. We're outside, enjoying the Spring Cape Cod afternoon weather and cigarettes when this blue Honda CRX650 rolls up. It's her last guy she fucked, a total douchetard with big hands and a bigger head. He walks over, and it's very awkward scene for everyone. Awkward for me not because this guy was once sticking it to my girlfriend, but because the last time they were together he got grabby with her... and I wanted to take his head off. We stood there, face to face very briefly sizing each other up, sharing one of those weird awkward handshakes where neither one of you gets a decent grip on the other guys hand and it comes out all gay. And the whole time in my mind (aside from the fact that in a flash I would export him to a beyond mortal existance) was that she, The Lady, was with me now, and I was a harder, better, faster, stronger version of what she wanted in him. And beneath his steady exterior I could hear him seethe.

Yeah motherfucker, seethe all night.

I get word about a day later from The Lady where she ran into the guy again about a day later. He was allegedly scared that I'd fuck with his bike. I don't blame him, it's a nice bike and I look like a bad enough motherfucker to do something that stupid, but I won't.

I have the pyschological advantage. I see the bigger picture.

...The Wind Knocked Out Of Me...

Ever get that feeling, where you're stunned and that feeling where all the air in your body got sucked out with such efficiency that you're left feeling tighter on the insides?

I get that feeling from time to time, especially when I feel like I fucked something up, big time.

I won't go into details, but this wash of horribleness is all over me and I can't shake it. I know things will be ok, and in a sense this is just kind of a test of a person's mettle and commitment, but all in all, I can't help feeling like a total piece of shit.

I'll get over it. It's out there.

Running Mix for the Week of 5/9/08

Here's what I'm listening to as I pound the pavement in my Nikes... in case anyone's interested..

"Don't Stop Believing" Journey
"Gimmie Shelter" The Rolling Stones
"The Game" Disturbed
"Burn My Shadow" UNKLE
"Life Is Beautiful" SIX A.M.
"You" Candlebox
"Freya" The Sword
"Killing In The Name" Rage Against The Machine
"(Rock) Superstar" Cypress Hill
"No Sleep To Brooklyn" The Beastie Boys
"Working For The Weekend" Loverboy
"Umbrella" Rihanna
"I'm Shipping Up To Boston" The Dropkick Murphys
"Smoke'em" The Fun Loving Criminals
"Bombin' The L" The Fun Loving Criminals
"Side 2 Side" 3-6 Mafia
"As You Already Know..." Kool G Rap
"Icky Thump" The White Stripes
"Beat It" Fall Out Boy with John Mayer (Not as gay as you'd think...)
"Speedin'" Rick Ross
"Riot Maker" Tech 9
"The Beast" Tech 9
"Snitch" Obie Trice
"The Trooper" Iron Maiden
"Guns and Roses" Jay-Z
"One Horse Race" Tom Vek
"Needy Girl" Chromeo
"Walcott" Vampire Weekend
"Aerodynamic" Daft Punk

Seriously, write your own joke....

This story, taken from (I think Reuters?), is probably the most articulate description of a New York Yankees fan, ever published. Go Sox.

BOOSH.

Getting Sick

Christ I think I'm getting sick.

Fuck.

Since I got up to take this watch at 2330 I've felt like total shit: my nose has been running harder than a black guy from a paternity suit, my head feels as swollen as it does normally due to my ego, and I just feel run down as if someone just spent an afternoon beating the shit out of me with a pillowcase filled with sodas.

I hate getting sick, and for the most part I almost never get ill. My immune system is like brigade of super intelligent, hot-shotting-anabolic-steriods-into-their-eyeball old-school Russian troops standing the line at Leningrad, fending off the invading Nazis with their bare fists. So in the rare times that I do get sick, I'm usually taken off my feet with good measure.

What makes matters worse is that I'm at work. Nothing's worse than being sick at work. For the typical person, you slug it out for eight hours and you get to go home, or even better, call out. In m case, I'm at "work" for up to fifty hours at a go. When I'm sick, I like to lay in bed, read, eat crackers, watch tv, jerk off, and nap in that order. It's part of my healing process.

And obviously I can't do that here.

And what compounds this further is the fact that my girlfriend basically doesn't have an immune system of her own. Her's is as frail as the bird's that flew into a sliding glass door. It's bad enough that right now her roommate is dying on a couch in her living room; and now her one safe-haven (my place) is going to be crawling with death and disease as well.

She's going to be pissed. Great.

I think I know how I got sick: We were working on one of the boats tonight, doing some fire-fighting training. I got wet. I wasn't wearing a hat over my skull. I then, being that I was "roasting" in my mustang, stripped down to just my t shirt and the mustang bottoms and walked the quarter mile back to the station from the end of the pier, wet and sweaty, with a light breeze.

I rack out for a few hours to rest up before the mids, and when I wake up my head is congested. I'm sitting up on the side of my bed, letting all the snot drain out of my face, thinking to myself "nice going, kid."

So to The Lady, who will read this in a few hours, "sorry luvy, hopefully I'll be better by Wenesday afternoon..." and to everyone else, go screw. I'm sick and authorized to be slightly more crabby than usual.

The Roommate and The Prostitute from Friendly's

"You eat like a soldier," The Lady says as she sits next to me at the counter of a homey diner in Orleans while I'm digging into a stack of pancakes. I keep my head down as I eat, shoveling food thoughtlessly into my gullet, chewing, sipping coffee, intent on my next delicious morsale, not taking the time to enjoy the one that's currently in my mouth.



I bring this up because we tend to go out to eat alot. It somewhat burns me up that I'll drop a hundred bucks on groceries at ... sigh... Shaw's, and then go drop another 50 on dinner with The Lady and The RM.

So this takes us to last night: We three are sitting at the local Friendly's at The RM's behest and being served by a reasonably attractive blonde. The Lady remarks about how attractive she is to the RM, who is turning red with each passing minute.

A long discussion is had about my RM's lack of balls. We, The Lady and I, keep provoking him to ask for her number and he's still acting like himself, not taking intiative - yet complaining about how he's going to go through life lonely and sad....

It makes for a very tiresome evening meal.

So fast foward to the end of the meal and the RM's all nervous... he asks us, me and The Lady, to step out and get a smoke and we do so. He then mans up and gets the digits from the waitress while forging my name on the receipt. He exits the Friendly's smiling ear to ear, and it seems like everything in the world is right for once.

So again, fast forward and I'm in bed right at that point where you're about to fall into a delightful slumber, when in busts my RM, panic-stricken.

"Dude, I texted that girl..." He says. We had given him explicitly strict orders not to make contact with her for at least the night.

"Why?" As I'm laying face down on my bed.

"Well she text me back," he manuavers around the question, "and told me to lose her number, because we didn't tip her!" I can hear the panic in his voice so I look up, half push up style.

"What? Why didn't you tip her?!" I'm somewhat angry... well agitated mostly, by this news and as well as being interupted as I'm close to sleeping. But importantly, I'm somewhat pissed at the fact that we didn't tip this waitress, because I'm very fond of tipping, and tipping well. So the idea of this waitress (she was a shitty waitress though, had a whole lot of attitude...) going without a tip got under my skin.

"I thought The Lady was leaving a cash tip!" What had happened was that we had discussed seperate bills and a cash tip during the meal, but I just said 'fuck it' and opted to pay for everyone on my card because it was easier. The Lady had taken out some cash to leave towards the tip but I told her to put it away. Hence all the confusion.

So at this point, the RM is up in arms and freaking out. I tell him, rather grumpily to forget about it, "if she's so into the money, then why would you be interested in her at all?" I say from my pillow. He closes my door and goes to bed.

...So I think....

Turns out, right after that, the RM takes off to an ATM, gets twenty bucks in cash, and with a note places it in an envelope and shoots back over to the Friendly's as it's closing. He manages to talk his way inside and confronts the waitress giving her the envelope.

"I threw it in her face," he goes on to tell me this morning, "like an OG would."

She text messages him back shortly there after apologizing for her gold-digger-like first impression and they set up a date for a movie.

Now, what hits a couple of key sour notes in this tale is that, 1) where did my roommate's balls suddenly come in, where he would march back into an closed establishment, and pull of this Jack Bauer-like stunt? Especially without witnesses. And then! And then! I check my bank balance this morning online and see that Friendly's took out 58 dollars from my checking account last night. ...I remember distinctly that the bill for the three of us was 49.00 even. So where did this extra 7 dollars come from?

Either the RM actually did leave a tip (a seven dollar tip seems about on point for what he'd leave) and this entire story is a farse, or the little prostitute took it upon herself to help herself to a tip. If that's the case I plan on filing a complaint with the Friendly's.

Allow me to go off on a brief tangent: Being that service industry folks make like 3.50 an hour, they depend on tips. I understand this, and my heart goes out to the hard working waiters and waitresses that literally slave for customers like me. That's why I try to over tip as often as possible, even when the service isn't what I'd consider up to par. That's the situation we had last night. The waitress, the RM's apparent new paramour was lifeless, sarcastic and unpleasant. I thought her waitressing sucked. She dropped plates in front of us, had very little enthusiasm when taking our orders and had zero personality. All that said, since she was taking care of three of us on one bill, I would've left her probably a ten or twelve dollar tip.

If the case is that she tipped herself, thinking we were cheapskates, she had no right. No tip or gratuity is considered a guarentee. You EARN a good tip, and you do so by being polite, friendly, a little outgoing, etc. I'm not asking her to adorn flair and sing happy birthday songs and stand on her fucking head, I'm just asking for decent service, maybe with a little less sarcasm/spit in my food.

Also, if she told the RM to lose her number, would it be conceivible that she would've deleted his as well? How would she have been able to text him as he was leaving?

So, what's it going to be in the end? I need to sit down and grill my RM about all of this and get down to brass tacks. If he tipped her out I need to know if his whole story is make-believe or not. If that's the case then I'll sit down with him and have a man-to-man about making shit up. If it turns out his side of the story is true, than I know of a local Friendly's that'll have a 'help wanted' sign posted in their front window, very soon.