Shooting Stars (24 page)

“I threw them in the trash.”

“What about your team?”

I shrug. I don’t even know which team I’m on, but I don’t tell him that. His bubble would burst all over his cotton candy.

“You don’t want to play any games?” he says. “Look at the manager-dunking booth. I know you want to do that.”

I look at the dunking tank, where a revolving list of managers will sit and launch taunts at employees as they try to land a baseball on the target. There’s a big crowd over there.

“Floyd was always good at that,” I say.

“Speaking of him, have you heard from him lately?” he says.

“No.”

“I just overheard, while waiting in line at the balloon-animals station, that someone else heard he enlisted in the Israeli Army.”

“Whatever.”

“Fine, don’t believe me. Anyway, dunk booth. Let’s go,” he says.

I look back at Eddie, shaking my head. “Only if they’d replace the water with a vat of piss, vomit, and animal diarrhea. Then, that’d be worth it. Until then, I’m passing.”

“Wow, talk about a party pooper. Okay . . . okay, I’ll challenge you to a game of Wii bowling.”

“Not right now . . . or never. Instead of talking to you, though, I’m going to do something else,” I say.

“Like what?”

I walk away and pretend not to hear him. I’ve spent so much time criticizing the event that I have not taken what I deserve for staying at this ridiculous affair. It’s time to eat, of course. I only want one thing. Well, two things really. Two hot dogs, to be exact. I can get them and dip off back to my desk. Or I might eat them in my car while listening to the radio. I haven’t decided yet. And it is the perfect time to retrieve my food and seek refuge, as the crowd has now left the food. I have a greater chance of avoiding the irritating stream of questions I was forced to endure with Eddie. The line is only three people deep, and I’m behind Mike. I try to walk as ninja-like as possible so he won’t hear me, but that doesn’t work.

Mike turns around and says, “Seems like these shits get worse and worse, right?”.

“Yeah, you got that right,” I reply. Then, he turns back around. I exhale because I’m grateful for dodging that bullet. I mean, Mike is okay. He does nothing out of the ordinary. And he’s not particularly annoying. Simply a regular guy, but I don’t feel like having any small talk right now. And it looks like I came just in time. The food is getting low, and the cooks have turned off the grills. The person before Mike takes a hot dog and a hamburger. There are only two hot dogs left, but there’s still a stack of hamburgers left in the aluminum pan. Fuck it, Mike could take all six hamburgers if he wants. I don’t care about them, not one bit. It’s not like he’s starving. I saw him with a plate on two different occasions already. A few hamburgers should top him off. He looks at the food selection as if he’s picking out a puppy in a pet store. He grabs a hamburger roll and puts it on his paper plate. Then, gets a hamburger patty. I sigh in relief. Then, in an exquisite exhibition of pure gluttony, he picks up two hot-dog buns and takes the last two hot dogs. The two hot dogs sandwich the hamburger on his paper plate, as it buckles under the weight of the excess.

“Sure your plate can handle all of that?” I say.

He examines the plate. “You’re right.” He looks back at the table and thinks for a minute. Then, puts the two hot dogs on another plate, so he can carry his two plates off in some sort of symmetrical display of overindulgence.

“See you later,” he says as he walks away.

I only wanted two hot dogs. Not only do I not get one hot dog, I get no hot dogs, and this son of a bitch gloats and trots off. The fucking nerve of this motherfucker. As he walks away, I think of the proper recourse for his actions. I should run up on him and take both hot dogs right off his plate, but some would view that as being uncivilized or childish. I wouldn’t view it as such, but others would. I could walk past him and “accidentally” run into him and knock the food off his plate. If I can’t have two hot dogs, then neither can he. That would be my passive-aggressive nature showing. And I can’t have that get the best of me, because I’m trying to grow as a person. I guess he has to learn the hard way. I now have the next nominee for my employee-extermination list: Mike. Mike, the office barbecue pig. Mike who probably had four hot dogs before that, and might not even finish the two he just took. He brought this on himself. It’s out of my control.

I
t’s been
three days since the STD fair, and I think some of the employees are now coming down from their euphoric high from the festivities. I still see occasional high-fives being dished out in the coffee room while recounting a riveting ring-toss performance here and there. Also, in the coffee room is where I see Mike. He approaches me beaming with a smile. As I can tell, he cannot contain himself. “Hey, Kev,” he says. “You probably haven’t heard yet, because you don’t read e-mails. But today is my last day.”

“Really? What happened?” I say.

“I got a new gig,” he says. “With Nextanza, doing health-benefits administration for them.”

“Get out of here. I didn’t even know they had an office in the area.”

“I was shocked too. It all came together. I don’t even know how it happened. I haven’t even been job hunting that hard.”

I shake my head with envy. “How’d you find out about that place?”

“It’s hard to believe, but all I did was post my resume on a few websites a few months ago. You know how those things go. It takes a while for the companies to find you,” he says. I shake my head in agreement. “Then, out of the blue an HR rep called me the other day and offered me the job after doing a quick phone interview. And it’s a huge bump in salary over what I’m making here. They didn’t even want to see me face-to-face. It must’ve been my lucky day. Only bad thing is, I have to start this Thursday. Which I thought was weird, because I’d rather do it at the beginning of a week, but I couldn’t say no, you know?”

“Yeah, I get you. Gotta get while the getting is good,” I say.

“Exactly. That’s why this is my last day. Handed in my resignation. They didn’t seem so happy about it because of the short notice, but I gotta look out for me,” he says.

I shake his hand. “Well, good luck, man. And let me know how it is over there. I might need you to save me and throw me a lifeline, if you know what I mean.”

“No doubt, I’m sure we can use good workers like you.”

“Shh,” I say. We both laugh.

I take my coffee back to my desk and let out a smile. My joy is not because I’m happy for Mike. That would never be the case for anyone. But I’m the only person who knows when Mike shows up to the address given to him by the phone interviewer he spoke with for his first day at his new job he’ll realize he’s not at Nextanza, but a gay strip club that’s located in the seedy run-down part of town, right next to an abandoned hot-dog packing factory. Poetic justice, if you ask me.

I
haven’t heard much
from Mike since he left for his promising job opportunity. One would think he would call and tell me he got duped into a fake job. Some friend he is. I guess it’s all about saving face. I wonder if he called Hunter and tried to get his old job back. Jake wasn’t too happy about me going rogue and getting Mike to leave, but it worked. That’s the first successful plan I’ve had in a long time. And I’m pretty proud of myself. I don’t know why Jake didn’t see the same joy, but whatever. I’m not gonna let him bring me down. My shit was good. He’s gotta respect that. Maybe he’ll even listen to my suggestions. I haven’t felt this good since Alexis left me. So good that I’m leaving exactly at five o’clock today. No overtime for me. I gotta enjoy my good vibes.

I head out the door, and Aida is right behind me. I wait and hold the door for her. She doesn’t move with any urgency at all, so this is a big feat for me, which I attribute to my great mood. Normally I’d rush to get out of here. I also have no hard feelings for her right now, even though the sting from her taking my promotion while being incompetent, for the most part, still remains.

Sometimes I get so stressed out while here that I forget where I parked my car. Not today, though. I’m not going to lose any valuable evacuation time because I’m caught in the back of the exit line in the back of the lot.

As I approach my car, five police cars whiz into the lot with their sirens blaring, as if they’re filming a car chase for a Jason Statham flick. The cars surround one car and block it from moving. I can’t see who it is from my vantage point, but the cops get out of their cars with their guns drawn. The driver emerges from the car with her hands up. It’s Aida. She’s as frightened as a Quaker walking through a Best Buy for the first time.

Since she’s pretty much harmless, as far as I know, I realize the situation isn’t as drastic as the cops make it seem, and I move in closer to find out what’s going one, while most keep their distance. They make her put her hands on the hood of the car. A bit excessive, if you ask me, but I’m no civil-rights lawyer. One older cop goes in the car and gets her purse. He looks through it.

“Got a live one,” the older cop says. His eyes light up. You would think he just nabbed one of the FBI’s most wanted. He pulls out a plastic Ziploc bag of marijuana.

“That’s for my glaucoma,” Aida says.

“Shut the fuck up!” a young red-haired cop shouts. “Shut the fuck up!” he repeats again for safe measure. He seems like he’s a bit trigger happy. If I were Aida, I’d play it cool and try not to talk again. He must not get much criminal action in this small suburban town.

The cop continues to search through her bag, and pulls out a hypodermic needle and presents it to his cop cohorts. Hunter has now joined the cops.

“That’s for my insulin,” she says.

“Give me a reason, bitch,” the red-haired cop shouts. “Give me a fucking reason to blow your ass away.” Another cop urges him to calm down.

The older cop puts the bag down and begins to search through Aida’s trunk. Then, he lifts up the spare tire and pulls out another Ziploc bag. “It’s heroin,” he says. All of the onlookers are astonished. They look further and find a small automatic handgun. “I’ve seen enough. Let’s finish this at the precinct.”

The cops push Aida into the back of the cop car. Nobody can believe what they’ve just seen. Aida, a drug-using, gun-toting criminal. Who knew? Today I feel a whole lot safer going home to my overpriced condo in the city. The suburbs have all sorts of unexpected criminals lurking around. Even frail old ladies. At least in the city you know who the criminals are. I don’t need them being sneaky and offering me peanut brittle and shit, not knowing they have a .22 tucked into their girdle. No thanks.

A
ida’s walk
on the wild side got me up nice and early this morning. I couldn’t sleep much anyway. Especially after I put together the pieces of what her arrest actually accomplished. There’s no way she didn’t get fired when Hunter saw that public display. And that means there’s an immediate opening for the manager position. I arrive nice and early, showing my commitment to STD. The job is all mine. I’m running too far ahead of schedule. I don’t want to give off the impression that I’m an eager ass-kisser. And the lack of sleep has me sort of bleary-eyed. A double espresso in my hazelnut latte should give me that jolt. Can’t have Hunter seeing me yawning like crazy. My positive mood gets sideswiped a little bit when I look above the coffee shop and see my picture hovering over the building. It’s one of our billboards. Mental constipation. Yep, that’s me. I don’t let it bother me too much. But I duck inside the coffee shop before I’m recognized, as if I’m a celebrity. Maybe I should invest in some sunglasses.

Usually I’m antsy when waiting in line, but I’m always rushing to get someplace. Being early kinda relieves that stress from your life. Also, my career is now on the upswing, and I’m within grasp of my promotion. The biggest stress in my life has been stabilized. I’m even contemplating getting a chocolate-chip muffin, but I better not. Once I get this promotion I’m getting new work clothes, and I want to look nice and trim when giving presentations and shit. Plus, I might get chocolate-chip stains on my bow tie. And I only have three of them.

I hear a familiar voice behind me as I look at the muffin display: “Spare change? Spare change?” It can’t be. “Don’t be cruel. Don’t be . . . don’t be, baby. Spare change?” I turn around, and Robbie’s there harassing the coffee-shop patrons. I turn right back around, hoping he doesn’t see me. I order my coffee, hurry up, and pay for it. Then, I turn around trying to go undetected out of the door.

“Kevin!” Robbie says. I try my best deaf-person impression and keep walking. “Kevin, you can’t stop to talk to an old friend?”

I stop dead in my tracks, so hard I think I almost blew out both of my ACLs. “Friend? We’re not fucking friends.” I continue to walk out of the door.

“Wait up,” Robbie says, as he grabs a half-eaten sandwich off an empty table and runs after me. “Hold up.”

“Leave me alone. I gotta get to work.” I continue walking down the street as he follows behind me.

“What did I do to you?” he says.

“Snuck around and cheated with my fiancée. Let’s begin with that.”

“She was your girlfriend. And she never was your fiancée, technically.”

I glare back at him. He steps back a little bit as I approach him. “I proposed. She said yes.”

“Okay, a technicality, then. I’ll give you that one. But there’s nothing I can do about that now. How about a truce?”

“You can’t call a truce. I hate you. Don’t you understand? I don’t want you to do anything. My life is a hundred times more awesome now. I’m happy. I’m almost at the place you’re at.” Then, I keep walking. I can’t let him make me late on my big day.

He gives chase and gets in front of me. “What did you mean by that?” he says.

“By what?”

“Get to where I’m at. You want this?” He points to the tattered clothes he’s wearing.

“It
is
my suit. So I kinda do want that back,” I say.

“You’ll get it back. But this is the life you want?” he says as he holds up his half-eaten trash sandwich. “I wipe my ass with the newspaper want ads, man. If I’m even lucky enough to wipe my ass at all.”

“Yes, I want to metaphorically wipe my ass with the want ads. It’s like you’re telling the whole system of employment to kiss your ass . . . or wipe it, rather.”

“I sleep with rats and roaches,” he says.

“Well, of course I’m not talking about that part. All the other stuff. Not the ‘fishing through the trash for food and sleep with pests’ part.”

Robbie looks at me with true disgust in his eyes. “You have a condo.”

“Can’t afford it,” I reply.

“You have a job,” he says.

“Don’t like it.”

He throws up his hands. He’s not understanding me. I think of a way I can break it down for him. “I always see you with a smile on your face. You never take no for an answer. You do your own thing. That’s what I want. I want to be free and happy like you.”

“Listen, I’m always smiling because there’s not a time when I don’t want something. Nobody’s gonna give something to an angry housing-challenged man. Your problem is that you’re never satisfied with what you have. Always focusing on things you don’t got. Always want extra shit. Your shit isn’t fancy enough. Your TV isn’t big enough. Your apartment doesn’t have enough room. This person makes more than me. This person has a nicer car than me. It’s all dumb. Comparing yourself to others. Just be happy, you bitch. You piss me the fuck off. You only have ten pairs of shoes. You only have three sinks to piss in,” he says.

“See, sink pissing. I want that freedom,” I say. Robbie throws his half-eaten sandwich at me. Then, he storms off into the alley. I stand there, stunned, and then walk away. I look back, not believing he talked to me that way, and see him come back to pick up the sandwich off the sidewalk and return to his alley refuge.

I
’m still shook
-up from my Robbie encounter as I pull into the parking lot. The nerve of him to get mad at me after all the shit he’s done. And on top of that, I thought I was giving him compliments. I kinda smell like bruschetta from that sandwich he hit me with, and it’s making me nauseated. I pull into a spot and try to gather my bearings while I still have some time before work starts. My phone rings. I take a look at the number, and I don’t recognize it. I don’t know what I am thinking, but I answer it. It’s probably a bill collector, and I’ve been ducking them long enough. My new success has given me just enough bravado to tell them to fuck off and not to cower like ho who’s come up short to her pimp.

“Hello,” I say. I wait for the delay and recorded message in which the bill collector asks to speak to me, as I would usually deny my own identity. It’s not a bill collector. It’s a woman from a job I applied to. She says they’ve reviewed my resume and would like to set up a phone interview with me. I typically hate those, but I’m game for anything. I’m on a good-luck streak. As I look for a pen in my car’s center console, so I can take some notes, Jake shows up right next to my window.

“How was your drive in?” he says. I motion to him that I’m on the phone. He grabs the phone out of my hand and hangs it up. “I’m talking to you. Don’t be rude.”

“What the fuck? That could’ve been my ticket out of here.”

“It probably was going to be another failed interview,” he says, as he sticks his head inside my car. “How’s your morning going?”

“Okay, had this weird thing with Robbie—”

“Yeah, whatever, that’s good,” he cuts me off.

“You missed it. I tried to call you last night, ’cuz this was bigger than a text message. But Aida got arrested when we were leaving last night,” I say.

“Get the fuck out of here! Aida?” he says, laughing.

“Yeah, it was crazy. All these cops came rolling up. Must’ve been a SWAT team or some sting-operation-type shit.”

“Must’ve,” he says. “What’d she do?”

“They caught her with drugs and a gun. Who knows what else was in that station wagon.”

“That’s some shit. From
Golden Girls
to
Scarface
,” he says.

I shake my head.

He bursts into laughter so hard it’s not long before his face turns red.

“What?” I say.

He says, while still laughing, “You really believed all that? That old lady getting caught with a brick of heroin?”

“Wait . . . that was you?” Jake nods. “How did you? Why did you?”

He stops laughing and takes on a serious tone. “We had to get rid of Aida. And I needed to show you this could be done either with you or without you.”

“What?”

“You doing your own thing with Mike,” he says.

“He had to go.”

“I’m the one who tells you who needs to go. Don’t ever let that shit happen again,” he says. His eyes darken. “Are we solid on that?”

I don’t respond initially, because I’m taken aback. I’ve never seen him this way.

“Are we solid on that?” he repeats.

“Yes, we’re cool. My bad,” I say.

“We gotta work together, or else this shit won’t work. Or that could be you who ends up with drugs and guns in your car.” He pauses for a second. Then, starts to laugh. I nervously join along with his chuckles. “I’m just fucking with you,” he says.

“What do you think about getting rid of Fray?”

“I told you, I’m not going anywhere near Fray. Him getting fired will not go over well. You know this. I’m not trying to disagree with you. But when that day of reckoning comes, I don’t want him to think anything bad about us. Plus, if he got fired, that day of reckoning would come quicker than expected. He’ll show up the next day with bombs and all type of homemade rifles and shit. Picking us off in the parking lot with poison-tipped arrows. Nope. No way.”

“Okay . . . okay, you got that. I’ll let you veto that. But seriously, I need you to show up at this address tonight at ten.”

“No problem.” I look at the piece of paper he gives me. “Where the fuck is this?”

He has already walked away and doesn’t hear me.

J
ake’s
impromptu meeting plus encountering Robbie move me from being early today to right on time. I’m still not too sure about Jake. He must be in one of his moods. But as soon as I get to my seat, I was told Hunter had ordered all of the employees to go through a complete battery of drug-and-psychological testing, claiming it’s because of all the recent terminations. Supposedly they want to be able to recognize if there are any more bad apples or potential head cases at STD, which does make sense. Some crazy shit has gone down in the last month. But everyone has problems. This shit has got to be against the law. They’re attacking our civil rights. I’m surprised I’m the only one thinking this is unjust. Everyone else goes along with whatever they’re told. Old Kevin would’ve brought this up to management or threatened to sue. But I can’t do that now. I have too much at risk. Plus, my congressman has started to send back my letters unopened. I guess that’s why it’s old Kevin, and now I’m stepping right in line to take a piss into a cup.