“Who wouldn’t rather make love than war, Jed?” Jandilyn asked.
Jed stopped for a second. “Okay, valid point. Do you have a problem with a gun, Mike?”
“I’ve just never shot one. I don’t want to blast any of my toes off.”
“That’s what the class is for, plus you get paid for it.”
“Okay,” Mike said dubiously, he was concerned that his lack of stereographic vision was going to make it extremely difficult to qualify on a range.
Forty minutes later, the paperwork filled out and signed, Mike and Jandilyn were getting ready to head out the door.
“Hey, Mike, next week you’re own your own for the gun safety course, but the following week I’ll pick you up for your shift,” Jed said just as they reached the door.
“You sure?” Mike asked.
“You’re only about ten minutes (he lied it was closer to twenty but the kid looked like he could use a break) out of my way. This way I’ll have someone to tell all my old stories to.”
“Thank you, Jed,” Jandilyn said, coming back and giving the man a small peck on the cheek.
“Get out of here,” Jed said, blushing for the first time in maybe twenty-five years.
“Would this be a bad time to ask for a raise?” Mike asked.
“I’ll see you next week, wise ass.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Jandilyn said smiling as she walked through the door Mike was holding open for her.
Jed was approaching the visitor’s station. “You have to sign in,” Ted said, startling himself out of a deep sleep. “Oh, hi, Jed. I thought we had guests.”
“We did, Ted.”
“Did they sign in?” Ted asked, but his eyes were already on the downward slope.
“Sleep good, my friend.” Jed laughed.
Mike hesitated as they walked across the lot to Jandilyn’s car. He could almost feel the entity sitting there waiting for an opportune time to again lean forward, it’s eyeless gaze boring holes into him.
“Mike?”
“I’m fine,” he said. “Must be dinner.”
“What?” Jandilyn said indignantly. “I make the best Ramen noodles this side of the Mississippi.”
“Come on, let’s find a diner or something, I’m starving,” Mike said as they got in the car. He was certain what had been there had now departed.
“You know we’re on a budget,” Jandilyn told him.
“My treat, plus I just got a job. We should celebrate.”
“I’m just warning you, I plan on eating a lot.”
“I wanted to talk to you about that,” Mike said seriously. “The other night when you asked if those jeans made you look fat, I lied.”
She slugged him in the arm. “Fine, I’m starting off with chicken fingers, some steak and eggs, with a side of bacon—nope, a plate of bacon. You’re going to have to roll me back to the car.”
***
The gun safety course went better than Mike had expected. His one-eyed shooting style was not the preferred method his instructor taught but it was hard to dispute the results. Mike was consistently hitting nine out of ten shots center mass. With certificate securely in hand, Mike had called Jed with the number he had supplied at the interview.
“I passed,” Mike said excitedly. Not introducing himself or even making sure it was Jed.
“Who’s this?” came the gruff voiced question from the other side of the telephone line.
“Sorry, is this Jed?” Mike asked sheepishly.
“Just bustin’ your balls, son. The instructor is a close friend of mine, he let me know how you were doing. He said you’re a natural with the gun. I’ll pick you up around seven on Monday.”
“Thank you, Jed.”
Jed could feel the heartfelt attachment in those words as the kid said them. Something even worse than the deaths of his friends had happened in that accident and he hoped someday Mike would trust him enough to let him know.
“De nada. See you in a couple of days.” Then they hung up.
***
“Hey, kid, how you doing?” Jed asked as he rolled up two minutes earlier than expected. Jed noted with amusement that Mike looked like he had been waiting impatiently for fifteen minutes before he arrived.
“Nice ride,” Mike said, hopping into the restored 1970 Mustang.
“It should be for what it cost to fix up.”
Mike was fairly bumping around in his seat.
“First job?” Jed asked.
“How’d you know?”
“Relax, kid, this is an easy gig. Crappy pay, even crappier benefits, but like I said, easy.”
“How long have you been doing this, Jed?”
“In my other life I was a minor politician, Selectman, Mayor. Real small town.” He added when Mike was about to question him on that. “Most of the town was kin and I still almost lost. Did that sort of thing for most of my adult life and just kind of finally got disenfranchised with it.”
Mike was looking at him funny.
“They were all fucking hypocrites, every last politician I came across. Preach for the people while they lined their pockets. I didn’t want any more to do with it. I found the least stressful job I could that did not involve handing out stickers at a store front. Luckily, my wife comes from money. So to answer your original question about a dozen years by now. Sounds like a long time by your standards, but it goes by pretty fast when you’re my age.”
“My folks used to say that.”
“Used to?” Jed stressed the words.
Mike was looking down at his hands. “We really don’t talk much since the accident.”
“Do they blame you?” Jed asked.
“I wasn’t even driving, Jed,” Mike said abashedly.
“They’ll come around. They will. Let’s change the subject. You going to make that wonderful girl you introduced me to an honest woman?”
Mike laughed. “This isn’t the forties, Jed! And I’m only eighteen.”
“At eighteen we had our first born and I was running for treasurer in my hometown.”
“Damn, Jed, I haven’t even got a dog yet,” Mike answered.
“That’s the problem with you kids—‘there’s always tomorrow’. What about today?” Jed asked.
“Between me and you Jed I fully intend on marrying that girl, I’ve just got to get my shit together. You know, get a career going.”
“You’re not intending on staying here?” Jed asked in mock horror. Mike’s face fell. “You’re way too easy, kid, I wasn’t expecting you to retire here. You give me at least a year I’ll be thrilled.”
The rest of the ride was in an easy silence Mike relished. Besides Jandilyn, he had not enjoyed that with anyone else in close to two years.
***
“Well, here we are kid, your new home away from home,” Jed said as they rolled up into the parking lot.
For a brief second Mike got a moment of dread as he looked up at the building. It looked exactly the same as it had the last time he was here, now it just felt different. ‘Expectant’ was the word that bubbled to the surface, like it had been waiting for him for a very long time. Mike shivered.
“You cold, kid?” Jed asked. And just like that the abhorrent feeling vanished.
“I think someone just walked across my grave.”
Three thousand miles away a police sergeant was investigating a minor accident in the same location Paul had slid off the road and into a mighty Oak. The scars in the bark still not healed.
“Come on, I’ll take you on the grand tour.” Jed used his keycard to get in. The resulting beep awoke Ted whose feet were propped up on the desk twenty feet to their front.
“Aren’t there cameras?” Mike asked, wondering how Ted could consistently sleep on the job and not get in trouble.
“Oh, there are, but unless something happens the tapes get recycled every three or four days. We haven’t so much as had someone stop to ask for directions after hours. Oh, wait, there was a guy about five ye
ars ago, a security guard. He was pilfering coffee. Dipshit had a hole in his pocket, I followed the trail from the warehouse to the break room, he must have had two pounds of beans in his pockets, he was shoving them into baggies in his locker. What’s even funnier is we get a huge discount on coffee if you want some, a buck fifty a pound I think is what we pay.”
“You don’t know?”
“I can’t stand the stuff. I used to have a cup or two in my day, but you’ll understand when you make your rounds in the warehouse, the smell is so overwhelming. It’d be kind of like working at McDonalds, at first you wouldn’t be able to get enough of them free French fries and then pretty soon you start to gag when you even think about them.”
“Gag when thinking about McDonald’s French fries? Are you a communist, Jed?”
“Come on, smart ass, I’ve got to get you your very own Rayon uniform, I suggest washing it repeatedly because they are itchy as hell right out of the package.”
“If nothing happens here, why the guns?”
“Because the stuff is still worth a lot of money. I’ll be honest, though, I’m not taking a bullet for a bean and you shouldn’t, either. Someone comes in here and they’re determined to rob us, we’re letting them. Don’t look at me like that. All the coffee is insured. If anything were to happen the company would recoup all of their losses, the only reason there are armed guards is because it brings the insurance premiums down to an acceptable level. Does Ted, even with a gun, scare you at all?”
Mike shook his head. “I don’t even think he could hold it up, so unless I was trying to look up his inseam I think I’d be alright.”
“You’re funny, Mike, we’re going to get along fabulously. Let’s go get your burr infused shirt and pants.”
Mike went into the locker room, removed his clothes and dressed in what he could only construe as some form of Russian torture. “This is ridiculous!” Mike bemoaned as he scratched all over his body. “I feel like I fell asleep on a fire ant nest.”
“The tie looks nice, now you can take it off.”
“Thank God,” Mike exclaimed as he nearly ripped the noose from his neck.
“That uniform change is the best thing our union has done for us.”
“Union?”
“Barely. Don’t sweat it, it’s voluntary.”
Mike started scratching his pants vigorously. “I wish you had given me this uniform the other night, I would have made sure to wash the hell out of it before now.”
“Oh, no, son, you don’t get it. This is part of the initiation, the rites and passages of the Security Guard. Even old Ted had to go through it, although he slept most of the night.”
“On his first day?”
“Narcolepsy.”
“Didn’t anyone think to ask him if he had any disabilities that might prevent him from performing his job?”
“They did, they didn’t care. They just needed a body and that’s really just about all they got.” Jed laughed.
“I’m not sure if I should laugh or not.”
“Laugh, it’s good for you. Come on, let’s walk. It’ll take your mind off the incessant itching.”
Mike thought that was highly doubtful, if anything it would only irritate the ants all over his body. He walked as stiffed-armed and legged as possible so as to avoid scraping against the offending material, that felt more like sand paper than any wearable material.
From the locker room they took a right, which led down a brightly lit corridor fifty feet long that ended in a set of double swinging doors. Next to the door was a clipboard with a sign-up sheet clipped to it.
“We are required by the insurance company to make rounds every two hours. I’ll let you in on a little secret; most nights I write down all of my times on this here sheet when I get in.” Jed grabbed the pen and began to fill in times alternating, with first his name and then Mike’s. “Very ambitious of you and on your first night to boot,” Jed said, letting the clipboard bang back against the wall. He pushed open the door next to them.
The bitter aromatic smell of tons of coffee assailed their nostrils. “After you,” Jed said, almost holding his breath.
“Wow, you weren’t kidding,” Mike said, walking into the vast warehouse. “How long do they store this stuff here?”
“Some of it they age for a little bit, depending on the bean. But for the most part, any particular pallet isn’t here for more than a few days. This place is crazy in the daytime, forklifts all over the place. But at the moment you can tell it’s pretty quiet, just pallets and pallets of coffee beans.”
Mike went over and looked at the boxes piled high.
“You don’t plan on putting any in your pockets are you?” Jed asked jokingly.
“More of a Mountain Dew fan myself. I guess I just never realized there was this much coffee.”
“Interesting stuff, huh? Do you like to read?”
“Not so much, gives me headaches,” Mike answered absently, rubbing his left eye.
“Well, you better find some hobby you enjoy doing or these nights are going to drag on forever.”
“I’m sure I’ll be able to keep busy just scratching tonight.”
CHAPTER SEVEN - The Encounter
“How’d your first night go?” Jandilyn asked.
Mike almost told her about his hesitation about the building when they first got there, but he hadn’t thought about it since that brief moment at the beginning of his shift so he couldn’t figure out why he wanted to say something now. “Besides this torture device,” Mike said, holding up his wet uniform pants, “it was pretty good.”
“Didn’t you already wash them this morning before I went to class?”
“And three times since.”
“You need to get some sleep before you work tonight.”
“Lack of sleep isn’t going to be a problem. Jed pretty much told me naps are mandatory.”
“Maybe I could come over and we could nap together.”
“That sounds great,” Mike said, pulling her close. The pants rubbed up against her arm.
“You have to wear those?” Jandilyn laughed as she looked at the small scrape on her arm.
“The shirt is worse.”
“Have you used any fabric softener?”
“Wait… there’s something called fabric softener? You’re kidding, right?”
Jandilyn reached on top of the machine and grabbed a big blue jug.
***
“Oh, this is heavenly,” Mike said, rubbing his arm. His uniform had been through four cycles before he finally had to get ready for work. “I wish I had more time to let my pants dry, though,” Mike said as he started to duck walk out of the apartment.
“You look pretty threatening when you walk that way.” She laughed.
“I think you and Jed have teamed up to make my clothes as uncomfortable as possible.”
“Please don’t tell me you’re becoming a conspiracy theorist?”
“Not yet, but there’s still time.”
“I’ll see you in the morning,” she said, planting a big kiss on his lips.
Mike lingered, the kiss extending.
“Jed will be outside in a minute,” Jandilyn said, backing away from Mike. “And if you go down there with that showing,” she said pointing to his pants pup-tent. “He’s going to think you have a thing for older men.”
“Great,” Mike said with chagrin. “Wet pants and a stiffie, this oughtta be fun.” He resumed his now hunched-over duck walk.
“All you need now is a cigar and a hat, Groucho, and you’ll be all set.”
“You did this to me.”
“You can pay me back in the morning.” She leered.
“Whassa matter with you?” Jed asked as Mike got into the car.
“My pants are wet.”
“Have a little accident, did you?”
“Funny, the dryer doesn’t work so good.”
“When we get in, you can put on a new pair until those dry.”
“Hell no, I
’d rather be wet than put new ones on.”
Jed sped off with a laugh. “Don’t blame you.”
“Where’s Ted?” Mike asked as they walked in and the visitor’s desk was empty.
“He’s gone now. No, not dead,” he added for clarification when Mike looked over. “He was just waiting for his replacement so he could truly retire this time.”
“So how’s this work?” Mike asked as he squished down into Ted’s now vacated seat.
“Well, we sit here, play cards, maybe some cribbage. Have some idle chit-chat, do some reading and periodically you’ll go make rounds.”
“Me?”
“Yeah, you wouldn’t want to have these old bones keep getting up and down would you?”
“No, I guess I wouldn’t. You do look mighty frail.”
“Not so frail that I’m not going to have half your check by the time payday rolls around,” Jed said as he pulled a deck of cards out of his pocket. “Do you know how to play Texas Hold ‘Em?”
“Is that poker?”
“Oh, we’re going to get along fabulously.”
“How is this happening?” Jed asked two hours later, with a heavy degree of sadness, putting his hand on his forehead. He was down five dollars and didn’t think the kid had any clue what he was doing. “You’d better go do your rounds while I rethink my strategy.”
“Damn, at this pace I really don’t need to work, I’ll just take your money.” Mike laughed.
“Don’t make me regret hiring you.”
Mike left the duty station in high spirits. He took an immediate left that led him through the break room and toward the corridor that housed a couple of offices, he jiggled the door handles to make sure they were locked and then headed the rest of the way down the long corridor to the double doors.
The one on the left was partially pushed open about a foot; it was difficult to see that far down but he had the distinct impression someone was peeking around the door, watching his approach.
The hallways bright I would be able to see them, Mike thought as he slowly kept walking. He stopped when the door swung to the shut position. Okay, that was kind of creepy, Mike thought as goose bumps rippled up his arms and the back of his neck.