10

In the morning I woke and climbed into the shower, letting the water run over me until it went cold. Even after I turned it off, I found myself standing there, still not fully awake to the world around me. The night had delivered romantic dreams as I lay unconscious and even though I couldn’t recall the details, I felt their remnants lingering like the path of white exhaust a jet airplane leaves on the sky’s canvass long after it’s gone.

That day I was scheduled to have my lunch date with Jennifer and I wanted to look sharp and leave her with a good impression. I removed a pair of black dress slacks from my closet and ironed a perfect set of pleats into them. I matched the pants with a light blue polo shirt because women had often complimented me on the color’s ability to bring out my eyes, which were a similar shade of blue. I readied my black cowboy boots and opted for a pair of gold toe socks because matching socks had long been an important accessory in my life. In fact, I remember trying to match socks all sleepyeyed in my pre-gold toe days and the disastrous end results. I’d end up with one brown sock and one black sock secured over my feet and sure enough, I would have a bad morning and it would prompt me to return home on my lunch break in order to make a hose change.

Mrs. Fazzino was standing on her walkway in oversized black sneakers pressing a T.V. remote to her head and looking up at the crystal clear, blue sky.

She looked down at the tip of my cowboy boot which had some scratches on it.
“He’s a vampire,” she said. “We know what he is.”
“Who is a vampire Mrs. Fazzino?”
Mrs. Fazzino looked over at Jimmy’s yard.
“He was washing all the blood off.”
“Oh, you mean when Jimmy was doing his dishes with the garden hose?”
This sent Mrs. Fazzino into what I can only describe as a spazz attack. She was practically going airborne jumping up and down and shouting in a granny voice, “HE’S A VAMPIRE! HE’S A VAMPIRE!” She ran over to the fence and I noticed that there was garlic all over it. She was putting the pieces that had fallen on the ground back on the fence. “Goodbye Mrs. Fazzino. Have a nice day,” I told her.
I got into my car with a fresh outlook on life. I stopped and ordered a small Jamaican nut blend of some kind from a Starbucks drive-thru window. I decided that I was going to be proactive and make my day a positive one by approaching it with a bit of enthusiasm. After all, I was due to have lunch with Jennifer later that day, so what reason did I have to be down in the dumps?
I was sitting behind my desk waiting for my desktop to load on my computer when Rooster poked his head, lead by his nose, into my office.
“Some guy’s at the front desk asking for you, Babes,” he informed. “He looks like a temp from the Salvation Army.”
“That must be Louie.”
“Whoie?”
“He’s a friend of mine.”
“Please, Babes, tell me you’re not going to hire this guy,” Rooster pleaded.
“Nothing long term. Only for an hour. He’s going to take care of the radioactive waste that we had stored in our bathroom.”
Always looking at the price tag on everything, Rooster asked without skipping a beat, “How much we paying him?”
“Two hundred dollars, plus a little gas money.”
“Is this guy bonded?” Rooster inquired.
“Not very well,” I admitted.
“Have him sign a release,” Rooster said as he walked away. “I’ll send him down to see you so we can get him out of our waiting room. He’s scaring people.”
Louie hesitantly stepped into my office. He looked as nervous as a kindergartener on his first day of school and continually wiped sweat from his forehead.
“Nice office,” Louie said. “You should just live here instead of in that house of yours.”
“Louie pulled a stiff handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose loudly. It was a wet, mucousy blow and I now understood why the handkerchief was stiff in the first place.
“Okay,” he said, wiping excess snot from his upper lip. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
I told Louie to sit and then slid him a standard release that we gave to all temporary employees.
“What’s this?” Louie asked.
“It’s a release form that basically states, if anything bad should happen to you while you’re working for us, it’s not our fault, and instead, it’s yours. It’s a standard form we use with everyone as a way of protecting the company from trigger-happy people looking to sue. Not that you’re that guy, it’s just a formality we have to go through.”
“Are you sure this stuff is safe that I’m moving out of here?”
Rooster popped his head in the office, obviously eavesdropping from outside the door.
“Don’t worry, old man,” he said to Louie. “If some of it gets on you, it will keep your pecker nice and hard.”
Louie signed the release and Rooster escorted him to a storage closet where the canisters were now being stored. Bob helped Louie carry the green biohazard bins to the infamous station wagon as Rooster supervised. After the radioactive material was loaded and ready to go, Louie returned to my office to collect his money.
“We’ll send you a check,” Rooster told him.
“Check!” Louie cried. “I don’t have a checking account. Nobody said anything about no check.”
“Don’t worry, Louie,” I assured him. “We’ll take care of you.”
I turned to Bob who was wheezing in the doorway and said, “Get two hundred dollars out of petty cash.”
“And don’t forget the ten for gas,” chimed in Louie.
“That’s right. Make it two hundred and ten, Bob.”
Bob scurried off and returned with the money. We paid Louie and he left on his mission to dispose of the radioactive waste that had been infiltrating our men’s room.
“This just cost us some money, Bob,” Rooster angrily said. “Next time you bring shit into the men’s room, flush it down the stinking toilet! It’s not rocket science! A fucking moron could figure it out!”
Bob left with watery eyes as Rooster took a seat in my office, stretching his legs far out in front of him.
“Where did you find that Louie, Babes? He’s something right out of an episode of Law & Order.”
“He’s in my neighborhood all of the time.”
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that, Babes,” he said, leaning forward and resting his elbows on my desk. “I’m a bit worried about you lately. Everybody’s talking about your move to that dump. Is everything okay?”
I got up and closed my office door so that we could have a little privacy. Being proactive in my day, I decided that it was time to be firm with Rooster and tell him that I was leaving the company for good. Seeing as he wouldn’t listen to the real reason that I wanted to quit and leave it all behind, I made up some ridiculous bullshit about wanting to move away and be closer to nature.
“Nature?” he squealed. “Why don’t you buy yourself a tree house in Natick? I’ll send a limousine to pick you up every morning.”
“I don’t think so, Rooster. It’s time for me to move on.”
“Why don’t you plan a trip to the French Riviera and take some time to clear your head? You can walk around with no clothes on for awhile and reconnect with your pre-upright self.”
“Not what I had in mind.”
“What about that girl you’ve been seeing?” he asked, desperation filling his face. “You’re just going to leave what’s-her-name behind in the dust?”
“Martha and I broke up yesterday.”
Rooster stood up and paced around my office. He rubbed his chin furiously. I was causing him a boatload of stress, but I had to do what was right for me for once.
“She was no good for you anyway,” he said. “What you need is one of those Cambridge, earthy crunchies to lick your balls, and I’ll tell you what, Babes, you’re not going to find one of those out in nature.”
“You’re probably right, Rooster, but I’ve been searching for something here for a long time and I’ve been unable to find it. It’s time to look elsewhere.”
“What are you going to find out in nature that you can’t find here? It’s the same everywhere you go. There’s nowhere to run, Babes!”
“I don’t know. It might just be one of those things that I have to discover for myself.”
Rooster froze and pointed at me like he was the host of a game show and I just won a new car.
“I’ve got it!” he screamed. “I’m going to call up my wife and have her hook you up with her friend Jill. Trust me when I say this. She’s the thing you’ve been looking for. That girl will give you some serious memory loss and she’ll make you feel like you’ve found what you’ve lost. I’m calling over there right now.”
Rooster rushed out of my office before I could say no and stop the sale from happening. I had just begun to check my messages when my cell phone rang. It was Mikey.
“What’s up, Mikey?”
“I got a free trial membership at this new high-end health club and I can bring a guest. You want to check out the hip hop aerobics class with me tonight?”
“Hip hop aerobics?”
“Yeah, man. Trust me. It’s nothing but women. It’s like fishing for carp in a barrel.”
“Actually, I’m trying to be somewhat proactive today and I could use a little exercise. Count me in. When were you thinking of going?”
“There’s a class at six and another at eight and either work for me. I’m off today.”
“Let’s play it by ear because I have a few appointments in the early afternoon that may run late, but whichever one we hit up, I’m driving,” I told him, fearful of ever stepping foot in a car where Mikey was behind the wheel again. “Oh, and before I forget. I know you’ve been having some money problems and that got me thinking. I have a phone call I need made and I’ll pay you one hundred bucks if you do it for me.”
“You’ll pay me one hundred bucks to make a phone call?”
“Yeah, I need to do a follow-up on that billboard deal you helped me out with. You have a rough voice and the goal is to get the guy who owns them to shit a few bricks in his pants so he won’t go stepping on our territory again. The guy’s name is Mr. Bratton and he’s over at Moakley Advertising. It’s in the book. I need you to call him up and say that you’re Mr. Franconi from the City Papers. Tell him that he has twenty-four hours to take back all the free ad offers he made or next time it’s going to be more that just his billboards that get a facial. Make sure you say that with your best Mafioso voice. Make it sound really scary like you’ve got mob ties or something. Can you do that?”
“Yeah, I can make that call,” he said. “And you’re going to give me one hundred bucks just for doing that?”
“It’s an important part of my plan, and I’m convinced you’ll scare the excrement out of him just enough to make him back down.”
“Okay. I’ll drive to the pay phone down on Eddy Street and make the call right now.”
“Sounds good, Mikey,” I told him. “I’ll pay you later when I pick you up to hit the gym.”
I hung up my cell phone and placed it down on my desk. I was already feeling a million times better than the day before and I knew the prospect of seeing Jennifer meant it was only going to get better. I was halfway through my messages when Rooster burst back into my office.
“You’re all hooked up for tomorrow night with Jill,” he informed me. “I’ll get you directions to her house so you can swing by and pick her up in that fly ride of yours. And believe me, you’ll thank me later for this.”
“I’m not sure I’m all that interested in going out on this forced date, Rooster.”
“Just do me this one favor before you ride off into the sunset. Please! That’s all I ask. Give true love one shot at blossoming in hopes that you’ll stick around and keep me from going insane here without you.”
I agreed to go out on the date with his wife’s friend Jill because I felt bad for leaving Rooster to fend for himself at the paper. I knew that I was gone no matter what, so anything I could do to soften the blow would help to keep our friendship intact.
“Listen to this,” Rooster said, flipping through a magazine that sat on my desk. “I just interviewed a recent grad who thought he wanted to get into sales. I asked him why he thought he’d be good at sales and he said because he ‘loves’ people. So, to counter his romantic approach to the world of selling, I told him that he would have to hate a few people to do this job because it comes with the territory. And you’ll never believe what he said to me.”
“Enlighten me.”
“He said that he could never do that and that hate is a terrible thing to have in your heart.”
“Uh-oh. What did you do?”
“Nothing. I just booted his ass out of my office.”
“Didn’t you ever have a first interview? It wouldn’t have hurt you to show the kid a little sympathy. He was probably sweating bullets in that room with you.”
“My first interview was tits,” he said. “I went in for this door-todoor sales position selling security alarms. This guy who’s interviewing me tossed a gold Cross pen into my chest and said, ‘Sell me this pen.’ I put the pen in my shirt pocket and told him that the pen wasn’t for sale. He said, ‘That’s funny, but I want my pen back.’ I said no and left the building.”
“So what happened?” I asked.
“He followed me all the way out into the parking lot and I drove off. I kept the pen, Babes. It was a nice pen. In sales, either he sells you or you sell him. There’s no in between. I wasn’t sold on the job or him as a boss, so I left and I took his gold writing penis with me.”
Rooster then gave me one of his rare serious looks and said, “Everybody in this world is conning everybody else. It’s just a question of who’s better.”
As he was leaving my office I asked him to send in Harry. Fifteen minutes passed before I ever saw his face, but when he arrived he seemed in good spirits as opposed to the last time we spoke. I decided that it was important to tell Harry that I was leaving the paper. The tough part of the conversation was going to be convincing him to stay, especially after convincing him to leave yesterday. I figured if the paper stood a chance of surviving in its current form, there needed to be a general in place that rose up through the ranks. For all of his faults and complaints, Harry was good at what he did when he put his mind to it and I felt as though I had the right amount of ammunition going into battle to convince him to stay on board with Rooster.
One of the reasons that the paper has grown to the level it had was because of the quality of stories that showed up in its pages. That was Harry’s doing and I made sure to thank him for all of his hard work before moving any further into my plans. If Rooster got a hold of the editorial department it would have meant a quick and painful death for the paper, so keeping Harry in the driver’s seat was important.
I confided in my old friend, spilling my guts about everything I planned to do, but was always to afraid to reach out and grab. He seemed relieved when I told him that I was going to be resigning because it meant that he could now quit without any unwanted guilt, but when I offered him half of my equity in the company to stay, I could see his mind churning as new possibilities presented themselves for his future. He knew he would probably never get a chance to make a substantial amount of money like this again.
“I’ll have to think about it,” he told me.
“Of course,” I said. “Take your time, but I just wanted you to know where I stood and where you could stand if you stick around. Oh, and Harry, keep this between us for now, okay? Nobody really knows that I’m going to be leaving besides Rooster.”
“Sure. My lips are sealed.”
Harry was definitely tempted by the offer even though he knew that Rooster would still rule over him. The only way Harry could be on even playing field with Rooster would be if he was an equal partner, which was what I planned. I just didn’t want to tell Harry that. At least not yet.