by Wild, Nikki
“Very good, then let’s begin.”
The top button of her blouse was undone. She could have loosened it because of the heat, but I don’t think she noticed it had come undone. She seemed far too professional to do anything that could be perceived as casual.
“Mr. Eason, what would-”
“Good afternoon, Sir. Would you like anything to drink?” interrupted the barista. She was standing at our table with a little electronic notepad. I’d been so focused on trying to see down Riley’s shirt that I hadn’t even noticed her approach.
“He’s fine,” started Riley. “We won’t be-”
“I’ll take a coffee,” I said. “Black.”
They both looked at me. The barista tapped her stylus on the screen. “Would you like French press, cold brew, or-”
“Just a black coffee,” I said. “You guys do sell regular coffee here, don’t you? I don’t need any junk in it.”
“Of course; I’ll be right back with that.”
That barista scurried away and I went back to creating memories of the soft mounds of flesh that showed above the V in Riley’s shirt. “Go ahead,” I said.
“Mr. Eason, what-”
“How old are you?”
“I… what?”
She was more than annoyed at being interrupted again. Her jaw clenched so tight that it made a little vein by her temple raise to the surface.
“Your age,” I continued, “because you keep calling me ‘Mr. Eason’ like I’m some kind of elder to you.”
“Oh. Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m twenty-two. Now can we move on?”
“Sure, but I’m twenty-four so you can drop the ‘Mr. Eason’ routine. My name is Troy.”
I couldn’t help but notice how well she was put together. Her hair was perfect. Her nails—which I saw weren’t attached to any fingers with a ring on them—were manicured with little French tips, and the sweater she wore was worth more than my old truck parked out there on the curb.
“Whatever you want,” she said. “So, Troy, what would you say has been the biggest challenge in being part of the program to this point?”
I thought about it for a minute. The heating sensation in the front of my pants threatened to distract me, but I came up with an answer. “All the meetings,” I said.
“I’m sorry, what do you mean?”
“I’m not trying to be difficult, but the hardest part is all the meetings. I have to get together with you guys all the time just so I can get something signed, or notify you of a change in my situation—it’s really annoying.”
She seemed confused. “But… that’s the whole idea of the program. It’s designed so that the offender—er, client… sorry—has to continuously check-in. That’s the best way to build a sense of responsibility. All studies show that when a person is held accountable by an outside entity, the success rate is significantly higher.”
“Maybe that works in your studies, but in the real-world people have shit to do. I have to go to work and train to fight. That doesn’t leave me a lot of time to keep spinning my wheels downtown whenever one of your bosses gets a wild hair up his ass.”
“That’s not-”
“That’s my answer,” I said. “Next question.” She didn’t look happy about it, but she opened her laptop again, jotted something down in her notes, and moved on.
She asked about my living situation and job. I gave her the standard answer on each. When she went into a monologue about the benefits of work study programs for “a man like you” I zoned out and drifted back to staring at her tits.
I wanted to know what her nipples looked like. It was all I could think about. This rich girl had no idea what is was like to be me. Her world was so far away from mine that we weren’t going to get anywhere with her questions, so there was no use in paying attention, but those tits… I thought about the horrified look she’d get on her face if I asked her to pull them out and it made me laugh.
“I’m sorry… is something funny, Mr. Eason?”
“No, sorry. Keep going, please.”
Maybe I’d gotten a little ahead of myself when I saw her that first time in the office. I had to be crazy to think that some trust fund girl from the country club would dare say yes to a street guy like me. Though, if she did, I’d rock her world so hard she’d forget how to count all her money. I chuckled again.
“Okay Mr. Eason, I think we’ve accomplished about all that we can today,” she sighed.
“Troy,” I corrected.
“Yeah… Troy.” She seemed defeated. “We’re scheduled to meet again early next week. I trust you won’t have any problems being on time?”
“Can we do it on the weekend? I’ve got a schedule to keep, remember?”
She hesitated. “We don’t work on the weekends.”
“Oh! You don’t work on the weekends. How nice!”
The mask of professionalism she wore cracked just the slightest bit. It was enough to know that she wanted to reach across the table to choke me. I’d seen that look from women a million different times.
“That’s right; it’s one of the privileges afforded to people who bust there tail to get a college degree. We don’t work on the weekends. I mean, I do, but the office is closed. It will have to be on Monday.”
“Uh huh,” I said. “The office is closed on the weekends. So, what happens if one of your offenders—er, clients—decides to knock off a liquor store on the weekend. Does that mean he doesn’t get his ass chewed out by you guys until Monday morning?”
Riley closed her laptop a second time and started moving everything that was spread out in front of her into a shoulder bag she had on the seat next to her.
“Got my whole life in that file, don’t you?” I asked.
She finished putting it away and smiled. “We do our best to research our clients to the fullest.”
“Okay, well if you read anything in there about me peeing my pants on the second-grade field trip, just know it’s a lie. I spilled water on my shorts but no one would believe me!”
She scooted her way to the edge of the bench seat. “Are you done?”
I shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. For now…”
“I’ll see you Monday, Troy. And you won’t have to worry about coming downtown. I’ll meet you at your jobsite. I’ll need to get a signature from your supervisor and I’d like to see what you do all day.”
“Fine with me,” I said. “And after that, maybe we can go smoke some crack and I can show you how to hot wire a car.”
Riley pinched the top of her nose and massaged my voice out of her head. As she stood up, her hand slid down her chin and dropped to her cleavage. As her fingers dragged between her tits and down her flat belly, I knew I was going to have to sit in that booth for a little while longer before I could go home.
“Goodbye, Troy.”
Maybe I’d have to wait a lot longer.
“Goodbye, Riley.”
Riley
“And that was a… Mr. Jenkins?”
Mrs. Hemlock’s voice grated on my last nerve. The way she spoke put me in a constant state of anxiety. “Yes, Davis Jenkins,” I said. “He’s failed to check-in for the past two weeks. I spoke to his probation officer on the phone this morning and he thinks we should remove him from the program.”
“And what do you think?” asked Mrs. Hemlock. Her suit jacket was rumpled. She had a bad habit of bunching up the material in her hand and squeezing it while she was trying to think.
“I believe everybody deserves a second chance,” I said. “But I’ll admit, it doesn’t seem like he’s interested in holding up his end of the bargain.”
“Ms. Becket, this is his second chance. Don’t you understand that we’re the last hope for many of these defenders? If he’s not willing to accept that, then our time his better spent on people with more potential.”
She sneezed and used a piece of notebook paper as a tissue. When she cleared her throat, she sounded like a dying goose. Everything about her was g
rating on me today.
“Okay,” I said reluctantly. I hated to see anyone dropped from the program because that almost always meant a violation for them and then a trip back to jail or prison. Even the worst of the worst had a chance to change in my opinion.
“That’s what I hoped you’d say.”
“I’ll inform Mr. Jenkins probation officer tomorrow morning that he’s been dropped from the program. He’ll let the judge know.”
“Very well. Who’s next?”
I shuffled to the next file in the stack. My voice caught in my throat.
“Well, go on. Who’s next?”
Mrs. Hemlock spoke like a woman in her early eighties though if I had to guess, I’d say she was barely fifty.
“Um, the next one is Troy Eason. He’s on a shorter track than most.”
“Yes, yes. I know Mr. Eason. He always has a smart comment to make when I sign him off every week. Has he missed any meetings? Because I wouldn’t mind seeing him out of the program. I don’t believe he takes it very seriously.”
Though I’d had my hang ups with him at the café, Troy certainly didn’t qualify for being dropped. I made sure to review his history ten different ways, too, because that night after I went home, I had a bit of consternation over whether he was influencing me with his charm.
“No, ma’am. Mr. Eason hasn’t missed a beat. I believe he’ll make it through without a problem. We’ve helped him with his apartment and he’s working a full-time job. All of his hours have been verified and he’s never missed a check-in.”
“Oh, he’s also involved in that awful fighting business, isn’t he?” she asked.
“Yes. We didn’t discuss that much in our meeting but I believe it’s a positive for him.”
“Nonsense,” she said, pushing away from the table. “See if you can get him to give that up. It has trouble written all over it and if he re-offends it’s going to hurt our stats.”
I weaved my fingers together and cracked my knuckles. I had a habit of doing that when I was frustrated. Mrs. Hemlock looked at me and made a little “tsk, tsk,” sound under her breath.
“I’ll see what I can do,” I lied.
“What else came out of your meeting with him? It was just the other day, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, on Monday. To be honest with you, he’s not the most repentant of our clients. He seems to look at it like it’s a bit of a farce. Still, he takes his commitments seriously. Like I said, he hasn’t failed to meet any of his requirements.”
I thought about the way his strong jaw moved when he sipped his coffee and it made me question all over again whether I was being honest about the situation. What kind of professional was I if I let a client get away with more just because he wore a fitted t-shirt and he was so ruggedly handsome that I took phantom sips out of an empty coffee cup out of sheer nervousness?
“Be that as it may, keep a close watch over Mr. Eason. He’s just the type of person who can screw up the entire program with his antics. Remember, Ms. Beckett, we have to take a hard stance with these people. If they don’t follow our rules to the letter, then we have every right to drop them.”
“I understand.”
We breezed through the last few clients on the agenda and then Mrs. Hemlock hustled me out of her office so that she could go to lunch. The woman kept a more regimented schedule than Eisenhower.
I wandered out into the hallway and thought about what the rest of my day looked like. I’d be lucky to get out of here before eight.
“Hey Riley, what’s up?”
Casey was pushing a mail cart down the hallway. She teasingly nudged it against my butt when I didn’t immediately turn around.
“Oh… hey.”
“What’s with you? I was calling your name like…forever?”
“You were? Sorry, I guess I was lost in thought. Why are you on the mail cart?”
She rolled her eyes. “Mrs. Hemlock fired the mail guy, so she said I should do it until we found a replacement.”
“Really? Why’d she fire him?”
“Ugh. I guess she saw him smoking a cigarette in from of the building on his lunch break and she deemed it ‘unbecoming behavior’ that she said made Fitting In look bad. Can you believe it? The poor guy got fired for smoking a cigarette when he wasn’t even technically on the clock.”
“That’s horrible.”
“I know, right? She’s been on the war path lately.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s especially unfair when you see what some of the other staff gets away with around here. Some of the other consultants act like they’re on the show Mad Men half the time.”
“That reminds me,” she said. “What time are we leaving for the banquet?”
Damnit.
I’d completely forgotten about the Board Member’s Banquet. “Shit. I spaced out on that.”
Casey stuck her bottom lip out. “You don’t want to go?”
I shrugged. “It’s not that. It’s more like I have a thousand things to do and tonight I was gonna try to play catch up.”
“What if I help?”
“You don’t have to do that. I know how busy Hemlock keeps you.”
“Are you kidding? As long as I’m standing at my post with a smile on my face, she doesn’t care what I do.”
“Other than deliver the mail,” I corrected.
“Yeah, right, the mail. But other than that, all I have to do is be there to greet guests. She always tells me ‘Casey, your number one priority is to make sure our guests are welcomed.’ So, that’s what I do. It wouldn’t hurt anything if I say… did some filing for you in the meantime.”
“Oh, my God, Casey that would be amazing. If you could help me get organized I could go tonight without having any stress hanging over me.”
She grabbed the hem of the cute little dress she was wearing and took a bow. “Anything for you girl. Besides, I need you to have my back when I talk to Curtis tonight.”
“Curtis, who’s that?”
“C’mon, he’s that new guy with the accounting department. The one who kind of looks like Bradley Cooper.”
“Oh yeah,” I said. “I’ve seen him. Not bad, but Bradley Cooper might be a stretch.”
Casey frowned so hard I thought her face might actually freeze that way. “Aww, he’s cute. Don’t rain on my parade.”
“Like I said, not bad,” I giggled. “Maybe he’s Bradly Cooper after a rough couple of years.”
She couldn’t hold her frown and started laughing with me. “What about you? I know Kyle Steven’s has been finding every excuse he can to bother you in your office.”
“Ew,” I said trying to hold back a gag. “He’s probably the slimiest guy here. No thanks, beautiful. You’re my date tonight.”
“I’m a good date,” she said. “You’re lucky to have me.”
“Don’t think I don’t know that.”
“Good. Now go get those files so we can kill it tonight.”
Troy
An overstuffed sack landed at my feet with a thud. The trailer floor creaked under its weight and my boots were coated with dust. Bags on top of bags full of heavy newspaper were stacked ceiling high in the back of the thirty-foot trailer.
Our company did industrial shipping and we sent everything from newspapers to refrigerators through our channels. Most of it got to where it was going only after it was carried on my back for a spell. Tonight, though, the workload was light and I figured I’d be clocked out by eight-thirty at the latest.
“Yeah, man, and then all you gotta do is flip it to some sucker for twice what it cost you.”
I was working with two other guys that were relatively new to the job. Newer than me, even.
“So, what’s up then? How do you make your money so fast?”
“That’s the thing. When it ‘falls off the truck’ you don’t gotta worry about startup costs. It’s all profit.”
The two of them slapped hands and laughed like they were the smartest guys in the world. Neither one of
them could have been older than nineteen and it showed in their decision making—not that I was one who should be judging other’s skills in that department.
They were talking about fencing stolen goods—probably stuff they planned to take from our warehouse. I hadn’t said a word the whole time they went over their plan, but I couldn’t hold my tongue any longer.
“That’s a pretty fuckin’ stupid idea,” I said.
“Huh?”
I hadn’t bothered learning either one of their names. In my head, I just thought of them as Dickhead One and Dickhead Two.
“Yeah, you think you’re gonna steal a bunch of shit from here and nobody’s gonna even notice? Neither one of you guys know anything about the inventory intake system. They’ll figure you out in half a day.”
“What the fuck do you know about it, man?” asked Dickhead Two.
“I know that if shit starts disappearing off the lot the first place they’re gonna go sniffing around is with the two new guys who don’t even have the good sense to wear gloves when they’re loading product.”
“Shit, I don’t remember anybody asking your opinion, anyway.”
Dickhead One was wearing a short-sleeved shirt that left his arms vulnerable to all the rough materials we worked with. He was scratching furiously while we talked.
“Besides,” I said. “Why would you want to do that dumb shit anyway? Both of you guys have a job where you’re making good money. I wish I could have been making eighteen bucks an hour when I was your age. Maybe then, I wouldn’t have had to work a hustle on the side. And God knows I was way better at than you two geniuses are.”
“I don’t wipe my ass with eighteen bucks an hour,” Number Two said. One chuckled and they high-fived one more time.
“Fine, do whatever the fuck you want; just make sure I don’t get mixed up in it. If you guys do any sneaky shit, make sure it’s when I’m off the clock. I don’t want to get sucked in to the tornado that is your stupidity.”
“Yeah, we don’t need permission from you to do what we want. We’ll do it when we feel like it.”
I bit down hard on my gum and felt the rage build inside of me. When I took my first step toward them, they both flinched. I’d beaten the shit out of guys twice their size and ten times as tough, and I think they were catching on to the fact by the look in my eye.
