by Eric Beetner
“I’m not gonna rely on your parents to get us around. What if we want to take a day trip?” He didn’t hide his annoyance and I knew this was an argument that started back in Detroit.
“What day trips are we gonna take, Sean?”
“We at least want the freedom, Linda.” He spat out her name with such a fermented venom. That one word, her name, had been marinated in all the years of marriage and all the variations on this argument they’d ever had, which I took to be many.
“You’re in space twenty-three,” I said, still in my early morning fake cheeriness. Besides, the Griffin family provided me with some great theater to start the day. The Fighting Griffins starring in Sad Suburban Vacation: A Tragedy.
“Thanks,” he said and a bead of sweat broke loose from his empty forehead and ran down his nose to splash on my counter. If he saw it, he ignored it. The whole wheezing, squeaking mass of them turned as one and rolled out pushing, pulling and toting luggage almost as square as they were.
I sat back down, wiped the drop of sweat away with a napkin and lit my first smoke of the day, thankful my life wasn’t as soul-crushing and shitty as that guy and his dumb-ass family. For me, right then behind the rental counter on a sunny Virginia day—payday no less—life was looking pretty good.
3
CLYDE
Despite being late, despite the forgotten cigarettes and the ten minute wait at the Gas ’N Gulp to pick them up, despite Madeline’s tears, I smiled when I pulled into the lot. It was a scorcher of a day already. Jets were screaming a half mile away at the airport, and my lot was ready for renters.
The lot had it all: compacts, sub-compacts, convertibles, SUVs, luxury sedans, mid-size sedans and coupes, luxury coupes, mini vans, and full size vans. I had been considering adding RV rentals as well, but it was likely to be a couple of years before I was feeling ambitious enough for that. I needed to do more homework on the demand, and with the kid soon to be born, I wasn’t eager to undertake any additional responsibility. Besides, I was spread a little too thin as it was.
I didn’t look for the Tahoe under the maple. It was early and Brent would have parked it where I told him. He might be a grumbler, but he could be counted on to do what he was told. When I walked in, he stood at the twin filing cabinets in the front of the office, stuffing a rental agreement into a drawer.
“Remember your alphabet,” I said. “A, B, C.”
“Yeah. I got it.” He gave a half smile. He acted pissed, but he was really shitty when it came to filing stuff. I kept him around because, in addition to doing what he was told, he didn’t ask many questions and he didn’t seem too interested in what I did when I wasn’t standing right next to him. In fact, he seemed to try really hard to avoid me sometimes, which was just fine these days. The less we saw of one another, the better.
“Anyone come in?”
He gave me a gesture that was half shrug, half nod. “Family from Detroit. Gave’em a minivan.”
I smiled. “Historic triangle, Busch Gardens, or Civil War memorials?”
He shrugged and picked up a copy of Sports Illustrated he kept under the counter. “Don’t know. Don’t care.”
I wanted to tell him to do something besides stand there, but the truth was we were a tight ship. We filed everything right away, kept things well-ordered, had a cleaning lady come in every night to spruce things up and keep the tiles their whitest.
An airport shuttle pulled up and a couple stepped off, a woman in an Ally McBeal knock off suit and stiletto heels. The guy wore a dark suit and designer sunglasses and gave me one of those chin jerks that is supposed to be a nod. I head jerked back at him. “Good morning,” I said.
“Need a sports car.” He smiled. The woman acted bored and drummed her fingers on the counter. I pegged them as business associates and bed partners. She wore a wedding ring. He didn’t. Not my business, but I always liked to speculate anyway.
My cell phone pinged, so I gestured for Brent to take over and I stepped to the back to answer.
“Hello?”
“It’s time. I told you it was going to be soon. I need you to come and get me.” Madeline was puffing out short breaths, the breathy huffs were loud in my ears.
“How far apart are the contractions?”
“I don’t know. Seven minutes? Five? Just get here.”
I hung up and gestured for Brent to step away from the couple.
“Madeline is in labor,” I said.
“Cool. Congrats, man. Go on. I got it here.”
“Yeah. Look. I need you to get that Tahoe to the right guy today. He’s a VIP and he wants that car.”
“The one under the maple?”
“Yeah. Look. Make sure he gets it.” I laid the Winstons on the counter. “Put these in the glove box.”
“Fine.” He turned back to the couple.
I grabbed his arm. “Brent, listen. It is very important that car goes to the right customer. Do you understand?”
“Yes. Geez. I got it. Tahoe. Tree shit. Right guy. Go. Have a baby. I’ve got work to do.”
I stood there for a minute, wondering how angry Madeline would be if I waited until the Tahoe was off the lot before picking her up. Brent was back at the counter with the couple, his head bent over the paper forms I still hadn’t gotten around to computerizing yet. The Tahoe was where it was supposed to be, Brent would make sure the smokes were in the glove box, and Madeline was in labor. Shit.
I walked back outside, climbed into my car, and drove toward home.
4
BRENT
Clyde left in a hot panic. Can’t say I blame him. I can’t even believe he had space in his head for some special reservation when his wife is in labor, but I guess if it were my name on the business, I’d want everything to go right, too.
Before the dust even settled from Clyde’s sprint out the door, the Griffin family came back. Same dumpy Midwestern foursome pulling their same beige luggage and their same fat asses. This couldn’t be good.
“Mr. Griffin, you’re back,” I said, trying to be cheery before the shit storm I knew was coming my way.
“That car you rented me,” he said. “It smells.” Then he added, “Bad,” in case I thought he’d come back to compliment us on the floral scent of our air fresheners. We don’t use air fresheners. You get what you get.
“I’m so sorry about that.”
“Smells like ass,” the boy said. His mother immediately shushed him with a small slap to the back of the head. I could see the embarrassment on her face for her son and her husband. I could imagine the argument in the van before turning around, her all, “It’s fine, just drive,” and him all, “I won’t pay for a car that smells like ass.”
“We want a new one,” he said. He stuck out his chin, such as it was, and acted entitled. I took a deep breath, working hard to keep it together.
“Of course. No problem.” I sounded less like a smiley glad hand and more like a waiter about to go back to the kitchen and spit in his food. I checked the roster of vehicles, of which there aren’t many on our lot. No more minivans. “I’m afraid, Mr. Griffin,” I started. I saw him already tense up, planning his rebuttal. “That was our last minivan.”
“That’s not my problem.” His face glowed red and tiny beads of sweat dotted his forehead all the way back across his dome. “The van you gave me smells like something died in the air conditioning unit and it’s obvious someone was smoking in there. We specifically asked for a non-smoking car.”
He hadn’t, since that wasn’t one of our options, but the customer is always right. Often times a humongous dick, but always right.
“Well,” I said as I checked the list of cars. “I can give you a four door sedan.”
“No, that won’t do. We need the storage. Can you not see the bags we have with us?”
“Sean . . .,” his wife tried to calm him down, but not trying very hard in case he turned his anger on her. She knew the drill.
“No, Linda, we won’t be treated like th
is. This is our vacation. I’m not driving around in a car that smells like a public toilet and I’m not driving around in some Japanese shoebox. We’re from goddamn Detroit for Christ sake.”
“Kids, you come with me,” Linda said as she ushered the kids away from Daddy’s tantrum.
I balled up my fists, let them loose again and tried talking myself out of using them on this jerk wad. I promised Clyde I wouldn’t have another incident like that again. The last guy I punched sued us. Almost won too, if he hadn’t been drunk. After that, Clyde installed the security camera, but I think that was as much to check up on me than any rude customers.
“I want that one,” he said. He pointed a fat finger at the black Chevy Tahoe I hadn’t had a chance to move yet.
“I do have an SUV you can have, Mr. Griffin. Let me just get it from around back and run it through the washer—”
“I want that one.” God, throw a diaper on this guy and he’d be a three hundred pound baby.
“That one is already reserved.”
“Again, not my problem. You said you had another one, give it to them. I’ve already been delayed enough. I’m not going to sit around your shitty airport while you wash another stink bomb of a car when a perfectly good, clean one is right fucking there.”
I saw the mom put a hand over one of each kid’s ears.
I wanted to punch this guy more than I’ve ever wanted to punch someone before in my life, but not more than I wanted to keep my job, so fuck it. Let him have the damn thing. The sooner he left, the sooner I could wash up the other Tahoe and give Clyde’s special repeat customer guy a twin of the Tahoe outside.
“You’re right,” I said. The thing they all want to hear. “I’ll change the paperwork for you, no need to sign anything else. You have a nice day.” I lifted the keys from the desk where Clyde had set them and traded Mr. Griffin for the minivan keys, then I secretly wished for the Tahoe to blow a tire, run off into a ditch, catch fire and trap him and his fat fucking family inside the burning wreckage where they could all sizzle to death like the chubby little sausage links they were.
I smiled the whole time I handed over the keys, but as soon as he turned his back I gave him the finger. I made sure the security camera could see it.
5
SEAN
Linda glared at me the whole time I lugged the bags into the back of the Tahoe. She sat on her butt in the passenger seat, looking over the heads of Chad and Becky, and glared at me. The car was clean, the air conditioner worked, and it didn’t smell like bunghole. How about a “Thank you, Sean?” Or even a “Nice job, honey?” Or maybe just not being a bitch? I closed the hatch and popped another antacid. I didn’t want to tell Linda about the upset stomach. She might think I was having a heart attack and make me detour to the ER. Or maybe not, I thought as I climbed into my seat and drove off the lot.
After a few minutes, when she realized I wasn’t going to look back at her and engage in the usual passive aggressive argument, she faced forward, put her sunglasses on, and read the regional map.
The kids plugged themselves into their iPods and stared out their windows.
“Get onto I-64,” Linda said, even though it was obvious that was the road we had to take to get to Colonial Williamsburg.
The phone in my pocket buzzed, but I didn’t take it out to check. My chest twinged a little bit. Guilt? Fear? Both? I didn’t know. Originally I felt justified by what I’d done, how I’d used some creative accounting to finance our vacation—a vacation long overdue because my raise was longer overdue.
My job was flipping homes. Or, more realistically, buying the abandoned structures in Detroit, knocking them down and scrapping out the lumber, the cabinets, the copper piping, and anything else we could salvage. Problem was, even though the business was my idea, my plan, my ambition, the financing came from my older brother, Ken, and two of his banker friends.
Funny how over the last three years they made a mint and I barely made enough to feed my kids and my wife and hang onto my vintage 1981 split entry modular home, complete with olive green refrigerator and stove. I was supposed to receive a bonus of no less than fifty K for the last three years, and for the last three years I got nothing. No bonus. No raise. Just more work on the endless stream of abandoned homes.
In December I asked Ken about a raise or at least a bonus. “No can do, Sean. Wish I could, but the partners . . . you know how it is.” He said it like I was supposed to understand that it was okay to screw someone out of an idea, out of a dream.
Linda said I should get a lawyer out of the yellow pages and get one of those free consultations. I nodded, like maybe it was a good idea. Linda likes to be right and my job is to let her think she is. So when she asked me a few days later how the meeting with the lawyer went I told her it went fine and that Ken had agreed to pay me more money, that we would be going on a vacation.
Don’t know why I said it. Don’t know why I started stealing from the company and selling stuff on the side under the radar. I know right from wrong. I know good from bad. I also know my brother and his two friends screwed me and, as the saying goes, one good screw deserves another.
Sure, I’d go back and face the music. I’d have to eventually, but for now I was going to take my family on a much needed, much deserved vacation.
“Don’t forget we need to be in Virginia Beach by nine o’clock tonight for a late cookout with my parents.”
Oh yeah, did I mention part of the vacation was spending a weekend with Linda’s folks? I called it penance and looked for a place to pull off for a drink. I was going to need something stronger than diet soda to get through the day.
6
SKEETER
It was too fuckin’ long since I had a bump of anything. Even a thin rail would do to keep my head clear. Smoke it, snort it, stick it up my ass—doesn’t matter none to me when I’m feeling the chill. But I felt worse. Must have been sittin’ around that shitty airport again that made me want a little something-something. Must have been knowing I had another run for Corgan that wouldn’t get me no closer to movin’ up out of the delivery boy business.
Must have been a hundred runs I done for him. Barely scored me a discount on the crystal. No point talkin’ about no respect. I’d have to do ten thousand runs ’fore that happened, looked like. Corgan was just gonna sit up in his big-ass Annandale house and keep sending me down to the corner store for smokes. What it felt like anyway.
It was a fuck ton of responsibility, those runs. I don’t think he realized. He’d been up in the suburbs too long, forgot what it’s like in the trenches.
Well, fuck it. The hours were good enough, even though the eight in the morning shit was a little tiresome. Checking the clock I was a little late. Served them fuckin’ right for settin’ it up so early.
Shaking off the bone deep need for a bump of crystal, I cracked my neck, wedged a pinch of Skoal in my lip, and finished my walk from the airport shuttle station to the rental car place—my own car having been stashed in an out-of-the-way location to be retrieved later, after the delivery was made.
The morning was just starting to heat up and the sun felt good on my arms. If I can help it, I don’t do sleeves. I must have sent five hundred innocent pairs of sleeves to the garbage chute. I had enough tats to make you do a double take to see if I was wearing sleeves anyway, but whatever tight-assed fuck invented sleeves a hundred years ago or whatever, he can suck my dick. Jean vest over sleeveless T from the last Slipknot show I went to. Jeans and Chuck T’s. You see me coming and you might not run away, but you’ll grab your pocketbook a little tighter to you.
Just the way I like it.
They had one of those stupid bells over the door. I never got tired of making fun of them for that. Almost as much fun as a guy named Clyde naming his goddamn business after himself. You got a name of Clyde and you run the hell away from that shit. You don’t fucking advertise it.
I go by Skeeter. Why? ’Cause my shit-ass stupid parents named me Leslie. Don’t s
ee me on TV with an ad for Leslie’s drug courier and general mule services, do you?
Only Clyde wasn’t here.
“The fuck are you?” I asked the yokel behind the counter.
“I’m Brent. How may I help you?” He gave me a smile and I knew he was thinking he wanted me to eat a bag of dicks. I didn’t give a fuck. I didn’t have no fucks to give.
“Clyde here?”
“He had to step out. His wife’s in labor. Are you here for the Tahoe?”
“Yeah. I’m here for the Tahoe.”
“Okay,” he said and he turned to get a set of keys. “Let me just run it through the wash for you—”
“The fuck do I care if it’s got bird shit on it?”
That stopped him in his tracks. “It’s just company policy to—”
“Don’t care. Keys.” I held out my hand, spiderweb palm tattoo ready to snare the keys.
This Brent guy knew better than to fuck with me. He shrugged his shoulders, set the keys in my hand, says, “Clyde said all the paperwork is already taken care of.”
“Fuckin’ better be.” I turned and head for the door. “Thanks, Fucko.”
Hey, Corgan. I got your pack of smokes. I’ll be there soon. Can I polish your shoes for you next? Maybe suck your dog’s dick? Anything you want, sir.
Fuckin’ Corgan.
7
BRENT
That guy was a repeat customer? A VIP? What a douche.
The guy smelled like a jockstrap, had meth-head teeth, and I swear I saw lice in his hair. I really hoped he didn’t get that shit in our car. It’s so expensive to get them out. You have to get the whole interior steam cleaned, and even with that there’s like a ten percent chance it won’t get them all.
Sometimes it was easy to forget Virginia was still the start of redneck country. Who else chewed tobacco in this day and age? It’s a big state and we’re not all lobbyists and government contractors. Dirt bags who haven’t yet slid down to the Carolinas still populate our state like possums. I only wished as many turned up dead on the side of the highway. Especially when they’re rude assholes like that guy.
