Dollars Per Hour Chapter 30

    I don’t get home until 10:30PM. I was stuck on the phone with a woman who was convinced there was someone in Financial Services capable of restoring her service immediately, even though she was required to pay a deposit before that happened, and our deposit group, like so many other departments, is only open during business hours. I would have hung up on her right out, but I figured it would have been a quick supervisor call, and with 15 minutes left in the day, I didn’t expect the call to last more than a minute or two.

    It would have been too, had not I not gotten a manager who had been hired cold and was on the floor about a week. Despite this being a job done by a subdivision of our department, she called Customer Service and waited on hold for ten minutes. When Customer Service came on and said there was nothing they could do either, the manager requested to speak with a manager in Customer Service, because this was an emergency. Meanwhile, I’m stuck listening to this cavalcade of stupidity, and the manager would not listen to me because even though I had been working for SpectraCom for five months longer, her title meant she must know more than I.

    There is a message on the machine from Alicia, telling me to call her, and that I can call even if it’s late. There is a message from Doc Filth asking why I’m not at the bar. I erase both of them and go down to Chloe’s room at the other end of the apartment.

    “Chloe Isis!” I call out musically before entering. She is sitting on her bed, looking up over a book with concern in her eyes. “How are you, my dear?” I ask, taking off my leather jacket and dropping it in her doorway. I open the refrigerator and look in habitually, as if there were something there I would want to eat that wouldn’t take time to cook. I close the fridge in disappointment. “Are you going to the bar tonight?”

    “I don’t know,” she says, closing her bedroom door.

    “I don’t feel like cooking, and I really want chicken wings.” I pound slowly and methodically on her bedroom door. “Convince me, Chloe, convince me to go to the bar and eat chicken wings!”

    “You don’t sound like you need much convincing,” she calls. Chloe’s bedroom door flings open a moment later and she pushes past me in a whisp of scarlet hair, clawing down the hallway to the dining room and telephone.

    “Does this mean you’re going?” I moan.

    “You twisted my arm,” she says dryly, dialing a number. “Hey,” she says into the phone. “Rubin and I are going to the Spot. You want to go? All right, we’ll be there in half an hour. Bye.” She slams down the receiver and looks at me. “Ready to go?”

    “Who’s coming with us?” I ask.

    “Tommy Guilt,” she replies, and repeats impatiently, “Are you ready to go?”

    “Let me call Alicia first,” I say, going to the dining room and snatching the phone away from her.

    Chloe smiles. “Tell her to come with us!”

    “Yeah, I’m going to see if she wants to.” I dial her number, which I have already memorized. Alicia picks up on the third ring, and I say, “Hey there, you called?”

    “Hey Rubin,” she answers, the smile sounding in her voice. “I was just seeing what you were up to tonight.”

    “Chloe and I are about to go to the bar, get some food, maybe some liquid nutrition. You should come with us. It’ll be fun. Doc Filth is going to be there too.”

    “I don’t know,” she says with a sigh. “Today was a long day. I think I might just stay in tonight and watch a movie or something.” There is a brief pause, and she tacks on, “You could always come and join me.”

    I look over at Chloe and mull over the situation. “Sorry,” I say. “I already made plans with Chloe, and I think she already set them in stone. You sure you don’t want to come?” I ask, despite Chloe’s frantic waving of her arms. “Go eat some chicken wings, drink some beer, then we can come back here and watch a movie. I’ve got some good Italian zombie flicks you might enjoy.” Chloe rolls her eyes at me and goes back into her bedroom. “You know you want to.” I add on seductively, sitting down on the couch and pull out the big guns. “It’s Friday night; you don’t want to stay in on a Friday night.”

    “You’re right, I really don’t, but I’m exhausted. It’s been a hellish week, and I really need to stay in. What are you doing tomorrow?”

    “Hanging out with you?” I ask desperately.

    “Good answer. What are we going to do?”

    “Take over the world?” I ask apprehensively. “I don’t know. I don’t like to plan that far ahead. Why don’t we just wing it and see? How does early afternoon sound?” I hope, my dreaded breakfast with Zoe will have reached its nightmarish climax at that point, and my weak self will not be having pathetic get-back-together sex.

    “All right, but you’d better have some kind of idea by then. I don’t care what we do, as long as it’s fun.”

    We say our goodbyes and I hang up. “Chloe!” I yell. “Are you ready to go to the bar yet? I’m getting sick of waiting!”

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