Thursday, my day off. Of course, Saturday, I will be calling in sick to watch my ex-girlfriend get married. Then, I will go to her open-bar reception. Then I will probably also call in sick on Sunday, being hung over and all. Then, I will (I hope...probably) get fired on Monday. Should be a good work weekend.
I get up around 11AM, sleeping an extra half hour just because I can. I get up and sit in front of my computer in my tartan boxers. I have two porn e-mails, two jokes, one e-mail from a from a friend in California, asking when I will be coming back again. Two replies for submission guidelines. Writer’s Block magazine also doesn’t want any of the five poems I sent them. That’s fine, because Red Letter magazine doesn’t want the short story I sent them either. Neither of these things bother me, because Buckley Literary Agency feels that a book on school violence is a subject that no publisher would want to publish, but they would love to see any other full length novels I may have, as they think my writing is good. Sure, I have four or five finished manuscripts just lying around.
I find about a dozen porno magazines online, fill out subscription information with the addresses of problem customers, with the ‘bill me later’ option. I then e-mail poems to three magazines, and prepare hard copies to snail mail another two packages. I then reflect on how cool and hip I am because I use terms such as ‘snail mail.’
Around 1PM, Chloe gets up, and we decide to go to the coffee shop downtown for breakfast. We sit in the back, where she has just a coffee, because she is on another diet that consists of never eating. This happens frequently, whenever Chloe decides that she is incredibly fat. She’ll talk about this for several days, and then it will fade. Oddly enough, I can think of only a handful of occasions that I’ve even seen Chloe eat. I get a bagel with cream cheese, and even though they have about a dozen flavors of cream cheese, I opt for the plain old white stuff. I also get a coffee, white with cream and sugar, and a Killian’s Red, which is the best breakfast beer one can buy.
We exchange little conversation though breakfast, with Chloe being largely hungover. I mostly just stare out the windows to my right, out into the courtyard where the goth kids sit in the afternoon, the drunk college kids sit in the evening and early night, and the homeless crackheads congregate in the wee hours of the morning. Dungeons & Dragons geeks used to sit in this café and play role-playing games all day until it came under new ownership, and all those kids were forced back to their parents’ basement with their unacceptable fantasy behavior. Now, drunks such as Chloe Isis and I sit here, trying to nurse our hangovers with copious amounts of caffeine.
“What do you have planned for today?” I ask, more to see if my voice still works.
Chloe just shrugs and grumbles something unintelligible. When we got home last night, she revealed she had acquired two 40s of Big Bear Malt Liquor, and the already drunk girl with the flaming red hair became the even more drunk girl with flaming red hair. The great marvel about most of the people I know–it may be a drunk thing–is that we can stay up drinking until all hours of the night, and get up (reasonably) early in the afternoon, and still function through a day. Chloe and I must have sat on my bed drinking Big Bear (ROOOAAAAAR!) and listening to Fantomas until at least five or six in the morning, and I was able to roll out of bed at 11AM as if I’m some kind of responsible doctor or lawyer, or even a paperboy, because hey, the early bird gets the worm, right?
“What are you doing today?” she asks.
“I thought I would go to a porn shop, get some subscription cards to filthy magazines, and fill them out with the name and addresses of customers who have given me a hard time. Then, I thought I might call some other customers and let them know how terrible it is to be mean to people over the phone,” I reply, and finish my hair-of-the-dog beer.
“Do you have credit card numbers?” Her eyes brighten.
“Oh yeah.”
“Rubin!” she exclaims, waking from the hangover instantly. “Let’s go shopping!”
“That would be brilliant,” I sneer. “I don’t have the card, so all we can do is call and order things. Then we can have everything sent to our house, so they know right where to arrest us for credit card fraud.”
She purses her lips and falls back in thought. “True, true.”
“I probably will order things for the card holders though. They might like it if I’m thoughtful.” I put back the rest of my coffee. “I bet some of them wouldn’t even know they want a big black dildo until I have it delivered, gift-wrapped oh so discreetly, right to their front door.”
“You’re so kind.”
“I’m in it for the little people,” I say with faux compassion. “I just want to help.” I go up to the bar and refill my cream and sugar, topping it off with the most delicate touch of house coffee, and return to our corner table. “So, if Alicia doesn’t want to go with me to this wedding, do you want to be my date?”
“You’re bringing the girl you are trying to score with?”
“Yeah.”
“And you think this is a good idea? What would you rather do, sit and think about how it should be you at that altar...”
“Shouldn’t be me at that altar... Thinking about how happy I am that it’s not me up there.”
“Whatever. Sitting there, hoping you won’t get too drunk to have sex that night, or go with your best friend, Chloe Isis, get really drunk and ruin Zoe’s wedding day.”
“I shouldn’t ruin her wedding.”
“She ruined your life! Ruin her wedding!”
“I wouldn’t really say she ruined my life,” I protest.
“Rubin, you’re a bill collector! You are 25 years old, have barely a year of college under your belt, work as a schmo at a bill-collecting job...”
“Soon to be fired!”
“Soon to be fired from a bill-collecting job, struggling as a writer, and haven’t been able to achieve a normal relationship since you were with her. She ruined your life. I’m sorry I had to be the one to break it to you, Rubin, but someone needed to do this. Now that she has done so much damage to you, it’s time for you to turn around and destroy her special day. Don’t you agree?”
“The wedding is going to be at 10AM on a Saturday. You know how hungover you will be at 10AM on a Saturday?”
“You’re right,” she says. “Take Alicia.”
“So you want to go to the porn shop with me?” I ask. “We can say we just got married, and see if we can get any kind of free samples.”
“Rubin, you’re disgusting,” she snarls. “Besides, that didn’t work at the liquor store. What makes you think it would work at a porn shop?”
Go to Chapter 51
Go to Chapter 51
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