“Any weed in there?” he asked.
“Nah, it’s all pharmies. Nothing good.”
“Doug’ll like it. Doug likes pharmies. Give him an early birthday present.”
“I’m not going to turn him into a pill head. Besides, I’m not taking them. I just looked inside.”
Kevin had sounded almost hurt by the suggestion that he might steal the pills, but Mitch had noticed that ever since they had stolen the TV, he seemed to have developed a fascination with criminal behavior. They had gone for a ride to the store to get beer and along the way Kevin had pointed out houses that might be easy to break into, doors that didn’t look secure, mailboxes that might be full of information that could be used to steal identities or credit cards. He had even pointed out a bank and said that it was situated perfectly for a robbery, as there were streets and alleys weaving off in every direction. He had actually sounded like he knew what he was talking about and it made Mitch think that perhaps his time in prison had not been a total waste.
“Well, I’m gonna finish up here,” Mitch said. He was aware that his lack of interest was disappointing Kevin, but he was worried about how far away Duffy might be getting.
“Just thought you’d like to know,” said Kevin.
Mitch heard a thundering in the snow behind him and turned around to see that Duffy had returned and was bounding toward him. The dog jumped right into Mitch’s midsection and knocked him sprawling into the gutter, sending the cell phone sailing off into the snow.
“Goddammit!” Mitch screamed. But he’d had the presence of mind to grab the dog’s collar on his way down, so although he was lying in the snow with a minor head wound, he at least had Duffy back. Duffy thought they were playing a game and nudged Mitch back into the gutter, which was filled with icy water, every time he tried to rise, until Mitch finally started screaming straight into the dog’s friendly slobbering face. Then Duffy shook the snow off himself, his head flying back and forth, and the gobs of drool that had been dangling from his jowls went splattering into Mitch’s eyes and mouth.
The phone, which had hung up on Kevin when Duffy knocked it out of his hands, rang again. It was Doug.
“Wassup, dude?” said Mitch. “I thought you were at work?”
“Dude, I got fired.”
“What?” Doug had worked at the restaurant for four years and despite his continual claims of having goals (like becoming a chopper pilot) Mitch had thought it was Doug’s fate to work there forever. He imagined Doug at age fifty, the head grill cook at last, his pay bloated to twelve or thirteen dollars an hour, making him the highest-paid grill cook in town. Mitch pictured him wandering back and forth behind the line in late middle age, saying things like, “I’m thinking about starting night school to become a welder,” or “Soon I’ll fill out an application to learn massage therapy at the community college.”
“Well, not fired exactly, but the restaurant closed. I guess you could say ‘laid off.’”
“It closed? It’s been there for, like, twenty years.”
“I know. I just went in and it was padlocked.”
“Shit,” Mitch said in amazement. “Dude, that sucks.”
“Well, listen. I was wondering if you could ask Kevin if he had any jobs walking dogs.”
Doug had been out of work half an hour and he was already panicking. Mitch knew the feeling. The dog-walking job was taking up half as much time as Accu-mart had and was likely to earn him half as much money, too, so Mitch had problems of his own without his friend asking for half the work. If being mauled by a fun-loving St. Bernard was the best thing he had going, maybe Kevin’s enthusiasm for the safe-opening might not be a bad thing, he thought. The three of them needed to get together and talk.
“Let’s all talk tonight. At our place.”
“Sounds good,” Doug said, thinking he was being offered a dog-walking job, not a safe-cracking and drug-selling job. “And hey, man, thanks.”
“Sure.” Mistake number three.
Doug hung up the phone in a panic. He had been panicking for close to ten minutes, ever since he had pulled up outside work and seen the waiters milling around outside the chained doors. The general consensus among them had been that it was fucked up.
“This is fucked up,” one of them said.
“It’s so fucked up,” another agreed.
There was a note on the door saying that the restaurant would reopen in a few months and thanking customers for their business. There had been an employee meeting a few weeks earlier and none of the managers had bothered mentioning the fact that the restaurant was going to close, which was the most fucked up thing of all.
“I can’t believe they didn’t give us any warning,” one waiter said. “Man, that’s fucked up.”
Doug hadn’t heard the words fucked up used so much since his last appearance at traffic court, where a group of his fellow citizens had sat around in the same type of shock, thunderstruck by the realization that they were losing a lot of money and there was nothing they could do but accept it. It occurred to Doug that four days of paid vacation, along with his tuition assistance, which had been the basis for his dream of chopper school, were all gone. That was it. No warning, just gone.
He got back in his car and watched his breath steam up the windshield for a few moments, then called Mitch, who had sounded vague and out of breath. He wasn’t sure Mitch appreciated the gravity of the situation but at least he had promised to talk about it later.
He started the car up and pulled back out onto the snow-covered road and hadn’t gone more than fifty yards before a cop car pulled up behind him.
“You know your tags have expired,” the cop said. Doug’s view of expired tags was that the little numbers in the corner of his license plate didn’t affect how well the car drove, so the tag renewal money had gone to repairing a fuel pump. Besides, the money for insurance, which the car had to have before you could get your tags renewed anyway, had gone toward new brakes, so the car could pass inspection, that is, if the inspection money hadn’t gone to repairing a cracked window so he didn’t get pulled over for driving with a cracked window.
How could Doug respond? He could say, “Yes, I know,” and get a lecture on personal responsibility, or “No, I didn’t know,” and get a lecture on vehicle awareness. It wasn’t as if the negative answer would instantly solve the problem. The cop wasn’t going to slap his hand to his head and say, “Oh, you didn’t know? That’s OK then. Glad I could bring it to your attention so you can get it taken care of sometime soon.” No, Doug knew a hefty fine was coming his way. He handed the cop his license and said nothing.
“Your inspection has expired and your insurance has expired,” the cop said after sitting in his car for ten minutes. He handed Doug a stack of paperwork and explained each document while Doug stared blankly, suppressing the desire to scream, which would only have made things worse. “This is for no inspection; this is for no registration; this is for no insurance.” Doug saw the numbers on the tickets and saw they added up to over $400, which was exactly the amount he had almost saved up to take care of all the problems the cop was ticketing him for. “I can’t let you drive this vehicle,” the cop finished.
“Why not?”
“It’s not legal.”
“How am I supposed to get home?”
The cop shrugged. “I can’t let you drive this vehicle.” He walked back to his car, his feet crunching in the snow, and then sat in it, idling the cruiser as if daring him to drive away.
Doug sat and stared at him in the rearview mirror. He looked down at his cell phone and thought about calling Mitch. Mitch would come and pick him up, but he doubted that Mitch had taken care of his inspection and registration, either, so calling him would be like luring him into a trap. How long was this asshole going to sit behind him? How bad could this day get? He’d had no idea when he went to work that within an hour he would have no car and no job.