I took the remote and stood over him as he slept on the couch.
“Bad!” I yelled with the remote in my hand. That was what the Dogs for Dummies book I bought at PetSmart said to do. I was vigorously showing my displeasure with Al’s behavior and associating it with the object.
Al opened his eyes, which from his recumbent posture deeply furrowed his brow, and then he closed his eyes and let out a sigh. He was either overcome with guilt and couldn’t look me in the eye or he was practicing some sort of deep breathing transcendental basset meditation.
I pointed the remote at the cable box and no matter what button I hit, it returned me to the Lifetime Channel. Talk about cruel irony. I was either going to have to get up every time I wanted to change a channel, get a new remote, or spend my life watching cable programming for angry women. The thought of watching endless movies about evil men repeatedly wronging victimized women made me shiver. Going to AJ’s a bit early was a much better idea.
Apparently, there’s no such thing as early for the Fearsome Foursome. It was some sort of existential quirk that no matter what time I got there, they were always present. I guess they merely exist independent of the natural laws of time. They were the only ones in and it was too early for Kelley.
“You have to watch it real close,” Rocco said. “But it’s obvious.”
“Why the hell would the Disney Company have a minister in The Little Mermaid get a boner?” TC said.
“Ministers get boners,” Jerry Number One said.
“That’s not all,” Jerry Number Two said. “In Finland they don’t allow Donald Duck movies.”
“What the hell are you talkin’ about?” Rocco said.
“They got really angry at the fact that he doesn’t wear pants,” Jerry Number Two said.
“Thank God it’s the minister getting the boners!” TC said.
It was a shame to intrude when so much was getting done, but I noticed Jerry Number Two had a very fat binder in front of him. I walked around the group with my Schlitz and sat next to him. I was hoping that sitting exactly opposite my usual position would not result in complete entropy for the universe.
“Hey Jer, what ya got for me?”
“Check this out,” Jerry slid the binder in front of me.
The binder was about an inch and a half thick. I opened it up and saw that the first page was a title page, neatly typed like some sort of FBI report.
Report on Internet Sites Related to Webster,
Web, Spiders, and Related Search Words
Prepared by Gerald M. Freeman
After the first page was a detailed table of contents listing websites and separated into categories. The categories included Webster, Web, Spider, and Miscellaneous Related Words, and were further divided into the subcategories Free Access, Pay Access, Member Only by Invitation, and Non-Pornographic.
“Holy shit, Gerald, this is unbelievable!”
“It’s the best I could do quickly. With more time, I could have got you more detail.”
“More detail? Are you kidding? Where’d you learn to do this kind of work?”
“My old gig.”
“I didn’t realize you used to work. I mean I knew you must’ve…” I began to realize how insulting that must have sounded. Jerry didn’t seem to care.
“I used to be big into computers. I was really into it.”
“Where did you work?”
“In the early eighties I spent some time with the Quantum Computer Services corporation doing Internet stuff,” Jerry took a hit off his Cosmo.
“In the early eighties?”
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t realize there even was the Internet back then.”
“Well, there wasn’t really, at least not like today. We were working on it.”
“What happened?”
“The company changed hands a few times, got bought and sold, and got really commercial. I wasn’t thrilled with the commercialization, so I quit.”
“What ever happened to Quantum?”
“It became AOL.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“No,” Jerry downed the rest of the Cosmo and slid it to the edge of the bar. “I took the stock options they paid me and got out in ’94. Cashed in the stock in ’98.”
“You mean you got stock when it wasn’t worth much and sold it when it was worth a ton?” I tried to keep my jaw from hitting the floor.
“Pretty much.”
“I don’t want to pry…”
“Oh yeah, I got a ton of money,” Jerry interrupted. “I developed the protocol that eventually was used to create chatrooms and instant messaging.”
“I thought you were disabled?”
“Well, I had a few bad trips and spent a little time on a funny farm, but that’s not why I don’t work.”
I bought Jerry another Cosmopolitan and sat thumbing through the report in front of me. It was overwhelming, and it was going to take a lot of time to go through it. I was about to start going through the report when Rudy came in. As usual, he had deep pit stains under his arms, he had his hands in his pockets, and he shuffled to a barstool with the energy of the participants of the Bataan Death March. He looked like a wrung-out, very fat dishrag.
I bought him his first drink and sat next to him.
“You don’t exactly look like the poster child for stress management.”
“There’s some fuckin’ insight,” Rudy said.
“How are the guys doing?” I asked.
“You know, remarkably well, thank God.” Rudy drank half of the Hennessy in the rocks glass. “Both of them look almost unfazed by the radiation-that’s wonderful.”
“How about the other stuff?”
“That’s time-and a little luck. I’m still worried about Mikey because he’s not as stable. They’re both in some pain but getting all sorts of good pain medication.”
“That’ll certainly keep both of them happy,” I said.
After that, the conversation wound down. I got the sense that Rudy didn’t need the company, that he was there to drink and let the Hennessy do its job. I finished my Schlitz and watched the TV in silence until I figured it was time to go.
I bid my farewells and headed out with my head down and twirling my keys around my fingers, thinking, when a voice jilted me.
“Duff?” It was Lisa. It was late and Lisa was way too much work this time of night.
“Hi.” It was all I could think of.
“I miss you,” Lisa said. She looked down at her new Doc Martens. “I don’t know what else to say.”
“I don’t either, Lis. It looked to me from the other night that you found somebody new.”
“You hate me because I’m interested in a woman.”
“Nah, I don’t think it’s that.” I tried to choose my words carefully. “It just seems to me that you found someone new and I ought to move on.”
“Do you have to be so closed minded?”
“I don’t have a lot of experience with this type of thing, Lis.” I never wanted to be in a conversation less. “Look, I got to go, take care of yourself.”
I didn’t wait for her to say anything else, which seemed a little cheap, but sometimes there’s nothing left to say. The situation had gotten to maximum weirdness, and I think I had some hurt around losing a girlfriend. That was then multiplied by the fact that it looked like I lost her to another woman. That wasn’t revolting, but it didn’t fit neatly into any particular category on the hard drive of my mind.
I was turning left on Main heading toward 9R when the headlights in the rearview took me away from Lisa. My buddy in the Crown Vic was back. He stayed with me, didn’t accelerate or slow down until I pulled into the Blue, and then he kept right on going up Route 9R.