Wednesday, November 4, 2009

The Boss

The Boss wasn't old when he got to town. He was a grown-up though, no mistaking. Long but chiseled features, and rail thin with skin like beef jerky, he had prematurely gray hair, thinning a bit at the sides and back cut close enough to stay in place under a hat, but long enough it didn't stick up. Gray eyes too, when you saw them through his thick-framed tortoise shell reading glasses, otherwise all you saw under his bushy eyebrows were the dark lines of his famed gunfighter's squint. There was a story that once, about a year after he came to town, he was called for jury duty. He showed up on time and spent a good two hours that morning on a folding chair, glasses on, working on a book of crossword puzzles placed on the seat of the chair beside him. He may have been a little too wrapped up in the puzzle because he didn't hear his number called the first time, or the second, but he did hear the lawyer practically shout his full Christian name from the front of the room. Concentration broken, with one hand The Boss removed his glasses, folded them up and placed them in his shirt pocket, and with the other hand he dog eared his page and shut the book, all while turning to look straight at that "loudmouth sumbitch" exactly the same way he would look at anything else, from two dogs fucking to the President of the United States. A full three seconds later The Boss hears the two words he waited all morning for, "you're dismissed" without a single question asked by the visibly shaken young lawyer. Yes, the power of that look was legendary, but what no one knew was that that terrifying tough-guy glare would disappear as soon as The Boss walked through the front door to his house and put on the bifocals he left on the tall wooden stool by the door on his way out every morning. Reading glasses were OK, bifocals were for old women and dentists.

The Boss had a uniform he stuck to. Twill pants in dark green, blue or brown, black steel-toed shoes and a black belt, topped by a short-sleeved white shirt, no matter what the weather. He also had a short, fat, brown necktie looped over the inside doorknob of his office for special occasions. At home, the white shirt, work shoes and twill pants came off and the flannel, boots and jeans went on after a quick shower and before anyone was allowed to say a word to him. This was the only rule he had that was never broken, bent or stretched. Once, a salesman was ringing the doorbell just as The Boss pulled his company Buick into the driveway. As the man rushed out to meet him, ranting on and on about some new vacuum cleaner, cleaning product or political issue, it didn't matter. The Boss blew past him, keyed open the the front door and slammed it shut on the man's fingers with devastating force without saying a word while trooping up the stairs and into the shower. Work was work and home wasn't home until the stink of work was washed off.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Tom thought

it was damn lucky he was awake and dressed when she called him. If he hadn't been, he wouldn't have checked his messages for hours. It's just not polite to make really important, personal calls to someone's mobile phone, was Tom's considered opinion. Especially if it was outside of work hours. If someone had something important to say, they should call your house. Where you lived. Who the hell knew who you were with or where you were when they called you on a mobile phone? You could be on the toilet or in a bar or, God forbid, driving somewhere. Even without having to deal with bad news over the phone, he was in a bit of an embarrassing situation.

For one thing he was sick. To be more precise, the incredibly strong smell of some kind of dried flower potpourri used, no doubt, to try and cover the equally strong smell of urine from an as-yet invisible cat was doing nothing at all to help with his massive hangover. For another thing, he wasn't at home or anywhere near it, as he had moved out of the adjoining townhouse the previous morning. Everything he owned was neatly arranged into nine cardboard boxes; an expensive garment bag and three well worn pieces of wheeled carry-on luggage. These, in turn, were stuffed into every inch of free space in his large but tastefully foreign car. Topping off the list was the embarrassing fact that the townhouse he was standing in belonged to the woman who, over the past seven months, had signed off on his time and expenses. It was to her that he had announced his defection from the project and the firm they both worked for and it was from her that he had received his eviction notice from corporate housing. And that was part of the reason that during his farewell dinner at the local semi-upscale, American casual chain restaurant, he had bought all of the drinks. The second reason was that he needed a place to stay, she lived alone, liked him, and she wasn't a bad looking lady. Simply put, he knew he could seal the deal and get out with what he thought would be a small amount of smug self-satisfaction.

All of that changed when his sister-in-law made that call.

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Have to post something...

OK, this is the blog where the embarrassing stuff will go. All my artistic pretension, lame stories and scratch pad stuff will go here.

Here's the deal, sometimes I'll spend some time typing up something that I think is fun and when I get ready to post it on my regular site I think...oh crap this is humiliating...and if you've ever been on my regular blog you'll know that that's really saying something. So this is where I'm going to put all of that stuff instead of deleting it or saving it as a draft forever. I might post the same thing over and over as I edit it, but don't worry, I probably won't. Edit that is...hell, I probably won't spell check.

Also, comments will be open and anyone who wants to put me down or call me a jerk is free to do so, although constructive criticism would be nice.

So that's that. No "have to post something today" bullshit over here. Buh-by