Donovan, a young man in his early to mid thirties with hair so dark brown it was almost black and large round blue eyes grinned crookedly and plucked at his light and dark blue striped cotton shirt. He also wore red cotton shorts with some print on them in grey and black and white. “What’s wrong with this? It’s almost patriotic.”
I smiled and shook my head. Apparently he’d never heard of an iron before. You could almost forgive the color combination had the shirt been neatly pressed instead of looking like he’d unballed it after discovering it lost in a corner of some drawer.
It was his day off, and he was visibly more relaxed than usual, not so tired looking. “Sleep in a little?”
“Yeah. Not too late. Had a weird dream, but all I remember is this guy at the end tellin’ me he was gonna commit suicide.”
“Did you know him?”
“No. Some young guy with dark hair. He said it, then looked off toward the broad, grassy base of some mountain, and then the cat jumped up on the woodstove and scared me.”
“In...real life?”
“Yeah. The cat woke me up. The little piece you set pots and pans on is loose, and he jumped on it and it lifted out of the edge a little and
dropped again right after the kid said he was gonna kill himself. It scared me for a second.”
“Then you went back to sleep?”
“No. The cat kept getting into stuff, so I had to get up and distract him. I grabbed some breakfast, then headed here.”
I nodded. “Big plans today?”
The tiredness returned to his eyes. “One day off a week means no rest. I hafta catch up on all my errands and stuff. Gotta spend that money I make.”
He’d officially begun working at age sixteen, unofficially at age twelve. Donovan had held many jobs, sometimes more than one at a go, but never earned very much money. If you brought up the idea of college around him, mentioning how much more college students tended to earn on average, he’d bristle and tell you how many people he knew who had
degrees, but wound up working crappy low-wage jobs anyway, unable to land something in the rather specific field they’d chosen for themselves. He was convinced that the majority of people he knew with high paying jobs had them because they were related to someone or best friends with someone who’d helped get them in. He never asked for handouts. It seemed very important that he always make his own way through life so he could prove to himself how good or bad he was. He’d get upset if anyone ever went out of their way to help him.
“I started working for my Dad when I was twelve, mainly just to be close to him, spend some time with him. I didn’t actually do much work. I remember being outside this one really hot day and this guy asked me for a Coke, and I poured him one with lots of ice and he got mad at me and made me dump it and pour a new one. He didn’t want all the ice. He said he was paying for Coke, not water. I’d have wanted lots of ice ‘cause once the Coke was gone, I could suck it or rub it on my skin...get
another Coke poured over it. He wanted the Coke. Whatever. It shocked me a little because he acted like I was intentionally trying to rip him off. He could’ve been nicer. I was obviously just a kid. That was the first time I noticed how nasty people could be to strangers.
“I still didn’t see my dad much when I was working for him. It was just on the occasional weekend, and it got me out of his wife’s hair when I visited. He’d pay me eighty five bucks a day under the table. Because it sounded funny, I’d actually make him hand it to me under the table like it was secret stuff. He didn’t care if I actually worked or not, and that first guy kinda put me off of it, so I mainly just ate hot dogs and played video games or went fishing after helping his crew set up. They sold concessions for conventions and flea markets and stuff. No big
deal. Hungry people are the worst to deal with, though. Anyone who puts up with that on a regular basis really earns my respect.
“On my sixteenth birthday, my mom tells me I’m starting a new job the next day. She wanted me to go to Wendy’s and apply. I refused. I told her I was gonna work after college, or maybe before, right out of high school, to earn a little money before I went. I didn’t know she wanted the money for herself, screw my plans. We argued, and I didn’t go to Wendy’s, but she set up a job through one of my dad’s friends, and suddenly I was to start work at a mall cafeteria. My first day there,
this woman orders soup and I ladled it into the bowl cheerfully and handed it to her. She shoved it back at me, spilling some, demanding I fill it up to the very brim! I complied, baffled, as she took the overflowing bowl and let it spill on her tray as she walked off triumphantly. Wow...a whole extra half inch of soup, which is, of course, mostly water. I quickly learned that everybody wanted more than we were supposed to give them if possible. People would unwrap the sandwiches in the cold foods section while waiting in line to order hot meals and actually snack on some of the sandwiches and the chips without paying for them... People were sure we were ripping them off on the roast beef, despite there being a scale for us to weigh the portions on
so they could see it was all fair. Everybody wanted a leg and a breast of chicken. It was sold either all white meat, all dark, or mixed cost by the piece. People kept yelling at me, telling me a leg or thigh was white meat and wanting one with a breast. It was so obvious they were trying to rip us off! The steaks were flame grilled, so they’d have a little charring or char marks on the outside, but be cooked to order within and all these stupid elderly people kept sending steaks back, insisting they were burnt, refusing to slice into one and see the
redness within. People would hold up the entire line waiting for spoons in the silverware rack, and when a fresh washed batch came out, the line would move again, but almost no one ever bought anything you needed a spoon to eat with! I was shocked at how stupid and nasty people can be in general. They’d eat their rolls while standing in line, waiting to pay for their lunches, then come back and get another one, trying to say they’d forgotten to pick one up with their meals. We tried having an all-you-can-eat night, but of course, people would pay for one person’s meal, then share all the food with everyone at the table, screaming at
us if we asked them not to. One day, some family came in with food from
another restaurant and sat at our tables to eat it. I hated it there. Passionately. There were torn bags of rolls with evidence of mice eating the breads, mouse droppings all over the kitchen and food service areas, cockroaches everywhere you looked, and flies. A big, fat, ugly woman did most of the cooking and you could watch sweat drip off her into the food. The dishwasher found a slice of uneaten ham on a plate in a stack of dirty ones the bus boy had brought, rinsed it off, and set it back out on the steam table. The ties of my apron caught on a corner of the food bar one day, and the steaks I was carrying fell on the floor. I threw them in the trash, then placed an order for two more. The manager came over and demanded to know what had happened to the steaks I’d just taken. I told him and he went to the trash can and fished them back out. He threw them on the grill real fast, then put them on fresh plates and set them on my tray before leaning in my face and growling that I had better not say a damn thing about it! It was a sickening, very unfriendly place to be. There was this big tall blonde there who had a wicked sense of humor. I liked her, and she was nice enough to me until she got a boyfriend, and then suddenly the two of them treated me like dirt. She had a friend of hers come eat at the place and call insults out to me as I worked. Her new boyfriend even confronted me, telling me
I had better back off. I tried to tell him I only liked talking to her. I knew she wasn’t interested in me. He backed down a bit, but I knew I could never be friends with her again.”
“Did you want to be more than friends with her?”
“Only if she had ever shown any interest in being more than that herself. She never did. I was cool with that. That was when I found out I couldn’t have friends of the opposite sex. It was so stupid. How could I be a threat to anyone? A rival? Look at me!”
Donovan wasn’t bad looking, but not a stand out by any means. There was an innocence to his demeanor that made him sometimes seem vulnerable, effectively hiding the cold, analyzing mind which drove him. It would be easy to dismiss him as a nobody if you never cared to learn anything more about him. He was sometimes seen as stupid because of his wide eyes and gently curious nature. Sometimes he’d take that error and run with it, playing stupid to the hilt if he didn’t care for the person who’d
misjudged him. Sometimes he’d spout pure, frigid science that bordered on the plans of some cinematic evil genius, completely unimpressed by human values or morals. He favored delights of the mind to delights of the flesh, and was not one to pursue possible love interests, but on the rare occasion allowed them to pursue him.
“When I left, I said I’d never work in food service again. Mom was pissed I’d quit, but I got another job immediately, working for a friendly, disgusting bigot lech.”
“You mentioned she’d wanted you to work so she could have money...what was going on with that?”
“Ah. Ate age sixteen, I was making, like, a hundred bucks a week. She told me that’s what the rent was.”
“You were paying four hundred dollars a month for rent?”
“Yeah! You can rent places for cheaper than that without some nasty live-in-bitch who takes your money and beats you!”
I shook my head and gestured for him to continue.
“I was failing school when I worked there anyway. I started falling asleep in class for the first time in my life. I was mentally and physically exhausted. A couple of my teachers asked me what was wrong and I told them about the job, and they wrote notes for me to give to her, but I was afraid to do it. I went from a high B average student to barely passing at all. Except for art. Art was nothing to me. I can practically do it in my sleep anyhow.
“So, I left the mall and got a job at a video store. Short, fat, ugly white guy, prior military was the boss. He was so clueless, you could tell it was his wife working behind the scenes that held everything together. We could rent all the movies we wanted, and I love movies, so I’d rent almost anything. People would come in and ask about some film, and I’d tell them all about it, and soon I got a reputation for being a
pretty good film critic. I was also fastest at ringing people up on the
computer, so even on nights when the place was really crowded, people would get into my line--the longest--because they knew they’d be out the door fast, and I could tell them if the movies they were interested in were any good or not. I loved it there. I hated my boss. He was always putting his arms around me and two of the other guys, standing there almost hugging us like we were his kids or something. He’d buy us milkshakes as treats for no reason. Then he walked in on me one day when
I was taking a shit. There was only one bathroom, upstairs by his office. He barged in while I was sitting there, looked me up and down real slow while he stood there, apologizing, then finally closed the door over. I asked the other guys about it and they all said he’d done the same thing to them. I made a sign for the door that said ‘occupied’, and told everyone we could hang it on a tack at eye level so these accidents wouldn’t keep happening. Of course, they did, strangely... Then I found out that if you locked the door from the inside, it acted locked until someone turned the knob from outside. I think it was rigged
like that. Bob kept coming in and standing there, watching us pissing or
shitting while he apologized. He was also horribly racist. He hated black people. One day, he demanded I follow a family to the back of the store to make sure they weren’t stealing tapes because they all had long coats on. Me and another guy pointed out it was raining, and he actually stepped outside to make sure we weren’t lying. He was always convinced black people were stealing from him. He’d stand by them himself if he was available, the whole time they were there, pretending to look for a good movie, hoping to catch them stealing. He never did catch anyone at it. It was all too ridiculous and sick. When I quit, a male friend of
his actually called me at home and tried to convince me I was doing
something wrong by just leaving. I should give Bob a second chance. I wasn’t behaving very professionally. I think he was in on the whole let’s-check-out-young-boys thing. I ran into him later when he needed some art done, and when I sat at a table across from him to show him some sketches I’d done, he patted the seat next to him and said, ‘I won’t bite...not you, anyway.’ Whatever that meant. Sicko creep.”
“You never told anyone?”
“Just my co-workers. They already knew. Some bosses take an awful lot of
liberties with their employees. If you’re desperate for work and you have no other choices available at the moment, it can be terrible trying to put up with some of these assholes.
“From there I tried to have a newspaper route. At first it was all money, money, money! The newspaper collected for me, and I’d just earn an hourly salary plus commission for each person on my route. Then they turned collections over to me and things went bad fast. I found out that if people don’t want to pay, or payment is late, until you get some cash outta them, the paper takes it out of your hide! Somebody pays for every paper that leaves the printer one way or another. I had a few clients who’d pay late, or refused to pay at all, so I was told to hold their Sunday papers until payment was made. All that does is cause angry
people to scream at you over the phone all day Sundays, demanding to know where their paper is! Some of them would go to the main office and pay their bills, and I’d get a call Sunday afternoon or evening when I was in the middle of something, and it would be someone at the office telling me I had to go deliver a paper to this person or that person who had just paid their bill. Why on earth didn’t they just give them a paper at the office? Sometimes I’d be sent out three or four different times during the day to do this, going to some irate asshole’s home to drop a paper off and getting screamed at in person. Sundays were hell. People sometimes would go to pay their bills, but deduct for the Sunday
papers they hadn’t received, and since I’d had the papers in my possession--even though I’d been instructed not to deliver them--I’d have to pay for those papers myself. I started losing more money than I was making. The next thing I knew, I began getting delivery sheets with new clients who didn’t exist on them. I’d have to pay for those papers,
too. I’d drive to some new address and find that it was a construction site and no homes were up yet, or the address didn’t exist at all. This would happen every morning. One or two new addresses each day. I went to the office and this girl and I went over a set of city maps and I was able to show her that some of the streets listed on my client sheet didn’t even exist. She said she’d tell somebody, but the bullshit kept building, and I was starting to have to take what little money I had in my savings account and pay for these damn papers! I started calling after work, demanding to speak to whomever came up with my client lists, and I’d get disconnected, or be given the name of someone who hadn’t
worked there in months, or would be patched elsewhere, told to ask for a
particular person who, it turned out, didn’t exist, either. If I went to the office in person, I never got farther than the girl with the maps. Something very fishy was going on, and I was going broke fast. I received a letter in the mail telling me I owed over $500 in lost and undelivered papers. That was the last straw. I carefully documented everything I could, I made copies of maps, compiled all the lists of bullshit addresses and highlighted them, wrote down every contact I’d
tried to make with people in the office, and dumped it all on the editor’s desk. He was the cousin of a girl I knew. He called the next day to ask if I had copies of everything, because the envelope with all my evidence had disappeared from his desk before he’d gotten too far through it. I didn’t. I’d dropped off all my equipment in front of the building the day I’d dropped off the envelope, quitting. I never received another notice that I owed this $500+ dollars, though. Stupid thing is, two years after I’d quit, people would still call my house to scream at me if there was something wrong with their delivery. I
explained I didn’t do it anymore, they had to figure out who their new delivery boy was, and some of them didn’t believe me. That job was so corrupt, so messed up. It cost me hundreds of dollars. I don’t think it
was just me, though, ‘cause every time I went in there to complain, there was always someone else at the front desk demanding to know why they had to pay hundreds of dollars for papers they couldn’t deliver. Sometimes kids’ parents would be in there screaming about it. Someone...or a couple of someones were certainly making a fat profit off each new delivery kid. What a racket.”
I mentioned, “It’s hard to believe a place like that could be so corrupt...”
“I’ve just started,” he told me, sighing. “From there I went to this
place out at the airport that fuels the planes. An airplane service station, I guess. I was only weekend help. My job was to count all the money in the vending machines, keep hot coffee and donuts available for the pilots who hung out there, water the plants, take phone calls, set up appointments for flight lessons and charter flights, and talk to incoming pilots who needed fueling. It was a cake job. Nothing to it. Nicely overpaid. But there was this guy there...some psycho creepy freak. He was bald on top with wispy side hair and bright blue eyes that might never have ever blinked.” He smirked, acknowledging his exaggeration. “He was one of the fuelers. There were three of them. Dumb guy, nice guy, psycho guy. He’d let the other two work and so long as the boss or the owner wasn’t due in, he’d sit at a desk behind me and stare at the back of my head, twirling a razor around his fingers like a magician with a coin. The first time I caught him at it, I stared back, startled, and he just stared at me, only the razor moving. Unnerved, I
finally turned away and tried not to accidentally face him again, checking on where he was by seeking his reflection in nearby objects. He’d do it every time he was at work, but not doing anything. Sometimes this girl would call and ask for him, and I’d take the message or get on the radio and let him know, and he’d come into the building and lean over the counter into my face and ask me brusquely, ‘Was it my girlfriend?’ I didn’t always know for sure. ‘What did she say?’ Just to
let him know she’d called. ‘Where was she?’ Don’t know--she didn’t say. ‘Was she at the mall?’ I don’t know. ‘Do you think she was at the mall?’ I really don’t know. ‘Did it sound like she was at the mall?’ I have no idea. And this same exact conversation would go on every time she called, except sometimes he’d add, ‘Did she sound upset?’ I don’t
know...I don’t think so... And then he’d sit his bug-eyed self down at that desk and stare at me, the razor blade just suddenly there, twirling all around his fingers. He’d sit there silently for hours...stop laughing. I swear to God this guy was real! One day, out of curiosity, I was watching him stare at me and do the razor thing, and I dodged suddenly to my left. His eyes never moved. He just kept staring at the spot where I’d been. The razor never nicked him. So then I knew it
probably wasn’t personal...but it still was sure creepy as hell.”
I couldn’t stifle my chuckle. It sounded too silly to be real. Donovan
kept talking, seemingly aware of how that story had sounded, but unconcerned with my opinion of it.
“Then I got a job with a local art museum. Gift shop. Easy work. hardly
anybody ever went there. It was a dusty dud of a place. Most of their money came from sales of the art in the gift shop.”
“You were in your element!”
“No. Not at all. It wasn’t art like anything I did. I draw fantasy pieces, and this was all wildlife. Most of it was sculpture anyway. I wasn’t there long when a big chain of clothing and kitschy quaint home stuff contacted the place to see if they’d like to sell the shop to them. They’d rent the space, bring all their own merchandise, and be a separate entity from the museum, handling all their art sales and commissions, too. The museum people could concentrate solely on the galleries and acquisitions, the gift shop would be self-sufficient, the
incoming company paying the staff and everything, doing nothing but turning over rent to the museum. There were five of us working there part time. Me and this hot chick who was a concert cellist were the top sales people. She sold expensive art like it was nothing to drop a few thousand for a piece of painted canvas, and I could sell little cheap souvenirs like they were the hottest collectibles ever. I mainly just
liked to play with the souvenirs, which caught people’s attention. All she had to do was exist, and she drew plenty of attention.”
“You were attracted to her.”
“No. Not at all. She’d speak to me as frankly as if we were close siblings. She’d admit anything to me. I was very fond of her and felt protective of her, but it was obvious she was her own person and I’d only ever drag her down. I can appreciate something fine without
desiring it. It never occurred to me that we could ever be an item, and I think she knew I felt that way and respected it. I was more like a big
brother to her. She and I could’ve been friends if things had worked out differently.
“Anyway, the jerks with the retail chain got hold of our clueless, beautiful leader and started to literally wine her and dine her and
shmooze with her badly, trying to find out how attached to us she was and if she could be manipulated. She was so shallow, it was a no-brainer. She was a former beauty pageant winner and model-”
“No attraction?”
“At first she seemed nice enough, but I quickly learned how brainless and selfish she was. I’m so glad looks alone don’t do much for me. Not that anyone like her would ever find anything attractive in someone like me. The retail jerks kept assuring us that we would not be fired as we renovated the whole gift shop for them, received and placed all the new merchandise, created a brand new inventory system for them. They’d buy us lunch from fancy places while we busted our asses, but it was always brought to us--we were never taken miles away to exclusive restaurants and hotels like our shallow little Venus was. She kept assuring us we would not be fired, but then she turned all the security cameras on us instead of on the merchandise, and I got in trouble when I came into work one day bent over with bad back pains and this girl I was working with had me lay on the floor while she walked on my back. There wasn’t anyone in the museum, as usual, but you couldn’t tell that by looking at
the tapes of her helping me. Our stupid young manager thought we were doing something flirty or erotic or something. Very strange. She was actually looking for reasons to try and get rid of us all. The rest got in trouble for equally stupid things. It was to help ease her own guilt when she eventually got rid of us.”
“She fired you--not the retail jerks?”
“She fired nobody. She was always just a figurehead anyway. The retail jerks asked her to start cutting our hours in an effort to see how long it would take for us to get the hint and leave on our own. I saw the schedule accidentally. She hadn’t posted it yet. I’d been cut from five days a week to three. Everyone had been cut back ridiculously. No one could survive with so few hours, so little pay. I immediately left and got a job working for a security company. I showed up the next day in my uniform and slammed my keys to the museum on the counter and stalked back out, never saying a word to the brainless little twit. She was
glad. As the others failed to cope with the way things were going, a couple of them tried to contact me about it, but I never got up with any of them. They’d all started foolishly turning on each other toward the end anyway, each believing the other was ratting them out or making up things about them to get them into trouble.”
“But it was all on the security tapes?”
“That, and the manager was going ballistic over stupid little things
that might’ve happened a year before and never fazed her. She was gunning for us to keep the fancy dinners and bonus checks rolling in. She yelled at me over an incident from the year before when I’d been injured and missed some work. I’d handed her a doctor’s note at the time, but she brought it up again and yelled at me over it. Like I said, I think it was all to help her alleviate any guilt she might otherwise
feel over stabbing all the rest of us in the back like she did.”
He paused to sigh again, his demeanor growing more and more dour. “Security is a great job if you need money fast. After that, get the hell out. I guarded condos on a resort island. It was supposed to be seasonal, but the owners of this one building liked me so much, they asked if I could stay on during the off season. There was an incident
where this dumbass broke into the building and I confronted him. The cops showed after he’d fled, and I actually got in trouble over it...I was told I was just a walking uniform, never meant to be put in actual danger. But, the condo owners were impressed with my heroics. It was easy work, but thankless. Renters showing up for the season thought I was a bellhop and wanted to pay me to fetch their luggage for them. I soon discovered that a few of the guards from other shifts actually did bellhop work for the tips. We were not supposed to be doing things like that. You couldn’t watch the building while you were rooting through
someone’s trunk for all their vacation crap. Some of the renters were the kids of wealthy parents. They’d show up to party despite noise ordinances. They’d get drunk and high and I’d have to ask them to keep it down when the other renters complained. They’d hang on the
chandeliers and throw mattresses off the balconies, damaging things that
weren’t theirs, then calling me an asshole when I tried to convince them
they needed to at least tone it down before someone called the real police. When the season ended, more than half the guards left, too, and we were terribly short staffed. I was suddenly asked to pull double shifts, working sixteen hours straight, with a one hour ride back to where I was staying at the time. Then they started asking me for triple shifts... Someone would be sent to relieve me an hour early so I could
drive to another site, nap in my car in hundred-degree heat, and pull another shift of at least six hours, getting to leave an hour early so I could nap before my next shift began again. I grew terribly sick. I’d chug caffeine filled beverages and candy bars to help stay awake, then choke down sleeping pills to force myself asleep for the brief times I had to sleep in. I started walking in a daze, unable to sleep when I was off, unable to stay awake while on shift. The caffeine aggravated my old injury, causing severe internal bleeding, leaving me anemic and exhausted. I started vomiting real food and could only hold down chocolate milk and granola bars. My weight plummeted. I stank all the
time ‘cause I only had one uniform, and I could throw it in the wash whenever I had a chance to nap, but would have to put it on wet and go to work that way if I wanted it clean at all. It was polyester. It stank. If I worked in air conditioning, I’d get bad chills from the wet clothes. I started falling asleep at the job. Sometimes people on
balconies would flick lit cigarettes down on me while I was on patrol. They’d argue if I caught them without parking permits on their vehicles.
They’d berate me if I refused to let them in when they didn’t have keys to the place. At one site, I had eight buildings to patrol. Because they couldn’t always find me when they needed me, the idiots who lived there
started calling my boss and telling him I was sleeping on the job somewhere, though they didn’t know where and couldn’t prove it. Funny thing is, I never did sleep on the job at that site. There was no place to sleep. It was eight hours of straight walking around and through all of those buildings. But, they kept complaining, and I finally got fed up with it and walked off the job. Rich fucking morons. Money doesn’t buy brains.”
“It sounds like you were physically unable to keep going anyhow.”
“Yup. The stress was amazing. I had to walk out or punch the next moron who confronted me. I’m a very non-violent, non-confrontational person. It was too much.”
“But, you worked for another security company.”
“Eventually. I also briefly took a job as a grill cook at a dive. That was a cake job, too, except for the girls who kept trying to flirt with me or kept asking me to dance. I eventually started bringing books and hanging out in the kitchen even if I had nothing to do.”
“You didn’t like the attention?”
“From drunk, high, and underaged girls? What a compliment! Some chick doin’ lines off the toilet tank lid in the ladies’ room thinks I’m hot! Whoo-hoo! How many beers or tequilas before I’m lookin’ fine, huh? Yeah...that’s what I wanted. To get fucked by some trailer trash with too much makeup and sequined polyester who smells like a cigarette and has needle tracks along her arms. God, yeah!”
“There was nobody-”
“It was a dive,” he emphasized. “Not a bar. Not a club. It was on a dark, lonely road in a very small rural town. A cinderblock building without windows filled with faded paper decorations from long past holidays, vinyl and chrome chairs, tables balanced on flattened matchbooks and cardboard coasters. The cook had to go to Johns Hopkins for a triple bypass, so I filled in for awhile. I made eighty five bucks a night whether I stayed and worked the whole night or not. All I could eat. It was safer hiding in the kitchen anyway. Not so many flying fists
and chairs back there. I also used to wear costumes for promotional events like new shopping mall openings. I got thirty five bucks an hour, but you could only wear the costumes so long before they started suffocating inside. I’d do two or four hours, then split. I got canned when a woman complained I was taking too many breaks. I was wearing a rubber duck mask that day and a yellow furred suit. They had a live
band, so I went outside and started break dancing. Everyone loved it, but I couldn’t do it long without getting winded, and the mask was clingy and kept filling with condensation, so I’d need long breaks to recover. I think the dumb bitch shoulda tried the costume on for herself. She’d have understood then.”
“Even without a pre-existing respiratory condition.”
Donovan nodded. “Nobody cares. Nobody understands. I prefer working for people who’ve done my job and know what I’m going through. They listen better. I respect them for having tackled the same tasks.”
“You worked those jobs while you were employed at the museum, right?”
“I think so. Grill cook, yeah...I think I did the costume thing a little before then. And the farm.”
“Yes, you were a volunteer there.”
“Sorta. I never actually got paid.”
“So tell me about your next stint in security.”
“Like I said, it’s good for fast money. It was a different company. Different clients. I had a real badge this time instead of just a patch. I got a jacket, too. My main beat was a factory. Huge place. I usually guarded it late at night or on weekends when it was empty. Stupid employees liked to entertain themselves by making up stories. When I was briefly sent to a new site for a while, the people at the plant decided I’d been caught doing oral sex with a female employee and was fired. Idiots. They all seemed surprised when I returned.
“My main responsibilities included checking all the safety equipment at
the site, making sure the employees followed all safety procedures, and
general surveillance. The employees hated us, and I found out why. They
had a time clock in the building, but if they were running late, they’d use the one outside in our guard shack. They’d hand us their cards to punch because they weren’t allowed in the shack with us. This one girl liked to be mean to employees she personally didn’t care for, stalling before punching their cards so they’d get in trouble for being late. I’m pretty sure she was the main reason they disliked us. I was always being told, ‘That’s not your job!’ when I asked someone to put their safety glasses back on. One of the morning shift guards sold baked goods his wife had made. The employees seemed happy with fresh, warm breads and
cakes for breakfast, but the guard, a corporal, knew he could get in trouble for pulling a stunt like that. He worked with a really funny, really nice bright kid who was also a pothead. I never ratted him out because I’d learned early on that most of the people I’ve encountered in my life have been addicted to some drug or other, and all seemed convinced that marijuana was the least dangerous thing you could take. Besides, our captain was also an admitted pot smoker, so why bother telling on anyone?
“I mainly worked the graveyard shift and weekends, and I loved it because I was almost always completely alone in the dark night with all the keys and a machine that let me know every time a door was opened on site. I knew if I was truly alone or not. I could operate the gates from the shack and had video cameras I could focus on anything suspicious.”
“It sounds like a very secure place already.”
“Twenty-foot high chain link fences with barbed wire topping. Huge street lamps illuminating the outside. Aside from the combustibles they dealt with and that I had to go check gauges on every hour or so, I felt pretty safe there all alone. The place was so big they had three-wheel bicycles to ride around with, and I’d help myself when the lights went out, speeding through the building, along the paint and assembly lines, through the warehouse and the test racks, sometimes singing loudly just for fun. They had garage doors that operated on a pull string, so you could tug one as you headed for the door and it would open before you
had reached it. I’d try to peddle outside, then turn quick and peddle
back in before the door had closed again. That’s when I found out they
had motion sensors and wouldn’t close on anything blocking the door’s descent.
“I had to check certain points during the night just so my captain would
know I was actually making rounds and not sleeping somewhere. They’d fired the last weekend guy because they could tell from the machine that recorded when doors opened that he’d enter the main office area and stay there for hours before another door signaled he had left the area. I discovered a flaw in the system...a door to the basement didn’t record, and I could enter on one side, exit the other and escape the building with the machine recording I was still inside. My captain noticed the
machine kept saying I was in the building and had been there for hours
even while I was standing beside him shaking my head in wonder at the flaw in the system. I never explained it in case I needed to use this convenient little feature. I never slept on the site, though. I never slept on any sites with that company.
“My co-workers kept complaining that I took the job too seriously. At all my jobs, I was always seeking the most efficient ways to do anything and would re-organize anything I could get my hands on. People thought I was sucking up, but I’m actually kinda lazy and just wanted things to go smoothly wherever I was. Why take twelve steps to do something that only requires two for the same results or better? So, I got promoted fast. You started as an officer, then after six months to a year, based on performance, you might make officer first class. Another six months to a year you might make corporal. I went from nobody to corporal in only four months. They started me on new sites, introducing me as the best guard with the company. I had sixteen guards working beneath me, some of whom had been with the company for a year or more, and boy was there
some resentment! A lot of them quit. Instead of being motivated to get their asses in gear, they decided they’d been slapped in the face. That created holes in the schedule, and who do you think got to fill them?” Donovan allowed his head to roll back and groaned. “Once again I was working double and triple shifts at multiple sites. At one site there was a lot of outdoor patrolling, and me being susceptible to respiratory
infections, I managed to develop walking pneumonia. I was outdoors in
the black of night armed only with a Mag-Lite, in snow and rain and sleet and hail and wind. Sometimes my coughing would drown out the sound
of the wind roaring in my ears. The people at that particular site actually called in for me one night, reporting I was leaving the site due to illness after they found me in the bathroom coughing up phlegm and blood, more blood running out of my nostrils. I got in trouble for that. I had a fever of a hundred and two and wound up in the emergency room, but I was chastened for leaving a site.”
“Then you quit that job?”
“No. I quit some months later. In the spring. Y’know, I actually had to work Christmas Eve and Christmas Day? Double shifts. All alone. Nobody called me. The girl whose cousin had been that newspaper editor I told you about knew I was there alone and brought me a blanket. That was my Christmas gift. I didn’t even have anything to give to her...”
“How well were you acquainted with her?” I asked him.
“She was older than me. Real smart girl. I think she took pity on me. She’d allowed me to stay on her couch while I worked for the previous security company.”
“That was one of the times you were homeless?”
“Yes. I’d hoped she’d take pity on me sooner, but she had another friend in even more dire straits who she’d allowed to move in with her for a time. I understood that. I stayed on her sofa off and on for three months. She was seldom home herself. A very nice girl. We never quite meshed enough to be really great friends, though.
“Anyway, I left the second security company after a particularly ugly
blow-up involving that nice kid who smoked pot and a wild girl who’d
recently been assigned to one of my sites. Her name was Bonnie. She looked like she’d just stepped out of an MTV video. Gorgeous. Said she could sing and dance. She wore her uniform blouse tied in front above her midriff, unbuttoned for maximum cleavage. I was surprised nobody got on her case about it, but I think she held everyone in thrall with her innocent, yet sophisticated nature, those huge brown eyes dusted with gold shadow...”
He glanced my way and I smiled at him encouragingly.
“Uh, no. Definitely not my type. She had a police record, which I also found surprising, and admitted she loved doing cocaine on the weekends and at parties. She was much too wild for my tastes. It was also a bit bewildering to watch her get away with damn near anything just by batting her eyes. I guess that’s how she got the job. I was nice to her because she seemed able to soothe disgruntled employees who came to
complain about stupid shit just by playing sympathetic and pouting while
she stroked their hands-”
“Women, too?”
“Most of the females at the site were disgusted by her brazen flirting, and probably jealous of her looks, too. We seldom had trouble with female employees there. Most of their complaints were of foolish, frivolous natures anyway. It was easy to shoot their stories full of holes. I had a couple of them confront me...over what, I was never quite sure. It always had to do with some stupid rumor one of them had invented and was floating around. The men’s complaints were usually legit, but often based on ignorance. Like I said, they were often trying to tell us what our job was and wasn’t, not really knowing everything
their bosses had hired us to do. So, there were quite a few complaints there in general, but seldom anything serious.
“Then one of the supervisors at the site--not one of mine--allegedly discovered a baggy half full of marijuana in an area accessible only to
the security guards...and any of the higher-ups with keys to the place. Drug selling and use was quite common at this site, but I’d never caught anybody in the act, and nobody would testify since they were all afraid of losing their jobs. Again, because drug use has seemed such a commonality, I never went out of my way to expose anyone. Like I said, my own captain was an admitted drug user...
“So it was decided that a ‘random’ drug test would be given to the guards. Four of us were chosen for this. Me and a new kid who was trying to earn money for seminary school, then the morning kid who smoked pot and Bonnie the party girl. The owner of the company was a heavily decorated former New York City police detective, and he came on site to
ask me what I knew of the incident. I didn’t know anything. The baggy had been discovered during the morning shift. He asked, out of the four of us being tested, who I thought might turn up dirty... I didn’t understand why he wanted to know this. He’d know the answer as soon as the tests were over. I felt trapped, so I mentioned vaguely that the one guy came from a rather...streetwise neighborhood. That he might have been mixed up in something at some time, but I didn’t know for sure. Then I mentioned that Bonnie liked to party and maybe hung out with a rough crowd sometime-”
“You said she had a police record?”
“Yeah. Battery charges. Twice. Once for punching a pregnant woman in the stomach. It was caught on video camera, but she still got away with it...pretty poison.
“We went in for the testing, and three of us went through with it. Bonnie panicked and refused, which resulted in her immediate dismissal. Me and the seminary school kid came out clean. The other kid quit before the results came back. He was excited because he decided to take some of the money he’d saved up from working there and go to college. Bonnie decided to confront the company owner and threaten lawsuits.
“There had been rumors she was dating a guy who worked at the site, in the factory. That was against the rules, of course. Proved true . She called to say she’d be in to get her last paycheck, and she started threatening me. I immediately warned my supervisor that she was returning to the site, and my captain said to make sure she could not
enter the guard shack. I was to hand her the check through a high window
and that was it. Seemed strange to me. She showed up with the boyfriend. He wanted to beat my ass. She stood outside the guard shack, trying to coax me out by telling me I was a coward, hiding in there with the door locked. Her boyfriend was only slightly bigger than me, but a known fighter and troublemaker. I gave her the check, and then she shocked me my spitting my own words back at me...the very words I’d mentioned to the owner of the security company when he’d asked who I though might turn up dirty on the drug test. He’d told me I could confide in him,
that it would be between us alone... He betrayed me. Why, I never knew. It was tempting to rat out my captain at that point, but I didn’t need more people after my ass, so I quit. How could I stay at that site with this wacko chick’s pissed off boyfriend waiting for me in the plant?”
“But, Donovan...you know martial arts.”
“Sure, but as a guard, we were forbidden to engage in acts of violence.
Like I said, I was a walking uniform, never meant to be put in any actual danger. I’d been warned by some of the other guards that if I ever got in a fight, I’d have to rip my badge and patches off so no one would think I was representing the company. The company would never back us if it came to that. I couldn’t afford a court battle on my own. Sure, because I’d been certified through the state police and the FBI, my word would gain precedence over anyone else’s in a court of law, but only if the case involved something non-personal between me and whomever. Martial arts can’t save you when you’ve been ordered to cower and protect your head until help arrives in a violent situation. Remember I got in trouble for confronting that guy at the resort?”
The idea of doing work of a law enforcement fashion, even the most basic
sort of patrol and surveillance work, with no weapons or means of self defense sounded strange to me. “Could you at least carry mace?”
“I did until I finally quit, but I had to hide it in a pocket because it was forbidden. Bonnie never gave me any trouble, and I think her boyfriend avoided me afterward because he was afraid I might try and make up lies to get him in trouble and have him fired, too.
“I worked as a telemarketer for half a day. They liked me because I sounded like a commercial when I read the script. Most of their employees sounded like they were bored when they read or stumbled over big words. When I started taking calls, almost everyone hung up on me immediately. A few people interrupted me to start screaming at me. Then there was an elderly woman who sounded like she was succumbing to
dementia. She didn’t know if she wanted vinyl siding or a new screen room. She couldn’t make up her mind at all. I wanted to tell her it was okay, nevermind then, so I wouldn’t have to keep bothering her, but my supervisor was listening in and expecting me to pressure this poor woman into handing over whatever money she might have had to us. I couldn’t do it. I can’t pressure people into anything, and I won’t prey on the addled. My supervisor jumped in and promised we’d call back at a better time, then glared at me and stalked off, pissed. Can you imagine if this woman had been on a fixed income? More than half of what most elderly
people take in goes toward outrageously expensive medications...” He shuddered, a look of extreme distaste on his features. “I can’t fleece people. I left after the first shift. They never paid me for those first few hours, but I later heard they’d packed up and fled the area sometime later. Said they were with Century 21...but I heard that was probably bogus.
“So then it was off to the local mall. I applied for security, but wound up getting a job in retail. Clothing.” He laughed, gesturing at his current attire. “Y’know, hungry people are the nastiest, but the customers at that place were among the stupidest I’d ever encountered. Mostly women. Please don’t think I think women are stupid...but it’s obvious where the stereotype comes from. Many women don’t even seem to
want to try and become something better. So many seem content to not
work, just entertain within their petty little social circles, live off their husbands or boyfriends, and pop out babies like PEZ dispensers. Don’t worry,” he added, “I don’t have a very high opinion of men in general, either.
“Women would walk up to me and ask stupid things like, ‘What goes with
these blue jeans?’ Anything. They’d get pissed at me. They’d try and switch price tags on items, peeling one off a lesser priced item, then trying to stick it on a higher priced one, like I couldn’t tell the sticker had been messed with. They’d try pulling fast ones with buy one, get one free sales. You get the lower priced item free. They’d buy two items, then later return the higher priced one, thus getting the lower priced item absolutely free!They’d try to return items years old,
stained, and frayed, unaware we could look it up and tell when it had been in the store last. They thought 50 percent off with an additional 20 percent off meant an item was 70 percent off, because they were too stupid to understand percentage math, then get mad at us when we rang up the items higher than they thought they’d be. In all fairness, it wasn’t uncommon for us to be directed to mix non-sale items with sale items, the fine print on the accompanying sale sign explaining which items were which. They figured most people wouldn’t feel like getting out of line again to search for something else and would just go ahead and buy the
full priced item anyway. Sometimes we’d get mark down sheets from the parent company where things would get placed on the sale rack at only a penny less than it had been at full price! Of course, most shoppers are too stupid to realize they’re getting ripped off. I don’t think the company cared if they ripped people off since so many customers went to such extremes to rip the company off, especially at Christmas. I hated Christmas there. Piles of clothing on racks and on the floors, people yelling we’re out of something they want when we just can’t find it ‘cause some kid’s made a nest of new clothes under a display so he can
nap there. The children were horrible! Parents would literally turn them loose and they’d break shelves by hanging off of them, coat their hands with lotion from the bath & body department then wipe them all over racks of new sweaters, they’d crawl from changing booth to changing booth, going under the walls to surprise half naked shoppers. Sometimes kids would just leave the store since their parents weren’t watching them. They’d steal our markers and draw on displays and clothing, they’d go behind the counter and get into some female employee’s purse, they’d eat the lip balm testers... It’s not the kids’ fault really if nobody watches them and they weren’t brought up better.”
I said, one eyebrow raised, “And you left there because?”
“Yet again, I was singled out for being intelligent, alert, and a fast learner. We had a meeting after our first Christmas to see who would stay on after the holidays. Another employee encouraged me to study this handbook for manager trainees, so I read it. At the meeting, I was the only one who could answer specific questions about company policy and procedure, despite being the new guy. My boss told me I was gonna be a manager trainee. I didn’t care. I hated the place, and I’m not money motivated. The job was a cinch, but the customers could make you want to show up for work one day with a semi-automatic and just go to town on
the place. I wonder what makes postal workers do that? Can their job be
worse than retail at a shopping mall?
“They originally paid us commission, and I was still consistently always
the number one or two salesman despite shunning the hard-sell strategy we were almost violently encouraged to perform. A couple of the other employees didn’t make as much money ‘cause they were part time only or not aggressive enough, so I would ring some of my sales under their codes to help them out. They knew I did this, but no one in management did. They put up with enough that I felt they deserved it. It didn’t hurt my standings any. Then they decided to pay us hourly instead. Whatever. It saved a lot of fighting between employees on the sales floor. The more aggressive ones would literally steal sales away from the less aggressive ones, and the whole idea of it sickened me.”
“You try to be fair, don’t you, Donovan?”
“I try. I can’t always see what the fairest way is, though. Sometimes I err trying to be helpful. Now and then I have to step in and get a little fairness for myself, but nobody likes it when I do that, so I’ve learned to just get by.”
“You’re not aggressive about anything, are you?”
He considered for a moment. “I’m an aggressive learner. I can’t learn
enough. I’m an aggressive artist. I’ll throw conventional systems and ideas to the wind and start something new anytime. I aggressively try to improve things around me...like making work more efficient and such. Two paths converged in the wood and I...I whipped out my machete and blazed myself a whole new way to go!”
His eyes sparkled as he said this, and I had to smile at him, but even this mere allegory hinted that Donovan chose his battles himself, putting himself through hell if necessary to see where his new way through the wild woods might lead him.
“I left the clothing store because the original manager quit and the new one was another shallow, backstabbing bitch. There was an assistant manager who swore I was trying to claw my way past her to the manager spot, but I didn’t care about titles or pay raises at all. Money’s nice, but I won’t get it by hurting someone else. She’d been there longer than me, so I could’ve cared less if she’d become manager and I just stayed assistant manager. But a totally new woman was brought in. And she felt threatened by both of us. Now I had two females gunning for me, and the new manager kept trying to use me to keep the assistant manager in line.
She’d threaten to replace her with me. Told her I wanted her spot. Meanwhile, the assistant manager started trying to make me look bad. She’d make up stories of how rude I’d been to customers, and she’d tell the manager I’d left the store a mess the night before so she would have to open late cleaning up after me. It was bizarre. She’d say I’d done a display incorrectly and it would have to be taken down and done right.
She really went after the fact I wouldn’t do the requisite hard-sell,
despite the fact I sometimes beat her in overall sales.”
“Where was the manager during all of this?”
“At home. We had a handbook sent to us each month from the main office, and it rehashed the basic store rules as well as gave us the new layout plans and sales tactics for each season... It specifically said in the beginning of the book that the manager had to work five days a week at the minimum, and always work on Mondays when the inventory sheets were sent with all the new sales printed on them. It also specifically said that the book should never be removed from the store. The manager’s name was Edna. She took every book home with her after she started working with us and never, ever worked on Mondays...or most days, for that
matter. If her supervisor called for her, we’d been instructed to say she was making a bank run, then were supposed to get hold of her and let her know she was wanted. She’d call from home and lie about what was going on in the store.
“Eventually, the assistant manager got pregnant and wound up leaving. The manager saw me as her next target and refused to make me assistant manager because she knew how easy it would be for me to take over her job. Short staffed, she hired a remarkable woman named Faye, and Faye immediately went gunning for Edna’s job.”
I had to ask, “What made Faye so remarkable?”
Donovan smiled, focus inward. “She was old enough to almost be my mom, but didn’t look it. She was as honest as the day is long, a strong family woman and true believer in Jesus. I have to admire her because there was nothing fake about her, and despite being a homemaker, she also intended to make something of herself. Strong female role models are scarce outside of fiction. She told me right away that she was gonna challenge me for the assistant manger spot and I told her she could have it. She busted her ass in that store, and I stepped aside and encouraged her, but all that happened was that Edna got scared. You see, Faye
wasn’t afraid to not only find all the flaws and corruption, but expose it--not to promote herself in any way, but simply because there was no room in her world for it. She gathered her evidence, and I answered her questions, and she confronted the district manager in an effort to oust our dishonest store manager.”
“Faye got fired.”
“Oh, you betcha. At which point, hurt and confused, she naturally suspected I may have had something to do with it, but I assured her I was trying to leave the ship fast before it sank completely. Somehow, Edna convinced the district manager that she didn’t need an assistant manager because the store was so small after all, so there was never any talk of promoting me. Other employees who had seen what had happened to the assistant manager and to Faye left in a hurry, but they all kept stopping back by to see if I had left yet. They suspected I’d been made
assistant manager and gotten a big fat raise. They started thinking I might be clever enough to have used all of them like pawns in some big, devious chess match, eliminating my competition. Feigning being a nice guy. Most of ‘em were female. I’ve noticed many females think along those lines... They think we guys are a lot more clever and nasty than we really are. They think we think as much as they do about the stupidest little things. I don’t like working in a mostly-female atmosphere. Too much to think about. Too much plotting and calculating, worrying, fussing. Overthinking. It’s like they need life to be more complicated just to justify it. Life’s much more simple than that. A lot of ‘em would do better to put those overworked brains toward more
productive enterprises.”
“You don’t think men and women are equal?”
“Of course not. But, the line can’t be drawn squarely between them. There are no groups in reality where clean lines can define them completely. What I mean is, some men are better than some women in some ways and vice versa. Lumping so many variables into so few groups and
trying to say that’s what totally defines them is realistically absurd.
Here I suggest that a number of women might not be that smart compared to men in general, yet the person with the highest measured IQ in the world is Marilyn Vos Savant. Of course, IQ does not denote genius as is so commonly believed. It merely denotes the speed and efficiency of a human brain at processing stimulation. I believe imagination is what denotes true genius, and thus far, imagination cannot be measured by a test. While men on average score higher than women in IQ tests, imagination knows no gender, no race, no discernible characteristics
aside from its own preponderance.”
This from a guy who’d been homeless several times, abused throughout life, and barely achieved his high school diploma. His sensitivity and observational skills served him exceptionally well. Donovan was
brilliant not only through artistic expression but also through the swift maturation of the wisdom he’d earned in his three and a half decades on Earth.
“How can you not be money-motivated?” I asked him.
“Money pays the bills. That’s all it needs to do. I don’t need a big, fancy set of wheels or a palatial home on manicured grounds. I don’t need to weekend in Aspen or Cancun. Don’t need to see Europe or lose myself in Africa. I work to pay my bills. If I earn enough for something frivolous, well then, that’s a bonus, but I’m more apt to try and save it than spend it. I mean, I buy the occasional comic book, drop a few bucks playing video games or slots, or treat myself to a nice dinner now and then, but a lot of fun things in life are free or close to it, and
I’d prefer to have a little stash set aside for emergencies only. I’ve dined with Senators, traveled through most of the states and into Canada, I’ve met celebrities, signed autographs as an artist...yet I’ve almost never had any money. At most, I think I’ve only ever had maybe a thousand dollars on me at once, and I’m sure it dwindled into car
repairs or eye exams, dental visits, or veterinary bills. I’ve never had more than a thousand in my bank account, and I think I only average maybe two hundred dollars. I live paycheck to paycheck, and it’s taught me I don’t need much to get by. I’ve already gone bankrupt. Been hounded for months by creditors. I’m always in debt. I’ve had to hock personal items to pay the rent. I used to want to be rich and famous. Then I saw how invasive fame could be. Then I saw how many fake friends money can draw. If I made enough money to live modestly, but comfortably on my own, then I would. Anything beyond that would go towards an emergency stash and charities.”
“You would say poverty has taught you that you don’t need much to survive.”
“Exactly. It hasn’t been a happy lesson, or fun, but I’m better for it,”
he assured me.
Chris has been fostered at the Crowley boot camp since he turned seven. At sixteen, he is finally ready to run away because his foster father is an abusive person who works Chris and the other children to the point of exhaustion. All he has left of h
Happy Halloween. A volume of Horrible Haunts & Twisted Tales taken from the horror books La Belle Rouge has written every October for a decade and a half. If you have read her works in the horror genre, you know the invitation is for you to enjoy thr
