Thursday, April 21, 2011

Train In Vain

I should have known better than to accept Ellen's invitation. I was working as a temporary clerk at a law firm where Ellen was a senior partner. Part of my job was tracking down old court records and case files for her and she wound up being so impressed with my alphanumeric derring-do that she sent me an email inviting me to lunch. I guess she must have won the case or something, because her email had smiley-face emoticons all over it, which was kinda weird to see coming from an old lady.

And Ellen was really old, like maybe forty or even forty-five, at least twenty years older than me. It was like being invited to lunch by one of my mother's friends, a neighbor that Mom always half-jokingly warned me not to take candy from. I always wondered what she meant by that. Or I used to, anyway.

Don't get me wrong. I mean, I sure was glad to be getting a free lunch and all, but I was afraid that my girlfriend Gloria or one of her friends from school would see me out with Ellen and think that I was dating some old chick. Plus,at work  they make me wear khakis and long-sleeves that
cover up my tattoos, so it would be a double-whammy of uncool if some hot art-major chicks saw me.

I considered the risk of being spotted, trying to do that 'look before you leap' thing that Dad always yells about, except he says it like 'look before you fucking leap, you stupid piece of shit' and we aren't allowed to cuss at work, so I tried to keep my thinking clean.

After some pre-leap looking, I decided I'd be safe as long as we didn't go to Starbucks, since half my class seems to work there, including Gloria's best friend Dan. Dan is a big, good-looking guy, but he's gay, so I don't get upset when she kisses him or stays at his house for a week or two. They have never come out and told me, but I'm pretty sure that Gloria just pretends to date Dan so people don't know he's gay. It works too, because I think I am the only one who has figured it out.

Like, Gloria isn't really my official girlfriend right quite yet, I just know that she really digs me and that one day we'll hook up for sure.

See, the last time my band, The Sickening Thud, played out, Gloria was the only person in the whole town that came out to see us play- she was the only person in the whole club except the manager and the soundman- that's how much she digs me and my band. She even came out from behind the bar so that she could listen to us play while she stacked the chairs on top of the tables and I bet anything that she woulda listened to our whole set if the the douche-bag soundman hadn't come up to the stage and told us  that he was closing early because there was no audience and that we owed him fifty bucks and that it would be an extra hundred bucks if we wanted to finish our set.

We were so busy packing up our gear that Gloria didn't have a chance to make her move on me, so she left before we did, which kinda sucked. Plus it cost me 25 bucks because me and our singer Matt  are the only dudes in the band with jobs so we wind up paying for everything.

Anyway, fate would have it that me and Gloria had about a zillion mutual friends on Facebook, so I sent her a request and she friended me right back the next week! So now all I needed to do was let nature take its course. Unless I got busted  being seen with Ellen. Not that there was anything dirty going on, but it would look funny, ya know what I mean?

Well, I didn't have to worry, because Ellen took me to The Open Flue, which I think sounds like a cool bandname but is actually an expensive high-class restaurant. I had  applied for a job there during my freshman year, but they wouldn't hire me because of my tattoos unless I wanted a job as valet. But then they turned me down for that, too. They said it was because of my driving record, but I think it was really discrimination on account of my tats.

I gotta admit, the food was top-notch excellent stuff. I asked for a hamburger but Ellen ordered a steak for me instead. I told the waiter that I would like french fries and he told me that they did not normally serve french fries, but that he could get the cook to prepare some for me. Pretty classy, eh? And it was yummy too. I had a coke, but Ellen had at least three glasses of wine. She really was reminding of Mom's friend by then.

Ellen told me that she had won the case- it was something to do with a railroad- and the client had given her a train-set as a gift and that I looked really strong and healthy and would I mind coming over to her house to help her put her choo-choo back on track? I didn't know how strong you had to be to put together a toy train, but I guess I musta looked like Superman or something to her on account of her being old and maybe drunk too.

I also figured she meant for me to help her after work or something, but it turned out she meant right then, so after she paid for the meal, we took her Jaguar - that same one- way over to the Belle View part of town, which is big-time rich people territory. She had a giant house with a circle driveway that  had a dancing bird statue in a  fountain inside the circle, which was cool even if the water in it looked a little green and mossy and wasn't really a fountain, since it wasn't moving.

Inside her house  was like the inside of a house you would see in one of those boring dental waiting-room kind of magazines, except it isn't boring in real life, it is more like scary- like what if I accidentally broke something or got something dirty or something like that happened ? I'd be broke forever paying for it.

Ellen said the train was in her dressing room, which had open floor space to set it up on. I figured a table would have been better, but she is my boss and technically I was still at work, so I said ok.

Sure enough, there was a really super-deluxe train set still in the box. It was sitting on top of a dresser drawer. Most dudes probably don't even know what a model train set is, much less how to set one up, but Dad had one and I sorta knew how they worked. I placed the box on the floor, knelt down and looked at the contents. The track was a simple oval loop, it would be easy to snap together.

"Can you handle it?" , she asked. I told her sure I could , no problem.

" Great. I need to change clothes, so don't turn around."

No problem, the train would keep me busy.

But she must've forgot that there was a double-sized wall mirror directly opposite me and that I could see her in the reflection as she undressed. I noticed how slow and careful-like she was taking her clothes off and wondered if she was afraid of wrinkling them and that my mom had some tricks for getting wrinkles out of clothes, but the train distracted me and I didn't pass on mom's wrinkle advice or look at the mirror for a few minutes even when Ellen told me that I had a nice ass.

How could she tell through my khakis? I guess she was just being nice.

"You can look now", she said. I looked.

Ellen didn't look like a lawyer anymore. She was wearing a black shiny outfit that looked like something Catwoman would wear, except a lot less so. I'm embarrassed to admit that it gave me a boner just looking her. I stayed kneeling down on the rug, facing away from her so he wouldn't see me like that.

Not to be to gross or anything, but khakis are lightweight fabric and don't hide boners very well so I didn't want to stand up right then, except she asked me to help light her cigarette for her and took a look right at my privates. Then she put here hand down there and I'm not really gonna say much more because I feel like I really let Gloria down  over what happened.

The next time I see Gloria, I will have to confess about what happened and ask her forgiveness and hope that she still might want to go  on a  date or something even though I'd cheated on her before we were a couple. Love is funny like that.

But Ellen kept making me do stuff and I kinda couldn't stop even though I kinda felt embarrassed about all the 'stuff' , Eventually she fell asleep and I noticed that she'd finished two whole bottles of wine since we got there, so I figured she'd be asleep for a long time and I could finally finish setting up the train. That is when I looked at the clock.

It was nine o'clock and I had to have Dad's car back home by ten and Dads car was still parked at work. I tried waking Ellen up, but she just mumbled some dirty words and went back to sleep.

I should have looked before I leapt, but instead I wound up fishing the keys to her Jag out of her purse . I was going to drive it to work, get dad's car, drive dad's car home and then walk back to work and get Ellen's car. Hopefully she would still be asleep and I could finish putting her train together. The big problem was that instead of driving from  work back to Ellen's house, I wound up hitting a mailbox about a half-mile down the road from there, which is where you found me.

If you let me make another phone call , I'm sure Ellen will be awake by now and she will clear this whole thing up.

.

2 comments:

yellowdoggranny said...

liked this very much

AngelConradie said...

Awesome piece.