Bad Day

It was a typical Friday night at the restaurant, meaning lots of work but mostly stingy tips from young couples too poor to be generous. The restaurant I worked at was respectable and romantic enough so dates did not feel like their partner was being cheap, but the prices were low enough that they could still afford hugely overpriced movie popcorn or whatever afterwards. Thankfully, there were enough older couples and families mixed in to make it worth working since their tips were offsetting the pathetic little ones. Considering wait staff only got paid $3.00 an hour, tips were what we survived on. As usual for a Friday, my money was coming from the quantity of tips I was getting, not the quality of them. Of course, the fact I was a guy meant I could not flirt up tips like the waitresses did. In short, that meant I was busting my ass pretty much nonstop.

The only thing that had made the night worthwhile was when I looked up and saw four heart-stoppingly beautiful women waiting to be seated. My girlfriend Terry, her older sister Lisa, and their friends Monica and Chandra had stopped by! God, she was so hot! Terry's Nordic beauty perfectly offset my Black Irish ancestry. Her blonde hair and blue eyes contrasted nicely with my black hair and green eyes. The only thing we shared was our pale Northern skin that went straight from white to burned lobster red in the sun. Her sister was a slightly older, shorter clone of Terry. Monica was from what I privately think of as peasant stock, being shorter and solidly built, not fat, just solid, with amazing curves, brown hair and eyes and skin that tanned beautifully. Chandra was the one who really stood out among us. Being from Cape Verde, she had extremely black hair and skin, which made us look even paler in comparison.

While we were not a formal pre-pack, they had made it pretty clear that none of them would say no to me when the time came. Of course, there was also the unspoken expectation that they would be the only ones I asked to go with me. Except for my girlfriend, I had not had sex with any of them, nor would I until we were picked up. I still had a little bit of pre-Confederacy morals, and did not believe in sleeping with multiple girls at the same time. Of course, I had heard that polygamy was required in the colonies, but I was not going to engage in it until we were headed there.

Honestly though, even if all three of them turned out to be awful in bed I would still be happy to have them as concubines and not just because they were all beautiful. We all got along really well and had enough overlapping interests to always have something to talk about. I really enjoyed just hanging out with them and talking. I would not lie and say thoughts of jumping in bed with any or all of them never crossed my mind, but they would remain fantasies until we were picked up, if we ever were.

"Hey Mike, how?s it hanging?" Terry asked when they came within whispering distance.

"Same as when you put it away earlier," I replied with a jesting leer, which caused her to blush.

"Ok, I'm jealous. Little sis is getting as much as she wants and I'm left hanging high and dry," Lisa teased.

After surreptitiously making sure the sudden tightness in my pants was not visible, I teased back, "Not my fault you decided to go without. You are the one who swore off boyfriends remember?"

"Yeah, yeah, but when I swore off boyfriends I didn't plan on swearing off sex as well!" was her rejoinder as she gave me a pointed look that did nothing to ease the tightness of my pants.

"Who knows, maybe tonight will be your lucky night," I said with another leer, enjoying watching her blush as I turned the verbal tables back on her.

I quickly added in explanation, "There's a pretty good crowd and a group of ex-jarheads are having a 10-year reunion of their company being disbanded in the back room."

All four of them perked up at that. It was not the thought of a bunch of drunk, rowdy, middle-aged ex-Marines, but rather how a group of them, gathered in one place, would greatly increase the odds of a pickup occurring. Luckily, I had an empty table in my section where I was able park the girls. I was really hoping they could stay for a few hours at least, just in case. Thankfully, as soon as I had mentioned the reunion out back, they abandoned their movie plans and they settled in for a long night, hoping it would be worth it.

After about an hour, of which I only managed to spend a few minutes with them, I finally got a moment to catch my breath since my section was temporarily almost empty. Just as I was heading toward my neglected girlfriend's table, the manager, Jack, whom we all called Jackass, intercepted me.

"Would you mind helping out the kitchen staff and take out the trash?" he asked, as if it was actually a question and not an order. Just once, I would have loved to see the look on his face if I had said, "Yes, actually, I do mind," in response to one of his passive aggressive question/orders.

Of course, as usual, I just gritted my teeth and gave a sort of grunt that implied how much I would love to do the job of the lazy slobs in the kitchen. I blew a kiss to Terry and waved to the others as I headed out back and grabbed the full trash bags. I came very close to herniating myself as I heaved them up. Wondering what the fuck was in them, I tried again. This time I managed to get all four of them up off the floor and I staggered out the back door. It was really stupid to carry them all in one trip, but I wanted to get back to my girlfriend as quickly as possible.

When I got to the dumpster, I dropped the squishy bags and heaved them one by one into the dumpster. As the last bag flew into the dumpster it tore open so, when it hit the pile of bags at the bottom, everything in it splattered out. In particular, a large amount of salsa flew up into the air, arcing gracefully up over the lip of the dumpster and back at me. Luckily, I had turned away as soon as I had tossed the last bag, so it was only a side silhouette I made in the salsa debris field.

For a minute I just stood there in disbelief, with salsa dripping off my uniform and out of my hair. All I could do was look up and say, "What the fuck did I do to deserve this?" Needless to say, there was no apparent answer. Shaking my head in dismay, I started walking towards the back door of the restaurant, wiping gelid globs of salsa off as I went.

Just before I reached the door, I plowed hard into a grey barrier that had not been there a second ago. "Oh for fucks sake, what is this shit?" I yelled at the top of my lungs. Blood from my nose was joining the salsa adorning my uniform as I stared at the grey barrier in furious disbelief. It took a few seconds for the light to dawn on me what the massive grey barrier really was. It had to be a Confederacy interdiction field! That was when I got really pissed, while at the same time my stomach was sinking down to my feet. I knew exactly what its being there meant, and far worse, I was on the wrong damn side of it!

"Hey fuck nuts, I'm a sponsor, let me in!" I yelled as I pounded uselessly on the solid barrier before me.

Bloody fucking hell! My girlfriend, her super hot and horny sister and their two really hot friends were in there, and here I was with a 7.6 stuck outside. Less then ten god-damned seconds earlier and I would have been inside enjoying a mini-orgy, instead I was standing in the reeking alley, all alone.

All alone? Nope, I spoke too soon, of course.

"Sponsor huh? You don't look like much to us, just a coward who wants to abandon Earth and take our women with him as fuck toys," a cold, angry voice said.

A quick glance confirmed that I was screwed. Four against one was bad odds at the best of times. The baseball bats they were carrying tipped the odds from bad to suicidal. I knew some kung fu, but nothing that would help me survive against these punks. I took the only realistic option open to me and bolted like a scared rabbit.

This was just fucking great. I was dripping blood and covered with salsa, separated by a thin grey barrier I could never cross from my girlfriend and a life of paradise with her and her friends, running for my life from a group of anti-Confederacy Neanderthals. That was when I made a critical mistake.

I muttered to myself, "How could this night possibly get any worse?" as I pelted around the back of the strip-mall that the restaurant was in. You should always be careful what you asked, because you never knew when the Fates might decide that it was a challenge.

I raced around the building and was suddenly faced with a tiny bit of evidence that maybe God did not completely hate me. A surprisingly large crowd had quickly gathered outside the grey barrier around the restaurant. It was large enough that I was easily able to lose myself among them before the punks chasing me got around the corner.

"Whew, that was too fucking close," I whispered to myself, while I stood there panting and rubbed blood off my throbbing nose. "Now what the hell do I do?" I wondered aloud.

That was when a random comment by my girlfriend popped up through the sludge clogging my mind. When we had first started dating, she mentioned something about having legal custody of her thirteen-year-old half-sister, "just in case of a pick-up." Thankfully, her sister Meredith was not going to turn fourteen for another month. As I raced for my car, I was thinking that maybe if I presented myself as a sponsor when the Marines went to pick her up, they would take me as well.

Jumping in my car, I jammed the key in the ignition and twisted it, only to have nothing happen but a few slow clicks. All I could do was just sit there in stunned disbelief. So quickly were my rekindled hopes dashed. My eyes were burning with unshed, angry tears at how unfair it was. For a long minute, I seriously considered going back to see if I could find those idiots with the bats so they could beat my brains in. It seemed I was wrong; He had just been boosting me up for the next fall.

It had now become painfully obvious that God, or the Fates, definitely had it out for me. Looking up, I could easily envision a cosmic toilet seat appearing over my head like a glowing halo with the Divine fundament settling down onto it and taking aim right at me. This evening was too fucking depressing to be believed. Giving up all hope, I sent a steady stream of vitriol and invective skyward and slumped in my defunct car, defeated.

When the grey field finally dropped, the mob swarmed in, and then almost immediately they trickled out again, disappointed. I could have told them it was no use, that the Confederacy would be long gone before the barrier dropped. Sighing in resignation, I levered myself out of my car and headed inside, my nearly two hour break finally over. I hoped my girlfriend would be happy with whoever had agreed to be her sponsor. I already missed her bright smile and tinkling laughter.

"Stop it!" I ordered myself and gave myself a mental kick in the pants. Going inside, I was amazingly unsurprised to find Terry and the other three girls were gone. The place was a mess, with piles of clothes everywhere and unmentionable fluids on many tables. With a depressed sigh, I dug in. I did not have the heart to look for my girlfriend?s clothes since it would just hurt too much to see them, so I stayed out of my section. I was going to put off cleaning my area until last.

The real irony was that the only reason I had taken this crummy job was to increase my odds of getting picked up. I had never in a million years thought I would be cleaning up after a pick up I had missed. The only bright side was that there were plenty of purses and wallets left behind, so my ?tips? for the night were going to be excellent. It took a surprisingly long time before it occurred to me that I was the only one cleaning up and emptying the abandoned wallets. Curiosity aroused, I shook off my depressed apathy long enough to see who else was left of the staff. After doing quick rounds, I found the only three left behind huddled in the kitchen griping about being left behind while chowing down on the most expensive steaks we sold. It was not surprising at all that they were the ones I disliked the most, including Jackass. The idea of restarting my life alone while working with them was so unappealing, I simply gave up. I collected a few more wallets and purses and emptied them of cash. I did not feel like it was stealing since they had all been abandoned by people who were going to a place where money was meaningless. I am not sure what it said about me, that I had no problem taking cash from wallets that were left behind, but I never touched any of the hi-tech gadgets that people had abandoned, and it never even dawned on me to take anyone's car keys. In my defense, my mind was not really working too well.

I decided to call it a day and was about to leave when I realized two things, one was that my car did not work and the other was that I was still pretty icky from the salsa bath. It was kind of funny how it had been so overshadowed that I had completely forgotten about it until I ran my fingers through my hair and they got stuck. I slipped out back to the bathrooms, avoiding my erstwhile co-workers in the process. After a quick clean-up in the bathroom, I was feeling a bit better physically and was ready to get the hell out of there. As I emerged from the bathroom, I could hear voices coming from the front of the restaurant. Since I was really not in the mood to deal with people right then, I sneaked through the kitchen and out the back door.

Because my car was dead and I did not feel like waiting for a tow truck tonight, I decided to take the bus to my girlfriend's apartment. I guess I needed to start thinking in the past tense about our relationship. So, my EX-girlfriend's apartment was only a block away from a bus stop, whereas mine was a several mile walk from the nearest bus stop. Also, I might as well grab my stuff from her apartment while I was there, since either her family or her former landlord would be claiming her belongings soon. Once again, my eyes teared up and I angrily dashed the tears away, feeling pathetic and miserable and alone.

The bus was never a fun thing to ride at the best of times. That night it was unbearable. I was alone, depressed, sore and stunk of old salsa. If that was not bad enough, several people were talking about the pickup that I had missed out on. The longing in their voices as they described how much they would have loved heading to the stars with a sponsor twisted the knife buried firmly in my heart.

Since I had never taken the bus to my girlfriend?s place, I had no real idea that it was such a long trip. About halfway there two drunks get on, so then I had to deal with the added aromas of whiskey and stale body odor that clashed nauseatingly with my salsa stench. I came very close to asking if the night could get any worse, but I stopped myself in time, just in case.

"Have a nice night," the annoyingly cheerful bus driver said to me as I got off the bus.

I had never been so close to going postal as I was when the damn bus driver had the unmitigated gall to say that to me. I think the only thing that saved him was that my depression had sapped all my strength.

"I would love to, but the world is conspiring against me," was my surly reply.

I was so depressed when I got to Terry's empty apartment that all I could do was take a hot shower and go to bed. I decided to sleep on her side since it still smelled like her. It was not much, but it did help ease the pain a little bit.

When I got up the next morning, a dull grey light was coming in the window. Crawling out of Terry's bed for the last time, I staggered to the window and looked outside. Naturally, the day I was stuck taking the bus and walking home, it had to be raining. All I could hope was that God was flushing away the shit he had dumped on me the day before. Then I had a sardonic thought,"of course, the way my luck has been going, this rain is probably just a courtesy flush, and there is still plenty more shit coming my way."

Hoping I was wrong, I pulled out my cell to call a tow truck. Sadly, but unsurprisingly, my cell phone was broken. I must have broken it when I collided with the grey barrier. Looking for Terry's phone, I remembered she had gotten rid of her landline to save money. With a loud sigh, I realized I had now pretty much confirmed the courtesy flush theory. Cursing steadily under my breath, I grabbed her hot pink umbrella stashed by the door and headed out into the grey, rainy morning, wondering how much more brown stuff was falling toward me.

The bus ride back to the restaurant was just as awful as the ride had been the night before. The only difference was that stinking homeless people who were taking shelter from the rain on the bus had replaced the stinking drunks from the previous night. The hard seats, hot foul-smelling air and annoying chatter seemed to be a foreshadowing of hell. It was with great relief when I finally saw the restaurant coming up. Eager to be away from the rolling hell machine, I lunged out the door and very nearly fell flat on my face. With a graceless hop and skip I saved my nose from the pavement at the cost of my dignity. Spotting my car sitting in the midst of a sea of abandoned vehicles left behind by people who were on their way to the stars with my pre-pack, just tore my heart apart, again. It was a graphic reminder of what I had missed. The closed sign on the door told me they had not even bothered opening the restaurant that morning.

I tried my car again, just in case it decided to start, but unsurprisingly, it was still dead. I crossed the road to the other bus route to wait for the bus that went closest to my place. As I settled in to wait, I sighed sadly and then swore loudly when I realized I had left the ugly pink umbrella on the last bus and still had several miles to walk in the rain to reach my place. That bus trip smelled better but I was so twisted up with despised longing I could not appreciate it. I was clinging to the faintest hope they would be at my place and hated myself for it, knowing they would not be there.

It was a long, wet trudge through the rain to get to my place. When it came into sight, I raced in and up to the third floor, bursting into my apartment, my empty fucking apartment. Damn it all to hell. It really hurt feeling that last little flame of hope being quenched.

I was not the neatest person in the world, but it was obvious someone had vandalized my apartment. That was just the icing on the cake, adding insult to injury. A few things had been knocked over, some others were missing. Sadly, one thing whoever had been here did not take was the engagement ring I had bought for Terry a few days earlier. It was still sitting on the counter where I had left it the night before, being too chicken shit to take it with me to work, despite knowing she had planned on stopping by. Now all I could do was curse myself for being such an idiot and losing the chance of an incredible memory. I could easily imagine the look of sheer surprise on her face, followed closely by the look of incredible happiness and love that would have lit up the entire room. It would have been the best day of my life. Tears poured from my eyes as I sat at the counter and clutched the small velvet box in my hands. Finally, I tossed it back on the counter and felt something break inside of me.

That little, velvet-covered, black box was the last straw; it would forever remind me of what I had missed out on, so I just give up. I simply could not fucking take any more shit. The idea of trying to rebuild my life from scratch, all alone, was simply too much. Grabbing the engagement ring that I would never get to give Terry, I walked out the door of my apartment for the last time. I did not even bother locking it, since I would not need anything in there ever again. Thankfully, it was only a brief walk to reach a nice, busy road. Now it was just a matter of waiting. Sooner or later, a large truck would come speeding down the road and I would take the step. A small part of me felt slightly bad for the truck driver, but not enough to change my mind.

There, a cement truck; that should do nicely. Now if the light would only stay green, the truck will have enough speed to definitely get the job done. I better not fuck this up. Ok, here we go, three, two, one and STEP.

"Mike!" a voice from the past called out.

Oh crap, I am going to fuck this up! I teetered for a second and then fell over sideways. The damn pothole I stepped in cost me my balance and the truck roared right past me, without touching me. Hands grabbed me and pulled me back to safety. A part of me sadly acknowledged that I was doomed to live, since I doubted I would ever be able to muster up the courage to try to commit suicide again.

Suddenly my face burned as a hand collided with it. "What the fuck were you thinking and where the hell have you been? We searched everywhere for you."

The voice registered, but it was just not possible since she was gone. Blinking away the tears of pain, I looked up to see not only Terry, but Lisa, Chandra and Monica were all standing there as well! The bands of agonizing sadness crushing my heart and soul suddenly shattered and joy poured through me! I simply could not believe they were all there, not after everything that had happened over the last 24 hours. Not caring who might be watching, I gathered not just Terry, but all of them in for a loving hug and kisses. To suddenly see them all again after thinking I had lost them made my denial of the love I felt for them shatter. I knew, no matter what, that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with them. My face felt like it would split from the huge, goofy grin on it. I could barely see through the tears in my eyes, but I did not care. They were here! Somehow, by some miracle, they were here!

Feeling a little exposed, we went back to my apartment. Some emotions were just too intense for public display. It was hard to walk as our little group was pressed so tightly together. Looking at their faces, I was surprised to see the same relief and joy I was feeling mirrored on every face. Our misadventure had certainly brought our true feelings out.

Later, as we were cuddling and telling our stories, we figured out what had happened. It turned out that I was always in the opposite place they were. I had been in the front after the pickup and they had gone out the back door looking for me. They had left me a note on my table, but I had avoided my area after the pickup. When I was out back cleaning up in the bathroom, they had finally given up and come around to the front of the restaurant and were talking to Jackass to find out if he had seen me. While I took the bus to Terry's apartment, they had gone to my place and spent the night hoping I had gotten their note and would show up. Since my cell phone was broken, I had never gotten any of the messages or texts they had sent. As I was taking the bus to the restaurant, they were going to Terry's place to look for me. In my fog, I had forgotten to grab my stuff, so they had not realized I had been there. Not knowing what else to do, they had headed back to my place while I was looking around my apartment and thinking about suicide. They had almost gotten back to my apartment when they spotted me stepping into the path of the cement mixer right next to them. From this side of the situation, after our reunion, the comedy of missteps was hilariously funny, but the gaping pit of despair I had felt when I thought I had lost them was no joke and would never be forgotten.

I looked each of them in the eye and I said, "Never again. Never again do I want to feel like I lost you, even for a few minutes. I love each of you and want to be with you forever. Would you be willing to get an apartment large enough for all of us to share so we can always be together until we get picked up?"

The unanimous and resounding chorus of "YES" from all four of them was the most wonderful thing I had ever experienced. Looking out my window and noticing the grey field which had suddenly appeared around my building was a close second for most wonderful experience.

"That was a cruel thing to do," Clotho said accusingly.

"Maybe, but look how much more tightly their threads are now intertwined," was Lachesis, unrepentant reply.

"True, but still, there must have been a kinder way," sighed Clotho.

Atropos shook her head sadly, "you know their threads have to be connected as strongly as possible for them to get through what is in store for them."

"Yes, I know," Clotho said sadly, her face drawn and tired. "Still, I wish we did not have to put them through what is coming."

The other Fates looked shocked at her comment. After all, they were merely the weavers, the hands of Necessity, not the instigators. It was up to them to spin, measure and cut the threads of life. They had very little power beyond that over what happened in the tapestry of existence. Occasionally, and only in emergencies, they could bump the life threads of a few mortals a little bit, like they had just done to those five youngsters, to make sure they were bound as close together as possible.

Silently, all three turned and looked at the vast mass of tangled knots and mangled, charred threads marring the tapestry of life just a little bit in their future and shivered in unison.

THE END??