Ryan looked up at the clock on the wall and sighed. The 48 year old couldn't believe that only thirty minutes had passed of the eight hours he was required to put in at the Pigeon Hill Tri-County Help Center. For perhaps the hundredth time this month alone, he asked himself how he had gotten into this fix.
A few months back, he'd been involved in what he liked to refer to as a 'traffic situation' due to his seizures and had pulled over or rather into the middle of the road into the median, and there had been a little involvement with the police during this situation as well. And while he didn't cause any wrecks and wasn't given a ticket, handcuffs were involved for some strange reason and his license had been suspended for six months as well; also involving community service to prove he was an upstanding citizen and not just another crazy college student having another random reaction to their 'weekend activities.' So as a requirement that every citizen who had been placed into this category to prove themselves, they were required to have a hundred hours of community service in order to start the process of whatever they were trying to get out of or back to be able to be doing, which in Ryan's case, that would be driving, and getting out of what he liked to call, getting out of being on 'house arrest'. And while it did involve an investment of time and energy, most people had no problem meeting this task.
They volunteered a day or two a week and finished up their prerequisite fairly quickly, usually only taking a month or two to complete, because for most people, namely drunken college students, none of them also had a full-time job to clog up their schedules. Ryan however, who lived nowhere close to the Pigeon Hill Tri-County Help Center, he worked 9 hours a day, knew almost no one in town, and could only get rides to and from work during the day because his mom couldn't take much time away from his crazy dad who was battling dementia and selfishness disease. So this meant filling his eight hour requirements at night, the worst time of all and borrowing his mom's bike to make the 8 mile trek to 'The Hill' as everyone like to call it if you were from around that area...which unfortunately for Ryan, had been his high school nickname, making this requirement that much more fun, or in Ryan's case, a nightmare.
To make matters even worse, because of time restraints, Ryan's community service now also took up most of every weekend and all of the really good jobs were already taken by college students who had been at them a while and could do them during the day. All Ryan had been able to come up with was the graveyard shift answering phones at the help center. A job he really thought sucked the big one. After all, who wanted to spend every Saturday night listening to a bunch of loser's problems? Especially when they could be at the movies with Charlene Darling, namely him!
Ryan had been dating Charlene for three weeks now, and while he hadn't gotten halfway to second base, he was sure that it was only a matter of time before he went for the gold. The word was that Charlene was the kind of girl who went all the way. You just had to catch her on the right night, when she was really in the mood. At least that was what he'd heard around where he was working.
The big problem was, with most of his weekends tied up with this community service nonsense, Charlene wasn't the type to spend her nights at home. So while she was dating Ryan, she was also going out with Eb Dawson. The Brown-haired work-a-holic was pretty sure that Eb hadn't gotten any further with Charlene than he had, but that could change with the flip of a coin. It would be just Ryan's luck for Eb to be the one out with her on a night when she had a major case of hot pants.
"Pigeon Hill Help Center," Ryan said into the microphone of his headset as he answered another call.
It didn't take more than a few seconds for Ryan to realize that this was what was considered a Class Two call. Those he could handle, as they were usually just people who were lonely and wanted someone to listen. Class One calls were people with real problems and Ryan always passed them along to the supervisor on duty without fail. He had enough problems of his own without trying to solve anyone else's.
As he listened to his current caller's tale of woe, Ryan's mind drifted back to the night one of his calls had turned out to be an obscene phone call. He had only been at the center three weeks and, thankfully, the supervisors had just stopped monitoring his calls on a regular basic. The female caller had been incredibly vivid in describing her body and all the things that she wanted him to do to her, and her to him. It hadn't even mattered that she sounded a little old, because she had given him a major hard on. By the time she was finished, Ryan had to hold a newspaper in front of him just to make his way to the bathroom.
The voice on the other end of the line this time was hardly as interesting as the one from that night, and Ryan was glad when he was able to finally bring it to a close. The call had lasted almost a half hour. Only a dozen more like it and he could call it a night.
"Mr. Hill, I'd like a word with you," La-a Jenkins, the shift supervisor called out across the room. "In my office." she added in a harder and much louder tone that meant right now.
"Great, what did I do now?" Ryan asked himself as he took off his headset and punched the code into his phone position that would list him as being unavailable for incoming calls.
Crossing the floor to the small, mug walled enclosure in the far corner, Ryan racked his brain for anything he might have done wrong and came up empty. It was an unusual feeling to not be guilty of something or other when called into the office, here or at work. He couldn't remember the last time, if ever, it had happened.
"Yes, Mr. Hueston, I'll see to it personally," La-a was saying into the phone as she motioned to the empty chair in front of her desk. "No, it's no problem at all. We're more than happy to help out when we can. Yes, sir, you have a good night as well, and enjoy your trip."
La-a took another minute to make an entry in the folder on her desk before turning her attention to Ryan. With nothing else to do during the short delay, Ryan reviewed what he knew of the shift supervisor. In her mid-forties, La-a Jenkins was one of the Center's few permanent employees, having been there for over ten years. She wasn't married, he knew, and even with all of the gossip that got traded back and forth about who was seeing who, none of it had ever involved Miss Jenkins. If she had a social life, it was kept quite private.
Not that she was unattractive, at least not bad looking for a woman her age, Ryan thought. She was probably pretty hot back when she was in high school. The Hispanic woman had a nice face, short, reddish brown braided hair and a body that, while not the kind of figure you'd find in some of the men's magazines Ryan liked to look at, was a lot better than his mother's or most of her friends, who were much older than Miss Jenkins's age.
In fact, the only thing negative that Ryan could really say about the woman was that she was a little too straight-laced and talked a little too loud for his taste. The center was probably her life and when she was on shift, she ran it by the book. There were three other shift supervisors, and all of them were a lot more laid back. Still, he had to also admit that, except for one time when he'd really screwed up, La-a Jenkins hadn't come down on him too hard. So he really didn't have anything to complain about.
"I have a special job for you, Mr. Hill," La-a said as she closed the folder and dropped it into the completed box on her right.
Ryan wasn't sure he liked the sound of that. Her voice was a little too friendly and not nearly as loud as she usually was when she talked to most people around the center, something that was never a good sign.
"Don't look do worried, Ryan, I have a feeling that this is going to be right up your alley," La-a added as she took note of the worried look on his face.
Her use of his first name didn't exactly inspire confidence, but then again, maybe he was reading it wrong he told himself.
"You have a car, right?"
"Unfortunately no," he answered looking down at his shoes. "but I do have a bike which I use regularly to get back and forth to here."
"Good enough, I'd like you to go to this address, and see a...Miss. Hueston." she answered as she handed him a small card with the address on it.
"And what do I do when I get there?"
"Basically, the same thing you do here, listen to someone's problems and see that they don't get into any further ones."
"Since when do we make personal visits?" he asked, thinking there was a lot more to this then she was telling him.
"Well normally, we don't," La-a admitted, "but Miss. Hueston is a very special case.
Hueston, Ryan realized, was the name of the man she had been speaking to on the phone when he came into the office.
"Look, let me put it all on the table and you'll see how this can work to your advantage," La-a said, he tone shifting ever so slightly.
This caused warning bells to go off in the young man's head. It had been his experience that it was never good when someone wanted to tell you how something they needed done was to your advantage.
"Woody Hueston, is one of the single biggest contributors to this center," La-a began. "His donations help keep us in business so to speak. So, when the situation calls for it, we're willing to go a bit further than we normally would for other people."
"Some pigs were more equal than others," Ryan thought, remembering a quote from one of his English courses back in his own college days.
"So what's the problem?" Ryan asked, when what he really was thinking, what can I get out of this?
"Before I go any further, I have to ask for your promise not to discuss this with anyone else. After all, Mr. Hueston is an important man and he values his privacy." she stated. "I can count on your discretion, can't I, Ryan?"
"Of course," he smiled, suddenly remembering where he'd heard the name Hueston before, hearing his music on the local radio stations and on Youtube. There was a picture of him in the outer office turning over a check at some charity dinner. An old guy in his later stages of life, Ryan remembered.
"Good," La-a smiled. "So let me explain."
Ryan was all ears.
"From time to time, Mr. Hueston is called out of town to take care of his business and his music concerns," she began. "When he does, he usually arranges for someone to stay over with his granddaughter Miss. Hueston while he's away since Miss Hueston's kids are all off to school or doing otherwise and other unfortunate events have left her flying solo. Sad to say, this afternoon he was called away somewhat unexpectedly and it wasn't possible for him to make those arrangements. When this had happened in the past, we have provided a substitute."
