I checked my watch again for the third time that half hour. As if mocking me, it read only 9:24. The minute hand had crawled only ten minutes further from the last time I'd checked. I had one of those feelings that this was going to be a long morning, although I couldn't have guessed at that moment that it would be for all the right reasons.
I was sitting in the waiting room of a glass and auto body shop.
'Waiting room' was probably a generous term in the extreme. The shop itself was one of the many warehouses in that neighborhood having been crudely converted into some semblance of civilized space for the benefit of customers. From the outside the building looked derelict, even though located in an up and coming district. Most of the businesses around that side of town were known only to the tradesman and lowbrows who frequented the area and none were visited very often by the everyday Joes like me who happened to find their way down here to get some sort of work done.
And the nondescript door looked more like the entrance to a speakeasy than a business.
When I had arrived at 8:30 that morning, I had been found it open and askew on unsure hinges. The entrance opened to a short rectangular room, with a counter at the far end, and the waiting room going off to the side forming an L shape. Every square inch of the place was covered in clippings, posters and other assorted papers. Here and there was the odd picture of a scantily clad woman or girlie calendar, you know mostly women posing on hot rods and motorcycles, right next to a poster advertising some exciting new feature for the ghetto gangbangers to add to their supped up, gold chrome rides.
It was a thoroughly masculine environment: from the décor, to the banter.
Speaking for no one but myself, I especially appreciated the sexy Miss Chinatown calendar that still hung next to the cash register, even though it was several years out of date.
Notwithstanding my current state of affairs, I had managed to maintain my usual good nature throughout the morning. Considering everything, I thought that was pretty good. Normally I would have been pretty pissed off, and I had been yesterday morning when I had awoken from a great night spent screwing my girlfriend at her apartment across the bay. In the best of moods I had gotten into my car to drive to my office when I discovered that some dumb fuck had smashed out the rear passenger side window on my car. This in and of itself wouldn't have been such a bloody crisis, except the winter rains had just started.
What really ticked me off was that whoever it was had stolen my pair of two hundred dollar sunglasses.
I'd really loved those sunglasses.
So here I was in the waiting room, taking the morning off, canceling important client meetings, all so I could get a damn window fixed before the rain ruined my interior.
I glanced around the room, located through a doorway from the main entrance. It was small, about seven foot by five. It's a good thing I wasn't claustrophobic, 'cause I'd been in bigger closets. The walls were bare sheetrock. No one had bothered to finish off the drywall with mud or tape, let alone paint.
I think the Geneva Conventions mandate cleaner prison cells.
My ass had been parked for the last hour on one of three chairs that were arrayed around a coffee table that looked like it came from the eighties. There was some newspaper that was permanently stuck to part of its surface. The ratty chairs were definitely older than I was. To my immediate right was one of those old red candy machines, where you put in change and get a gumball. All it held now was what looked to be a mix of peanut M&Ms and salted almonds.
The chair across from me, sitting at a grotesque angle, was vacant.
A surly looking young punk who couldn't have been much older than nineteen or twenty occupied the last chair in the far corner of the room. He had arrived about twenty minutes ago with a friend of his, and after the friend had taken off the punk had set up shop in the corner waiting for his car to be finished.
The kid had on a hooded jacket, the hood being pulled up over his baseball cap. The rest of the outfit was typical slacker: t-shirt, jeans and sneakers. He was one of those sloppy looking white boys, with a half-goatee thing growing under his lip that looked more like unwashed dirt than facial hair. A silver eyebrow ring completed the ensemble, which I admit (never having had one myself) was kinda cool looking.
His parents were probably stockbrokers or something.
With the Italian suit and leather shoes I was wearing, we probably couldn't have made a bigger contrast if we tried.
And, no doubt, I looked completely out of place.
The punk glanced up from reading his Playboy magazine and nodded at me, giving me this nervous look, like if I glanced in his direction I might try to make a pass at him or something.
I couldn't quite bring myself to examine the depositions that were sitting in the briefcase I'd brought with me so that I'd have something to do. Instead I just lounged in my chair, half-paying attention to the shit talking going on between the employees and their various customers. I had a pretty good view of the goings on in the other room, since my chair was near the waiting room door.
The employees were a motley crew fit to match their surroundings.
The two main honchos were both young Hispanic dudes: Andy and Carlos. Each of whom spoke better Spanish than English and their hair was greased back with whatever crap it was they put in it. If you were to hold a lit match up to their heads I expect the resulting fire would be something like a blowtorch. The rest of the crew was a mixture of dirty Asian and Caucasian greasers who were running back and forth between the cars with the auto parts and repair glass.
Carlos was the guy who had written down my repair estimate. I started paying attention to something he was saying something to his compatriot Andy.
"Dude, you know it's my birthday," he told the other guy, who couldn't appear more disinterested.
"Yeah, man?" said Andy, and then there was this pause as he filled in paperwork.
Suddenly out of the blue, Andy sang off key, "Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday mother-fucker, happy birthday to you."
There was a loud peel of laughter from one of the guys in the back, followed by general sniggering.
"Dude that was harsh," someone else said laughing.
"So what you getting for your birthday, man?" asked Andy.
"I'm gonna party all night, man," replied Carlos, accent thick, "I'm gonna get all fucked up and shit."
Then the phones started ringing and the conversation died off for a bit.
"My girl's coming by," said Andy, after hanging up his last call, "She called me up on her cell phone. Said she was gonna give me a treat."
"Andy, dude," asked a voice from the back, "She new?"
"Yeah, man," he replied to no one in particular, although adding a wink in my direction when he caught me glancing his way, "Can you believe I haven't been dating for like six months?"
"You?" someone asked disbelieving, "You a player, man!"
"Whatever, dude," said Andy, making some pretty grotesque hand gestures as he spoke, "I almost forgot how my dick worked till I met this bitch. She got all the pussy you want, bro. She all tight and fine, and mmmmm.... I blow before I get it inside, man, it's that good."
There were murmurs of understanding from the guys.
"I wish some girl'd come sit on my dick for awhile," Carlos, interjected, "Everyone should get laid on their birthday. It's like a rule or something."
The punk with the Playboy finally perked up a bit at the conversation.
"Dude," I asked him, "Can I get a look at that magazine?"
I figured if I had to be here I might as well enjoy myself.
He seemed amused by this, "Yeah, man, I got another."
He tossed me the Playboy and took out a copy of some other skin rag. Nothing like some pussy pics to inspire male bonding.
For the next twenty minutes I glanced through some of the porn filled pages and, hell, if I didn't even read some of the articles.
"Mmmm," said someone hungrily, "Damn, baby you looking good!"
This brought me back to the real world and I looked up.
"Good enough to eat," added someone else.
"I hear that man," came another comment from one of the herd, "You hot for me, baby?"
The object of their running commentary was a tall slinky looking girl. She strode on in through the dilapidated door like she hadn't heard a thing they said. No doubt she was used to that sort of remark, especially the way she was dressed.
Her ass was covered in a short black leather skirt, which showed off most of her two fine looking long legs. Glancing down I saw that she was wearing some real shit kickers, probably designer knockoffs, that rode up to her knees. As for the rest of the ensemble, she wore a tight fitting Tweety Bird shirt that struggled to cover her big titties and a purple jacket. The tight ringlets of her jet-black hair were held up in a freaky sort of style that suited her well.
Now she was definitely pretty, no doubt about that.
She looked to be a mix of Latino and something else. She had that hard sort of beauty, streetwise, that comes from too much knowing and too much make-up. But she was way too classy to be confused with a common streetwalker, except maybe by the stuffed shirt set I worked with that is.
"Andy, baby," she whined, going up to the counter and pounding on it with her two-inch long nails, "You kept me waiting, baby...you know how I don't like to wait!"
The guys in the back made jeering noises, joshing around with him. I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about, but all the same I liked the way her ass moved when she shifted her weight.
"Trisha, how'd you know Tweety Bird was my favorite?" asked Carlos from somewhere back there.
"I didn't," she said, suddenly noticing him, "Guess you was just lucky."
"He wishes he'd get lucky," hollered someone from the back.
There was more general laughter from the crowd.
