"Seventy-seven, seventy-eight, seventy-nine, eighty. There! Minus five bucks for that order you delivered late, here's your pay. Don't go spending it all in one place now, kid."
"I won't, mister Maroni."
Jackass.
Chet closed the door to the pizzeria and lifted up the kickstand on his bike. The air was much cleaner and fresher outside, but it was also getting chilly so he had to put his jacket back on for the ride home.
Straddling his bicycle with one foot on the ground, he took his olive green bomber out of his backpack and slung it on, popping the last two remaining buttons in place to close the front over his chest. The sleeves were torn and the zipper was busted, but it was still a smart jacket and fit him pretty well. He didn't have a lot of decent clothes, so he held onto them long after they were worn out.
Chet hoisted himself up, using his standing weight to push down on the pedals and overcome the initial friction as he climbed up the hill. After Norton Street, the ride was pretty level for the mile back to his house.
Or more accurately, his apartment. Hamilton wasn't very urban, but as a city in New England, there wasn't a lot of space in it, either. Ever since his father died, Chet's family sold their house and moved into a flat to save money. The red brick walls of the other tenements blurred by as Chet's wheels spun on the asphalt, trampling over fallen maple leaves and litter.
"Hey watch it!" he yelled out at three kids blindly crossing the street. He swerved around them, barely keeping upright on his bike. Even though they were the ones failing to pay attention, one of the kids muttered 'fucking retard' under his breath. He looked to be about ten or eleven. Chet sighed in annoyance and pushed down on the pedals harder to speed away.
Scrii-i-i-p!
Ah, fuck.
The bottom of his pant leg had gotten caught on the chain.
Just my luck.
Chet closed his eyes and hurried back home, not interested in having any more incidents on the way. The chain was already a mile or two away from busting from the strain of Hamilton's hills.
The cool wind nipped at his nose and ears as his bike picked up speed again, zipping past the lofts in Old Industrial. The hipsters and beatniks milling around were indistinguishable from each other, and from the homeless, too.
The tires screeched as Chet deftly braked and hopped off his bike in a single, well-rehearsed motion. He walked his bike up the three short steps to the lobby, then let it rest against the wall as he collected his family's mail.
"Evening Chester," came a voice from the booth.
"Evening Mr. O'Leary," Chet replied. O'Leary worked security in the building since '08, when the economy shat the bed. The old man was one of the lucky ones who found work again during the recovery, but he made about a third of what he used to in construction, and those glory days were catching up with him in medical bills.
Still, the job didn't ask much of him, and he didn't ask much of it in return. He turned back to his computer and bottle of Hennessy underneath his desk as Chet and his bike squished across the wet floor into the apartment elevator.
Luckily no one else was using it as there was really only room for himself and the bike. Half of the time he'd have to wait a while for other riders to clear out, or lug his wheels up two flights of stairs. Chet pushed the plastic '3' button and waited for the slow doors to close.
When they did, he sighed a bit, relishing the few seconds of privacy and isolation afforded by his metallic carriage. Unlike most moms, his wouldn't care that his pants were torn when he came home, which meant he was saved a scolding. But it also meant that he'd have to spend ten minutes patching it up himself. He let his shoulders slump a bit at the thought.
Chet let the doors fully open before he walked out, letting them clank and crank before they finally slid out from view. He walked out and turned to the left, blearily focused in the general direction of his room before someone almost tripped over his front tire.
"Oops!" came a girlish squeal as dozens of sheets of paper flew out into the air in front of her. Chet immediately set down his bike in the hallway and gathered them up from the floor.
"Sorry!" They both blurted at once. The two of them were on their hands and knees, quickly stacking the fallen sheafs.
"Sorry, Jane," Chet repeated. Jane Chikovani was the landlord's blonde and vaguely ethnic daughter who lived on the same floor as Chet and his mother. Her blue marbles darted around quickly as her deft, slender hands scooped up the last of the fumigation notices that she dropped. Chet glanced at the opening of her low-cut T-shirt, admiring the gentle furrow between her small breasts.
When the stack of papers, now slightly sullied, were returned to her hands, Jane stood up and thanked 'Chester' before flashing him a snaggletoothed grin and entering the elevator. Her eyes were big and bulgy, in a cute way. She didn't have the beautiful, bitchy face of a Victoria Secret's model, but she more than made up for it with her expressiveness, smiling freely and often. Chet always thought she kind of looked like Ursula from the Spider-Man movies (the first ones), but didn't feel it appropriate to tell her about this comparison.
Chet headed back to his apartment, his thoughts turning back to the subject of girls. Girls like Jane Chikovani were wallflowers, pretty fish in small ponds. Judging by the plainness of her clothes, Jane wasn't rich. Helping her father with the apartment probably kept her time and attention away from dating. Or did it? Was she dating? Chet was too afraid to ask; even laid-back girls like her seemed just a bit too far out of reach for a nobody like him. The thought depressed him terribly.
"Hey, mom," Chet said in greeting and acknowledgment as he stood his bike next to the door
"Hey." The 38-year old didn't look up from her program. "Dinner's in the fridge."
"Thanks, mom."
Chet popped the door open and pulled out a tray of macaroni and meatballs, with a bit of bacon cole slaw. His mom had eaten less than half of it, the expectation was he'd finish it and put the tray in the dishwasher. He didn't mind.
He scooped it all onto a big plate, microwaved it (he didn't mind it if his cole slaw was warm) and turned the corner to his room. In a bit he'd have to wake his mother from the recliner so she could have a proper night's sleep in bed before work tomorrow.
Roxanne (not Roxy, don't ever call her Roxy) was a bartender at some upscale joint downtown. She made a decent enough income to supplement the family's savings and his dad's life insurance payouts for the two of them to live comfortably, provided Chet paid for his own college.
She was a skilled mixologist, and she never begrudged him a good drink if he asked for one, which wasn't often. They mostly had low alcohol volume though, since she tried to be responsible with her kid. He never drank with her, as she'd tend to overdo it and then moan about being a 'bad mother', which was kind of annoying.
She was an objectively good-looking woman, though the details on her appearance probably weren't something Chet would want to dwell on. To be delicate, she had a vivacious figure and her face only bore some motherly worry wrinkles. While a part of Chet was disturbed by the thought, the greater part of him wanted her to be happy and find someone to take care of her, so he was happy that she maintained her good looks so far. She was definitely a knockout in those early family album photos with Chet's father.
So why didn't her looks pass on? Chet figured it was his dad's potato head that spoiled the mix, or some weird averaging effect that blended out all the good-looking parts. Except maybe his eyelashes.
Girls did always tell Chet he had gorgeous eyelashes, especially when they needed a shoulder to cry on after their boyfriends mistreated them, or when they needed an ego boost and thought playing with his feelings would give it to them.
Chet opened his laptop and mindlessly went through all his social media feeds, not even caring when the videos were clickbait. He chowed down his reheated dinner, indulging in the lazy feeling of not having to be "on" for some guy in a manager's shirt. The salt and fat swam through his tastebuds, putting an end to his stomach's plaintive groaning. His toothbrush and paste were on his desk, saving him the trip to the bathroom to get them. He brushed his teeth while planning the last couple of things he'd surf on the internet before retiring.
He liked to look up things from the internet's early history: old memes, old flash games, old youtube channels. There was just something interesting about seeing something for the first time when you know all of the people originally involved have long since aged and moved on. And even the stuff that went on to make it big today had changed so much in content and style that the original amateur content felt like it was made by different people. Most of it was bad, to be sure, but even bad things from the past had a quaint and nostalgic quality that made it charming most of the time.
There was a category of simple flash games called dating sims, where you would spend each in-game day performing a set of actions to improve your character's traits, or accumulate money to buy gifts to woo and impress the girls. Your relationship with that girl would progress linearly through different stages, depending on the success of your dates, which consisted of trivia questions, gift-giving, and maybe a mini game or two. The ultimate goal of the dates, or at least the goal beyond which the player lost interest, was to get into the girl's pants. The reward was usually a barely animated sex scene.
Overall, the games were much less erotic than a porn video, but Chet had seen thousands of those, and the games at least gave him a sense of participation and involvement. It was too bad that the pay-off was so disappointing. Art imitating life.
