Tag: just goofing around

Salazin – Three

Bandon said, “You ready to go, Dee?”

He always called me Dee. I liked it. Bandon was a good choice for the Nautilaus’ captain. He’d grown up around ships, had learned to fly, flew A-10s in the Air Force and then F-22s. A Stanford graduate, he was as all kind of amazing as I was below average.

I’d met him through his wife. She’d come to work for me as my personal assistant after she’d divorced Bandon and moved back to the Bay Area where I lived and worked. Now they were back together as crewmembers on my air ship.

“I am, Bee,” I said.

Bandon stood beside me. “I take it you haven’t seen nor heard from Salazin.”

I put my cell phone down. I was going to call Salazin again, but why?

“He said he wouldn’t be here,” Bandon said.

“I know.”

“He also said that we were to launch at ten.”

“I know.”

“And you know, it’s ten ten now.”

“Yes.”

“Salazin also said that if we launched too late, then we might as well not launch.”

I said nothing.

“Everything is green.”

I nodded.

“It’s your call, chief.”

I nodded.

Salazin had said all those things that Bandon said, but he’d never said why it was so important for us to launch at ten. He was an amazingly accurate and prescient forecaster, and the force behind the Nautilaus’ construction.

That’s why I believed he was an alien.

“Come on, chief. You’ve trusted him this far. He’s never been wrong. Why stop trusting him now?”

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Salazin – Two

Mom said, “Grandpa Paul left you five thousand dollars.”

It was another beautiful California day. Ready to head for work, I was feeling joyless. I would be eighteen in five days and worrying about whether my light blue Subaru, now ten years old with one hundred and forty thousand miles and about the same number of rust holes, would make it through the week. My older brother, Rory, was in the Air Force. He’d just celebrated his second year, and had a bought a seven year old Mustang. I was beginning to think joining the military might be the way for me to go.

Five thousand dollars was a fortunate. When I think of Grandpa Paul, I think of hams on Easter, Pall Mall cigarettes and Iron City beer. I couldn’t believe Grandpa Paul had left me five grand. I’d loved the man when he was alive, and now I loved him more.

“I can buy a car,” I said. I’d been picking up the Auto-trader and a couple of those other paper rags that have car ads and ogling them like they were Playboy magazines.

“You should save it for college,” Mom said. “You’re going to need to pay for classes and books, and you won’t be able to work as many hours.”

She always made that speech. I’d argued against it but her logic was better than my emotions. I knew I couldn’t beat her. Feeling bitter about life’s unfairness, I said, “I know,” and stormed out because I knew that she was about to start talking about how important a college education was and all that bullshit.

Out in the Subaru (which started on the first try, after cranking it until the starter began slowing down, thank the fucking gods), I let out my frustration in a spew of swearing and a few hot tears. While I was doing that, I saw Salazin’s list.

I remember that day well, because that’s really when I made the decision that let me become a billionaire.

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Salazin – One

It’s time. Salazin isn’t here. I’m not surprised, but I’m sad and disappointed. He said he wouldn’t be here, and he isn’t, but I’m still sad and disappointed.

His first words to me were, “I need money.”

I ignored him. Salazin is broad shouldered and muscular, and doesn’t seem to have any hair that I saw. Black and shiny, he looks almost inky blue in some light. That’s why I ignored him. I try to be hip and cool, but I’m too much like Dad. Black people scare us when we’re alone. I didn’t realize that. I learned that of my Dad and myself almost twenty years later: black people scare us when we’re alone.

Salazin thrust a hand out at me. “Hello.” He grinned with porcelain white teeth. His teeth always amazed me. “I am Salazin.”

Shaking his hand to be polite, I said, “That’s nice.”

Besides being afraid of Salazin because he was black and muscular (and also spoke with an accent) and I was alone, I was not a happy camper. A month away from graduating high school, I worked at the new Home Depot part time, the same place where Dad worked in the evening.s Dad was six months away from retiring from twenty years in the Air Force. The second job was needed to meet our nut. California was expensive that way. Besides Dad’s military job in civil engineering and his Home Depot job, Mom took classes at the community college, and was a security guard there at night, and helped another woman sometimes with her business cleaning houses.

Heather broke up with me a month before, right after Prom, and I was looking forward to taking classes at the same school as Mom. I had no idea what I wanted to do. I was smoking a little grass, drinking some, and sometimes smoking cigarettes. I wasn’t big, very good looking, or smart, and had no talent for anything that anyone had found yet.

It was depressing to realize these things about yourself. The thing is, if you’d asked me about it then, I would have called bullshit on you with great defiance. It took me about ten years to realize those things about myself, too.

Salazin said, “What’s your name?”

“Dylan.” Mom had name me after the poet.

“Dylan.” Shaking my hand hard and grinning, Salazin said, “I need money.”

He moved to my table. “I know the stock market.” As he talked, he pulled a folded piece of pocket from his pants, unfolded it and spread it out on the table. “Look at these stocks. If we could buy them, we can make a fortune.”

“We?”

Salazin kept talking while I shook my head and laugh to myself. First pause in Salazin’s spiel, I said, “I don’t have money for the stock market. I’m saving my money to buy a tank of gas so I can go to work.” Truth.

“Then you need to buy these as much as I do,” Salazin said.

“Look,” I said, channeling Dad in one of my most pathetic, chickenshit moments, “if you need money, get a job and save some. That’s how it works in America.” Then I got up, said, “I have to go to fucking work,” and left.

Salazin didn’t give up. He was there every day. Asking, why me, I think the answer is because he knew I wasn’t too smart. He kept fucking at it, telling me, “Take this paper and look at these stocks. We can make money with them.”

I finally took his paper to shut him up, folding it up and shoving it in my pocket to die. I also changed coffee shops because I didn’t want to see him again.

Then I graduated with my barely B average, got more hours at Home Depot, and Grandpa Paul died.

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Musical

You ever been in a public place, like a coffee shop (where you were writing), and a song comes on that you like, and you start singing it in your head, and then wonder, if you got up and started singing it aloud and dancing, would everyone else join in, like in a musical?

No, me neither.

5

Perfumed

The perfume of you and I

still intertwines

with the thoughts of what we doing

what we meant to say

before we went away

left me wondering who we think we’re fooling

we never talk

and stay distant in our walks

with a feeling that something’s brewing

it never boils and never perks

but it’s always there, it always lurks

I think our love is cooling

 

 

0

Screwed

I finally did it!

I finally fixed my Roomba.

The Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner had become quieter. Its softer noise made us suspicious, so we conducted a paper test. The Roomba failed. Then I removed the collector, got down on the floor, and confirmed that the brushes weren’t turning. Bummer.

That was months ago. I began looking into repairing it, but then, I thought, maybe I should buy a new one. They were on special at Costco and seemed pretty damn attractive. The display models lacked the scratches and wear and tear plaguing my current beloved Roomba. The new ones had that great new Roomba smell, too.

I read reviews and comparisons, checked prices, and thought, and thought. Eventually, I decided the old one probably only has a couple thousand miles on it and deserved to be fixed. Besides, it now felt like part of the family. I reminisced about the time that poor sick Lady had decided she’d piss on the Roomba, and how you just need to pick it up to send Quinn through the pet door with a sonic boom. I wrestled with what I do with it if I got rid of it. Taking it to the Goodwill seemed wrong. I refused to even think of the landfill.

The parts, a new enhanced cleaning head (I don’t know how it was enhanced), purchased for $49 with free shipping, arrived yesterday. Three minutes later, the Roomba was repaired and making its rounds again.  The weird thing was that iRobot had sent new screws with the replacement part. I used them, which meant I had four perfectly good screws left over.

Perfectly good.

I’m like a compulsive scavenger. Whenever I have left over screws, nuts, bolts, or hardware, I add them to my collection. It’s a fine collection, begun when I first moved out when I was eighteen. At first, I integrated left over screws with others in my various drawers and containers. Then I began keeping them separate, with little notes. The notes had their original planned use and the date. That way, see —

I don’t know what was planned there. It was just an idea. What I’d realized was that most of the screws, bolts, nuts, and fasteners were too unique to be used elsewhere. Most of the time when a fastener was required, I’d go through the collection, testing their viability, conclude that what I have doesn’t work, and go buy new ones.

Having recognized this, I threw the four Roomba screws away. It required a lot of grit, opening the trash can, putting my hand with the screws over it, letting the screws go, and closing the lid. It took a lot of grit, and just five minutes, but I did it. I kept my eyes closed, though. I couldn’t bear to watch.

So that’s it. My days of being screwed are over.

Now, what do I do with the old, un-enhanced Roomba cleaning head? I could just trash it, I suppose, but I think I can make some room on a shelf. Because you never know when it might come in handy, right?

5

Day #101

I like the sun

I like the rain

I like how the day

smells this way

I like the breeze

that’s sometimes a wind

I like the scents

that tease and spin

I like the hours passing me by

and the time spent

with no one asking me why

 

 

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