SoMa Literary Review - Rent, Food, Bills, No Zombies

Rent, Food, Bills, No Zombies

By Jon Alan Carroll

Some days are pretty much over before they start.

Berto waited in the morning drizzle with 2 sandwiches and about $5 and change. The sky was darker and colder than a meter maid's heart.

The 14 arrived and Berto climbed on and found a place to stand near the rear door. The bus jerked and strained as it pulled out from the curb.

Just past 18th, a huge Thunk came from the engine compartment and the 14 stopped dead in the middle of the street.

The Operator got out and walked to the rear of the bus. He climbed back in and announced the bus was out of service.

The riders grumble-mumbled and started shuffling off the bus. Berto re-waited as two 14s passed by without stopping.

He didn't need any major Muni-crap this morning. It was bad enough, hacky enough, just being a foot-soldier in the industrial army of the employed.

Berto stood with the rest of the bus-crowd in front of Cash-4-You E-Z Loans and watched the street-sweeper push around the pizza crusts, trash, parking tickets and broken Hi-Life bottles.

He waited. Still three days until payday.

Another 14 arrived and Berto wedged his way into the crowded bus. Clinging to the bar, jammed between a tough old Asian grandma and a housepainter with Antique White on his pants, he rode along and pulled the cord at his stop.

He was a good half-hour late, Butch was going to chew his ass anyway, so he stopped at the garbage wagon. Coffee from the garbage wagon usually tasted like hazelnut lighter fluid, sometimes a newspaper sandwich, but he needed some coffee and what did you expect for 75¢ anyway.

Berto headed to the loading dock and another day underwater. Maybe someday the Golden Age of Bullshit would end and he could quit living like a roof-rat or a hobo-dog under an on-ramp.

Most of the other art students were trust-funders, doctors' daughters, while Berto worked full-time and was still so poor he had rent-to-own towels.

The loading dock was a half-block of cracked concrete, piled high with random junk. One truck was pulled halfway out, the furniture inside all jumbled up and tossed on top of itself.

Down next to the truck, Butch the foreman was meeting with Juan and Mikey. "Look at this shit," Butch said. "How many times have I told you dumbfucks to tie shit down before you move the truck?"

Bald, big gut, the foreman was brutal-strong, company-famous for lifting a hide-a-bed by himself. "Shit," he said, "I never saw a dumber bunch of dumbfucks in my life. What are you guys, toasters?"

Juan and Mikey stood there, nodding, perky as prison mugshots.

"Look at this shit," Butch said. "A monkey could do this job, a chicken. Now clean this shit up. It happens again, dumbfucks, you're both fired."

Sometimes the workers didn't get Butch's old-school Army cursing, but right then it seemed clear enough. Juan and Mikey jumped up and started straightening out the truck.

Butch turned around and told the lumpers there was nothing for them.

The lumpers were a wino-looking bunch of guys, all scroungy and fucked-up, probably from sleeping in the park. Every morning, they lined up at the dock looking for a few hours of work.

"Colonel Sanders is in a foul mood again," Rocky said to Berto.

Rocky was a dirty-blond Anglo guy, mustache, death-breath. Berto thought Rocky was OK, alright, but if you weren't careful he'd tell you about seeing Black Sabbath in concert. Man, Rocky would say, they were so cool.

Their truck was a decrepit GMC, aka General Mess of Crap, 4-speed with a half-gear, no radio, once used by Charlemagne to haul dinosaurs to the tar pits.

Rocky and Berto got in the GMC and out of the yard before Butch started screaming again. Life's too short to work for assholes, but sometimes there's no other way.

"Mrs. Pierce told Butch you seemed like a nice young man," Rocky said. "You sure got her fooled, gangster-boy."

"Shut up," Berto said.

Traffic was nasty and thick, so they poked their way over to Seacliff Heights . Rocky said he wanted to see a zombie movie last night, but Kim wasn't in the mood, so they ended up watching a happy-wedding movie called Love Eternal or Love Forever or Love's Loving Love.

"No zombies," Rocky said.

They pulled up to Mrs. Pierce's front gate and snaked up the driveway.

Berto got out of the GMC and rang the doorbell. He usually tried to smile for Mrs. Pierce, she was a nice lady, it wasn't really her fault if he had the stupidest POS job in the world history of the universe.

Mrs. Pierce's house was three stories, about 45 bedrooms and 23 bathrooms. It was sort of amazing, how rich some rich people were, just because they went to Princeton with Satan or something.

An unsmiling housekeeper came to the door and led him over to where some boxes were stacked in the 4-car garage. They'd been to the house many times, Mrs. Pierce was a career shopper and needed extra storage space.

Berto and Rocky loaded the boxes into the GMC and Berto stacked and tied and closed up the truck.

They drove over to the company warehouse off Bayshore. Stuck behind an old lady in an old Buick, Rocky said, "C'mon, nearly dead, move it. Take the fuckin’ bus, you'll get there faster."

As they drove, Rocky waged a one-man long-war against stupidity and slowness and bad driving.

Back at the dock, Butch gave them a Noe-Val job and they got back in the GMC. Big City Moving & Storage could issue cell phones and avoid all the extra driving, but that would cost too much and make too much sense.

Her apartment was off 24th, third floor, no elevator, so they double-parked and kept an eye out for meter maids.

The customer was an Indie-Girl named Kael. For mysterious reasons, all the Indie-Girls had names like Kael or JoJo or Kira, never Julie or Marie. It was like a sickness or state law.

Kael was tense, stringbeany, brown hair with black roots, kind of pretty in the Indie-Girl style. Her eyes were red from something, probably crying.

They hauled it all, her retro-couch, her vintage bed, her Hello Kitty lamps, down the stairs and into the GMC. Berto tied it down and closed up the truck.

Rocky came back with the paperwork and said Kael told him she'd lost her job to off-sizing or down-sourcing and was moving back to Indianapolis.

On the way back to the storage, Rocky and Berto passed the new-car lots down on the Miracle Mile. "That was Dal's big dream," Berto said, "have a car lot like those guys on TV."

"I dunno," Rocky said. "Sounds like a pretty good dream to me. Beats busting your hump for 10.55 an hour."

They unloaded Indie-Girl's furniture at the warehouse and parked over near the deli. Berto started on his sandwiches and gave Rocky a buck to buy him a coke.

Three dollars left, three days until payday. His phone buzzed and it was Mama, she probably wanted him to clear out the storage and he'd been putting it off for months. He let her roll over.

Last thing he wanted to do, after hauling junk around all day, was clean out Dal's old storage space.

Berto was glad his cell hadn't been cut off yet, usually VeriComm threatened to cut him off after 3 weeks. As far as he could tell, the cell-phone companies were a bunch of consolectomy bags filled with the tears of innocent orphans. It must be hard work, being so evil.

Rocky came back with his meatball sandwich and told Berto that after 2 days of Kim's nagging he broke down and went to Cost-Rite after work. When they were first going out, his life was nothing without her, he couldn't wait to be with her, four times a day they went at it. Now he comes home and says, Honey, I bought sponges!

"Yeah," Berto said. "Shut up. Nobody cares."

Rocky reached down into his coat and pulled out a ziplock. The bag was half-filled with nice Mendocino bud.

"Here, Pedro," Rocky said. He tossed the ziplock to Berto. "My buddy George gave it to me for helping him move. Me and Kim never smoke that shit, it's for hippies and losers."

It was true enough that Berto liked driving around, toasted, in the afternoon after the overcast burned off. It was funlike, funnish, because San Francisco when you were high was like waking up next to a woman far more beautiful than you deserve.

They ate lunch in the truck and Butch gave them a move in the Fin-Dist. Rocky tried one of his famous shortcuts, but got stuck behind some doofus in a rent-a-car trying to drive and GPS and breathe at the same time.

As he explained, Rocky found this situation less than optimal.

They stopped at the Superette on 17th and Rocky went in to get his 3 beers for the afternoon. Berto sat in the GMC and started in on the ziplock.

Pretty soon, right after his second beer, Rocky was going to start raving about all the perfect people again, like he did every afternoon.

All the perfect people, their perfect little lives. They'd never wrecked a car or knocked up a girl or woke up in jail. Shit, they'd never even had a hangover.

Berto never saw any of these perfect people, just regular boring citizens, so he'd let it slide as usual.

The office-job was downtown on Sutter, lots of businesses going under now, so more work for them. It was a mistake to go to the Fin-Dist this time of day, gridlock, no parking, swarming piranha meter maids, but that's why they got that big 10 bucks an hour.

They were loading up the desks and filing cabinets and his cell buzzed and it was Mama again.

"The storage space man says he's going to the law," she said. "You have to clean it out, Berto, Dal wanted you to have his stuff."

"Alright, Mama," he said. "I'll do it."

Mama hadn't been doing so well, after Dal and the Levi's factory closing and all, she'd sit around and worry and watch telenovelas about poor brave scavenger girls in love with handsome rich men. Berto couldn't help her much, his paycheck didn't stretch very far.

He told Rocky he needed to go to Seventh Street and clear out Dal's old storage space.

"Clothes, junk, old car parts," Berto said. "I don't know."

"OK," Rocky said.

They finished loading the office job and headed over to SoMa.

One night, Berto told Dal that he wanted to be an artist and Dal said, something, Berto couldn't remember exactly, but something like, Guys like us aren't beatniks, Berto. We need somebody to make money for the family, real money, not janitor money.

Seventh Street was one-way and Rocky had to circle the block 3 times looking for Hugo Alley.

Dal was probably right, being an artist was a stupid fucking dream. The art-world was like everything else, bullshit piled on bullshit, run by insiders to benefit themselves.

He still hadn't found what he was looking for, so screw it. He'd stay alive, stay high, an ordinary worker like everybody else.

"There," Rocky said. Hugo Alley was narrow and small, the street sign all tagged over and unreadable, and Berto thought 1019 Hugo was commercial storage, not an old warehouse.

They blocked the alley with the GMC and Berto dug out the key one of Dal's little scumbag buddies gave him after the funeral.

Berto pulled up the rolling door and fumbled around for the light. The space was mostly dark, with a little light streaming down from the windows.

He flicked the switch 3 times, no luck, looked like the lights were already cut off. He went back to the GMC and got the flashlight.

Berto ran the flashlight around the room. A table-desk covered with DMV papers. A cot, a girlie calendar, a full set of Craftsman tools.

"Over here," Rocky said from somewhere in the murk.

Berto walked deeper into the space and ran the flashlight over a line of parked cars.

Rocky and Berto passed the flashlight back and forth. A ceramic-black Escalade, a streety Acura, two motorcycles, a cream-white 64 Impala.

Berto leaned over and looked into the 64 Impala. He recognized it, it was Skemer's old car. Skemer loved that car, it was like his life, he punched a guy once for parking too close.

Rocky took the flashlight and pointed at a 51 Ford pickup sitting in the corner. "Shit," he said, "there must be a 100 grand worth of cars in here."

Berto'd keep the 64 Impala and sell the rest, cars, tools, all of it. He was going to miss his career as a furniture mover, really miss it, like for about 15, 20 seconds, maybe a minute.

"All this shit ain't gonna fit in the truck," Rocky said. "What do you want to do?"

Also by Jon Alan Carroll on SoMa Literary Review:

Warriors, - Or, I Bought a Bestseller at the Bookstore of Pain, Litigation is War, War is Hell, Only the Young Die Young, Wish I Was Here, Sick Days, The Adventures of the Delusional Cowboy, Misery Can Be Fun, If You Want to Know about Society, Hold Your Breath for 30 Days, Fresh, Bloated, Decay, Post-Decay, Skeletal [Dance Mix] & The Big Empty Thing

Jon Alan Carroll is a fiction and humor writer. On the Web, his work has appeared in Defenestration, Empty Mirror Books, Monkeybicycle, Opium, Raging Face and Unlikely Stories. In the print press, his work has shown up in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Oakland Tribune, the Santa Cruz Sentinel, Silicon Valley Metro, magazines such as Harpoon and The Nose, and micropress journals like Poultry, No Xmas and Cathedral of Insanity.