CHAPTER 2: OT AND THE DELIVERY

Something is amiss already. I can feel it in my sternum, chest, gut or what have you. As anxious as Nesbo is for me to deliver the Philly Cheese Steak, he doesn’t allow me to make it. Which in and of itself sets off alarm bells in my brain, and all I hear is a loud beeping noise.

“Turn dat shit off,” Nesbo says.

I look down and see my super deluxe and expensive Casio* watch alarm is buzzing, telling me my shift is over, but as of now – thanks to this mysterious delivery – it’s not. (Just to clarify, my watch is actually a cheap junker of a timepiece that never remains lost for too long.) Looks like I will be getting some overtime today. Fun fact about myself: I’ve only gotten OT a few times in my life and never once been able to get a little dose of that deuce-juice.

So Nesbo hands me the brick that is the Philly Cheese and says I need to deliver somewhere near William B. Umstead State Park. Here’s another fact for you: The Sub Shop is located on West Main Street in Durham. Now, I’m no mathematician, but having a delivery scope beyond a diameter of close to twenty-five miles seems excessive. This drive will be over thirty miles round trip. Nesbo gives me the address, which indicates that the location is just east of the Research Triangle Park.* (Called RTP by some, or pretty much everyone in the state of North Carolina.)

“You gotta get it there quick, son,” Nesbo says, clearly forgetting it’s rush hour and the freeways are going to suck the big one. “There is a little something extra in it for you, if everything goes okay,” he adds.

Goes okay? It’s just a stinking delivery, you fat shit. But I say, “Really?” I mean, this could be good for me. Money’s been tight lately; extra cash is always a welcome addition to my life.

“Yeah, ya’ get to keep your job.”

“Thanks,” I say. What. A. Prick!

Now, I’m not too inclined to get a ticket just to hand-deliver a sub, but at the same time I’m thinking that if I can get there and back, I just might forgo my shower and maybe I can still catch up with Liz Jenkins for that movie. Also on that list of hopefuls is that she won’t mind me smelling like salami and pickles. I mean, after all she’s a 9 in my book.* (It’s been awhile since my last romantic interlude, and in my mind she’s looking better to me every passing moment.)

Twenty-three minutes later I’m making my way as dangerously as I can manage, maneuvering through the parked cars on Interstate 40, when a particularly nasty slide makes me lose control of my vehicle, and I almost crash into the center divider. If I had collided, the forces of nature would have commanded that both the east and westbound traffic come to an even worse halt than they already are. It’s simple science.

However, remembering everything I had seen from The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, with calm effectiveness I pull myself from the skid and miss the concrete wall separating the rip-roaring traffic.* (The movement looks very uncool in my Datsun that has billowing steam emitting from the radiator, I’m actually shrieking like a schoolgirl, and as a secondary reminder, traffic is not really flowing.)

This second event that happens is the ‘why’ component of how the precursory phone call from earlier changed my life. The Philly Cheese Steak which was ‘heavy on the bread’ scoots right out of the brown bag and onto the passenger floorboard. I’m just pulling off the freeway, because I think I see a cop trying to catch me and I really don’t need more of a delay in my schedule right now. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. I couldn’t lose anyone if I tried to make a getaway; the black cloud of smoke that shoots from the muffler marks my route pretty clear, like a jet leaves a contrail.

When I regain my breathing and bearings, I make sure I’m in a safe area and reach over to grab the fallen sandwich. Nesbo had wrapped and taped the thing up well, so no juice had stained my seat or carpeting. To be fair, though, it would not have changed the aesthetics much.

I grab the cheese steak and this is when that earlier feeling of amissness* solidifies in my left testicle. (I don’t think amissness is a real word, but I’m sticking with it; mainly because I don’t like to be corrected.) Okay, as I’m holding the sandwich, I notice it doesn’t feel like a sandwich. And I should know because I handle them almost every afternoon. What it does feel like is a one-foot-long brick. My earlier feeling that Nesbo – the cheap bastard – had been gracious by adding extra meat for his friend Tony evaporates. Now, I must explain: I did not sustain any head injuries, but I did have a very close brush with death just seconds prior, which must have affected my better judgment. With foolish catlike curiosity, I open the nicely wrapped cheese steak.

I shouldn’t really have to divulge what I find, but let’s just say it’s not the Lost Ark or the right hand of Jimmy Hoffa. So for the slower people reading my memoirs, I will spell it out: it was eight stacks of one hundred dollar bills.

I’m going to take this little sidebar to point out another obvious. Just because I’m telling this story doesn’t mean I’m going to make it out alive. There are at least half a dozen scenarios that could happen that all end with me no longer breathing.

It could be that I’m being tortured at this very moment, and I’m simply flashbacking these events in my brain – because as they say, your life flashes before your eyes before you die.* (For me it won’t take too long because I’ve only lived nineteen years, and for the first half of that time I didn’t do much that seems important enough to recall; the last half was porn and video games.)

Then again, I could be strapped to the driver’s seat of my Datsun, a real brick being placed on the gas pedal and off I go into Falls Lake or the Neuse River. My body will of course be found days later, partially decomposed and swollen with water. Some nice family out for a boating trip will be treated to a horrible surprise when the catching of that trophy bass doesn’t end the way they envisioned.

Or I could be in a nursing home at age eighty-nine, and I’m rattling off my thoughts to a decent looking nurse who is injecting me with vitamins, pills, and life liquid prolonging my degrading existence, where I just shit myself for the third time today.* (Excessive drinking can really wreak havoc on a body with some unfortunate side effects. The Surgeon General is right!)

What I like to imagine is that I’m now twenty years old, sipping a martini in Bora Bora, and somehow the eighty grand I found in a sandwich bag will be able to last until my golden years.

To sum up, all of what I imagine is not what happens.

I used to think about where my life was going, and I had such a positive outlook and a feeling that things could always get better. But as I look at the heavy stacks of cash I have a darkening thought in my soul that now it will only get worse. I mean, I was going to be a lawyer and reenact scenes from Law & Order in the style of Sam Waterston.* (This is not true; I’m going for a business management degree, just in case you aren’t following the bouncing ball.)

So what do I do, you might be asking? Well it sure as hell isn’t take the money and run, and I’ll tell you why. I begin thinking of Nesbo and his conversation with Tony on the phone, his Sicilian accent giving me the strong impression that either Nesbo is in the Mafia or works closely with the Mafia, and that this Tony Soprano (or whatever his last name is) most definitely does and is a made man of some kind.* (I have watched Goodfellas and that being my most basic compendium of Mafioso knowledge, I know I have reason to worry.)

I wrap the money back up and pretend none of this ever happened.* (It doesn’t erase my memory though. It did happen, it isn’t over, and now I am scared shitless.)

Ten minutes later I’m on the front stoop waiting for Tony or whoever to answer the door. The guy answers and invites me in. I don’t want to go inside; it’s the last place I want to be.* (This isn’t true either; Hell reserves that spot.)

I walk in and try not to look at his face, but it’s hard not to. It’s crazy – he looks exactly like Robert De Niro. I’m lying again. He’s heavyset, and not at all dressed like what the stereotypes suggest regarding mob guys. He’s wearing a tank top and sweatpants, and from what I garner I don’t think he has underwear on.

Tony the mobster takes the ‘money sub’ from me and tosses it on his couch. From around the corner walks a fake blonde with super-oversized fake boobs. How do I know? Well, she’s topless and they sit funny on her chest. You know, the way a pair of enormous fake tits do; as if they have this strange otherworldly power, and that force of nature thing Sir Isaac Newton is famous for has no effect on them. Being weighed down by those giant magumbos doesn’t seem to bother her much. Plus, she’s obviously high. Anyway, they’re gross. I’ve always been a fan of the small and sporty, and I’m aiming to keep it that way. The blonde has a smearing of white powder on her nose and upper lip, and she’s walking unsteadily on her bright purple heels.

I want to leave now, and it takes all my willpower and control not to fly out the door and call the cops. What stops me is my Datsun; turning her engine over isn’t always easy – and now I’m cursing myself for not leaving it running. You dumb son of a bitch!* (Please don’t be offended I’m talking to myself here.)

Sweat pants/semi boner is walking back over to me and he hands me another brown sandwich bag. “Give this to Sam as payment. I seem … to have lost my wallet.”

I don’t mention he has a huge wad of cash in the bag I just gave him. I can’t think of one reason to take the package from Tony, except one. Life. You see, I have this strange fascination with still being alive after this chance meeting, and I’d like to keep doing that.

“Sure,” I say nonchalantly as I feel beads of sweat shoot from my forehead at Tony like a shower of sparks.

“You a good kid,” Tony is able to say over the torrential downpour cascading down his face.* (I’m exaggerating. I’m not sweating as bad as that, but it sure feels like it.)

I’m almost to the door when Tony hollers at me. I feel an extra wide load of poop drop into my lower colon, threatening to present itself to the world.

“Hey, before you go. Take dis.”

His fat hand holds a small folded set of bills.

“Oh, is that for the Philly? ’Cause it’s only ten ninety-five.”

“What? Oh, right. Ha! – the Philly. No kid, dis is for you.” He offers a slow wink, and I barely contain the aforementioned dookie within my body.

In the next span of nanoseconds* (which are like really fast seconds), I’m thinking very long and very hard about what happens next. By taking the money, I’m accepting a life of crime, in a sense. If I don’t accept the bought silence, I might be in serious danger. I can’t stop my brain from showing me the possible outcome of being stuffed into a garbage bag, my body cut into sections and fed to a wood chipper – or dogs. Either way, it’s not a good look for me.

Disregarding that imagery I say, “It’s okay. I don’t take tips. Sam doesn’t like it.” I cannot have sounded more stupid if I tried. It comes out high-pitched and nervous, and Tony gives me a slow, quiet stare. The solidified turd I had earlier is gone, because my bowels turn to water and give a gurgle I hope only I can hear. And now I’m sweating more than before, and it feels like El Niño lives in my ass crack. “But what Sam don’t know, right?” I say, recovering.

Tony gives me another wink. I’m not sure, but this second one feels like it holds a perverted twinkle to it too, and that just sickens me. I mean, come on. His girlfriend is sitting – or should I say collapsed? – right there on the couch.

So an accessory to crime it is. I grab the money from Tony’s palm, feeling like I’m so far into the thick of it I might as well visit Buck-A-Tattz* (a local tattoo parlor), and get two matching Russian stars on my chest tomorrow.

Getting inside my Datsun and starting it up, I’m thinking two things. One, thank God I didn’t make a run for it because it takes four cranks before my awesome car roars – or should I say smokes? – to life. And two, I just became a runner for the mob and I can do some serious time for taking this package back to Sam. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know the item I just locked in my glove compartment is a bag of cocaine, heroin, or God knows what kind of illegal substance. All the stuff I removed from the compartment to make room – papers, registration, checks, pens, CD’s, and condoms – is now lying on my seat. I know putting condoms in a glove box is not the smartest due to the heat, but like Austin Powers I like to live dangerously; and I always forget about them anyway. Plus I’m really busy with school and don’t have time for women.* (Not true and never will be.)