mcgrew's Journal: She fell off the wagon...

I think staying away from the hookers has paid off. I'd love to journal about my new girlfriend, but I can't. She'd only been broken up with her old boyfriend for a week, and she doesn't want anybody to know about us, as it would "look bad"; he'd accused her of cheating on him (with me) when she hadn't. I'd been wining and dining her for weeks, and I can't blame her for wanting to keep our new relationship secret.

A couple of weeks ago I went home for lunch, and as I went in the front door I heard someone in the house. "Who's there?" I demanded. "Who's in my house?"

I heard the back door and ran toward it, opened the inside porch door and there trying to make his escape through the outside porch door was Alan. The door had a faulty lock that was easy to get past.

He was embarrassed as all getout, and whined and apologized profusely. "I haven't had any work for a week and I was broke and haven't had any food and I was SO hungry, God Steve I'm so sorry..."

I gave him some food and he walked down the street where he lives. I got a new doorknob that night.

I hadn't seen or heard from Amy for a couple of months. The last time I saw her she'd stolen my cheap cell phone, which perterbed me greatly as, like Alan, I'd never known her to steal anything from anybody. She'd lived with me for a long time before she met Connor, and nothing had come up missing the whole time she was there. Losing the phone was a blessing is disguise, as it wound up saving me money. Amy denied stealing it, despite the fact that friends told me she'd called them from it.

She and Connor had moved to the far north end of town and nobody had heard from her. Everyone was worried about her, and hoped she'd gone into rehab again for her alcohol addiction.

That was exactly where she'd been. She called me Thursday afternoon, wanting me to pick her up after work. So I did.

She'd been sober for forty days, having inpatient rehab followed by outpatient. She'd gotten a job and was going to spend her first paycheck getting her nursing license, which she'd lost for not paying child support, back. But she'd had a big fight with Connor about something he said about her daughter, and had dropped his truck off where he worked and left the key in it. Then had walked to a bar, had a few drinks and called me.

"I already told Tami I'd take her to Felber's", I said. "I'm still trying to get their computer on the internet."

"Well, you can take both of us, can't you?" I picked Tami up from Alan's and the three of us went to Felber's.

A few days earlier Mike, who owns the place with his wife and daughter, had approached me, asking "you know about computers, don't you?"

There had been a power surge that had killed the modem over a month earlier, and nobody had been able to get the computer back online. It turns out that they have wifi there, which is surprising considering that it's a "working man's bar" whose clientelle was almost all construction workers. I'd never seen anyone in there with a laptop. I told him I'd come by the next day when I was more sober.

He'd spent over a hundred bucks on a new modem and the jukebox guy had hooked it up. They have one of those internet jukeboxes. Looking things over I discovered that the jukebox guy had hooked the modem straight to the jukebox, completely bypassing the computer and Linksys router. I cabled it back up correctly after finding a missing cable under the table. The cable didn't look in very good shape, and I figured it was the cable that was the problem. I told Mike I'd come back with a couple of cables the next day, and paid up my bar tab. I'd drank heavily the weekend earlier, as I'd had quite a letdown from a woman who I thought was going to be my girlfriend.

It was getting late, so I collected Amy and Tami, who I'd bought a pitcher for (and drank some of while working on the network problem) and dropped Tami off at home. Amy asked if she could crash on my couch, and I of course said Ok. Right before I was going to bed she asked for a ride to the store, but it was getting late. I told her I'd just let her use the car and leave the back door unlocked, and gave her the car key.

The next morning I was crestfallen to find that she and the car were stil gone. I walked to work, meaning to stop by McDonald's on the way. I noticed that my old house, the big one I'd bought in 2000 when I was still married, was empty with a realtor's sign in front.

When I got to McDonald's I saw Elvis.

I hadn't seen Elvis in years, not since I'd moved from the now empty house I'd passed on the way. "Hey, neighbor!" Elvis said, and shook my hand. I greeted him, and said "but we haven't been neighbors for years, Elvis."

"Well, that don't matter, I still consider you my neighbor." I chatted with Elvis for a few minutes, got my biscuits and gravy and walked the rest of the way to work. At noon I spent my entire lunch hour walking to the bank, then to get some Chinese takeout that I ate at my desk. About the time I got back my friend John's wife called, asking if I could give John a ride when I got off work. I told her that the car was missing and if Amy brought it back by then I'd give him a ride.

After work I trudged back home, and it was a hot summer day. I took off my shirt and hung it from my belt. I actually got catcalls from women! That's never happened before. Must have been some women with bad eyes, I guess.

As I walked down my street, Tami was walking up it. "You need a hug!" she exclaimed. She'd talked with John's wife, who had told her about the missing car. "You need to call the police", she said - but I didn't want to put Amy in jail. Amy had taken Connor's car for days at a time before, and although she'd never done it to me, there's a first time for everything.

"Alan's pissed", Tami said. She's been staying at Alan's for a few weeks now - every time Tami fought with her boyfriend, she'd storm out and try to get me to let her be my roommate, but I'd have none of it. "Alan couldn't believe she'd do that to you." I couldn't believe I'd caught him breaking into my house.

I walked home, relaxed a bit from all the walking I'd done, and walked up to Felber's with a LAN cable, a crossover cable, and a spare DSL modem for if his new one got killed again. I had two of them, neither one of which cost me anything as the phone company had supplied them. I got a beer and went back into Mike's office to work on his computer some more. I rolled the XP registry back to before the storm that had fried the modem and reinstalled the Linksys drivers.

The install hung at the very end. I gave up, and went back out into the bar and got a beer, and told Debbie, Mike's wife, that I was afraid the router might be bad. "Oh", she said, "we have a couple more at home we aren't using." She said whe'd bring one in. She said "now the jukebox won't get on the internet".

"I can fix that in two minutes," I told her, and plugged the jukebox back into the modem. The jukebox now worked again. I was now sure the router was bad, as its lights said that it was on the internet and its connection to the jukebox was good before I plugeed the jukebox directly into the modem.

Saturday morning my new girlfriend showed up, and... well, I can't write about that.

Later on Tami came by. "You got laid!" she said accusingly, with an evil grin on her face. "No I didn't", I replied, respecting my new girlfriend's wishes.

"Yes you did, you lying sack of shit!" she laughed. "Even your eyes are smiling! Now stop it before somebody thinks we had sex!"

We walked back up to Felber's in the light rain. I talked with Rachel, Mike and Debbie's daughter, about my suspicions that the router was bad.

"Oh," she said, "we already knew that router was bad!"

Tami and I had a couple of beers and walked back to my house. We both saw it at the same time - the car was back, parked in front of my house. Alan was sitting on my porch with a half gallon of whiskey.

"Amy came by this morning, so I stole your car from her for you." I gave him and Tami a ride back home.

Next: I Love Lucy

your stories...

[zogger]

...are very nice. Good job man...just sayin'...getting the visuals and hearing the voices,..I was smellin' the booze in the air and getting antsy around the distracted half nervous semi skanks...stuff like that... and it happens *fast*.. that's my test on writing, and *very few* pro writers really got it....go for some fiction work.

BTW, you and I are very close in the generational scene...down to the slide rule (carried in a long leather scabbard), but I never used it to ace tests.