Preface
Most of the stuff I write is absolutely packed with all
sorts of speculative elements. But every once in a while, I get ideas that would
only work in a real-world contemporary setting. With no immediate use for them, I defaulted to putting them all in a special file.
Enter me getting around to reading P.G. Wodehouse. At some
point, I caught myself thinking – here I am, reading a story that's basically a
guy spending a weekend in the country with some relatives. And it's the most
entertaining thing I ever read.
I can do that, I thought to myself. And so I did, combining
some of the stuff I learned while reading Wodehouse with all those notes I had just sitting there.
This resulted in a story about a member of the elusive idle
middle class whose bumbling attempts to help his friends with their romantic
problems end up getting them all embroiled in a criminal conspiracy.
So, without further ado, here's the first chapter of The
Dude About Town:
It makes sense, really, if you think about it. But inside me, instead of undomesticated canines, I've always felt there were two guys. No, not like that. It's just that my personality, I posit, can't be properly quantified by the rather straightforward measures of good and evil.
Not to sound overly boastful, but things are infinitely more subtle where the old Peregrin, like the hobbit, Yates is concerned.
You see, one of my inside-guys is a gentleman who lives to please and wouldn't dream of leaving the house without a freshly-pressed bespoke suit on. Even when the reason for such a sortie is decidedly mundane, like picking up a delivery from a driver not paid nearly enough to educate himself on the intricacies of urban navigation.
A proper Jeeves-type fellow that guy is. You know, the one who's all "Indeed, sir," and "Very good, sir," and not the one you asked to fetch you some porn before our overlords over at the Alphabet conglomerate monopolized the business. This gentleman always aims to give satisfaction while preserving at least some semblance of face regardless of the situation.
And then, unfortunately, at least when looked at from a certain angle, the other guy is a layabout of legendary proportions who has no aspirations in life other than to lounge on a couch with a paper container of freshly-delivered takeout, a cheap but potent adult beverage, and possibly some mind-altering substance.
And let me tell you. It's no jolly walk in the park to live your life with those two vying for supremacy within the very core of your being. I'll take some snarling pups over those two any day. No amount of fancy waistcoats or impromptu staycations seems to ever shut either of those chaps up.
Which frequently deposits me in the deep end of the pool that uses elevated levels of anxiety as water and substitutes chlorine with a generous helping of faux pas.
Like that one time when I took it upon myself to reconcile one Kathy Morello, the sweetest thing, unlike her namesake might suggest to the botanically-inclined among you, with her then-boyfriend Joey Something.
Having passed through that whole ordeal like good old Paul of the Atreides and his poisoned box…Or was it Schrodinger and his cat who had the poisoned box? Courtney Love, for sure, had the heart-shaped one. Or still has it, depending on who you ask. So what did Paul have then?
Ah, never you mind Paul. This here yarn is about Kathy and her amorous misadventures that some slanderous detractors of yours truly have at times had the gall to blame on my meddling.
The point I was trying to make before getting slightly carried away, is that even after everything that's happened during what Kathy later referred to as her personal maelstorm, as opposed to a maelstrom - it's like a storm but with males, she likes to say - I've not managed to learn Joey's proper last name.
And seeing how Kathy, still Morello, by the way, is currently happily married to this robot guy, I think you can guess how well my attempts at reconciling her with Joey went.
But before you add another spike to the iron maiden of my detractors, allow me to explain just how Kathy got first introduced to the eventual love of her life. Who isn't a robot, by the way. He just makes them. Or rather, he draws the models the actual eggheads then use for reference. Either way, it pays alright and is a creative enough field to put a tender soul like Kathy in a positively swooning mood.
In order to do the explaining, I'm afraid, I'll need to step back and tell you a bit about myself. It's like that thing they make you do in school, but this time, you don't have to say anything. So chin up. This will only take a moment.
A few years back, a combination of dumb luck, wasted higher education, and some, dare I say, crafty scheming carved a me-shaped cubby in the sales department of a rather prominent software company.
For fear of recreational litigation from any of the parties involved, I'm not naming any names here. Just know that it's nothing sexy like Apple or solid like Microsoft. But even so, some of our stuff is said to be the lifeblood of offices worldwide. I know this because we have a plaque saying just that hanging in the lobby.
Working in a sales department would, to the uninitiated, make me a sales manager. But then I would have to do some managing, and on occasion even engage in sales. I vehemently deny both counts.
You see, on my first day there, I was waiting for some HR paperwork to come through when I encountered this older gentleman holding onto a cardboard box with a plant sticking from it. I'm pretty sure the plant was plastic.
He too had some business in the building. For the last time, from what I gathered. He was too steamed for me to get a clear picture, but his anger, accompanied by sticking a thumb in the vague direction of upstairs, was primarily aimed at shrieking harpies and blood-sucking vampires. Only he was using the epithets in a more mundane context than the rare Amazon original that doesn't prominently feature spies would.
And as I have this tendency to act outwardly polite and downright empathetic in those situations when I either have no clue what the conversation is concerning or just do not care about the subject, I beamed at the geezer with the utter agreement throughout it all.
But that inherent amiability of mine came back to bite me, you see, when he then inquired about my reasons for being there. And what you have to know here, is that unless another's honor is at stake, I'm not particularly predisposed to lying. I laid it out straight for the male-patterned retiree.
Imagine my surprise, when instead of flying off the handle on account of me not paying heed to his warnings and applying for a position in this den of evil, he thoughtfully chewed his lip before congratulating me on not being an outright ghoul.
Upon receiving my thanks, this monster manual aficionado made an effort to put himself together and convey to me in more or less coherent terms that he was currently being ousted from his cozy spot after giving fifteen years of his life to the soul-sucking factory of nightmares we were currently stranded in the bowels of.
I was to be his replacement, as it turned out, while his portfolio of clients was to be redistributed between the hammer and sickle piranhas upstairs. But upon meeting me, all proper and presentable and not at all a ghoul he took any umbrage with, he figured out a way to blast some Alanis Morissette on his way out.
Upon getting stuck on whether this was to be a rain on the wedding day or a free ride when you've already paid type of irony, my eyes glazed over and I just went along with his newly-hatched plan that had a whole bunch of phone calls as its step one.
And when the red tape of the bureaucra-sea finally parted, I became the proud owner of a decade and a half-long list of legacy clients instantly propelling me to the general vicinity of the top of the entire department.
From that point onwards, my official duties involved regular check-ins with a number of prominent LLCs on the topic of our latest updates. These tended to be fairly short, seeing how just about the last thing any well-oiled machine of a company wants at any point in time is a software update that will inevitably break something and freeze their whole operation.
This left me with a decent chunk of spare time I then dedicated to playing online poker. Now, I wasn't some card savant with a bright future among those rare simultaneous ball cap and sunglasses wearers of the world who weren't involved in the drug trade. I read a book, a couple of online guides, and had a buddy, who swore he was really good, give me some tips. And that was more than enough, I reckoned.
On average, my day had an hour of actual office work and seven hours of poker. Well, more like six, since as anyone who has ever worked in an office knows, the first hour there doesn't count. Well, closer to four or five hours of poker, really, because you have to account for all the staff meetings, of which any office has way too many. And then you have the lunch, bathroom, and other miscellaneous breaks on top of it.
Fine. You got me. I use poker as an excuse for when the inevitable, "So what do you do for a livings?" come up and I, a productive member of society, can't just immediately reveal myself as a hopeless slacker who mostly just sits on his ass in an air-conditioned room from 9 to 5 on the dot for a very generous paycheck.
In the current climate, many would consider such good fortune insulting to their own toils. Therefore, a certain degree of hustle had to be invented. Hence, poker.
And now you're all caught up to understand how both Kathy, who was known to manage some sales from time to time, and I found ourselves in the relative seclusion of a drab stairwell boring through our joint place of employment.
Back in the day, this very spot was used for smoke breaks, on account of the tiny horizontal window showing the barest glimpse of an impressive skyline. In our highly advanced age, you would be tarred, feathered, drawn, and quartered, not necessarily in that order, for the mere suggestion of a recreational smoke.
At the same time, people, regardless of their advancement, tend to not take it very kindly when the personal time they're used to gets taken away. So, even though the proud habit of sucking on nicotine sticks may be well on its way to meet the fabled dodo, smoking breaks were alive and well in our company.
I felt I was justified in cooling off a bit after some kid from Uzbekistan managed to get a flush on the river and knock me back to square one for the day.
And there, squatting with her back pressed against a wall last touched up during the Reagan administration, I found Kathy.
The poor lass was clearly distraught over something or other.
That, however, was the second thing I noticed, as from my vantage point I couldn't help but get a decent peek down Kathy's glossy white blouse.
If I were to describe Kathy as well-endowed to you, chances are your imagination would fall way short of the actual mark. And in her current position, I had an opportunity to examine the full extent of that impressive endowment.
The gentlemanly part of me cleared my throat and directed my eyes towards the window. But not before the other guy filed a fresh folder with "Kathy" going down its spine into a special cabinet for later use.
Before I knew it, a hasty "What's eating you, kid?" escaped my suddenly parched throat.
I'll be the first to admit I've no idea what possessed me to utter those exact words. Especially considering that as far as I knew, the two of us were in the same vicinity when it came to revolutions around the sun. I must've been channeling my inner Bogart on account of the pinstriped trousers I had on at the time.
But lest you bump up my remark from unexpected to untoward, some additional laying of the groundworks is in order.
You see, through no fault of my own, I was the only one, in a sales department housing a dozen of drones, of what they call the male persuasion. This made me a frequent object of gossip and furtive sideways glances filled with that certain mixture of curiosity and judgment familiar to anyone who had to spend any amount of time in the high school for adults that most any office on the planet can be described as.
But that very same quality also made me into a confidant of sorts for many a co-worker during those times when not all was peachy in the state of Denmark, and it was all too easy to idealize a rumor-padded bloke you only had a passing acquaintance of.
Especially when said individual dressed a certain, some might say classy, way in a building otherwise packed with guys who favored sweaters that seemed to have a contest with their respective beards in the matter of bristly scratchiness. You know, software developers.
That settled, you might be curious to learn that Kathy's response to my question very much blindsided me with its terseness.
"Thinking," she said.
I wagged my chin at her. "Can never have too much of that, I say."
To that, Kathy simply sighed.
And I'll have you know, that made me downright worried. Usually, Kathy's infectious enthusiasm makes the local cheerleading squad look like a convention for Nietzsche fans. It was no good for her to be turning monosyllabic all of a sudden.
And while I was working out some zinger that was sure to both cheer her up and not get me reported to HR, she uncoiled herself into a more human-like shape and joined me by the banister.
"So, a baby seal walks into a club," I was saying.
And halfway through that classic witticism, Kathy butted in to drop the bomb of, "I think I should break up with him."
"With whom?"
"With Joey."
And right there and then I made what I later recognized as my biggest mistake in the mess that closely followed.
Instead of the obvious, "Who's Joey?" I went with an "Eh, you shouldn't be too hasty with these things."
In the heat of the moment, it seemed to me the more sagely option. After all, who among us hasn't been in a situation where a momentary spat led to a lifetime, or at least a few months' worth, of regret.
"I'm pretty sure he's cheating on me."
A reliable classic, as far as breakup reasons go. But still, I inquired, "Sorry, if you don't mind my asking, you base that on what?"
Kathy looked up at me, and in her pursed lips and pert nose I could read clear as day a certain hesitation to open the Ceylon floodgates for me.
In the end, something must have given. She grabbed onto the railing, for moral support I figured, and said, "He's been distant lately. Always busy, always sneaking off to somewhere. And every time he's talking on the phone and I enter the room, he gets really silent and covers the screen with his hand."
"Suspicious, sure. But what if he just watched some documentary on that Snowden chap?"
As if expecting something along these lines, Kathy graced me with an excited, "A-ha," and produced her phone from somewhere.
Without slowing down to question where she kept the thing all this time, I found myself staring at some text app.
I tried not to read the actual words, for that would surely cross the threshold of politeness, but still, I was able to see a string of outgoing messages, all double-ticked, and all lacking a reply.
"What do you make of that, Perry?" was Kathy's return question. And going by the general forcefulness of it, I was currently acting as the proxy for all the villainous leavers on read of the world.
I was about to produce an explanation, but upon considering the parties involved, hit a bit of a snag.
You see, my example, that would frame Joey's actions in a perfectly reasonable light, heavily featured the exciting world of video games.
Allow me to paint you a picture. You, along with a couple of your good mates, are engaging in a bit of recreational online gaming. You're doing your best to hold your own in some heated match against a bunch of kids too young to know why the save icon is shaped the way it is. Passions run high, the children are relentless, and some good times are being had.
And right in the middle of all of this, with both your hands, not to mention your mental RAM, entirely occupied, your phone buzzes with a text.
It must be spam. So you leave it be. But then the phone buzzes again, and again. And while in some distant corner of your brain it begins to dawn on you that it probably isn't spam, you mostly just get progressively more annoyed by the repeated interruptions.
Can't these people take your silence as a hint that you're busy? Don't they remember the blissful era when everyone alive wasn't on call 24/7? How nice it was when in order to hang out with your friends you had to first get dressed, go all the way to their place, and pelt their windows with gravel.
And at the very same time, you're being bested online by a bunch of people-to-be who will indeed never know these things and treat phones as pretty much an extension of their hands.
It all compounds until you find a spare second to grab the buzzing beast and see that someone you take for granted, but also at this point should know better, is very insistent on getting your input on some new piece of cat-related media.
With you all distracted, things turn for the worse in your game. Your buds scream bloody murder, so you just chuck the damnable phone on the couch and erase its existence from your mind.
And when your little gaming session is over, you go on with your life. Maybe do some chores around the house.
Later that evening, you plop down on the couch, inevitably sitting on your discarded gadget. You think about putting it away, and then it hits you that there was something you had to do.
You unlock the screen with trepidation, almost like you're expecting a Cenobite to pop out. But instead, you discover something much worse. A string of seen but unanswered texts from your romantic partner.
Perhaps it's already a bit on the late side. And you're not really sure what reaction you'll get if you decide to reply now. Maybe it's better to wait until the morning. But then you wouldn't want to write too early and lay your apologies on someone who hadn't had their caffeinated beverage of choice yet. Then, you wouldn't want to distract someone who's at work. And so it goes, with you thoroughly stuck in this excruciating loop of uncertainty.
I was about to convey all that to Kathy, but the thing is, from what I knew of her, she decidedly wasn't a gamer. And I, in return, wasn't particularly well-versed in the comings and goings of Disney's princesses and superheroes.
Thus, some common ground in the middle had to be found. And that's how I arrived at the topic of putting up an Ikea shelf. That activity is also fraught with mental exertion and tense moments when your hands are generally busy with something other than an overpriced rectangle.
I conveyed this adjusted tale to Kathy to the best of my abilities, and it did seem to lift her spirits.
Life rushed back into her large eyes. And while my truncated story alone didn't magically mend all the bridges, it managed to fill Kathy with hope that perhaps things weren't as bad as the tightly-wound spring of her inner monologue was convincing her they were.
"And what if there's no new shelf at his place?" Kathy inquired.
"The shelf is a bit like the spoon. It doesn't exist. Or rather, it can be anything, really," I elaborated.
"And you're sure he's all upset about what he'd done?"
"Well, I don't know the guy. But I maintain that it's likely."
That seemed to do the trick. Before long, we wrapped up our break and Kathy returned to her workstation, while I went ahead with half-assing a poker game.
For the time being, I was feeling quite good about myself.
