It's Chico, not Leonard

"Kid.  Kid.  Hey.  Kid!"

"Huh, what," I jumped out of my table saw daydream to see one of the owners trying to get my attention.  It usually took about 10 minutes at the saw before I was off in la la land, dreaming of bigger things.  Even though my fingers were a fraction of an inch from a steel blade spinning at 10 million rpms or whatever, cutting through wood like warm butter, I was bored.  I was thinking about Renaud and hoping he made it out of his uncle's evil clutches.  I still had about 90 minutes before lunch when I would seek him out and learn if he survived.  But right now Rick was bugging me about something.  As I gracefully hit the kill switch on the saw with my knee, holding the panel in place while the blade slowed to a stop, Rick waited impatiently, arms crossed.  

"What?" I asked, all professional and stuff.

"Follow me until I figure out what happens in this scene," Rick instructed.  The truth is he had no idea why he was stopping me from working to follow him.  Of course I was racking my brain trying to think if I'd done anything I could get into trouble for.  Are they firing people or something?  I just didn't know.  To this day I still don't know because I haven't written it yet.

Rick's Office was about 8 feet from my table saw so that's not where we were going.  What could this be?  I was getting really worried as I followed Rick out of the building and toward my car.  Oh crap, he's firing me for some reason and I still haven't finished my plaque for Chico.  Wait.  My lunch is still in the refrigerator.  I wonder if he'll let me go back and get it.  Where the hell is he going?  Because I was still drawing a blank as to the meaning of all of this, Rick kept walking past my car and toward the street.  It was a dead end street, lined on both sides by industrial businesses and ending at some foam rubber manufacturing plant or something.  As we walked toward the foam rubber plant, a few laborers from various buildings, stood around watching us, leaning on pipes or some sort of machines and stuff.  Finally I asked Rick where the hell he was taking me.

"Where the hell are you taking me, Rick?"

"Huh?  What?  Oh yeah, this is fine.  I need to ask you something?"

"Out here?  I mean, what's wrong with your office?"

"It could be bugged," Rick said, quickly shifting his eyes left and right.  His left and right, not mine.  

"Uh ... Right.  Ok, so I should probably get back.  Those panels aren't going to saw themselves," I was now wishing he was firing me because this was weird and creepy.

"Wow kid, you better get back to college, your English ..." As we stood facing each other in the middle of the street, I could see Rick was struggling to say something, but also those miscellaneous industrial worker guys were subtly inching toward the street trying to divine the meaning of this most unusual happenstance.

"Did the narrator just start using awkward funny words," Rick asked.

"Believe me.  He does that.  It'll stop in a minute," I convalesced.

"So anyway," Rick started with a whisper so faint I had to lean close to hear and got a big whiff of his coffee breath.  At least he didn’t have B.O.  A lot of the guys at the shop did. "It has come to my attention that you and BoomBoom know a, uh, friend of mine"

"No shit!?  Cool. Who?  And, uh it's 'Boomer'", So he wasn't going to fire me after all.  But what the hell? 

"Let me bum one of them smokes," sweat was now running from the left side (his left) of Rick's hairline and gathering at his brow.

Rick took a deep breath as he lit the cigarette and smoked about a third of it in one pull, "I just want to ask a couple of questions.  That's all"

"Fire away, Rick.  I mean ..."

"Ok, so - That kid you guys know.  The one who almost got killed in that fire downtown.  Where did you meet him?"

"Janer?  Well, I guess down in the old market.  They're always down there.  So?"

"And, um.  The guy that saved him.  The big kid.  You know him too?"

"Janer?  Yeah.  He doesn't talk much, but he seems mellow enough."

“So, um when’s the last time you’ve seen them?”

“Not since …” Now it was my turn to be evasive.  The last time I saw Janer was at the movie theatre.   I had inadvertently started a debate when I said I thought the best actor in the best movie was Robert Duvall in the Godfather.  J said Duvall was actually better in some movie I never heard of and then somehow, Janer disappeared.  We joked that they must have phoned home or something, but yeah it was weird.  Nobody had seen them since then.

“Since ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’,” Rick finished.

“How did you …”

“Did you and Boomboom meet a couple of girls downtown a few nights ago?” asked Rick, upping the creepy ante.

“It’s ‘Boomer’.  If you mean downtown ‘literally’ then yes we did.  Just this waitress girl Laura and her friend.”

“The friend.  Her name was Marilyn?”

“Yeah.  That’s the one you know?  Well we don’t really know her.  In fact she got up and left in a big hurry when …”

It didn’t really mean anything to me at the time, but now some things were starting to fall into place.  Boomer, Laura, Marilyn and I had been sitting at a table outside the dinner theatre.  We were all having a pretty good time people watching.  We’d make up imaginary conversations for people walking by or we’d say what we thought they were up to, etc. 

Then off in the distance I noticed a peculiar character.  So I pointed him out.  He was wearing shades, but it was nighttime.  He had on a close fitting sharkskin suit and was walking our direction in a hurry.  He looked just like Robert Duvall.  So nodding in his direction, I said, “Uh oh, looks like somebody’s in a hurry to deliver bad news to his boss,” referencing Duvall’s character in the infamous “Horse Head” scene from ‘The Godfather’. 

Just like that, Marilyn got up, threw some cash on the table and left.  We tried to stop her, but she was gone before we could see where she went.

Then this Duvall lookalike comes right up to our table, sniffs around for a second and turns and goes back in the direction he came from, talking into the inside of his wrist about something.

The three of us look around for a few seconds until I say, “Told ya.”

But now, with Rick asking me about ‘Rocky Horror’ and Marilyn, I wonder what is the connection with Marilyn, Janer and Robert Duvall.  I gotta get back inside and see what Boomer remembers about the other night. 

“You have something.  I need it back,” Rick was accusing me of something.

“No I don’t.  I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“Na-Na, uh, I mean ‘Marilyn’ told me she gave something to you.”

“Na-Na?  Maybe she gave it to boomer.  She kept getting us confused.  She was all, ‘So boomcube, what is it that you do?’  she asked like 5 times.  Then she said she had ‘whale lag’.  She was totally bizarre.  And hot.  You know, for an old lady.

“Old?  She’s like 26,” Rick argued/confirmed.

“Well yeah.  26. That’s old to me.”

  

At this, Rick started staring off to the left, his left, trying to work out some puzzle.  Then, his features changed.  It looked like a wave passed through him, relaxing every muscle.  Also, I suddenly noticed he had a serious case of body odor going on. 

“What just happened Rick.  Also, you don’t smell good.”

 

“Who are you?”  Rick asked me.

“Alright.  I’m going back to work now,” I had had enough of this. 

As I turned to go, smelly Rick grabbed my arm, “Wait.  I’m just pulling your leg.  Of course I know you,” But he was now acting nervous,  “Huh-huh.  Just a little joke.  That’s all.  But yeah.  Probably you should get back to work.  And hey - Could we keep this little conversation between us, Boomcube?”

“Sure.  Yeah.  What conversation?  Ha-ha,” I decided I’d better get Boomer and my lunch and get the hell out of there.   Renaud’s story would have to wait because I was never going back to the little cabinet shop.

“What the hell, Cube,” Boomer asked as we pulled away from the shop for the last time ever.  Some flash of light caught my attention.  Boomer was lighting up a smoke with a fancy Zippo I’d never seen before.

“Where’d you get that?”

“I don’t know.  It might be my dad’s. I found it in his suit jacket pocket when I wore it the other night,” Boomer explained casually as he flipped it closed and threw it on the dashboard.

I grabbed it, inspecting it for a moment as Boomer waited for whatever story I had to tell about why we just quit our jobs.

“Your dad’s name isn’t ‘Burt’,” I said.

“No.  I think that’s my dad’s lighter’s name, though …”

"Ok, I'll buy that,"  I said as I tossed the time machine back to Boomer and recounted to him the strange behavior of Rick, the cabinet shop owner.