The air was hot and heavy as Deb slid the key into the door of the office. Just another day at work that has somehow begun to feel like a prison to her, locked away every day for 8 hours, interrupted only by an occasional customer ticking away about five minute intervals of the day. This morning just getting to work had been an adventure. Whisky
her golden retriever mix had barged his way out the gate as she attempted to get the boss’s dog, Buddy, into the car. Her chocolate beagle, Coco, had bolted down the alley oblivious to her frantic calls to come. Wrestling with Buddy on the leash and dragging Whisky by the collar, she had managed to get Whisky back behind the fence gate and Buddy in the car. Grabbing her purse from the top of the car she had raced down the alley in search of her “girl” as Coco was affectingly called. Luckily, Coco hadn’t gone far, just down to the second house and she was able to coax her into the car and finally leased back into the yard. Giving her a few stern “bad girl” reprimands as she returned to her car and headed for work.
Now unlocking the door trying to get Buddy in the office presented a bit of a challenge and she had to nudge him on the rear to avert his attention to something he was sniffing near the fence by the office door. She was dog sitting her boss’s dog, her office-mate, while the boss and family went on vacation to Washington D.C. and Ocean City, MD. Buddy had become a regular on the office sofa just a half year
or so after she had started working at Access Storage, a small self-storage facility some four years ago. He was a quiet dog, unlike her rambunctious pups. He rarely moved from the sofa except to greet an occasional customer or their children. Bud was use to children by now, the boss, Marc, had three active boys under the age of 12 and a 2 yr old little girl, but nothing ever seemed to faze Bud. Deb called him regal, because he always seemed so composed and held his head high, but he was just a floppy eared blue tick hound mix that had been rescued from the pound after the boss’s family had lost their other dog, a pure-bred bull terrier name Mike to lymphoma.
She shoved Bud in the door and relocked it from the outside as she made her way out to the storage facility to get the golf cart and make her morning rounds. She looked forward to this part of the job, riding the cart around the facility in the morning air, puffing on a smoke before encasing herself behind the glass door of the office. Every thing looked o.k. she noted that the church grounds behind the facility was nearly cleaned up from the revival that had taken place the weekend past. All that remained was one R.V. and the trash dumpster that was finally empty after being filled the first day of the revival, leaving no where but stacked next to the receptacle for the trash from the rest of the weekend to go. She thought it was a good thing that there was a good fence between the church and the storage units, being the last weekend of the month, tenants moving out might have thrown even more trash in their receptacle and left more of a mess. Since coming to work here Deb had noted that most of the people that rented storage units had bad habits when it came to disposing of things they no
longer wanted. In fact, she had discovered that people store a lot of things she would call trash. It was part of her job to clean out the units that tenants stopped paying on for some reason or other and had been foreclosed on, leaving the contents of their units to be auctioned away. Since coming here she could only remember two units were ever bought by someone other that the business. Most were “purchased” by the business and cleaned and parted out, trying to sell anything that might be worth a little something. Having second pick of anything out of the units was one “work perk” as she called it, her boss has first choice on anything of value, she has seconds, within limits more or less set by her, and the rest would then be stored in other units with other contents of foreclosed units and sold at a later auction held by an auctioneer. Deb never took anything of real value without first asking her boss, like the sofa and chair still in one unit that she wants to replace her current sofa. Mostly she gets various household items, just little items that replace what she currently has or something she doesn’t have. She has been able to collect enough storage tubs in the four years to finally organize her and her husbands stuff in the barn at home. This had been no easy task since her husband, Jim, liked to keep the littlest of things from his past. She is anything but a packrat; things had always come and gone in her life so she never seemed particularly interested in holding on to anything, always looking for different things to fill in the spaces of her empty life, if just for a little while.
Now back at the office she entered and went about the opening routine that she had at one time so looked forward to, following the same procedure every morning had given her a sense of stability now it offered a hint of stagnation. Like the things in her life Deb often bored of her situation or station in life. She longed for change, yet feared it. Too many times in her life things had suddenly changed for the worst, when all she wanted was just a small change in her daily routine, something good, exciting, different, just something to take the routine out of her daily life. Yet, today would not bring such a good change, it was one of those in between days, just after the rush of the first of the month, but too soon and too hot to shed the confines of the office and work out in the units. She occupied her morning processing a payment, checking in a rental truck and making reservations for next weekend’s trip to join her brother for an inmate dinner event he was so looking forward to. Her brother, Tommy, had chosen the wrong path early in life and wound up immersed in drugs and alcohol winding up in prison for beating a man to death to get drug money. Her brother was only 19 when he entered prison and over the years she, her husband and her mother, up to her death, were the only ones that visited him in the various prisons he was incarcerated in over the years in western Pennsylvania. Now since moving to Ohio in 1994 she had been able to visit him more often and join him for different events sparely held for lifers. She had come to know that prison officials don’t encourage visitation, they seem to do whatever they can to discourage it. Only with the insistence of inmate organization and prisoner support groups do they cave to different events and visitation amenities.
Unfortunately, Tony the guy who leased the building behind the office a few years ago for a body shop interrupts her work stretching techniques. Like usual he enters bitching about something. Today it’s the heat, his thirst and his miserable life. For over two and a half years now he has wore on her last nerve with his constant bitching and moaning. He had flim flamed himself into Marc’s life three years ago with promises of muscle cars and money that Marc found hard to resist. Marc’s wife Monica was always on him about making more money and living up to his ability that when he pictured restoring classic cars as a possible money maker he jumped right into a quasi partnership with Tony, with Tony doing the body work at discounted prices, Marc supplying the funding to buy the cars and fix them up then they would split the profits from each sale. At first, it was the thought that Tony was a perfectionist at his work, because it took him so long to get a project done, soon it was realized that he was an old alcoholic slacker who blamed everything and everybody else for his mistakes and miserable existence. Every day was another story to sponge money from Marc that he was soon in too far to pull back without losing his investments. Now Tony seems to be a permanent thorn in Marc’s side. Deb would have long ago counted her losses and sent the scum packing, but Marc just goes along on the bumpy roller coater ride that Tony provides. Today she just wishes he would ask her a favor, like to go get him some water or pick him up or take him home, he lost his driver’s license for not keeping up with his child support, for a lot of good they would do him, because he had lost his vehicle months earlier because of non-payment, but with Marc gone she wishes he would ask her so she could be one of the few that would tell him not only no, but hell no. She has pictured his demise in some form or fashion, literally and figuratively, or just the one thing that would shut him down, and out of her daily life and off Marc forever. At first, it had bothered her that she had such sinister thoughts, but after too many outburst and everyday cranking from him, she's proud to think that boiling acid would work or at the very least have her chance to tell him what a loud mouth, blood sucking, slimy leach he is. Yet, thankfully, he leaves and she returns to her work.
Deciding to buy her lunch today, she starts her car with the remote starter Jim had gotten her for Christmas two years ago. Most days she forgets she has it but it has been so hot that she can’t help but remember. Minutes later as she is gathering her purse and keys she sees a car had pulled up to the front of the office and an feeble looking, elderly man is standing outside the car, alone, looking out toward the units. Maybe he is waiting on someone to come or go but whatever he is doing, he is preventing her from leaving just yet, so she returns her purse and keys to their place and waits. Meanwhile the phone rings and she answers. It’s the collection agency they use for foreclosures and other collections. He is asking for information on a foreclosure from 2005, she lays her hands on the file quickly and he ask that she fax him the information. She does. Finally, she starts for the door again only to find the strange little old man approaching the door, she had seen him pull away while she was on the phone, but now he was back. He opens the door, reminding her of the physical efforts of Mr. Burns on the Simpson’s, she ask, “How can I help you?” He lifts his eyes slowly and coughs out the words, “I need propane.” Ah, the one part of the job she never cared for from the start, filling propane tanks. Always, showing the customer a smiling face and cheerful voice she returns, “I can take care of that for you.”
To Be Continued
