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A family on vacation, cranky from the flight which must have left wherever they came from while it was still dark outside. I’d be cranky, too. A mom with short, sensible hair and twenty extra pounds around the middle. A dad with a bald top and a ring of sad looking wisps circling the rim of his skull. He toted about eighty extra pounds around his belt line. Eight a.m. and already sweating like a hog.
They pulled enough bags for a two-week trip and two kids who looked like puberty had run them down in the street driving a Sherman tank. A boy and a girl. They looked to be in the midst of a contest for which one could grow the most pimples. A dead tie so far, from what I could see.
“Morning. How can I help you?” I said. First one of the day gets my special “helpful guy” treatment.
Dad stepped in front of his depressing family and took charge. One look at him and I could tell the only time in his life he got to take charge of anything was with a pudgy, given-up wife and two kids destined to live out the rest of their lives waiting for their awkward phase to end. Congrats, Pops, you’re king of the royal family of kill-me-if-it-ever-happens-to-me.
“We have a reservation. Griffin.”
All business, this guy. Better than the chit chat of some jerk who got off an eight-hour flight and needed to vent about the shitty flight attendants and sub-standard food.
“Okay,” I said. “Let me pull up your reservation.”
I typed his name into the computer and his page came on screen. Another good thing about being with a small, independent rental company is we can pretty much count all the rentals on two hands in a day. There’s never a lot of searching for lost files around here.
“Here we go. Minivan, right?” As if I needed to look that up in the computer.
“Yes. Minivan. For two weeks.” His wife fanned him with a folded up map. I hoped his face didn’t turn any redder or I’d start to worry about the old guy having a heart attack in the lobby. The two sad sack kids stared blankly, the boy mouth-breathing through thick braces.
“That’s mileage included,” he sort of asked, sort of stated.
“Yes. Mileage included.” I’m sure it made him feel like a real provider, a real hunter/gatherer to this family of Cro-Magnons.
“Dad, I’m hungry,” the boy said.
“Yeah, me too,” th
e girl followed up. Really? These lard-asses hungry? You don’t say.
“We’ll get breakfast as soon as we’re out of here and on the road,” he said in that typical annoyed dad way. I bet he couldn’t wait to get behind the wheel so he could threaten them with the old, “If you don’t knock it off I’ll turn this car around and . . .” But if they were at an airport I doubted he was gonna drive them all the way home. Mileage or no mileage included.
“Where y’all from?” I asked while the rental form printed.
“Detroit,” he said, clipped and sharp to let me know that was all the information I would be getting out of him.
I nodded. I figured I didn’t need to tell him what a shithole he lived in, so I left it there.
“Here we are,” I said. I read him all the particulars; he declined the insurance. They all do. Anyone renting from us was a cheap bastard, so they all turned down the insurance. I got his info and offered to do the walk through of the van with him.
“I think I know how a minivan works,” he said.
“It’s more just to check for any damage to the vehicle so you won’t be liable upon return. And there may be a few things in the newer models you may not be familiar with.”
“Da-a-a-ad,” the boy said, his impatience showing like the big red zit on his nose.
“That’s fine, just tell me what spot it’s in and we’ll get going. We still have a drive ahead of us to get to the beach.”
“I don’t know why you wouldn’t let my dad pick us up,” the wife said.
“I’m not gonna rely on your parents to get us around. What if we want to take a day trip?” He didn’t hide his annoyance and I knew this was an argument that started back in Detroit.
“What day trips are we gonna take, Sean?”
“We at least want the freedom, Linda.” He spat out her name with such a fermented venom. That one word, her name, had been marinated in all the years of marriage and all the variations on this argument they’d ever had, which I took to be many.
“You’re in space twenty-three,” I said, still in my early morning fake cheeriness. Besides, the Griffin family provided me with some great theater to start the day. The Fighting Griffins starring in Sad Suburban Vacation: A Tragedy.
“Thanks,” he said and a bead of sweat broke loose from his empty forehead and ran down his nose to splash on my counter. If he saw it, he ignored it. The whole wheezing, squeaking mass of them turned as one and rolled out pushing, pulling and toting luggage almost as square as they were.
