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Jay shoved open thedoor to the convenience mart and sighed when the cool air hit his sweaty face. “Christ, it’s hot out there,” he complained. “We need more prospects—or hangarounds, or something. This sucks.”
In the best-case scenario, prospects and hangarounds did the grunt work around the station: they ran the register, pumped the gas, cleaned up the mart and the bays. Patches did auto repairs and body work and towing, and filled in in the mart in a pinch. But these days were not the best-case scenario. They were dealing with a shortage of fresh meat, which meant patches had to fill in on all the jobs that kept the station running.
Jay and Duncan, the youngest patches, were still working on their ASE certification to be mechanics, so they worked in the mart more often regardless. A standing rule here was that the mechanics had to be certified to do any work on cars. Eight Ball had loosened that up a little, letting them both get some apprentice hours in the shop and take on some minor jobs themselves as well. Still, Jay did most of his straight working hours behind the counter.
But virtually everyone agreed that the worst job at Brian Delaney Auto Service was working the pumps, so prospects and hangarounds did that work almost exclusively. It was a full-service station, no self-service pumps at all, and most of the people who pulled their vehicles to the pumps were the sort of folks who liked being waited on. Whoexpectedit. Old fogeys and middle-aged Karens.
It pretty much sucked, yeah. Especially on a hundred-degree August day.
Standing behind the sales desk, leaning on the back counter, Zach nodded. He’d watched the Karen in the Lexus SUV put Jay through his paces out there. “Yeah, but I can’t think of a hangaround ready to prospect, and we haven’t had fresh hangarounds coming in for a while.”
It was becoming an acute problem, Zach thought. Christian was at the end of his prospect period, and there was no reason Zach could think of not to patch him. Then they’d have no prospects at all, and they needed at least one.
“How about Monty?” Jay asked, grabbing a frozen Snickers out of the ice cream cooler.
Monty Pickett grew up in the neighborhood. He was about their age—a little younger than Zach and a little older than Jay—and they’d grown up together at the clubhouse. Monty’s uncle Maurice was a friend of the club. Not a hangaround, had never looked to prospect, just a nearby neighbor who enjoyed their company, and vice versa. He had a small tuckpointing business. Monty, an only child with a single mom always working at least two full-time jobs to get the ends to meet, had been pretty much attached to Maurice’s hip, so he’d been at the clubhouse a lot, too.
They’d all played together as little kids, ridden bikes and boards together as they got older, and learned to really ride together as well. Then Monty enlisted in the Army right out of high school. He hadn’t seen combat, hadn’t left the States, and he’d thought he’d maybe make the Army his career, so he’d reupped. But his second stint had been cut short when he’d gotten into an argument with an officer that had turned physical. They’d been at a bar off base, out of uniform, but he’d still been rung up for hitting a superior. Because he hadn’t thrown the first punch, he didn’t get court martialed, but he’d been kicked with a general discharge. The officer who’d started the fight hadn’t been disciplined at all.
The officer was white. Monty was Black. He thought that said everything anybody needed to know. To the extent he had an opinion about something that had happened far outside his own experience, Zach figured his friend was probably right.
Monty had been back about a year, working full time at the station, hanging around full time at the clubhouse. But he’d come back different. He’d been an enthusiastic dude before, a lot like Jay in that respect. Mom jokingly called it Labrador Syndrome—excitable and prone to breaking things, but too cute to get too mad at. Now Monty was quiet. Sullen.
That wasn’t a mark against him; more than a few Bulls were fucking angry most of the time, or got there with lightning speed. It was more that Zach hadn’t figured out the new Monty yet. It sort of felt like his friend had been taken over by a bigger, madder alien version, and they didn’t fit the same way anymore. He didn’t know if that was a valid reason for concern or not.
“Does he even want to prospect?”
With a mouthful of frozen candy bar, Jay dropped his jaw. Before he went back to chewing, he said, “Bro. C’mon.”
“He’s never said it out to me.”
“Well, he’s said it to me.”
“Since he’s been back?”
Jay shrugged that answer as he wadded up the Snickers wrapper and tried for a three-pointer in the trash can near the front door. And missed.
“I don’t know, Jay. Before, yeah, he wanted it. We all wanted it. But you and I went straight to the club. He went to the Army, and he came back pissed. I don’t know how he’d deal with the prospect bullshit.”
“He dealt with the basic training bullshit.”
“Yeah ...”
Jay hiked himself up to sit on the counter, which would drive Maverick to distraction if he saw, but Maverick was off the compound at some kind of parent-teacher meeting at Hannah’s school. Parent-teacher meetings in the middle of a school day were always bad news, and this one was in the second week of the school year, so Hannah was starting off the year with a bang. Jay had better be minding his manners before the veep got back.
“It’s not like he doesn’t know how prospecting sucks,” Jay said. “He’s been around, Z. He knows he’ll be shoveling shit for at least a year before the payoff.”
More like shoveling dirt to make holes to bury shitheads in, but okay. “I guess. At least, it wouldn’t hurt to throw his name on the table and see what everybody else says about it.”
Jay gave Zach a sharp look and a head-tilt. “Wait. Are you thinking about sponsoring him?”
The question took Zach by surprise, so he thought about it for a second. Was that the source of his hesitation? It was, wasn’t it? If somebody else put Monty up, he’d vote for him without a question. But before he took on the responsibility for ushering him to the table, he wanted to really understand who Monty had become.
The question was academic, probably. Realizing that, Zach shook his head. “I can’t. I want to go to Laughlin and set up the charter.”
Jay made a disgusted grunt. He was really resistant to the idea of Zach working on the new charter, and Zach didn’t think it was because he was worried how Mom would take it. Mom was taking it badly, but they were working through it. They’d be fine, especially if Zach came back in a few months.
He was becoming less and less sure he would, as he and Lyra continued to talk every day, but he was keeping that possibility entirely to himself for now.
