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The three of them stood there, then James the Virologist finally regained his smiley attitude and made a big show of running up the stairs.
Reaching the stop, he grinned and stretched. “Glorious day! You guys want something to drink?”
“We’re fine.”
“Then up and away!”
—
They’d been driving for a day more than planned due to a brakes thing in Tulsa where they had to spend the night in a motel full of gnats and with what sounded like tweaker lowlifes next door not sleeping and the smell of gasoline everywhere.
Shit trip to California and now they were going to be lifting and hauling and uncrating and moving stuff around all day because people always changed their minds about furniture.
Alfie and Donnytrudgedup the stairs.
When they got inside the house, music was playing loud, piped in through unseen speakers.
James said, “That okay? The song?”
“Sure.”
Then he winked.
That’s when Alfie started hating the asshole.
—
The job took longer than they figured because James’s wife, a scarecrow blonde with a mouth as tight as a drawstring purse and some kind of accent, insisted on inspecting every single crystal and porcelain thingie and when you do that you find something and sure enough, there were two broken plates and that meant tears, dirty looks, and paperwork.
Combine how much stuff there was, the house being on three levels, plus their mandated lunch and dinner breaks and they didn’t finish until six p.m. Meaning they had to spend the night before taking the last haul—a smaller bunch they were taking to another professor in the Westwood neighborhood of L.A. Professors all over the place; company had some kind of deal with Case Western.
GPS said Westwood was a hundred and thirty miles north, meaning at least two and a half hours if they were lucky, a lot more if they weren’t, L.A. traffic sucked.
They found a motel better than the one in Tulsa in Anaheim, near Disneyland. Better but not good. One bit of luck: separate rooms so Alfie didn’t have to listen to Donny snore. Guy should lose weight, that gut out to here had to mess up his breathing.
But Donny was strong. Stronger than Alfie who was ten years older and not a big guy but even so, stronger than he looked.
Donny, a football guy in high school. Alfie, baseball. Wiry but all sinew. For years he’d been scoring free drinks in bars doing arm wrestling.
Now he hurt all the time.
—
When they got to Anaheim, they both were exhausted, had a couple burgers, conked out at eight, slept lousy, and were up at two forty-five with coffee and bearclaws from a twenty-four-hour Dee-Lite Donuts across from the motel, you could smell the sugar and fat.
When Alfie finished, he said, “Let’s go, now.”
Donny said, “Now?”
“This early, maybe we can cruise on the freeway. Better we wait there than sit in crap.”
“Lemme pee,” said Donny.
“Then we go?”
“Sure.”
Good strategy, rumbling along in the dark, the freeway really feeling free.
