fiction by Jason Edwards
I’ve never been the sort of person who just goes out and buys something if I can get my design team to make it for me, but I made a spelling error in the req and now I’ve got myself an electric cab opener.
And let’s be frank, this things is completely useless. Nevertheless, I’m not about to let all that R&D go to waste. So I went downtown to do some shopping. I put on my three-piece suit, the sharkskin one with a hint of salmon, a black silk shirt, a tie the board gave me as a thank you for 2012. 2012 was a great year!
I looked good for a guy in his late fifties, shaped like a butterball, going bald. I love it when people underestimate me. That’s how I get ’em. No one was going to underestimate me in my sharkskin and silk, though. I had my driver drop me at West and 144th, and walked a block to Jazeray’s. Think Bed Bath & Beyond but everything costs about as much as a decent family-sized home in the mid west.
I mean, can you imagine. Standing there, trying to decide between a blender and a split-level ranch in Nicoma Park, Oklahoma? And don’t tell me none of the houses in Nicoma Park are split-level ranches, or I’ll go there, build one just to make this illustration work, and then jack the price up to a queen bed-sheet set or even one of them “art prints” they got hanging in droves at the front of the store. Talk about overpriced. Tell me shag carpeting and popcorn stucco ceilings are worth 5 year’s salary and I’ll call the loony bin on ya myself.
Where was I. Oh yeah, West and 145th, since I walked a block from 144th. That was fun, walking on the street like a regular person. I went into Jazeray’s, bought about a dozen ice cream scoops, some refills for my Soda Stream, a throw blanket with a sport team logo on it– I forget which one. I was into sports in 2011, when me and the boys from the club where buying and selling shares in each other’s franchises. It was like a game- pun intended- to see who could own the most shares of the most winning teams. Kind of like fantasy football, but all that money shuffling put a couple thousand people out of work. Don’t worry, we got ’em all dream jobs scattered around the country. One guys piloting a desk and getting paid to answer the phone once an hour. I’ve called himself a few times. Nice fella. Knows a lot of movie trivia.
Went outside with my purchases, hailed a hack. You look like I do, you don’t wait long for a taxi. Tried out the electric cab opener– had it on the wrong setting. All four doors, hood, trunk, glove compartment, poor guy’s lunchbox. Woops. He started apologizing all over the place. I guess he didn’t know it was my doing. I didn’t set him straight. Apologetic’s less stress than anger on the ticker, and he looked about as old as me but without the room full of doctors sitting around playing Canasta in case I get a papercut or throw a clot.
He asked me where to and for a second there I forget my three assistants hadn’t faxed him my whole day’s itinerary that same morning while he was having his daily monkey-butt coffee. You know, that coffee where they give the beans to a monkey and his gastric juices break it down so when he craps it out it’s ready for roasting. My driver has expensive tastes. He used to be a Fortune 500 CEO with his own island in the Caymans. But I talked him into the job after a heart-to-heart about what corporate life was doing to his kidneys. Pour guy was on his fifth and sixth ones, respectively, and the AKF was flush and didn’t need any more charity.
Oh, and those rumors? That I started the American Kidney Foundation, the first non-profit to earn the equivalent of the GDP of half the countries in Scandinavia, just to put this guy in a position to need us and then need me? Not true. I mean, I’m on the board, but that’s coincidence. I don’t get off on having billionaires drive for me. Not at all. He’s just a fantastic driver.
Finally came to my senses and told the cabbie to drive me home. On the way I handed him an improved meter. It was way better than the one he had. He was reluctant at first, but I told him to keep it and I’d pay both meters. He wised up when he realized that while his meter said seventy-six bucks, mine said Tuition for All Your Kids.
And I paid both, too, even tipped him on the seventy-six. But not on the Tuition. I’m not an asshole.