Читать книгу Escape from Coolville - Sherman Sutherland - Страница 8

Apparently Trainer Tim was pissed at me for not paying attention during his awesome PowerPoints, so to punish me or teach me a lesson or whatever, he got a tape of the call I got all my PINs on. He didn’t mention any of this at the time; he just said, “Okay, as promised, we’re going to listen to a few actual calls.”

It took me a while to realize it was me, because I wasn’t really paying attention, for one, but mainly because I sound way totally more dorkish than I realized.

When we took our break, Tim was like, “L.J., could I talk to you for a second?”

And then he went into this whole thing about how he was trying to teach me a lesson since I’m never listening and everything and how he was planning to play the call and then tell everyone, “Okay, that’s what you’re not supposed to do on your calls.”

But then he was like, “I don’t know how you scored so low on that call. I used to be in QA, as you probably know, and I don’t see how you could’ve scored lower than a ninety-seven. I’ve got your QA tally sheet right here—Greeting, Verification, Sincerity—those were all good on this call. I’ll talk to Daniel to see if we can’t get you back on the call floor tomorrow, okay?”

But right then, Tanha walked past and she smiled kind of a cute little sexy smile at me, and then I caught a look at her perfect little tight butt as she went out the door and I was like, “That’s okay, Tim. Training’s not so bad.”

“Are you sure?” he asked. “Don’t get me wrong. I’d love to have you in here. I get a bonus for everybody who completes training. But you really could be—should be—out on the call floor.”

“That’s all right,” I said. “I really am getting a lot out of your training. I don’t always look like I’m listening, but I really am.”

I’m turning into as big a perv as Adam.

* * *

God, I hate OU. I just called them to find out about my results from Judiciaries, and they’re like, “I’m sorry, I can’t give that information out over the phone. If you haven’t already received the letter detailing your results, you should probably be getting that in the next few days.”

“Can’t you just tell me what the results are?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t give that information out over the phone.”

“I haven’t gotten it. Did you send it to my address in Athens, or to my parents’ address?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t give that information out over the phone.”

“Did you send it to my school address or to my home address?”

“I’m sorry. I can’t give that information out over the phone.”

“How about this? Can I verify my address? Did you send it to Athens, or to Cincinnati?”

“According to this, it was not sent to Athens.”

So now I’ve got to drive all the way to Cincinnati after work tonight just to find out if I’ll still be suspended next year or not.

It’s a good thing I’m in training. If I would’ve been working my regular hours, I wouldn’t get there until, like, one-thirty in the morning. At least now I can make it there by eight, easy. Maybe I got sent back to training so I could get the letter out of the mail before Mom and Dad open it—one of those, the Lord works in mysterious ways sort of things. Of course, if I never got sent back to training, I could’ve driven there before work, while Mom and Dad were both at work, and got the letter before they get home from work. So maybe the Lord doesn’t work in mysterious ways, after all.

Now I’ve got to get all ninja and hope Mom and Dad don’t catch me going through their mail. Hopefully Mom won’t open my letter before I get there. And why did they send it to Mom and Dad’s anyway? They’re supposed to send stuff like that to me at my local address.

Fucktards.

* * *

I am the ninja, coo coo ca-choo.

Mom and Dad weren’t home when I got there, so I got in and out in about ten minutes. It would’ve been quicker, but they’re planting some new something in the back yard, so I had a bunch of muddy footprints to clean up.

The main thing is, I got the letter and got out before I had to deal with any of the “How’s school?” “Are you graduating this year?” “Do you have a major, at least?” questions that always lead to the “When I was your age” or “It’s time for you to grow up” arguments that never end, or the “Keith did this and Keith did that and why can’t you be a big shot investment banker like Keith and worship the almighty Dollar like a normal person” crap that always makes me wish I had the balls to quote that thing from Jesus about how it’s easier for a camel to go through a needle than it is for some rich dude to get into heaven.

The letter was basically what I expected: Blah blah blah, blah blah blah, “numerous code of conduct infractions,” blah blah, “your best interest,” blah blah blah, “your request for academic reinstatement has been denied,” blah blah blah, “one academic year,” blah blah, “at which time we will review any request for readmission,” blah.

At least I got to the letter before Mom opened it. Otherwise I’d still be stuck on the couch in the living room, Dad standing in front of me giving me the disappointed look, while Mom’s pacing back and forth behind him, every once in a while saying, “And premarital sex is bad, too,” or asking, “Are you on drugs?”

Since I got out of Mom and Dad’s house a lot sooner than I expected, I decided to stop by Fitzgerald’s for a beer. I just wanted to kind of chill out before I drove back to Athens and, I don’t know, think about my life or something now that it was definite that I won’t be at OU next year.

Pretty much as soon as I sat down, though, Ernie Ameedo comes up and starts yapping yapping yapping away.

“Lucas Davenport! What brings you here?”

He asks about Keith and Mom and Dad and what I’m up to and he’s telling the bartender all about the time I broke my leg when I was five, and about all the crazy stuff he and Keith did in high school. Pretty soon, though, it becomes obvious that what he really wants to talk about is the Grab Bag.

I mean, I understand that he owns the bar now, but that doesn’t mean that he needs to be talking weed talk loud enough for pretty much everyone to hear.

He said to the bartender, “Lucas’ brother and me had this friend, Charlie, who had an uncle who collected weed. Some people collect stamps, he collected weed. Whenever he got a hold of some primo kind buds, he’d set aside about an eighth of an ounce and keep it in this Crown Royal bag he had. Twenty years worth of the best, red-haired, sticky stuff you ever smoked in your life. He gave it all to Charlie on his eighteenth birthday. I can’t tell you how many times I tried to buy it. I offered him three grand, and he still wouldn’t sell it. So imagine my surprise when I hear that Charlie’s moved out west and sold his Grab Bag to Keith’s little brother here.”

Then he says to me, “How much did you pay him for it? I’ll give you two grand for it right now. Cash. It’s in the back.”

I don’t know if he thinks I carry a big ginormous Crown Royal bag full of weed around with me all the time or what, but he acted totally shocked when I told him I didn’t have it.

“You don’t have it with you now, or you don’t have it at all?”

“I don’t have it now.”

He kept going on and on to the bartender about how the Grab Bag is “Hall of Fame of Weed,” so I didn’t want to tell him that I lost it when I moved. I’d just avoided a lecture about responsibility from Mom and Dad; I didn’t want to replace it with one from Keith’s high school buddy. So I lied.

“Bring it by when you’re ready to sell it,” he said. “I’ll make sure we’re both happy.”

Okay.

Then he starts arguing with the bartender because the bartender thought weed was more potent now than it used to be.

Ernie was like, “That’s what the cops want you to think so they can buy all their expensive cop crap. Have you seen that tank the police have now? A fucking tank. Why the hell do the police need a fucking tank? They don’t. But if they scare enough people, they can convince somebody to buy them one.”

I sneaked out of there pretty soon after that. Now I’m home.

And bored.

And sober.

One nice thing about the night, though, was that I finally talked to somebody who knows the Grab Bag is real. Every time I try to tell the guys at work about it, they’re all like, “Oh, yeah, L.J.’s got this magical bag of weed that’s better than anything anybody’s ever smoked.”

Then I’d say something like, “It’s not better than anything ever smoked, because it’s been smoked—that’s the whole point.”

But they’d always be like I totally made it up. Seeing Ernie tonight reminded me that it’s real, even though it’s lost now.