Paperback Writer

“Pay-per-back wri-ter, pay-per-back wri-ter!”

Listening to the Beatles' song on the radio, Jason chuckled to himself over the irony. As a wannabe writer, the song couldn't have come on at a more appropriate time. With more than some amusement, he wondered how he could possibly have writer's block when he wasn't a writer yet?

Shaking off the mental fuzzies, he headed to his favorite watering hole. Maybe I'll get some inspiration there, he thought. Either way, it provided the perfect excuse to see Laura again.

“Yo Jason! What's happening?” yelled the bartender over the cacophony. Jason ambled up to a bar stool and eyed her. She was kind of a cute blond, but somewhat overdone with tattoos.

“Not much, how 'bout you?”

Laura just gave him an impish grin but said nothing. Jason understood her reluctance for small talk and ordered bourbon on the rocks. Good for inspiration, he thought. But one of these days he intended to find out the significance of the tattoos. She was an enigma of sorts, with many soulful personality layers for such a young person.

Nearby a middle-aged couple in a booth was vehemently arguing over something, but it was unclear what the dispute was. Their shouting rose above the normal baseline of bar noise. The woman quickly stood up, told her husband he could go to hell and stormed out. Jason turned away from them and sipped his bourbon. However, the husband unexpectedly left the booth and sat down next to him at the bar, muttering to himself.

Jason politely nodded but was trying to avoid an entangling conversation with him. He was trying to concentrate, trying to get some story ideas.

Now the man addressed him directly, almost shouting, “What the hell are you supposed to do, huh?” Jason just shrugged, trying to be polite but he had a feeling this was going to be a long night.

“She left me for a garbage collector! A freaking garbage collector!”

“I'm sorry to hear that,” Jason said. He really wasn't sorry, except for the downturn in conversational discourse. He was, however, curiously stunned by the wife's choice in the matter. What magical attributes do these trash men possess? He would have to revisit this mystery some other time.

If it happened to him, it could very well happen to me someday, he thought. Sam, the cuckolded victim, went on for more than a half hour. His initial rage turned into anger, then to sadness. He then managed to sum up a very peculiar, 20 year marriage in the time it took Jason to drink one bourbon.

Jason fought the urge to excuse himself and sit elsewhere, and was losing the battle when friends of his arrived. They told Jason to join them in a nearby booth and drinks were on them. Yeah! The perfect escape!

Just as Jason said, “It was good talking to you, Sam,” one of his friends yelled to him “your friend can join us too!” Damn.

Vinny and Bob welcomed Sam and Jason to the booth. Jason mechanically asked them what's new. It seemed Vinny couldn't wait to tell Jason that he had been fired today.

“Fired?” Jason asked. “That's incredible! You've been there over 21 years and doing so well”.

Vinny looked around, twice, before replying. “Well, ‘fired’ is a euphemism for being paid off,” he said in a muted tone. He went on to explain that he uncovered an increasing number of accounting shenanigans at his firm, and was called into the V.P. of Operations' office later that day. The V.P. slid a document over towards Vinny and asked him to read and sign it.

“It's better for both the company and you,” said the V.P.

Vinny was now silently grinning like a Cheshire cat.

“So! What was it?” Jason yelled. Sam was leaning forward across the table, curiously straining for the answer.

“They paid me off,” Vinny whispered. Of course, he looked around the room, thrice, before telling them this.

“Wow!” was the simulcast from the booth occupants.

“Big time!” Vinny proudly whispered. Smiling, they toasted Vinny on his good fortune.

“So Sam, how long have you known Jason,” Bob inquired. Sam and Jason looked at each other and laughed.

“About an hour,” Sam replied. It was an awkward moment for Jason, as he didn't want to relate how Sam and him began this “friendship.”

He didn't have to, as Sam blurted out “my God-damned wife left me for a freaking trash man! I've bent Jason's ear about this for the last hour, and he was nice enough to let me vent without judging me.”

The silence was shattered when Bob stated, with great authority to Sam, “You should have seen that coming!”

Sam sputtered, “What the hell do you mean by that?”

Without hesitation, Bob offered some secret sociological insight into the world of garbage men and their customers.

“Everyone knows the trash men are Romeos, and in spite of their occupation and the attendant drawbacks, they're great lovers.”

At this point, their newly acquired friend was volcanic, his neck veins protruding like so many large earthworms in a pile of garbage.

“Are you shitting me?” Sam screamed. Jason and Vinny glared at Bob, silently signaling him to shut the hell up. Now! However, Bob was having too much fun to let it go.

“Any man who can't satisfy his woman will definitely lose her to the trash collector. It's a proven fact.”

Jason saw the large profile of Sam lunge across the table in a flash. Vinny was up instantly to block his murderous attempt on Bob and Jason was pulling him from behind. To make matters worse, Bob was still laughing at his insightfully illogical lesson on bored suburban housewives when the two spindly friends got Sam calmed down.

As Jason bought Sam a drink, Vinny and Bob made a quick exit, with Bob still smiling. “Jesus! That moron almost got himself killed with his nonsense,” Jason angrily mused.

Sam calmed down and apologized for his outburst, but Jason told him to forget about it. Moments later, a mousy little man timidly approached them.

“I'm sorry but I overheard your conversation earlier,” he said, “and I can certainly empathize. My first wife also left me for the garbage collector. I was devastated at first, but got over it in no time. It was just meant to be.”

Jason's lower jaw visibly went south. "You're serious?” he asked. The little man just nodded his head, confirming it but also offering reassurances to Sam.

“Freaking incredible,” Sam muttered. Jason and Sam periodically sipped their drinks in mutual silence for the next twenty-two minutes.

Finally, Sam stood up and firmly shook Jason's hand. "I've gotta go. It was nice to meet you!"

“Take care of yourself. Maybe I'll see you around,” Jason offered. Sam thanked him and his friends for the moral support, as uneven as it was. As Sam was leaving the pub, Jason actually felt like he bonded with the big guy. He also felt good that him and his friends, in a weird way, may have helped Sam get through his domestic crisis.

Spotting an empty stool, he weaved his way through the increasingly intoxicated masses back to the bar. Laura came over to refresh his drink.

Avoiding eye contact, she stated more than questioned “Another tragic trash fatality?”

“You heard his story?” Jason said.

“Not quite. Lately, it's the most common reason given for marital strife. And no one knows exactly why.”

Jason quietly pondered that pronouncement for a short while. Laura remained nearby as the drink requests had slowed down. Jason glanced at her intermittently, but lost the connection between his thought processes and his oral cavity. He was actually afraid to probe her feelings for him, although he had the impression that they connected. How much she liked him was the $64,000 question.

Throwing all caution to the wind, Jason managed to blurt out “Can I ask you a serious question?” Laura looked right at him, melting his eye sockets and liquefying his brain cells with her natural beauty.

“If you were married, and I was your trash collector, would you, ah, consider leaving your husband for me?” A horrible silence followed, lasting at least 3 seconds. An eternity for Jason, as he knew it was probably a prelude to a resounding “No!”

Laura coyly replied, “I'll give you my answer the next time your garbage truck is in the neighborhood.” Jason was now grinning back at her, more as an acknowledgment of her answer than actually understanding what it really meant.

It was getting late, and he finished his drink. Leaving a much larger tip than usual, he said goodnight to Laura as he left the bar. She smiled and winked at him.

Turning up his collar to the biting wind, he chuckled at the contradiction of the icy night and the warm inner feelings he had. It was an unusual evening, but he reprimanded himself for not conjuring up some story ideas. Oh well. Later.