The Fuck Up Read Free Page B

kissed her, changed my clothes, and went off to the theater.
    When I got there, everyone seemed unusually kind. The candy girl couldn’t offer me enough popcorn. The manager on duty a new guy with whom I got along well, realized that I was tired and allowed me to sit in the lobby and relax. I wasn’t curious about the kindness; I assumed that it was fate’s compensation for all the recent misdealings. I didn’t anticipate that it was all just pity for what was to come. After the movie, I went into Pepe’s office, where he sat like a fat cat eyeing me.
    The evening’s intake of cash was in the box on the desk between us. He put the box in a desk drawer. I figured I had been working here for a year now and perhaps he felt it was time to offer me a manager’s position. Staring down at other items that were sprawled along his desktop, he started speaking. “This isn’t easy, because you were here longer than just about anyone else, but I’m going to have to release you.”
    “Huh?”
    “One of the patrons complained that you were… duplicitous.”
    “Duplicitous?!!”
    “Uhhh, yeah.”
    “Spare me that S.A.T. crap! I went to college!”
    “Fine, the fact is I don’t like you.”
    “Why?”
    “You started a bad habit. People are asking for raises. Whenever I turn someone down, they bring up your name. I’ve got to put an end to this. Simple as that.”
    “You can’t do this. I’ll take you to the fucking labor relations board.”
    “Go ahead, you don’t belong to a union; this is only a minimum wage job.”
    “I gave you a year of my life. I’ve always been on time, courteous. What kind of a person are you!”
    Silently he ushered me to his office door where he handed me an envelope. “This is what we owe you.”
    Canned! It was the second job that I had been fired from and I felt guilty.
    As I walked home, I pieced together details and realized that he had waited until after the holidays to fire me because he knew that nobody else would work on Christmas day for just minimum wage.
    When I arrived home, Sarah wasn’t there. By the time I finished soaking in a bath while watching TV, it was midnight. Sarah still wasn’t home. Since I was wide awake and was mulling over being fired, I dressed and decided to go out for a beer. In the East Village most of the bars had started out as Eastern European hangouts, but more and more they became alcoholic cafeterias due to the growing influx of students. By the mid-eighties, the last of the Iron Curtain refugees in most of these neighborhood pubs were just the bartenders.
    As I peeked into the many area bars like the Verkhovina and the Blue andGold looking for a familiar face, it struck me how time had passed. All of the old crowd had moved on. After stopping here and there, I arrived at the Holiday Lounge on Saint Mark’s Place. It was brimming with children who paid for overpriced drinks with their parent’s money. By the time I had shoved through them to the rear, I felt ancient. Just as I was about to head back home, I caught sight of a chunky punk in a leather jacket. He was sitting in a booth kissing some girl who was lying horizontally along the bench with her head lying idly across his fat lap. When I positioned around to look at her, my heart quit—it was Sarah! I grabbed his collar and yanked him up.
    “What the fuck is your problem?” he yelled.
    “I’m her husband!” I hollered. When I tried to pull her upright, she remained drunk and limp.
    “What the fuck are you doing?” I shouted, shaking her to gain some degree of sobriety.
    “What the fuck am I doing?” She leered. “The same thing you’ve been doing for the past month.”
    “What?”
    “Humping that candy girl, you fucker.” And she slapped me full in the face and stormed out. I felt my skin turn into goose pimples and walked past the prepubescents, who looked back at me, the twenty-three-year-old cuck-old. I slowly walked home, chewing my bottom lip to a pulp as I juggled