Skirt And The Fiddle by Tristan; Egolf

Author:Tristan; Egolf [Egolf, Tristan;]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3, epub
Publisher: Atlantic Books Ltd
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

THE GRIND

I got to the deli at 11:08 to find Hanz the Dutchman seething with impatience behind the till, where he’d been all morning.

“Em-ah, Charles!” he exploded on contact. “Howzt going? Nice of you to drop by!” He gave me a thoroughly revolted once-over, then resumed with streamlined vitriol: “Exciting evening, I take it. Em-ah, yes, well—pity.” He cleared his throat. “So, then—moving right along—” He presented an almost comically brutal list of duties, from till repair to septic maintenance, all of which had been growing in size and severity over the past three hours. By now it read more like the annual quota for a road gang than deli work.

Here went nothing …

Five minutes later I was down in the cellar sweeping piles of rat shit from every corner. The Dutchman had thrown me a dingy old broom and a pan with no handle. I wasn’t getting anywhere … Nothing on the level was working worth a damn—lightbulbs, wall heaters, switch boxes, me … In vain, I clambered over mounds of furniture, pitching down the incline, gagging through hot sweats … I may as well have been back in the sewers, only now I was cleaning up after Ben. Rapid downward mobility, that: from holy terror to under-paid housemaid …

I wouldn’t have lasted as either that morning.

Once the corners were swept and cleared—to add to matters, insult, injury—I was meant to load the elevator full of Old Mud and run it to the stockroom upstairs. In my condition, I didn’t even want to look at beer, much less handle it.

I got three cases into the lift and was turning for a fourth when the door slid shut …

I’d forgotten to hold the car.

A motor rattled. I panicked, furiously jamming the call button. It didn’t respond. The needle climbed to four. Then stopped …

It stayed there for a long time. I was trapped in the cellar, kicking myself for an idiot. Someone upstairs (probably that blue-haired dolt with the pit bull) was waking to a stack of swill from out of the sky, free of charge …

And, of course, the car came back empty. Bastards … Hanz would have a conniption when he found out. Charles!—And he would find out. How is this POSSIBLE? Then dock my pay. Fifty dollars! One more time. Tell it goodbye!

I collapsed on the floor.

It seems the Grim Reaper had standards that day …

After a while, a large black cockroach crawled into view on a pipe overhead. Outside of the Desmon, I’d never seen bigger—probably had a wingspan of six to eight inches. I thought about catching him to plant in the till for the queens on the night shift. There was a thought: none of Hanz’s graveyard club boys would have been caught in this hole for a second. They were clean, they were gay, and they did not go down in the cellar, thank you very much. All grunt labor was relegated my way, left for the token straight boy on the day shift.

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