I walked out of the bathroom after a hot shower, a bath towel wrapped around my waist, to be greeted by three strangers in my living room. One of them was a short sallow-faced chick with beady eyes and a smart ass smirk. The other two were a couple of really large, muscled guys. It was a chilly morning, but they still wore sleeveless shirts. One of them was bald – the black one, was bald. The other guy, I think a white guy, had his face tattooed to look like a snake. Mustering all the dignity that a fat man wrapped in a towel that barely covers him could possibly muster, I was the first to speak.
“Is…uh… my WIFE here?”
“She let us in.” The sallow-faced girl spoke. The two guys just stood there, acting amused, their thick arms crossed on their massive chests.
Former football players? I thought. Kicked out for steroid use and for sexually assaulting the water boy with a wet towel? I tried to think. Did I owe anybody money? No. I’d paid off most of my debts from the Bowl games… don’t even get me started on Ohio State or Pittsburg. I hadn’t been placed any bets at the track in about a month. Too early for March Madness. A month away from spring training and my yearly gentlemen’s loss on the Indians to Kirby at the bar. I looked at her jacket. The label over her diminutive left tit gave me my answer. RENT-A-ROOM. They were here to take the furniture.
I’d been dodging their calls for a week. Maude had been on me to take care of it. Normally, I paid my bills – if not on time, then in a timely manner. But, just like with everybody else, things had been getting a little tight. Her work hours were being cut back. There was talk of budget cuts, contract freezes, and the loss of contract positions at work. I was coping with my worries in my usual fashion, down the street on a bar stool, or out at the track. Maude was doing her level best to put up with me. I know all that shit about belt-tightening and being responsible; I’d had my fill of all that advice growing up. But it wasn’t like we had massive revolving credit debt. We weren’t really living far beyond our means. Of course, the only reason for that was that neither of us had a good enough credit rating to get even a high interest card.
That was what led us to Rent-A-Room in the first place. They didn’t do credit checks. That was the upside. The downside was that by the time we paid the cost of the furniture and the accruing interest, we’d end up paying two or three times what the shit was worth. We were two years in and had maybe another year worth of weekly payments to go, and the shit was already falling apart. But, at the time, it was our best option. We’d moved from Ohio to Arizona without stick of furniture because none of it would fit in the car. We had to have something to sleep on. Someplace to sit, for fuck’s sake. If we’d had a truck, we would have gone dumpster diving and yard saling for furniture. People here get rid of nice shit for the stupidest reasons. We would have looked on Craig’s List. We would have checked out the local Green Sheet – a free publication where people list everything from baby bottles to engine blocks they want to get rid of for free or in trade.
But we didn’t have a truck. We had a rinky-dink roller skate of a car. And we needed something to sleep on and someplace to plant our asses – leading to our entrance into the world of rental home furnishings.
Letting them in and leaving while I was in the shower was probably her way of saying I told you so. I suppose I should have been more upset. But I had it coming.
Even so, their presence in my living room was still something of a surprise; I expected one or two more stern calls before they spent gas money and manpower to come over here and actually take the shit back. And I wasn’t sure that I cared too much about them taking the furniture, except there'd be nothing left to sit on but my towel.
“We’ve been trying to call you for a week,” the girl said.
“Uh-huh.”
“We’re here for the furniture.”
“I, uh, got the last message,” I said, holding tightly onto the quickly slipping knot that was keeping me covered. “I don’t recall anything about you coming today to get it.”
“We’ve been trying to get a hold of you for a week.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I heard you the first time.” I smiled in what I thought was a non-confrontational and friendly manner. “I was going to drop by the store and pay it today; honest to god. I was just taking a shower so we could run errands, and your store was the first place we were going to go. Really.” I smiled again. Friendliness worked. Sometimes. That was people were always telling me. What was that bullshit cliché my grandmother used to say all the time? You can draw more flies with honey than with oil? That never made sense to me. Oil? What did oil have to do with anything? And why the hell would I ever want to draw in flies? Maybe it could work, though. It worked for other people, right?
“We’re here NOW, sir.”
Shit, I thought. So much for friendliness. “Don’t suppose you’d take a check, would you?”
The sallow bitch shook her head. She really seemed to be enjoying herself. I wasn’t sure why; it had to hurt her womanhood to see a half-naked man with bigger boobs than hers. “You KNOW our store policy, sir…”
“Yeah, yeah. Whatever.” The knot holding my towel on was close to coming unraveled. I was afraid to move because any movement would expose me. And while I was confident that my dick was bigger than the either of the two ‘roid head’s, I still wanted to maintain my dignity. “What are my options here, exactly?”
I was waiting for her to tell me I needed to take a ride to the store and pay in person. I wondered if that was part how they made sure people paid for them… in the case of late payment, resort to public humiliation. Drag some poor bastard in an ill-fitting towel down to the store, then make him take the bus home. Assholes.
“You can use my cell phone to call the store and pay over the phone using a credit or debit card.” She rattled it off like a pro.
“I can’t just call on my phone after I put on some pants?” I asked.
Not surprisingly, the sallow bitch shook her head. She took out her cell and called the store. I was standing there. The two muscled lunk heads were standing there, too, staring at me over their crossed arms smiling. Enjoying themselves. Watching the chubby guy delinquent on his bills get his comeuppance. She was talking to someone on the other line and watching me. What? I wanted to ask. Are you trying to make sure I don’t make a run for it? “Here’s the client,” I heard her say. She was handing the phone to me.
I took it from her. “Hi,” I said. “I just need to get my wallet.” The woman’s voice on the other end of the phone was mildly friendly. Familiar. Then I remembered. She had been the woman in the store who tried to talk us into a home theatre system. I remembered her because she was wearing this necklace with an odd pendant on it – hand made out of metal and semi-precious stone. At least it had looked handmade. I was looking around for my wallet. I didn’t think I left it in my pants. I looked over at the counter between the kitchen and the living room. The landlord once described it as a “breakfast nook.” My wallet was sitting there next to my car keys, my cell phone, and a bunch or receipts. “Oh, ok. Here it is.” I appreciated the patience of the woman on the phone, though I wondered how she would feel knowing she was talking to a semi-dry half naked man. Goose bumps were sprouting all over. I was getting cold. The sallow bitch and her peanut-testicled pawns left the door open and it was still a little chilly. It doesn’t get cold in the desert in the same way it gets cold other places. But the night time temperature does drop below freezing, and the previous night had been the coldest of the season.
I wanted to get rid of them as quickly as possible. I was cradling the bitch’s cell phone between my ear and chin, hoping to myself that my hair, which was still a little wet, would drip and cause her phone to short circuit. I picked up my wallet without thinking, opened it with one hand and pulled out my bank card with the other. I hadn’t even considered that there was no longer a hand holding the knot on my towel. I was reading off the card number, expiration date, and CV code – that three digit number on the back that’s supposed to keep people from stealing your card number and buying shit online. I didn’t think it actually helped. It was just another series of numbers that I was responsible for. When I was finished, I handed the phone back to the sallow bitch. She smiled. It was a malicious, evil smile. Her beady little eyes glinted with the small victory she’d just achieved. The dynamic duo uncrossed their arms and suddenly looked bored. A little disappointed even.
I was more than ready for them to leave. I turned slightly and tossed my wallet back on the breakfast nook. Then, before I could do anything about it, I felt the knot holding my towel together come undone and the towel fell to the floor.
The sallow bitch’s face turned a little red, but she didn’t say anything. Huey and Dewey didn’t say anything. The one with the snake face chuckled and shook his head. The black bald rubbed his eyes and tried to contain his laughter.
A man can behave in any number of ways once his dignity is stripped from him. I probably should’ve reached for the towel, or acted like I was embarrassed. But then the thought crossed my mind: THEY ARE THE ONES INTRUDING. I looked at sallow bitch. Her eyes were directly focused on my eyes. It was a deliberate focus and she was working not to look to the left, the right, or down. She probably would have looked at the ceiling, but she probably didn’t want to look as embarrassed and (undoubtedly) disgusted as she felt. That’s what you get, you stupid cunt, I thought. I tried to go put on pants.
“Are we about DONE here?” I asked, rocking up on the balls of my feet. The weather was working against me, but I didn’t care. At least my nuts were shriveling because they were cold and not because I was shooting human growth hormones between my toes.
“Thank you, sir,” she answered quickly. “Have a nice day.” She made a not-too-hasty retreat, followed by her entourage. The snake-faced one was the last one out. He closed the door behind them.
