Pseudo Apprentice

“Oh, c’mon! Are you serious? Are you fucking serious?”

Alan suspected Dirsuwalt was just getting started, both with the insults aimed at the athletes on the television and the plastic cups of bud from the pitcher he’d bought them. They were sitting in a notorious late night hangout for the drunk and disorderly that had once been a respected corner store specializing in fountain drinks. In recent times, the Malt Stop boasted a bulletproof glass wall with various compartments through which the kitchen staff shoved slices of pizza, hot dogs, hamburgers, and French fries. Customers who ordered alcoholic drinks at the register window (also bulletproof) picked up their orders from a dumbwaiter.

This was not the level of caution the previous owner had displayed, and, as the present owner told Alan in an interview, it was still not entirely sufficient, as more than a few desperate people had accosted the kitchen staff in the back by the dumpsters.

“That’s what they get for putting all their chips on the guy named after a kind of beef.” Dirsuwalt gave the pixels a final rude gesture and turned back to the table as the channel segued into a truck commercial. Alan decided that it had to be now.

“Think about this situation. You’ve got a source that tells you everything you want to know about somebody - the perfect profile, because it’s a semi-public diary written by the person himself. Do you go with it, even if it seems suspicious?”

Dirsuwalt stared blankly at him for several seconds, and Alan worried that the other wouldn’t make good on his promise. Then Dirsuwalt belched and scratched his chin. “I always suspect diaries, private, public, half-public, or whatever. Half-public is probably the worst, shows that the subject is an indecisive fucker, to boot. How much time do you have before this goes to press?”

“Story’s in the queue, but it could be modified as late as midnight on Sunday without too much trouble.”

Dirsuwalt refilled his plastic cup. “You want my advice?”
“Of course.” Alan replied. That’s the whole point of this fake enterprise.

“Normally I’d say let it go, ‘cause it’s not worth the time or the effort. Ombudsman were created for this very reason, for the times when something in the twenty-four hour news cycle shifts far enough to turn your carefully gathered facts into a pile of shit. This way, the two or three nutbags who nitpick you to death have someone to bitch at.”

He fired another invective at the screen. The homeless man in the last booth stirred and then settled his head back into his arms.

“But you don’t have a normal ombudsman. You’ve got that mean son of a bitch. So cover your ass, and maybe you’ll be able to work there a little while longer… Though I’m not sure why you’d want to.”

Alan spent the remainder of their time at the Malt Stop listening to his former coworker complain about poor performing athletes who were costing him money, and boast about his past successes. He must have made an impression, because Dirsuwalt gave him his business card before they parted and clapped him on the back, telling him twice that he was a good listener.

It was late when he reached the second floor of the three story Victorian for which he’d paid extra because of its location by the park. That was before he’d learned that the park was dealer central, and that the couple upstairs fought or made-up every night. Guaranteed shouting or thumping or both, inside and out. This didn’t bother his apartment mate Alonzo, who considered the drama eight feet above them to be the best psychological study he’d witnessed in ten years of wrangling volunteers for every type of study Commonwealth Psych dreamed up.

In fact, Alonzo was lying on the couch staring up at the ceiling when Alan walked in. “Weren’t you there when I left this morning?” Alan asked, and Alonzo held up his finger.

“Shhh!”

Alan shrugged and retrieved a loaf of bread from the refrigerator while the thumping above continued unabated. He sawed the end off the loaf and covered it with Peanut Butter, noting as he did that he had to scrape lines of it from the thin layer on the bottom of the glass jar. It had been full yesterday, which meant that Alonzo must have annexed his groceries again. When confronted, he would admit to it, and proffer money far exceeding what it was worth, and Alan would explain again that the money was not the point. They had some variation on that discussion perhaps once every three months.

He stepped on the recycling can pedal and dropped the jar, then set the bread on a plate and put it in the microwave. Sometime during the day Alonzo must have gotten off the couch and nuked his old platinum level credit card. Then he had neglected to take it out. Alan did so, and sprayed the inside of the microwave with a lemon cleaner. He left the microwave door open and ate the bread cold.

The thumping faltered and stopped. Alonzo sat up and spat chewing tobacco into a Styrofoam cup, than poured himself another helping of gin into a large Princeton Tigers mug that had earlier held Campbell’s chicken noodle soup.

“Hmm…” Alonzo murmured, savoring chicken-flavored gin. “What were you saying before?”

Alan started to repeat himself, but Alonzo’s memory caught up. “Right! Of course I moved. I went to…” His memory darted away again. “It’s not important. So how was your day?”

I hatched a plan to humiliate my bosses, and its success hinges on a nasty girl and the jerk that got fired in my place.

“Same old thing. Work. Basketball. If you ever want to come to the latter, just let me know.”

“No-ho, not me. My job is two blocks away from here, and that’s two blocks more than I want to commute from this couch.” Alonzo looked regretfully at a pack of clove cigarettes Alan had forbidden him to smoke in the house, so he lurched to his feet. “The balcony awaits. Bet you dinars to donuts that our friends up there are smoking right now. In that, at least, we can share a threesome.”

Alan shuddered and waited for his housemate to settle into the lawn chair on the balcony before he plugged Mira’s transponder into the laptop. It was time to edit the life of a world leader.