Kevin and Karen

Kevin never had his wallet on him so I always ended up buying him a coffee in the morning before we headed off to our first job of the day. He smoked pot and this was his way of avoiding random drug screens. No ID, no drug test. It seemed to be working so far.

I drank my coffee black and he filled his with cream and sugar and ruined it. We were standing at the coffee counter of what had become our gas station. 

"Can you get this man?" he asked. "I don't have my wallet."

"Sure. You get tomorrow though."

"Cool. No problem."

He stirred the ruined coffee with a little wooden paddle and then threw the paddle in the trash and we took our coffees to the counter. The clerk was off somewhere and I waited and was astonished at how expensive cigarettes were getting.

Kevin stood next to me. There was a group of town workers at a table near us, drinking coffees and eating donuts. It was nine in the morning. They had been on the clock for a little over three hours or so and I tried to figure out which lunch break this was for them. First? Second?

"I tell you man," Kevin said, "those dudes have it made."

"Which?"

"The town guys." 

"Yeah? Why's that?" I thought I saw the clerk in the cooler, but it could have been a ghost. Freezer ghost. Beverage ghost. Gas ghost. Ghost ghost.

"They just sit around. Collect twenty bucks an hour. Come here, eat donuts. It's the life."

"Why don't you apply for the town?"

"I keep trying," he said. "they just won't have me."

"Maybe it's the drug test."

"Maybe."

Freezer Ghost corporealized and was the Clerk. He walked behind the counter. "Sorry guys. Just the coffees?"

"Yeah," I said.

"Two fourteen."

I handed him the change I had already counted out.

"Thanks. Have a good one guys."

"You too man," Kevin said.

We walked out and climbed into our truck. A beaten F-350, barely running and hauling a large trailer behind it filled with lawnmowers, leaf blowers, and the promise of miserable days.

"I think Karen is fucking around on me," he said as we backed out ever so slowly into the parking lot.

"Why?" 

After a brief pause; "I don't know. I just get that feeling, you know?"

"Yeah. Well, I'm sure she isn't." We pulled out into the road, and began to make our way to the first unruly fucking lawn of the day. 

"I don't know man. I mean, we got in a fight the other day, well, last week, I guess, and out of nowhere she starts like, berating me. Calling me a fuckin' pothead. Mows lawn for a living and keeps calling me a fuckin' teenager."

"So? People fight, doesn't mean she's fucking around on you."

"No, you're right, but, I mean, we haven't really talked since. We had sex a few nights ago, but it was kind of, I don't know, dead. Like, just two bodies knocking around in the wind. and really, I mean, like I said, she just hasn't really talked to me, but she seems all happy and shit now, and she's wearing her, you know, her sexy clothes all the time, and doing her make up all the time. I mean, that's pretty much screaming out that she's fucking somebody, isn't it?"

I tried to drink my coffee but it was still too hot. I set it back down in the cup holder and turned down a side street."Maybe she just feels bad about saying that shit and she's trying to get your attention and impress you or something." 

"No, man, you don't know Karen."

"That's true, but if you're so worried about it, why don't you just talk to her? Be a fucking man about it and try to solve the issue. Or just beat feet. Take off."

"Yeah. I can't do that. I love her."

I didn't know what to say to that. We pulled into the driveway and went to work.