Small Talk on the Clock

"How're you liking it so far?

"Liking what?"

"Oh, I meant the job. You know, you still like it?"

"I guess," I said. "I'm not quitting yet. That's pretty much as 'like' as any job is getting from me. I keep coming in."

He was making small talk and that was fine. There was nothing for me to do then and it passed the minutes. "Yeah, that's how I feel too when people ask me if I like it. It's a job, I say."

I was shoulder deep in the guts of a large machine that cut shapes out of paper, cleaning adhesive residue from rollers and blades and knocking my goddamned elbow repeatedly off a bar that wouldn't move. "Yep, pays the bills," I said.

"Sort of."

"Sort of."

Cap was younger than me. They all were, save for Kevin who had put me in for the job. It was disorienting, waking up one day and suddenly being one of the older guys. It didn't bother me. I don't give a shit who cuts my checks or gives me something to do for a day. It was only disorienting at first.

"This someone you know?" he asked.

"What?" My elbow banged off the bar again and I pulled my arm quick from the machine. "Fucking goddamn..." I said under my breath.

"Oh, the music. I know you're a musician, so I didn't know if you knew them."

"No." I looked at my phone as it struggled defiantly to be heard over the deafening hum of air compressors and cutters and printers and who knew what else. "No, no. A girl I knew once used to listen to them. Kind of got me stuck on them."

"Always a girl."

"It wasn't really like that." I thought about diving back into the machine. Fuck around. Look busy.

Cap had a ruler in his hand and was repeatedly measuring a print out he had made and I suspected he was doing the same thing, though he didn't come off like a guy who wasted time if there was actually work to be done.

"What're you doing for lunch?" he asked.

"Probably going home. Bacon and eggs."

"Home?"

"Yeah, I live down the street a ways."

"Lucky."

"You haven't seen it."

I hadn't had a drink in a couple of days and that wasn't abnormal anymore. I felt like I was coming back. Far from recovered, but I was breathing and working, and able to face a day, most days. I still watched the clock and no matter what I was ever counting down to it was torture and it was a habit I wished I could break.

I wasn't sure if I'd last at this place. This job. Historically it wasn't likely. I had a tendency to be laid off or fired from somewhere every couple of months or so. Shit, there were three different places that went under while I worked there. Sometimes you deserve to lose your job and sometimes you don't. But I always lost mine. A point of hostility with every woman I'd ever put in any effort with.

I wondered if it was because I saw them all as "jobs" and never "careers". I always assumed I would die young so I could only ever see to the end of the month. Never set up retirement packages. Never gave a shit about insurance. Just kept waking up, morning after morning. Waiting to die. Losing one job, finding another.

And now I was one of the older guys.

"What about you?" I asked.

"Haven't thought about it. Maybe Taco Bell."

"I could go for tacos."

"You get to sit on a couch though," Cap said. "Or lay on a bed. Nap."

"That just makes it harder to come back."

"I can see that. Get tacos then."

"Fuck that. I'm going to lay on my couch."

"Right. Well, I should probably stop measuring this thing and change it up a little. Someone's going to catch on."

"Change up to what?"

"I don't know. Sweeping?"

"Time to lean, time to clean."

"Right," he said. "See you man."

"See you."

I stared at my machine and waited for lunch and lunch tomorrow and the day after and wondered if I'd make it back.