333 Miles (2 page)

The left register was empty. From the
opposite side of the restaurant, a fortyish man with some type of
muscular disability, wearing acid-washed jeans and a classic
wife-beater shirt, was lurching heavily toward it. The man was
about fifteen to twenty feet away from the available register and
was making steady progress despite his handicap. Alex broke into a
medium-speed trot and successfully overtook him, gaining the front
spot and feeling somewhat relieved he would not have to wait for
anyone else to order before him. He was completely oblivious to the
fat lady observing him with a disgusted look on her face, her
stringy brown bangs held out of her face with one of her pudgy
hands.

The cashier working Alex’s register was a
short Mexican male in his late twenties. His name was Jose,
according to the red and white name tag attached to his uniform.
Though the Jack in the Box employee English as a Second Language
program, Jose had become a fluent English speaker over the past two
years. In another six months, he would be promoted to shift manager
and make more money per month than he ever imagined when he lived
just over the border in Tecate, Mexico. So much money, in fact,
that it would exceed what Alex earned in a typical day.

At restaurants, Alex always made an effort to
be courteous and to make eye contact with the servers. This
practice was the result of a date he had when he was twenty-six in
which the girl told him that one of her primary ways to judge a guy
was to see how he treated the help. “Because that is probably how
he is going to treat me in five years,” she explained cheerfully
between bites of a papaya salad.

The comment stuck with Alex, but he did not
afford the same respect to fast food cashiers.
“Two-tacos-and-a-sourdough-Jack-with-no-mayo-and-a-medium-Diet-Coke
please,” Alex requested in rapid speech, all while leaning back and
staring at the black menu with little white letters and numbers and
pictures of various meal combinations above the cashier’s head. The
words ran together, taking only two seconds to come out of his
mouth.

Nine highly satisfying minutes later, Alex
sucked down the last sip of the Diet Coke and re-read for the
fourteenth time the paper insert inside the red tray his food was
served on. He was by now vaguely aware of its message: it seemed
Jack (a tall guy wearing a suit who possessed an abnormally big,
round, white head) felt there was a valid comparison between the
restaurant’s new sandwiches and those served in the cafes in
Saint-Tropez. Alex made a weak mental note that he should try to
see Saint-Tropez before he turned thirty-five and would be too old
to really enjoy it. Realizing that one probably needs a yacht to do
that particular trip properly, he cursed himself lightly for not
making more money. Then he made a mental note to try and make more
money. This thought led to the realization that he should probably
go back to work.

“Donkey Punch,” he thought to himself.

After checking his Tag Heuer watch (he had
one with a blue face like the one in the Tiger Woods ad, though he
really only wanted one after he saw Maria Sharapova promote the
women’s version) he sat back in his red plastic chair and exhaled
deeply. He subconsciously Al Bundied his right hand halfway into
his pants, the lower part of his palm resting on his stomach
outside of his Armani dress shirt. He scanned the interior of the
Jack in the Box and focused in on the fat lady from the register.
She was struggling to scoop out the last of the fries from her
jumbo-sized container because her hand did not fit cleanly inside
of it. He noticed with some revulsion that it appeared she had
already eaten one Jumbo Jack and still had a Sourdough Jack waiting
on deck. All of this was being washed down with a large vanilla
shake.

Alex simultaneously grimaced and said quietly
aloud to himself, “Gross.” He sat up and exited the restaurant.
Energized by the meal and invigorated by the sunshine, Alex found
himself in a very good mood, feeling pleased with himself and his
life and no longer bothered by the unfortunate seagull incident. He
checked the Tag Heuer again, which now showed that it was 1:40 p.m.
Most of the more successful brokers took Friday afternoons off to
play golf or drink beers. Alex usually worked diligently until at
least five o’clock, finding that this was a good time to get ahead
on things without being bothered much. Today, however, he
distinctly did not feel like being back in the office.

He retrieved his Motorola Razr cell phone out
of his pants pocket, hit the contacts button and scrolled down to
“Deez Nutz,” which was sandwiched between “Danielle” and “Dianna.”
Danielle he had gone out with three times, fucked once, and then
took on an ill-fated trip to Rosarito where they both got food
poisoning from the taco shop outside of the hotel and took turns
using the bathroom for the next twenty-four hours. They did not go
out together again. He had no idea who Dianna was. “Deez Nutz” was
really Mike Bochner, Alex’s best friend from college. Alex pressed
the green Send button.

Chapter Two

The Cubicle

1:41 p.m.

“
So I was sitting in my cubicle today, and
I realized, ever since I started working, every single day of my
life has been worse than the day before it. So that means that
every single day that you see me, that's on the worst day of my
life.”

– Peter Gibbons,
Office Space

When the phone rang, Mike Bochner was sitting
in his cubicle on the third floor of the nondescript beige Qualcomm
headquarters building in Mira Mesa, about fifteen miles north of
downtown San Diego. He was subtly picking his nose with his left
hand and playing a miniature golf video game embedded into a popup
Orbitz ad with his right hand. Though the ceiling of the room was
eleven feet high, his cubicle was exactly six feet by six feet by
six feet. He sometimes wondered, because of this, if the devil had
anything to do with his confinement to corporate prison/hell. He
often wished the grey “sound-proof” walls were higher because he
was sick of hearing the incessant pseudo-drama from the girl in the
cube next to his (a short, blonde girl from Ohio named Molly).
Molly had been married for two years and was upset that her husband
was getting fat. Apparently, since the wedding he spent most of his
time playing X-Box online and drinking Sierra Nevada. Mike often
wondered if she realized this may be related to the fact she too
had gained about twenty pounds since the wedding and was so fucking
annoying to begin with that putting on headphones and cyber-joining
some geeks in the Midwest to help kill a bunch of space aliens (or
Germans on Thursdays) was probably the best alternative the poor
guy had. It puzzled Mike that, although he genuinely disliked Molly
and found her utterly unattractive, he frequently fantasized about
her while jerking off.

Unlike most of his co-workers, who behaved as
though their cubicle was a college dorm, Mike’s cube was sparsely
decorated. He had a Padres season schedule to the left of the
computer and, though he considered himself to be a staunch
Republican, an autographed picture of Chelsea Clinton to the right.
Three-inch-tall plastic figures of Beavis and Butt-head stood at
opposing ends of the base of his seventeen-inch flat-screen
monitor. On the rear wall was a bookshelf whose contents resembled
the software programming section at Borders.

While generally good-looking, Mike was
probably about as plain as the cubicle. At about 5’11,” 185 pounds,
he was not a small guy, but he could blend in pretty well just
about everywhere. He had short brown hair and was not exactly
balding but had what Alex annoyingly liked to describe as “major
league power alleys.” He mostly wore Dockers’ pants and Banana
Republic button-up shirts to work. Every time Qualcomm stock
dropped more than fifteen percent, there would be increased talk of
requiring people to wear ties, but thankfully, that policy had not
yet become official. Mike thought that would be the thing that
would finally make him quit, but he had also thought that about a
lot of other things. All in all, he knew it was a pretty good job,
and it paid fairly well. Because he started with the company in
2001, he missed out on the boom years of stock option rewards
during the bubble and had nowhere near the kind of money many of
his older co-workers, now frequently referred to as “volunteers”,
had. Nearly daily, Mike fantasized about moving up to Silicon
Valley to join a dot-com or some other start-up, but at the end of
the day he knew he wasn’t a big risk taker and was fairly
comfortable where he was. This didn’t mean he didn’t bitch a
lot.

Mike snapped up the phone quickly: “Good
afternoon, this is Mike Bochner.”

Alex’s response came immediately: “Whattup
douche-bag! Happy Friday.”

Mike replied with neither enthusiasm nor
annoyance: “Hello Alex.”

Alex: “Hey big man.”

Mike: “What’s up?”

Alex: “I am sure you are busy, so let me get
right to it. I was thinking . . . going to bars tonight, getting
drunk and trying to trick ourselves that we are still twenty-six
doesn’t sound terribly appealing at the moment. There is more to
life . . . greater things can be accomplished.
And as much as I would enjoy staying home and spanking your ass all
night in Madden, there is an even better option. You deserve more,
and so do I. You work hard, right?”

Mike was by now used to Alex using leading
questions and largely ignored them: “Sure.”

Alex: “And that is why we are going to Vegas
instead.”

Mike: “Vegas? Tonight? The two of us? I don’t
think so, dude.”

Alex (assuming his closing voice): “Yes.
That’s right. Tonight. It will be fantastic. Make it happen for us,
Mike. Let’s do it together.”

Mike missed a one-and-a-half-inch putt in the
Orbitz game and cursed beneath his breath. He finished the
three-hole course with a two-under-par seven, about average but
nowhere near as good as his record, a very lucky four. He hit the
Try Again button to resume another game.

Mike: “I don’t know, dude. I mean if we want
to gamble, maybe it would be easier just to go out to the Injin
casino.”

Alex: “Fuck that, the Injin casino sucks and
you know it. I think you are forgetting I grew up in Reno and there
is a reason I left. I am talking Vegas here. Anyway, I don’t really
want to gamble that much. I want us to go party together.”

Mike: “Dude, your family lived in Reno for
like ten months so save the sob story. Plus, I heard they have a
new attraction where there’s a drunk Indian in a tent or a tee-pee
or something out behind the bingo room. He sits on a stool and for
twenty bucks you get a shot of whiskey and a pair boxing gloves and
you can take a swing and hit him as hard as you can.”

Alex: “Bullshit.”

Mike: “No, I’m serious. It is called the
Drunken Indian Booth.”

Alex: “Can you hit him in the face?”

Mike: “I think so, yeah.”

Alex: “Does he get a shot of whiskey
also?”

Mike: “I’m not sure, I guess probably if you
buy one for him. Apparently, it’s pretty hard to knock him off the
stool even though he is totally wasted. I think if you do you get a
free bingo card or an entry into a slot tournament or
something.”

Alex: “You are so full of shit it is
unbelievable.”

Mike: “No, I swear to God. I saw a thing on
it on Channel Nine last night. Some of the activist groups are
like, um, all pissed off about it and stuff.”

Alex (wrinkling his nose in thought):
“Interesting. Is it at Viejas or Barona?”

Mike: “Viejas.”

Alex: “Hmmm. Well . . . I mean that sounds
cool and all, but even so, I want to do Vegas. We can check out the
drunken Injin next week.”

Mike (laughing): “Jesus, you are stupid.
There is no drunken Indian booth. But anyway, I don’t know about
Vegas. It sounds like a hassle and I don’t think I want to blow the
cash.”

Alex: “Come on. Sack up. I don’t want to go
back to work and I am bored. If I can get Roger and G-Balls to
come, are you in?”

Mike: “Yeah, right. Good luck. The Rodge is
for sure dead broke, and I don’t think Gary has been out of the
house since, like, they had the kid.”

Alex: “I think Roger hit a four-teamer last
weekend so he should be good. Anyway, let me worry about them. It
will be good for you. And it will be like the good ol’ days. Come
on. Just say yes.”

Mike, like most people, for some reason or
another usually went along with what Alex wanted to do. “Fine, but
only if everyone is in, which will never happen,” he said. Then,
after a pause in which neither said anything, he asked, “Are we
flying or driving?”

Alex: “I’ll drive. It will be cheaper. Can
you leave work at three?”

Mike: “Yeah probably, but like I said, I am
only in if everyone is in. And I am not sharing a bed with The
Rodge.”

Alex: “That’s the spirit. You won’t regret
it. I’ll call you back. Tell that slap-dick boss of yours you are
leaving at three.”

Chapter Three

The Blair Project

1:53 p.m.

“
Behind every good man there is a woman,
and that woman was Martha Washington, man, and everyday George
would come home, she would have a big fat bowl waiting for him,
man, when he come in the door, man. She was a hip, hip, hip lady,
man.”

– Slater,
Dazed and Confused

When Alex called, Blair Williams was sitting
at the kitchen table with her three-year-old daughter, Sarah. They
were playing a Fisher Price game that helped kids learn European
geography. Usually kid’s toys bored the hell out of Blair, but she
found she was learning quite a bit with this one. Also, it allowed
her to indulge her favorite fantasy about traveling to Paris with
her husband Gary (usually she pictured Gary), driving through
Bordeaux for a few days and then renting a villa high above the
French Riviera. In these visions, her hair was a very dark brown
(just like Penelope Cruz) and her body looked like it did before
Sarah was born (sort of like Penelope Cruz).