RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Writer's Block Ramblings of an Insomniac -- an ongoing, unrelated-to-anything-else story...

It's chilly, but not cold. Warm but not hot. Strangely, though, I don't really care one way or another.

The other day the last thing on my mind was getting a job, but it was the first thing I got that day. How strange.

It all started when I woke up. That's when most stories start, I guess, only I had only gotten about two... three hours of sleep tops, so I was bagged and ready for nothing but sleep for the rest of the day.

Alas, though, my stomach beckoned me out the door, and I was forced to go forth in search of food. There's really nothing in my fridge right now besides a moldy tub of chip dip and three half-empty beer bottles (though I'm not sure that that's still beer inside them).

So I headed out the door straight towards the corner McD's, which had just opened a couple of minutes earlier, so they had just finished getting ready a small stockpile of the inevitable burger-and-fry orders which would come streaming in over time.

On the way there I passed a guy in a cardigan who was cursing a blue streak over his car.

"What's the problem?" I asked him casually, not really caring about the answer but too tired to possess common sense enough to just ignore him.

"This damn fucking shitbag of a car is stalled again, and I have to get to the airport for an 8 AM flight. FUCKING HELL!"

I strolled over to the hood, which was smoking. The guy was looking around but didn't seem to know what to look for. "Mind if I--?"

He gave me a suspicious look, but relented and let me look. I made motions of checking all the fluid levels to see what was wrong, but from one glance I could tell it was simply a lack of coolant. I'd had the presence of mind to grab a waterbottle on my way out the door (I can't stand the overpriced gut-wrenchers at McD's), so I emptied it into the coolant tank and said to the guy, "This should do the trick for now, but you should replace the water with engine coolant as soon as you can."

The man looked unconvinced... until he tried starting the engine, which began to run perfectly after a couple of fits and starts.

"Thanks, man! You literally saved my ass back there! How can I repay you?"

I wanted to say, "Large bills would be nice," but instead said, "De nada. Don't worry about it."

"Well, at least give me your name and number, so I can help you out in return."

I really shouldn't have done so, but as I said, I was too tired to think clearly. "My name's Chris Black. 555-7230."

"Chris... Black..." the guy said as he jotted it down in his pocket notebook. "Well, Chris, you're a real lifesaver. You'll never know how much this meant to me." Still smiling in appreciation, he got into his car and waved goodbye as he sped off to the airport.

Then I got myself a McBreakfast.

***

I was into my 3rd coffee at my regular booth at McD's when my phone rang. It took me about five rings to find it (they make them so damn small nowadays it's easy to lose 'em), but I finally answered on the sixth ring.

"Hello?" I said drowsily.

"Chris!"

"Uh... yeah?"

"Chris! It's me, Bill Peterson!"

"..."

"The guy you helped out this morning getting to the airport."

"Oh... uh... well, did you make your flight?"

"Yes, I did -- thanks to you. I'm calling from the airplane right now, in fact."

I couldn't think of anything to say but, "That's cool."

"Chris? Can I ask you a question, buddy?"

The "buddy" thing threw me a bit, but I replied, "Sure."

"Have you ever thought about... life insurance?"

Truthfully, I never had and I doubted I ever would...

TO BE CONTINUED

It was Tuesday of the next week when Bill Peterson sat down across from me at my regular booth at McD's. He had a perma-smile and carried a briefcase from which he produced a legal pad and a pen with his name on it, under which said "Vice President". If I didn't know he wanted to talk to me about Life Insurance, I'd have thought he was going to give me the old Amway sales pitch.

After a bit of coy small talk, Bill finally launched into his spiel: "I suppose you're wondering, Chris, why I wanted to talk to you today." (Not particularly.) "I didn't want to say much over the telephone because it wouldn't have done it justice, Chris, but I must apologize for giving you a teaser the last time we talked of what I do for a living." Bill calculatedly placed his thumbs on his briefcase locks, looked up at me and said, "Life insurance," and popped open his briefcase with a cli-click.

"Yes, Chris -- life insurance. Everybody needs it, but nobody thinks about it until it's too late."

"Well, to tell you the truth, Bill -- I already have life insurance. My aunt's in the business." It was a half-truth. Aunt Victoria was indeed an insurance agent who'd provided coverage for my parents and my grandparents, but I'd never gotten any for myself and didn't think I needed it.

Bill Peterson laughed right on cue. "Oh, I'm sorry, Chris -- I should have told you what I meant by the term 'life insurance' by now. No, I'm not in the same business as your aunt, bless her little soul. My family provides a quite different type of... 'life insurance'."

"I'm listening..." I said. It was the truth. This was finally started to get interesting in a Twilight Zone-ey kind of way.

"Now, no disrespect to your little aunt, Chris, but most insurance agencies provide a monetary sum of money upon the insured's death. Am I correct, Chris?"

"Uh-huh."

"Well, Chris, what good is that so-called 'life insurance' to the person who died? It's useless! And the money provided to the survivors is usually eaten up by the cost of the funeral and all the taxes the government takes out of inherited property. Am I right, Chris, or am I right?"

"You're right, Bill," I said unenthusiastically.

"Exactly! It's useless, Chris, if the insured doesn't benefit at all from the insurance policy. That's where my family and I come in. We insure that the insured person's life continues."

"Like the Mafia?" I said, thinking of all those TV shows and comics which portrayed 'Protection Rackets' in their various forms.

Bill Peterson laughed again as if half-expecting such a comment. "No, no, no, Chris. We don't do anything illegal or immoral." (It really was starting to sound like an Amway sales pitch.) "No extortion of any kind is involved. We do, however, provide a service to insure a person's life expectancy for a small fee. So many unexpected things can happen to a person to cut short their life. Well, we insure that those events don't happen."

I didn't know what to say.

"Speechless, eh, Chris?" Bill said with a smirk. "I must admit that I was speechless myself when I first learned what my father did for a living. It must sound like some kind of far-fetched magic, doesn't it?"

"Well... yeah, kinda."

"I can assure you that completely immoral -- er, I meant say completely moral... heh -- and safe, Chris, if you're worried about that. Anyway, what I wanted to offer you, Chris, is an entry position with my company. I know you mentioned you were 'between jobs' at the moment--" (He said it like it was an insult.) "--and after you saved me from missing an important meeting on the coast last week, I figured one good turn deserves another." (I hate it when people use cliches and then think they're clever for using them.) "I'd like to offer you a well-paying job with extended benefits, Chris. What do you say?"

"Well..." I began, finding it hard to think of anything to say after what I'd just thought I'd heard. "I--I don't really have any experience in the field..."

"Oh, pish-tosh, Chris! I didn't have any experience, either, when I started ten years ago, and now look at me -- I'm the Vice-President of the company!" (He neglected to mention that his dad was the President of said company.) "Tell you what, Chris -- I'll give you two days to mull it over, and then I'll call you right back to see if you're interested."

"Well, could you... at least tell me a bit more about what it is exactly that you do?"

"I wish I could, Chris, I really wish I could. Company policy and all that, though, I'm afraid. If I let the cat out of the bag with you--" (Another stupid cliche.) "--it might be all right, but if the guy at the next booth is a spy for a rival company and can overhear everything I say, then I could very well singlehandedly ruin my company's business, because EVERYone would want to get in on it. I'm sorry, Chris, but you'll have to learn about the rest of it after you're already in."

I sighed, already regretting what I said next. "OK, Bill. I'm in."

"You're in?"

"I'm in."

"Excellent..."

I didn't like the look of the grin Bill Peterson wore on his face as he looked at me, nor the way he tapped his fingers together. It was all quite unnerving...

TO BE CONTINUED

It was at 2:12 AM that night that it finally hit me: WHAT THE HELL WAS I GETTING MYSELF INTO?

Of course I couldn't sleep. The lack of sleep at a time when normal people sleep is what defines me as an insomniac (though I think it's more likely that I'm simply nocturnal, since I have no problem falling asleep by the time morning rolls around), so it wasn't any big surprise to me that it should hit me that night. But I knew I wouldn't be getting any sleep that night.

I examined my reasons for so impulsively accepting a vague job offer from a stranger I knew almost nothing about. The only real, immediate reason I had for it (other than the fact that I needed a job right now) was mere curiosity. What the hell kind of business could this Bill Peterson be involed with, anyway? After all, whatever he was describing, it wasn't like any kind of job that I had ever heard of before. And all his emphasis on it not being immoral or illegal seemed to raise red flags in my mind. I knew that, if I had any common sense, I'd just drop the whole thing right now and not show up for my orientation on Friday.

In fact, I had just about convinced myself to do just that... when my telephone rang.

"Hello?" I said in an exasperated voice not often heard at that wee hour in the morning.

"Chris..." a familiar voice whispered through the phone, "Chris... it's me..."

"Amanda..." I finished in just as breathy a voice.

This was awkward. Amanda had moved back in with her mother and hadn't returned any of my calls for three weeks now. It had been a living hell. Yet here she was, talking with me on the telephone at 2:30 in the morning. It was what I wanted, yes, but I still couldn't think of any words to say.

"So... how are you?" she finally asked me. A typical icebreaker question, one which is supposed to lead to an actual conversation and thus shouldn't be answered like this:

"I'm good."

"That's... that's good," she answered. Then there was silence again.

"How about you?" I asked.

"Oh, I'm doing all right," she said. Silence once more.

Then I said something that I shouldn't have said. I really, really shouldn't have said this:

"I got a job."

"You did? Really?" she answered with a bit more enthusiasm than I was expecting. My lack of employment and lack of any will to look for said employment had been a bone of contention between us which had driven her away from me. "Where are you working?"

By this time I'd already realized my blunder, but I couldn't very well just retract my statement once I'd put it out there. And she seemed pleased to hear that I was employed somewhere. I figured that was a good sign.

"Umm... yeah, well, actually I don't start until next week. My orientation's on Friday."

"That's cool. What will you be doing?"

"Something to do with life insurance," I said, though of course I had no idea what that something was as yet.

Amanda was silent for a moment or so, and then she said in a somewhat-choked voice, "Chris, I'm so glad for you. I knew you could do it if you put your heart into it." She always loved using the word 'heart' for special circumstances. It was her thing.

She didn't sound angry with me at all any more. This was good. This was definitely good. "Amanda, I've really missed you..."

"I've missed you, too," she broke in.

"And I'm sorry about all the... y'know... stuff..."

"I'm sorry, too."

"But it's been a living hell being away from you, Amanda."

"Oh, Chris..."

I won't bore you with the details of the rest of our conversation, but it lasted for a good three hours, by which time it was getting close to breakfast. We decided to make a date of it. And my orientation on Friday was the furthest thing on my mind...

TO BE CONTINUED