A gray sky for a shiny black 1971 Dodge Polara spells disaster, especially when it had just been washed earlier that day. The clouds weren’t quite dark yet, but they were getting there, and Jeph just knew the day was going to piss on his parade. But he had orders to fill, and there was no way he was going to beat the rain to get his monster in the garage before his wax job got ruined.
That was life. There was something new every day to annoy him. Like finding a house on a street he had been down a million times. He had probably even been to the house a million times. Why weren’t these things stuck in his head like all the other useless knowledge he seemed to find there? He knew that wombat poop was cube-shaped. Why did he know that, but he couldn’t find a simple house in the middle of a small town?
As his Polara crept down the street, he finally came to a stop. He looked at the number on the porch and verified the number on the ticket. Then, he grabbed the delivery bag from the passenger seat and studied the house for a moment. First of all, how does a wombat poop cubes? That’s mental. It just doesn’t fit with the scheme of things, but the world has so much weird in it, he tried to stop asking those kinds of questions a long time ago.
After knocking on the door a few times and looking to the sky for a hint of rain, Jeph was greeted by a lady who slowly opened the door. She wasn’t the age of a typical Bridgeport student, or at least she didn’t look like it anyway. Plus, she answered the door alone. Five other giggling, energetic schoolgirls didn’t join her to help with the nearly impossible task of grabbing lunch. So, she must have actually been a resident of Bridgeport.
He shook his head when he thought of how he couldn’t remember ever meeting her before. She was a nice-looking lady with a pleasant smile. He would definitely have remembered her. But all that was shattered when she took a look at her order and started going off about how wrong it was. She hadn’t ordered a cheesesteak sub, and she wanted onion rings. Why did it come with fries and not the onion rings she had ordered?
Jeph took a deep breath as he listened to her go on about it. He had been in this situation before. It wasn’t his first rodeo. Sometimes, orders get mixed up. They put the wrong name on the ticket, and the wrong food shows up at the house. It happens. Of course, Jeph could have picked the wrong order. It wasn’t completely unheard of that he could have been the culprit. But he confirmed it wasn’t his fault when he simply looked at the ticket and saw the house number with the list of items. He had done his part the right way.
That aside, there was another issue Jeph had seen many times before. This once sweet, smiling lady could be one of those hustlers always looking for some way to get free stuff. That was the most common reason when things like this happened. So, Jeph followed protocol and called it in, to which he was told that the shop would fix it and that would be that. Taking the loss was no big problem for the shop.
When he hung up the phone and explained the situation, that’s when he heard the words he just knew were going to come next. There wouldn’t be any tip for him. What a totally useless lady and an absolute waste of time. Not only was this real piece of work going to get free food out of it, but she couldn’t even bring herself to tip him for his troubles, especially when she knew what she was doing. Just add that frustration to the growing list of frustrations for the day.
“Well, you got a free lunch out of it, too,” he said as he drove super slow down the street, turned the corner, and imagined shaving her head while she slept. Driving slowly was a coping mechanism he had developed for those times when he found himself frustrated. Needless to say, he drove that way a good bit of the time.
“Yeah, I guess a cheesesteak will work,” he consoled himself as he came to a stop sign, looked down at the order that wouldn’t make it back to the shop, and imagined gluing her butt cheeks together.
“Remember to check on her when we get back to the shop. See how many times she’s sent an order back,” he reminded himself as he took a look at the dashboard and noticed the fuel gauge.
“That’s a good idea. You need gas, by the way,” he told himself as he looked around for a gas station, shook his head when he saw the gas prices, and imagined pulling out her teeth one by one with pliers. A smile crept across his face as he pulled into the parking lot.
When he saw her kick open her car door, his heart leapt in his chest. All he knew was that she had a good-looking leg, but that was all any guy needed. It was that good-looking of a leg. Then, her body followed, and everything fit together perfectly. She was wearing tan shorts and white tennis shoes that made her tan glisten in the sun.
That’s when Jeph realized that the weather had gone the other way, and his Polara was safe for now. Then, his mind went right back to this beautiful lady getting out of her car at the gas pump in front of his. She was a welcome distraction to an otherwise brain-numbingly awful day.
She had a V-neck T-shirt that highlighted her cleavage, and she walked around like she knew it. She looked at the pump and read the instructions because obviously, this was her first time ever getting gas. She pulled her card out of her back pocket because that’s the best place for a credit card when you’re sitting in a car, driving around all day. Every move she made was perfectly orchestrated, and the longer Jeph stared, the more he started to think that it was all a show for him.
When she looked back at him, that’s what sealed the deal. Her gaze lingered a moment before she unscrewed her gas cap and gently slid the pump into the pipe. The way she bent her leg and curved her spine, she was posing as if she were doing a photoshoot for her social media. She didn’t have a blemish, so what was her deal?
Forget the fact that she was obviously a college student at B.U. His imagination running wild, she was the daughter of a rich businessman who took the helicopter into the city too often and left her home alone with the staff. She had a very pampered life, which pushed her to seek out relationships with what the elite call “undesirables.” That’s where he came into the picture, right at the part where she’s trying to do something awful to get her daddy’s attention.
The click on his pump brought him back to real life, where he got to enjoy watching her put the nozzle back and bend over to pull the car door open. She slid down in the seat with as much elegance as she could muster. Then, she drove off slowly, making sure to look back a beat to see if he was still watching.
He hadn’t taken his eyes off of her since he first saw her leg kick open the door. He sure wasn’t going to miss a glimpse of her now as she was leaving. And long after she was gone from his view, the thoughts of her kept playing themselves over and over in his mind. Not just the beauty that he beheld with his eyes, but what he imagined while she was patiently waiting for her tank to fill at the pump. Those were some beautiful thoughts of entanglement that followed his imaginary courtship.
“Yes, nice to meet you too, Mr. Rich…That’s right, your daughter and I have been on a few dates, which means that we’ll be having coitus the next time I pick her up…No, I’m sorry you really can’t do anything about it. It’s happening. It’s what she wants, sir. You know all too well, when she wants something, that’s what she’s going to get. And of course, I want her. I mean, look at her. She’s one hot little number. Kudos to you, sir. You did a great job with that!”
It was right about the time when his hand slid up her soft thigh that an obnoxious car behind him with a loud horn had to ruin the moment. He looked up to see that the light was green and there were no cars in front of him. So, he did what any normal person would do and waited until the light turned yellow to hit the gas. He saw the middle finger as he drove away, and that was good for a laugh. It was the little things that kept him entertained throughout the day.
But his thoughts kept returning to the girl at the pump. When he was driving to a delivery, he thought about her. When he was driving back from a delivery, he thought about her. Forget the thousands of other girls he saw walking across the street or driving in the car beside him, Jeph’s mind was lost on that beautiful, rich girl at the pump. It wasn’t his first time seeing a beautiful girl, but you’d think it was.
When his shift was finally over, he retreated to his basement, where he liked to unwind. That was his special place where he had two computer systems set up on the desk against the back wall. One was for browsing the internet, and the other was for diving deep into the dark areas of it.
The room was like a dark dungeon, but it was his escape. He was full of contradictions like that. It’s like escaping to a prison, only this was a safe space that brought him some comfort despite the battles that raged in his mind. As his fingers danced across the keyboard, websites flashed on the monitor. He had no friends on Lookbook, but that didn’t stop him from browsing through the profiles and seeing what everyone else was doing. Wink was a new dating site he had just discovered, where there were plenty of beautiful ladies in his area just dying to meet him. The only problem was that they weren’t as excited to meet him as the advertisements made it sound.
Profile after profile, beautiful girl after beautiful girl, he must have been surfing for about an hour when he heard the most delicious ding in his life. It was from the phone in his pocket. He knew what that sound was, even though he hadn’t heard it that often. Most of the time, it was about a new profile in the area that Wink thought would make a good fit. But this time, it was something different.
When he pulled his phone out of his pocket and took a look, it was that girl at the gas pump. That was too strange, too coincidental. Could it be that she was actually flirting with him, and then she looked him up on Wink?
That’s crazy! The beautiful girl at the gas pump had sent him a message. It took him a moment to wrap his brain around that, and then he read the message…
“The site says we are compatible. Write me back if you’d like to find out.”
Warning: Part II of the Joker Joker Deuce Halloween Series will be coming soon!
In the meantime, dive into Jeph’s world, Joker Joker Deuce, the psychological thriller that inspired it all. Available on Amazon now!
