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“You aren’t going to live in the house?”

Mike cut a sharp left turn down Olden Avenue. The balding tires of his 1987 Ford pickup squealed against the warm pavement, leaving charcoal-colored skid marks across the street and on the inside of my boxers. I wrapped my fists around the “oh shit” handles so tightly the blood drained from my knuckles.

Mike jammed the accelerator until the speedometer needle jumped past 55 mph and the truck shook like a Tourette’s patient during an earthquake.  His master plan was to run it into the ground, convinced his parents would offer to buy him a new truck.  It refused to die. It was going to kill Mike first.

“McDonald’s isn’t going to run out of burgers so slow the fuck down. Does this thing have air bags?”

“Air bags? Thank Christ it has seatbelts.”

Like an immigrant gazing harbor side to see the Statue of Liberty, I’d never been so happy to see the Golden Arches. It meant I had made it alive. By the time the truck crash landed in the parking lot, I’d lost my appetite. Mike abandoned the pickup with the windows down and the keys on the driver’s seat.

The smell of fat frying tricked my stomach back into thinking I was hungry.  We sat in a booth facing McPlayland.

“Don’t you have a job lined up for the summer?” he asked, devouring an entire cheeseburger in a mouthful before shoveling in fries to keep the meat and bread company.

“I have nothing lined up. Even if I did, it’s not going to pay me enough to have money all summer and save for the house. Two grand is a ton of dough to live five minutes from home.”

Mike shoved more fries into his mouth followed by a ketchup packet chaser. He had an addiction to ketchup.  It was nauseating.

“Did you ever consider squirting the ketchup on the tray and dipping the fries in, instead of squirting the packets straight into your mouth?”

“You don’t get all the ketchup that way. Sucking the packets gets more. One of the benefits of belonging to a fraternity is living in the house.”

The ketchup residue on his 5 o’clock shadow was making it impossible to take him seriously.

“I would love to live in the house. I was going to ask my parents for the money, but I just don’t have any…..”

“No nuts?” Mike said.

“I just know they will say no,” I replied.

“No. No nuts in my sundae. I specifically said ‘hot fudge sundae with nuts.’ They wonder why they are working at McDonald’s.”

Mike took his sundae up to the counter to complain.   Out the window, I watched a little brat whip red and blue plastic balls at his younger brother. Finally nailed him in the eye.

After pledging, I wanted to live on campus in my fraternity house. Get the full college experience.  House dues were $2000 for a room the size of a Port-o-John, with heap furniture, a bathroom down the hall used by seventeen other people, and no air conditioning in the fall and spring and barely any heat in the winter.

My parents thought it was ridiculous to pay that much money to live five minutes away from home. Also weighing heavy on their decision was the fact that I just spent two years away from home at a different college where I was one exceptionally high mark (in gym) from failing out. After arguing for days, and setting fire to all of their clothing, they gave in and said I could live on campus but the $2000 dollar residency fee would come out of my pocket.  I agreed.
Once May rolled around and the semester ended, I searched for a job. One month later I was still unemployed.  On my way to the bank with a ski mask and water pistol, I stopped by a friend’s house to ask him to drive the getaway car.  He was just getting home from the first day of his summer job.  He was painting dorm rooms at a private school for $14 an hour. His boss was looking for one more reliable worker.  I told him if I thought of any reliable people I would let him know.  Then I realized he meant me.

I hated painting. When I was 16 my aunt asked me to paint her bedroom. I had no clue what I was doing. I figured “how hard could this be? Throw some paint on the walls and I’ll be done in an hour.”  Five hours and two buckets later and I finished the ceiling.

I went to the job site the next day to meet the boss and interview for the position.

Alan had a whiny, nasally voice that sounded like his vocal cords were replaced with a Kazoo what whistled with every breath.

“Can you paint and can you start today?”

“Grab a brush.”

Painting was Alan’s side business. He worked a full time job as a maintenance worker at Princeton University. He would gather a crew to paint during the day while he worked and would show up in the evening, long after the painters left for the day, to check the progress and finish up any uncompleted tasks. So the boss was away from the work site the entire day.

He told boring stories. No one ever asked but he told them anyway.  His favorite involved a rifle and a gopher. It seems he had a gopher problem on his property. They would eat everything in the garden. So he decided he had to get rid of his problem permanently. He waited for the little varmints to appear, took aim, and fired.  He missed his target by at least 5 inches. Before the second shot, the gopher spun around to race for cover. But it was too late for the little guy. A direct hit on the ass.

“I shot that bastard right in the ass. He did two flips in the air, and landed on his stomach.” He howled with laughter while the rest of us smiled and pretended it was the first time he’d told us the story.

Howard and Ronnie worked with Alan at his full time job. They were cafeteria workers at the University. Unlike Alan, they had summers off.  Ronnie was a 40-year-old immigrant from Jamaica, with one gold front tooth and a heavy accent.   He spoke in an alarmingly high-pitched voice.  He told explicit tales of the many women he bedded, despite being married with two children.   He charmed his way into their pants and ultimately into their checkbooks.  Howard backed up the stories explaining that they couldn’t go places without some random woman hitting on Ronnie. Ronnie had a certain fetish. He liked large girls. The bigger the better. When I asked him to explain exactly how big he responded “big enough to fit my head between their breasts and stay warm all winter long.”

Howard also claimed to be as smooth with the ladies as his friend.   He could never back up his claim.  He would tell me all about his sexual conquests in high school, being the star basketball player, and adored by all in the neighborhood.   It’s not that I didn’t want to believe him, because who wants to call anyone a liar, it’s just that as time went on, his stories got longer, bigger, and less believable. A gopher doing flips was more believable.

Ronnie was fascinating. He had so many quirks and beliefs. For example, he never eats in restaurants. If he took his family out to eat, he would stuff himself before leaving the house.  When it came time to order dinner, he would just have a glass of water, nothing else. His entire family enjoyed a full meal while he just drank water. He knew from experience what went on in the kitchens of restaurants.

Ronnie had a big heart.  In the first week on the job, we were painting a bell tower that was at least ten stories high. I was nervous because there wasn’t much support around us. One wrong move and the paramedics would need a spatula to get me in an ambulance.

Howard, Ronnie and I were discussing what would happen if one of us fell, and the chances of survival.  Howard believed a person could survive the fall, but they would be a vegetable for life.
I told them I would rather die then live my life that way.

“Don’t worry” Ronnie said, “If you fall and live, but you are gonna be a veggie, I will slit your throat, so you ain’t gotta suffer.”

How would describe the incident to police and paramedics?

“Sir what exactly happened?”

“Well we were painting and he fell off the roof”

“And why is his throat sliced?”

“Cause he wasn’t moving.”

“He was probably unconscious from the fall sir.”

“Are you calling me a liar?”

For some reason, I was touched.

The job went well for a month.  It was boring and redundant but the pay was incredible. I’d make enough to live in the house and have enough left over to live the rest of the semester like a rock star. My friend left to take a real job that paid just as well but also counted towards college credits. I was left alone with Howard and Ronnie. His leaving made the job even more boring but I was compensated financially. Now that we were down a man, Alan decided to pay us more to do the work because we were short handed. All was right with the world.

One hazy afternoon, a sudden downpour changed everything.  The guys put me in charge of painting the outside doors and doorframes of the Business office.   The doors had a windowpane running along side and on top.  I began with the top, working my way down.  The humid summer sky blackened over the course of an hour, and the rain began to fall in buckets on my paint supplies, the building, and me.  I gathered my supplies and took cover inside.   As the rain continued for over an hour, I stood in the doorway praying it would last through the afternoon and force us to leave early.  I found an empty office and watched the summer camp programs run from building to building, dodging the rain.

“Come on, we can’t finish nothing today. This rain isn’t gonna let up and it’s already 3 p.m.” Howard said, sneaking up behind me as I dozed off in a desk chair.  We cleaned our supplies and went home for the night. On the ride home, the clouds broke, and the sun started to shine.   I decided to spend what was left of the afternoon playing basketball with friends who were lucky, and lazy, enough not to have summer jobs.

The next morning, I found Howard and Ronnie waiting for me in the basement of the freshmen residence hall.   It was our usual meeting place with a janitor’s room where we stored our supplies.  They both looked liked they had something to tell me, but didn’t have the heart, or want to be the one to talk first.   Finally, Howard spoke up.

“Alan came by last night, to check on our progress. And the Chief ripped him a new one.” he explained.

The Chief was the head maintenance man of the school, and kept tabs on all the work around the campus. He kept a close eye on our group, especially after I mistakenly tried to eat lunch in the campus cafeteria which was off limits to all workers.

“For what?” I asked, cleaning one of my brushes in the sink.

“That door you painted.”

“Well, I didn’t really get a chance to finish” I explained, “it started to pour. I will finish it today.”

“It ain’t that,” Howard continued, “the section you started, the paint ran all over. Down the windows and onto the concrete. It was all over. Alan spent half the night cleaning it all up.”

“So I made a mistake!” I barked, defending myself, but more embarrassed that Alan had to clean up my mess.

“The chief threatened to fire us all. Find a new painting crew.”

My stomach sank.   It was one thing for me to get fired. This wasn’t my job or livelihood.  For Howard and Ronnie, this was easy money and helped their income.   For Alan, this was his company.  It wouldn’t look very good for him to get fired from a prestigious school for sloppy work.

“So is Alan going to fire me?”

“No” Howard said, “but he did give us some orders to follow”

“What orders?” I asked.

“Well his exact orders were ‘don’t let the kid touch nothing.’”

I couldn’t help but laugh. Especially as Howard described my new job.

I was the first painter who was paid not to paint.   I was now the “prep man.” I would go ahead to the next area and get everything ready. Scrape walls, plaster, take down posters and pictures and whatever else might get in the way.   The tasks that take anywhere from an hour to less than five minutes. That was now my job. I wasn’t allowed to touch a paintbrush for the rest of the summer.

I was thrilled.