…it was the longest fucking shift of his life.
At some point in the night the air conditioning started blowing warm air. A compressor bearing in the warehouse was ringing loudly when he started the shift. Half way through the bearing gave out and the diesel fumes from the backup compressor started seeping in under the eaves. Helen wold not shut the fuck up… all night, on and on about some bull shit about her neighbor that no one gives a shit about…perhaps it’s the sound of her voice that drives everyone nuts… and her incessant rabble…. like a dog barking all night long that leaves you exhausted when you wake up.
He knew he was low on cigs, but he was going to make a mid shift run. If he got lucky Frank would want coffee and say , “Hey Beau, I buy, you fly? Which would occur somewhere around midnight…. ish. If partitioned correctly he was going to make those 5 smokes last till midnight, with one to spare…Within two hours Beau was out of cigarettes and Frank was working on something in the back for the General Manager, Roger… Beau saw the two of them talking at the beginning of the shift and he had not spoken to Frank all night.
The compressor failure created a chain of events which basically caused the downstream equipment to also fail. The equipment restart after a clean shutdown takes at least an hour. With a hard shutdown, pump reservoirs must get purged, bleeding valves reset with external compressed air… it’s a fucking nightmare and a dirty job. No smokes, pissing like a fucking race horse because of all the coffee, and listening Helenes fucking yapper all night… walking out the door he mumbles “let her torture someone else with that mouth”
Two kicks and the 72 Hard-tail Bobber came to life. He could see Helen flinch as she was getting into her car on the second kick. A quick twist of the right grip gave a rasp of the V twin that rattles the fillings in your teeth. She scurried into her car keeping her focus on her keys, but her stare immediately shifted out once she was within the safe confines of her car. She hated that loud disgusting thing and the people that ride them, they’re idiots. Beau was maybe an exception, though he needs a haircut, and DEFINITELY does not bath every day.
Thoughts of her tabby, Kimba, immediately consumed her awareness and continued to do so until she arrived home, and performed the “kitty care routines” for her babies. Living alone with her cats provided her the privacy, and quite, she preferred… “the people at work are such chatter boxes.”
For Beau…. once he cleared the gravel parking lot gate, and was on dry asphalt… he was in the wind!