Rage From the Edge

Mickey felt the last rays of the sun on the back of his neck as he ground out his cigarette and made his way to the turnstile. A straggling line of men had formed at the milk bottling plant entrance, waiting their turn to enter the building, their white uniforms looking pink in the dying sunlight. A few lonely people hurried along on the sidewalks, trying to get home before it became dark.

He made his way through the crowd of men and punched in. The locker room was smoky and there was some small talk buzzing in the background while Mickey dejectedly put on his rubber boots, gloves, and raincoat. He hated this job, but it paid the bills and kept him and Tessa fed. Still, he dreamed of something else. He didn’t think she deserved the life that he was giving her. He saw young guys, younger even than him, as they drove by in their shiny new cars with their fancy clothes and their beautiful women. Tessa was prettier than all of them, a real smokin’ gal when she got dolled up, but those times were so rare anymore and usually money was spent on rent, bills, and groceries rather than dinner, drinks, and a show.

The conveyor belt was waiting for him where it always was. Standing like a dreary, mute ogre, it extended off into a hole in the wall and had thousands of grimy milk bottles on it. He’d be here for 12 hours, washing those bottles with his high-pressure hose, and every soggy minute he would be wishing he could be at home with Tessa. The shift horn sounded and the conveyor kicked forward with a start. He grabbed the first bottle he could and inserted the hose.

The job was a boring humdrum that went on forever. Mickey could feel it draining away his life with each passing bottle. The conveyor never stopped, and if you fell behind, the floor boss was on you like a tiger, chewing you out as he shifted his cigar around his working mouth. He knew he had to get out. This place was going to kill him.

During this bland drudgery of an existence, one thought occurred to Mickey almost constantly. Tessa! He had to get out of this life and into a better one. She deserved so much more. She was beautiful, but that wasn’t the only thing that kept him going. She understood him. Understood him probably more than anyone--even his parents, probably. On days where he was worn down, feeling the weight of the world on his shoulders, there she was, always, and she was a listener. She took care of him, she made all the worries and the bad things go away. Mickey knew that if he didn’t do something, she might leave him.

Sure, she had told him a thousand times that she loved him, but he knew gals. He knew that the sort of existence that they shared was something that a girl like Tessa would only share with him for so long. No matter how much she loved him, no matter how much she was attracted to him, some guy would come along with the right car and a fat wallet and Mickey could kiss Tessa goodbye.

It was thoughts like these that occupied Mickey for the remainder of his shift. He was depressed by the time the workday ended. As he left the bottling plant, the mid morning sun was already starting to get hot and Mickey was sweating inside his wet clothing. He thought of going over to Vince’s house on the way home, but he was just too bedraggled to do it without changing. He knew that Tessa might not like the idea of him going over to the old guy’s house, but it didn’t matter because she was going to be gone for a few hours. During weekdays, Tessa worked a half shift down at the sandwich shop and was gone until mid-afternoon.

Tessa liked Vince to an extent, but she was always cautious around him and probably thought he was a bad influence. The old man had been in prison before, doing a stretch for burglary and armed robbery. Still, she realized that Mickey needed friends and he needed to relax after the wet hell of the bottling plant.

Mickey needed it, she thought to herself, after a bad day of work, it was relaxing to go over there and have a few drinks, maybe play some cards, and listen to the grand old stories he told. Mickey loved those stories; he sat with a glass of cheap whiskey and listened to the old guy all afternoon. Sometimes he forgot just how late the day was and wouldn’t leave until late in the afternoon. Those days were always extra hard at the bottling plant later. He’d come in tired and hung over. Yet she allowed it to go on. if only because she loved him so much and because she knew that boys needed to be boys. And what could it hurt? Vince was old now and not likely to be pulling down any jobs…right?

Mickey changed into some dungarees and a white t-shirt. Tessa was busy at the little table in their bedroom, putting on makeup and primping her black gleaming hair with a brush.

“I’m going on over to Vince’s for a bit, I’ll be home before you get back from the sandwich shop.” He said. He could see the flicker of mild annoyance on her face, but she nodded and said nothing.

Mickey spit on the tip of one of his shoes and used the footstool he was sitting on to burnish the dust away. Tessa gave him a cross smile.

“I wish you wouldn’t do that!” she said, but he knew she really didn’t care about the furniture. The place they rented was furnished, so the stuff wasn’t theirs anyways. She picked up her purse from the table by the door, bent and gave him a kiss, grimacing at his whiskers and told him that there was some leftover sitting on a rack in the oven.

“And don’t stay up all afternoon with that old man, I don’t want to have to drag you out of bed tonight for your shift.” She said as she went out the door.

Vince was smoking a pipe when he answered Mickey’s rap on the door. The crinkled old man had a pair of glasses on, perched impossibly at the very tip of his nose, and he was wearing worn out pants held up by worn out suspenders. Vince welcomed him into the small apartment and offered him a seat at a rickety card table.

There, sitting on the table was a bottle of cheap bourbon, a deck of cards, and a rolled up paper that looked to Mickey like a map. Vince noticed that Mickey was giving the paper a curious look.

“That, my friend, is a plan.” He said with a kindly air to his voice. “My last plan…my best plan.”

“Whaddaya mean?”

“Never mind now, let’s have some drinks and a few hands of rummy. I’ll talk while we play.”

Vince perched himself directly across the card table from where Mickey was sitting and shuffled the cards like a Vegas expert. The cards danced lightly over the old man’s fingers which had not lost their magic despite his age. They played into the early afternoon.

Mickey felt himself relaxing because of the booze and the conversation. Vince had all sorts of funny stories about the good old times when he did jobs with crews. Vince was a safe cracker and some said he was the best. He had taken some major scores back in his day. An unlucky bust had put him behind bars, but that was a long time ago and Mickey, hearing the man talk, got the idea that the old fellow had the itch all over again.

Finally, he pushed the subject and the old man gave a quick, sly glance around the room. He moved the cards over to one side of the table and began unrolling the large tube of paper. It looked to Mickey like a blueprint of some sort, but he was never any good at reading that sort of thing, so it could have been the plans to the Taj Mahal for all he knew.

They used their bourbon glasses, the bottle, and an ashtray to hold down the corners of the plans and Vince motioned for Mickey to come to his side of the table.

“This is my last job,” Vince said with a small hint of nostalgia. “This one, if it goes perfect, is gonna get me out of this dump and put me on easy street until the end of my days.”

Mickey was shocked by the revelation. He couldn’t decide if he was more stunned by the old man’s balls, or the fact that he was revealing the plans to him in the first place. Things just got a bit more interesting than funny old stories.