I got home this morning from the doorman shift at 3am, ate a bratwurst, and went to bed around 4.
The pager went off at 8:21am.
"TONY, LET ME KNOW WHEN ON THE WAY"
"worked at a bar til close, up soon."
Yet another day of small runs until...
"HERRIE BROKE DOWN AND I AM RUNNING SOME DELIVERIES, I HAVE 3 VAN JOBS LEFT DT..."
Oh, so that's how it works.
While Herrie's van is running, he gets all the good work.
At this point who cares.
I could use a day where I make more than $100.
It would be like old times.
The first van job was a lot of crates and boxes going to the Westin Hotel.
The dock is in a dark, sewery maze just north of the river, across from The House of Blues.
Large grey-brown puddles dominate the cracked concrete, like an unfinished puzzle ruined by the urine of the dead.
Exposed dormant railroad tracks assure rainy day wipeouts for inexperienced cyclists.
I would actually like it down there if it wasn't filled with the rage of screaming trucks, bull-brained House of Blues thugs, and the stubborn odor of actual horse shit.
The second van job took me to a storage facility on Halsted just south of the river.
A couple of boxes going to Miller Coors.
They were somewhere in the labyrinth of the storage units.
The guy behind the counter shared an irritating quality with this city: the you-should-know-this-without-having-done-it attribute.
"Just walk straight out this door, take a left, make a right, take a right, go straight and it's right in the dock," he said very quickly.
Why do people do this?
Is this his weird power trip?
Making people ask him to repeat multi-step directions?
He said the directions again.
They made no sense to me, as I am not familiar with the storage facility, having never been here ever in my lifetime.
I found the dock on my own.
His directions were inaccurate.
A 7'x4' box rested against the wall.
I was going to need to drive to the dock to load it into the van.
Back at the clerk, I asked if he could open the gate so I could get to the dock.
"Yeah," he guessed, and I walked toward the van.
"I tell you what, you can just let yourself in. The code is 3008*3008#."
Again, he said this almost as fast as his powerful Chicago mind could work.
"That would be easier than you just letting me in," I stated.
"The code is 3008*3008#."
"You said that really fast. I'll try."
I put in what I thought the code was but the gate never opened.
After pressing the HELP button a few times, he eventually let me in.
I don't know.
The gate code for the storage space at 1015 N Halsted in Chicago is something like 3008*3008# or 3008#3008*.
The third and final van job of the afternoon took place at a rock star themed restaurant in River North. I was supposed to pick up a bunch of stuff for a weekly entertainment magazine. The page didn't specify what stuff I was picking up.
The host had his hands full with the phones, but was actually cool.
But he had no idea what I was supposed to pick up.
The contact for the pick up was Mellicity.
I gave her a ring.
She had no idea what I was supposed to be picking up, either.
"You're going to have to figure out what you're supposed to pick up."
I could tell that Mellicity was a cunt by the way she hung up on me.
The host, who was still nice, informed me that the stuff was upstairs.
Up there, a small group of important near-humans were setting things up for an amazing night of talentless, fake rock star douchebaggery.
A short, pudgy, pasty fellow with a headset and a cool guy haircut or wig used his forefinger at me.
"It's over here."
He took me to a back staircase blocked by an avalanche of chairs. Underneath the chairs were seven opened boxes and a litter of loose throw pillows.
"The boxes and the pillows. Get it out of here."
Hey, Rock 'n' Douche Productions.
Learn how to talk to people.
You understand that you're completely worthless, right?
So I gathered the pillows and noticed they all couldn't fit into the boxes.
I do like pillows.
Especially ones embossed with entertainment heroes like Johnny Depp, the Slumdog Millionaires, and the space lizards from Avatar.
The perks of hell.
On my second trip one of the line cooks ate dinner on the emergency staircase completely blocked by chairs.
I offered him a pillow.
"Garbage," he said.
At home I checked my email.
I didn't get the writing job.
It sounds like nobody did.
Sucks for everybody.
Verdict: Loss
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