Grumpy Best Friend

“Exactly. You don’t want the workers to spend too much time looking at pretty paintings. Otherwise, you can’t extract all their labor.” He finished his beer with a sigh and laughed at himself.

“It’s funny, imagining you as a boss, you know?” I leaned back a little and eyed him, trying to picture the young teenager I used to know, the guy that used to stare at me from beneath a shaggy head of hair. “You always used to say that you never wanted a real job.”

“I was a little idealistic,” he said. “And I have no clue why. It wasn’t like I had it easy.”

“True, but maybe that was why. Sometimes when life’s hard, maybe you need a little idealism.”

He smiled a little, and gave me another one of those searching looks, and I felt color come to my cheeks. I didn’t know why I was getting philosophical—maybe because I was tired, and halfway through my beer, or maybe it was all the stress of Zeke and opening the factory starting to get to me. Either way, it made a kind of sense to me, that he’d rebel against normal office work. His father was a Boeing engineer and clocked into work every day, day in and day out, and that didn’t change anything for Bret back home. His father still drank too much, still beat the shit out of him, and it didn’t seem to matter that his old man had a supposedly stable, good-paying job.

Of course, that didn’t last forever. Last I heard, his father was forced to retire when he was found drinking in his office, although I didn’t want to ask about that. I didn’t know how much contact Bret had with him these days.

The waitress returned with our food. I ordered chicken schnitzel, which was basically breaded and fried chicken breast with a dark gravy and mashed potatoes on the side. It was good, and way too much, and Bret ended up finishing his fish and chips, and half of my schnitzel. He was in incredible shape, but the man sure as hell could eat.

“Are you nervous for your interviews?” he asked, leaning back with his beer and breathing deep the night air. I felt good and relaxed, and the conversation had flowed naturally, like we’d dropped right back into the old days again. That should’ve made me pause, but I couldn’t bring myself to investigate it too much.

“A little,” I admitted. “Lisa was easy, but I have a feeling they won’t all go like that.”

“The top jobs are a little easier because the qualified applicant pool is so much smaller,” he said. “Everyone you interview for those jobs will be great, and it’ll just be down to whoever you like.”

“But the other positions?” I asked, genuinely curious about his take—since he had experience in this.

“More applicants means more variation,” he said, shrugging a little bit. “You’ll figure out how to weed out the bad ones based on their resumes though, and I’ll help as much as I can.”

“Aren’t you missed, back at your other company?” I asked. “I mean, you do have another job, right?”

“Technically,” he said, smiling. “But Neal can handle it while I’m gone. To be honest, he’s been running the show for a while now. I’m more or less a glorified salesman.”

“Oh, good, and here you are, giving me advice.”

“Don’t worry, I know what I’m doing,” he said, leaning forward. “I’m very good at what I do.”

“I bet you think that,” I said, smiling, and I realized that I was flirting with him, and he was flirting with me—and it felt really good. Which was honestly not okay, or at least it wasn’t smart, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself.

He laughed and tilted his head, and I thought of another night, so long ago, when he laughed and looked at me just like that, while we sat at the top of the slide and smoked a cigarette, our shoulders and legs touching, and I wanted him to kiss me so badly back then—just like I wanted him to kiss me right now.

The guys at the other end of the table began to cheer about something, and it broke the moment. The group next to them tossed over some dirty looks, but the aggressive drinkers quieted down.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said, and flagged down the waitress with a confidence I completely envied. When I wanted to pay the bill, I sat quietly until the server came back and asked if we were done—but there were people in this world that couldn’t wait quietly, and Bret was one of them.

He paid and we left. The restaurant was crowded, and the people were rowdy, with huge German beer steins being passed around. Some drunk kid with a huge, unruly beer bumped into me. Bret grabbed me as the guy’s beer sloshed, and pulled me to the side before it could drip all down my front. Instead, the drunk guy holding the glass only splashed some onto the floor and apologized in a heavy slur before scurrying away.