Sitting at a table in Fish Taco King, surrounded by Dashing Delivery Dudes, Jake and the other holiday helpers keep quiet while their drivers insult one another while eating lunch. "Hey, Lonnie," Luke, a driver nearly the size of his van, says, "Your helper hasn't said anything. Did you get another mute again this year?"
"No, he talks. He's probably worn out from all the packages we delivered already. We aren't lazy like you," Lonnie says while putting peanut butter on his tuna burrito, "Don't they have chunky peanut butter? I hate this creamy stuff."
"Luke told me you liked the creamy stuff," Roy, a driver with the kind of tan one gets after falling asleep in a tanning bed whose automatic shutoff is broken, says and laughs, slurping diet pop through his straw.
Lonnie pauses from peanut buttering his burrito and sticks his right index finger in the air like a talisman, "I like my peanut butter chunky and my women creamy."
"Oh, God, here we go again," Siobhan, the only female driver at the table, says.
"I heard it was the reverse," Luke says.
"What's your helper's name?" Roy asks Lonnie.
"Jake," Lonnie says, returning to buttering his burrito.
"Jake, has he made any special stops yet?"
Jake finishes chewing his bite of fish taco, and asks, "Special stops?"
"You know, the ones where he takes a half an hour to deliver a package and a woman walks him out and his overalls are mussed and so's the woman's hair," Siobhan explains.
"Half an hour?" Luke says, "I think five minutes for Lonnie would be a world record."
"Hey!" Lonnie says, index finger rising again, "That was just once and I told your wife to slow down."
Roy claps his hands, "Oh, snap!"
Luke laughs and gets up with his tray of fast food wrappers, "Speaking of her, it's time I stopped in for my daily quickie."
He beckons to his helper, a sleepyeyed midget, "C'mon, Jason, you can sleep in the van while I'm rocking the house."
Goodbyes are exchanged and Luke and Jason leave, sounding at the door the foghorn which thanks the staff for a good meal. "Well, we better get moving too," Siobhan says, nodding at her helper, a young woman with a squirrel like face minus the fur and whiskers, "I don't want an inspector showing up and hassling me for a long lunch."
"That asshole Allen already showed up this morning and was about to yell at me for leaving the back door unlocked. I had Jake in the back looking for a package though, so he couldn't say anything. That fucking guy. He's fucking unbelievable."
"I tell you what's unbelievable. All the shoppers out today and the traffic. I didn't think it could be worse than last year but somehow it is," Roy says, crunching up his empty soda cup.
"I hear ya. These fucking people . . . " Lonnie says, before launching into a tirade about having to work on the day after Thanksgiving, which includes 57 variations of the word "fuck".
By the end, only he and Jake are left at the table, and then they too must be dudes who dash to deliver.
Blog Love Omega Glee is a novel by Wred Fright about two bloggers who fall in love while the world falls apart, which is being serialized on his blog. To start reading from the beginning or read another installment, please visit Blog Love Omega Glee Central on WredFright.Com. If you like what you've read, or you've read all of Blog Love Omega Glee and want more Fright, then please read his first novel.
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