When he got in from work that evening, there was a cranky mood in there waiting for him. It was like someone had been pumping bad feeling in through the air vents. That's what he thought at first till he realized he probably fetched it in with him. He wasn't of a mind to do nothing but sit and grumble.
"Aretha, honey. You wouldn't believe what the management's brought me to train up. This little China girl with no more fire in her than an icy pole. She don't give a shoot about quality control. I don't get the feeling she'll be around long enough to finish the training. You know what she said to me today?"
Aretha didn't answer on account of Aretha being dead. I don't mean she was dead and he was there talking to the body or nothing weird like that. She'd been dead and buried some fifteen years. But that didn't stop him talking to her. Just cause she was dead didn't mean he couldn't talk to her, right? Just cut down on the answering time was all.
"She said, 'Them's balls. Why don't you just roll 'em? If they roll straight, that's quality ain't it? If they don't roll straight you just quality control the little suckers out of there.' Jees, Reet. You see what I mean? She'd have balls rolling around all over the plant if I didn't stop her. I tried to explain to her about weight, and balance, and torque, and sheen and all that stuff, and you know what she said? You won't believe this, Reet honey. You'll laugh when I tell you. I was too bellypunched to laugh myself. She said, 'Hell, they's only balls.'
'Only balls.' Them's the very words come out of her mouth. Jees."
He was feeling better now. Talking things over with Aretha always made him feel better. She was the only one that really understood how he felt about stuff. All that moaning had made him hungry as a dump dog.
First he went off and took a shower. Well, tell the truth he just boogied around under a drip barely wet enough to rinse the soap off. But if it weren't for his shimmy in the shower, he wouldn't of got no exercise at all.
He put on his red flannel pajamas even though it wasn't barely dark outside, and went to his favourite place in the apartment, the kitchen. He transferred the top two aluminum trays from the freezer to the snack oven and set the dial to 'rapid defrost and bake'. He emptied a liter of Coke into a pitcher and carried it to the living room. "White for fish. Red for meat. Dark brown for TV dinners."
He sat and waited patiently for the ding but he still counted the rapid defrost seconds in his head. He was so good at it he was already there at the oven door with his mitt when the sound come. He carried the two trays to the table and peeled back the tops. The beautiful smell was carried up in the steam and he hoovered it up his nose. It smelled just like real food. It usually looked and tasted like something less so he liked to stretch out the smelling as long as he could. He always felt sorry for B.O's wife that she couldn't appreciate the scent of a good TV dinner.
And, thank heaven for ketchup and mustard. He didn't know where he'd be without 'em. The paint and plaster of food. There weren't no meal construction faults that couldn't be put right with generous helpings of ketchup and mustard. It made his meals all taste the same but he'd gotten used to that taste a while back.
"So anyway," he went on like he'd only just left the conversation. "I went over to tell Desire. 'Desire', I say, 'that little girl in there, she can't be no QCO. She ain't got the aptitude. She got no interest in pool balls. Man, it's like it's just a job to her.'
And you know what Desire says back to me? She says, 'Waldo, (and I'll cut out the 'f' words for you, Reet) If the Pacers get on a losing streak and bomb one game after the next, (she's always comparing the real world to basketball) you don't see Slick Leonard come on TV and say his boys ain't no good. He says, "I take full responsibility. It's my fault them old boys can't play worth a shit, not theirs. I here on by tender my resignation."
"So Waldo you old trainer you, if you can't train her up, if you ain't man enough for the job, I'll have to find me someone who is. But don't blame the nip. She's got her elementary school certificate, and that's about five years more schooling than most of you other morons got. You understand that?"
Hell, Reet. That Desire. Ever since she got interviewed on Indiana Tonight, she thinks she's something else. Well, I got half a mind to tell the bitch that she ain't. You know how it is, don't you, Reet. When Waldo got half a mind, ain't nobody can sleep easy."
With all the words coming out and all the food going in, that was one hell of a busy mouth on the face of Waldo Monk. There's old faces like balloons that get shrunk and wrinkled when the air gets out of them. And there's others that swell up and kind of grow, you know? Waldo's was an expanding balloon face. The type where all the features got bigger; the eyes got rounder, the lips got fuller, and the nose blew up like a bubble of licorice gum.
That was the face Waldo ended up with after sixty five years of stuffing junk into it. He wore his gray hair so short it was easy to forget he had any, and he never did find the secret of growing any type of whiskers. His body was kind of made up of put-together balls, like a snowman, but black. He had round everything; arms, belly, thighs, even his fingers and toes was starting to look like something they produced at the factory. He was a round guy.
But he wouldn't be round for much longer. Once the diet started to kick in he knew he'd be on the beach at Lerdo de Tejada with his Bermuda shorts, playing beach volleyball with the spinster chicks. Only one pitcher of Coke tonight in spite of urges otherwise. Only two TV dinners. And the piece of resistance, an apple with his ice cream. They'd probably brand him a health fanatic, but it'd be worth the effort.