Heaven, INC: Chapter 3: A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A CARPET CLEANER

They’re watching every move we make,
we’re all included on the list.
—The Lunatics Have Taken Over the Asylum,
FUN BOY THREE

CHEMSTEEM,
KEARNY MESA
6:52 A.M. PDT

JIMMY FOUND OWEN working on his B-3 organ, a 1970's-era musical monstrosity comprised of vacuum tubes and miles of wires that on the morning of the night of the biggest show of their lives was a thing neither wholly living nor dead because, in typical Owen McClain fashion, it was decided shortly after three in the morning that the action on a black key somewhere in the middle-register wasn’t quite to his liking and that must be immediately disassembled and repaired from the ground up with pieces strewn from one side of the apartment to the other and it was only through cajoling and outright force that Jimmy managed to pry Owen from the half-assembled keyboard and into the car. They still got to Chem-Steem late and surely doomed to the worst jobs Evil Roscoe could cook up until the day took it’s first turn for the cool. See, Roscoe had bigger problems than tardiness because Roscoe was deep into yesterday’s Action Reports.

Take Joe and Edgar’s report.

Joe and Edgar— the two most chronic stoners in ChemSteem’s pantheon of chronic stoners— had managed to not only crash one of the big vans, Van #4, but to roll it three times end-over-end in Pacific Beach at the intersection of Mission Boulevard and Garnet and in full-view of a cop. Joe and Edgar claimed the tire blew, the cop that the tire was dangerously under-inflated and a possible case of criminal negligence and Roscoe that the whole world was out to get him.

None of this was terribly uncommon at ChemSteem Carpet Cleaning & Upholstery Specialists.

Also: Van # 3 was missing, the carpet technician having failed to return the van after yesterday’s jobs and was presumed to have sold the van along with the gear inside for drug-money. Again, not as uncommon as you might think.

Also: One of the carpet-cleaning units caught fire in the garage and since the fire-extinguishers were empty, some of the lesser stoners tried extinguishing the flames using ChemSteem DeepKleen solution which turned out, to everyone’s great surprise, to be highly flammable.

Also: Part of the garage’s western wall caught on fire from the burning carpet-cleaning unit and flammable DeepKleen. Nearby was a 200-year-old Turkish rug some lawyer had dropped off with instructions that it was worth thousands of dollars and made of angora wool and must be handled with the utmost care as it had been in his family for twelve generations. So, of course, one resourceful stoner used the ancestral rug to smother the fire.

The good news? The west wall fire was out.

The bad news? Who’d lie to the lawyer about his family’s blackened ancestral rug?

THE FIRST THING Roscoe said as Jimmy and Owen came through the door was, “Did you two losers crash, burn, break or steal any company equipment yesterday? No? Good. Did you break, burn or steal anything at your customers’ houses? No? Even better. Have you drank alcohol, smoked pot, snorted lines or shot up in the last eight hours? No again? Then have fun making real money because you two get La Jolla and the Beaches.” Roscoe turned to the small army of dipshits gathered in the office. “You see? That is why Jimmy and Owen are being considered for management. Because they don’t lose, crash, burn, steal or break shit.”

It was at that moment— from the back of the office where the door led off to the garage— that a lone stoner’s voice called out, “Hey, boss? Fire’s back.”

JIMMY WAS IN VAN #2 and backing out when a meaty hand slapped the driver’s-side window and Officer Coolidge’s sweaty face loomed like a zit-pocked moon.
Jimmy rolled down the window. “Hey, Coolie, you got crumbs on your tie.”

“Right, sure I do, convict. Now get outta the fucking van.”

Owen leaned over. “Hey, dude? He’s not kidding— there’s orangey stuff all over you.”

Coolidge glanced down at his shirt and tie and brushed a haphazard hand before saying,
“Alright, outta the van, Francisco, out of the van now or I am violating you straight back to Chino. What’s it gonna be, tough guy?.”

That’s how Jimmy ended up standing around while Coolidge delivered a big long speech about how he could, as Jimmy’s parole officer— at any time and for practically any reason— send Jimmy back to jail to serve out the remainder of his sentence.

“Because,” Coolidge orated around a chocolate Ho Ho, “I am the power and you are the piss ant. And if the piss ant know’s what’s good for him, he will show the Power respect.”

“Your mom tell you to move out of the house and get your own place again last night, Coolie?”
Coolidge’s moon-face darkened. “Officer Coolidge,” he said and opening his tricky-dicky little clipboard. After licking his fingers clean, he made a notation on Jimmy’s Parole Status Report before the clipboard snapped close. “I told my cousin the next time you fuck up, he should fire your ass.” Coolidge smiled, revealing teeth full of Ho Ho. “Fuck up, Francisco, and lose this job and I swear I will violate you straight back for a four-year tour at Chino.” He glanced at Owen and back at Jimmy. “Then you can kiss your stupid band goodbye cause by the time you get out, the only thing you’ll be rocking is a chair.” A broad, Ho Ho-smile split Coolidge’s face. “Get it? Rocking chair?”

And the worst part? It was sadly pretty much true and it was his life.

Jimmy, ex-Homicide detective, was now a 39-year old working at a dirt-bag carpet-cleaning outfit and being lectured by a guy with Cheetos down his tie, a loser who with the flick of his clicky-pencil and a subsequent parole hearing could send Jimmy back to prison for the remainder of his sentence, yeah, that was the deal, that a guy who actually liked living with his mother and who’s greatest joy in life was playing a Dungeons-and-Dragons card game called Magic with his cousin, Roscoe, that this complete dork had semi-complete control over Jimmy’s life.

Coolidge held a hand up to face, the phone-gesture with the pinkie out. “I call . . . Any time, any where . . . You answer . . . I don’t care if you’re sticking your dick in one of those little tramps follows your band around, I call, you answer or I send you back to the can.” Withdrawing another Ho Ho and gesturing with it, added, “I own you . . . Get used to it,” before taking a big satisfied bite.

Yeah, well at least Coolidge hadn’t found find the Czech .40 hidden under the van’s seat.

Jesus, I gotta get a real life . . .