The guilt kicked in before the exterior door closed behind Lou Renzo, the etched glass of the door bearing the name of the law firm that leased the building.
Even feeling the guilt, he was angry enough to kick in the glass, but Buchov and Morris Attorneys weren’t to blame for what RapidQuest Marketing had done to his life, his outlook.
It was a sick waste of almost five years.
The bad poet in Lou hoped for a cool breeze of freedom to hit his face, but it was humid out and looked like it might rain before he even got on the bus.
Decided he would walk home, maybe the rain would trigger some bad poetry that he hoped one day would be good.
He had planned the exit, the speech to Ridley, everything.
Except now that the adrenaline was gone he had to piss like crazy.
Lou couldn’t walk back into the building.
His phone was humming, he knew it was Ridley, not coming after him because Ridley would never leave his bank of monitors until midnight and it was only 10 am.
Lou thought about it.
If he hadn’t walked out he’d be in the office until midnight again.
Almost wet his pants from the relief.
***
A guy was pissing between the dumpster and the lattice-covered fence behind the bus station, and Lou thought about it but decided he didn’t want to risk the ticket. Bart Almsfeld picked up an indecent exposure that way, couldn’t get it ripped from his record.
Lou’s phone continued to hum, Ridley was probably gonna fill his voicemail, but his guilt was limited to the things he said in anger, and not to actually leaving.
The bus station restroom was cleaner than Lou expected and deserted except some legs in the last stall that seemed by their angle to belong to someone sleeping.
The blue mat in the urinal looked broken at first like a chunk was missing.
Ridley would know what the mats were called and the basic web traffic that could be generated if one advertised on them.
But this mat had no advertisement, just the phone number of the maintenance company that installed them.
The part that seemed broken wasn’t broken at all, just partially covered with a white index card with a name and phone number written on it.
Andrea followed by ten digits.
Seemed kinda quaint in a digital era.
There was no “for a good time call”, or any other trite, suggestive bullshit.
Just a name and number.
The index card had been pissed on at least once, maybe by the guy who threw it in the urinal.
Lou wondered if guys using the urinal would call the number.
Ridley would guess the demographics of the guys who would call it, and what percentage of them would say something rude or sexually suggestive.
Lou thought about fishing the card out of the urinal, but…
His phone had stopped humming.
He zipped up and looked. Ridley had left two long messages.
Lou looked down at the index card.
He dialed Andrea’s number.
A woman answered.
“Hi, “ Lou said. “This is gonna sound kind of weird, but I thought you would want to know.”
“Want to know what?” the voice said, curious with a splash of annoyed.
“My name is Lou, I’m at the bus station.”
“Who? And why do I care?”
“I uhhh, I just wanted to warn you that someone put your phone number in the men’s room at the bus terminal and that you might get some weird calls.”
“Like this one?”
“I’m sorry,” Lou said. “Really. I just thought you would want to know, in case, I don’t know…you got weird calls or texts or something.”
“Like this one.”
“I’m sorry,” Lou said again. “It looks like someone just placed it there and–”
“Well can you draw over it or something,” the woman he assumed to be Andrea said. “Erase it?… I don’t know. This is weird.”
“It’s on an index card. In a woman’s handwriting.”
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Jimmy Doom's Roulette Weal to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.