I used to go with Boyce on ride-alongs a lot more than I have lately. People began getting uncomfortable when a second locksmith, dressed without a uniform, would stand around and scope out the inside of the house. Once I asked Rachel to go with me to deflect any weirdness my presence might cause with Boyce’s customers. She asked me why anyone would want to do a ride-along with a locksmith, besides just to spend time with Boyce (Rachel used to say that even if I was a horrible person, she’d still like hanging out with me because of Sammy and Boyce. Compare this to my mother who constantly dared Boyce and Sammy when they were teenagers to lie on the railroad tracks and let a train pass over them). I explained to her that often times a ride-along with a locksmith was like getting to be the first witness to an epic disaster that you are under no obligation to clean up. Think driving in a motorboat down the canals of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. A lot of Boyce’s customers had locks broken due to domestic disturbances, and that meant the homes were mind-boggling. Say what you will about my mother, but you never had a cockroach fall on you from a hole in the ceiling when you were in the house. Sure, she might have called your father a piddling disaster with a backbone made from rabbit ghosts, and she may have scared all the guests the one time you had a birthday party by telling all the other eighth graders how she thought they were going to die, but she never let vermin take over the house. Besides, if you go with Boyce on a ride-along and you go to a nice house, they might make you lemonade. That is, unless they spend their time on the phone with their husband saying things like, “No, honey, I don’t think he’s a locksmith. He’s just staring at our stuff. No. I wouldn’t call him scary, but there’s something not right about him.”
Rachel did go on one ride-along with Boyce. She didn’t say much about it, but Boyce told me that when they first got to the house the woman was crying and talking to family on the phone about “finally leaving him.” Boyce said, “By the time we left that woman had given Rachel lunch and they were smiling about cities they thought were beautiful, even if they hadn’t been there before. She gave me lunch too, but I think only because she really wanted to give Rachel something.” Certainly not the experience of my ride-alongs which generally ended with Boyce asking me to wait in the van.
I called Marcel yesterday to see if he could talk to some of the higher-ups at the Sleep Center to see if Boyce could get some hours doing janitorial work with me. He told me he would do what he could. I even called Rex Tugwell, too, because this is Boyce we’re talking about. Rex was fairly civil on the phone and told me the only way he could give Boyce hours is if he took some from me. I said that was fine. Rex explained that he couldn’t really do that because Boyce would have to be hired by human resources, but he was really nice when he said it. For the amount of times I have had people explain how much pleasure they would get in causing me both physical and emotional harm, I have never heard someone complain about Rachel, Boyce, and Sammy.
I’m certainly willing to give Boyce what limited hours I have. I have very little need for money because a) I do not have a family, b) my house belonged to my mother, and is paid for, c) I have already purchased all bird-related paraphernalia I might need, and d) although it's never yet come to it, I could probably just make a living at casinos. Plus, I don't need health insurance yet because I am relatively healthy, although Rachel would said she doubted that sometimes, and then she’d touch my arm. Once I was so energized when she touched my arm that I picked up a chair in a room full of her friends. I just held onto it because I didn’t know what to do with it. I did the only thing I knew how to do in a crowd full of women and their husbands, which was to tell them something about birds: “The penguin has the strongest wing relative to its size.” Then I put the chair down. Then a couple of Rachel’s girlfriends laughed, which they always did once they were convinced Rachel was never going to be romantically interested in me. The husbands would sometimes say something a bit mean, because they didn't ever know what to think of me. Rachel would tell me, "So what? They play golf and grow goatees and wait for their bellies to come in." Then I'd tell her about how beautiful the European bee-eater is, and maybe some day I could see it. That's the closest she would let me come to telling her that she was my soul mate.
When you see the European Bee-Eater though, you realize how close she let me get.
