“Hey,” I said, collapsing onto Larry’s couch, “Thanks a lot, man.”
He threw me a beer and plopped down beside me. “Hey, no problem. You can crash here as long as you need. Besides, you would have done the same for me, right?”
I tried to run the scenario through my head, but came to no conclusions. “Sure man,” I said anyways.
Larry took a gulp from his beer and made a long Ahhh sound. “Yeah, so did you have to call off from work today?”
Because I hadn’t called off from work, my first instinct was to say, “Fuck,” but instead I said, “God fucking damn shit fuck.”
“Hey, it’s cool man,” Larry said, flipping vacantly through the TV channels. “They’ll probably understand. Just tell them what happened, tomorrow.”
On the short drive to work my attention was split fairly evenly between the visor mirror and the road. Despite running a red light and almost running down a kid on a bicycle, I did manage to come up with a somber face that would make even the meanest of bullies ask me what’s wrong. Once I arrived at the office, I took a deep breath and strode in. It wasn’t until Millie, the secretary, greeted me that I realized I’d forgotten to come up with a story.
“Good morning,” she said, “Is something wrong?”
“Hey, Millie,” I said, “Yeah, I uh, ummm.”
Fortunately my boss, Dave, caught sight of me and interrupted. Not-so-fortunately, he was pissed. “Where the hell were you, yesterday!” he bellowed.
“My grandfather passed away,” I said, contorting my face to look even more solemn.
His eyes narrowed and his face turned blood red. “Your grandfather died last month!”
“Other side of the family,” I tried to thinking about bunnies getting slaughtered, or the last time I played the lottery and lost. The tears were on their way, but still needed some time. “Look, it’s just really hard for me right now, ok?”
Dave was fuming now as he closely examined me from head to toe. I’m sure he knew I was lying, but my story was without flaw. And soon came the first tears.
As our standoff continued, one of my co-workers came by and put his arm around my back. “Hey,” he said, “I don’t know what’s got you so bummed out, but your grandpa’s on line 1. Wants to know if you want to go to the ball game tonight.”
I hastily picked up the phone from the secretary's desk. “Grandpa!” I said as ecstatically into the phone as I could, not really paying attention to what he was saying. “You’re alive! The doctors said you died! … They even put you in the morgue?! … No! … Yeah … Yeah! A miracle! Wow! … Ok, well, I’m glad to hear you’re alive but I really have to get to work, so I’ll talk to you later! … I love you too, Grandpa. Bye.”
“Did you hear that!” I said to everyone, “He’s alive after all!”
Dave put his fist through the drywall.
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