A.G.E's Joint

 The reflected light from the pink moon reflected gave the table an eerie glow as she gets into the Range Rover. The car fits her. Both are high maintenance, high strung machines. The slight aroma of Chanel lingered. Old-fashioned for someone her age. Thinking back, the sundress was a 1960s clone, too. An off-white number with small daisies.  The hour and a half I spent was profitable to say the least. I got the job. But not her name. Making love to my beer, I look out over the water. I'm not sure what to make of her or the situation. Claims poverty and delivers cash. Something was off. The envelope containing the target information was still on the table. It could wait until I get home. Too many people here who could tie the pieces together. Draining the glass, I pay the tab with one of the hundreds, putting the rest in my jacket. The clock on the wall blinked 9:30. Time to go home. Driving down 85, I thought about what the Cad, as she called him, might look like. Given he'd ...

On the surface, it was a normal client meeting at the Dockside Cafe, sitting on the patio making small talk. It wasn't. The Hazel eyes told a story. It was my job to find out what it was.  The server came with our drinks, beer for me, vodka and cranberry for her.  Over her shoulder,  a baseball game silently flickered over the bar. She might have been forty in a flowered sundress with a red carnation in her hair. The pink tints in her hair clashed. But who was I to judge? It was a possible job and the rent was due. The project was simple. Her estranged husband had hidden assets and she wanted me to find them. Usually, I was hired by an attorney for this kind of work, not directly by the client. When I told her, the excuse was she didn't trust the lawyer to do it. He was lazy. I'd heard this before. It made me wonder if was her stealing. I made a mental note to do an NCIC check if I took the job. An Aiding and Abetting charge would not make my day. As the sun sank close ...

Marty comes into the office after a couple of days at Lake of the Fires. On his desk in a note from Beezelbub. He needs the 144-K numbers yesterday. It's nice to be wanted. He pulls the ash covered laptop and powers up...then sigs. 225 new messages, mostly spam. That's all it was good for these days. Everything truly business-related went to Slack or Skype. Quickly scanning the subject lines, he marks them for deletion ten at a time. He would have selected all, but the last time he did he missed a meeting invite disguised as a dating site. On his third set, one caught his attention" "It Could Have Been YOU!, highlighted in yellow"  Ooh. Clickbait. Probably some diamond level multilevel market guru on our payroll revealing the secret to wealth. Yeah, I'm already there. Not interested. He clicked the deletion box. It wouldn't stay clicked. Instead, a pop-up box said he must open it. Oh, great. Malware. I wonder how that got over the firewall.  It was going ...

Light was breaking the tops of the trees as Jim watched for obstructions. Sipping from his cup, he winced. God, the store coffee sucked. Oh, well. Nothing was perfect. But all in all, the trip out was uneventful for this "Choose Your Adventure" lake outing. No rain, engine issues or drunk jet ski nuts to ruin things. Flipping up his cap up, the red bandanna mopped the up the sweat. What a deal. How many fifty year olds had the balls to take on a wild goose chase? Jobs or usually wives came first. But for Jim, there was no wife and never will be. Boat bunnies kept him happy and rarely pushed for anything permanent. If one got mad, there were two more ready to take their place. And It helped he was his own boss, buying and selling marine gear on contract. It had been a Havana Daydreaming kind of life with no regrets. Dropping out of college and never quite fitting anywhere, he still made his way. The last place he was before he came to the lake, a girl he had dated t...

Before I met my wife, I dated a girl named Julia.  Her memory had been triggered in me by the entry in my desk calendar for yesterday, which was her birthday. The calendar is Worse Case Scenarios and How to Prepare for Them. , and the entry was "How to Survive If Your Car Careens Down a Mountainside" . How we met and began dating is one of the greater adventures in my life. The beginning was not unlike running off a cliff blind.   It was in the spring of 1981. I was going to college, acting in Community Theater and working at Home Depot.  It was a crazy schedule, but I was young and thrived on the lack of sleep. One weekend, I was invited by my best friend Karl to a cast party for a players group that had put on a production of Brigadoon at North Georgia College.  \It would be a big event and I would meet some neat people.  He said everything would be happening Saturday and drive on up.   Because of scheduling conflicts at work and some...