Page 28 of Conan
“Which one?” I ask.
“Don’t know, he didn’t say.” He shrugs his shoulders.
“Leave it to Teddy to be mysterious. He loves to catch us off-guard and surprise us.”
“Let’s make things more interesting!” the instructor shouts, gaining our attention. “We’ve put together a little sketch act of different scenarios and how they should be handled.”
“For fuck’s sake, if they break out in song and dance, I’m outta here,” I grumble.
As soon as break was called, I hauled ass out of that conference room faster than a lightning strike. The play, if you can call whatever that disaster was that, didn’t become a musical, but what it did do was give me a raging migraine—those actors and actresses didn’t talk in any sort of normal pitch, they damn well screamed their lines and their voices became scratchy, which to my pounding head, was worse than nails sliding down a chalkboard.
I lit up a cigarette as I was walking out of the lobby doors. Several employees gave me a condescending and scathing look, but I’m a rule breaker and couldn’t care less if I wasn’t where I was supposed to be when I took my first drag. After what I just had to sit through, mass murder was on my mind so this was the higher road to take, so they should be thanking their lucky stars I had this vice of mine because they wouldn’t appreciate my other one.
By the time I fire up my second one, and ash the tip, I’m joined by Midas, Liam, Niles, Rev, and Risk. Marcum gave up the habit after the smell made Luna sick. This pregnancy hasn’t been easy on her, no doubt about it, she’s nauseous more often than not. I told Marcum it's because she’s carrying his spawn and seeing as I firmly believe we’re direct descendants of the underground, it makes sense.
At least it did to me.
Marcum doesn’t think my theory holds any merit and gave me hell for saying that in front of his old lady. She thought it was funny, my brother however, did not. There are times like that one when I wonder if we’re actually related. He sometimes has a dry sense of humor—that’s not something I suffer from, thank fuck.
“What would happen if we skipped out on the second half of that… whatever it is?” I ask, being dead serious.
“Wish we could,” Niles complains. “What was that anyway?”
“I don’t think there’s a word in the dictionary to explain what that was,” Midas says.
“Excruciating comes to mind,” Liam murmurs.
“It was painful to sit through,” I input. “When do we get to the more physical aspects of this retreat?”
“Trust building exercises begin tomorrow,” Midas tells us, holding up his phone to show us.
On the screen, I see the agenda pulled up and know that he is just as bored as I am. Why Auto signed us up for this course is an enigma. We don’t have any female employees, so there’s no valid reason for us to have to sit through it.
Before I know it, our time is up and we head back in to ‘discuss’ the right and wrong ways to handle the situations we watched. I’d rather put a bullet between my eyes than have to sit through this ‘informative’ seminar.
“If you answer correctly, your team earns five points on the leaderboard. Don’t forget, at the end, whoever has the highest points will earn your company a gift to pass out to every member of your organization,” the lecturer reminds us, as if we need a setof prissy shirts that are imprinted with ‘We Care’ because quite frankly, I don’t give a shit.
The day drones on, and none of my brothers nor I raise our hands to earn any points. We’re not here to be the top dogs, our reason for joining these clowns is to earn the trust of a select few.
As we sit at our table, the four imbeciles take the extra seats. David, the pseudo leader of the quadruplets, raises the question, “We’re going out tonight, you guys wanna come with us?”
“Where are you going?” I ask as I attempt to gnaw my way through the stale bread wrapped around even staler lunch meat.
“There’s a bar in town that all the locals have been raving about,” Joey answers. “We thought we’d head up there and check it out.”
“Is it a bar or a club?” I ask. “I have a migraine and couldn’t handle the heavy bass of music, but if it’s a bar, I could do that.”
“Just a bar from our intel,” Liam pipes in and tells us. “Clubs aren’t our thing.”
Of course not, they’re too high maintenance and would blend in easier at a club. They want to stand out so they draw the eyes of the ladies and won’t have much in the way of competition.
“I could use a beer, a draft, not the gaudy bullshit they serve here,” Marcum adds. “I’m in.”
“Me too,” I agree, already licking my lips at the thought of drinking good, straight from the tap beer.
My palate will never be the same after attempting to drink the hotel’s schmancy label shit. I mean, since when do these places not serve a good Budweiser? Hell, I’d even settle for a Michelob light, and I can’t stand the taste of it.
I push my food away and sneer at it. “Plus, at a bar I can get a greasy burger and fries.”
