Ch. 4 ~ All in a Day's Work
Bob is convinced he's boring, but is never bored. He discovers something about his namesake.
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Ch. 4 ~ All in a Day's Work
Bob would not care to be described, because he was convinced he was boring, or at least felt that other people thought so. On his rare dates, he didn't really want to talk about having the same job and apartment for three years, for fear of yawns and a deft change of subject by someone who had something exciting to say, which presumably was why he would have asked her out in the first place.
But Bob was never bored. He liked being settled into his apartment, with all his own stuff there. His roommate added a touch of the unknown but was respectful enough that nothing was unfindable. Sometimes the kitchen wasn't in great shape, but Bob didn't use the kitchen a whole lot. It did save money to cook dinner sometimes, and he had his routines of cereal for breakfast and making tuna or turkey or peanut butter and jelly for lunch. Sometimes he'd grab some fast food, which pushed him toward pudginess, but he knew how to make soup, chicken dishes, and even stir fry once in a while.
Beer was the one leftover from his college days down at UNC, where he used to overdo the drinking until his adventure with Lucy seemed to change everything. That's about when he quit being a benchwarmer for the football team and his muscles started morphing into the round form that made two different girls, independently, start calling him Teddy.
Doing title searches had interesting moments, such as the clouded titles most people would think was the saving grace of that job – the times when something had gone wrong in the handoff of a property from one owner to another, something mysterious about how a house came to be owned or sold or claimed to be owned by somebody. Houses were big money, so their ownership could inspire all sorts of shenanigans.
But Bob didn't care for clouded titles. They didn't resolve. He liked it when a search came up just the way it was supposed to, with nothing wrong. He was really good at executing all the steps that had to be done, and enjoyed seeing his stack of completed work grow.
His coworkers were professional and didn't gossip much about TV shows or celebrities. They liked their work, consulted with each other occasionally, but mostly the office was fairly quiet outside of phone conversations. Everyone took coffee breaks at 10:30 and 2:30, for fifteen minutes each.
Bob did not consider this regimented, even though it sounds that way when it's reduced to words. Each search required his full attention, and he knew where to find what he needed, how to write up good reports, whom to call and what to ask whenever information was incomplete.
Clouded titles were not exciting to him. They did require a little extra puzzling and sleuthing but they also took longer to finish and often could not be completed at all, depending on the often unpredictable responses from frantic buyers on the verge of a purchase.
Bob liked to work on his own and complete a search. He would flip through the paperwork when it was done, place it in his outbox and sip a decaf coffee. He always felt that every bit of good work deserved a bit of admiring, before moving on to the next task.
It was probably Bob's preference for completing and resolving things that made him stop reading newspapers. It seemed to him that in order to capture the attention of their readers, the newspapers had to talk up murder, scams, scum, bums, wars, liars, betrayals, flashy trends and spectacular accidents. All were disturbing or provocative, and none resolved; they just led to the next day's or week's news. Not that Bob would ever want to sit and read only good news, or read descriptions about good but boring people like himself.
But Bob did notice his life feeling much more peaceful about a week after he stopped newspapers and caffeine.
He didn’t watch TV, either. TV was worse than newspapers, in Bob's view. Not only did they have to find ever crazier ways to keep viewers interested, but they had to do it in real time. In your face at every moment. Switching camera angles three times a second. Saying and doing outrageous things with a smile and trying to hook you into watching the ads. About all he’d watch on TV was an important game now and then, and he could go to The Pit sports bar once in a while for that.
Radio was more tolerable. Bob liked most kinds of music, except music intended to cause distress, like heavy metal. But the announcers were a pain. Even on classical stations. You'd hear the delicate caress of the last notes of a piece of music, and suddenly the announcer would burst in and remind you which station you're listening to and tell you how relaxing their music was. The pop stations were okay but the DJs were even more hyped up than TV people. At least the TV people filled up fractions of seconds here and there by just looking good instead of shouting into their microphone.
Bob's favorite radio show aired on his way home from work on Fridays. It played a whole musical every week. His current favorite was The Music Man. He could rattle off the entire song about pool which starts with P which rhymes with T which stands for Trouble, right here in River City. He wouldn't mind finding a woman like Marion the librarian.
He used to think he'd like someone like Maria from West Side Story until he visited his younger brother, Eric, down in New York City, and didn't find it so romantic.
He didn't see Eric much even though he was only four or five hours south of Bob. They were pretty different people, but Bob always found Eric entertaining, in proper doses. That's probably why he didn't mind having Franck around. He too was entertaining, although Franck's life seemed to be a cross between A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum, and Wicked.
On his drive to work, the day after Franck’s wild ride, Bob spotted the old lady kids called Figface. She always stood in a doorway, her face dark from sun and wind, with ancient creases from living on the street. She held onto her shopping cart for dear life and muttered to herself all day long. "At least I don't talk to myself," Bob said to himself. "That's for desperate people. OK, I’m talking to myself."
The light turned green and he left Figface behind.
“Am I a desperate person? What am I worried about? It was just another one of Franck's stories. Just because my name was on the paper doesn't mean anything. There is more than one Bob McIver in town. Imagine if every John Smith had to answer for the papers of every other John Smith. But my roommate signed it. That's forgery. Or fraud. He doesn't get it. Maybe it's nothing. But he lives at my place. He drove down railroad tracks. Look at that, another homeless guy. No cares in the world. Wait, okay. I have a home, a roof over my head. A job. A paycheck. All is well. Then why the hell am I talking to myself?"
He drove into the drive-thru coffee shop and ordered a decaf. Across the parking lot was U-Fitness with big windows displaying people running on treadmills.
One of these days I'm going to go in there and sign up, he thought, and I'll go at night when no one's there and I can do my workout and get fit. But who am I trying to impress? Right now, nobody. And when do I have time anyway? Maybe if I did it I could impress someone and then I'd have someone to impress. Catch-22. No, she's just going to have to like me the way I am. She's got to be out there somewhere.
Work was the same as usual that day, thankfully. Or almost. Bob felt on edge all day, as if he had drunk something with caffeine in it. It was that story of Franck's. Something about it was getting to him.
At 2:30, instead of taking a coffee break, he stayed on the computer. The others went into the coffee room and the office was quiet and empty.
He looked up the other Robert McIver and found his street address. He logged onto the Registry of Deeds website, but then realized this was private business and he'd have to pay for the search unless he went to the Registry in person. He decided to stop in at the Registry soon. He googled the address, hoping for some kind of published news. He didn't think it too likely, but to his surprise, lots of entries popped up in the search results. The first was a map showing the location of the house. Bob clicked on it to study where the house was and where the railroad tracks ran. He printed the map.
The next couple of entries were alternate maps of the location, and after that came a smattering of entries showing partial matches of the address. He nearly cancelled the search but first tried adding "McIver" to the search box. The same entries seemed to come up. But there were a few new ones: some city council meeting minutes, a McIver plumbing supply place on Church Street in West Haven, and others that Bob skimmed through. He looked at the next page of entries and his dim hopes started to fade, but then he spotted an obituary linked to the address. He opened it and quickly printed it out, checking his watch as the printer spewed out a page. Two minutes left in coffee break. He was about to close the window when his own name caught his attention one more time. Robert McIver was highlighted along with parts of the address. He opened the document and found it was a news article with a picture of McIver. Bob stared. McIver was black.
"No break for the weary?" said Julie, on her way back to her desk, carrying a coffee cup. She laid it on his desk. "Decaf, cream, sugar, just the way you like it," she said, and walked on down to her desk.
"Thanks, Julie! Just trying to catch up on something personal here." He liked her smile. They both turned back to the job at hand.
I'm catching up on reading your latest submittals today.
It will be interesting to see how this turns out for Bob. He is an interesting character as well.
This is a fun read. Look forward to each episode.