Chapter 43

It wasn't so much the spoiled milk as it was the wilted lettuce. Milk -- Jake could take it or leave it. But the lettuce, that clinched it.

"Who left the damned refrigerator door open again?" he yelled to an empty house. He lived alone, but it helped to blame someone. He checked his doors and windows to see if some fridge raiding burglar had been in his town house. All locked. That left two choices: ghosts or aliens. He didn't believe in God, so that somehow ruled out the ghosts also.

"Freakin’ aliens," he muttered. He went over to the sink, ran the cold water and began methodically shoving the ruined food down the garbage disposal, all the while cursing the government for participating in a huge cover-up of alien visitations. If people only knew, he thought, they could protect themselves. He watched TV, so he knew that the aliens could just "beam in" to his apartment, bypassing his locked doors and windows. Maybe he would just get a big, mean dog. His landlord wouldn't like it, but he didn't like a lot of the things Jake did, like paying his rent with quarters and not having a phone.

He sat naked on the couch after disposing of the rotten food and contemplated the decision to buy a dog. First off, a good dog would be expensive, it would be better if he just stole one, but it would have to be a puppy, which means it wouldn't be mean enough for a year or more. That much thinking started to give him a headache, so he got up, slipped on a bra and a matching pair of panties, then into his coveralls. It was time to go to work. Eight hours of baggage loading with his crack smoking crew, then back home. Forget the dog, Jake decided he would just sit up all night with a shotgun and keep an eye on the fridge.