seemed like everyone was getting canned. People that had ten, fifteen years experience were either getting booted out the door or offered a job in one of the company’s offices in Houston, Texas or Greenville, South Carolina. It had been about a year since that fat bastard puked all over himself. In that time, I earned my instructor rating and was teaching part time at Liburdi’s Scuba Center. So I was ready for the axe to fall on my head; I had an ace in the hole.
I was talking with “Q” who was visiting me in my cubicle.
“You’re really going to do it?” she said, looking at me with her soft blue eyes.
“And what are you going to be doing?” I asked. “Are you staying here or did they offer you a spot in Houston?”
“I’m staying here,” she said.
“That’s good because I hear Houston gets very hot and humid.” I was about to say something else when my phone rang. After a brief conversation, I hung up the phone.
“Was that them?” Q asked.
“Yes.”
“I could tell by the ring it was the dreaded phone call,” she said.
“Dreaded? Hell no, Q. That was the freedom call,” I said getting up from my desk.
Q smiled and said, “Are we still on for lunch?”
“Of course. I’ll pick you up at he same time,” I said.
“Okay, Pasley,” she said as she got up and walked out of my square coffin with me. “I’ll be waiting for you.”
“Eric?” A cartoonish female voice said. I was sitting in the human resources lobby looking at a Cosmopolitan magazine. I loved smelling the perfume sample pages. There were about four other employees who all had that doomsday look on their faces sitting across from me.
“Yes,” I said, putting down the magazine and looking up at the HR worker.
“Follow me please,” she squeaked. Man, despite her cartoon voice, she was a good looking girl with long legs that resembled a Barbie Doll.
In her office, she started rambling on about how the downsizing is necessary due to the fact that the offices in Texas and in the east are getting most of the job bids, and that all the overhead and California taxes are playing a part in all of it. Then she asks me about transferring.
“Transferring?”
“Yes,” Barbie Doll Legs said. “What do you think about transferring to our Houston office?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think that sounds good.”
She seemed a bit shocked at my answer. There was an eerie pause. A moment of awkward silence. Then she said, “Oh, do you have another job lined up?”
“I don’t know for sure,” I said. “But what I do know is that I got a one way ticket in my pocket to the United States Virgin Islands and I’m kissing this place goodbye.”
She looked at me in dumb muteness as I got up, smiled and walked out the door.
The Lost Puppy Divers, St. Thomas, USVI
I had a good buzz kicking in and I began to chuckle out loud. Some of the other passengers looked at me briefly then quickly turned away when I caught their eye. I was thinking about the night before the flight.
I stayed the over at my good friend Pete’s so he could take me to the airport in the morning. Pete was also an instructor and we were like twins. We both shared the same thought process and warped sense of humor that was always pushing the envelope of decency. I think this was due to our childhoods being very similar and the way we viewed life. We both dove together all the time and formed a little dive group along with our two other friends Big Paul The Boxer who knows Mickey Rourk and Little Jim. We called ourselves the Lost Puppy Divers and to be a Lost Puppy Diver meant we’d dive anywhere, anytime and in any condition. We often set up Lost Puppy Diver scuba trips.
We cracked open a few beers and talked about our first Lost Puppy Diver trip. Big Paul loaded up twelve tanks in his mini van and we took a road trip from Orange County up to Monterey. We took The Pacific Coast Highway all the way up and we would just stop at some random spot along the beach, throw our scuba gear on and go diving. “Remember when we were standing on that cliff just a little outside of San Louis Obispo checking out the water. Damn that water looked almost like the Caribbean, the “vis” looked like it was seventy feet and Big Paul says, How come there are no divers here?” I said.
“That place looked awesome,” Pete said.
“And it was a totally shitty dive. We couldn’t see shit. The fucking water was like split pea soup with ham chunks mixed in,” I said after taking a guzzle from my beer.
“And we got the hell beat out of us from all the chop, surge and current knocking us against the rocks down below. And that was after we were as exhausted as hell climbing all the way down that damn cliff, with all our gear on, sweating like boiled pigs in our quarter inch wet suits,” Pete said, almost spitting out his beer at the funny image.
“That was a fun-ass trip, “I said, “But I still can’t get over that one dive place where we tried to get our tanks filled.”
“The dive and tattoo shop?” Pete laughed.
“That’s the one. Christ, it was a dive shop with a tattoo parlor in the back. And that dive instructor was sitting behind his plain, gray steel desk reading his instructor manual and drinking a Budweiser,” I started to laugh. “He had no local dive maps of the area or a compressor to fill our tanks.”
“But he did have a cage of rats in the other room. I mean, what the hell was up with that?” Pete said.
“Damn, I wanted to catch one of those filthy rodents. Jesus, they were climbing in and out of that cage.”
“Catch one? You almost tackled the bastard.” Petes’ laughter intensified. “The next thing came, was the sound of a tattoo gun stopping, and that big Samoan lady who was giving a dive flag tattoo to that scrawny white boy with buck teeth screamed at us. ‘You better not hurt my rats!’ Man, she sounded pissed.”
“Damn, that was good times,” I got up to get another beer.
“Even when Big Paul pissed all over our dive gear up in Monterey Bay after the dive.” Pete said.
“I think I liked the Baja trip better, El Bajo Sea mount was a kick ass dive.” I said. Then while shaking my head I said, “I can’t believe we were asking almost every Mexican we met where we could find Jesuchristo El Diablo.”
Shaking his head, Pete spewed out, “Yeah, those Mexicans thought we were crazy looking for Jesus The Devil.”
Before we crashed for the night we were watching the news; Civil unrest in the Dominican Republic, Haitians were trying to jump the border. The scene was total anarchy. West Indian police were bashing innocent civilians over the head with eight foot long sticks that resembled boat oars. It was ridiculous, total slapstick action right out of The Three Stooges.
“That’s where you are going, dude.” Pete said holding his gut. He was laughing his ass off.
“Holy shit dude, I’m going to get clubbed!”
I wasn’t going to the Dominican Republic or Haiti. I had my ticket to St. Thomas, but the mayhem in Dominican Republic was still typical for that area of the world. I can still see those poor bastards in my head getting clubbed. Man, I felt bad for them, but at the same time, it was absolutely hysterical.
I flew into Puerto Rico, then caught a fifteen minute puddle jumper to St. Thomas. I wondered if Mike, the guy from the dive shop, would remember to pick me up at the airport. The plane’s wheels hit the tarmac and started to screech as the pilot hit the breaks. My heart jumped with excitement. I was finally here. I couldn’t believe it, I actually kissed the rat race