here’s this week’s unedited version of timeline. Let me know what kind of part-time jobs you’re working. -tms
BONUS: each week immediately flowing timeline will be a bonus snap fiction piece from a collection I keep under my bed called: “This Perfect World.”

To pickles and dirty girls and all the extra Teds in this world.
— Tiara

10:30 a.m.: For starters, everybody can go fuck themselves.
(is that ever going to get old? Somebody needs to sit me down and explain to me how that may become tiresome and repetitive ‘cause I just don’t see it happening.)
10:32 a.m.: Marketing guy confesses that every time he sees the new girl in the billing department, he wants to throw her on the floor and ravage her. I like the word ravage, I say. “And some days, I like to picture her completely naked except for, like, one article of clothing,” he says.
10:33 a.m.: What kind of clothing? I ask. “Oh, like a hat or a lobster bib or biker shorts,” he explains. “Yesterday, it was one shoe.” One shoe? I wonder. I’ve heard of people getting turned on by a naked woman in high heels, but one shoe? “I’m totally in love with her,” he says, “but if I told her any of this, she’d probably think I was a pervert, right?”
10:34 a.m.: Probably, I confirm. But she’d be wrong. You really sincerely love her, right? “Yeah, yeah.” Because if you were mentally stripping every woman who walked by or telling all your friends how you’re “gonna hit that” every time a new woman joined the staff, that would be perverted. But if you truly love somebody, all etiquette is out the door. It’s only lust and passion and, you know, perversion in a good way.
10:34:17 a.m.: When it comes to love, everybody’s a pervert.
10:35 a.m.: “So I should tell her?” marketing guy asks. Definitely. “You always make me feel better.” That’s why I’m here.
10:40 a.m.: Sales guy comes in complaining about his part-time night job making sandwiches. “I smell like meat all the time. I can’t stand it anymore.”
10:41 a.m.: I know Tiara makes extra money dressing up as mascots and bunnies and stuff for different promotions, but I thought I was the only other one who also had a part-time job.
10:42 a.m.: “What is it you do again?” sales guy asks. I work at the Marriott in West Palm as a greeter and sign-in guy for seminars, I say. “You’re the person who sits at the table with all the name badges?” That’s me.
10:44 a.m.: New guy says he has been working with his brother-in-law at odd jobs, and tech girl decorates cakes at Publix three nights a week. Surprisingly, the music guy has been working as a nail tech for six months. “It runs in the family,” he says.
10:45 a.m.: And the normally prudish Carrot reveals she has been doing sales at a custom motorcycle shop. “Chiminey’s Cyclerama,” she says. “I know the name sounds goofy, but Chiminey’s a cool guy. I dated him for a while; that’s how I got the job. Now, I just work there to be near him.”
10:46 a.m.: “I have to wear this stupid checkered smock at my job,” sales guy complains.
10:46:10 a.m.: “I have to wear black leather chaps,” Carrot retorts.
10:46:13 a.m.: “OK, you win,” sales guy concedes.
11:12 a.m.: Former art guy calls to tell me that at his new job, a couple of the women had asked co-workers if he was gay. So are you? I ask. “No,” he snaps. “But it’s not about that. They said the reason they asked was because they found me ‘soft’ and ‘nonaggressive.’ I don’t mind being thought of as gay, but I can’t have my employees thinking I’m soft. I’d rather be known as a hard-assed gay.” Of course you would, I say sympathetically.
11:14 a.m.: It’s like in that mob movie when the guy asks, “Is it better to be loved or feared?” I say. Is it better to be gay or soft?
11:14:20 a.m.: “I really don’t want to be either one,” he starts to say, “I … ” You obviously don’t have a choice, I interrupt. “But I’m … ” Quiet, I’m thinking: To be gay or soft … soft or …
11:14:41 a.m.: “You never make me feel better,” he growls. That’s why I’m here, I say.
11:18 a.m.: She says she doesn’t love me and never will. Shit!
12:02 p.m.: New guy comes over to my desk to suggest we all get together tonight around midnight after our second jobs. “You know, meet outside a 7-Eleven like construction workers do and stand around drinking 40-ouncers.” Sounds good, I say. Text me the details.
12:34 p.m.: Go to lunch and eat alone.
1:33 p.m.: When I get back to work, I read a story on the five warning signs of burnout at the workplace. No. 1: You come in late and want to leave early.
2:20 p.m.: Came in late, so I want to leave early.
7:04 p.m.: Take another shower because I like to be superfresh for my second job.
8:17 p.m.: Lots of Ted name badges tonight. Guy in a blue suit comes up and asks me if the seminar deals with personal investments or just group investments. How the fuck do I know? I ask. Is your name Ted? “No.” Well, it is tonight, I say, shoving a name badge in his hand.
10:51 p.m.: Steal a rum and Coke from banquet room and head out for 7-Eleven in Oakland Park.
11:48 p.m.: Tiara is already out front, wearing green tights with the head of a pickle sitting on the hood of her car and the music guy diligently working on her cuticles. “Deli grand opening,” she reports. “They’re always the worst — especially for pickles.”
11:49 p.m.: I can’t take my eyes off the pickle’s forehead.
11:51 p.m.: Carrot walks by, heading straight for the store. “Anybody want a Bartles and Jaymes?” she asks.
11:51:02 p.m.: “Definitely,” Tiara calls.
11:58:32 p.m.: Sales guy won’t get out of his car. “I smell like meat,” he yells. “You don’t want me too close.”
12:08 a.m.: New guy shows up completely covered in muck. “Fucking spackling,” he says.
12:11 a.m.: Carrot passes around wine coolers and immediately starts complaining about her night. “This gang called the Dream Catchers came in again. What a sissy name for a gang, right? Anyway, all they do is pester me: ‘Come on, you coming out with us tonight, Dirty Girl?’ ”
12:12 a.m.: “Dirty Girl?” new guy asks.
12:12:10 a.m.: “That’s my nickname around the shop,” Carrot says matter-of-factly.
12:13 a.m.: “Oh, and Chiminey’s wife came in,” Carrot continues. “Y’all can guess how that went. Haggard bitch.”
12:14 a.m.: “Who’s next?” music guy asks.
12:15 a.m.: “How was your job?” Tiara asks me. Too many Teds, I say. You know, I like this. It’s nice to have a second job to complain about. Sometimes one just isn’t enough.
12:16 a.m.: “Cheers,” new guy says, raising his bottle of Apple Passion.
12:16:02 a.m.: “Cheers,” we all repeat.
12:16:10 a.m.: “To pickles and dirty girls and all the extra Teds in this world,” Tiara adds.
12:16:32 a.m.: “And meat in your pores!” sales guy yells from his car.
12:17 a.m.: “Oh, next week, I’ve got a job building a tree house,” new guy says.
12:17:10 a.m.: “That sounds like fun. Can I get in on that?” Carrot asks.
12:17:32 a.m.: “Sure, if you wear those chaps.”
12:21 a.m.: Tech girl comes barreling up and starts complaining about a customer who had ordered a NASCAR cake. “I made this beautiful blue car, and he’s whining that there’s not enough sponsors on the hood. He wants me to squeeze in Pennzoil or some shit. I swear, I think I’d rather be a stripper who just has to jump out of cakes.”
12:22 a.m.: Immediately envision tech girl jumping out of a cake wearing nothing but a lobster bib.
12:22:04 a.m.: And suddenly, nothing else matters.

e-mail me at tmshine@msn.com

bonus –

The Sign of the Cross
“It’s right between the two exits,” he could still hear his wife telling him as he slowed on the interstate. “Look for a burned patch of grass and a flock of seagulls etched into the sound-barrier wall. Right beneath the third gull going south would be good. Perfect.”
A perfect place to die, Raymond mumbled to himself as he pulled onto the shoulder. From the start, he hadn’t understood why his wife wanted to place a cross at the spot on I-95 where her brother died in a car crash 11 days earlier.
They’d seen the flimsy roadside memorials — simple white crosses draped with small flowery wreaths — on occasion, but had never paid them much mind until Greg was killed. And then, they seemed to be everywhere.
“It’s almost like it’s a fad,” he’d said to his wife, trying to deter her.
There was one along a lonely stretch of U.S. 27 that just said “Moose,” and so many others whose names were indistinguishable at 60 mph. Once, he had even approached one when he’d gotten a flat out on 441. It was set back a ways and he went over and read the name aloud: Katlyn Maurich.
He paused for a second to try to picture what she must have been like. He immediately thought of her as young; not that young, but young enough that if she had met him, she would have thought he was old.
But he hadn’t given the subject much more thought until his wife wanted to put a cross up for Greg. He didn’t want to demean her intentions and, besides, he liked the idea of being the crossmaker. Generally, Greg had been a pain in the ass, but a couple of times, when Greg had been drinking and his defenses were down, Greg had embraced him and thanked him profusely for some small favor: “Remember that ride you gave me that night nobody else would? Thanks, man.”
So, he had gathered up some fresh scraps of wood, bought a pint of eggshell-white paint and gone about the task with the same meticulous enthusiasm he had had with his son’s last science project.
Gregory Doyle McGrath in black block letters was the first thing he saw when he opened his trunk to take out the cross. He was certain that the accident (which he’d been called to that night to empty the car out before the tow truck took it away) was about 50 yards farther up the road. But if his wife wanted birds, birds it would be.
What if all deaths were marked like this? He wondered. He recalled how his Aunt Dorothy had tripped and stroked out while reaching for a jar of mustard in an A&P in Rochester, N.Y., when he was a child. What if Uncle Drew had shown up at the market and tried to hammer a cross into the shelving just left of the hot sauces and ketchup?
So, yeah, marking the spot of tragedy didn’t make such sense, but plenty of things he did to help people these days didn’t really add up: helping someone pick up a leather couch from Rooms to Go that was going to put them miserably into debt despite no payments until 2002; building an addition to a neighborhood couple’s house, only to watch them divorce a month after its completion. Besides, the game was at 1 p.m. and he was looking forward to that. So, he’d do this and then he’d have that.
With a rubber mallet, he whopped at the cross’s peak, but the cross just kept sinking until it looked like a totem pole for a tribe of ants. So, he pulled it back up and moved it a little farther south.
The flock of birds would be flying away from Greg, more than over him, but it would have to do. And the paramedics had said they’d actually lost him on the way to the hospital. For all anybody knew, his soul took flight as the ambulance screamed past the Miami Subs on Federal.
“Here goes,” he said as he gave it another try. This time, the cross went in firmly. He walked back to the car and got the goodies his wife had sent with him: Greg’s key chain bottle opener with the words “Ron Jon Surf Shop” on it, the CD case to Van Halen’s 1984 (his favorite), a Piper High graduation tassel, a small wreath and some fancy tangerine stationery.
He put the possessions around the base of the cross, flung the wreath over the top, and then read the long letter his wife had written, before folding and weighing it down with the key chain.
There also was one sheet of blank paper. “In case you want to say something,” his wife had said.
But what? He thought. Better just a heartfelt letter from a sister who truly loved him than a note from someone who only tolerated the guy’s existence because he had occasionally thanked him for small gestures when he was drunk.
Instead, he got back in the car. But as he tried to build speed along the shoulder to join the traffic, he could hear his wife’s nagging voice rustling in his ear: “Why didn’t you leave a note? Why couldn’t you just take a minute? Is that too much to ask? There must be something you wanted to say to him while he was alive but never got the chance to.”
He stomped the brakes and reached for the tangerine slice of stationery that had slid down on the floorboards. His hand was trembling as he scribbled the note, trotted back to the cross and left the words lying there like his own epitaph.
“You’re welcome.”

ok, here’s this week’s unedited version of timeline. i highlighted the edited parts for everybody this time out but next week you’re on your own. - tms
BONUS: each week immediately flowing timeline will be a bonus snap fiction piece from a collection I keep under my bed called: “This Perfect World.”