here’s this week’s unedited version of timeline. does your car smell funny and, if so, is it a reflection on you? I think it is. -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.”
This week’s short story is one of my favorites. Let me know what you think…

Tell me I got here at the right time
If I did it’s probably the first time
— Josh Ritter

9:20 a.m.: “You’re a good guy,” my roommate, Katee, says, catching me off-guard.
9:20:14 a.m.: Because I am.
9:20:21 a.m.: And then, I’m not.
9:28 a.m.: Try to decide whether to tuck my shirt in for work or not. It’s been 138 days since I tucked.
9:29 a.m.: 139.
9:34 p.m.: My Prius has body odor. I get in and everything is fine; it smells like babies on a vine. But as soon as I start the engine, a blast of body odor comes rushing out of the air vents. It’s as if someone has put a crusty pair of gym socks on the engine’s manifold.
9:35 a.m.: I’ve tried making sure the A/C is on before I start the car, but the end result is only slightly different: arctic body odor. Polar bear body odor.
9:36 a.m.: There are a lot of great pluses when it comes to these new hybrid automobiles — tax credit, 50 mpg, a commonality with Owen Wilson and Cameron Diaz — but nobody advertises that in month four you will be greeted by a horrendous blast of body odor. I’m talking opening-Dale-Turner’s-locker-a-year-after-he-quit-the-wrestling-team-in-ninth-grade kind of BO. I’m talking the smell of socks, 3-year-old sneakers and the cup Dale even wore at home to mow the lawn in case rocks flew up and nailed him in the crotch.
9:38 a.m.: When I start the day, I don’t smell a beautiful woman or the roasting of fresh breakfast-blend coffee or the burp of someone who just ate a bowl of mandarin orange slices. I smell Dale.
9:43 a.m.: On my way to work, I spot a billboard advertising the best diet ever: “Bacardi and Diet Cola: 0 Carbs. 0 Sugar.”
10:10 a.m.: Several employees at work are comparing hit lists. “I have a separate one for people at work I want to kill, and one for just family. Which one do you want to see?” music guy asks me.
10:11 a.m.: I guess the work one. Am I on it? I ask.
10:12 a.m.: “Of course, but look how far down you are,” he says, handing me his list. “I’d probably get arrested before I got to you. You know, bodies piling up and all.”
10:13 a.m.: “It’s very trendy to do this,” red carpet girl says, highlighting a couple of people on her list in pink. “It started in Vancouver.”
10:14 a.m.: Tiara, who’s always looking to be more productive, has suggested people pool their lists for efficiency. “That way, three people won’t be trying to kill the same co-worker at the same time,” she explains.
10:16 a.m.: As the staff exchanges lists, the marketing guy remarks, “I’ve heard about this. I’ve been to seminars that go on about this ad nauseam, but this is the first time I’ve ever experienced it: teamwork!”
11:02 a.m.: Get text message from DJ at a “pure rock” station who is always bugging me about eating lunch alone too much. Message reads: “perusing FARK and came across this headline: ‘u know tht coworker that always eats alone?? You may want to keep an i on him.’ ”
11:03 a.m.: I find the story online, and this headline pops up: “Cannibals Usually Dine Alone.”
11:05 a.m.: The reasoning has to do with the transference of disease, so it kind of makes sense for cannibals to eat solo. Plus, you don’t have to share, and nobody says things like, “Please pass the lower intestines.”
11:06 a.m.: Wouldn’t it be cool if I were a cannibal instead of just a social misfit?
11:48 a.m.: Boss calls me into the office and says Marti, the new supervisor, has a problem with me. I thought she liked me, I say. We were just talking about the ending of Chumscrubbers for 20 minutes the other day. She didn’t say much back, but she listened pretty contently.
11:49 a.m.: “She can’t figure out how to work with you,” boss says. “She asked me if you come with an instruction manual.”
11:50 a.m.: “Well, do you?”
11:53 a.m.: Move boss and Marti up to the top of my hit list.
12:02 p.m.: Get an invitation to Harlem Globetrotters Summer Camp and am definitely considering it. Campbell’s Soup sponsors the camp, and I can envision morning dribble drills, tenting with the wily Jermaine Brown and crunching up Ritz crackers for big heaping bowls of tomato soup whenever I desire.
12:04 p.m.: “I once went to basketball camp, and we all practiced spinning basketballs on our erections,” new guy says.
(please make sure above image is used for illustration/ts)
12:04:13 p.m.: OK, no basketball camp this year.
12:28 p.m.: Go to lunch and eat solo.
12:53 p.m.: Dine on a beautiful woman in a lemon-colored jogging suit. Her name was Kamila, and I’m sure she will be missed. Eventually.
1:41 p.m.: As I’m heading back into the office, a mousy girl smoking a brown cigarette says, “I hear there’s a hit out on you.” Who the hell are you? I demand. “I’m not even here,” she replies.
1:43 p.m.: My computer screen is flashing with a free offer — 10 cases of Mountain Dew if I take four minutes to fill out a survey. Ordinarily, I’d ignore such a ploy, but Katee loves Mountain Dew. It would be fun if 10 cases of Dew showed up at the apartment and Katee invited all her girlfriends over to share in the bounty. And I could sit in my room listening to them talk into the night about overtime at the restaurant, low-grade ecstasy, TV on the Radio and how, one week, they all ended up fucking some guy named Ronkins.
1:45 p.m.: I always enjoy hearing their giddy voices in the near distance, coming through the crack beneath my bedroom door along with the kitchen light. I like hearing my name come up in their conversations when I’m not present, and I love to fall asleep to the sound of their stupid laughter.
1:47 p.m.: Survey isn’t what I expected. It includes questions such as, “Would you be interested in starting a revolution?” and “Have you ever shoplifted Mach3 razor blades?”
1:48 p.m.: Yes and yes.
2:12 p.m.: Red carpet girl comes over to tell me how she used to enjoy drinking a cosmo at lunch. “You know, I was into the whole Sex and the City thing,” she says. “But now that the show is on TBS, no more cosmos for me. Sorry if that sounds pretentious, but that’s just the way I feel.”
2:13 p.m.: You can’t help the way you feel, I agree. “Anyway,” she continues, “You want to go see the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie again?”
2:13:09 p.m.: I don’t think so, I say. I’m about to start a revolution.

e-mail me at tshine@citylinkmagazine.com

The Truest Way to Do Things

The spot where I usually stand - and I'm not thrilled about this - but the spot where I usually stand with the pitcher of iced tea is near the restrooms. It's kind of my standing-in-the-wings place between refills. Some of the other workers just go around every eight minutes or so, but I really keep an eye on my area and actually like the word refill, even though I have to say it about 410 times a day. At least that was the count yesterday.
"Refill?"
"Refill?"
"Refill?"
"Refill?"
You get the idea. I don't even mind when some people say, "No thanks." This other girl, Staci, tries to start pouring before even asking because she says she has to lighten the pitcher. "It kills my wrist when people keep saying, 'No thanks,' " she says. I tell her it's not about her, but she says everything is about her.
A woman screamed at me one day: "For God's sake, will you please stop asking me if I want a refill? Refill, refill, refill!"
I said, "OK." Because it was, you know . . . Her husband stopped on the way out of the men's room and gave me $5 "for being classy," he said. I took the money, but I don't think it was being classy not to get upset with his wife. I just thought it was OK that she got upset that I kept asking her.
I became the refill girl eight years ago. I know that sounds a little crazy but only if you think about it. I turned 24 last week, which is the age where people start asking, "Don't you want to do something else with your life?" But after a week or so, they don't ask anymore. I never put a heck of a lot of thought into it other than that I started doing this when I was 16, and I haven't stopped.
Sometimes, my co-workers kid me, saying I'm going to be an 80-year-old refill girl. They make this shaky, old-lady voice and ask, "Refill?" After we closed one night, this guy Andy, who's really pretty funny, did this whole bit of me hobbling around and missing people's glasses and falling asleep in midpour and whatnot. But I told everybody that when I am 80 and refilling iced teas, my hand will be steady, there will be no quiver in my voice, and they will all be dead.
I also remind them that Arthur has been busing tables longer than I've been the refill girl. They say, "Yeah, but he's slow."
"But he's fast at busing," I tell them. I know a lot of people who are fast in the head but slow at their jobs, so I don't necessarily buy into all that.
One night, Gwen, the hostess who looks like Katie Holmes, was out sick, so they made me the hostess. I had to wear this slinky dress that made me feel Hawaiian for some reason. It was kind of fun, and two guys asked for my phone number. But I'd never want to do it again. For one, I kept looking back and thinking the people weren't trailing me. I was scared to death I was going to lose somebody. Plus, I don't like feeling Hawaiian.
Oh, before I forget: Chili's is the best. A lot of people lump it in with T.G.I. Friday's, Applebee's and Bennigans even. But Chili's is the best. Trust me on this.
Last week, I was standing by the restrooms, cradling my pitcher, and this guy came by, sort of eyed my station in life and said, "That looks depressing."
"Not depressing," I said. "Just sad."
He was kind of cute, and I thought it was a good comeback, but he just kept walking. I never think of my job as depressing, but to be honest, it does bother me when people I care about think I'm stuck in a depressing job and should be miserable.
My friend Kimmie, who works in marketing and drives around in a car with a giant Red Bull can on the back and made $31,000 last year, tells me I'm in denial. But I have all this stuff outside work that's important to me. I take pride in my job, but it's not where I find my inspiration.
Most of all, I like to write poems about my body and my friends' cars. About how I have these inverted ridges on my knees that look like bottle caps, and how my right arm is completely covered in freckles while the (reverse this) other arm only has one, and how my friend Kevin has put $23,000 into a 1991 Honda Civic and what I most appreciate is how he can make his dashboard lights change from blue to fluorescent green to frosty orange anytime he wants. So, anyway, I write poems titled "Kevin's Dashboard Lights" and stuff like that. Sometimes, I go to this place in Delray where you can read your poems. But it seems like the people who write the poems only like the poems they wrote, and they ask me "why this?" and "why that?" - questions I don't have answers for. 'It's a poem,' I say, but that doesn't seem good-enough for them. That's why now, when I finish a poem, I just put it in a notebook under my bed. It seems the truest way to do things. That way, you don't do it for attention or recognition, and no one ever asks you stupid questions about a poem.
The only poem I ever wrote that kind of went off the track of body parts and hooked-up cars was one I once scribbled in the middle of the night titled, "What If It Really Is All About Staci?" It doesn't fit in with the others, so I keep it under the bed in a separate notebook.
I mostly work nights, and a lot of my co-workers go to the beach. They ask me to go, but I prefer to lie in the shade at parks. I like grass better than sand, and I like to be near swing sets. Sometimes, a kid will stray off a little and step on me on purpose. The moms always yell their names. A lot of times, the kid's name is Justin, so you'll hear, "Justin, you get over here right now. You leave that young lady alone." And then, I'll pop up and say, "Aha! Now, I know your name. It's Justin, isn't it!" And then I tackle him and make him giggle and squirm. That's kind of my m.o. at the park.
I like to think of myself as a playful person. Friends are OK, but I still like to hang out with my mom the most. We get ice cream and go on these nature walks where there are supposed to be, like, 212 species of birds, but we only spot about four. But I appreciate the fact that there's all that different kind of life hidden away there. I don't have to see it.
My dad sometimes bothers me about being the refill girl. I try to annoy him even more by telling him I won't always be the refill girl. I'll be the refill lady - and the refill mom someday, I hope. I don't mind setting my whole course to asking, "Refill?"
I pretty much like people, and it's not that big a deal. And I really do hope that when I'm the 80-year-old refill girl, my voice will be sweet and steady with a touch of character. And people will say, "Jana over there has been here forever.”
I've always wanted to be someplace forever.