Attention to details

 

Email to Al Sullivan

 

            Look, I only got fifty cents for this call so you’d better get this straight.

            It’s just bad luck that I’m calling and I don’t want no federal rap for this. You hear me?

            None of this would have happened if my landlord hadn’t threatened to put me out this morning. Woke me up and demanded I give him the money I owe him.

            I told him I’d get it to him.

            That wasn’t good enough. He wanted it wanted it right at that moment, but I was able to put him off for a few hours and told him I’d get it to him by nightfall.

            He said if I didn’t have the money by then, I wouldn’t be waking up in his place in the morning.

            I told him: all right.

            But it wasn’t.

            I hadn’t had a job in weeks, not since that bungled the warehouse job downtown.

            After that, you cops got on my case so bad I was scared to try anything heavier than a purse snatch or a shop life, and neither of those got me the rent I needed.

            Sure, I called some people downtown who I’d done business with in the past.

            But those fools were so busy laughing at me that I used up my coins feeding the phone.

            Finally, they told me nobody would trust me with a gig.

            I’m too sloppy they said.

            I don’t pay attention to details.

            Of course, I told them to screw off.

            But that didn’t get me much – except the satisfaction of getting to tell someone off.

            I thought my luck changed when I slammed down the phone and saw a Mercedes huffing and puffing at the curb with door open and no one in it.

            God had decided I wasn’t so bad after all. So I just eased over to it, slide behind the wheel, and took off.

            Well, my luck has changed. It went from bad to worse.

            Two blocks later the kid in the back seat began brawling.

            That’s why I’m calling you guys – to tell you where the car is. I didn’t mean to kidnap nobody and I don’t want you to send in the feds.

            I got enough problems as it is.

            So why don’t you collect the kid and we’ll call it all square. Me, I got to go find some money for my landlord.

 


monologue menu

Main Menu


email to Al Sullivan