My Jaw was Starting to Cramp

​My jaw was starting to cramp.

You’re supposed to keep it loose, so they don’t break it.

I’d had a broken jaw and was not anxious to go through that again.

Where were they?

One of the Hartford guys have trouble with their costume?

Like most day players, they were always overstating their skill sets and understating their vital statistics.

There was that one job where we needed some divers—scuba, you know—and the Hartford guy  said he had just the people.  

There were six of them.  For some reason—I don’t remember why—they all had to have matching wetsuits.  

Fine. 

No problem.

We got the gear, got the suits to the job and then those fucking guys show up.

Like High School football coaches, the lot of them.

You know like sometimes you see a group of guys on motorbikes out for a weekend ride, and you can just tell they’ve spent all week polishing the chrome and Friday conditioning their leathers?

They looked like that.

We had to send them home.  No way would they fit the suits.

Jim had to improvise.

Jim hates to improvise.

They could have been the best divers in the world, but, in our scenario, they were going to stick out like beachballs in a funeral home.

After that, we never built a move around them.  They were the parsley.

If I got my jaw broken off some parsley, I was going to be pissed.

He was taking another water break.

Apparently, it’s thirsty work beating on me.

I was reaching my limit.

Time to get ready.

I can’t tell you how grateful I was that we were close to the same size.

Bad Guy HQ

​I wasn’t exactly sure where I was.

Sure “Bad Guy HQ, but was this a satellite office, or the main branch?

No evidence of windows:  basement probably.

I looked up.

Sprinklers.

I smiled.

We could be in the worst fucking country and it was still somebody’s job to go around and make sure the minimum code was enforced.

Bureaucrats are the same everywhere.

“Excuse me, Mister Dictator, Sir, but your fearsome and fatal secret torture chamber and prison must be set back from the roadway a minimum of fifty feet.”

I followed the supply lines.

A couple of corners later, I found what I was looking for.

There was an illuminated panel over what looked like a fire door,

“Xzit.”

I pushed through and headed for the fresh air.

Thinking He’d Killed Me

​If the chair hadn’t wobbled, maybe it would have turned out differently.

Movement equals opportunity.

So,  I took advantage.

He wasn’t ready.

I have to tell myself that so I don’t feel like such a heel. 

But, he clearly wasn’t ready, because, when the chair went over, he froze.

Maybe he was thinking he killed me.

I don’t know.

Anyway, it gave me time.

Not a lot, but enough.

First, the chair leg snapped.

Then, so did his.

It wasn’t fair, but, like I said, he was starting to piss me off.

And, after I’d wedged myself into his uniform, I did take a minute to give him a taste of his own medicine.

Turns out he could dish it out, but he couldn’t take it.

I may even have broken his jaw.

That’s on me.

Memories of Meals I Had Forgotten

 You can feel the last bits of last night’s dinner as they come loose from the gaps between your teeth.

In an instant, you recall the mountainous lasagna and soupy house salad, you had at Somme hole-in-the wall that Paris said was the best in town.

Never take restaurant recommendations from the Talent.  Trying to be s team player will always leave yo reaching for the antacids.  Every single time.

Then, he used his left.

Caught my tongue between my teeth.

More memories of meals I had forgotten.

I don’t know what they’re doing, but they’re taking their sweet time.

“Oh, we need a stall for half-a-day.  Let’s send Willie.”

I can’t tell you how many times I got the short straw while Jim, or Rollin, or even Barney in the later years, would go off and work the mark.

“Get yourself caught, and keep them busy while we do this one thing.”

The “one thing” was, invariably, the toughest part of the play, and would take way longer than planned.

And, while they were sweating over which wire to cut, I would be getting the crap beat out of me.

After a while, you get numb to the beatings.  It was the shots that took it out of you.

Like first year philosophy students, there was no agreement on what constituted truth, and so there were as many different varieties of “truth sera” as there were dictatorships and criminal organizations we would go up against.

I remember this one job where I had to fill some time and I worked my way up the organizational chart of interrogators and each one of them had a different truth serum.

It struck me as funny at the time, and I got very philosophical about truth.

Aren’t we all just searching for knowledge?

It seemed only right that each serum deserved its own truth.

Okay, this guy is really starting to piss me off.