two (jared)
Nov. 2nd, 2010 08:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smackenzieJared's weekdays all start out pretty much the same way: He hits snooze no more than twice. (Three times if he knows for a fact that it's going to be a slow day.) Lets the dogs out. Showers, shaves, lets the dogs back in. Feeds the beasts. Feeds himself. Packs lunch and a couple of snacks. Gets dressed. Makes sure he has all his stuff if he has to be somewhere right after work. Makes sure he has his phone. If he has an extra ten minutes he stops at Jeff's house down the street to say hi.
Jeff has two dogs of his own and almost never leaves his house, and after Jared moved into his own place, he and Jeff made a deal that Jeff would come by at least once and ideally twice during the day to let Jared's dogs out and talk to them and make sure they're not starving or dying of thirst and just generally love up on them and remind them that they haven't been abandoned. Jeff also has a really nice girlfriend named Hilarie who works during the day, but sometimes she's still home when Jared stops by in the morning, and they have a five-minute chat before he has to get going.
He clocks in when he gets to the garage - Beaver Automotive, where he's been happily rebuilding engines and replacing spark plugs and repairing air conditioners and realigning brakes for the last four years - changes into his coveralls, checks out what's on his list for the day, and prepares himself for a good eight greasy hours getting his hands dirty - literally - and arguing over what music to listen to in the shop.
Jared loves his job.
He also loves his coworkers. Most of the time. Even when they all fuck off and leave him in the shop alone for an hour. Although even that he doesn't always mind, since it gives him time to think - if he has anything particularly knotty he needs to think about - and put on the music he likes and sing along. (Jared can't sing, as anyone who has ever had to listen to him has pointed out. He doesn't care. He sings in the shower and in the car where no one can hear him, and if you leave him alone in the shop and happen to walk back in when he's got the Gaslight Anthem on, well, what did you expect?)
Today among other things he's got a six-year-old Buick LeSabre that needs a new fuel line, and after spending the entire morning helping Aldis with a 2007 Impala, he's kind of glad to be working on his own thing. Aldis has about a year's seniority on Jared, which means he gets to give the orders when they're both on the same car, and sometimes Jared has slightly different ideas about what they should be doing and who exactly should be doing it. So as much as he likes the guy - and he really does like the guy - he sometimes prefers to be working alongside him on something else, rather than with him on the same thing.
“Jared!” someone yells.
Jared looks around the side of the Buick’s hood to see Katie stomping across the shop floor from the front desk. He didn't realize she was still here. “What’s up?”
“Where is everyone?” she demands.
“Tom’s at lunch, Aldis is driving that Impala around that we had to completely rebuild the engine, and I don’t know where Jim is. Why?”
“You gotta back me up. This dickwad doesn’t think I know what I’m talking about. He wants to talk to the manager.”
“Which dickwad?”
“Piven,” she practically spits. “The Escalade with the snapped timing belt. Doesn’t think girls know anything about cars. Fucking chauvinist.”
He follows her out to the front, where the customer is waiting and looking annoyed. Jared didn’t work on the guy’s car but he trusts Katie to know what she’s talking about, so when she repeats everything she apparently already told this guy, Jared just nods and agrees with her. He knows, if nothing else, that they didn’t pad the guy’s bill – they just fixed what was broken and charged a fair price for it.
Katie doesn’t bother to hide her anger at the fact that this Mr Piven doesn’t want to listen to her explain what she fixed in his car or why, but when he appeals to Jared, Jared just shrugs and says “She knows what she’s talking about, but if you want to come back in a couple hours and talk to the owner...."
“He’ll tell you the exact same thing,” Katie finishes. Jared makes a "Yep, that's exactly what he'll do" face and Mr Piven huffs and gives Katie his credit card.
"Everything cool?" Jared asks both of them, and when Katie nods, he goes back to his Buick.
Jared has never in his life faced the kind of blatant discrimination Katie sometimes gets for being a girl mechanic - especially being the only girl in the shop - and while in more private moments he thinks it was weirdly brave of him to go to mechanic school instead of a four-year college like his friends, and independent-minded (and maybe a little perverse) to choose a blue collar path instead of chasing a white collar career like his parents expected, even with that, he doesn't think it's as unexpected or as worthy of comment as it is to be a girl mechanic.
After all, how often do you see girls working in garages or auto body shops? He can count the ones he knows on two fingers - Katie and apparently his boss' niece, who does vintage restoration out in California.
When Tom comes back from lunch, Jared takes his break. Ten minutes in one direction is a pretty decent sub shop, and halfway back to his house is a really good (if really divey) BBQ place, but he tries to bring his lunch to save money and besides, it's a really nice day out and he doesn't actually mind sitting in the bed of his truck eating his cold meatloaf sandwiches and reading. Today's book is The Killer Angels, historical fiction about the Civil War, which he found secondhand after his globetrotting friend Misha sent him a postcard with an elephant on the front and "Sitting on the train to Varanasi reading a novel about the American Civil War. It's called Killer Angels, you'd like it" written on the back. Jared doesn't always take Misha seriously - which is fine since Misha doesn't always take himself seriously either - but he trusts the guy to give him good reading recommendations. He's only about fifty pages into the book, but so far he's enjoying it.
He's enjoying it so much that he doesn't realize his lunch hour is up until Katie comes outside and yells his name again. That's twice today - maybe he should start paying better attention to the world around him.
Aldis' girlfriend Beth has his car today since - ironically - hers is in the shop (she has an old Toyota, though, and Beaver Automotive only deals in domestic cars) and she needs to be able to drive herself around, and after they close up for the day Jared sits out front with Aldis waiting for her.
"What are you doing Sunday?" Aldis asks. "I think we're gonna have an afternoon barbecue. We'll eat meat, drink beer, shoot the shit, it'll be fun. I got a secondhand smoker I want to try out. Hey, is the Triumph road-ready yet? I wanna see it."
"It still needs some work," Jared says. "It's still sticking every time I try to change gears." He shrugs. "I'll ride the Harley. Gina's gonna read me the riot act."
(Gina is one of Beth's friends. How an Englishwoman not in the country-music business came to be living in Nashville, Jared doesn't know. He's only met her twice but the second time she watched him ride up to Aldis and Beth's house on his bike and was faintly appalled. She's kind of a mother hen. But Beth likes her.)
"Gina's not - " Aldis' phone rings and he interrupts himself to answer it. "Hey, girl, where are you?"
"Is that Beth?"
Aldis nods. "We're waiting for you," he says into the phone. "Me and Jared. He's coming over Sunday.... Barbecue! I want to try my new-old smoker.... What? That's this weekend? Do I have to go?" He seems kind of surprised and kind of disappointed about something. Jared makes a "What's going on?" face. Aldis rolls his eyes. "Ok, ok, fine, I'll go, I'll ask him. You ask him too, when you get here. I don't know how convincing I'm gonna be."
"What?" Jared asks.
"Barbecue's out. No, I'm talking to Jared," he tells Beth. "No, it's good. We'll be here.... I love you too." He hangs up.
"Did Beth make plans and not tell you?"
"One of her friends has a gallery opening on Sunday. He's her friend so she has to go, and I'm her boyfriend so I have to go, and you're my friend so you have to go." He grins brightly. "They'll have wine and cute arty girls. It might be fun."
"You don't look convinced."
"I've been to gallery openings. 'Gallery.'" Aldis makes air quotes with his fingers. "It's great for Beth, it's her scene, sometimes she can network, she gets to gossip with her friends. It's not really my thing, although sometimes the art's kind of interesting. Look, Jared, if you go to this thing with us, I'll buy you a beer afterwards. And make you dinner next week."
"Is this going to be like the performance art installation thing?"
"I sure hope not. That was just... wow, that was terrible."
Beth was a photographer and had a lot of struggling-artist and artist-wannabe friends, and her only real failing, as far as Jared was concerned, was her tendency to encourage them in all their artistic endeavors, although to be honest the only failure there was when those endeavors fell well beyond the borders of what most people considered "art", and more into the realms of what both Jared and Aldis considered "self-indulgent crap".
"No, this guy does watercolors," Aldis continued. "Portraits and monster things and weird shit. I don't know him that well. It's Sunday afternoon, at least you can sleep in."
"Yeah, sure, I'll go," Jared said, "why not. I'm always up for expanding my horizons."
"That's what she said." Aldis snickered and Jared laughed. It was such a stupid joke, such a teenage-boy pun, but they couldn't resist. They'd even gotten Katie and Jim, the boss, to say it too.
Beth showed up about fifteen minutes later, and when she got out of the car so Aldis could drive, both guys told her that Jared agreed to go to her friend's gallery opening, and she squealed and gave Jared a hug.
"Aldis promised me dinner," he added.
"Whatever," she says, waving her hand airily. "It's Matthew's first solo show. We're trying to get as many people as we can to show up. Tell everybody else. Make Jim come."
"I don't think he does contemporary art, baby," Aldis says.
"Ask him anyway. For me." She flutters her eyelashes. "Now we gotta go home, I have photos to process. Bye Jared. See you Sunday."
"Tomorrow," Aldis adds.
"Tomorrow," Jared says. "Bye guys."
He watches them drive away, then gets in his truck and heads home himself. He turns the radio up and sings along to the songs he knows, because he can.
words: 1948
total words: 5085
(by next time i'll have uploaded a jared icon.)
Jeff has two dogs of his own and almost never leaves his house, and after Jared moved into his own place, he and Jeff made a deal that Jeff would come by at least once and ideally twice during the day to let Jared's dogs out and talk to them and make sure they're not starving or dying of thirst and just generally love up on them and remind them that they haven't been abandoned. Jeff also has a really nice girlfriend named Hilarie who works during the day, but sometimes she's still home when Jared stops by in the morning, and they have a five-minute chat before he has to get going.
He clocks in when he gets to the garage - Beaver Automotive, where he's been happily rebuilding engines and replacing spark plugs and repairing air conditioners and realigning brakes for the last four years - changes into his coveralls, checks out what's on his list for the day, and prepares himself for a good eight greasy hours getting his hands dirty - literally - and arguing over what music to listen to in the shop.
Jared loves his job.
He also loves his coworkers. Most of the time. Even when they all fuck off and leave him in the shop alone for an hour. Although even that he doesn't always mind, since it gives him time to think - if he has anything particularly knotty he needs to think about - and put on the music he likes and sing along. (Jared can't sing, as anyone who has ever had to listen to him has pointed out. He doesn't care. He sings in the shower and in the car where no one can hear him, and if you leave him alone in the shop and happen to walk back in when he's got the Gaslight Anthem on, well, what did you expect?)
Today among other things he's got a six-year-old Buick LeSabre that needs a new fuel line, and after spending the entire morning helping Aldis with a 2007 Impala, he's kind of glad to be working on his own thing. Aldis has about a year's seniority on Jared, which means he gets to give the orders when they're both on the same car, and sometimes Jared has slightly different ideas about what they should be doing and who exactly should be doing it. So as much as he likes the guy - and he really does like the guy - he sometimes prefers to be working alongside him on something else, rather than with him on the same thing.
“Jared!” someone yells.
Jared looks around the side of the Buick’s hood to see Katie stomping across the shop floor from the front desk. He didn't realize she was still here. “What’s up?”
“Where is everyone?” she demands.
“Tom’s at lunch, Aldis is driving that Impala around that we had to completely rebuild the engine, and I don’t know where Jim is. Why?”
“You gotta back me up. This dickwad doesn’t think I know what I’m talking about. He wants to talk to the manager.”
“Which dickwad?”
“Piven,” she practically spits. “The Escalade with the snapped timing belt. Doesn’t think girls know anything about cars. Fucking chauvinist.”
He follows her out to the front, where the customer is waiting and looking annoyed. Jared didn’t work on the guy’s car but he trusts Katie to know what she’s talking about, so when she repeats everything she apparently already told this guy, Jared just nods and agrees with her. He knows, if nothing else, that they didn’t pad the guy’s bill – they just fixed what was broken and charged a fair price for it.
Katie doesn’t bother to hide her anger at the fact that this Mr Piven doesn’t want to listen to her explain what she fixed in his car or why, but when he appeals to Jared, Jared just shrugs and says “She knows what she’s talking about, but if you want to come back in a couple hours and talk to the owner...."
“He’ll tell you the exact same thing,” Katie finishes. Jared makes a "Yep, that's exactly what he'll do" face and Mr Piven huffs and gives Katie his credit card.
"Everything cool?" Jared asks both of them, and when Katie nods, he goes back to his Buick.
Jared has never in his life faced the kind of blatant discrimination Katie sometimes gets for being a girl mechanic - especially being the only girl in the shop - and while in more private moments he thinks it was weirdly brave of him to go to mechanic school instead of a four-year college like his friends, and independent-minded (and maybe a little perverse) to choose a blue collar path instead of chasing a white collar career like his parents expected, even with that, he doesn't think it's as unexpected or as worthy of comment as it is to be a girl mechanic.
After all, how often do you see girls working in garages or auto body shops? He can count the ones he knows on two fingers - Katie and apparently his boss' niece, who does vintage restoration out in California.
When Tom comes back from lunch, Jared takes his break. Ten minutes in one direction is a pretty decent sub shop, and halfway back to his house is a really good (if really divey) BBQ place, but he tries to bring his lunch to save money and besides, it's a really nice day out and he doesn't actually mind sitting in the bed of his truck eating his cold meatloaf sandwiches and reading. Today's book is The Killer Angels, historical fiction about the Civil War, which he found secondhand after his globetrotting friend Misha sent him a postcard with an elephant on the front and "Sitting on the train to Varanasi reading a novel about the American Civil War. It's called Killer Angels, you'd like it" written on the back. Jared doesn't always take Misha seriously - which is fine since Misha doesn't always take himself seriously either - but he trusts the guy to give him good reading recommendations. He's only about fifty pages into the book, but so far he's enjoying it.
He's enjoying it so much that he doesn't realize his lunch hour is up until Katie comes outside and yells his name again. That's twice today - maybe he should start paying better attention to the world around him.
Aldis' girlfriend Beth has his car today since - ironically - hers is in the shop (she has an old Toyota, though, and Beaver Automotive only deals in domestic cars) and she needs to be able to drive herself around, and after they close up for the day Jared sits out front with Aldis waiting for her.
"What are you doing Sunday?" Aldis asks. "I think we're gonna have an afternoon barbecue. We'll eat meat, drink beer, shoot the shit, it'll be fun. I got a secondhand smoker I want to try out. Hey, is the Triumph road-ready yet? I wanna see it."
"It still needs some work," Jared says. "It's still sticking every time I try to change gears." He shrugs. "I'll ride the Harley. Gina's gonna read me the riot act."
(Gina is one of Beth's friends. How an Englishwoman not in the country-music business came to be living in Nashville, Jared doesn't know. He's only met her twice but the second time she watched him ride up to Aldis and Beth's house on his bike and was faintly appalled. She's kind of a mother hen. But Beth likes her.)
"Gina's not - " Aldis' phone rings and he interrupts himself to answer it. "Hey, girl, where are you?"
"Is that Beth?"
Aldis nods. "We're waiting for you," he says into the phone. "Me and Jared. He's coming over Sunday.... Barbecue! I want to try my new-old smoker.... What? That's this weekend? Do I have to go?" He seems kind of surprised and kind of disappointed about something. Jared makes a "What's going on?" face. Aldis rolls his eyes. "Ok, ok, fine, I'll go, I'll ask him. You ask him too, when you get here. I don't know how convincing I'm gonna be."
"What?" Jared asks.
"Barbecue's out. No, I'm talking to Jared," he tells Beth. "No, it's good. We'll be here.... I love you too." He hangs up.
"Did Beth make plans and not tell you?"
"One of her friends has a gallery opening on Sunday. He's her friend so she has to go, and I'm her boyfriend so I have to go, and you're my friend so you have to go." He grins brightly. "They'll have wine and cute arty girls. It might be fun."
"You don't look convinced."
"I've been to gallery openings. 'Gallery.'" Aldis makes air quotes with his fingers. "It's great for Beth, it's her scene, sometimes she can network, she gets to gossip with her friends. It's not really my thing, although sometimes the art's kind of interesting. Look, Jared, if you go to this thing with us, I'll buy you a beer afterwards. And make you dinner next week."
"Is this going to be like the performance art installation thing?"
"I sure hope not. That was just... wow, that was terrible."
Beth was a photographer and had a lot of struggling-artist and artist-wannabe friends, and her only real failing, as far as Jared was concerned, was her tendency to encourage them in all their artistic endeavors, although to be honest the only failure there was when those endeavors fell well beyond the borders of what most people considered "art", and more into the realms of what both Jared and Aldis considered "self-indulgent crap".
"No, this guy does watercolors," Aldis continued. "Portraits and monster things and weird shit. I don't know him that well. It's Sunday afternoon, at least you can sleep in."
"Yeah, sure, I'll go," Jared said, "why not. I'm always up for expanding my horizons."
"That's what she said." Aldis snickered and Jared laughed. It was such a stupid joke, such a teenage-boy pun, but they couldn't resist. They'd even gotten Katie and Jim, the boss, to say it too.
Beth showed up about fifteen minutes later, and when she got out of the car so Aldis could drive, both guys told her that Jared agreed to go to her friend's gallery opening, and she squealed and gave Jared a hug.
"Aldis promised me dinner," he added.
"Whatever," she says, waving her hand airily. "It's Matthew's first solo show. We're trying to get as many people as we can to show up. Tell everybody else. Make Jim come."
"I don't think he does contemporary art, baby," Aldis says.
"Ask him anyway. For me." She flutters her eyelashes. "Now we gotta go home, I have photos to process. Bye Jared. See you Sunday."
"Tomorrow," Aldis adds.
"Tomorrow," Jared says. "Bye guys."
He watches them drive away, then gets in his truck and heads home himself. He turns the radio up and sings along to the songs he knows, because he can.
words: 1948
total words: 5085
(by next time i'll have uploaded a jared icon.)
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Date: 2010-11-03 05:22 am (UTC)anyway. i'm guessing you liked this bit. :D