Off the Grid
Garth Porter
The overhead door creaked and shimmied its way to a rest above the garage and Doug stomped inside. He kicked a plastic bucket out of the way and made a beeline for the pallet of mulch in the corner. He positioned a wheelbarrow next to the mulch, then looked toward the tool bench. A rusty box cutter sat next to a pair of leather gloves. He put the gloves on and, with the box cutter, sliced a long, deep gash into a bag of mulch. Fresh from another argument with Mackenzie, the hotel manager, he needed something constructive to channel his anger into and the mulch beds around the parking lot, with the potential for digging and shoveling and physical exertion, would have to do.
He dumped the wounded bag into the wheelbarrow and did the same with three more. He grabbed a shovel from the rack on the wall, spit on the concrete floor, and pushed the wheelbarrow out of the garage. He stopped as he passed the hotel’s shuttle van, a red fifteen passenger Chevy, parked in its usual spot beside the dumpsters. Driving always cleared his head, but there weren’t any shuttles scheduled that morning. He pushed the wheelbarrow toward the row of trees that surrounded the lot.
At the end of the parking lot, a man stood by the street trying to hail a cab. He wore a black business suit and waved his hand in the air like Doug had seen in movies.
A cab drove by but didn’t stop.
The man cursed and kicked a rock on the pavement. He lit a cigarette and threw his hand in the air as another cab drove by.
Doug pushed the wheelbarrow toward the man.
“What the hell is wrong with the cabs in this city?” the man asked. He took an angry drag on his cigarette and glared at Doug.
“I don’t know,” Doug said. “Everybody says the service here is terrible.”
“I’m already late.” The man looked at his wristwatch. “Does your shuttle go downtown?”
Doug still had both hands on the wheelbarrow handles. “No, we can only go within three miles.”
“Three miles? What kind of a—” The man cursed and waved Doug away. He took out his phone and swiped his thumb across the screen harder than he needed to. Beads of sweat formed around his slicked back hairline and his face grew red.
Early morning sun peaked through the trees above the lot and a breeze rustled the leaves. The mulch smelled like shit.
Doug looked back across the parking lot to the shuttle van, then back at the man fuming over his phone. He looked in the wheelbarrow and saw a maggot wiggle through the bark chips and manure.
“Where do you need to go?”
~ ~ ~
They rode past scenic academic buildings and brutalist dorms. At every crosswalk, students stood shoulder to shoulder on both sides of the street. People crowded around bus stops and cyclists darted in and out of traffic. Doug’s eyes scanned back and fourth across five lanes.
The man sat on the bench seat behind the driver’s seat.
“What happens if you drive past three miles?” he asked. “Your work boots turn into glass slippers?”
Doug stopped at a red light. “Nothing, if we don’t get caught.”
A gaggle of students flooded the crosswalk in front of the van.
“How would you get caught? They have a GPS on this thing?”
Doug shook his head. “Nope.”
“So, don’t get into an accident and we’re good, right?”
“I hope so,” Doug said.
“Are you a safe driver?”
Doug watched the pedestrians file by. “I like to think so.”
“When’s the last time you had an accident?”
The crosswalk cleared and the light turned green.
“It’s been awhile,” Doug said.
“Was it bad?”
“Ya know,” Doug drove through the intersection, “I don’t really like talking about accidents while I’m driving.”
“Great,” the man said. “First I couldn’t get a cab, now I’m stuck with a nervous shuttle driver.” He turned and started looking for the seat belt.
Doug didn’t feel like explaining himself. Driving soothed him. He had the opposite of road rage. When other drivers cut him off, when pedestrians walked out in front of his vehicle, when someone in a giant pickup truck revved the engine and flew past him twenty miles an hour over the speed limit, he felt a wave of calm.
The man looked out the window and shook his head. “This hotel is a joke. No breakfast buffet. The wi-fi is terrible. And it smells like pot every time the maid cleans my room.”
Doug laughed.
“And, I mean, what are you? A groundskeeper or a driver?”
Doug flipped on the turn signal and drove around a bus. “I guess I’m a laborer. My title is ‘maintenance tech’ but I kind of just do whatever.”
“I’m not staying here again,” the man said. “Nothing makes sense. The shuttle only goes three miles? What kind of hotel has a shuttle that only goes three miles?!”
“I wish they’d let us go farther,” Doug said. “I really like driving the van.”
The man huffed. “I don’t suppose we can smoke in here?”
They came to a stop at another red light. Doug rolled the window down and motioned toward the front passenger seat. “I won’t tell if you don’t.”
The man moved into the front seat and reached out to shake Doug’s hand.
“My name’s Jacob.”
~ ~ ~
The academic buildings came to an end and they started driving past hospitals. Doctors in white lab coats entered buildings through glass doors while nurses in scrubs gathered on sidewalks for their smoke breaks. A couple blocks ahead, three nurses pushed patients across the street in wheelchairs.
“So what happens if you get caught?” Jacob asked. He exhaled a drag out the passenger side window.
“I guess I’d get in trouble,” Doug said. “Written up or a verbal warning.”
“So, you’re kind of taking a risk for me?”
Doug nodded.
“I appreciate it,” Jacob said. “You’re really helping me out.”
Doug checked the side view mirror. “I needed to get out of there. I was having a rough morning myself.”
“Why?” Jacob asked. “You don’t like shoveling cow shit into mulch beds?”
The lights of an ambulance flashed on behind them.
Doug flipped on the signal and wedged the van between two cars on the right. “I got into a fight with my manager.”
Jacob leaned back in the seat. “So this is kind of like a middle finger to the boss, huh? Screw you, boss, I’m going out on my own! That kind of thing?”
The ambulance turned on its siren and wailed up beside the van.
Doug rolled his window up to block out the sound. “Sort of.”
More cars moved out of the way and the ambulance accelerated through them.
“You said there’s no GPS on this van, right?” Jacob asked.
“Right.”
“So, we’re off the grid right now?”
Doug laughed. “Yeah, we’re off the grid.”
Jacob let out a mock whoop and took a long hit. The smoke caught in his throat and made his voice croak. “Really makes you feel alive, doesn’t it?”
They came to the last light before the street curved down a long hill. Off to the left, residential neighborhoods dotted the hills across the river. Straight ahead, skyscrapers poked up over parkways lined with bumper to bumper traffic.
~ ~ ~
“Where the hell are you taking me?” Jacob asked.
“This’ll get us around traffic,” Doug said.
They’d left the hospitals and universities behind and were now driving past row houses and public housing. Children climbed on the jungle gym at the housing complex playground and old men sat on the porches of the row houses.
“This looks like a rough neighborhood,” Jacob said.
The kids on the playground and the men on the porches were all black.
Doug cast him a sideways glance. “It’s just a neighborhood.”
They rode a few blocks in silence.
Up ahead, a pickup truck blocked the road.
“What the hell is this?” Jacob asked.
Doug brought the van to a stop.
Behind the pickup truck, a strip of yellow Caution tape hung between the aging support beams of a row-house porch. Four-by-fours held up its sagging roof and plastic with duct-tape covered broken windowpanes. The houses to the left and right had new siding and fresh paint.
An old white man emerged from the door less entryway behind the caution tape. A neon-green bandanna held back his wiry grey hair and paint splotches covered his white painter pants. He pulled a wad of tobacco from his lower lip, threw it to the ground and, with the same hand, motioned for the man in the truck to back up.
The driver, an old black man, yelled obscenities at the man on the porch as he backed up.
Doug looked over at his passenger then turned back to the scene in front of the shuttle.
A third man emerged from the building carrying a heavy chain that was attached to something inside. He looked just like the other man on the porch but thirty years younger. The older man yelled at him and pointed to the truck, then the younger man wrapped the chain around the truck’s bumper hitch and secured it with a rusty hook.
“There’s enough room,” Jacob said. “Just go around.”
Doug shook his head. “I’m going to give them a minute.”
The man in the pickup pulled forward slowly and put tension on the chain.
Jacob checked his watch. “They better hurry up.”
The truck lurched forward and tugged on the chain. The rear wheels spun against the pavement but the truck went nowhere. The men on the porch waved wildly and yelled for the man in the truck to keep going but the truck screeched to a halt. The driver stuck his head out the window and cursed the men on the porch.
“These guys have no idea what they’re doing,” Jacob said.
Doug watched and waited.
The driver revved the engine again. The tires squealed and he tugged until smoke rose from the pavement.
“Just go,” Jacob said. “They’re not going anywhere.”
Doug inched the van forward. “They don’t even see us.”
“We can’t just sit here,” Jacob said. “Look, he’s getting out.”
The pickup driver opened the door and stuck his upper body out to yell at the other men more efficiently.
Doug cursed and put the pedal on the floor.
As he did, the man in the truck whipped himself back into the driver’s seat and did the same. The truck pulled on the chain, yanked free from whatever it was tugging on inside, and the vehicles lunged toward each other.
Doug slammed on the brakes. The wheels on the van locked and it started to skid. He made eye contact with the pickup driver as both vehicles screeched to a stop, then looked over and saw Jacob gripping the handle above the window.
The old man on the porch yelled, “Get outta here, dumbass!”
The other driver got out of the pickup and crouched over the bumper of his truck. He leaned back and revealed a gold-toothed grin. He held up two fingers, as if he was about to pinch something, and started to laugh.
“That close!”
Doug looked at the man and started to laugh as well. They were kindred spirits, high on the adrenaline of a near-miss.
Jacob slammed a fist against the passenger door and said, “Get me the hell out of here!”
~ ~ ~
They rode the rest of the way without talking. When they were deep into the tall downtown buildings, the man broke the silence.
“So what was the fight with your manager about?”
Doug rolled the window down. The bustle of the city reverberated off of the skyscrapers they’d seen earlier on the horizon. The air smelled like diesel exhaust and cigarette smoke.
“She’s a dick to the housekeepers,” Doug said.
“The housekeepers?” Jacob said. “What the hell do you care about the housekeepers? One of them your girlfriend?”
Car horns and bus air-brakes echoed over the streets. Pedestrians spilled off the sidewalks and jaywalked right in front of the van.
“No,” Doug said. “It’s not that.”
“So, what? You don’t like working for a woman?”
Doug checked the side view mirror. A couple blocks behind, a bum yelled at the sky while people walked around and pretended not to notice.
“It’s not that either,” Doug said.
Jacob looked at Doug and waited for more explanation. When he didn’t get any, he lit up another cigarette and said, “This place is messed up.”
Doug made a left into a narrow one-way alley that brought them out a couple blocks from the Jacob’s destination.
“You know your way around town pretty well,” he said as he grabbed his briefcase.
“I used to work down here,” Doug said. He turned on the signal and pulled over when he saw an empty street parking space. “This is about as close as we can get.”
Jacob opened the door and stepped out onto the sidewalk.
“Well hey, thanks again,” he said with the door still open.
Doug craned his neck to check traffic down the street. “No problem.”
“Here,” Jacob said. He reached into his back pocket, pulled out his wallet, and handed Doug a twenty-dollar bill. “I would have spent this much on cab fare anyway.”
Doug took the money and said thanks. He looked Jacob over one more time. “Can I bum one of those cigarettes?”
Jacob handed Doug a cigarette, leaned over the passenger seat, and gave him a light. “I hope things go better with your boss.”
Doug nodded and gave a thumbs up. Jacob walked off toward the tallest building and Doug watched him disappear into the crowd on the sidewalk.
Rush hour had died down by then, and Doug took the parkway back to the hotel. The freeway curved up out of the city along a hill with a giant retaining wall that overlooked the river. With no traffic, he could actually go the speed limit. Wind ripping through the window combined with the height above the river gave Doug the sensation of taking flight. He turned on the radio as the downtown skyline came into view in the rear view mirror.
~ ~ ~
When he got back to the hotel, Doug parked the van and went to work on the mulch. He’d been gone an hour and no one noticed. He worked the rest of his shift and had almost forgot about giving Jacob a ride until he went to clock out.
He made the walk through the courtyard and toward the hotel’s main office. The time clock was in the back, where the managers had their desks, and he found Mackenzie at her computer when he went in to punch out.
She spoke without looking up from the screen. “Did you give someone a ride in the shuttle today?”
Doug took his time card from the rack. “Uhm.”
“This guy called and said you gave him a ride around nine-thirty, but I didn’t see it on the shuttle schedule.”
“It was kind of a busy morning.” Doug rubbed the back of his neck.
“You were spreading mulch all day,” Mackenzie said. “You don’t remember if you stopped at some point and drove the van?”
“Oh yeah.” Doug said. “There was a guy—”
“He said you went over to the university and it was only a couple miles,” Mackenzie said. Her eyes darted back and fourth but stayed locked on her computer. “He was very specific about that. He kept saying ‘It was less than three miles’.”
“Oh yeah,” Doug said, a little too fast. “I was there and back in a half an hour.”
Mackenzie clicked her mouse harder than necessary. “He called to say thanks. He said you changed his whole opinion of the hotel.”
Doug relaxed and swiped his time card. “Glad I could help out.”
“Just make sure you let me know next time,” Mackenzie said, looking up from her computer to glare at Doug. “I need to keep things in order around here.”
But Doug was already out the door, through the courtyard, and on the way to his car.
Garth Porter
The overhead door creaked and shimmied its way to a rest above the garage and Doug stomped inside. He kicked a plastic bucket out of the way and made a beeline for the pallet of mulch in the corner. He positioned a wheelbarrow next to the mulch, then looked toward the tool bench. A rusty box cutter sat next to a pair of leather gloves. He put the gloves on and, with the box cutter, sliced a long, deep gash into a bag of mulch. Fresh from another argument with Mackenzie, the hotel manager, he needed something constructive to channel his anger into and the mulch beds around the parking lot, with the potential for digging and shoveling and physical exertion, would have to do.
He dumped the wounded bag into the wheelbarrow and did the same with three more. He grabbed a shovel from the rack on the wall, spit on the concrete floor, and pushed the wheelbarrow out of the garage. He stopped as he passed the hotel’s shuttle van, a red fifteen passenger Chevy, parked in its usual spot beside the dumpsters. Driving always cleared his head, but there weren’t any shuttles scheduled that morning. He pushed the wheelbarrow toward the row of trees that surrounded the lot.
At the end of the parking lot, a man stood by the street trying to hail a cab. He wore a black business suit and waved his hand in the air like Doug had seen in movies.
A cab drove by but didn’t stop.
The man cursed and kicked a rock on the pavement. He lit a cigarette and threw his hand in the air as another cab drove by.
Doug pushed the wheelbarrow toward the man.
“What the hell is wrong with the cabs in this city?” the man asked. He took an angry drag on his cigarette and glared at Doug.
“I don’t know,” Doug said. “Everybody says the service here is terrible.”
“I’m already late.” The man looked at his wristwatch. “Does your shuttle go downtown?”
Doug still had both hands on the wheelbarrow handles. “No, we can only go within three miles.”
“Three miles? What kind of a—” The man cursed and waved Doug away. He took out his phone and swiped his thumb across the screen harder than he needed to. Beads of sweat formed around his slicked back hairline and his face grew red.
Early morning sun peaked through the trees above the lot and a breeze rustled the leaves. The mulch smelled like shit.
Doug looked back across the parking lot to the shuttle van, then back at the man fuming over his phone. He looked in the wheelbarrow and saw a maggot wiggle through the bark chips and manure.
“Where do you need to go?”
~ ~ ~
They rode past scenic academic buildings and brutalist dorms. At every crosswalk, students stood shoulder to shoulder on both sides of the street. People crowded around bus stops and cyclists darted in and out of traffic. Doug’s eyes scanned back and fourth across five lanes.
The man sat on the bench seat behind the driver’s seat.
“What happens if you drive past three miles?” he asked. “Your work boots turn into glass slippers?”
Doug stopped at a red light. “Nothing, if we don’t get caught.”
A gaggle of students flooded the crosswalk in front of the van.
“How would you get caught? They have a GPS on this thing?”
Doug shook his head. “Nope.”
“So, don’t get into an accident and we’re good, right?”
“I hope so,” Doug said.
“Are you a safe driver?”
Doug watched the pedestrians file by. “I like to think so.”
“When’s the last time you had an accident?”
The crosswalk cleared and the light turned green.
“It’s been awhile,” Doug said.
“Was it bad?”
“Ya know,” Doug drove through the intersection, “I don’t really like talking about accidents while I’m driving.”
“Great,” the man said. “First I couldn’t get a cab, now I’m stuck with a nervous shuttle driver.” He turned and started looking for the seat belt.
Doug didn’t feel like explaining himself. Driving soothed him. He had the opposite of road rage. When other drivers cut him off, when pedestrians walked out in front of his vehicle, when someone in a giant pickup truck revved the engine and flew past him twenty miles an hour over the speed limit, he felt a wave of calm.
The man looked out the window and shook his head. “This hotel is a joke. No breakfast buffet. The wi-fi is terrible. And it smells like pot every time the maid cleans my room.”
Doug laughed.
“And, I mean, what are you? A groundskeeper or a driver?”
Doug flipped on the turn signal and drove around a bus. “I guess I’m a laborer. My title is ‘maintenance tech’ but I kind of just do whatever.”
“I’m not staying here again,” the man said. “Nothing makes sense. The shuttle only goes three miles? What kind of hotel has a shuttle that only goes three miles?!”
“I wish they’d let us go farther,” Doug said. “I really like driving the van.”
The man huffed. “I don’t suppose we can smoke in here?”
They came to a stop at another red light. Doug rolled the window down and motioned toward the front passenger seat. “I won’t tell if you don’t.”
The man moved into the front seat and reached out to shake Doug’s hand.
“My name’s Jacob.”
~ ~ ~
The academic buildings came to an end and they started driving past hospitals. Doctors in white lab coats entered buildings through glass doors while nurses in scrubs gathered on sidewalks for their smoke breaks. A couple blocks ahead, three nurses pushed patients across the street in wheelchairs.
“So what happens if you get caught?” Jacob asked. He exhaled a drag out the passenger side window.
“I guess I’d get in trouble,” Doug said. “Written up or a verbal warning.”
“So, you’re kind of taking a risk for me?”
Doug nodded.
“I appreciate it,” Jacob said. “You’re really helping me out.”
Doug checked the side view mirror. “I needed to get out of there. I was having a rough morning myself.”
“Why?” Jacob asked. “You don’t like shoveling cow shit into mulch beds?”
The lights of an ambulance flashed on behind them.
Doug flipped on the signal and wedged the van between two cars on the right. “I got into a fight with my manager.”
Jacob leaned back in the seat. “So this is kind of like a middle finger to the boss, huh? Screw you, boss, I’m going out on my own! That kind of thing?”
The ambulance turned on its siren and wailed up beside the van.
Doug rolled his window up to block out the sound. “Sort of.”
More cars moved out of the way and the ambulance accelerated through them.
“You said there’s no GPS on this van, right?” Jacob asked.
“Right.”
“So, we’re off the grid right now?”
Doug laughed. “Yeah, we’re off the grid.”
Jacob let out a mock whoop and took a long hit. The smoke caught in his throat and made his voice croak. “Really makes you feel alive, doesn’t it?”
They came to the last light before the street curved down a long hill. Off to the left, residential neighborhoods dotted the hills across the river. Straight ahead, skyscrapers poked up over parkways lined with bumper to bumper traffic.
~ ~ ~
“Where the hell are you taking me?” Jacob asked.
“This’ll get us around traffic,” Doug said.
They’d left the hospitals and universities behind and were now driving past row houses and public housing. Children climbed on the jungle gym at the housing complex playground and old men sat on the porches of the row houses.
“This looks like a rough neighborhood,” Jacob said.
The kids on the playground and the men on the porches were all black.
Doug cast him a sideways glance. “It’s just a neighborhood.”
They rode a few blocks in silence.
Up ahead, a pickup truck blocked the road.
“What the hell is this?” Jacob asked.
Doug brought the van to a stop.
Behind the pickup truck, a strip of yellow Caution tape hung between the aging support beams of a row-house porch. Four-by-fours held up its sagging roof and plastic with duct-tape covered broken windowpanes. The houses to the left and right had new siding and fresh paint.
An old white man emerged from the door less entryway behind the caution tape. A neon-green bandanna held back his wiry grey hair and paint splotches covered his white painter pants. He pulled a wad of tobacco from his lower lip, threw it to the ground and, with the same hand, motioned for the man in the truck to back up.
The driver, an old black man, yelled obscenities at the man on the porch as he backed up.
Doug looked over at his passenger then turned back to the scene in front of the shuttle.
A third man emerged from the building carrying a heavy chain that was attached to something inside. He looked just like the other man on the porch but thirty years younger. The older man yelled at him and pointed to the truck, then the younger man wrapped the chain around the truck’s bumper hitch and secured it with a rusty hook.
“There’s enough room,” Jacob said. “Just go around.”
Doug shook his head. “I’m going to give them a minute.”
The man in the pickup pulled forward slowly and put tension on the chain.
Jacob checked his watch. “They better hurry up.”
The truck lurched forward and tugged on the chain. The rear wheels spun against the pavement but the truck went nowhere. The men on the porch waved wildly and yelled for the man in the truck to keep going but the truck screeched to a halt. The driver stuck his head out the window and cursed the men on the porch.
“These guys have no idea what they’re doing,” Jacob said.
Doug watched and waited.
The driver revved the engine again. The tires squealed and he tugged until smoke rose from the pavement.
“Just go,” Jacob said. “They’re not going anywhere.”
Doug inched the van forward. “They don’t even see us.”
“We can’t just sit here,” Jacob said. “Look, he’s getting out.”
The pickup driver opened the door and stuck his upper body out to yell at the other men more efficiently.
Doug cursed and put the pedal on the floor.
As he did, the man in the truck whipped himself back into the driver’s seat and did the same. The truck pulled on the chain, yanked free from whatever it was tugging on inside, and the vehicles lunged toward each other.
Doug slammed on the brakes. The wheels on the van locked and it started to skid. He made eye contact with the pickup driver as both vehicles screeched to a stop, then looked over and saw Jacob gripping the handle above the window.
The old man on the porch yelled, “Get outta here, dumbass!”
The other driver got out of the pickup and crouched over the bumper of his truck. He leaned back and revealed a gold-toothed grin. He held up two fingers, as if he was about to pinch something, and started to laugh.
“That close!”
Doug looked at the man and started to laugh as well. They were kindred spirits, high on the adrenaline of a near-miss.
Jacob slammed a fist against the passenger door and said, “Get me the hell out of here!”
~ ~ ~
They rode the rest of the way without talking. When they were deep into the tall downtown buildings, the man broke the silence.
“So what was the fight with your manager about?”
Doug rolled the window down. The bustle of the city reverberated off of the skyscrapers they’d seen earlier on the horizon. The air smelled like diesel exhaust and cigarette smoke.
“She’s a dick to the housekeepers,” Doug said.
“The housekeepers?” Jacob said. “What the hell do you care about the housekeepers? One of them your girlfriend?”
Car horns and bus air-brakes echoed over the streets. Pedestrians spilled off the sidewalks and jaywalked right in front of the van.
“No,” Doug said. “It’s not that.”
“So, what? You don’t like working for a woman?”
Doug checked the side view mirror. A couple blocks behind, a bum yelled at the sky while people walked around and pretended not to notice.
“It’s not that either,” Doug said.
Jacob looked at Doug and waited for more explanation. When he didn’t get any, he lit up another cigarette and said, “This place is messed up.”
Doug made a left into a narrow one-way alley that brought them out a couple blocks from the Jacob’s destination.
“You know your way around town pretty well,” he said as he grabbed his briefcase.
“I used to work down here,” Doug said. He turned on the signal and pulled over when he saw an empty street parking space. “This is about as close as we can get.”
Jacob opened the door and stepped out onto the sidewalk.
“Well hey, thanks again,” he said with the door still open.
Doug craned his neck to check traffic down the street. “No problem.”
“Here,” Jacob said. He reached into his back pocket, pulled out his wallet, and handed Doug a twenty-dollar bill. “I would have spent this much on cab fare anyway.”
Doug took the money and said thanks. He looked Jacob over one more time. “Can I bum one of those cigarettes?”
Jacob handed Doug a cigarette, leaned over the passenger seat, and gave him a light. “I hope things go better with your boss.”
Doug nodded and gave a thumbs up. Jacob walked off toward the tallest building and Doug watched him disappear into the crowd on the sidewalk.
Rush hour had died down by then, and Doug took the parkway back to the hotel. The freeway curved up out of the city along a hill with a giant retaining wall that overlooked the river. With no traffic, he could actually go the speed limit. Wind ripping through the window combined with the height above the river gave Doug the sensation of taking flight. He turned on the radio as the downtown skyline came into view in the rear view mirror.
~ ~ ~
When he got back to the hotel, Doug parked the van and went to work on the mulch. He’d been gone an hour and no one noticed. He worked the rest of his shift and had almost forgot about giving Jacob a ride until he went to clock out.
He made the walk through the courtyard and toward the hotel’s main office. The time clock was in the back, where the managers had their desks, and he found Mackenzie at her computer when he went in to punch out.
She spoke without looking up from the screen. “Did you give someone a ride in the shuttle today?”
Doug took his time card from the rack. “Uhm.”
“This guy called and said you gave him a ride around nine-thirty, but I didn’t see it on the shuttle schedule.”
“It was kind of a busy morning.” Doug rubbed the back of his neck.
“You were spreading mulch all day,” Mackenzie said. “You don’t remember if you stopped at some point and drove the van?”
“Oh yeah.” Doug said. “There was a guy—”
“He said you went over to the university and it was only a couple miles,” Mackenzie said. Her eyes darted back and fourth but stayed locked on her computer. “He was very specific about that. He kept saying ‘It was less than three miles’.”
“Oh yeah,” Doug said, a little too fast. “I was there and back in a half an hour.”
Mackenzie clicked her mouse harder than necessary. “He called to say thanks. He said you changed his whole opinion of the hotel.”
Doug relaxed and swiped his time card. “Glad I could help out.”
“Just make sure you let me know next time,” Mackenzie said, looking up from her computer to glare at Doug. “I need to keep things in order around here.”
But Doug was already out the door, through the courtyard, and on the way to his car.
