It's Hard To Find A Good Plumber

So, after two weeks of non-payment, PC Nation cancelled Ken's contract.

Ken was used to bone chilling winters in Louisiana; the humidity, along with a brisk wind blowing in from the Gulf can make thirty degrees feel like ten degrees. But 'feel like ten degrees' and actually ten degrees are two different things.

October 29, Ken woke up to a ten degree morning. After he finally got his truck to start, Ken turned in his resignation and headed south and west.

"Pussy," his supervisor cheerfully said as he watched Ken's truck drive away. "Ten degrees? Shit, wait until it's forty below, huh?"

"Forty, shit," the dispatcher sneered. "I remember one winter never got above fifty nine below."

"Fifty nine? Shit, that ain't nothing," Tommy, the parts manager sneered, and the lies and tall tales started.

In Los Angeles, California, Ken found more than a handful of his type of woman but found that most of them were vacuous mercenaries, more interested in his wallet than his cock.

In San Diego, California, he found slightly warmer women, but there was high competition among plumbers and the three places he'd worked for actually expected him to be less than scrupulous.

The last company actually expected Ken to break their customer's plumbing, to cause several thousands of dollars in repairs.

So he headed east.

His old buddy in Galveston welcomed him.

"About a week after you left, hell, right before New Year's, some guy stopped by looking for you," the man said. "Said your wife was looking for you; know anything about that?"

"Wife? News to me," Ken shrugged. "But Thibodaux's a pretty common name in Louisiana; might have been looking for another Ken Thibodaux."

"What I thought too," the man agreed.

"Well, just stopped by on my way through, wanted to say 'hi,'" Ken said; he could tell that the man did not believe him.

And if the man did not believe him, the man would be on the phone with whomever was looking for Ken just as soon as Ken's back was turned.

Well, good to see you," the man agreed. "Like I said, you're a hell of a good worker and you know your shit, no pun intended."

"Ha ha," Ken smirked.

Bender, Florida was a balmy sixty eight degrees when Ken pulled up to the local motel. The fact that the town bore the same name as his old stomping grounds made Ken smile softly.

And next to the motel was a bar named Red's so after he checked in and pulled his two suitcases into the room Ken went to the bar.

"Sonny boy, I'm telling you the National Football League is bullshit!" one patron was loudly arguing. "Them Saints ain't had a shot in hell beating them Colts in the Super Bowl! Payton Fucking Manning is a god; ain't no way them Saints beat him!"

"They got the trophy prove it, Ralph, I'm telling you. It's right there in their trophy case," the other man replied.

"Yeah they got the fucking trophy but they ain't won it!" Ralph said.

"You, what you say?" the other man asked, nodding toward Ken.

"I say I came in here for a beer, cold as you got it," Ken said.

"Listen, Saints in the Super Bowl, what? Two thousand and ten, right?" Ralph demanded as the bartender slid a frosty cold beer toward ken.

"Miracle in Miami," Ken agreed. "Yeah, I watched it."

"You really think them Saints won that game or you think somebody got paid off?" Ralph asked.

"I think the Saints did what they did to everyone else that season," Ken answered and drained half the glass in one gulp. "They pounded and pounded on them Colts until there just weren't no more fight left in them."

"There you go, brother, put her there," the other man said and shook Ken's hand.

"Aw you're all full of shit," Ralph snarled. "Now, the Patriots and Giants, huh?"

"Aw come on Ralph, don't be going on and on about that one handed catch at the back of the helmet; shit we all seen plays like that," the other patron sighed.

"They in here every day?" Ken asked the bartender who just smiled.

"Know anyone looking for a plumber?" Ken asked.

"Me; crapper in the women's room is fucked," the bartender said. "Plumber out in Verdot says be another week before he can get out here."

"Let me take a look at it," Ken said.

"Well, Red," Ken said, coming back out. "Nothing a new wax seal can't fix; thirty for the part and how about fifty for labor?"

"Red?" the bartender asked the other patron.

"Go ahead and I'll throw in one free beer every night for the next week you tell my wife it was her fat ass broke it," Red smiled.

"And I'll throw in a free beer you admit that Miracle in Miami weren't no miracle," Ralph snarled.

"Deal and no deal," Ken smiled. "Where's the nearest Home Depot?"

"Lowe's right up the street ain't nobody here uses Home Depot," Red said, pointing in the general direction of the Lowe's.

Red's wife, Dolly, was a large Latin woman and Ken had to admit, it very well could have been her to wear the wax seal to barely a strip around the bottom of the commode. Dolly wasn't fooled in the least and demanded that Ken tell her how much Red was paying him to say that she was the one to break the toilet.

"A free beer," Ken admitted and she smiled.

"Gringo," she said. "My momma's sink? It keep dripping and dripping; you fix maybe?"

And Dolly's momma had a room she agreed to rent to Ken for three hundred a month. She fixed huge breakfasts so laden with sugar, Ken was sure he would be diabetic within a week, and fixed dinners so massive Ken was miserable by the time he went to bed.

The weight he'd taken off nearly two years earlier rapidly crept back and Ken found himself having to job along the beach, five miles in the soft sand or risk having to buy 'fat clothes.'

Because he spoke Spanish, albeit a little clumsily, and because he was honest with his customers, Ken found he had no shortage of work in Bender, Florida.

And because he stopped off in Red's every so often, especially during football games, Ken found he had a few friends too.

"Some guy was in here couple of nights ago," Red whispered to Ken one night as they watched the New Orleans Saints embarrass themselves against the Carolina Panthers. "Said your wife was looking for you; really needs to find you."

"Dude, I don't have a wife," Ken whispered back. "Was supposed get married but bitch comes in screaming all kind of shit right before the wedding so I left."

"Anyway, told the guy you might have stopped in here, face looked familiar; he had some high school picture of you, but hadn't seen you in a while," Red whispered.

"Thanks, Amigo," Ken said, watched Drew throw another interception, grimaced, and left Red's.

Dolly was waiting for him when Ken entered her mother's house.

"Mister Reynolds come by looking for you," she said. "You in trouble?"

"No, I'm not in any trouble," Ken denied.

"You in trouble you don't stay at my Momma's house, hear?" Dolly ordered.

"No, I'm not in any trouble, but this is more trouble than it's worth," Ken sighed.

He sat down on her mother's couch and Dolly smiled as he winced; her mother's couch was covered in plastic.

"I'm sitting there, trying to get the football game on the television, it's not cooperating and she comes in all mad and screaming I did something but won't even tell me what it is I did," Ken said.

"You mess around?" Dolly asked, fixing him with a squint.

"No, I mean, shit, Sydnee wasn't even my type but I loved her, you know?" Ken said.

"Sidney?" Dolly asked and chuckled.

"My friend, Maggie? You fix her refrigerator? It needed water line for the ice maker? She said she's standing there in just panties and tee shirt and you don't try nothing," Dolly chuckled.

"Because she had a wedding ring on," Ken said. "That ring hadn't been there, I'd have begged for a taste. And Sydnee's a girl's name."

"Oh!" Dolly said.

"Anyway, I call and call and she doesn't want to talk to me, called her dad and he curses me out so I just gave up," Ken went on. "Mom's all mad at me; nothing new there. Dad's not talking to me; again, nothing new."

Dolly went into the kitchen and came back with two bottles of beer.

"Then all of a sudden she wants to talk, you know? After everybody's been telling me about all the guys she's screwing, she wants to talk," Ken said and accepted the bottle of beer. "By now, though? I could care less she wants to talk. But then she gets my mom to try to trick me into talking."

Ken drank deeply of the ice cold beer.

"Damn, where'd you get this anyway? Every time I look in there, your momma never has any beer in there," Ken said.

"Fruit drawer, behind the melon," Dolly whispered and Ken smiled.

"So I up and left, just got in my truck and left," Ken concluded his tale.

"You should at least listen to her," Dolly counseled.

"Why?" Ken asked and drained the bottle.

He shook his head when she indicated that she'd get him another beer.

"Then if you want to leave, you can and if you want to stay, you can," Dolly said. "Now? You don't have no home."

"Yeah well...." Ken said.

"That what you want? No home?" she asked, getting to her feet.

"I don't know," Ken said wearily. "Even when it was home, it was never home. Was never good enough for my mom and dad, none of the girls were ever good enough; none of my jobs were never good enough. I came home with all as on my report card that still wasn't good enough."

"That what you running from?" Dolly asked.

"No, yeah, I guess," Ken agreed.

In Red's, Reynold Reynolds mopped his forehead and drank his beer.

"Never heard of a mother fucker no FaceBook page; shit, guy don't even have an email address!" Reynold complained. "Who in the hell don't have email, huh?"

"I ain't got no email," Ralph snarled. "People want to get me need call me. And what the hell is twitter anyway?"

"Sure this boy ain't around; trail ends here," Reynold asked, double chins quivering as he flashed Kenneth Ryan Thibodaux's high school picture around. "About twenty six, twenty seven, tall, six feet..."

"That boy's twenty six, twenty seven?" Red asked, squinting at the photograph. "Shit, looks like he's in high school."

"Well, this is his high school picture," Reynold agreed.

"Then how we supposed to know we seen him or not?" Ralph asked. "Think I looked like this in high school?"

"Think you was born that ugly," Red agreed. "Seriously? Said his wife's looking for him? And she ain't got no recent pictures of him?"

"Well..." Reynold Reynolds said.

"I mean, shit, much as Dolly hates me, she's got maybe a hundred pictures of me," Red said.

"And I burn them too," Dolly said as she plopped down on a stool. "Give me a beer, huh?"

"Give me this give me that, it ever stop with you?" Red asked and kissed her, then poured her a beer.

"No, only reason I marry you is for beer," Dolly said and they shared another kiss before Reynold indicated he wanted another beer.

The next day, Ken finished the two work orders he had before stopping in and shaking Ralph's hand and Red's hand and leaving Bender, Florida.

The radio in his truck would not pick up any stations that wasn't playing Christmas music or the insipid and flavorless crap that passes for music today; no good Classic Rock or even a decent Country&Western station so Ken had to be content with silence as he drove west on I-10.

The casino in Biloxi was also piping Christmas music but Ken won seven hundred and forty nine dollars so it didn't bother him. And he really couldn't hear the music over the din in the building anyway.

The helpful concierge at the casino hotel, for a fifty dollar tip, did arrange to have a masseuse come to Ken's room. The woman did look a lot like Sydnee, short and chunky but with short dark hair.

"You a cop?" was her greeting and Ken smiled.

"No, I'm a plumber," he said.

She rattled off the prices and Ken lay four one hundred dollar bills on the table next to her bag. The woman shrugged and pulled out a condom and some lubricant.

"Two more and it's all holes," she offered and Ken shrugged again and lay two more bills down.

The woman's blow job was quick and efficient. Ken lay and watched as the woman impassively sucked his cock. Sydnee had been terrible at sucking cock, but least she acted like she enjoyed it.

Same with vaginal sex; the woman was impassive and almost looked bored.

Anal sex was slightly different; she actually grunted, then moaned as Ken slid his cock in.

Sydnee had never had anal sex before. She admitted that her last boyfriend had wanted to do it, but when she finally acquiesced, he'd used his saliva as lubricant for her anus and her saliva as lubricant for his penis. Then he had simply tried to force it in.

Because she had loved Ken, she grimaced but agreed to do it.

Ken wasn't sure who Sydnee's last boyfriend had been, but the unnamed boy would have had a very enthusiastic anal partner if he'd simply taken a few minutes. Sydnee had knelt on their bed, reached behind and pulled her fat butt cheeks apart.

"Oh!" she grunted when Ken slowly eased a greasy finger into her tightly clenched rectum.

Oh!" she sighed as Ken rotated the finger in her tight confines.

"Uh!" Sydnee grunted when Ken added a second greasy finger and slowly twisted them around.

Oh!" Sydnee grunted and drove herself back to meet his two fingers as he fucked them in and out of her anal sheath.

"Stick your dick in me," she panted when he added a third finger. "Come on; stick your dick in there."

The night he proposed to her, Sydnee had insisted they make the engagement official with anal sex. By now, her favorite way of taking it in the ass was to straddle him as he lay on their bed. Then she'd reach behind, grab his hard cock, and ease the head into her anus, then sink slowly down. Her big brown eyes would close tightly as he invaded her.

"Fuck!" she would scream when she finally felt his pubic hair against her pudgy cheeks.

Within moments, though, she'd be bouncing up and down.

"You're fucking my ass," Sydnee would chant. "Fucking my ass. That's so nasty; you're a nasty boy, fucking my ass."

"Going come in that nasty ass," he would grimace and then blast a torrent of his sperm into her back door.

"Oh yeah!" the masseuse encouraged as Ken began to thrust himself into her.

The minute he finished coming, she was wiggling free of him and dressing.

"Thanks," the woman said and waited.

"What?" Ken asked, wanting the woman to leave his hotel room.

"Uh, most guys tip, you know," she said, all business now that they were done.

"Really?" Ken said. "Even after giving you six hundred bucks, they still tip, huh?"

"Uh yeah," the masseuse said.

Here," Ken sighed and gave her fifty.

"Fifty, huh?" the woman said, clearly less than impressed.

"No, fifty and a real tip," Ken said. "Next time, act like you enjoy it."

Pretty well drained and tired from the drive, Ken was able to sleep well on the cheap hotel mattress. In the morning, he showered, scraped his face and again pondered whether or not to grow a mustache; it'd be one less thing to shave.

He'd had a mustache once and his mother had complained so bitterly and his father had just looked so disapproving that Ken had shaved it off.

"Fat fucking lot of good that shit did me, huh?" he asked his reflection. "Fuck, they still weren't happy."

Ken checked out, thanked the desk clerk, which got an odd stare from her, and left.

Waveland, Mississippi had a Waffle house which served him a good hot breakfast and less than good coffee.

He stopped again in Grosse Tete, Louisiana and picked up some boudin for lunch. He ate the sausages as he drove, throwing the casings out the window.

'Food in a Condom,' Virgil had called boudin.

"Least I don't get on my knees to eat them," Ken had laughed.

The cold IBC root beer washed the food down and he sighed in contentment as he let a belch escape.

Outside of DeGarde, Louisiana, Ken cursed. Sydnee's phone number had been on his old cell phone, as had been her father's phone number. In fact, after their second date, Sydnee had grabbed Ken's phone as they left Cowboy's Barbeque and put her number into his phone, so he had no reason to remember her numbers.

When they moved her into his apartment, Sydnee had added her father's number to Ken's phone. She had been number 8 and Jim had been number 9.

But that phone was now in a landfill in North Dakota.

"And I'm not driving there to find it," Ken joked aloud.

Ken remembered that his mother's house had been number 1 and his dad's cell phone had been number 2. His job had been number 3 and Virgil had been number 4. But who had been 5 through 7 he could not remember.

It was just after one in the afternoon so Ken wasn't sure where to go or what to do, so he drove to the First Union Bank. Maybe his buddy Virgil could give him some advice on how to proceed.

Ken approached the front door, frowning slightly. The last time he'd been to this building, the doors had been old, ugly bulky doors. The glass had been reinforced with a diagonal wire pattern running through it, with bulky steel beams. It had given the building an imposing, unwelcoming façade.

These new doors were sleek, modern looking.

"Replaced them after that lady cop drove through the old ones," a female customer answered Ken's unasked question.

"Well they were ugly enough, but that's taking it a bit far, don't you think?" Ken smiled, letting her go first.

"No, no, she broke up this robbery," the woman laughed.

"No kidding?" Ken gasped, looking back at the doors with real interest.

Virgil smiled pleasantly as his customer gathered together her numerous documents and spotted Ken chatting with a female customer.

"What the hell?" Ken heard a man loudly complain and looked up in time to see Virgil sprint to a door.

"Damn it, I only got thirty minutes for lunch!" the male customer complained loudly.

"Sir, I can help you over here," Ingrid called out briskly.

The female customer went to the next teller and Ken stood, looking at the door that Virgil had disappeared through.

"Ken, Ken, over here," Ingrid called out as the man, still grumbling unhappily, left her window.

"Hi, uh, was hoping talk to Virgil," Ken said, still looking at the door Virgil had gone through.

"Uh huh, bet you are," Ingrid said.

"What? What you mean?" Ken asked, now looking at the attractive blonde.

"Uh, after the shit he pulled?" Ingrid said under her breath.

"Shit? What shit?" Ken asked, also keeping his voice low.

"Oh, guess you didn't know you and me were doing long lunches," Ingrid said breezily.

"We're doing what?" Ken asked.

"Oh yeah, and then instead of lunch we're just having sex," Ingrid said.

"We're what?" Ken asked, some anger creeping into his voice.

"Uh huh, or at least that's what your buddy told Sydnee," Ingrid nodded. "Right after I told him, 'look I'm just not interested, all right?' he decides he's going to shit on your birthday cake."

"You mean, you telling me, the guy I said 'hey, want you be my best man,' that guy?" Ken asked, voice rising.

"Uh huh," Ingrid nodded. "Weasel's the kind he ain't happy ain't nobody happy, you know? Why I just wasn't into him; bad enough he looks like a rat baby, got to act like one too?"

"You know what you did! Don't play stupid with me," Sydnee had screamed at him.

"So, you and me on the down low with each other and my best man goes and tells Sydnee all about it?" Ken asked, face red with rage.

"Afraid so," Ingrid confirmed.

"Tell him I see him it'll be his turn to put up the bail money; I'll be in jail for killing him," Ken growled through gritted teeth.

By the time Ken reached Oak Park Drive in Baylor Lake, though, his rage had dissipated.

He and Sydnee had looked at a house, a cute little two bedroom, one bathroom bungalow on Oak Park. Ken slowed down as he looked at it.