“You’re quitting?”
I laughed. “Not exactly.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Oh, you haven’t heard, then,” I said. “füdmüd is being bought out by Uber for, like, four billion dollars, and rolled into Uber Eats. Apparently, we were so successful at locking up the best restaurants and the best deliverators that Uber decided it was just easier to buy us and all our exclusivity contracts.”
“So the CEO who stole your ideas—”
“Rob Shitmonkey Sanders, yes.”
“—is now becoming a billionaire.”
“It’s an eighty percent cash deal, so, yup, pretty much.”
“And you don’t want to deliver for Uber.”
“See, that’s the best part,” I said. “Uber already has their delivery people, and they didn’t want to have to roll over all the deliverators. That would make the delivery people they already have unhappy. So they’re only taking the ones that had four-star and above ratings.” I opened my füdmüd app and showed him my stats. “Three point nine seven five stars, baby.”
“I always gave you five stars,” Tom said.
“Well, I appreciate that, Tom, for what little good it does me now.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Long term? I have no fucking idea. I was barely scraping by as it is. I’m the only one of my roommates who had anything approaching close to steady work, so I was paying the rent and the utilities and most of the food. We’re in the middle of a plague, so no one’s hiring for anything. I have no savings and nowhere else to go. So, yeah. No idea, long term. But”—I held up a finger—“short term? I’m gonna buy a bottle of shitty vodka and drink the whole damn thing in my shower. That way, when I make a mess of myself, it’ll be easy for my roommates to clean up.”
“I’m sorry, Jamie.”
“It’s not your fault,” I said. “And anyway, I apologize for unloading on you.”
“It’s all right. I mean, we’re friends.”
I laughed again at this. “It’s more like we have a workable service relationship with a tenuous personal history. But thank you, Tom. I actually did enjoy deliverating to you. Enjoy your shawarma.” I started to go.
“Hold on,” Tom said. He set down his shawarma and disappeared into the recesses of his very nice condo. A minute later, he came back and thrust his hand out at me. “Take this.”
I stared at his hand. There was a business card in it. My face did a thing.
Tom noticed, even through the mask. “What is it?”
“Honestly?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought you were going to give me a cash tip.”
“This is better. This is a job.”
I blinked at this. “What?”
Tom sighed. “The NGO I work for. It’s an animal rights organization. Large animals. We spend a lot of time in the field. There’s a team I’m a part of. We’re supposed to ship out in the next week. One of my team members has COVID and is currently in a hospital in Houston, hooked up to a ventilator.” Tom saw my face do another thing and held up a hand. “He’s out of danger and is going to recover, or so they tell me. But he’s not going to recover before my team ships out this week. We need someone to replace him. You could do it. This card is for our recruitment officer. Go see her. I’ll tell her you’re coming.”
I stared at the card some more.
“What is it now?” Tom asked.
“I really did kind of think you were a mercenary.”
It was his turn to laugh. “I’m not a mercenary. What I do is much, much cooler. And much more interesting.”
“I, uh … I don’t have any training. For whatever it is you do. That involves large animals.”
“You’ll do fine. Also, if you don’t mind me being blunt, at this point what I really need is a warm body that can lift things.” He pointed at his shawarma. “I know you can lift things.”
“And the pay?” I asked, and immediately regretted it, because that seemed like kicking a gift horse in the mouth.
Tom motioned at the very nice condo, as if to say, See? Then he held out the card again.
I took it this time. “I’ll let Gracia know you’re coming,” Tom said, and looked at his watch. “It’s one p.m. now. You can see her today, probably. Or early tomorrow. But that’s pushing it in terms of timing.”