Teg

 Teg waited patiently for the receipt to pop out of the slot proving that he had just put eight dollars’ worth of ethanol-infused gasoline into the tank of his ’95 Saturn S-1. Why eight dollars? Two reasons: first, eight dollars was one hundred percent of Teg’s funds and second, at 25 miles per gallon, eight dollars would purchase a bit less than 2 ½ gallons of gas, enough for a one-way trip to Eppley Airport in Omaha, 58 miles away, with enough fumes to roll into the parking garage. Give or take. Despite being in possession of a countenance that suggested, if one were being charitable, that his intellect was somewhere in the neighborhood of “dim”, Teg was adept at doing math in his head. This facility with numbers was why he was heading to Eppley with no money and an undependable vehicle. 

Two things were going to happen at the airport. He was going to meet a guy named Steve in the parking garage. He’d met Steve once before, although on that occasion he introduced himself as “Clint”. Steve/Clint was one of those guys who looked like he never washed his hair, but was vain enough to have a carefully sculpted beard and mustache. To describe him as “menacing” would be a mistake. Not because it was inaccurate, but because Steve didn’t know what it meant and would surely think it was an insult. Some of his tattoos were spelled correctly, but not the ones on his face. 

 Steve was going to give him 10 cases of Hrast that he had “found” somewhere. Well, not “give”. The Love of His Life, Ariadne, or Manila, or Svetlana or Joan – he still was unsure of her name, had sent Steve $360 by some online cash transfer app. The second thing was that Steve was supposed to give Teg a $20 gas card so he could be able to get back to Lincoln. The rest of the plan was that Ariadne/Manila/ Svetlana/Joan would sell the cases of Hrast to local bars for $10 a bottle (for some reason Slovenian Whiskey had become popular among the neo-hipsters), cutting Teg in for 10% of the profit, which wouldn’t pay his rent for the whole month, but might cover a week. (Teg calculated that his $84 cut, plus the $20 gas card, minus around $15 in fuel cost, would indeed cover one week of his $360 rent – if he could find another dollar) 

“Fuck you Teg”. That was Steve, who had no intention of giving him a $20 gas card, “Tell Agnes that she never paid me for a gas card, and the price next month is $5.00 per case”. Mostly, the fact that he now knew that the love of his life was improbably named Agnes was what got through to Teg. A tiny part of his brain though, focused on the fact that he had just enough gas in his vehicle to get out of the garage and about halfway to the interstate – if he was lucky.

Teg, being the math savant that he was, knew that $8 in gas had gotten him to Eppley, so all he needed was $8.00 to get him back to Agnes (Agnes? Really?). He also knew that Agnes would be very sad if he didn’t bring back $1200 worth of Hrast (the resale value). What if he brought back $1190 worth of Hrast and $10? If he could sell one bottle for $18, he was all set. 

Teg was one of those people who are irrationally optimistic. He always was convinced that things would work out, even when it was abundantly clear that they wouldn’t Sure, it’s not a bad thing to have a can-do attitude, and being consistently negative is going to yield consistently negative results, but there should definitely be some kind of basis for optimism. You’re not going to get hired at NASA on the strength of a GED. If Teg were most people he would just call Agnes and explain the situation, but being that Agnes was the Love of His Life (for a certain value of “love”), even if she didn’t know it, but you don’t let The Love of Your Life down. So, irrational optimism it is. How hard could it be to sell one bottle of whiskey for $18? 

Pretty hard as it turned out. 

Teg, math savant that he was, was no savant when it came to discerning people’s motivations. Surely that guy who smelled faintly of cat urine really did have $120 back at his house and would surely pay him for the case of Hrast that Teg let him have on credit. Surely that Omaha cop really was doing him a favor by taking only two cases of Hrast instead of locking him up. Surely, he’d be able to convince the tow truck driver that it was all a mistake that the Casey’s manager got his car towed while he was in the bathroom, and the remaining seven cases of Hrast would be safe in the back seat until it all got worked out. 

Surely. 

At least the clerk at the Casey’s let him use the phone after the manager left so he could call The Love of His Life and leave a voice mail message. 

Once again, Teg was on the side of the road, waiting for The Love of His Life, who he now knew was named Agnes. The day might have gone downhill faster than the Jamaican Bobsled Team, but what do you know? There’s still a little Hrast in his flask.