Clay and Josh (Part 4)
"Holy shit! What time is it?!" Josh sprung up from alongside his lover on the floor in horror. The morning sun shone brightly through the livingroom window, illuminating the rolling hills and deep river valleys around Clay's house...and indicating that, had he been at home, his alarm clock must have gone off a while ago.
"...Mmmph, hunh?" Clay opened one eye and pawed the other, still mostly asleep.
"What time is it Clay?! We've gotta be at work for 9:00!" his blue eyes wide as he searched fervorously for the clothes he picked out the night before.
Clay, awake enough now to look at his watch replied in a non-emergent tone, "it's a little after 8:00, we've got time, but it's gonna be close. You have a set of overalls in your locker?"
"Yeah," Josh breathed a sigh of relief and pulled a pair of Clay's boxers from underneath one of the blankets and started pulling them on, one leg at a time. "Well, I guess that means no breakfast this morning!"
"I'll send someone out for doughnuts or something for the entire crew when we get there, It'll be fine."
"Doughnuts and coffee...the breakfast of champions!" Josh laughed and helped Clay toss the blankets in the corner next to the couch and find the rest of their clothes. "So much for dropping me off last night!" he said, still laughing to himself.
"Yeah, oh well, that's why I always say 'keep an extra set of coveralls and a pair of boots if you got 'em' in your locker for mornings like this," Clay's muffled voice came from under his t-shirt. His pants were already on, as were his boots, though still untied.
"Well, I'm ready when you are," said Josh, though he was clearly lagging behind his partner in getting dressed.
The two, now fully dressed, made one last look-around of the room before Clay grabbed his keys, wallet, and cell phone, and headed for the door. "We'll be at work with five minutes to spare, traffic premitting," he said, and the two of them were out the door, into the Jeep, and headed down the drive.
"Okaky, we're all here, so I'll begin," their boss raised his voice raised over the dogs, a small sea of coveralls and coffee mugs. "where's Nick?"
"I sent him on a doughnut run, I'll fill him in when he gets back" Clay stood up, steel coffee mug in hand. His boss glanced at him sideways and there was a moment of silence before the morning meeting continued. Everyone knew they had to be there to be accounted for, but they also knew that clay wasn't the best at doing exactly what he was told, but his superior job performance and ability to get results was far better than any, which is why none of his co-workers, his boss included, could say anything that would make any difference to the large gray wolf.
"Anyway...it's everybody's favorite day of the week, and, as usual, my expectations are the same: once we break from here, we'll do a full clean-up of all machinery spaces until 12:00, at which time the supervisors and myself will make a walk-through of the spaces and generate our 'hit lists.' After that, the noon crew will take over and the midnight crew will work on the hit list until it's done, or 4:00, whichever comes first. Last week, the offgoing crew got out of here at 3, so it's up to you if you want to leave early."
"Yeah, they only got off at 3 'cause HIS ass wasn't here!" Clay sniggered under his breath to Josh, who burried his muzzle in his arm so as not to draw attention to himself.
"Supervisors: Adam, Jeff, Matt, and Clay, make sure you've got enough buckets, shop towels, wire brushes, and flashlights for your spaces. Everyone else, if there are no questions..." he paused just briefly enough to make it almost appear as if he cared if there were any questions, "...get to work!" And with that, the break room soon emptied and everyone went to where they were going to spend the next three or more hours dusting, scraping, wiping, and vacuuming, as they did every other week.
Dusting and scraping, wiping and vacuuming, the morning drug on. What made it even worse was the fact that Nick returned shortly after the morning meeting with three boxes of warm, delicious doughnuts, but noone was allowed to have any because it was "clean-up day" and everyone was already elbow-deep in their assigned tasks. Josh and Clay's stomaches growled as they watched the minutes on the clock slowly tick by. Josh was tail-up vacuuming dust, dropped pens, and the occasional dropped nut or bolt, his body almost completely inside the access plate. Clay was a supervisor, and as such wasn't really supposed to clean (his job was to supervise), but he always felt it was better to work alongside his underlings, offering guidance when necessary, than to just point a flashlight and carry around a clipboard.
"I can smell those damn doughnuts from here!" Clay yelled to Josh who was climbing out of one hole only to climb back down into another.
"I don't even wanna think about it, my stomache's been talkin' to me ever since we left your house," Josh replyed over the sound of the vacuum and the machine he was now working under.
"Oh, well..."
After what seemed like forever, Clay got up from the valve he was wire brushing and walked down the walkway, banging his flashlight on the polished steel handrails, barking "alright, five minutes, start wrapping it up! Wrap it up, five minutes!!" Paws, heads, and tails started to emerge from everywhere as clean up wound down and everyone began dusting themselves off, putting their cleaning gear away, and getting ready for lunch.
"Let me have everyone's attention!" the machinery room's PA crackeled. "We're ready to wrap-up clean-up. Everyone be sure to put away your cleaning gear. The hit lists will be distributed after lunch. That is all." These were the words that Clay and Josh were waiting to hear--lunchtime! Within minutes the sound of the vacuums and scraping and dusting disappeared and the machinery room was once again alive with the whirring and buzzing and humming sounds of the machinery equipment alone.
The rest of the day drug on like any other day, though the two were a little more thankful to have full bellies than normal. 4:00 rolled around and half the workforce was allowed to leave, as promised, leaving only a few minor discrepancies from the hit lists to be finished by Clay and Josh's crew. As the sun went down the time sped up. It was much easier to get things done without the unnecessary distractions that seemed to plage the daylight hours.
Before they knew it, it was already past 11 at night and, more impressively, the work for the day, hit list and all, was done. All that was left was a little work site clean-up and the usual bit of last-minute paperwork.
"I can't believe it--we've finished almost an hour early tonight! what an awesome way to start our mid-week weekend!" Josh slumped his back against a pipe, wiping black grease from his paws."
"Yup," Clay replied, "ya missed a spot," he said, pointing to a smear of grease on josh's muzzle.
Josh rubbed at the spot with a rag, then bent down to pick up his stuff.
"Alright, well I'm going up to the break room to finish up this paperwork, see you up there!"
"See you up there, paperwork jockey!" said Josh, trying to reach a stray nut with his hind paw.
Clay sat at a table with forms and work packages strewn out in front of him and waved to Josh as he passed on his way to the locker room. Josh changed out of his coveralls and waited there for his buddy to collect his papers and talk to the oncoming crew.
"You done already?" Josh asked Clay when he saw him enter the locker room just minutes after seeing him in the break room. Yeah, they've got a pretty light load today, too, so I didn't have much to tell 'em." Clay stood beside Josh, who was sitting on a bench in front of his locker and said, "you wanna do something today?"
Josh's tail begun to wag, "sure, what do you have in mind?"
"I'll tell you what--you decide. don't tell me what it is, just figure it out and let me know what time you want me to pick you up."
"Um... okay. I don't have any ideas right now, but are you sure you don't want me to text you or something when I think of something?"
"Nope, I like surprises," Clay said, stuffing his work clothes in his black backpack and zipping it up. "I'll bring your coveralls from yesterday when I come to pick you up."
"Okay, and i'll have these washed for ya," Josh pulled at the borrowed t-shirt he was wearing.
"Cool. just give me a time! Later Josh," and with that, he turned and headed toward the old brick building and to his Jeep in the parking lot.
"...Later..." Josh said to the empty locker room. He gathered up his belongings and headed for the door.
At first, Josh thought to himself, "Why was Clay so cold to me today? Is it like he just wants to forget about what happened last night? ...there's no way, maybe he was just pre-occupied or something?" No sooner that those thoughts entered into his consciousness did he find his answer: "Of course! If anyone at work found out about us, we'd both be looking for new jobs!" He remembered someone he had met his first day on the job who was discovered to be having a relationship with, he assumed, another co-worker. He never saw the fur after that. "Why must things be so difficult?!" Thinking some more on the way out of the old brick building and to his car, a blue '09 Charger, he came to the realization that it really didn't matter. "Work stuff at work," he told himself, and got into his car and headed home.
"What are Clay and I gonna do today?" he asked himself, listening to some old skool Linkin Park on "The Fox" as he drove. "What to do, what to do..." The sounds of the radio filled his ears as he pondered...
"I got it!" he said aloud and sent a message to Clay's phone.
Clay was turning onto his street when his phone rang: "msg from JOSH: my house @ 11 :)"
He smiled deeply and sighed, texting back: "to JOSH RE: I'll be there! :)"