Pete, Suzanne and Bob

This story comes after "Nell Gives UP the Ski Bum Life".

Pete, Suzanne and Bob

Pete had known Suzanne for at least a decade. She had been roommates with Nell and him in Isla Vista, back when they all had attended UCSB. And Pete had a quirk that he didn't like strange women, or at least he didn't mix well with them. Molly had grown frustrated with this oddity when she would bring over friends to introduce to Pete when his current separation from Nell seemed permanent. Pete would be completely uninterested and would mostly simply ignore the women. Or worse, he would pick them apart over some trivial matter, saying he didn't like the way they dressed or talked. He'd once complained that a prospect's car was too big.

And when Molly and Jane packed up and moved to Colorado, Pete wanted his own person in that side of the duplex. The walls were thin, they shared the small yard and porch and there was little privacy. He wanted someone he knew, but not Nell. And this was no problem as she now had her trailer and would not move out of that for anything. He finally convinced Suzanne to abandon her swanky apartment over in Goleta and to take the duplex. He argued it's low cost and pleasant vegetation.

So Suzanne moved in with her little boy and she and Pete began a pleasant domestic life. The little boy was the result of Suzanne's impulsive pregnancy after one of her friends had a baby. Some guy she met in a bar and who didn't know the kid existed. But Pete liked the kid, so all was fine.

Suzanne worked as a contract software engineer and made even more than Pete and Nell, although there was no guarantee of another job after each six to nine month assignment ended. And they paid cheap rent. So there was plenty of money to go around and little to worry about. Suzanne knew that if she ever had trouble finding a new assignment, Pete was there and he would help her.

She and Pete had been lovers long ago, and they two soon began doing the “friends with privileges” thing once in a while.

But things probably would have ended here, with two friends living next door to each other, and with just a little bit of hanky-panky now and then, had not other outside events come forward.

First, Nell had decided to take a long vacation from Pete. She often did this, but this one lasted a little longer than usual. Most of the sympathy and nurturing Nell required had come from Molly. And Pete was a bit cold towards Nell, explaining to Molly that after ten years of Nell's bullshit he was tired of it. Molly had served as a sort of referee that kept the relationship alive. And when Molly left, things went off the rails.

Nell had put on a horrible, drunken screaming attack in Pete's half of the duplex. To the point that Pete handed her his sleeping bag and told her to go sleep on the floor in Molly's empty half of the property. And this made matters worse as the old duplex still smelled like Molly and Jane lived there, but they were long gone. Nell was flooded with memories of her old friends and felt more lonely than ever in the now empty duplex.

But she was the one that had always come crawling back after these types of incidents, and she resolved not to to do it this time. To teach Pete a lesson. To find out if Pete really cared or not. She had no intention of ending the relationship, she simply wanted a little leverage to fix what she saw as problems with it. And she didn't have Molly around to tell her that this might be a dumb idea.

Then Beatnik Bob got laid off from his job in Canoga Park, a hot, dry sea of dismal condos and sleazy apartment buildings in the San Fernando Valley. Bob was a slightly overweight, slightly unkept character who loathed his life as an aerospace engineer almost as much as he loathed the San Fernando Valley. And he was dropped from his job for the same reasons that Nell would soon be dropped from hers. Peace with Russian was making weapon's research less important.

And for all his freedom talk and bohemian ways, Bob was actually a responsible character. He hated his job but would never quit it. He realized he could never make the money he made there anywhere else, and he planned to set himself up somewhere in a proper manner.. And he cared about his parents, who were very proud of their son and bored almost everyone they knew with stories of his success in Southern California.

But to lose the hated job through no fault of your own? To be kicked out the door, on your a*s, without a word of say so in it? Hey, that was different. That was cool. And Bob felt a great sense of joy the first Monday he didn't have to show up at that hell hole and do his miserable job. He got drunk and chased women for a week before he finally settled on a plan. As there were no engineering jobs for him, he would return to UCSB and study something he liked, and then work in a field he liked, even if it didn't make as much money as he made the week prior. He showed up at Pete's door the second Saturday after his layoff.

“Doob man, what's up?” Said Bob as a greeting, stepping from his filthy Mustang. A car full of burrito wrappers and paper coffee cups that he was famous for. Almost a part of his personality.

“You up for the weekend?”, asked Pete asked from the duplex's tiny porch.

“Hell no, I'm up for good. Lost that s****y job last week and I'm free.” With this Bob spread his arms and resembled a sort of sojourner from a motorcycle gang. Both his black beard and long hair had gown since his last visit and his denim jacket was dirtier and more frayed.

“Lay offs starting down there? That was my great hope. If stuff went to hell here, before I starved, I'd go back to the Valley and get a job.”

“Well, if I were you, I'd try eating out dumpsters first. But that's just me. And besides, there isn't any hiring down there now. Everyone is getting laid off.””

“You seem happy” said Pete.

“I am. I hated that miserable f*****g job. But I could never decide to give it up. So they made up my mind for me. I told my mom and she cried. But now she thinks I'm a victim and not a bum. She would have thought I was a bum if I just quit. So it's all good.”

“Any idea what you might do?”

“Yeah, maybe be a bum. Check out the wino life for a while. Winos can live anywhere. So I'll finally get to live in a nice place.”

“There's a lot of competition for that around here. Especially down by the beach.”

“Nah, actually I'm going back to UCSB. Maybe study Oceanography. Learn to scuba dive.”

“You accepted for a grad program?”

“Nah, but I know I can get in as an undergrad and then bump up. I need to do some undergrad anyway. Get my core biology and chem courses.”

Mounting the porch he said, “That's what I came by to talk to you about. I'm wondering if I can stay here until I can get settled into my own place. I have unemployment and my severance package, but money's still tight, and my loans won't kick in until class starts this fall. But I can still catch half the rent.”

“Sure”, said Pete.

Bob had done the same for Pete down and the valley. And he liked having Bob around anyway, a person who made acidly hilarious remarks about people Pete disliked, engineers, managers, cops, rapture monkeys, etc. And Bob was a person who was usually up for almost anything.

“Bang some acid and drink a case of beer?”

"Why not?”

“Mescaline, Wild Turkey and Crank?”

“Yeah, if the shrooms are decent.”

“Get naked and set the lawn on fire?”

“Let me move my car first.”

In addition, Bob was no trouble. He only ate in restaurants and would quietly come home and crash on the living room floor. He wouldn't even disturb the back bedroom to use the toilet, preferring piss off the front porch rather than pass through rooms where people were sleeping.

Suzanne came back about six and set her two year old down to run about the yard. Pete and Bob came out of Pete's side of he duplex.

“Hey, you remember Bob”, said Pete.

“Yeah, I met you over at Rod's place. Bob, you remember, that old guy up on the hill that used to be a professor.”

“I remember. Hey, why don't we go hit that bar for a happy hour. I liked that old guy.”

“Rod told me not to bring the kid in”, Suzanne replied. “He runs around and bothers people.”

“Well you can go Pete. Can't you?”

“Yeah, I haven't been in a while. Let's go read some poetry.”

With this Bob and Pete piled into the Mustang and began pulling away from the curb.

“I'll be back in hour or two”, Pete called back to Suzanne in the porch.

They actually got back a little after 10:00 PM. Pete wasn't driving and he was pretty much blasted drunk. His eyes got squinty when he was in this state and Suzanne could see it. Bob, who was driving, seemed OK but he was rapidly using a pint of Wild Turkey to catch up.

“Turkey anyone?” Bob offered.

“No”, said Suzanne.

“I might have one”, said Pete, and then after a long pull on the bottle, “Whew, that burns”.

Pete didn't come over that night to watch TV or play friends with privileges. She could hear Pete and Bob laughing that “Har, har, har”, guy laugh for most of the night through the wall. Suzanne decided she didn't much like Bob, but decided to give it a chance as he was Pete's friend and Pete hadn't seen him in a while.

What clinched it was Bob's womanizing. Sue had always admired Pete because he didn't chase women. He had a few, choice female friends, such as Nell and her, that he had known for years. They all thought the world of him and would have been grateful to pair up if Nell ever completely blew it.

But Bob was different. Sloppy as he was, he somehow managed to attract scores of women. Most were nice looking and not very bright. He had a different girlfriend every couple of weeks. How he did this was no secret, and he had explained it to many a lonely guy just to watch his words go in one ear and out the other:

“Talk about them and don't talk about you, and make them laugh. That's all you have to do.” He would explain time and time again.

But Suzanne resented this, ahem, hobby of Bob's. She couldn't really articulate why, but she did resent it. In her more perceptive moments she felt that Bob didn't really give a damn about her, or about any other woman All could be easily replaced. And in many ways she was correct in this opinion. She began to compete with Bob for Pete's attention, taking him into her side of the duplex before Bob could convince him to set out on a tear about town.

But school started and Bob was no longer around. He was in class and on campus most of the day and in the library most of the night. He took diving lessons on Saturdays. He cleaned up his act and now only got really drunk a couple of times per month. Usually with Pete. The only danger Suzanne now felt was Bob's attempt to talk Pete into taking diving lessons with him.

“No, it's really great”, said Bob. “We go down about fifty feet off Goleta and it's a regular forest down there man. Stuff you never saw before. And there's abalone and lobsters that you can just scoop up with your hands. And that's all I've ever seen. People tell me there's places out there that make Goleta look boring.”

Bob would bring home abalone which he and Pete would BBQ. Cut it into little cubes,wrap each with a piece of bacon and toss it on the grill. Suzanne caught Pete with a catalog of diving equipment.

“Pete, don't get into that. Bob is gone on that boat for three or four days sometimes. And we don't see much of each other as it is.”

“Bob is studying marine biology and those trips are his classes. If you just want to go out, you can do it on a Saturday afternoon and then come back. Why don't you take the class too?”

“Because I have a kid to watch and I can't be gone all weekend every weekend. I want you to stay here with me.”

But all was well until Bob got his certification and finished his first semester. He then applied for, and got, a job as a diver on the oil rigs. A job that paid all the money in the world. Bob figured he could graduate debt free if he worked on the rigs alternate semesters. And this would give him a tremendous number of undersea hours and diving expertise.

He rented Jane's little cottage behind the duplex. He didn't need much space as he was gone most of the time, and being in the cottage let him hang out with Pete when he was around. He was now out on the rigs for ten days and then home for five. And Pete and Bob raised hell when he was home. Bob wasn't pinched for money anymore and he bought a Harley so he and Pete could cut around the mountains together. Pete on his old hard tail and Bob on the new eighty incher. The two would ride all day and then drink all night. Trips out of town to Big Sur were common.

But what really ended Nell's relationship with Pete was Pete's layoff. Suzanne was primed to move out of town to get Pete away from Bob, and Pete losing his job provided the means. 

One day Pete came home from work early, about 1:00 PM. He looked stunned and was more serious than Bob had ever seen him. After a short and unenthusiastic greeting he entered Suzanne's half of the duplex.

Surprisingly, it was Suzanne who came over to talk to him on the porch of his U-Haul sized house. Usually, she wouldn't even go in the back yard for fear of seeing him.

“Pete's really broken up”, she said. “He got laid off from his job today.”

“That was the happiest day of my life”, said Bob.

“Well, it's different for him. He was really proud to be working in that consulting firm, and not some s****y engineering shop like Delco or SBRC.”

“Yeah, I noticed that.”

“And it all came without any warning. He said he thought he had the world by the tail when he went in this morning, and then they called him in after lunch and canned him.”

“Wow. That would hurt. I knew my time was coming, and I got used that, and after that I couldn't wait for the ax to fall.”

“Keep this secret and don't tell him I told you, but he was the only one to get laid off. There are eight of them there and he was the only one. It's like they had to can somebody and Pete thinks they picked the least valuable person. Him.”

“OK, I won't say anything, but you should tell him that first, he's just the first person to get it today. Today. Who knows what's going to happen next week? And second, if you have eight people, and they're all pretty much the same at their work, they use different criteria to pick the victim. Like who has kids, who has a mortgage. Stuff like that. And Pete's single, with no debt, no kids and money in the bank. He's a prime target. So getting the ax doesn't mean he's the least valuable, it might mean that he looks like the most able to survive it.”

“I didn't think of that. I'll tell him.”

Pete had bucked himself back up by the next day and stopped by Bob's cottage.

“Welp, I'm joining you brother. I'm out on my a*s. 'Cept I didn't really hate my job.”

“Yeah, Suzanne told me.”

“My big fear is that I'll have to leave SB. I grew up here and really like it.”

“Yeah, it is a bit of paradise, but there's lots of other places in the world and lots of other jobs. I really like what I do now, getting laid off was a godsend for me. I'm so busy and happy that sometimes I even forget to get drunk. And if you have to leave here, it doesn't mean you have to go back to the valley. You're always talking about Oregon, why don't we gas up the bikes and head up and take a look on my next off period? Hell, I might move up too.”

“I think I'm going to go up with Suzanne. Her contract is just about over and she'll be out of work too. Might be better to look for a job up there. She does software for banks and stuff and they're not going down like aerospace. Might give us a foothold.”

And in this time of crises, Nell was forgotten and Suzanne and Pete became a true couple, supporting each other in the bad times. Bob paid two months rent on Pete's duplex, explaining the situation and telling the land lady to say she was waiving the rent because Pete was having trouble and he'd always been a good tenant. Bob knew that Pete would never take the money from him.

Some weeks later Pete and Suzanne had a big yard sale. Almost all of their furniture sat outside.

Bob approached, “Are you guys moving?”

“Yup, we're going up to find a place”, said Pete. “We're starting North of Fort Brag and working our way up to Washington. There ought to be something up there for us. Can you keep my bike? I'll come back for it when I get settled.”

“Sure, there's plenty of space in the garage. Not taking a lot?”

“No, just a stereo and a TV, and some pots and pans. Our clothes and camping gear. We figure we might be on the road for months.”

Six months later Bob got a call from Pete. He and Suzanne were living on Whidbey Island in Washington State. Just a little South of Langly. Suzanne was working for a bank near Everett, but as a regular employee and not as a contract worker. And Pete had landed a really good gig with a forestry company, one that let him spend a lot of time in the woods. They were renting a nice little house at the end of a dirt road. You could see the ocean from some of the windows. They planned to try to buy it from the owner soon. The kid was doing well. Pete said he'd be down to get his bike next summer and the two of them should ride up together.

Bob was in class now and he'd be working on the rigs next summer, and it would be hard to get away, but maybe if he explained everything to his boss he could get a couple of weeks.