Brian Jennings saw it coming the moment the beefy, tattooed arm dropped roughly, amiably onto his shoulder, saw it with the awful foreknowledge of a bystander watching a car stalled on the tracks before an oncoming train.
He was going to regret this visit. Immensely.
"You 'bout done talking business?" rumbled the owner of this arm, a burly civil engineer named Ralph Petroczyk, Brian's client. "It's lunchtime, and I'm getting thirsty," he winked, then laughed forcefully, expelling breath redolent of stale coffee and Juicy Fruit gum past the rows of tobacco-stained pegs that filled his mouth.
Brian winced under the weight of this solid, tanned limb, clad in a worn shortsleeved white business shirt, with its odd little tattoo of a flying sea serpent on its forearm. It was, Petroczyk was fond of pointing out in drunken pride, a symbol of his participation in the Korean War--the last real war, as he called it.
He endured Petroczyk with the stoicism of a true salesperson. Industrial air filters, that's what the company Brian owned sold; the kind used in big commercial heating and air conditioning systems.
Specialized wasn't the word for it. He couldn't let one single customer dry up, especially one like Petroczyk, who bought for some of the largest construction projects in the area. If it meant getting drunk with him or visiting the local titty bars with him, it was all worth it.
Brian slid his samples wearily into his oversize case, snapped it shut. Petroczyk must have been awfully geared up; he never started this early in the day before. But maybe lunch would get Brian out of having to entertain him tonight.
"Sure, Ralph," he said with as much enthusiasm as he could muster. "Where to?"
Petroczyk smiled mischievously. "Ah, ah, ah," he warned, waggling one horny, yellow-nailed finger at him. "My secret. Your treat." He broke into deep, rheumy laughter again.
Petroczyk had, in fact, just offhandedly dangled before him a rather large order that could provide Brian with a substantial third-quarter boost to his company's profits.
"Right," he smiled back, throwing his own arm, thin and ropey in comparison, around the older man's broad, corded shoulders. "My treat."
"Now you're talkin', junior."
)
