Wobble
It was only four o’clock in the afternoon, but Jack was exhausted already.
With a sigh, he put his truck in park and double-checked the address on his order sheet. Yep, this was the place. The house looked like a dump with a sagging roof on one side and scraggly weeds growing up everywhere on the postage stamp-sized lawn, but there was a late model SUV parked in the driveway.
“Typical,” muttered Jack, having become long familiar with the scumbags in these kinds of neighborhoods.
After gathering his toolkit, Jack walked up to the front door and rang the doorbell. A moment later, a short, squat man with balding hair, wearing a white wifebeater and shorts, appeared.
“Hi there,” said Jack. “I’m here from Acme Repair. You are... Miguel?”
“Yes, yes, come in, come in,” said the man, wiping some kind of red sauce off his mustache with a napkin.
Jack grimaced and stepped into the living room, which stank of old beer. There was a battered sofa along one wall as well as a well-used armchair, but the television was enormous, some kind of soccer game playing that Miguel quickly muted.
“The washing machine, she... I don’t know,” said Miguel, leading Jack down a narrow hallway with bits of paint peeling off the wall into a kitchen overflowing with unwashed dishes. “She don’t want to work no more.”
“Well, that’s why I’m here,” said Jack, wrinkling his nose at the melange of unpleasant odors.
Miguel led Jack down a flight of stairs into a musty basement absolutely crammed full of boxes and other detritus piled helter-skelter everywhere.
The washing machine, though, was a top-of-the-line KleenQween 2600, highlighted by a bare bulb hanging down from the ceiling, right next to a matching KleenQween QwikDry 5000 clothes dryer.
“Okay, I’ll leave you to it,” said Miguel, turning to head up the stairs.
“Hang on a second,” said Jack, getting out his clipboard. “It helps if you can describe the problem to me. Failure to drain? Spin cycle unbalanced?”
“Problem? Ah, yes, she no want to work,” said Miguel with a frown before clomping his way back up to the kitchen.
Jack sighed and then brought up the KleenQween 2600 service manual on his tablet. He’d only had the opportunity to work on a few of them before as they were high-quality machines that rarely needed servicing, but even the finest washing machine in the world will break down if it isn’t operated properly.
Following the procedure honed by years of experience, Jack set the washing machine up to do a practice run, carefully making note of any irregularities, but everything seemed to be fine until it got to the spin cycle where there was a noticeable wobble.
Jack knelt down and made sure the washing machine wasn’t sitting on a slope or that one of the legs wasn’t propped up by something, but everything appeared to be on the level.
Sure enough, a moment later, the washing machine stopped, throwing up error code 469, which according to the service manual, indicated that it was unbalanced.
Normally, modern washing machines were able to self-correct their balancing as long as they were on a flat surface, which this one was, so it meant that something was probably wrong with the internal gyroscope, which was bad since it meant Jack would have to disassemble the front housing.
It took a little more than an hour, but Jack finally figured out that one of the capacitors on the control circuit had gone on the fritz and would need replacing. Luckily, he had a spare in his van, but it wasn’t a cheap piece. The homeowner was already looking at a call-out fee plus two hours of labor time, so Jack went to go find him before installing the replacement capacitor.
When Jack got up to the living room, he found Miguel fast asleep in the armchair, the TV still blaring, now showing some kind of fast-paced game show of sorts that he couldn’t quite follow. Jack hunted around for a minute until he found the remote control in order to mute the TV, and then he gently shook the man’s arm to wake him.
“Huh?” spluttered Miguel, absent-mindedly scratching his belly as his eyes fluttered open.
“Hey, your washing machine has a broken capacitor,” said Jack. “I’ve got one in my van, but I just wanted to check in with you first.”
“Why?” grumbled Miguel, letting out a beery belch. “Just fix it already. Stupid girl hasn’t washed my clothes in a week, and I need to look fresh.”
“Yeah, well, the list price on that thing is $800,” said Jack. “Add that to everything else, and this job is gonna cost you around two grand. And just for the record, I don’t take credit cards, all right? Cash only.”
“Meh,” said Miguel with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Just fix it. I cannot stand wearing dirty clothes.”
“All right,” said Jack, shaking his head in disbelief as he made his way out to his van to get the spare part.
It never failed to amaze him to see people who lived like this, who were clearly poor and yet would throw their money away on stupid stuff like a high-end deluxe washing machine.
Heck, for two thousand dollars, he could’ve marched down to Wal-Mart and bought two or three brand-new ones. What did a guy living in a ramshackle house like that even need a KleenQween 2600 for, anyway?
Nonetheless, Jack wasn’t going to say no to a handsome payout, especially after the long, shitty week he’d had. He retrieved the spare part and then made his way back into the house and down to the basement. It took steady hands, but Jack finally got the capacitor installed, and then after running a diagnostic, put everything else back in place along with the front housing.
Once everything was buttoned up, Jack did another test load, and this time, the KleenQween 2600 purred like a kitten. She may have been relegated to the musty basement in some dipshit’s house, but she somehow managed to keep her royal dignity.
Anyway, the job was finally over, thank god, and now Jack could turn his mind to getting the hell out of there and grabbing some burgers on his way home.
In his precise, neat handwriting, Jack wrote up the bill for $2,683.13 and then closed up his toolbox. Upstairs, Miguel was in the living room, now eating a bowl of beans as he watched the news. Jack handed him the bill and then waited.
Miguel’s eyes scanned the bill, and then he set it down on the side table along with his bowl of food. He then stood up and carefully brushed off his shirt for a moment before looking up to meet Jack’s eyes.
“Listen, um, I don’t have any cash on me right now...” said Miguel.
“Ah, shit!” cursed Jack. “Are you kidding me? Dude, I told you I don’t take credit.”
“Hey, is okay, is okay,” said Miguel with a sly grin. “I pay you, yes? Just not with money.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” said Jack. “I don’t want any drugs. I want cash money, American dollars.”
“Oh, no drugs,” said Miguel with a chuckle. “Something much, much better. Girl! Get in here!”
Dumbfounded, Jack stood there as a young girl, maybe 16 or 17 years old, slowly made her way into the living room. She was completely naked except for a leather choker around her neck.
“Come,” said Miguel, wrapping his arm around the girl’s shoulder before turning to Jack. “We made trade, yes? You have sex with my daughter in exchange for fixing washing machine.”
“What the fuck?” said Jack, his eyes wide with surprise. He’d seen a lot of things in his time as a repairman, but this was truly a first.
“Look, she has pierced tongue,” said Miguel, the girl obediently opening her mouth to show him. “She is very well trained, you will see. One hour with her, and you will forget all about that pesky little repair bill.”
“This is insane,” said Jack, although his pulse was racing.
As completely fucked-up as the situation was, he had to admit that the girl had a fetching nubile quality to her, and it had been a long time since he’d done anything beyond jerking himself off to porn.
“Come on, this is a good deal for you,” said Miguel, signaling for the girl to turn around, which she did, giving Jack a clear look at all her tight curves and shapely round bottom. “She is the best whore in this neighborhood.”
“No, I c-can’t,” said Jack, sweat pouring from his brow. “This is wrong. I mean, fuck. That’s your daughter, dude.”
“And so what?” said Miguel with a laugh. “She’s a natural-born slut, just like all women. Tell the man you like to suck and fuck.”
“Yes, I love it. I love getting fucked, especially by a guy as handsome as you,” said the girl, swishing her hips in a way that made it hard for Jack to think straight.
“Tell you what,” said Miguel, his eyes wide with excitement. “You take her downstairs and give her a test drive, yes? And if you don’t like the pussy, well, maybe we can work out some other arrangement.”
Jack’s mind whirled as he tried to figure out what to do. The rational part of his brain was telling him that this was crazy, that there was no way in hell he was going to have sex with this guy’s underage daughter.
But the older, more animal side of him was already firing off a stream of hormones in eager anticipation of coupling with such an attractive young woman.
Feeling as though he were in a daze, Jack followed Miguel and the girl down the hallway, into the kitchen, and then down to where the newly-repaired KleenQween 2600 sat gleaming in the corner of that musty basement.
“All right, I’ll leave you two to it,” said Miguel with a chuckle as he turned and clomped up the stairs.
“Listen, I...” said Jack, having decided to forego the bill and get the hell out of there before this thing went any further.
“Hmm, I’ve always wanted to get fucked while pretending to be stuck in a dryer,” said the girl, opening the door to the clothes dryer and then kneeling down in front of it. “That’d be hot, don’t you think?”
Jack opened his mouth to protest, but then she bent over, shoving that pert backside right in his face, and then his biological instincts kicked in, deciding the matter once and for all.
