Arthur Knob checked to make sure he had his paper sack full of dimes in his pocket before shouldering through the door of Big Stan’s Diner. Not that he couldn’t feel the weight of them dragging down the left side of his jacket of course, but he felt that he had to check to avoid potential embarrassment later. Luckily, Big Stan was not in the diner otherwise Arthur would have received yet another lecture regarding the polite way to open a door. Arthur had had one too many bad experiences touching doorknobs sticky from unknown substances while making deliveries to the less reputable establishments in Port Haven to be altogether comfortable with doorknobs.
As always, upon entering Big Stan's Diner Arthur was faced with a dilemma: should he sit in Abby's section and annoy her by being "That Damn Dime Guy" or sit in one of the other waitresses' sections and risk not getting to talk to Abby at all? And as he always did, Arthur chose to sit where he knew he would get to talk to the tall brunette who almost certainly hated his guts.
"Well if it isn't That Damn Dime Guy, come back to haunt my waking nightmare. The usual, I assume?" Abby was already writing down his order before Arthur nodded. She was almost as tall as he was with straight brown hair that was always pulled back in a tight bun to keep stray hairs from landing in customers’ food. She had blue eyes and long legs that drove Arthur crazy. She smiled at everyone but Arthur when the entered the diner and that drove him an entirely different sort of crazy.
"Rough morning?" Arthur asked, hoping to steer the conversation in a new direction.
"What, a rough morning at the diner across the street from the sleaziest bar in town? I've been groped twice, thrown up on once, and had a bowl of gravy dumped in my hair by a guy who was still drunk from last night," she growled as she wiped down the counter.
"At least that's not as bad as last time I was here. You'd gotten thrown up on three times that morning!" Arthur pointed out happily.
Abby glared at him. "Obviously you're good luck," she said dryly before walking away to attend other customers.
"Yes, very smooth. Remind her of the last time she was vomited on," Arthur muttered to himself.
Just when he thought his morning couldn't get any worse, Arthur's hot-headed landlord Lester Gearhart stormed into Big Stan's Diner.
"Get me some God-damned coffee!" Lester bellowed at Abby. Arthur's landlord was a perpetually angry man in his early forties with a pot belly and only a fringe of greying black hair remaining behind his ears. Where some people had laugh lines Lester had scowl lines and he leveled a mighty scowl in Arthur's direction as he sat down beside his tenant.
Abby gave Arthur a look to let him know she considered this newest development in her terrible morning to be entirely his fault. Then she put on her best fake smile and poured Lester a cup of black coffee. "Here you are Mr. Gearhart. Isn't it great that we haven't gotten any rain this week?"
"No," Lester said grumpily. "I wish it would rain and rain until my ex-wife's house was washed away down that preposterous hill she built it on just to spite me after I told what a lousy idea it was!"
"That's too bad!" Abby was great at making all the diner patrons besides Arthur feel like she genuinely cared about their inane problems.
"Speaking of which," Lester rounded on Arthur, "we need to revisit your rent agreement. The ex is bleeding me dry."
"I don't know if I have time to make any more rent..." Arthur tried to tell him. "I'm working a lot as it is just to pay what you want now."
"Oh, so you have time to come down here and ogle waitresses, but you don't have time to pay your bills?" Lester bellowed loud enough to make sure the whole diner heard.
Arthur felt his face turning bright red from embarrassment. Abby was still standing right in front of them, smirking as she watched the show unfold. "Ogling, huh? We charge extra for that, you know."
"I wasn't-" Arthur began, but Lester interrupted.
"Quit trying to change the subject! You owe me twenty percent more at the end of this month! What the hell am I doing sitting next to your ugly, scrawny ass?" Lester stormed off to find an empty booth.
“Do you pay him in dimes too?” Abby asked with a smirk on her angular face.
"Yes,” he admitted. “I wasn't ogling you though," Arthur muttered without looking up at Abby.
"I know, honey. You don't have the courage to do any such thing." She reached across the counter to ruffle his unruly blonde hair.
Arthur ate his omelet when it arrived and stacked his dimes neatly on the counter for Abby when he was done.
"You tip well, I'll give you that. Of course, if you didn't tip well and tried to pay with dimes I'd kick your ass," Abby warned.
"I know. Thanks for breakfast," Arthur told her as he left.
+
Arthur climbed into his 1987 Ford Festiva and started the engine. The mostly blue, except for the yellow and green replacement doors, little car groaned and squealed and wheezed, but it started on the first try. Arthur drove back to the little house on the lot behind Lester's laundromat where he lived. The house had been built by Lester's grandfather back in the Twenties without bothering to get any of the proper permits or have any of those pesky inspections done since. Naturally, that meant the house was in a fairly sad state of repair, but it was free. At least as long as Arthur kept the dimes pouring in.
You see, Arthur did not have a job, per se. During his last year of college Arthur had won a set of dime minting plates from an incredibly disreputable frat guy's even more disreputable father in a wager over who could drink the most tequila shots in half an hour. Tequila consumption was one of Arthur's few enviable natural abilities. After earning his bachelors degree Arthur had returned home and much to his surprise, he had found a thriving demand existed for counterfeit dimes in his little hometown of Port Haven. Most of the local business owners were morally ambiguous and were utterly thrilled to pad their bottom lines by buying Arthur's dimes for pennies and giving them out as change at face value to their customers.
Arthur parked the Festiva in his driveway and left it unlocked. No one in their right mind steals a Festiva, especially not one that looks like Arthur’s. The paint on the house's exterior was a peeling and faded yellow, one of the windows was still broken from when his idiot friend Duke got drunk and threw a beer bottle through it last Halloween, but there were carefully groomed rhododendrons in the yard and the grass was green and neatly trimmed. Arthur enjoyed taking care of his lawn, even if he didn't have any money to fix the rest of the house.
Most of the living room was filled with his minting equipment and boxes of dimes in varying states of emptiness were lined up along the wall. Arthur studied his boxes and realized with a cringe that the only one with enough dimes to cover the cost of new materials to meet Lester’s demands was the one he never wanted to borrow dimes from. People who did not meet their obligations to City Councilman Thomas Varner had the unfortunate habit of having their lives ruined quite thoroughly. Varner was the heavy hitter in Port Haven’s small town approximation of an underworld. His legitimate business was a grocery store, but he had various other interests ranging from moderately classy prostitutes to gambling dens to unlicenced boxing matches. He was Arthur’s primary customer as well as the one who had put him in contact with most of his other clients. Arthur owed his success, such as it was, to Varner and the crusty old bastard seemed to like Arthur for some reason.
“I’ll just have to work all night,” Arthur told himself as he shifted bags of dimes from Varner’s box to Burt Cable’s. Burt owned the local hardware store in addition to his true passion in life: building killer robots and making them fight to the death. As such, Burt was Arthur’s supply line for the necessary minerals to mint new dimes. And just like everyone else Arthur associated with, Burt was paid in fake dimes to give out to his customers as change.
Arthur loaded Burt’s now full box of dimes into the Festiva, which weighed the poor car down severely. The Festiva protested loudly against being started again after such a short rest, but Arthur eventually coaxed it to life and he lurched back onto the road towards Burt’s Hardware. Arthur parked behind the hardware store and entered through the service entrance with his giant box of dimes in his arms.
“Hey Burt, I’m early and-” Arthur began.
“Everybody down!” Burt shouted as he hit the linoleum. The staff, quite used to these sorts of outbursts, did the same as did Arthur. Whatever creation Burt had been tinkering on exploded and bits of robot flew in every direction. “Anybody hurt?” Burt asked when it was over.
A chorus of nos eased the hardware store’s back room back into a state of normalcy. Arthur dusted himself off and waved at Burt.
“Arthur, what are you doing here? You aren’t due for another three days!” Burt had a tendency to shout everything he said. He was a especially exuberant fellow.
“Lester wants twenty percent more dimes so I need more raw materials,” Arthur explained.
“You ought to be rid of that hot headed heart attack waiting to happen by now,” Burt mused as he ran a hand through his thinning red hair.
“Do you have a place I could rent?” Arthur laughed as he asked.
“And what the hell would I do with an extra helping of your dimes?” Burt shook his head. “No, you ought to get married. It’s good fun, I’ve done it three times!”
Arthur chuckled. “And only two of them have tried to kill you in your sleep.”
“Nah! All three, I just tell people it’s two so the ladies think I have redeeming qualities.” Burt grinned from ear to giant ear. “But don’t you worry, I’ll have one of the boys bring by your things later this morning. I don’t even have to check that box of yours, I’m sure you’ve paid the correct amount, you’re too honorable for your own good. Just because this is a small town, don’t think there aren’t sharks circling out there. Ask Old Man Varner, he’ll gladly tell you. I hear he likes you better than he likes his own children.”
Arthur shrugged. “That isn’t hard, his kids are all spoiled brats who live as far across the country as physically possible.”
“Do you blame them? Varner scares the bejeezus out of me!” Burt shuddered.
“I’ll see you later, Burt.” Arthur nodded goodbye and left the way he came.
+
Arthur worked all day and well into the night minting dimes to make up for the lost dimes he’d paid Burt. He finished up around one in the morning and staggered across the street to his favorite bar. Though to be fair, it was the only bar he went to because he had traded a generous helping of his dimes for free drinks with the owner.
Bill, the Tipsy Slug’s owner, was nowhere to be seen tonight, but Arthur’s good friend Sam was tending the bar. Sam was a spitfire of a redhead who didn’t put up with anybody’s shit no matter how smoothly they talked to her. She and Arthur had gone to high school together and been friends then, but they had lost touch when he went away to college, at least until he had moved back to Port Haven.
“Hey Sam.” Arthur’s eyes were bleary from working all day and he put his head down on the bar before realizing how bad of an idea that was. Rubbing the stickiness from his forehead, Arthur sat up and grinned at Sam.
“You did something stupid today, didn’t you?” Sam asked as she fixed him a tequila sunrise.
“I let Lester raise my rent by twenty percent just because his ex-wife is on his ass for more alimony,” Arthur told her.
“You should come live with me. We have an extra room in the house.” Sam set his drink down in front of him. When she read his mind like this Arthur almost wished he and Sam weren’t just friends that felt incredibly awkward around one another after they got drunk and made out occasionally.
“But I hate your roommates,” Arthur complained. Sam made a damn good tequila sunrise and he took a long swig.
“You hate everyone!” Sam laughed. She poured him a shot of tequila and slid it over to him.
“And you always try to get me drunk! I just started on this.” He gestured to his sunrise.
Sam held up a finger. “First, there is no ‘trying’ to get you drunk. I always get my drunk when I set out to get a man liquored up! Second, take your shot!”
Arthur slurped the shot of tequila she had given him. “There, happy?”
“A bit.” Sam smiled. “Now finish your drink so you’ll be feeling drunk enough to play the game.”
“Oh come on, Sam! I’ve had a long day, don’t make me play the game!” Arthur begged her.
“No one’s making you play.” She poured three shots of tequila in front of him. “But when you do agree to play the game, don’t forget the last part. Your neglected that last time and I was very cross!”
“God dammit,” Arthur groaned.
“You know if you resist I’ll start adding shots to these three,” Sam threatened with a friendly grin on her face.
“Shit. Fine!” Arthur downed all three shots in rapid succession and then hopped up on his stool. “I’ve a little old fashion passion!” He shouted in a semi-singsong voice. “That would make a Hessian blush!” Sam laughed so hard she snorted behind the bar. “I came from behind in the shower, now he don’t sit down so much!” The entire bar burst out laughing and applauding. This was not the first time Sam had made Arthur play the game.
“Yay, that was beautiful!” Sam guffawed.
“You’re beautiful!” Arthur reached across the bar with his long, gangly arms and grabbed Sam by her oversized, stupid, cute ears and tugged her close enough to kiss her on the mouth. Then he tried to sit back down, missed his barstool, and fell flat on his bony ass. “See, I didn’t forget the last part this time!”
Sam laughed and laughed as she walked around the bar. She handed him his drink rather than helping him up. “You are a piece of work, Arthur Knob!”
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