The Friend

Rodney

"Aye, ain't that Maxine's friend walking down the street?" Michael asked on a mouthful, "What she doing here?"

"What do you mean? They live around here," Rodney muttered.

Michael accepted that answer and joyfully began to dig into his food again. As Rodney continued eating in silence, he thought about Maxine's friend again. That girl was beginning to get under his skin. How could Maxine be friends with her when she was a snob? He might not have chosen to go to college, but that didn't mean that those who did were smarter or better than him.

He looked at the direction she went walking in several minutes earlier and wondered if she had been coming back from teaching. The girl had to have been a teacher with the way she dressed. Blouses with ruffles and pencil skirts. It oddly looked better than what she wore to the party in a mundane way sort of way.

"You smashed Maxine yet?" Cortes asked him.

"Nah," he muttered, "I haven't seen her since that party."

"He saw her making out with some guy and got jealous," Michael laughed.

"Why? At least just hit it, alright?" Cortes asked.

"I don't know. I don't know if I want to deal with her—"

"Why? Cause of her friend?" Cortes asked. "I saw you guys arguing just now."

"Her friend's a bitch, man. There's plenty of girls here that I can get with instead of dealing with those two. I just have to hit someone up," Rodney said.

"Is that what you really want because you don't sound like you want to smash anyone," Cortes said.

Rodney rose, "I don't know. I don't care about any of that. I'm just tired. Tired of this, of being here...of doing the same thing. Are we gonna be doing this forever?"

"What? This work?" Michael asked and Rodney nodded, "Who knows?"

"We know. The answer is no. We have to get out of here and do something else. Make some real money," Rodney told his friends.

Michael sneered at that as Cortes responded, "It's easy for yo black-ass to say. You good if you want to do something else with the way you be solving those equations and helping Briefcase. And you don't have to help him, man. You could do your own thing. We can't."

Briefcase was the manager for their site. Briefcase often complained about his bosses, engineers and architects, who barely made visits to the job sites, and sat on his ass doing nothing. A year ago, when Rodney suggested a few changes to the construction plans for this school, Briefcase brought it to the architect and engineer who loved the new ideas. And so Rodney went uncredited for his input and Briefcase got all the notoriety. But that's the way the world worked.

Rodney had been doing this job for so long that he had picked up on creating designs and solving equations whenever something didn't appear right to him or could've been enhanced. It got to the point where briefcase leaned on him for his opinions.

Briefcase got his name because the first time they met him, he was holding a briefcase and they didn't know his name yet. Simple. Back then though, he was always trying to act like he was better than everyone else by holding onto it, but he truly loathed his higher-ups so he dropped the act. Still, when they found out his name, Clayton, they decided to keep the nickname anyway. It suited him. Briefcase dressed in designer shirts and slacks, was always freshly shaven, and whenever outside wore sunglasses. His name even became a verb as a joke. Whenever someone was going to freshen up for a party or event, they would say I'm going to get Briefcased.