Don't quit your day-job.

"Make mine over-easy too, but I want bacon instead of sausage. And some white toast, please."

The Latino short-order cook nodded his head and turned back around to tend to the griddle. My new foreman, Paul, sipped his coffee as he stared at the sizzling food. The morning had gone well, but I wasn't sure if he liked me or not yet because he hadn't said one complete sentence. Maybe he'd open up over breakfast, maybe there was a dragon in his belly from last night's beer that had to be fed before he could socialize. I'd met a lot of men like that on the job. The twenty-year-old cook handed us our plates and we walked towards the register. It seemed a bit overpriced for college cafeteria food, but the novelty of eating something other than an egg sandwich made it worth the cost. Paul finally formed a complete sentence during our walk back to the jobsite.

"They're saggier than all hell, but I'd still love to give it to her."

Funny, I'd thought the same thing. Well, just the saggy part. A fifty-year-old Hispanic woman working as a cashier at a community college should probably not wear such low-cut tops. The site of those drooping monsters could cause a student's appetite to disappear thus affecting his academic performance due to malnourishment, and ultimately, the categorical demise of capitalism as we know it.

"Yeah, I noticed the same thing." I also noticed that Paul had started walking funny like his pants had suddenly gotten tighter.

"Gravity will do that to people, though." He snickered afterwards like he was in on the joke that the laws of physics were playing.

I looked down at the cuffs of his jeans to see if his testicles were dangling out. Paul was about sixty-five and should not have been talking about gravity's effects as if he were immune. He must've read my mind.

"Man, I'd like to rest my balls right on her chin. Then I'd shoot one right down her throat. She's been working here for a few years now, I've had some time to think about it."

By this time we'd arrived back in our section of the building. I closed the lid of the large metal toolbox and the two of us sat down on it to eat. There was a glimmer in Paul's faded blue eyes that hadn't been there that morning. One minor tail sighting and Paul turned into a raging nymphomaniac with the vocabulary of a phone sex operator. I wondered if he kissed his grandkids with that mouth.

"And that little Oriental slut in line behind us, I'd bone the living shit out of that one." I didn't bother reminding him that rugs were Oriental and people were Asian. "Then when I was filling her snatch up I'd shout, 'This is for Pearl Harbor, honey!' "

Paul was the kind to laugh at his own jokes, and he did. I joined him, but only due to the mental image of this withered and demented little Popeye of a man mounting such an innocent young co-ed. It didn't seem logistically feasible. Nature would not allow it, but those purple wonder-pills would make it possible if the opportunity presented itself. Man had beaten God again. No, it was too soon to know that verdict. Man had ignored God again, that was more reasonable.

"And that Spic chef they got over there, he'd better be hittin' that clerk off." Thankfully, no one at work ever guessed my ethnicity. I always let the remarks slide to avoid awkward tension. If not it'd be taboo, like someone tuning in to something other than a classic rock radio station on the construction site. "She doesn't wear a ring, she's probably single. She may be older, but she could show his punk ass a thing or two in the sack."

Paul was just short of drooling by this point. I practically heard the wrinkled skin of his ancient member growing. My stomach turned as I caught a glimpse of the sausage on his plate.

"Yeah," was all I could muster. I didn't want to encourage the conversation to continue. I'd had enough of my new foreman's voice for awhile. I wanted him to go back to pointing and gesturing and using simple phrases again. "Cutter." "Solder." "Inch-and-a-half elbow." Those were safe words. No degree of disturbing perversity there. Not unless he asked me to hand him a two-inch nipple or a gascock, or told me to go lay some pipe. Of all the trades I had to get into the one with the most room for run-of-the-mill innuendo. It was as predictable and painful as British humor.

A few silent minutes went by as Paul and I finished our meals. "That Spic chef" had made my second egg over-hard so my toast bounced off the yolk when I tried to free it's oozing orange goodness. I gave up on the rest of my food and looked over at Paul. He sipped his coffee and I lit the last cigarette in my pack. It didn't taste good, I'd smoked my lungs sore over the weekend while drinking with the boys. After taking a few miserable drags I smothered it out with the heel of my boot and flicked it across the room. Paul's phone rang and broke that precious silence.

"Hello?" he said tentatively after flipping the phone open and hugging it to his massive pink ear. He listened for two seconds and hung up.

"Telemarketer?" I asked with a half-assed chuckle. I was trying to be that likeable, funny apprentice who works hard when he's supposed to and shoots the shit on break like he's really one of the guys. It had always been a hard act for a recluse like me, especially stone sober. Still, the effort was necessary. This outfit was a reputable one and I wanted to stick around awhile.

"No," he replied quietly, raising his coffee to his mouth timidly like it might jump out and bite him. He'd lost that sparkle in his eye. Boner time was over.

"Angry ex-wife?" I persisted. It may have been the wrong move, but I had to respond with something. Letting it go entirely would be admitting that my first attempt at humor was foolish, thus negating any progress with earning brownie points.

"Yeah," he said just as solemnly as if someone had asked if his parents were dead and buried. I didn't know how to read it so I went in for the kill. Oh, hindsight...

"I have a few of those myself. Maybe it's time to change your number." Open mouth, insert foot, curtain begins to close.

As if on cue Paul's phone rang again. He didn't bother to look at the display screen, we both knew who it was. Regardless, he answered the phone the same as the first time. It pained me to watch him agree to take the beating we knew was coming. This time I heard it. "Listen, you son of a bitch..." but that was all she managed to get out before he closed his phone and returned it to the holster clipped to his belt as if nothing had happened.

Paul sipped his coffee again and scratched the bald spot on the back of his small head. I wondered how he managed to get a sunburn on it during the month of December and made sure to keep my mouth shut until it was time to go back to work. I wished I'd gotten coffee instead of chocolate milk. Then I'd have something to focus on during the imminent silence. This was why I'd become a plumber and not a stand-up comedian. This, Jack Daniel's, and a few noteworthy damsels in distress.

Paul would choose to like me or not and I would have little control over it. The clouds overhead parted and God donned a shit-eating grin as he re-staked his claim over Man once again, little purple pills be damned.