This isn't weird.

Business-business

A few weeks later, Ben suddenly found himself—unexpectedly and without actually trying—once again gainfully employed. The opportunity had arisen on one highly competitive Sunday afternoon of video games on Dustin's couch, a tradition that they were both glad to have reinstated. After gracefully accepting his third consecutive defeat at Mortal Kombat, Dustin turned abruptly to look at Ben, and asked ever so casually, "Want a job?"

"What?" Ben asked, blinking.

"You still don't have a job, right?" Dustin replied. "You want one?"

The answer left Ben no less confused. "Where?" he asked.

"Here," Dustin replied, gesturing around the room. "Well, technically there." He cocked his thumb toward the door leading to his garage.

"You're growing weed in there, aren't you?" Ben said, narrowing his eyes. "You know I'm terrible with plants. Do you even have a permit?"

"No, dude," Dustin laughed. "Not plants. Trees."

"What?" Ben shook his head. "You're fucking with me, aren't you?"

"I'm dead serious," Dustin insisted. He got to his feet and started toward the garage. "Come on, check it out."

Ben wasn't sure what he expected to see as he stepped through the door, but it certainly wasn't the horde of cat furniture that awaited inside. He looked around, bewildered, then moved forward for a closer look. There were at least ten finished towers of varying height and artistry crowded together on the east wall; one even looked like an actual tree. To the left was an assembly of smaller, whimsically shaped scratching posts—a cactus, a turret straight from a fairytale castle, a narrow rocketship poised for blast off— and to the right, equally whimsical little houses—a mushroom cottage, three miniature cabins, even one that looked convincingly like a hollowed out vintage television set. Ben had to walk over and touch it to confirm that it was, in fact, made of wood. He looked at Dustin, eyebrows high with disbelief.

"You built all these?" he asked.

"Yep," Dustin replied.

"How the fuck did you have time to do all this?"

"Oh, I didn't tell you. I quit my job a few months ago," Dustin replied with a shrug.

"What? Why?"

"Eh. I got a call from a headhunter at Boeing a while back offering me a thermal engineering position up in Portland. Aerospace. It would have been almost double the salary I was making here."

"Wait, a fucking aerospace engineer?" Ben asked, flabbergasted. "I thought you were, like, a home repairman?"

"Technically true," Dustin replied.

"Technically?"

"I don't actually get paid for that. I know a few elderly folks that need the help but can't afford it, so I volunteered to help out. I just kind of let people think that was my day job. It's a pain in the ass to explain to people what I actually do. Well, did."

"Goddamn, Dustin. So, what—" Ben tried to fill in the blanks. "The job offer fell through?"

"Nah," Dustin replied. "They really wanted me. Hell of a sign-on bonus. I went up and toured the facility, it was fucking amazing."

"And you... turned it down?"

"Yep."

"So... why did you quit the job you already had?"

"Well... being up there, surrounded by all that amazing tech, and brilliant engineers, I just realized... if I took the job, I'd be committing to a real career."