Fools Paradise

by Stevenson, Jennifer

  Goomba didn’t meet her eyes. “What a nice young man you got for a fiancé,” he said. “I won’t have to worry about your future welfare any more. A great guy, a steady guy.”

  You jerk. She did an eyeroll.

  “What’s for supper?” he said.

  Their day out was over.

  Chapter Ten

  Marty Dit called his best friend as soon as Daisy started supper. He took the phone outside, away from little pitchers.

  “Compagno, I got problem.”

  “I got your back,” Badger said easily. “’Sup?”

  Marty Dit lowered his voice, though Daisy was inside and on the other end of the house. “You know that ritardato Bobby Morton?” Between the two of them, there was only one Bobby Morton, Bobby the first, the sonofabitch. “He got my Daisy a job at the Opera House.”

  “What, making lattes in the coffeeshop?”

  “No,” Marty Dit said, pausing to add importance to his revelation. “Working electrics.”

  There was a pause. “No.”

  “Yes. She starts tomorrow.”

  Badger drew an audible breath. “You must be shitting stageweight yourself. Who’s gonna cook your supper?”

  Marty Dit scowled at the hydrangea bushes. “It ain’t about my supper, it’s about my angelina in that snakepit of fucking deckhands. She’s still got no sense. I took her to the Opera House cafeteria for lunch and a bunch of stockbrokers hit on her. She was hopeless,” Marty Dit said, omitting to mention Bobbyjay Morton’s role.

  Badger grunted. Thank God Badger understood. It was Badger who had dragged her butt out of a karaoke bar at two o’clock on a school day three years ago, and brought her home to her Goomba for judgment. Badger had a soft spot for the kid.

  “I can’t have this,” Marty Dit said, his voice cracking.

  “The kid’s a walking candy store,” Badger agreed, and Marty Dit winced. “What do you want me to do?”

  “You can’t get a gig over there?”

  “Yeah, I guess I could,” Badger said, sounding reluctant, and Marty Dit cursed under his breath. “Only I’m putting Morrissey through the Pavilion for four days. How about I drop by the Opera House on my dinner break?”

  Marty Dit squinted at a blue jay rocketing by. “You can get over there in that time?”

  “If I park like an asshole,” said Badger, who never parked any other way. “What do you want me to do? Scare off the strumenti?”

  Marty Dit closed his eyes, thinking. “No. No, she probably won’t get into too much trouble on her first day. The real assholes will scope her out first, figure out what kind of protection she has. Maybe the first day will scare her enough.” He thought. Then a golden idea occurred to him. “She’s probably still got a crush on you. Talk to her.”

  Badger groaned. “Aw, Marty, do I hafta?”

  “It’s puppy love. She can’t hurt you.”

  “I’m working on a dancer in the Ring cast.”

  “So make her jealous,” Marty Dit said in a hard voice. “Make ’em both jealous. You know your business best, goddammit,” he said, thinking of all the women Badger had had. It was only because Badger had been in the cradle at the time that he hadn’t been the one to steal the love of Marty Dit’s life, instead of Bobby Morton. And now a fucking Morton was stealing the light of his life again. “Do it.”

  “You know your business best,” Badger said.

  “Sarcastic bastard. You’ll do it?”

  Badger sighed. “Yup.”

  “I need your heart in this, my friend. She—” Marty Dit choked. “She’s engaged to that moron, Bobbyjay Morton.”

  Badger was silent again. Marty Dit savored the shock he knew he had administered.

  “His stupid fucking family filled my Targa full of smelt and then he took my angelina.”

  Heavy breathing noises came out of the phone. “This is war.”

  Well, at last. A reaction. “I can count on you,” Marty Dit said, positive.

  “Yup.”

  Chapter Eleven

  At ten-thirty next morning, Daisy was told she could take a break. Most of the guys headed for the Opera House back door so they could smoke. She watched them go with mixed feelings.

  It had been an eventful three hours. At seven a.m. Bobbyjay had escorted her into the presence of Pete Packard, a man whom providence had expressly designed to be the bad cop version of her grandfather. He was old and paunchy and his nose was red and he had a voice like Gene Hackman. The great man seemed to be in a bad mood. Bobbyjay seemed to think Packard might bite him.

  “Your grandfather know you’re workin’?” he’d said to her, just like Goomba in a grouch, and she’d lost a lot of her awe.

  She opened her mouth to tell him that Goomba knew and Bobbyjay stepped on her toe.

  “Uh, yeah, Pete,” he said, and cleared his throat. “It was my grandfather who called in for her.”

  Packard looked at him hard. “I din’t forget.”

  “No, sir,” Bobbyjay said and shut up.

  “I don’t want to hear a lot of whining ’cuz the work is hard, young lady.” Packard resumed his weary and displeased examination of Daisy. “Lot of women coming into this Local, and they all piss and moan. Way it’s been for a hunnert years ain’t dainty enough for ’em. You ain’t one of them, are you?”

  Daisy gave him the look she had used on nuns who didn’t like her. “No. Sir.”

  Packard looked her up and down and she remembered suddenly Bobbyjay telling her what to wear on the job. Maybe she should have listened.

  Pete sighed. “Awright then.” He stood up and walked to the door as if he couldn’t stand having them in his office one more minute. “You will show up on time. You will have your tools with you. You will be sober.” He looked her up and down one more time, and she fought the urge to slap him for it. “Try not to start no riot with my boys.”

  Really slap him.

  Bobbyjay hustled her into the corridor.

  “Don’t fuck with Pete,” he said, “if you ever want to work in this town.”

  Daisy had shut her mouth. Huh.

  And for the next three hours it went pretty much like that. Guys told her what to do in an impolite tone. Guys brushed up against her when Bobbyjay wasn’t around, or, when he was, looked at her in a way that would have had her siccing Wesley on them if Wesley’d been here. She got dirty and sweaty and after an hour she hated her crop top and low riders with such passion that she would have asked Bobbyjay to take her to the nearest Gap for some yuppy cover-up clothes if she could have found him.

  She saw a couple of women stagehands working on the electrics crew, but never nearby. They seemed in a subtle way to be guys. Their hair, the way they dressed. The way they yelled up at the darkness over the stage—the flyloft, her supervisor called it. If I see a pretty stagehand, like, a grrl, I’m gonna ask her what the fuck, Daisy vowed, swearing in her head.

  That was part of her problem right there. She heard plenty of language around Goomba’s house, but she wasn’t allowed to curse. Here, she suspected, saying ‘darn’ was like painting ‘victim’ on her forehead. ‘Darn’ plus the low riders.

  Overalls, she promised herself. Tomorrow. If I survive. She also promised herself she would apologize to Bobbyjay. And ask him about a million questions.

  But Bobbyjay was called away at the break to talk to the head carpenter. The other guys strode purposefully toward the loading dock for their smokes.

  The women stagehands passed her as if she were invisible. One of them glanced her way. “She’s related,” the other one said shortly, and the glance shifted.

  Feeling bereft and a deep loathing for the entire male population of the planet, she walked out the stage door on Wacker to stand under the monster colonnade. The next guy who pinches me, she thought, gets a kick in the balls.

  So when Badger Kenack came up behind her and blew in her ear, they both got a surprise.

  “Aaaagh!” he screamed.

  “Badger!” Remorse clu
tched her. “Omigod, are you okay?”

  Badger was busy cursing under his breath. He clutched his crotch and staggered up against the gold picture-frame that held the poster for Wagner’s Ring Cycle.

  In a squeaky voice, he swore, “Fuckin’ Marty Dit, I am never coming down here again, fuckin’ candy store with a fuckin’ doberman is what she is, ow ow ow.”

  “I’m so sorry, Badger! The guys have been pushing me around all day and I—I kind of snapped. Oh, God, are you okay?” She wrung her hands.

  The stage door opened behind her and Badger stood up in a hurry, lounging against the wall like the biggest wolf in the Local, looking a bit strained.

  “Yo, Mikey Ray. Weasel. Lon,” he said casually, nodding like he was the chairman of something.

  The guys eyed her and then Badger. Daisy sensed them withdrawing. An oh-fuck-she’s-Badger’s look was in their eyes.

  Weasel approached them with elaborate caution. Weasel had copped a feel of her butt on the rail this morning.

  “Uh, how’s your first day at work goin’, Daisy?”

  “You have a nerve asking me that,” she said calmly. Badger’s presence took the edge off her skittishness.

  “He bother you, Daze?” Badger said in a higher-than-normal voice.

  Before she could say anything, Weasel had his hands in the air. “Whoa, whoa, I wouldn’t poach, Badger. Shit, she’s like your daughter practically.”

  Daisy made a face at this. To her surprise, Badger looked sour, too. She opened her mouth and, again, nobody was listening.

  Badger said, “She’s engaged to Bobbyjay Morton. She’s Marty Dit’s granddaughter. And—” he squeaked, and paused.

  Daisy gritted her teeth because now he was about to tell everybody how he spied on her for her grandfather and ruined her karaoke career and “advised” her about guys in his own special way and he’d tell them all and she couldn’t stand it.

  “—And she just kicked me in the nuts. You got a fuckin’ death wish, Weasel?”

  Now the guys were looking at her. Finally. She tossed her hair over her shoulder and raised her chin at them, aware of her crop top rising over her bellybutton as she did so.

  The guys looked at each other and sidled away.

  Badger eyed her morosely. “I hope Bobbyjay Morton knows what he’s getting into.”

  “I suppose you’re going to tell him.”

  Badger moved toward her. He looked like forty miles of bad road. But oh, those eyes. The crinkles around his eyes got her pulse fluttering. In the light of day, next to the Opera House’s assortment of his brother stagehands, Daisy knew perfectly well that Badger was a wicked old roadie with more notches on his tool belt than any of them, including Ask-Me-Why-They-Call-Me-Weasel.

  Nevertheless, the fluttery pulse. Her tongue touched her lips.

  “Don’t break your grandfather’s heart, Daisy. I know he should have put you to work years ago. But Morton is his enemy and a fuckin’ moron. This is no way to punish him.”

  She almost told Badger everything, but three things stopped her. First, Burg the doorman stuck his head out the door and said the head electrician wanted her. Second, she thought of Goomba telling her she was too dumb for college and then practically siccing those stockbrokers on her. Three, she remembered Goomba pointing a gun at Bobbyjay and pulling the trigger.

  She lifted her chin. “He’s not a moron. And we’re engaged.”

  Badger sighed. He started to reach for her arm, but drew back warily. “Let me take you in. I’ll make sure the electrician leaves you alone.”

  She read him a lecture about using excessive influence on her behalf, all the way to the stage right rail.

  Meanwhile Bobbyjay Morton was taking a ribbing from Lon Murphry. “Kicked him in the balls. Badger Kenack! You better hope he don’t take it out of yours with interest, haw haw.”

  “What did Badger do to get kicked in the nuts?” Bobbyjay said, homing in on the important part.

  “Who the fuck knows? I know Weasel been after that thang all day and she din’t lay a finger on him. Yet,” Lon said, licking his lips.

  “I know you’re desperate for the attention,” Bobbyjay said after some thought, “but honest to God, Lon, a kick in the balls from my fiancée feels just the same as a kick in the balls from, like, me.” It was no use trying to look menacing. Bobbyjay knew his baby face was about as terrifying as the busboy’s. But he did outweigh Lon by a hundred pounds.

  “No prob, buddy,” Lon said and changed the subject.

  “What you been up to?” Bobbyjay asked Daisy in an undervoice when he collected her at the end of the workday. “You kick Badger in the nuts. You did something to Weasel, I’m afraid to ask what.” Weasel had come up to him in the afternoon and apologized for stepping out of line with Daisy. For pete’s sake, Weasel Rooney! Anxiety made Bobbyjay read the worst into the glances of departing stagehands. He tried not to snarl at them. Wouldn’t do any good.

  Serene and lovely with soot on her hands, on her cheeks, across her mini-shirt at tit-level, and on her bare bellybutton, Daisy sashayed beside him, eyeing suits and being ogled in return.

  “I’ve got a lot to learn,” she said. “Like, what’s it mean, I’m ‘related?’”

  “Related?” he replied absently. “That means some dumb ex-son-in-law or a relative who got the office to hire him even though he’s useless. Oh,” he said, as his brain caught up with his mouth.

  They were stopped at a Don’t Walk sign.

  She met his eye. “I should have listened to you. I’m sorry.”

  Bobbyjay was speechless.

  She put her hand on his bare arm. “You’ve been so great, Bobbyjay. I’ve wanted this for three years and you made it happen.” She dimpled. “Wesley will be sooo jealous! Tomorrow I’ll wear something for getting dirty,” she said, and Bobbyjay whanged up a boner. “And put my hair back.” He thought he heard her sigh but the traffic was godawful loud. She added, “I don’t want to inflame these losers any worse than I have already.”

  “Took the words right out of my mouth.” A flash of gratitude and lust overwhelmed him. She thanked him. She said he was right.

  She looked down at herself. “Boy, I’m a mess.”

  “You look hot,” he blurted.

  Flushing, she glanced into a plate-glass restaurant window as they walked by. “You think so? Oh my God, my face is all black!” She stopped dead and scrubbed at her cheeks with her blackened hands, making it worse, and he took her hands and led her into the parking ramp. “You’ll help me with tools?”

  “We’ll stop at my place and pick you up some of mine,” he said, dragging his mind out of the gutter.

  “I bet you have a big tool collection already.”

  Christ, Morton, rein in your imagination. “Uh, yup.”

  “And Bobbyjay? Tomorrow I want to try to be just me. Between you and your grandfather and Badger and that rude Packard guy—” Bobbyjay cringed and hoped nobody would hear her. “—Everybody’s using their pull for me and I think that’s just going to annoy people. Those dykes already called me related. So, no hovering and fussing over me, okay?”

  Bobbyjay opened his mouth, trying to find any part of this speech he could safely address. “They’re not dykes. Well, some aren’t. Liz was boinkin’ Jack Yu for fifteen years and nobody knew about it until they, like, finally got married.”

  “Oo, scandal.” Daisy looped her arm in his and bumped against him, making him sweat. “Tell me everything.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Goomba was waiting for her when Bobbyjay dropped her off. “How did it go? They treat you okay?”

  “Fine,” she chirped, thinking longingly of a shower. She knew he would notice the dirt on her face, hands, crop top, low riders, and every exposed inch of skin on her midriff. “I had fun.”

  She breezed past him into the house, dumped her purse in the hall, and pelted up the stairs. Maybe she would be able to get that shower before—

  “What’s for supper?” Goom
ba shouted up the stairs after her.

  She stopped, sighed, turned around, slumped back downstairs and into his flat.

  Vince and Wesley were sitting on the couch watching a dog race.

  “How’d it go?” Wesley said anxiously.

  “What’s for supper?” Vince said.

  “Went great,” she said. “Linguine and white clam sauce. Supper’s on in twenty minutes,” she called over her shoulder. It would take more time than that, but she was counting on Wesley to help. Sure enough, he followed her into the kitchen.

  But every favor comes with a price. “How’d it go?” Wesley said again as he pulled plates out of the dishwasher.

  “Good, great. I met a ton of stagehands.” She threw butter and garlic into a saucepan and opened a bottle of clam juice.

  “Were they polite?” he said darkly.

  “Mm, most of ’em.” She dumped a can of clams into the butter. “Start the pasta water, will you?”

  Wesley turned in the act of filling the big pot. “Who was it?” he said in a throaty voice. “Who disrespected you?”

  “It was nothing.” When the clams were heated through she removed them with a slotted spoon and set them aside.

  “I gotta know who I hafta kill,” Wesley said, channelling his sixteen-year-old fantasy version of Badger Kenack. He got the burners going under the big pot. “Which linguine batch?”

  “Um, Tuesday’s. White.” She stirred a little flour into the liquid in the saucepan and heated it until it turned brown. Then she whisked in the clam juice.

  “Aw, no spinach?”

  “Okay, the spinach.” She hadn’t the heart to deny him, tonight. The thought of her first day of real work still thrilled her, even after all the hassles. Besides, she didn’t dare give the men any reason to complain about the service.