by Plakcy, Neil
Cuban parents like to keep their kids close, and it was a real fight to get my parents to let me accept the room in the dorm that came with my scholarship to FU. My mother cried for two days, as if I were dead, even though I was moving only a dozen miles away.
By going home every Sunday for dinner and answering every text my mother sent, I gradually got my parents accustomed to my living away from them. I never told them what kind of a frat the Three Lambs was, and they didn’t seem to care. I never invited them to visit me on campus.
When I got the chance to share the apartment with Gavin and Larry, I was sure they’d complain again. But strangely, they seemed okay with the idea as long as I still kept coming home.
I sat down at the plan desk, beginning with the first set of documents, detailing the site work. I had taken a class in infrastructure, so I was able to move quickly through the details of earthmoving, foundations, and laying down sewer, water, and electric conduits.
Adrian came in with a plumbing contractor as I was going through the documents. I nodded hello and stepped aside as they went over an MEP plan—mechanical, electrical, and plumbing. When they left, I went back to work.
“Lunch?”
I looked around, and Estefani was standing in the doorway. “You have to remember to order with me by eleven thirty, or you won’t have anything to eat during the meeting.”
She handed me the menu, and I chose a chicken Caesar salad. “You sure you want that?” she asked. “Most of the guys get sandwiches.”
I took the hint. I didn’t want to stand out on my first day. I looked at the menu again. I couldn’t order a meatball sub; what if I spilled something on my new shirt? “How about a burger?” I asked.
“Sounds good.”
I ordered a bacon cheeseburger with lettuce and tomato and a side of fries.
“The meeting’s going to be in here,” she said as she left. “Noon.”
A few minutes before twelve, guys started coming into the conference room. I recognized Camilo and Adrian, but there were many I didn’t. We all sat at the big table, and Estefani came in carrying a cardboard box filled with wrapped packages. She put it down in the center of the table, and the guys converged on it like lions on a dead gazelle. I held back until there was a single burger left in the box.
“I was supposed to get fries,” I said. “Somebody got extra?”
No one said anything. No wonder they had all jumped on the food. “No prob,” I said. I sat down as Walter walked in, carrying his own lunch.
“We have a new assistant manager,” he said, as he sat down. “Everybody, meet Manny.”
Between mouthfuls, the other guys said hello.
“Be kind to him; it’s his first day on his first job.”
“Quinto!” one of the guys said. I knew that was Spanish for virgin.
“That’s not what your sister says,” I answered in Spanish, and the crowd guffawed. Adrian even slapped me on the back.
Walter went around the room as we ate, asking everyone for progress reports. I wanted to take notes, but I thought that would be too geeky, so I tried to remember as much as I could—which super was responsible for which part of the site, how the progress was going on excavation, on concrete formwork, on pours.
Walter was on top of everything on the site, lecturing the infrastructure manager about sloppy workmanship or challenging the site manager to meet his schedule, which had slipped due to heavy rains. Like most Miami Cubans, myself included, he switched effortlessly between English and Spanish. His deep baritone could purr or bark depending on his mood. When he purred, my dick tingled, and I shifted uncomfortably in my chair.
After lunch, he said, “Come with me, Manny. I’ll walk you around the site.” As he leaned close I got a whiff of his lemon cologne. When he put his arm around my shoulder, I felt a zing directly to my groin.
It was hot as a bitch out there on the flat plain, with no trees to offer shade. We were right under the flight plan for one of the major airport runways, though, so every few minutes we’d get a hell of a breeze blowing dust in our mouths, accompanied by the throaty roar of engines straining for lift.
I struggled to connect what I saw on-site with what I’d read about in the plans. Steel beams swung by, dangling in midair like huge, ungainly birds; roofers climbed the steel exoskeleton as if it were a jungle gym; and a concrete truck rumbled up, its mixer rotating slow as a giant snail.
“Follow me,” Walter said. He walked over to the site of the second warehouse, where concrete footings were being poured. A rusty chute came out of the back of the mixer, and an evil-smelling gray slurry rolled down the slope. A stocky workman with a yellow hard hat had the sides of the chute locked between his legs. He guided the slush into a trough on the ground between a palisade of wooden forms.
“What’s the difference between cement and concrete?” Walter asked me, raising his voice over the noise of the mixer.
“Concrete is made of cement, water, and an aggregate like sand or gravel,” I said.
“You ever stick your hand in it?”
I shook my head. I’d read about how to build concrete forms for building footers, but I’d never seen them in operation, and I was fascinated by the whole process, as well as weirdly turned on by the sexual implications of the giant phallus sticking out of the truck’s rectum, and the way the workman straddled the vibrating tube and controlled it with his massive thighs.
Walter walked up and plunged his hand into the lumpy gray mix. He brought his hand up, rubbing his fingers together. “This won’t pass the slump test,” he said. “Look how thin it is.”
He held his hand out to me. “Good concrete holds together more than this mierde. You’ve got to get a feel for it. Here, stick your hand in.”
I hesitated.
“Go ahead; there’s no alligators in there.”
I plunged my hand in.
“Feel it?” Walter asked. “Too thin.”
I nodded. “Feels thin to me.”
We rinsed our hands off at a pump next to the truck, and I followed Walter to the concrete super. Switching rapidly between English and Spanish, he told the super what was wrong with the mix and that he expected it to be changed pronto.
“Sí, Señor Loredo.” The super whistled at the guy controlling the chute and slid his hand across his neck. Then he walked off to talk to the truck driver.
I was sweating like crazy, water pooling under my arms and in crescent shapes under my pecs. Walter wasn’t showing any sweat, but when I stood next to him, his smell gave me a woody I had to turn away to conceal.
“Come on; let’s keep going,” he said, and he clapped his hand on my back. I thought that if anybody noticed my hard-on I’d die of embarrassment.
Everywhere we went, Walter introduced me and pointed out things I should know. The utilities for the third warehouse were going in underground, and the site for the fourth building was being graded. We were out there for an hour, and by the time we got back to the air-conditioned trailer, I felt like I’d taken a bath in warm water. Walter still looked cool and composed, though.
“I thought you were Cuban,” he said as we climbed the two steps into the trailer. “You should be better in the heat.”
“My family only made a pit stop in Cuba,” I said. “Not long enough to affect our DNA. My papi reminds us all the time that we’re really Spanish, from the mountains in Andalusia.”
“That explains your fair skin,” Walter said. “And I can hear some Castilian in your Spanish too.”
I hadn’t realized Walter was paying such close attention to me.
“Well, better get back to those plans,” he said. “I’ll have a list of projects for you to handle on the site first thing tomorrow.”
I returned to the conference room and picked up the plan review where I’d left off, basking in the glow of Walter Loredo’s approval.
A million challenges ran through my head as I worked—mastering all the technical material, learning which super was respo
nsible for which scope of work, becoming one of the guys in what was shaping up to be a very macho environment. But the biggest problem of all was how I was going to work with Walter Loredo every day when I already had a massive crush on him.
Change Orders
The next morning I wore one of the polo shirts Estefani had given me, with a pair of jeans and my Doc Martens. On my way to work, the street lights along the highway glowed in a halo of morning fog and an orange glimmer in my rear-view mirror promised dawn would come soon. I pulled up at the trailer about six forty-five and was surprised to see a row of cars already there.
A couple of construction managers slunk past, looking sleepy and hungover, and I followed them into the conference room, nodding hello to those who acknowledged me. Around the table, guys fumbled with papers and coffee cups. Camilo stood next to the tiny window, coughing hoarsely as he lit up a cigarette, then blew the smoke out under the jalousie.
Walter walked in promptly at seven, handsome as ever in the dark green polo shirt that reflected his eyes. He began with a weather forecast from his smartphone. Temperature, winds, and rain all had an effect on our construction, so we had to know what was expected and plan around it. The prevailing weather pattern for Miami was a thunderstorm every afternoon in the early part of the summer. Any work sensitive to the elements, like fine grading of the warehouse pad, had to be done before the rain swept in.
He led us through a quick meeting about what had to be accomplished on-site that day. Everyone spoke English, which put Camilo at a disadvantage. He was waiting on a delivery of ten-inch sewer pipes; there was some kind of shortage he wasn’t clear about.
“You talked about that yesterday,” Walter said. “How come you haven’t done anything about it yet?”
“They got no ten-inch pipe in the warehouse,” Camilo said, his accent heavy.
“Talk to the engineer. See if we can swap out for nine-inch. I always thought that pipe was overengineered. You’ve got barely a two-foot decline in that line, and nine inches should get us enough flow to meet code.”
“Sí, jefe,” Camilo said.
Walter turned to Adrian. “You get the scope of work for the flooring yet? I want that out to bid yesterday, if not sooner.”
“Drove over to the architect’s office last night after work,” Adrian said. “Stood there until he finished the last calculations and printed the drawings for me.”
“Good man. That’s the kind of initiative I like to see.”
We were done by seven thirty, and as the rest of the guys filtered out, Walter said, “Manny, come to my office and let’s talk about what you can do.”
I followed him, trying not to notice the way his black jeans hugged his ass. “Let’s get a couple of terms straight,” he said as I sat down across from him. “Loredo Limited Partnership Number Six is the developer of this project. I’m the president of that entity as well as of Loredo Construction.” He slid a piece of paper across his desk at me—an organization chart that showed Walter at the top. Beneath him were Camilo and Adrian. Estefani also reported directly to him, and he sketched in a box for me as assistant manager, with a line up to his name.
“LLP Six hired Loredo Construction to build this project,” Walter said. “LC is the general contractor, and we hire subcontractors for each trade. I’m the only one authorized to sign contracts, but Adrian and Camilo can negotiate schedules and prices.”
He handed me a blank contract of the kind he used when hiring subcontractors. “I want you to know this contract from front to back. You’ll be in charge of the project schedule, which means knowing what each trade has promised and when they’re due. You’ll be out on-site every day, checking on progress, coordinating with Adrian and Camilo. You’ll meet everybody and start to see how it all comes together. Oh, and tomorrow morning? You’re the new guy, so you get to make us all coffee before the meeting.”
Walter assigned me one of the empty offices, and Estefani set me up with a computer, a phone, and a radio. She ordered me business cards with the Loredo logo. Then I walked the site, checked in with the contractors, and made notes on their progress. I took my notes back to the trailer, where I pulled up the scheduling software and adjusted a giant Gantt chart that showed each item, how long it would take, and what depended on it.
When every item on the chart was green, we were on target. If something turned yellow, that meant it had become a priority, and could potentially hold up something else if anything went wrong. An item that turned red would throw off a significant part of the schedule.
That afternoon I watched from the trailer window as contractors scattered with the first sheets of rain. It was the kind of downpour that sweeps in from the Everglades and drenches everything in its path, and within a half hour the site was deserted. I stayed in the trailer, hearing the water pound the roof and sluice off in a drain by the front door.
My abuela often took care of me and my two little sisters during the summers, and I remembered sitting in our house with them through many storms. Abuela was frightened of thunder and lightning, and she’d gather the three of us around her in the hallway that led to our bedrooms. It was the center of the house, far from any windows. She wouldn’t let us comb our hair, watch TV, or listen to the radio.
The rain had eased by the time I left the office, though the drive home was slow on wet, slippery roads. I nuked a frozen dinner, ate it, and spent some quality time in bed with Maurice Vellekoop’s ABC Book—an erotic comic with sexy naked guys representing each letter of the alphabet. I busted my nut over “E is for executives reaching their goals,” loving the gray-haired boss getting his ass eaten by one of his staff.
The next morning I got to the site a few minutes early so I could make Cuban coffee for everyone at the seven a.m. meeting. I made it the way my father always had—only Pilon, a Cuban brand of beans, with demerara sugar, a natural brown sugar. I let the first bit of espresso drip into the glass pitcher and paused the machine while I mixed in the sugar until I had a creamy, light brown paste. Then I ran the rest of the espresso into the pitcher and mixed it up, creating a light brown foam layer, an espuma, on top.
Estefani kept a dispenser of tiny white paper cups, and I filled them up, put them on a tray, and carried it into the conference room as everyone was getting settled. The guys liked my technique, and an appreciative murmur spread through the room. Even Camilo grudgingly admired the taste.
When I looked at the schedule after that meeting, I saw that the formwork for building two was red. That was where Walter had showed me the runny concrete. Heavy rains the week before had delayed building the forms, and the bad concrete meant that a row of footers had to be pulled out and repoured. I met with the superintendent in charge of the forms and concrete, and talked to him about what we could do to make the schedule green again. He said if he could hire a second crew, he could increase his deliveries and get back on schedule.
I reported that back to Walter, along with a cost estimate for the extra crew. Because they’d be short-term workers, and not regular guys getting overtime, the cost was negligible, and Walter authorized the addition.
“Good job,” he said, looking up from his desk and smiling at me. My heart thumped an extra beat as I thanked him and walked back to my office, basking in his praise.
I tried not to bother Walter with simple questions, addressing the relevant super instead, but I was still in and out of his office all day as he gave me small assignments or asked for progress reports. Each time I saw him, I got a jolt of sexual energy. At the same time, whenever I heard him holler my name I jumped, worried that I’d done something to screw up that would get me fired.
Wednesday afternoon when he called me in, he had a stack of papers in his hand. “Goddamn change orders,” he said. “These subs will screw you every way to Tuesday if you don’t keep an eagle eye on them.”
I had learned that sometimes the contractors bid, or even began building, from incomplete drawings, resulting in the need to amend contracts to acc
ommodate changes that had come up after the contract was signed.
He held the first order up. “Expand graded area as per drawing L-12 of July 1, 2012,” he read. “Fourteen thousand dollars. He’s full of shit.” He showed me a rough sketch he had drawn, calculating the area and multiplying it out by the figure in the contract. “It’s only worth twelve grand.”
“Will the contractor accept that much?” I asked.
“He’ll accept it,” he said, pushing the papers toward me. “If he doesn’t, I’ll get out there with a D-9 and handle the grading myself.” He smiled. “Won’t be the first time. Now take these out and distribute them to Adrian and Camilo. If they give you any shit, tell them you’re just the messenger.”
I took the papers from him and walked outside, so impressed with Walter. Not only could he run the whole project, he could handle any trade. Yet another reason to swoon over him.
I spotted Camilo sitting in a plastic lawn chair at the far side of the site, where he was supervising a couple of laborers clearing away brush. It was hot and dry, and a strong wind kicked up a dust bowl worthy of the 1930s. By the time I reached him, my hair was plastered to my scalp and beads of sweat dripped down my back.
I sorted through the pile of change orders and handed the site work ones to Camilo. “Qué comemierderia!” he said, when he saw the change order for the site grading. What kind of shit is this? “Walter Loredo is an engineer now?”
I shrugged. “He told me to tell you I’m only the messenger.” I didn’t bother to add that Walter was willing to do the work himself.
I found Adrian next, behind building two. He had his hard hat under one arm and his phone against his ear. He had worked construction in Cartagena until his twenties, when he got tired of all the violence and drug trafficking and managed to snag a visa for the US. He had taken the piece of paper and never looked back, he said. I gave him the change orders and trudged back to the trailer—hot, sticky, and tired.