Love on Site

by Plakcy, Neil

  I must have made a face, because Walter laughed again and said, “He doesn’t have cooties, Manny. Just an unenlightened attitude. You do your job well, maybe you can help him change that.”

  I nodded and left Walter’s office as Estefani came into the trailer. She looked around. “Where’s my coffeepot? I need my caffeine.”

  “Sorry, I broke it. I’ll go out and get you another one as soon as I talk to Camilo.” I went out the front door and saw Camilo talking to Pierre over by warehouse three, and walked toward him. He finished his conversation and turned to me as I approached. I wanted to get the jump on the conversation, so I said, “I’m sorry for what I said to you. I know I need to grow up, and I hope you’ll give me the chance to show you I can.”

  Camilo nodded. “I don’t like you, but I have to work with you. I need this job.”

  “I do too.”

  “Me pasé de la raya,” he said. I crossed the line. “I will be good.”

  “I will be too.” I reached out to shake his hand, as Walter had told me I had to. Camilo hesitated, but responded to my gesture. His hand was rough and sweaty, but I gripped it hard and shook. Then I went back to the trailer, astonished that I still had a job.

  The Kiss

  I went back to the trailer and fished through the trash to find the manufacturer and size of the coffeepot. “You okay, Manny?” Estefani asked.

  “Never better. Back soon.”

  My hands were shaking. I got in my car, took a couple of deep breaths, and backed out of my parking space.

  I was still employed. That was excellent.

  I had come out to Walter Loredo, and he hadn’t even remarked on it. Was it no big deal to him? Or had that part of the conversation slipped past him because he was focused on the larger issue? Would he remember it later and say something then?

  I bought the coffeepot with my credit card and returned to the office. I went back to my office and got to work. I was determined to prove to Walter that he had made the right decision in keeping me around.

  Our lunch meeting was quick. There was an energy crackling in the air that no one wanted to acknowledge. I worked on the schedule that afternoon, then went out to the site to watch a crane lift the roof trusses onto warehouse two. As I approached Adrian, he was in conversation with one of the superintendents. They saw me coming and turned away from me.

  That was weird, I thought. By the time I got there, the super was leaving, and Adrian turned around to face me. “How’s the truss lifting going?” I asked.

  “All right,” he said.

  “When do you start putting the sheets of metal deck on?” They were the first roof layer to be covered with tar paper and tiny pebbles. Holes would then be cut into the roof for exhaust pipes and connections to roof-mounted fans and air-conditioning units.

  “Not for a couple of days.”

  Adrian was usually so willing to walk me through everything that was going on, and I had hoped to get some insight into the time it would take for each of those steps. But I assumed he had a lot on his mind, and I thanked him and walked on. When I stopped to watch the masons on warehouse three, a couple of them looked at me and whispered.

  I figured I was being paranoid after all the excitement of the morning. I went back to my office and worked until the end of the day.

  “Burning the midnight oil?” Walter said from my doorway. He was wearing his electric-yellow jogging shorts again. His running shirt read Ninety-nine percent of lawyers give the rest a bad name.

  “Well, the six o’clock oil,” I said.

  He laughed. “Go on, get out of here. I’m going to lock up and then go for a good long run.”

  By the time I had my computer shut down and my office closed, Walter was in the parking lot stretching. I stepped out of the trailer door and looked at him. He had such a great body, long and lean, and I was mesmerized by the way his calf muscles flexed as he stretched. I ached to touch the silky hair on his lower arms and legs, to run my fingers through his dark, curly hair.

  He looked up at me and smiled, and I felt my mouth go dry. “See you tomorrow,” I said, my voice a bit too high. I waved and then worried that was too faggy a gesture.

  “Things will work out,” he said. “Don’t worry. I’ll look out for you.”

  “You don’t have to do that. I can fight my own battles.”

  “Yeah, but you’re on my battleground,” he said. “And I’m the commander in chief. If I say no fighting…”

  “Then I won’t fight. I promise.”

  “Good man.” He walked toward the trailer door as I headed for my car. But I had the feeling he was watching me.

  Our Tuesday morning meeting was quick as well, and I spent the next hour or so in my office, working on estimates for new work to be done. Shortly after nine, Walter came into my office. He wore a green Loredo polo, and I noticed again how it complemented his green eyes, which sparkled from the effects of caffeine and vitamins.

  “I just got a heads up,” he said. “We’re getting an OSHA inspection sometime within the next two days. Get out to the site and make sure all the supers know.”

  “Anything special I should look at?”

  He began ticking items off, and I hurried to write them down. “Temporary railings around every opening. Proper signage posted at hazards. Everyone wearing a hard hat. You can find a list of regulations online—you ought to get familiar with those. But first go outside and let everybody know that OSHA’s coming. Then get yourself a checklist.”

  I looked at him for any sign that Tío Teo’s gossip might be true. Could Walter Loredo be gay? He’d shaved that morning, and his polo shirt fit perfectly over his pecs and biceps. But did dressing well make a man gay?

  “What are you waiting for? Get moving,” Walter said and turned away. His pants fit well over his shapely butt. His belt was braided leather. Did he ever pull it off and use it to tease a lover?

  “Will do.” I jumped up and headed for the site. I had to pull my head out of my ass and focus on my job. Whether Walter Loredo was gay or straight shouldn’t matter to me at all.

  I hurried out to the site, beginning at warehouse one. I notified the superintendents of the upcoming visit, and then I checked off all the items Walter had mentioned. I did the same with each of the buildings, ending at the pad for warehouse four, where I found Camilo and told him.

  “Gonna fuck with the schedule,” he said. “Fireproofing contractor supposed to be in warehouse one tomorrow.”

  I nodded. I knew that we’d scheduled that day for spraying the beams and columns with a thick coating. “We don’t have to call the fireproofing off for that, do we?”

  He shook his head. “But if OSHA’s here, it’s going to stall things for a while.”

  “I’ll make a note of it. Thanks, Camilo.”

  He nodded, and I walked away. Now that the air had been cleared, we seemed to be getting along better. Or maybe it was just Walter laying into him.

  The OSHA inspector arrived early the next morning. I hovered in the background as Walter greeted him. I loved to watch Walter talk to people—he was so charming I couldn’t see how the inspector could find anything wrong on the site. He clapped the guy on the back, told him a couple of jokes, and walked him out to warehouse one.

  Then he stepped away so the guy could perform his inspection. He and I moved over to warehouse two, and Walter said, “I walked around first thing this morning, and I didn’t see a thing he could catch us on. You did a good job, Manny.”

  I basked in his praise. We checked the status of the electrical work on warehouse two and then went back to the trailer. The inspector was gone within the hour, leaving us with a clean bill of health.

  That evening I worked late, catching up on everything I hadn’t been able to get to while the OSHA inspector was there. When I looked up, I realized I was alone in the trailer and the only cars in the lot outside were mine and Walter’s. But where was he? He wasn’t in the conference room or in his office.

 
; I opened the trailer door to step outside, and Walter barreled right into me.

  He was soaked with sweat and panting for breath. I instinctively put my arms around him, and his sweat leached onto my clothes. My dick pronged to attention at the feel of his skin against mine.

  Our faces were close to each other, and there was some kind of magnetic force emanating from both of us that pulled our lips together into a kiss.

  I was nearly delirious from the scent of him, the taste of his lips, the feel of his body against mine. But too quickly, he backed away from me.

  “Jeez, I’m sorry, Manny,” he said. I couldn’t help noticing through his skimpy yellow shorts that he had a hard-on too. “That was completely inappropriate.”

  He stumbled away from me, into his office, closing the door hard behind him.

  I looked down and there was a big wet spot on the front of my shirt—as well as a smaller one on my pants. I was too shaken up by the realization that I’d just kissed Walter Loredo to do anything but get in my car and drive home.

  My emotions were all over the place. I’d finally kissed Walter Loredo, and it had been almost as excellent as I had hoped. I wanted to memorize every second of it in case this was a one-off, some kind of terrible fluke.

  How could I face him at the seven a.m. meeting, not knowing what that kiss had meant? I agonized over it all the way back to the Beach. I didn’t report Tío Teo’s rumors to my roommates or tell them about the kiss. I wanted time to consider it all on my own.

  Wednesday morning, Walter was all business, and I took my cues from him. I spent the whole day in warehouse one. The building was always swarming with electricians, plumbers, and the heating-ventilating-air-conditioning crew, called tin-knockers, who had to install the ductwork and controls for their systems.

  All the exterior doors, including those for the loading bays, had to have keyed locks. I carried my laptop out with me and began to check and tag the keys for each door.

  “I walked out of the trailer and saw your car,” Walter said from behind me.

  I was startled as I turned around. Only then did I realize how late it was and that the site had cleared out. “Didn’t mean to scare you,” Walter said.

  “I got so caught up in what I was doing I didn’t notice the time. But this is my last set of keys. I just have to write down the serial numbers and then I can get out of here. Do you need to lock up the trailer?”

  “I can wait. Let me help you.”

  I handed him the set of keys, and when our fingers brushed against each other, I felt that tingle again. Crap. It was almost worse knowing that Walter might be gay. At least if he was straight, I could lust after him without worrying that my dick would get me into trouble.

  I leaned down over my laptop screen, and Walter read me the numbers. When I finished writing, Walter said, “We ought to talk. Can I buy you a beer or do you have to hurry back to the Beach?”

  “Um, no, I mean, yes,” I said. I took a deep breath. “Yes, I can have a beer—no, I don’t have to rush home.”

  “Excellent. How about we meet at El Rincón?”

  “Oh yeah. Sure.”

  “You go first. I’ll lock up the gate.”

  My hands were shaking as I drove out of the site and around the corner to El Rincón. What if this was a date? I took a deep breath. I was being stupid. He was my boss, and he’d apologized twice now for being unprofessional, after our conversation in the men’s room and then after the kiss. We were just going out to have a beer.

  I waited in the parking lot until he arrived. I hopped out and met him at the front door. We walked inside and up to the bar. “Hatuey?” he asked me.

  “Sure.” He ordered two beers from the bartender, and handed one frosty-cold bottle to me. We sat at a table by the wall.

  “I want you to know that I’ve been agonizing over what I’ve done to you,” he said when we were seated. “I’ve been a lousy boss.”

  “I think you’ve been a great boss.”

  He shook his head. “A great boss doesn’t make sexual overtures to an employee. Especially not one as young and inexperienced as you are. I promise you I won’t do anything else for as long as you work for me.”

  “Then I quit.”

  I didn’t know where that idea had come from, but I knew it was what I felt. “I’d rather explore the possibility of a relationship with you than have to work with you every day, knowing you were out of my reach.”

  “Manny, Manny,” he said, shaking his head. “You’re so young.”

  “I’m not that young, Walter. I’m ten years younger than you are. Big deal. And I’m old enough to recognize a spark between two guys when I see it and when I feel it.”

  “We can’t,” he began. “I can’t. I have everything I own, and everything I’ve borrowed, staked on this project. You saw the way Camilo reacted to your being gay. If I come out to them too, and start dating you openly—everything could fall apart. And not just with them, with Dolores too.”

  “She doesn’t know that you’re gay?” I asked. Immediately I worried I’d gone too far, and I held my breath. It was a big leap from one kiss to confronting Walter about his sexuality.

  “No, she doesn’t. When we were first married, we had sex all the time. But things tailed off, because I realized I just wasn’t satisfied, that I was lying to her and to everybody else. She complained and tried a bunch of things—sexy lingerie and stuff—but none of it worked.”

  He picked up his beer but didn’t drink. “Then one day a couple of months ago, I came home from work and caught her in bed with a guy she’d hired to do some faux painting around the house.”

  “That must have been tough.”

  “I was glad,” he said. “I thought that meant she was ready to call it quits, and I moved out. But she insisted that she had staged the whole thing—that she was just trying to make me jealous enough to come back to her. She got really angry that her strategy backfired, and we’ve been fighting ever since.”

  He sipped his beer. “She even told her father, who gave me the seed money for this project, that it was my fault she cheated, that I wasn’t doing my duty by her.”

  “How did he react?”

  “At first he was on her side, until he discovered that she had brought the painter over to the site the other day, to see if I would give him work. I said no, of course. For one thing, who needs fancy faux painting at a warehouse? And there was no way I was going to pay this guy for sleeping with my wife, even if I didn’t want to sleep with her myself.”

  “She probably wasn’t happy about that.”

  “She’s pretty miserable,” he said. “And I feel bad that she is. But it’s all her own fault. After the painter fiasco, her father laid down the law to her. She’ll get the house, but we’re mortgaged to the hilt, so she’ll have to sell. And there’s no way I can pay her much alimony—I just don’t have the income right now. He told her that she’ll have to move back in with him and her mother and go back to work as a teacher, or else work in his office.”

  “Ouch,” I said.

  “But enough about my terrible life. Cheer me up, Manny. Tell me something about your fabulous single life on South Beach.”

  So we were going to dance around the idea that we might have a relationship. I opted to keep things light. “Not so fabulous,” I said. “I work, I sleep, I go out to my parents’ house for Sunday dinner.” I scrambled for something amusing to say and remembered the conga line.

  “When I mentioned that Camilo saw me on South Beach, I didn’t give you all the details,” I said. “I was out at a bar with my roommates, and we started talking to these drag queens.”

  There was a glint in Walter’s eye.

  “One of them was named Iona Trailer, and she was dressed like some white trash housewife—curlers in her hair, lots of makeup, fake boobs busting out of her dress. Her friend was a plus-size queen named Helen Wheels, and she wore this formfitting red satin outfit with matching red devil horns. And inline skates painted r
ed with sparkles.”

  “Just an ordinary night on Lincoln Road,” Walter said, smiling.

  “Helen had the brilliant idea to organize a conga line down Lincoln Road. I guess we were all drunk enough to go along with her. She had this little boom box thing, and she started playing the Gloria Estefan song. She skated out the door of the bar with a whole line of us attached. I had my hands on Iona’s butt when we danced right past Camilo and his wife.”

  Walter guffawed. “That must have been something to see. I’ll bet Camilo had a heart attack.”

  I shook my head. “He didn’t say anything then. But that led up to the coffeepot incident.”

  He drained the last of his beer. “I love that picture. That cheers me up.” He clanked his empty bottle against mine. “I should hit the road. Thanks, Manny.”

  “Hold on,” I said. “We haven’t dealt with the giant pink elephant in the room. Am I going to quit, or are we going to…I don’t know…start something?”

  “On-site, I can’t be anything more than your boss,” he said.

  “But off-site?”

  He hesitated. “My friend Pepe and I got our mortgage broker’s licenses a couple of years ago,” he said. “We were supposed to go together to a one-day license refresher in Naples this weekend. Pepe had to cancel, though, even though we’ve already prepaid for the course and the hotel, and it’s too late to get a refund.”

  He looked at me. “Do you want to go to Naples with me this weekend? I’d have to sit for the class during the day on Saturday, but the rest of the time…”

  “I’d love to,” I said. “I haven’t been over there since I was a kid.” I was floored at how quickly he’d shifted gears, from refusing a relationship to taking me away with him. “When do you want to leave?”

  “I have the room for two nights,” he said. “Suppose we leave Friday after work, and come back Sunday.”

  I drove back to South Beach with a gentle buzz—from the beer, but also from the intimacy I’d shared with Walter. That night I fell asleep dreaming of spending a long, sexy weekend with Walter, staying in bed, ordering room service, walking on the beach at sunset. It felt good.