Invasion of the Blatnicks

by Neil S. Plakcy

  Monday morning, Steve took a deep breath and dialed the number on Max’s card. “Steven Berman,” he said to the receptionist. “I met Mr. Thornton on a plane on Friday.”

  She put Steve on hold, and while he waited, he listened to the Silhouettes sing “Get a Job.” He was tapping his foot and singing along with the music when Max plugged in. It took Steve an extra second to collect himself and say hello.

  “Sure, sure, I remember you,” Max said. “So, you looking for a job?”

  “That depends,” Steve said. “You have any available?”

  “Sure,” Max said. “Got a million of ‘em. Why don’t you come out to the site tomorrow and I’ll show you around? We can talk.”

  Steve made a date for late in the afternoon, when Max said the site wouldn’t be quite so busy. “You don’t have to be so happy,” he said to Rita irritably, after she broke into beaming again. “You’d think I’d just become the first Jewish pope.”

  Steve borrowed his father’s car and drove west for a long time, past the waterfront suburbs and the inner-city slums, past the neighborhoods of neat stucco houses where the prosperous West Indian immigrants lived, even past the big houses in gated developments, where the porches and swimming pools were protected from the swamp mosquitoes by acres of mesh screening.

  Finally he saw the signs for the Everglades Galleria. Max Thornton loomed ten times life-size, wrestling with a giant alligator in front of a rendering of the future shopping center. The caption beneath the picture read, “The easiest deal you’ll ever make. Call today for leasing information.”

  The project’s logo was an alligator with its jaws propped open, and Steve followed the pointing tail down a rutted dirt road to a group of trailers. He pulled up in a cloud of dust as a giant flatbed loaded with roof trusses thundered past, the driver leaning on his air horn.

  In the distance Steve saw the skeleton of the mall. It was quiet in the parking lot except for the distant hum of the bulldozers and tractors, and the gurgle of a small stream that ran past the trailers. There were four of them grouped together, linked by common walkways and a broad flat porch. An area in the front of the trailers had been graded and planted with hibiscus and bougainvillea, but they had not thrived in the hot sun. The vast flat plains between the trailers and the construction had been bulldozed for parking lots.

  Just as Steve opened the trailer door, a giant man in an electric yellow tie thundered past him, yelling back inside. “I didn’t realize I was running a hire-the-handicapped program!” he screamed. “Who messes up such a simple order?” He leaped down the short staircase in a single bound and jumped into a pickup. He threw it into gear, backed up, and roared down the dirt road toward the highway. Steve stood there with the door open for a minute, watching him, and then walked inside.

  “They put mayonnaise on his pastrami,” the receptionist said. “He’ll get over it. How can I help you?”

  She was an attractive young black woman with a lilting island accent. She wore a swath of bright cloth on her head, wrapped around like a turban. The name plate in front of her read “Celeste.”

  “My name is Steven Berman, and I’m here to see Mr. Thornton,” Steve said. “I have an appointment.”

  Celeste buzzed the intercom. “Uncle Max,” she said sweetly into the phone. “You have a visitor.”

  She listened for a moment, then hung up. “Go straight back,” she said. “Turn left at the blue poster and then right at the red one. His office is at the end of the hall.”

  Steve was surprised that the black woman was Max Thornton’s niece, but that was Miami for you. He walked slowly down the hallways, past a warren of small offices cluttered with battered furniture and racks of drawings. It was a much more casual workplace than he was accustomed to, and yet he felt comfortable there. Underneath the red poster, where he turned right, there was a big hole in the wall, just above the molding. He puzzled over it for a moment, then moved on.

  “Come in, Steve, come in,” Max said when Steve hovered in front of his door. The wall behind Max had been ripped out and replaced with a giant picture window looking out on the dusty site. Max looked just as large and shaggy as Steve remembered him. He motioned Steve to a chair.

  “So, you like it up there in the world of stuffed shirts?” Max asked. “Hunched over a computer all day?”

  Steve shrugged. “It’s OK. I feel I can contribute to the profitability of the company.”

  “Don’t give me that crap,” Max said. “They pay you a lot and you don’t have to work hard. Am I right?”

  Steve smiled in spite of himself. “It’s not the most challenging work I can imagine.”

  “Here, you’d get a challenge, all right. Challenge you right off your ass. I don’t know that I can match the money you’re getting in New York, but I can sure as hell promise you it’d be interesting.” He stood up. “Come on. Let’s take a walk.”

  When Max came around the side of the desk Steve saw he was wearing faded jeans and knee-high rubber boots. “You can leave your jacket here,” he said. “We’ll come back for it.”

  It was late, and the land had been baking in the hot sun all day. The heat hung in the air like a damp blanket. There was no hint of a breeze. Steve thought that the sun felt good, that it might be nice to have a job that didn’t keep him cooped up behind double panes of tinted glass all day.

  Max waved his arm as they walked. “The science center is going to be over there, and next to it the Miccosukee Indian Village. We’ve hired some Indian consultants from Arizona to make sure it’s authentic.”

  “I thought the Miccosukees were a Florida tribe,” Steve said.

  “Indians are Indians. And next to the Village is the alligator wrestling pit. That’s my personal favorite. I guess you saw the signs on your way in.”

  Steve nodded. He thought it was a dumb idea, but he felt obliged to flatter Max a little. “Good gimmick.”

  “Nah, it sucks. But I just wanted to see my picture up there wrestling with a gator. Gives me an image, you know.”

  Steve wasn’t sure he knew at all. “Would I be working for you?”

  “Not directly,” Max said. “I go back and forth between here and the home office. I’ve got a hell of a project manager, though. You might have seen him on your way in. Big fella, likes to wear bright colored ties.”

  The pastrami monster, Steve thought. “I think I did.” He was looking at Max rather than at where he was going, when his foot slipped on a mucky spot. He cried out and windmilled his arms, but it didn’t help. He ended up knee deep in swampy water.

  “Sorry about that,” Max said. “Still a few sinkholes around we haven’t plugged up yet.” He gave Steve a hand and pulled him out. Steve’s pant legs were soaking and his soft leather loafers were starting to curl and crinkle. “So,” Max said, “How soon can you start?”

  “I still don’t know what you want me to do.” Steve knew he needed this job, but he was getting frustrated, and all he wanted to do was get back in his father’s air-conditioned car and get the hell out of the swamps.

  “Come on inside and we’ll iron out the details.” As they walked back up toward the trailers, a rat emerged from under a pile of lumber and across in front of them. Max noticed Steve’s shiver. “Don’t mind the wildlife,” Max said. “They’re all over the place.”

  By then, Steve felt miserable, and the rats made it worse. Sweat dripped down his back and into his eyes, his legs chafed against his wet paints and his feet squooshed in his shoes. When he got to the steps leading up to the trailer he stopped and took his shoes off. He held them up and several ounces of scummy water dripped out. He squeezed his socks like sponges and walked into the trailer barefoot. No one even gave him a second look, and he liked that.

  Once they were seated back in his office with the panoramic view, Max offered Steve a job as assistant project manager, based more on his spunk and his ability to learn, as evidenced by his education, than on any solid qualifications. He couldn’t match Steve’s
salary in New York, but he made a decent offer, and he agreed to pay for moving expenses.

  There was something about the place that interested Steve. An attitude, a feeling that a job could be fun. It was also clearly a way to keep working without facing unemployment. And though there were a lot of advantages to living in New York, there were a lot of hassles, too. He was tired of stepping over drunks and bag ladies every time he walked out his door, tired of long waits for crowded subways and coughing every time a smoke-spewing truck rumbled past.

  He liked the idea of being able to wear jeans to the office, of working someplace where you could yell a little and not feel like the walls were going to cave in. And he remembered his mother sitting next to the window, and how her eyes had lit up when he mentioned the possibility of moving to Florida. He knew he ought to go back to New York and consider everything, weigh the pros and cons in the way that he was taught in business school. Instead he lied and said, “I have to give my boss two weeks notice. I could start after that.”

  Rita and Harold were delighted. They took Steve out to dinner that night to celebrate, to a steak and rib restaurant with an early bird special. Like so much else in Florida, the dining room was decorated to resemble someplace else, in this case a corral in the wild west. The room was lit with imitation gas lamps, and swinging cafe doors led to the kitchen. The waiters and busboys wore chaps and ten-gallon hats and said, “Howdy, pardners, what kind of grub can I rustle up for you?”

  Everyone ordered off the special early bird menus, which were printed on brown paper that was supposed to look seared. After the waiter left, Rita said, “I have some good news for you. I found out that the Goldsmiths on the fourth floor are looking for someone to rent their condo. It’s a lovely one-bedroom with the eastern exposure.”

  “No,” Steve said. “I’m not living in your building. I’ll get a place near work.” Steve was afraid that if he lived near his parents, he would be expected to mediate every argument between Harold and Rita, and as happened when he visited, every plan they made would include him, even trips to the grocery and the K-mart.

  The restaurant was filled with elderly people, although there were a few young people like Steve, obviously children or grandchildren visiting. He pushed a wave of brown hair back into place and smiled, a clean, straight-toothed smile Harold had spent thousands of dollars in orthodontia bills to perfect. “If you want, we can go out and look tomorrow,” Steve said.

  “If we want,” Harold said. “Like he’s doing us a big favor, moving to Florida.”

  “All right, Harold,” Rita snapped. “We’re here to celebrate.”

  “Yeah, Dad,” Steve said. “Maybe we can get you a paper hat and one of those noisemakers.”

  “Maybe we can get you a zetz,” Harold said.

  “Oh, look, the salt shaker is a horse and the pepper is in a cow,” Rita said, in a tone that warned both Steve and Harold that she would not tolerate anything that ruined her happiness. “Isn’t that charming.” Then she turned to Steve and said, “You’ll have to give your boss some notice.”

  “I called this morning,” Steve said. And indeed, he had placed a call to his office number, to ask a few questions about his benefits and accrued vacation time. “He said he understands.”

  Rita smiled. Looking at her handsome, intelligent son always gave her such pleasure. “Of course. A smart boy like you, they couldn’t figure they were going to hang onto you forever.”

  Mercifully, the waiter arrived with salad for the table in a long, low bowl that looked like a trough. “I guess not,” Steve said, and dug in.

  The next morning Steve reluctantly took Harold and Rita along on his apartment-hunting expedition. They wore their matching jogging suits, which were maroon accented with gray. “It would be nice to have you settled before you have to go back to New York and pack everything up,” Rita said. They spent most of the next two days driving through the new suburbs of the far west, looking at apartments and townhouses. They finally settled on a two-bedroom at Mangrove Gardens, which was only a mile from the site of the Everglades Galleria. The garden apartment units were clustered around little ponds with mangroves in them.

  The apartment Steve liked best was roomy and white. The appliances were still taped shut and protected with cardboard, the carpet was clean and the whole place smelled of new beginnings. Steve almost hated to move his furniture in and ruin the unspoiled look.

  Sliding glass doors off the living room led to a small screened-in porch overlooking the parking lot and the swamp beyond. He and Harold stood in the living room looking out while Rita measured the bedroom for a little armoire she thought would be just perfect for Steve.

  “Just think, I can sit on my porch and watch the mosquitoes breed,” Steve said.

  “Better you should stay inside and start breeding yourself,” Harold said. “You’re not young forever, you know.”

  “I know,” Steve said. “You’ve been telling me ever since you first got arthritis.”

  “Arthritis is no joke,” Harold said. “By you, everything is a joke.”

  “All right, Harold, Steven, enough,” Rita said, coming back into the living room with her measuring tape. “As soon as Steven is settled down, we can talk about the future. For now, I’m just so happy you’re moving down here.” She smiled and kissed Steve. “I don’t know what we did without you, Stevie. It’ll be so convenient having you close by.” Over her shoulder Steve saw that his father was smiling, too.

  For the rest of his vacation, there was always something to do. After finding the apartment, he had to schedule the movers whom Thornton Development had hired on his behalf, then call his landlord and negotiate the cancellation of his lease, and then buy a car.

  Harold had set opinions on cars. He did not think American cars had the quality control of the German or Japanese imports, but on the other hand he resented the economic progress both those countries had made out of the ashes of war. Hyundais were out because they came from Korea, and the U.S. had fought there, too; Yugos came from behind the former Iron Curtain and were victims of expectedly shoddy workmanship. British cars, like the Jaguar, the Rolls and the Bentley, were out of Steve’s price range, and besides, Harold thought they were always in the shop.

  “So what do I buy, Dad?” Steve said, sitting next to his father on the sofa with the Consumer Reports book of car ratings on his lap. “You want me to get a Volvo too?”

  Since Sweden was the only country with which America had not fought a war, and which made a halfway decent car, Harold had been forced into a choice between Saab and Volvo. He did not much care for either car, but he firmly believed that was the cost of having principles. Every two years he traded his car in, switching from Saab to Volvo and back again.

  Steve fortunately felt unshackled by such principles, and bought a Mazda, mostly because it looked nice and came in a really hot shade of red. Harold, who was fully aware of Steve’s lack of principles in such matters, refused to go look at the car before Steve bought it.

  With all these issues resolved, Steve was ready to go back to New York, clean out his apartment and say his good-byes. The day after Yom Kippur, a Tuesday, he sat back in his seat on the airplane, making a list of all the things he had to do in New York, feeling happily contented that everything in Florida was moving along so smoothly. Then he remembered Cindy.

  What was he going to tell her, he wondered, as the plane took off. That as soon as he was away from New York, he had forgotten all about her? That she no longer fit into his career plans? The sad thing was that the thought of having to face Cindy made him feel worse than the thought of losing her.

  Outside his window, gray storm clouds rolled over the sun and tiny droplets of rain streaked the many-layered glass. The pilot asked everyone to keep their seat belts fastened through the turbulence ahead.

  5 – Ladles and Jellyspoons

  Two nights after he returned to the city, Steve met Cindy for dinner at an outdoor cafe near Lincoln Center. It was really
too cold to eat outside, but Cindy thought there was something romantic about sidewalk cafes, and Steve was not willing to cross her. They sat at a wrought-iron table near the street and waited for someone on the staff to pay attention to them.

  All around them the city sparkled with a brief flash of Indian summer. It was too early for the streets to be littered with paper pumpkins, expanding tissue paper turkeys or ribbons of multicolored blinking lights, and the blistering, sweaty heat of summer had fled south weeks before. Trees struggled to hold onto leaves already beginning to turn crimson and gold, and people rediscovered their sweaters and leather jackets, so hastily thrown away with the first warm rays of May.

  Steve’s brown hair shifted back and forth across his forehead in the cold breeze, and he rubbed his hands.

  “You’d think they could bring us menus,” Cindy said, looking around.

  “Maybe they could bring some firewood while they’re at it.”

  “It’s perfectly pleasant out here,” Cindy said, though Steve noticed that she shivered a little under her cashmere blazer.

  Soon, Steve thought, the tables would go back into storage, and the waiters and waitresses would hang up their roller skates until the trees bloomed again. It pleased him to think that he’d be in Miami, where you could eat outdoors in January.

  “You’re smiling,” Cindy said. “Want to tell me about it?”

  “I’ve got a new job.” He looked out at the intersection next to them, where Broadway, Amsterdam Avenue and 66th Street all met. There was something wrong with the traffic light, and cars were honking and backing up on 66th.

  “That’s terrific! And so quick, too. But how did you do it, when you were in Florida?”

  Steve shifted awkwardly in his chair, ending by stretching his long legs out toward the street. Cindy looked at him, and her mouth dropped open. “You took a job in Florida, didn’t you?”

  He nodded. “With a developer. Building a shopping center in Miami. I’m going to be the assistant project manager.” Cars on 66th Street had gotten fed up with the light and were creeping foot by foot into the intersection. Drivers on Broadway were veering around them and blowing their horns.