11 – Escalator Test
Sheryl told her grandmother about the accident on Monday, and old Mrs. Blatnick repaid Steve the money he had put out. Thursday at lunch, he made it over to the bank to make his deposit, just in time to pay the credit card bills. “One Blatnick down, one to go,” he said, walking away from the bank with the deposit receipt in his hand.
That afternoon Bill Benzakry asked him to come out to the site to help with a test of the fire riser system in the Miccosukee Welcome Center. Steve didn’t really understand what the fire riser system was or did, even after he took a hurried look at the drawings. It had something to do with fire prevention, he figured out. Somehow large mains carried water from the supply outside the building to the sprinkler system within it. He shrugged and went out to the site.
It was bright and sunny, like nearly every day during the Miami winter, and there was a nice breeze. Steve stopped and looked across the surface of one of the lakes, shimmering in the reflected sun, to a stand of slash pine and sago palm at the edge of the site. For a moment it seemed like a tropical paradise, the stuff of winter dreams in a cold climate. Then he blinked and it was a dusty construction site again.
The Welcome Center was a two-story building at the entrance to the Everglades Galleria. Uncle Max hoped to have Miccosukees in their native costumes handing out maps of the center and working as parking lot attendants. The Welcome Center would also have extensive displays of Miccosukee handicrafts and historical artifacts, as well as a diorama of life in the Everglades before the invention of the shopping mall.
The building was modeled after the chickee huts in which the Miccosukees lived in their natural habitat, the Everglades. Uncle Max’s architects had been stretched to their limits in converting this basic building type, which consisted of four poles supporting a roof of thatched grass, into a two-story structure with escalators and skylights. There were to be Miccosukees paddling small canoes endlessly around the reflecting pool. This was a touch Uncle Max particularly liked.
The Welcome Center was the first building to be finished on the site, because Uncle Max hoped to use it as offices for the leasing and construction team and to establish a profile for the mall. The Welcome Center was visible from the highway and Uncle Max hoped it would bring in tourists who would see the site and plan to come back when the stores were open.
Steve met Bill in front of the reflecting pool, which was empty and so reflected nothing more than the fact that it was dirty. Bill was wearing a white t-shirt that read, “I Hate This Place and I’m Leaving as Fast as I Can Get My Tail Out of Here.” A hard-box pack of Marlboros stuck under his left sleeve looked like a mutant growth. He took a long drag from a cigarette butt and then stamped it into the ground with his heel.
“I want you to go up yonder,” Bill said, pointing to a second-floor balcony of the Welcome Center with the hand that had the missing finger joint. “There’s a fire riser main just inside that doorway. When you look down and see me waving my arms over my head, I want you to turn the wheel on that main ninety degrees to the right. That’ll set the water flowing. I’ll be down here at the other end waiting to see how it goes.”
“Ninety degrees to the right,” Steve said. “OK.”
“Just you be sure to wait til I give you the signal,” Bill said. “Otherwise we’ll have water all over the goddamned place.”
Steve walked up the escalator, which was still covered in plastic and had not been tested yet. At the top, he stopped for a moment to look down to the main floor of the Welcome Center. It looked impressive from there, and he liked the way the light filtered down through the thatched roof, even through the coat of hard shellac.
He went out onto the balcony and watched Bill. He was too far away to hear anything that was said, but he could see Bill clearly, even down to the square lump in his shirt sleeve. Bill was talking to a workman next to him. Steve yawned and leaned back against the wall.
He looked out at the site. It was the first time he’d been able to see it from any height, and it looked totally different. He could see how the buildings and the parking lots and the entrance drives all worked together. He imagined himself as a bird, flying over the Everglades Galleria and watching the traffic flow into and out of the shopping center once it was open.
When he looked down again, Bill was waving his arms in the air and he appeared to be yelling. Steve quickly turned back to the big wheel, which looked like the steering wheel on a ship. He turned it ninety degrees to the right and then looked back at Bill.
Bill had stopped waving his arms and was lighting a cigarette and looking down at the pipe on the ground in front of him. Suddenly a geyser of water shot up out of the pipe, directly into Bill’s face. Steve gasped, and turned back to the wheel. He shut the water off as fast as he could, then ran downstairs.
The water had stopped flowing, but Bill was soaked. “What happened?” he asked when he got to Bill.
“You turned the goddamned water on too soon, that’s what happened.”
“You told me to turn it on when I saw you waving. You were waving, so I turned it on.” Steve imitated the motion of Bill’s arms.
“This is what I meant,” Bill said. He held his arms straight above his head and waved them slowly, as if he was part of a crowd at a football stadium. “When I wave my arms like you were doing it just means I’m mad at somebody.” He frowned.
“Sorry,” Steve said. “I never took semaphore lessons.”
Bill laughed. “It’s my own damn fault,” he said. “Serves me right, too. Well, get on back up to that balcony and let’s try it again.”
This time the test went off fine. Bill waved his arms the way Steve expected, Steve turned the water on, and then, when Bill waved again, he turned it off.
“I still feel bad about soaking you,” Steve said when the test was over. “Let me buy you a beer after work.”
“Hell, I never turn down a free beer,” Bill said. They agreed to meet at a bar called The Swamp Thing a little after five.
It took Steve two rounds to get up the nerve to ask Bill for a job for Richie. Bill was already on his third Heineken, all on Steve’s tab, so the idea didn’t bother him. “Any cousin of yours has got to be a hell of a guy,” he said, slapping Steve on the shoulder. “Send him over any time.”
“Thanks,” Steve said. Under his breath he said, “You’ll be sorry.” He was just hoping he wouldn’t be sorry himself.
Steve called Rita the next day with the good news. “I’m glad you could do something for your cousin,” Rita said. “And now that this job is becoming a family affair, maybe I could come out and see it sometime?”
“There’s nothing to see, Mom,” Steve said. “When it’s open I’ll bring you here, I promise.”
“I’d like to see where you’re working, that’s all,” Rita said. “You took us in to see that lovely office in New York.”
“Well, the trailer isn’t quite so lovely,” Steve said. “So let’s drop the subject, all right?”
“All right,” Rita said. “I’m sorry I asked.”
Richie started work the next week as a laborer on the paving crew, pushing a roller over fresh tar, grading and smoothing. Every time Steve ran into him on the site he was covered in black smudges and smelled as if he’d just run into a skunk. Steve tried to avoid shaking hands with him.
Steve tried to avoid ever acknowledging that Richie was his cousin, though Richie called him Cousin Stevie whenever they met. Steve would be walking to a meeting with Junior or Uncle Max when they’d pass the paving crew, and Richie would holler out. Steve shuddered and waved.
It wasn’t that he disliked Richie so much. It was just that Richie was a Blatnick, and Blatnick was a synonym for trouble. The one time they spoke without anyone around, Richie wanted to know where Steve got his drugs.
Steve was distracted and wasn’t really listening. “There’s a Walgreen’s two exits down the highway,” he said.
“I don’t think they got the right kind of drugs
, man,” Richie said. “You think I can go in there, find the grass next to the nasal spray on aisle thirteen?”
“I don’t do those kind of drugs,” Steve said. “Sorry.”
“Man, Sheryl was right. She said, that Stevie, he’s square as a picture frame.”
Steve was so surprised that Sheryl understood the concept of similes that he overlooked the insult. “Look, don’t go asking around the site,” Steve said. “You might get caught or something.”
“Don’t worry about me, man,” Richie said. “Us dopers have a secret code we use to recognize each other.” He gave Steve the high five and walked off. When Steve looked at his palm he had black tar on it.
Steve worried about Richie, but two weeks passed without much trouble. Days were sunny, but now and then clouds scudded past and then disappeared on the far horizon. Rain came in sheets and torrents and in soft slow droplets, and lizards and snakes adjusted to the disruption of the once-quiet swamplands. Steve worked late every day, writing contracts, going to meetings, walking around the site with his radio, looking for trouble.
The site was prettiest in the evening, when the big loaders and graders were silent as sheep, huddled together in the shadow of the Welcome Center. By six o’clock, the dust had settled and the air held the sad wet smell of the swamp. The giant orange sun set slowly in the west, gathering a retinue of gold, red and lavender clouds around it.
Steve loved that time of day, after most people had gone home to their families and their dinners, when he could walk around and feel like he really belonged. Each night he noted how many more feet of block wall had been built, how many more courses of tile had been laid, how much higher the steel skeleton had climbed. Though he knew that the completion of the Galleria might mean the end of his job, he enjoyed the visible sense of progress at the end of every day.
By then, the Welcome Center was almost ready to open. On Friday, Junior and Steve were out on their morning walk-through when Junior stopped to let a concrete truck rumble past, its mixer rotating slowly. When it stopped, Junior walked up and plunged his arm into the lumpy gray mix. He brought his hand up, rubbing his fingers together. “This shit won’t pass the slump test,” he said. “Look how thin it is.”
He held his hand out to Steve. “Good concrete holds together more than this shit. You’ve got to get a feel for it. Here, stick your hand in.”
Steve hesitated. “Go ahead, there’s no alligators in there.”
He pushed his sleeve up and plunged his hand in.
“Feel it?” Junior asked. “Too thin.”
Steve nodded. “Feels thin to me.”
They rinsed their hands off at a pump next to the truck. “What do you think of this form work?” Junior asked.
“Doesn’t look strong enough to me,” Steve said. “Seems like the concrete might blow the forms out unless they’re real careful.”
Junior nodded. “You’re learning. Go over and tell ‘em.”
Steve couldn’t mimic Junior’s delivery but he gave it his best shot. Junior watched, laughing. “You’ll get your stride, Steve,” he said. “Hell, you’ll never match me, but you’ll get your stride.” He clapped an arm around Steve’s back and they walked on into the building.
Just before they parted, Junior said, “Need your help this afternoon. We’re doing the people test on the escalator in the Welcome Center around three-thirty. Everybody from the trailer has to be out there to ride up and down a couple times.”
“Sure,” Steve said. He thought it would be fun to go out to the Welcome Center and ride up and down on the escalators for a while, like a little kid’s idea of going to the mall. He walked back up to the trailers and fell into paperwork.
At three-fifteen Celeste started rounding people up for the test. Steve, Miranda, Brad, Maxine, Celeste and Junior all walked out to the Welcome Center together. “I can’t believe we have to do this before the building is air conditioned,” Miranda said.
“Anyone who complains has to ride up and down twice,” Junior said.
“Complain? Who, me?” Miranda said.
As they approached the Welcome Center they saw Uncle Max standing in front of it with a half-dozen Miccosukee Indians in feathered, beaded costumes. “I didn’t realize testing the escalator was such an important event,” Steve said. “Does the medicine man have to give it a blessing?”
“I didn’t invite them,” Junior said. “This has Uncle Max written all over it.”
There were three Indian men and three women. The men’s faces were painted and they wore extravagant headdresses of white egret feathers, the kind that Las Vegas showgirls wore. They wore no shirts, but their chests were painted in bright colors. Their fringed leather pants had been embroidered with thousands of beads.
The women wore broad hoop skirts which had also been embroidered, and white blouses. All the Indians’ hair was pulled into fat, black ponytails, and their faces were broad and dark.
The Miccosukees were on their way home to the Everglades from a rehearsal for an Indian musical to be performed in a dinner theater on Miami Beach, and they had seen the enormous chickee hut from the highway and pulled off to investigate. They had arrived in a recycled school bus, which had been painted with green and brown camouflage paint. It was parked next to the Welcome Center.
“Well, we can use all the bodies we can find for this escalator test,” Junior said. “Why don’t you all join us?”
Everyone moved toward the escalator in single file. At a signal from Junior, a technician in a pit at the bottom of the escalator turned it on. It whirred smoothly as the panels rose from the floor and became stairs.
Bill and a number of the other superintendents came over to join the parade, and Celeste borrowed Bill’s lighter to light up a thin cigar. Uncle Max wore a plaid blazer and had waxed his bushy mustache. He led the way onto the escalator, followed by Maxine, who was wearing a blue polyester mini-dress that looked like it had been molded to her body, and Miranda. A Miccosukee couple followed them, then Junior and Brad, another Miccosukee couple, Celeste, Steve and Bill. The other Miccosukees and the rest of the superintendents followed.
Just as Steve was rising above the reflecting pool, he heard his mother’s voice. “Steve! Yoo hoo, Steve!”
He turned and saw his parents entering the Welcome Center, being led by Richie Fenstersheib. And worse, Sheryl, Sheldon, Dusty and old Mrs. Blatnick were trailing behind. They looked like tourists, oohing and aahing and touching things to be sure they were real.
Richie had obviously just finished work because he was still covered with black smudges. Harold and Rita were wearing matching jogging suits, both of them gray with lavender stripes. Old Mrs. Blatnick, as usual, was wearing black, in perpetual mourning over the bunch of losers she had raised.
“What are you doing here?” Steve yelled.
“You would never invite us to see where you worked so Richie did,” Rita called.
“Who are they?” Celeste asked Steve.
Steve sighed deeply. “They’re my parents. And some other people I wish were not related to me.”
Celeste started to wave. “Mrs. Berman! It’s me, Celeste!” she called out. The escalator continued to move slowly upward.
Harold and Rita waved back. Rita took Mrs. Blatnick’s arm and pointed at Steve on the escalator. Sheldon, Sheryl and Dusty spotted him too and began to wave.
Then the Miccosukees all started waving, and soon everyone on the escalator was waving at Harold and Rita and the Blatnicks. Everyone except Steve, who was cringing next to the rail. Sheldon walked over to the escalator control panel, which was mounted on the wall next to the fire extinguisher bracket. Steve wanted to warn Sheldon away from there, but he found he could not speak, as if his vocal cords were paralyzed.
Steve thought his parents and his relatives looked unbearably silly, down there on the first floor at the edge of the reflecting pool. He was embarrassed that the people he worked with should see Harold and Rita dressed up like elderly children and wa
ving foolishly. And it was worse that they had brought the Blatnicks along, like this was a field trip to see where darling little Stevie was working.
He was also embarrassed by the people he worked with. He could imagine his father saying, “These people are building a mall?” Particularly with the Miccosukees sprinkled in, the Everglades Galleria team did not look impressive. Celeste was still smoking her thin cigar, her big cloth headdress balanced on her head. Steve, Junior, Bill and the superintendents were all dusty and dirty, with dark patches under their arms. Miranda and Brad wore pressed khakis with perfect creases. They were posed on the escalator with the bored look of professional fashion models.
Sheldon’s mother called him, and he turned quickly, and in turning, stumbled against the control panel. Suddenly the escalator stopped, just before Uncle Max, at the head of the crowd, reached the second floor. For a brief moment everything was still.
Steve was the only one who noticed Sheldon near the panel. He watched with silent horror as Sheldon fumbled for balance, grabbing onto any switch he could find. That minute that the escalator was stopped seemed to last forever to Steve. He was desperate to get off, to get out of view. He wanted to run away from his family, from his co-workers, from everything that embarrassed him.
Then the escalator started again with a jolt, much faster than before, only going down. Uncle Max toppled onto Maxine and Miranda, who in turn fell on the first Miccosukee couple. One minute Steve was standing, the next he was lying on his back on the escalator with a mouthful of egret feathers.
There was a Miccosukee woman pinning down his left leg, and pain was radiating from the point where he’d hit his head on the escalator treads. But he didn’t mind. He felt strangely triumphant. He had known all along that mixing together the Blatnicks and the Everglades Galleria would lead to trouble. This was mild trouble, to be sure. He vowed to stay vigilant in the future, to keep things from getting any worse than they already were.
Invasion of the Blatnicks Page 10