Invasion of the Blatnicks

by Neil S. Plakcy

  Steve watched TV and read for a while. When Cindy came upstairs for her shower, she moved her clothes into the guest bedroom. “I think it’s better this way,” she said.

  Steve said, “If that’s what you want,” but he felt sad. That night, he sat propped up in bed with the lights out, listening to the rise and fall of a distant siren, missing Cindy already.

  On Saturday they ended up at a waterfront bar facing the Intracoastal. It was a warm, slow afternoon, more like August than November to Steve. They ordered piña coladas and sat back under the striped umbrella, watching the boats steer lazily down the waterway. Some were as big as cruise liners, festooned with lights and ropes, crowded with young women in bikinis and older men in expensive polo shirts and snap-brim sailing caps.

  The waitress, a pouty teenager in a tiny skirt, brought their drinks and then sulked away. “Are you glad you came down?” Steve asked.

  “It’s been a nice break.” Cindy stretched her legs toward the sun. She was starting to get a little color she’d be able to show off when she got back to work. “I can’t say I’m happy with the way things have turned out, but at least we both know where we stand.”

  Steve reached over and took Cindy’s hand in his. She gently pulled it away. “I don’t think we should get started.”

  A forty-foot sportfisherman pulled up at the dock in front of them, with much back and forth and revving of engines. It was a few minutes before it was quiet enough to talk again.

  “I don’t want to lose you in my life,” Steve said. “We have too much history to give up so easily.”

  Cindy picked up her piña colada and sipped. “If you don’t love me I can’t make you,” she said after a while. “But I can’t pretend it doesn’t hurt. I’m leaving tomorrow. We’ll just try and be nice to each other until then.”

  Steve was afraid to go into the guest room to wake Cindy, so he sat up in bed and read the paper while she slept late the next morning. After a quick lunch, he dropped her off at the airport for her flight back to New York. He was sorry to see her go, but relieved, too, that he didn’t have to lie to her any more. She offered him her cheek, and he kissed it. He wanted to take her in his arms one last time, but her flight was announced, and she took her little cart from him and walked down the hallway. She did not look back, though Steve waited until she was out of sight.

  By Wednesday afternoon the Everglades Galleria was back on track. Everyone had recuperated from the long vacation, gotten over their hangovers and upset stomachs, and though Christmas loomed on the horizon as the excuse for a massive slowdown, work seemed to move along.

  Steve was busy meeting with contractors and tenants, learning about grand opening plans and leasing strategy. He prepared drawing packages for miscellaneous scopes of work, like fireproofing and chain link fence and partitions for the mall public restrooms. Every item had to be researched, the drawings studied and lists of suppliers compiled and reviewed. It was slow, painstaking work.

  His meeting with the union leaders was set for Wednesday afternoon. Just before they were due to arrive, Uncle Max buzzed and asked to see Steve in his office. “I’m not going to tell you how to run this play, Steve,” Uncle Max said. “It’s your ball. But I want you to give those guys a message from me. This is still private property. My property. And if I catch any of those union troublemakers here, I’ll get ‘em thrown in the pokey for trespassing. You can tell them that. I don’t take kindly to people being on my land when they don’t belong.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Steve said. He nodded toward the door. “I’m going to make sure the conference room is ready.”

  “You do that,” Uncle Max said. “If it was up to me I’d make it ready by wiring all their seats to the generator!” He laughed. “I’d serve ‘em poisoned alligator tail and watch ‘em writhe around on the floor like lizards with their heads cut off. I’d take all their little pinky rings and grind ‘em down to dust.” Uncle Max was still thinking of bizarre punishments when Steve escaped.

  The union men arrived a few minutes later: Angelo Ronalli, for the carpenters; Phil Sears for the plumbers; and Pete Wickstaff for the electricians. Steve ushered them into the conference room. “I’m hearing a lot of talk about a strike,” he said, when they were all seated at the conference table. “I’m sure nobody really wants that. Men on the picket line don’t earn salaries, and a job that’s being picketed doesn’t get finished. So I figure we can sit down, talk a little, maybe find some way to compromise, work together, so we don’t have a strike.”

  “You know what kind of conditions those guys work under, when they don’t belong to the union?” Pete Wickstaff said. He was in his late thirties, a thin, nervous guy with shoulder-length dark hair. “No overtime. No coffee breaks. No safety goggles or shit like that. You know how easy it is to hurt yourself when you’re working eight, ten hours straight?”

  Phil Sears put a hand on Wickstaff’s shoulder. “All right, Pete, keep your shorts on,” he said. He was in his fifties, a seasoned worker with skin the color of coffee beans and short, frizzy gray hair. “We ain’t going to get anywhere if you go off the handle like that.” He turned to Steve. “Our position is, you get all union contractors in here or we call a strike until you do.”

  Steve looked at the list of contracts in front of him. “We’ve already got union plumbers,” he said. “D and C Plumbing. Woods Electric is union too, and so is RKL Drywall. So what are you guys complaining about?”

  “We want all union men here,” Angelo Ronalli said. “You see, your carpenters don’t just deal with each other, or even just with the plumbers and the electricians. We gotta cut holes in the drywall for the tin-knockers to go through. We gotta work our way around the steamfitters and the masons. It comes down to that, we gotta buy our coffee from the same truck as the road pavers and the landscapers.”

  Sears broke in. “See, we feel like we’re all a family,” he said. “No matter what trade, you belong to the union, you belong to the family. Now, if it was between somebody in your family to get a job, and some stranger, who would you want?”

  Steve knew that if it was between the Blatnicks and any strangers for a job, he’d hire the strangers. But he didn’t think these guys would understand. “That’s a nice thought,” he said. “And I’ll tell you something. My cousin’s working out there-- he’s with the paving crew. So I know what you mean about hiring family. But I gotta tell you, I can’t convince my boss to choose a higher bidder, just for nice thoughts.”

  He picked up a sheet of paper. “This is the list of bids we got from steamfitters,” he said. “I’m sure you guys can understand, we have to look for the best price. This is a business, after all.”

  He passed the list of bids around. He had noted which contractors were union and which weren’t. “Now, we’ve still got a lot of contracts to let out,” he said. “Everything from fireproofing to rubber entrance mats. We’re willing to give union contractors a chance to bid on anything we’ve got. And if a union guy is close, I’ll work with him and try and get him to the lowest price. Anything more than that, I can’t promise.”

  Sears, Ronalli and Wickstaff looked at the list of bids. “You know how these guys get the prices down,” Wickstaff said. “They take it out of our pockets.”

  “And if we pay a higher price, it comes out of my boss’s pocket,” Steve said. “And between you and me, since he pays my salary, I gotta go for the money coming out of somebody else’s pocket but his.”

  “This is all you can do?” Sears asked.

  “If you want, I can set up separate gates for you,” Steve said. “Union and non-union. You don’t want to buy your coffee from the same truck, I’ll get a second truck in here. You don’t want to talk to somebody, any time you need something you talk to the superintendents and they’ll get it for you. I’ll tell the non-union guys the same thing, they won’t talk to you.”

  “We gotta take it back to our people,” Ronalli said. The three union guys looked at each other and the
y all stood up. “We’ll be back in touch with you.”

  Steve stood up with them, shook everybody’s hand as they walked out. He saw them out to the front of the trailer, then walked quickly back to Junior’s office. There was a little jump in his step.

  “It went well,” he said. “No promises, nothing definite yet, but I think it’s gonna be OK.”

  “What did you have to give them?”

  “I promised to work with any union contractor whose price was close. I said we’d get another lunch truck in if they wanted, they never had to talk to non-union guys or eat lunch with them or anything.”

  “Good work,” Junior said. “But keep on top of them. You never know what might come up.”

  Steve went back to his own office. It was going well. The site was calm, the union thing was resolved, or nearly resolved. Thanksgiving had passed without too much trouble. Junior had met the Blatnicks without getting hurt, and Steve had cleared things up with Cindy. He felt good.

  But Cindy’s visit had made him miss New York. Listening to her for four days about old friends, restaurants, museums, and Broadway plays made him long for the city more than he had in September when he first left it behind. He called Dan at the bookstore, just to chat.

  Dan told him about a party on Saturday night that he would have been invited to had he still been in the city. “So it was fun?” Steve asked.

  “They played sixties music and we danced until three in the morning,” Dan said. “Then we went to a 24-hour Italian bakery in the Village for cappuccino and cannoli.”

  “Nothing’s open 24 hours down here except bowling alleys, strip joints and grocery stores,” Steve said. “And I haven’t been out dancing since I left New York.”

  “You could always come back for visits, or move back to the city, if that’s what you want.”

  “No, I don’t want to come back,” Steve said. “I want to make a life for myself down here. Now that I’ve broken up with Cindy I feel like I’m ready to commit to living in Florida.”

  As soon as he hung up, Celeste buzzed to tell him that a Federal Express package had arrived for him, and then there was a call from a tenant, and soon he was working so hard that he didn’t have time to miss New York any more. Florida was his home now. He was committed to it and to working for Thornton. He thought of himself like an egret out in the Everglades, sailing on updrafts over the smooth, flat land, heading into the golden sunset of the opening, when everything would come together, the mall would be open, and his parents would be proud of him.

  As Steve expected, Rita failed to keep her promise. By the fifth of December, she was back to her old habits, calling Steve whenever the mood struck her. “She promised not to call me more than three times a week,” Steve said when Celeste buzzed to tell him Rita was on the phone. “This is the fourth time and it’s only Tuesday. Tell her that I’m out on site and I won’t be back before five.”

  “She’s your mother, Steve,” Celeste said. “If my children talked about me the way you talk about her, I’d knock the stuffing right out of them. She’s on line two.”

  “What is it now, Mother?” Steve said, picking up the handset.

  On the other end of the line, Rita began to cry. “It’s your father,” she said.

  Steve sat bolt upright. “Daddy?” he said. “What’s the matter? Is he all right?”

  “He’s fine,” Rita said, sniffling. “I’m the one who’s miserable. He won’t give me two minutes peace. Aunt Mimi and I went to the dressmaker’s in Boca Raton this morning, and your father insisted he had to come along. He doesn’t even like Mimi.”

  “Mother.” Steve sank back into his chair. “What am I supposed to do, come over and give him a life? Just tell him he can’t go with you.”

  “I tried that. He said I wanted him to just lay in bed until he died, then I could go off and be a merry widow. Every time I try to get away from him he comes up with new aches and pains and he’s sure he’s going to die.”

  “Doesn’t he belong to the men’s club at the condo?”

  “He refuses to go to the meetings because he says all they do is play cards and brag about their grandchildren.”

  Steve started to fiddle with a paper clip. “Thank you very much,” he said. “Now it’s my fault my father won’t go to the men’s club. How about something else.” He thought for a minute. An egret swooped past his window and landed in the dirt next to the trailer. “I know,” Steve said. “He’s always watching those nature programs on TV. Maybe he’d like to join the Sierra Club or the Audubon Society.”

  “He’d never go to anything like that,” Rita said. “You know him. He never wants to go anywhere alone.”

  “Maybe you have to take him to the first meeting.” Steve pulled the newspaper from his drawer and looked at the calendar. “The Florida Club is having a lecture on marine life of the Florida Keys, tomorrow at four o’clock. Why don’t you go, and take him. If he likes it, maybe he’ll go back on his own.”

  “I don’t know,” Rita said doubtfully.

  “Mother, every time he turns on the TV he’s watching some program about how fish breathe or the aerodynamics of bird wings. Trust me, he’ll love this.”

  “If you say so, Stevie. Give me the address.”

  The meeting was in North Miami, not far from the Bermans’ condo. Steve gave Rita the address, listened to a few more minutes worth of complaints, and then said, “Oops, there’s somebody here to see me. Gotta go, Mom.”

  His office was empty. Steve put his head on his desk and said, “Why me, Lord? Why me?”

  “Because you’re cute?” Brad said from the doorway. “Though not from that angle.”

  “Do you have a life, Brad?” Steve asked, raising his head.

  “Touchy, touchy,” Brad said. “Let me ask you a question. Do the tenants have to use union contractors? I’m working with this woman who wants to open a newsstand. Her brother is a contractor and she wants to hire him, but he’s not union.”

  “This union stuff never stops,” Steve said. “There’s no rule says she can’t, but you ought to be honest and tell her that some of the non-union contractors have had a few problems.”

  “Honest?” Brad said, lifting the right side of his lip. “That word is not in my vocabulary. I’ll tell her it’s all systems go.” He pantomimed a rocket taking off with his hands and said, “Whoosh!”

  Celeste buzzed. ”Steve, one of the superintendents just radioed in that there’s some kind of fight going on out on site.” Her voice was urgent and had lost its accent. “Junior and Bill are at a meeting and I can’t raise either of them.”

  “I’ll go right out,” Steve said.

  “Dum-da-da-dum! Steve to the rescue!” Brad said as Steve walked past him.

  “Why don’t you come, too, Brad,” Steve said, locking onto Brad’s arm with a vise grip. “We can spend some quality time together.”

  “I’m not really into sweat,” Brad said, trying to get Steve’s hand off his arm as they walked down the hall.

  “Do you want me to call the police?” Celeste asked as they passed her desk.

  “Yes, I’m being held hostage,” Brad said.

  “I’ll radio you,” Steve said.

  “Building A, Steve,” Celeste said as Steve and Brad walked out. “In the middle by the fountain.”

  It was overcast and almost cool. Puffy gray cumulus clouds covered the sun and there was a fine grit of sand in the light breeze. In the distance a power saw whined.

  “All right, I’ll go,” Brad said. “You can let go now.”

  Steve opened up his car and jumped in. “Come on,” he said, and reluctantly Brad got in next to him. Steve took off down the dirt road, bumping and bouncing, the air conditioner on high blasting cool air at them.

  He pulled up at Building A, and he and Brad ran inside. It was eerie in there, all shadows, equipment, dirt floors and steel beams. It smelled like mold and sawdust. In the distance someone was hammering sheet metal, and the sound echoed in the high
corners. A group of men stood in front of the open pit where the fountain was to be installed.

  Three guys had squared off, two against one. In the light that streamed in through a skylight above them, Steve could see their tool belts, and tell that all three were carpenters. They stood in front of the half-finished fountain, with steel piping and pallets of tile around them. Their backs were turned to him, so he could not see their faces.

  “We don’t need no scabs here,” the smaller of the two men was saying. ”This is a union job.” There was something familiar about his voice, but Steve couldn’t place it.

  The third man, a Cuban, responded with a stream of Spanish. Steve didn’t recognize him, but he was sure that the man worked for one of the few non-union contractors still on the site.

  “This is an open shop,” Steve said, stepping forward. ”You don’t need a union card to work here.” The crowd parted, and all three men turned their attention to him. Steve recognized the taller of the two men, the foreman for RKL Drywall, but the shorter man’s face remained in shadow.

  “Who are you?” the foreman asked.

  “Steve Berman,” Steve said. “I work for Thornton. I’m the assistant project manager. And if you can’t abide by our rules, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

  “Cousin Stevie!” Richie said, stepping from the shadows into full light.

  16 – Rats!

  “Oh, no,” Steve groaned. He looked at the Cuban, who didn’t seem to understand what was going on. “Anybody here speak Spanish?” Steve asked. The crowd was silent.

  Finally Brad said, “What do you want me to tell him?”

  “Tell him this is an open shop. He doesn’t need a union card to work here.”

  Brad translated Steve’s words into Spanish, and the Cuban man growled. He spoke to Brad in Spanish and Brad started to laugh.

  Steve turned on Brad. “What’s so funny?”

  It took Brad a minute to stop laughing. The crowd was dead silent. The high whine of a power saw coming from the far end of the mall sounded almost soft and melodious.