Invasion of the Blatnicks

by Neil S. Plakcy

  “I said it was fine, Mom.” Steve sat down at his desk and picked up a contract.

  “There’s one more thing, Steven,” Rita said. She sat down across from him. Steve put the contract down. “I was talking to Mimi last night, and she gave me some news. Good news and bad news, actually.” She paused, and tried to smile. “Sheryl’s driving case came to court, and they gave her a fine and probation. That’s the good news.”

  Rita’s smile faded. “The bad news is that Sheryl is pregnant.”

  “Sheryl? Boy, I didn’t know Morty would go that far to snag a rich wife.”

  “Now, you don’t know if it was deliberate,” Rita said. “And besides, nobody’s talking about marriage right now. Mimi’s in shock and Jerry’s flying down. He’s going to be at dinner with us on Saturday night. We’ll see what happens then.”

  Rita stood and picked up her portfolio. “Well, I guess that’s that. I’m sure I’ll be speaking to you soon, Steven. And at least you won’t be able to tell me not to call any more.” She smiled sweetly and walked out.

  Junior came in a few minutes later. “Bill saw you talk to that overhead door guy,” he said, leaning against the wall. His tie was an electric blue and glittered in the light. “You did good.” Junior paused, and looked down at his tie. “But pretty soon you won’t have much time for anything but tenants.”

  “I can see that,” Steve said. He was already spending half his time reviewing tenant drawings, attending meetings with their designers and contractors, and walking the site looking at their construction progress.

  Every tenant had a different contractor, and every one had a dozen questions for Steve. Either there was a funny condition at the storefront, or walls didn’t measure up right, or the plumbing connections couldn’t be found. Steve began making notes of every tenant’s progress because Uncle Max was always popping his head in asking if the Chinese restaurant had brought in any equipment yet or when was the linen shop going to put up some drywall.

  “If you get swamped, don’t feel bad if you have to shift anything else back to me,” Junior said.

  “I’ll keep it in mind.” Junior left, but his cigarette smoke lingered behind him. Steve watched it hang in the air for a minute. While he appreciated Junior’s offer, he wanted to prove that he could handle anything he was given. It was the only way he thought he’d truly be able to be proud of his success when the building opened.

  Around six o’clock, Bill appeared at the door of Steve’s office. “I heard you put old Frank in his place today. This calls for a little celebration. You up for it?”

  “Abso-fucking-lutely.”

  Bill laughed. “Come on, then.”

  Steve, Bill and Junior went to a country and western bar in Davie, a town of cowboys and horse farms a few miles from the site. The bar was decorated like a Wild West saloon, complete with swinging doors and old-fashioned gas lamps. The floor was covered with sawdust and peanut shells.

  They settled down at a table in the back, ordered a pitcher of beer and a plate of nachos, and started cracking peanuts and telling stories. As the evening passed, they shot some pool, played the jukebox and flirted with the waitress.

  Junior and Steve sat across from each other. Junior put his beer down on the table and said, “Contractors are scum. Never let a contractor think he can run your site. Never let a contractor date your daughter or your sister. Never pay a contractor a penny more than you absolutely have to.”

  Bill nodded and poured more beers. To Steve, Junior was larger than life, a kind of mythical figure from another world. He told good jokes, held his liquor well, and knew more about construction than Steve thought he could learn in a lifetime. Even after three or four beers, Junior could unravel the complexities of a thirty-page contract, explain how to build a retaining wall, and cite figures from a contractor’s last invoice.

  “You see, all these guys, contractors, developers, you and me, we’ve all got this edifice complex.” Junior smiled, like he knew the pun he was making and he knew Steve knew it, so he didn’t have to explain. “We get our rocks off on building shit, like we’re leaving our tracks behind, just like a dog leaves his mark on every tree and fire hydrant. You come past this mall once it’s open, you’re gonna know you and me were here, that we built it.” He shook his head. “It’s better than drugs, sometimes.”

  Junior drained his glass, ordered another pitcher and another plate of nachos. The pitcher arrived quickly, frosty and cold, tiny drops of water already melting onto the red and white checked tablecloth.

  “You know, Steve, I had my doubts about you when you started,” Bill said, filling up their glasses. “College boy like you. I figured you for some kind of sissy, didn’t like to get your hands dirty. That kind never last in construction unless their daddy owns the business.” He put the pitcher down and slid the pack of cigarettes out from his shirt sleeve, took one out, and tapped it on the table. “I gave you about a month until you turned your little college tail between your legs and lit out for New York.” Bill lit the cigarette, took a drag, and then coughed. “Gotta jump start my lungs sometimes.”

  “Nice to know I make a good first impression,” Steve said.

  “Hail, only school I went to is the school of hard knocks,” Bill said. “But I gotta say, you learn fast. You’re all right.”

  Junior lifted his glass in a toast. “To Steve. He’s all right.”

  “To Steve,” Bill echoed. They clanked their glasses together and drank. Steve was sure he was blushing, but fortunately the bar was dark and no one noticed.

  Steve felt good that night. He was in control of things. He could handle the toughest contractor at the Everglades Galleria. He could even handle his mother. Bring on a thousand Blatnicks, he said to himself, somewhere during the third or fourth pitcher. He’d wipe the floor with them. He reached for a nacho and the side of his arm sent Junior’s mug sliding across the table. Junior made a flying leap and caught it just before it spilled into Bill’s lap. Well, Steve thought, maybe not a thousand Blatnicks. But he could certainly still handle a few.

  21 – Mrs. Blatnick’s Pocketbook

  Rita’s brother Jerry Fenstersheib was a struggling young salesman when he married the former Mimi Blatnick, and Mimi’s father owned a prosperous wholesale business in ladies’ undergarments. Rita’s father, who hadn’t lived to meet his grandchildren in person, had called the merger “a romance with finance.”

  Sheryl and Richie were teenagers when their parents broke up. Though Jerry felt they needed their father around, he knew in his heart they were Blatnicks and that they belonged with their mother. Now that they were both in their twenties, he took them out to dinner on their birthdays, slipped them money when they needed it, and missed them on holidays.

  “Do you think Uncle Jerry will get married again?” Steve had asked Rita once, a few years before. They were sitting in the kitchen late at night, playing gin rummy and eating girl scout cookies, after Harold had gone to bed.

  “He’s still a handsome man,” Rita said. “And even with all the money he has to pay in alimony and child support, he makes a good living.” She took a second bite out of a chocolate mint cookie. She ate in small neat bites and never appeared to chew. Steve thought she ate like a very polite rabbit. “But I think he still loves your Aunt Mimi.”

  “Did he tell you that?”

  “We’ve never discussed it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true.”

  “You think so?” Steve crumpled up the waxy paper that had bound together one column of cookies and ripped open the next.

  “I can tell.” Rita held her hand out for a cookie. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Jerry and Mimi got married again someday.”

  “I would,” Steve said. “I don’t even understand why you’re still friends with Aunt Mimi. I mean, it’s not like she’s family any more.”

  “When my brother married your Aunt Mimi, I took her in like a sister. You don’t just drop a sister like a hot potato.”

  And Rita had n
ever dropped Mimi, as evidenced by how much time the Bermans and the Blatnicks spent together. On Saturday night they all met for dinner at an Italian restaurant on Miami Beach where the sauces were as heavy as the plush velvet decor. Though no one mentioned Sheryl’s pregnancy, Steve was sure that it was the reason why everyone was so quiet and sullen.

  Even the presence of Jerry Fenstersheib did not lighten the evening, though he told jokes and interesting anecdotes about the rag trade in New York. “So this guy says to me, ‘I got a men’s store here. What am I supposed to do with twenty gross of ladies’ panties?’ And I say, ‘Advertise in a magazine for transvestites.’”

  Everyone laughed, but the tone of the dinner remained grim.

  Afterwards they all headed back to Mrs. Blatnick’s suite. Steve and Sheryl walked together from the parking lot toward the hotel entrance. “Are you excited?” Steve asked.

  “Why?”

  “Well, you’re having a baby. I’d be excited if I were in your position, though I couldn’t exactly be in your position.” Sheryl looked dumbly at Steve. “I mean getting pregnant. Like, I can’t get pregnant.”

  “Yeah, well, I thought I couldn’t either. I mean, I didn’t even have an orgasm.”

  Steve wasn’t sure how much Sheryl knew about the birds and the bees and thought he’d see. “Well, you can’t get pregnant unless you have one.”

  “At least somebody agrees with me,” Sheryl said. “All my girlfriends say you can’t get pregnant unless you have an orgasm. It’s like a law or something.”

  “Well, maybe you had one and didn’t notice,” Steve said, as they caught up with the rest of the family.

  Upstairs, the gloom continued. Sheldon paced around for a few minutes, and then said, “I’m bored. There’s nothing to do in this town.”

  “Oh, Sheldon, you’re wrong,” Rita said. “There’s a lovely opera company in Miami, and the ballet, and we have off-Broadway theater too.”

  “I don’t mean that.” Sheldon waved his hand dismissingly. “I mean action. In New York, you go down to the street, there’s something going on. Rich ladies in fur coats and bums asking you for a quarter and cops arresting some dope head. Here all you got is old people and beach bums. Even the drug busts, they’re in slow motion.”

  “You want action, Sheldon, go cause some,” Steve said. “Life is what you make of it.”

  “I need to stretch my legs.” Sheldon stood up and yawned theatrically. “I may go down to the 7-11 and get some cigarettes, maybe something to drink. See you all later.”

  Steve went out on the balcony, and Morty joined him. Streetlights on Collins Avenue twinkled like stars on a celestial causeway, and a cruise ship out on the horizon was decorated with a cascade of lights. Cars honked, sirens rose and fell, and a plane passed overhead.

  “How do you think my aunt and uncle’s store is going?” Morty asked. “I mean, honestly. I’m not asking as their attorney, just their nephew.”

  Steve considered for a moment. “They have a lot of goofy ideas,” he said. “They get caught up in them and everything has to grind to a stop while we discuss parking a jeep in the front window. But I think they know what they’re doing.”

  “They started with one little store in Ozone Park,” Morty said. “I used to go in after school and help them unpack. Uncle Joe bought boxes of manufacturer’s closeouts, sight unseen. We’d look everything over, pull out the damaged goods, and Aunt Estelle would take them in the back and fix them up.”

  “I never heard of that -- Ozone Park. Sounds like someplace in the atmosphere.”

  “Could have been, when I was a kid. Used to be all Jewish, but by the time I went to school it was all black and Spanish. So they had all these classes in school for “disadvantaged” kids, which meant the black kids and the Spanish ones. My father couldn’t hold down a job, and they said I had advantages.”

  “I was lucky,” Steve said. “We had good schools out in the suburbs.”

  “You’re a smart guy, Steve. You wouldn’t have had any trouble, even in Ozone Park. But me, I’ve gotta work for what I know. I barely scraped my way into college, and then, law school, hey, you haven’t got any idea how hard I had to work.”

  Dusty stuck his head out the door and said, “You guys need a refill?”

  They handed their glasses in to him and a moment or two later they were returned, full of fresh ice and the potential of the early evening. Steve and Morty sat facing each other on wooden lounge chairs. “I didn’t have to work too hard in school,” Steve said. “But you know, out at the site it’s a whole different story. It’s stuff I never even heard of before, and I’m supposed to know it all.”

  “I’ve got the same problem,” Morty said. “In law school, you study constitutional issues and great jurists of the past, and then when you get out, you get a practice like mine, you’re springing felons from lockup more than you ever think about freedom of the press.”

  “So what do you think about this baby of Sheryl’s?” Steve asked. “You want her to have it?”

  “You can bet your shorts on it. I got a score to settle on my growing up. I want to have a kid so I can do for him what my parents couldn’t do for me.”

  Harold and Rita had felt the same way. They had pushed Steve to succeed in a world they never had the chance to enter, directing him to the Ivy League, and then, when they had given up on law school, to a good business school with an old-boy network and a prominent name. He had no idea what more he could want for a child of his own.

  “So are you and Sheryl getting married?” he asked.

  Morty smiled. “I’m not saying anything now. We’re working out the details.”

  Dusty came out for a while, bringing new drinks and a fresh direction for the conversation. Around ten o’clock Rita stuck her head out and asked Steve if he was ready to go. Everybody got up and went inside.

  The phone rang just as Steve and his parents were saying good night. Dusty answered.

  “We’ll see you soon,” Rita said to Mimi, kissing her on the cheek. “Say good night to Sheldon for us.”

  “You did what!” Dusty exploded to the phone. “You dumb shit!”

  Everyone stopped and watched Dusty. “All right, all right, give me the address. Yeah, Morty’s right here. I’ll bring him along.” He hung up the phone. “Jesus fucking Christ. My fucking brother.”

  “What’s the matter?” Mimi asked. “Is it Shelly? Is he all right?”

  “Yeah, he’s all right. The dumb fuck tried to hold up a 7-11 down the block and the police picked him up.”

  The room was quiet for a minute. Then Morty spoke. “I guess he’s at the Miami Beach police headquarters.” He turned to Sheryl. “Just where I met you, sweetie.” He looked back at the crowd. “Are we going down there or what?”

  While they waited for the elevator, Dusty related the whole story, from Sheldon’s point of view. Instead of asking the cashier for a cherry Slurpee and a pack of Marlboro Lights, it appeared Sheldon had asked her for all the cash in the register. And he just happened to have a gun in his pocket, for protection alone, he insisted, and the girl saw it and tripped some kind of silent alarm and the police arrested him.

  “Just a harmless misunderstanding,” Steve whispered to Rita. Knowing Sheldon Blatnick, it was almost possible. What was more likely was that Sheldon had watched a few too many TV shows and decided to write his own script.

  They drove down to the police station in three cars, the Bermans following Dusty’s Cadillac, who in turn followed Morty and Sheryl in Morty’s Toyota. “Now, I want you to behave in there,” Rita said to Steve as they all cruised down Collins Avenue. “No jokes, no nasty remarks.”

  “Mom, you take all the fun out of life.”

  “This is serious business, with the police.” Rita shook her head. “I just don’t understand it.”

  “Look on the bright side, Mom. We may get to go to the trial too.”

  “Only if we’re invited, Stevie. I don’t want the Blatnicks to feel that w
e’re interfering with their privacy.”

  “Mom, criminals have no privacy. That’s why they have bars around their cells instead of walls.” Rita groaned and settled into her seat.

  There was no visitors’ parking at the jail, so all three cars had to find spaces along the street. “Honestly,” Rita said, when Harold found a place three blocks away. “This is so inconvenient. It’s as if they don’t want you to come down here at all.”

  “It’s a police station, Mom,” Steve said. “Most of their clientele arrives in official vehicles.”

  By the time they got to the jail, Sheldon had been brought down to meet his family. They walked in just as he was escorted in through a door across the room.

  Mrs. Blatnick walked briskly over to Sheldon, moving faster than Steve had ever seen her go. Sheldon opened his arms as if to hug her, but Mrs. Blatnick had other ideas. “This is the way you repay a mother’s love?” she asked, whacking him with her pocketbook. “Forty years I took care of you, fed you, changed your diapers, and for what? To come and see you in prison?” She whacked him again before a guard restrained her.

  “What are you, some kind of moron?” Dusty asked, coming up behind his mother. “A 7-11? For Christ’s sake! You want to rob someplace, you go for class, Shelly. Haven’t I ever taught you anything? What’s the matter, you never heard of Gucci? Brooks Brothers? They got a whole shopping center in Bal Harbour full of fancy stores, and you have to hold up a 7-11.”

  “It wasn’t like that, Dusty,” Sheldon whined.

  Mimi and Wilma came up. Both of them walked around Dusty to hug Sheldon. “We believe you, Shelly,” Wilma said. “We both know you’re innocent. This is all a terrible mistake.”

  “Sheldon’s birth was the terrible mistake,” Steve whispered to Rita.

  “Is someone here to post bail for this individual?” an officer asked.

  “I’m Mr. Blatnick’s attorney,” Morty said, stepping forward. “Has there been a bail hearing yet?”