He sat and waited patiently for the ding but he still counted the rapid defrost seconds in his head. He was so good at it he was already there at the oven door with his mitt when the sound come. He carried the two trays to the table and peeled back the tops. The beautiful smell was carried up in the steam and he hoovered it up his nose. It smelled just like real food. It usually looked and tasted like something less so he liked to stretch out the smelling as long as he could. He always felt sorry for B.O's wife that she couldn't appreciate the scent of a good TV dinner.
And, thank heaven for ketchup and mustard. He didn't know where he'd be without 'em. The paint and plaster of food. There weren't no meal construction faults that couldn't be put right with generous helpings of ketchup and mustard. It made his meals all taste the same but he'd gotten used to that taste a while back.
"So anyway," he went on like he'd only just left the conversation. "I went over to tell Desire. 'Desire', I say, 'that little girl in there, she can't be no QCO. She ain't got the aptitude. She got no interest in pool balls. Man, it's like it's just a job to her.'
And you know what Desire says back to me? She says, 'Waldo, (and I'll cut out the 'f' words for you, Reet) If the Pacers get on a losing streak and bomb one game after the next, (she's always comparing the real world to basketball) you don't see Slick Leonard come on TV and say his boys ain't no good. He says, "I take full responsibility. It's my fault them old boys can't play worth a shit, not theirs. I here on by tender my resignation."
"So Waldo you old trainer you, if you can't train her up, if you ain't man enough for the job, I'll have to find me someone who is. But don't blame the nip. She's got her elementary school certificate, and that's about five years more schooling than most of you other morons got. You understand that?"
Hell, Reet. That Desire. Ever since she got interviewed on Indiana Tonight, she thinks she's something else. Well, I got half a mind to tell the bitch that she ain't. You know how it is, don't you, Reet. When Waldo got half a mind, ain't nobody can sleep easy."
With all the words coming out and all the food going in, that was one hell of a busy mouth on the face of Waldo Monk. There's old faces like balloons that get shrunk and wrinkled when the air gets out of them. And there's others that swell up and kind of grow, you know? Waldo's was an expanding balloon face. The type where all the features got bigger; the eyes got rounder, the lips got fuller, and the nose blew up like a bubble of licorice gum.
That was the face Waldo ended up with after sixty five years of stuffing junk into it. He wore his gray hair so short it was easy to forget he had any, and he never did find the secret of growing any type of whiskers. His body was kind of made up of put-together balls, like a snowman, but black. He had round everything; arms, belly, thighs, even his fingers and toes was starting to look like something they produced at the factory. He was a round guy.
But he wouldn't be round for much longer. Once the diet started to kick in he knew he'd be on the beach at Lerdo de Tejada with his Bermuda shorts, playing beach volleyball with the spinster chicks. Only one pitcher of Coke tonight in spite of urges otherwise. Only two TV dinners. And the piece of resistance, an apple with his ice cream. They'd probably brand him a health fanatic, but it'd be worth the effort.
5
"Well excuse me, miss, but I don’t think you need to be talking like that."
She give him the evil stare. "Like what?"
"You know, using the 'f' word."
"The 'f' …? Shit. You some kind of friggin' preacher or something?"
"Don't have to be no preacher to know what's right and what ain't."
"Shoot. 'Fuck' don't mean nothin. It's just a noun you know, like 'rather'. Fucking great just means 'rather great', right? Don't mean 'sex' or nothing."
"It's vulgar."
She laughed in his face. He noticed she had nice teeth. He'd never seen inside her mouth before.
"Vulgar? Where'd you get a word like that, man? They use the fucking 'f' word around here like breathing. If there ain't a 'fuck' in the sentence nobody understands it."
"Them's men, and they got no class. You're a lady and when you use the 'f' word you sound cheap. It ain't necessary."
He got to see her teeth again.
"A lady? That's a friggin' good one. I ain't never been accused of that before."
"If it means the same as 'rather', then use 'rather' why don'cha?"
"Fuck."
"You're saying it deliberate now. I don't wanna listen no more."
"You ain't got no choice, pal. You're training me, remember? You gotta listen to my filthy mouth for two months. And I'll say any fucking thing I want. Thank you." She walked off, still with that big rude smile on her face.
It was true. He was training her. Some hope. No one said he had to like her, and that was just as well, cause he didn't. She was unrespectful, and ignorant. It riled him that Desire was giving his job, a job he'd taken seventeen years to fine tune, to this little girl with no ambition. And they'd given him just two months to turn the sow's ear into a silk purse.
By lunchtime she was still a sow's ear, and if anything she was even less silky than when he'd started working on her. When the lunch horn sounded, she didn't bother to eat nothing, just crawled onto a stack of packing cases and went to sleep.
Waldo watched her curl up like a plastic playing card on a hot grill. She all but vanished. Bore no relation to a body. She was just some thrown-out overall in the corner. He fathomed that his right leg had to weigh more'n she did. Didn't seem fair that; one person having too much of everything while another got nothing. Couldn't be no QCO in heaven.
Couldn't of been no QCO when they built Roundly's neither. It was a big biscuit box with little windows so far up the walls you couldn't see nothing but the pearly gates. Least you would of been able to if they'd ever cleaned them windows. They was so greasy you needed to have the lights on, even on sunny days.
The ceiling was about high enough you could stand old Liberty up inside and her torch wouldn't even scare the rafter-pigeons that shat all over the plant. All that upward space didn’t serve no purpose other than to make heating a waste of time in winter. All the ball making went on down on the ground.
It's funny, everybody in the world probably handled at least one pool, or billiard, or snooker ball in their lives.But you ask 'em how the things is made and I bet you they wouldn't have the first idea. Bet you don't even know. If this was one of them well-researched serious novels, I reckon we could spend a couple of chapters explaining it all, round about here. But this ain't that kind of book and I never worked there, so I got no idea how the hell they make the frigging things.
6
By the end of the first week, Waldo knew he was wasting his breath. The girl did the work okay but he couldn't get her real motivated. She didn't have no ambition, no hankering to carve out a career in pool ball manufacturing. It was such a waste. She'd been handed a golden opportunity on a golden plate and she couldn't see nothing but balls.
"I tell you Reet, young people today. They got no appreciation for stuff our generation would of been grateful for. You know how it was, Aretha honey. When we was young we was begging for work. Twenty of us fighting for one position. You recall how happy you was when they took you on at the sewerage works? Ten dollars a month plus overtime. That was real money in them days. And you got to keep the boots and snorkel.
He sat watching I Dream of Genie. He had no choice other than watching cause there wasn't no sound. He just sat and guessed what skinny old Major Nelson was moaning about and laughed. His guessing was probably funnier than the script anyway. He knew if Major Nelson was any kind of red blooded military man and he had Barbara Eden half dressed giving out wishes …Well, it was frustrating to see was all. He could of got the sound fixed but he was saving for Mexico.
He'd been saving for Mexico for ten years now. The company had an account he'd been paying into. The interest it built up would pay the final month's installment so really he saved money that way too.
'Lerdo de Tejada, Your Last Resort'.
'American Class at Mexican Prices'
'End it all with Us.'
'We'll Fill you Full of Beans'.
'Sunshine 24 Hours a Day.'
It'd been a sunny day indeed when he met the agent guy at McDonalds. It was the guy's day off but he just happened to have the photos with him. All them happy old folk playing croquet, and ballroom dancing, and riding donkeys along the beach. The guy worked for the company, but he'd already paid the down payment to go there himself. If that don't give you confidence, what would?
He was a likeable guy. He was an ex-lawyer so Waldo knew he could trust him. But even without his scholarly background, Waldo would still probably of trusted him cause Waldo pretty much trusted everyone. He was already dreaming about retirement under the hot Mexican sun even before the second Big Mac went down.
Another stroke of luck was that the guy had all the papers, the brochures and the contracts outside in his pickup. The pamphlet was real professional, all color and big words. There was more pictures and recommendations from satisfied retirees. They had ex-schoolteachers there, engineers, TV personalities. Waldo couldn't be certain, and the lawyer guy weren't giving nothing away, but one old biddy in the photos looked a lot like Marlene Deitrich. The lawyer just winked at Waldo when he asked. Marlene Deitrich. Man it had to be a hell of a place.
He signed right there in the truck, filled in the form, and handed over a small 'trust' deposit. He'd been paying off every month since for the past ten years. He got regular updates; the new tennis courts, the hiring of a chef from the actual France, and a Xeroxed sheet of useful Spanish phrases he hadn't quite memorized yet.
He'd learned some. 'Hola,' that was like 'hi'. Then there was 'yo tengo hambre'. That meant 'I'm hungry'. He figured that'd be the one he'd use most so he learned it first.
Course there'd had to be sacrifices through all this saving. There'd been no vacations. Plenty of overtime. He hadn't bought nothing new in all that time. If something broke down, he'd get it fixed. If it broke again, it could stay broke, like the TV.
So that's why Barbara wasn't saying nothing. But it was okay. He could talk to Aretha without no distractions.
"So what can I do, Reet? How can I convince the kid? If you and me'd had kids, they'd of had values. We would of had some good kids, you and me, Reet. I'd of been a good pappa. You'd of been a great momma."
He come over all nostalgic again. Getting old was making him soft on the inside as well as out. He got a lump in his throat and he couldn't swallow the hunk of Hershey bar he'd been chewing on. Him and Aretha hadn't had no kids on account of her problem. Her pipes was all messed up. That weren't the technical term for it, but whatever it was, she'd spent more time in the hospital than some of them doctors. She must of ended up real puzzling inside, all mismatched and wrong placed. There was so much plastic inside her she sure as hell disappointed the worms at the cemetery.
Waldo only upset himself more by thinking about it. She'd been gone fifteen years already but he still saw her. Still talked with her. Still loved her like no woman before or since. But man he wished she was there loving him back.
7
"Miss, could you come over here please."
"Miss? You talking to me?"
"Yes'm. I want to .. need to talk to you a while before we go in."
Waldo had ambushed China on her way out of the ladies' change room. He'd been not really training her for nine days now, and come to the conclusion he needed to work on stimulating her mind. He played Aretha's old Dale Carnegie tapes the night before, 'Think Positively to Turn Your Life Around'. He figured, if China was stimulated mentally, she might take more of an interest in calibrating eight-balls. Cause right now she didn't see nothing exciting in it at all.
"Yes, miss. Could you sit down here please." He directed her to the desk in the interview room, closed the door and sat opposite.
"You gonna call me 'miss' now are you?"
"It's polite."
"Shit. What you wanna be polite for?"
"A few good manners go a long way. Ain't no reason we shouldn't be polite to each other. We gotta be together seven more weeks."
"Hell. Just call me China like all the other morons here."
"That ain't your name, and it ain't polite."
"You got some fucking fixation with politeness or what?"
"I told you already it ain't necessary to use that word."
"Fixation?"
"You know the one I mean."
"Oh, the other 'f' word. The one that makes me sound cheap. Sorry. I forgot." Waldo, looked down at his pen that was doing all his agitating for him between his fingers.
"Is it everyone in the world you hate, or just me?" He guessed that must of come out of his own mouth. She blushed.
"Whachyousay?"
"Miss. I ain't got nothing 'gainst you, or 'gainst Chinese people, or 'gainst women. So I don't see why you gotta fight me. I ain't done nothing to you. The world's a lot easier to take if you're nice to people. Being nasty don't get you no place."
She stood up like she was shot out of a mortar.
"I don't remember seeing nothing about mindless gabbing when I read the contract. So I don't think I gotta listen to this crap. Miss China here got balls to roll. If'n you'll excuse me."
She didn't wait for an answer. She walked out on him and slammed the door. Waldo wasn't no expert on counseling, but he had a feeling his first motivation talk didn't go too good.
8
To be the QCO at Roundly's you had to have a working knowledge of each facet of the pool ball production process. China was spending three days at each of the twelve stations in the plant. But it didn't take her half a day to master the skills she needed in each one. It wasn't that hard. Any moron could do it. Except maybe the ones they hired at Roundly's.
If she could of been bothered, she could of recommended stuff to improve the system and increase their output too. But she couldn't be bothered. She knew she wouldn't be around long enough to pick up her end-of-year bonus, or reap the fruits of any wasted effort she put into the place.
By lunchtime she was so moody she didn’t even head for the cartons. She was pissed at the fat man, but she was more pissed at herself for letting it get to her. He didn't mean no harm. He was just some dumb ass, small-minded hick whose whole life rotated round this shitty factory. Weren't his fault.
She walked over to where he sat on a sack reading the paper and eating a long sandwich. She crouched down in front of him in a way Waldo couldn't of crouched in a million years.
"Lao," she said.
"I beg your pardon?"
"I ain't Chinese. I'm Lao …from Laos." She pronounced the 's' at the end so he'd understand it. He thought about it for a bit. His sandwich hovered in front of his mouth like one of them spaceships waiting to dock.
"The country?"
"Yeah," she laughed. "The country." The sandwich spaceship still hung there, susceptible to attacks from alien raiding parties.
"Landlocked."
"You what?"
"Laos. It ain't got no coast. Surrounded by Vietnam, Cambodia, China and Thailand."
She made them little eyes as round as they'd go.
"That's right. How the f … how the rather you know that?"
"Me and Aretha got atlases and maps and stuff. I like to look things up when I read them in the papers. When they talk about our boys in Nam, I like to see where they're talking about."
He finally took a bite of his baguette. She made eye contact with him for the first time that week. It looked like she was gonna get into a conversation, but it only looked like it.
"Right." She stood up. "Just so's you know I ain't Chinese." And off she walks.
Waldo was all ready to get into that conversation they didn't have. He already had questions queued up to ask. But he was too slow. By the time they'd wo
rked their way up to his mouth, she was over there curled up on her packing cases.
9
At 3am the same pink Chevy pulled up in front of Roundly's. She wondered about driving straight into the building. But they made factories tougher in them days so there wasn't much hope of knocking the frigging place down.
She banged her head on the steering wheel a couple of times, not hard enough to knock herself out, but enough to beat out the unhappiness. It didn't work. She climbed between the two front seats into the back. The rear seat was her living and sleeping room. The front seat was just for driving.
She pulled her shiny cocktail dress off over her head and looked at it bunched up on her lap. The crap they give her to wear. She didn't know what they'd dress her in from one night to the next. Jesus knows what vermin there was frigging around inside it, or what diseases they'd give her.
She leaned forward and flicked on the dumb little ceiling lamp. It hardly give out enough light to see herself in the driving mirror. Compared to the assorted lady farm animals working at Roundly's, hers was the body of a child. She'd seen ten-year-olds with bigger tits. She was twenty-four, but folks that could be bothered, guessed anywhere from fourteen to fifty.
She saw herself having a grumpy Asian grocery store face. No one had ever called her pretty so that must of meant she wasn't. Her eyes wasn't as squinty as some, and her naturally wavy hair was unnaturally streaked brown. Being Asian give her the shits. But she still had to fight often to defend it. She wondered if she wouldn't have gotten so hateful if she didn't look the way she did. That big soft nigger was right. She was nasty.
As always she'd have to wait for the factory change room to open before she could get herself a shower. Thank God the caretaker opened up early so she could get in and get cleaned up before them shoefaced sows got to work. Them women looked at her like Vietnam was her fault. She looked at 'em back like it was too. There wasn't much dialogue. When it come, they spoke at her like she was deaf and stupid. It didn't matter none. It never mattered.
Pool and its Role in Asian Communism Page 2