Ghosts of Tom Joad

by Peter Van Buren

  I had heard about this and it wasn’t just in China. In Mississippi, Nissan claims never to have laid anyone off at their car plant. That’s because more than a quarter of their workers are employed by temp agencies and laid off at will, but by the temp agency, not Nissan, still with its clean hands. The workers say in eight years they have never seen a temp promoted to regular. FastEx Ground classifies thousands of drivers as independent contractors, so they get no benefits. Those drivers have to pay for their own gas, and rent their trucks. Still having to buy from the company store.

  I did get one thing outta the Germans. For a while one of them had his wife staying with him in town, sort of checking us out I guess to see if their German kids could grow up here. She hired me under the table to do some yard work, cleaning gutters and painting a bit, saying even their rented place wasn’t right for her, as she had come from Europe. Whatever, I made a few bucks, she gave me coffee and we actually got to know each other a little while I was working. One day she invited me inside to move some stuff and, you know it, like in them videos, we ended up in bed. She never called me back, but she slipped me a sweet fifty that day, mumbling how it wasn’t much in real Euros anyway, so there’s your American worker, job done right.

  Back at Bullseye things didn’t go as smoothly. It wasn’t anything I did, but they hired some kid to bus tables and I got sent back to my old job, though I always wondered if any of the waitresses secretly caught me stealing their nickels and dimes off the tables. One of them could have seen me at the bowling alley buying beer with handfuls of change maybe. Anyway, the second time around the picking and stocking job didn’t last too long. Steve the Team Leader explained one day that Bullseye had innovated a new warehousing system that centralized item distribution in such a way that goods came to our store already sorted into tubs. Instead of me breaking down a big box of razors or toothpaste into tubs for Pharmacy and tubs for Grocery, it was done centrally somewhere else by someone else. The people who used to just have to pick up their filled tubs from me were redefined so that they now went into the big truck directly and lifted out their pre-filled tubs. They could skip their own bar code reading part, and so Steve laid off three of those people for efficiency, too. Steve did thank me very nicely for my contributions to the Bullseye family and took my blue vest. At first I was so mad I wanted to burn down the building and bayonet the survivors, but Steve said he hoped I would leave without a fuss. I did. I guess in the end I had precious little fuss left in me.

  BEING UNEMPLOYED AGAIN meant lots of time on my hands. When it was too hot or too cold outside and I had a few bucks in my jeans, I liked to spend time in the new coffee shop at the strip mall here in Reeve. I’d buy a cup, drink some, then load it up with sugar and milk. Drink some more, slowly, reload with sugar and milk, and keep doing it until it was just milk or I got caught. The owners were Koreans and would take the milk container in right after the morning rush, but when one of the few local staff was at the counter (those Korean families were only so big and could only cover so many hours no matter how greedy they was, plus I think they liked the idea of us havin’ to work for them), I could do that milk thing all afternoon.

  The other thing I liked about the coffee shop was the Korean girls that would come in for bubble tea, the kind that requires that big-ass straw. I tried one of those straws on my coffee once, but it made me drink too fast. Not a working man’s straw. The girls were all young and pretty, maybe a little too much makeup at nine in the morning sometimes, but everybody had to make a living. I tried to chat a few of them up, but they either didn’t speak English or didn’t see the point in talking with a guy who obviously had no play money. Most of them worked at that club without windows, and most of the customers going in and out were Koreans too, dropping money as if they were allergic to it. I doubt too many of Reeve’s other citizens could afford an import.

  I did have some hope for this one woman who seemed to linger a bit longer than most of them. She might have been a little older, hard to tell age exactly with Orientals, but she’d sit outside and smoke while her friends would grab their tea and head right back to work. I wasn’t sure what was the right way to approach her, but after some clumsy eye contact and some spilled coffee trying to bump into her accidentally twice at the door, we did get to talking. Spoke good English although without ever satisfying the letters R and L, which I kinda got used to. At first it was mostly hello and good morning, but once she realized I wasn’t angling for anything, we’d talk while she smoked and got to know one another.

  Kim, my angel of the strip mall.

  Man, she was a whole story in a sigh. I always wanted to know why she did what she did, you know, her job. I especially wanted to know if she had a boyfriend or whatever they called it over in Korea. She is probably too busy to get on the bus with me right now, but I remembered her none the less.

  “Why my job any different than yours?” Kim asked me. “I saw that movie, ‘greed is good.’ I wanna make my money.”

  It helped that day that I had had a couple of eye-openers for breakfast out of that half-finished bottle of Everclear from last night’s therapy. Okay, maybe I drank half the damn bottle before breakfast.

  “Kim, I’m sorta embarrassed to ask, but—”

  “Little brother Earl, I have sex with strangers for money. I don’t embarrass.”

  Kim didn’t get embarrassed. She just said stuff. Not like Reeve girls.

  “Okay, you, you know, sell your—”

  “Kitty. That’s what I got, that’s what I sell.”

  “Aren’t you—”

  “Oh cut the shit. You no virgin, and I’m not either. We all do what we have to do. It’s a job. I’m in business, taking as much as I can from them and giving as little as I can get away with. I want to be dirty rich, no, you say filthy rich, same thing. I give them with my kitty, not my brain. I no there. Maybe you look and see him naked, I look and see his wallet on the dresser. If he on top of me, I look up at my nails and think about what polish color is best. You, boy friend Earl, what’d you do last week for money?”

  “Some guy hired me, two bucks an hour, though he shortchanged me on the last twenty minutes, to pick up construction crap and throw it in a Dumpster.”

  “And you used your body, used your muscles, yeah? Got all sweaty? Pretended to be enthused about some shitty work?”

  “I get it Kim, but I ain’t no whore. I work for my money, hard work.”

  “Me too baby. I also ain’t no whore. It no different. You selling your body, I selling mine. Guys who pay me, they selling something somewhere else to make their money. Anyway, look at them. I use their sad, weak parts. They more pathetic than me ’cause they lying to they wives and they lying to themselves. Even you. You’d fuck me Earl, if you had the money. I let you, if you had the money, but nothing for free little boy. You pay for coffee, you pay for me. And I saw you stealing the milk too. You in love with all those little high school chicks you screwed?”

  “No. Course not.”

  “And they no in love with you, yeah?”

  “Right, but we both were wanting, so it was okay.”

  “Yeah, me too. He want to do me for sex, and I want to do him for dollar. Different reason, but the same in the end. Everybody wants something, that’s what money is for, stupid boy Earl.”

  “But ain’t you ashamed or something?”

  “You made few bucks an hour. I could do that at a nail salon with your mother my customer, sure, but I can pull in fifty, sixty, maybe a hundred an hour with the right guy and my kitty.”

  So I sorta understood that you could imagine you still owned something you’d sold, at least until you ended up sleeping in a bath tub hoping one of the seven guys a night would leave a few bucks on your sticky belly after he left. See, I knew my way around this. There was a bar called The Promised Land run mostly for Mexicans, but in the back was another room where they said they told fortunes. You paid up at the bar for a palm reading, they had a sign and all, and went back in
. It was cheap, not classy like I imagined Kim’s place, designed more for the Mexican day workers, but they’d service anyone. It was just dark and shadows and then some chiquita would reach out and take your hand and lead you off to a cot without sheets. It smelled like Clorox and sweat. It was quick and sad, not even fast food. Sometimes I’d be more lonely than the other thing, but them girls didn’t speak English, not like Kim. They’d say “okay, okay” to whatever you said, but even in the dark you could see there were no smiles. I guess it was fair, ’cause I wasn’t smiling either. In the end, paying for sex was mostly about not being alone.

  They didn’t like to kiss, but would let you sorta do it if pushing back was harder than giving in. Every time you’d taste cigarettes and gum. Kinda odd, a girl who’d suck you off wouldn’t kiss you back, but that really told the story if you could understand the language. When it was done she’d hand you a baby wipe in the dark and you’d walk out still alone. After a while when fucking was, well, just fucking, you started to forget how it could be anything else. It was just appetite, and we were all embarrassed to be hungry, but we had to eat. Funny thing, the cops closed the bar down because getting fucked for money was illegal. I then recognized two of the girls working in Bullseye just the next week when I went in for my last paycheck. Small world.

  I was talking some more to Kim.

  “So, they just walk in and you guys, what? Just fall on the floor?”

  “You an idiot. Gimme that lighter, I wanna smoke before I go back. They come in, pay sixty dollars to the house. Some old whore Mama who married one of the gangsters takes the money from them and passes them back to me or one of the other girls. If Mama likes you, she’ll throw the rich-looking ones your way. To make Mama like you, you gotta kick back to her some of your tips. She gotta turn over her money to the gangsters, or they’ll beat her up or worse, stop sending her fresh kitty like me. A whole club full of cheap street meat mean no customers come back. She bitch. Right, or you say ‘she a bitch’? Don’t matter, everybody screwing everybody.”

  “So the guy get passed to me, and I size him up. He know the game? He know the price? If he’s new, I try to pull as much as I can up front. But most of the guys know it all, so I gotta play them. I worry he might want to change girls too, maybe I not pretty enough or my tits too small or remind him of his wife, so right away I take his pants off. He no gonna run out naked. On the table, we start massage. I tease him. The more he lay there thinking about fucking me, the more money I gonna make. I start out behind, owing Mama her off-the-book tip, plus I owe the house another twenty bucks for towel fee. They making all the money, man. I work the guy all over his back, teasing underneath, making sure he not bored. Mama told him the house fee was for an hour, and if he finish too fast he thinks he got cheated or I have to talk to him to fill time. An hour is at least forty-five minutes now days. Anyway, him on his stomach longer mean I don’t have to see his face for more time.”

  “I turn him over. If he not hard, I get him happy before I ask for the money. I ask for $200. He knows that’s a joke, and I see what he really will pay. Or maybe he no understand, and I get my money. Whatever he wants, when he asks what it cost, I just say ‘more.’ One way is as much trouble as the next. Most of them finish quickly, or I tell them to hurry up. ‘Oh, you so big. Oh, you turn me on baby. Oh, you make me come, honey.’ I don’t mean it, and he don’t believe it, but we playing the game. He probably starting to think of his wife and feel guilty anyway, and then he never finish. I hate that, feels like I am doing hand laundry in the sink. He finish, he pay, and he leave. I make more now anyway, with my fake boobs. Invest in yourself baby. These two cost me five hundred.”

  As she said that, I came to realize that Kim was a woman made of many products, a whole arsenal of creams and lotions, nail enamels, makeup and hair color, so it wasn’t out of place that other parts of her came from a store too. What was real and what was made up seemed to matter little when you were making money. Fooling customers was part of the process, and they readily participated. Kim was nothing if not consistent.

  “Ain’t you afraid of the cops around here?”

  “Nah, Mama usually know all the cops, not like those stupid Mexicans. She send cops back same as anyone, but they no have to tip, it free for them. Cost of doing business, jerking off a cop once in a while. Ha, ha, stupid Earl, maybe you try it once, jerk off the cop out there in your parking lot and he leave you alone too.”

  On the bus I kept seeing that one Korean kid, the only person riding the bus I didn’t recognize, so I just nicknamed him “Tom” ’cause it was easy to remember. I worried who he was, thinking I must have known the kid from around the coffee shop, or somewhere at this strip mall. There were enough Koreans around for sure, but I could not place the one on the bus. He wasn’t the kid that got beat up in the parking lot a while back, this one was even younger. I thought it might have to do with Kim, so I got my courage up to ask.

  “You aren’t worried about, you know, a baby? Havin’ sex with all them men?”

  “Yeah, I have a baby, had, a baby somewhere. Couldn’t afford to keep her, too expensive and getting in the way of my work. Got to cut expenses, cut overhead, cut personnel, you know. Baby not efficient, so I took her to Christian orphanage. That’s economics. Usually it ‘no glove, no love,’ but some guys pay me double for no condom. If I wanna make money, gotta have business risk.”

  “Do they know you, see you outside work? You know, like your boyfriend?”

  “No way. You stupid. I can’t afford a boyfriend, they want free sex. I tell customers my nickname is ‘Money,’ or they call me whatever name they like, like owning a dog, they get to pick it. It don’t matter to me. I forget their names even before the smell of their cum leave my room. You don’t get it Earl. They my customers. They buy something from me, pay and leave. We say ‘in, up, off, out,’ like we practicing English verbs. I never see them outside. You have more of a relationship with the counter guy at the coffee shop you buy from? It just sex, baby. I gotta make it now, while I got my looks. My time is short.”

  Kim wasn’t just some mousetrap. I sorta had feelings for her by this time.

  “I never met a woman like you. You’re not afraid of sex, you can talk about it. It’s effortless with you. Maybe it’s the booze talking now, but I think I love you Kim.”

  “Do you?”

  “Kim, I’ve never met someone like you. I really think I love you.”

  “Guys I do for money tell me that all the time. Love you, love you, love you baby.”

  “Whattaya say back?”

  “I say ‘I love you too,’ because they tip more that way. Just business, like ‘Have a nice day!’ Makes people feel good.”

  “But you don’t mean it?”

  “Have a nice day? Sure I do. You an asshole.”

  “You know what I’m asking, Kim.”

  “I don’t have to mean ‘I love you,’ I just have to say it. Just words.”

  “I never meant to fall in love with you, Kim.”

  “Yeah, I love you too.”

  One time I ran into Kim at the coffee shop after dark, and she asked me to walk her back to work. She entered through the back door. Door didn’t have any handle on the outside, as if announcing clearly I was not welcome; somebody had to push it open for you from the inside. Kim would yell something in Korean, and Mama or one of the others would open it, always with a scowl for me. Mama was rough on all the edges, called everyone “Honey” in a voice like she stopped smoking cigarettes and just chewed on them, eye makeup that looked like it hadn’t been pried outta her wrinkles in years. Breath that would peel paint, good paint. Ugly, sorta like forage the deers wouldn’t eat until the end of winter even if they was hungry. Smelled of garbage out back there, greasy trash from the fast-food places next door. The big smell came from inside the club however, a storm when the door opened, a flood of perfume and disinfectant, the two not getting along, competing with each other for ownership of your nose. After walking
Kim over two or three more times, she’d say if it looked like a slow night, and she’d prop the back door open and we’d talk. She slam it shut quick when Mama called, and I’d sometimes hang out, waiting for that forty five minute hour to be up for the customer and she’d open up and we’d talk more. Sometimes she’d hand me some soda or something from inside, when the customer wouldn’t take the drink she was supposed to offer him as a signal it was time for him to get out.

  One night I had my first ever hit of speed from Kim. Mama handed out little red and blue pills so the girls would work longer hours, and Kim said if she took two or three or four or eight her head spun and the time passed more quickly. Kim looked tired without the speed, but when I said something she’d laugh at me and say, “I don’t even open my eyes until after midnight.” Some nights Mama laid out lines of the new, cheap coke coming into town to perk up her girls. Hours were pretty rough for Kim at the club, basically stay on as long as customers were coming, but it was her job and she had a work ethic. I just hung out for something to do.

  By now I was used to finding myself in a place without a really specific reason for being there. Sometimes in the dark I’d see people in the Dumpsters looking for food or whatever. I don’t think they lived there, just came to eat, like them animals in nature documentaries coming to the water hole. When I was a kid, the places in Reeve where you could go at night to do technically illegal but really just wayward stuff like climbing the water tower, or pulling off some road to make out, were limited. Desire and interest were there, but usually without opportunity; you didn’t want someone to tell your mom the next day that they’d seen the family car parked behind some store. In those days, you couldn’t find a place like this, back of a strip mall, that was public enough no one knew you but still private enough that you could do whatever you wanted.