by Jim Gavin
“Dad?” one of the girls says. He can’t tell their voices apart.
“Hello, hello!”
“It’s Katie.”
“Katie!”
“Watching the game?”
“It’s a travel day. How’s summer school?” She has to teach it for extra money. Teaching at a Catholic high school, a vow of poverty.
“I talked to Megan and Matt. We want to take you out on Saturday.”
“Don’t go to any trouble,” says Costello. “You guys should enjoy your weekends.”
“I’ll call you Saturday.”
“Okay. Well, I’ll let you go.”
“I don’t need to be let go. I’m talking to you. We’re talking.”
“Okay.”
“How’s business?” she asks.
He tells her everything he knows about gila monsters and their lack of assholes.
“I don’t think that’s true,” she says.
• • •
At lunch on Tuesday it’s Costello vs. Luis. The warehouse crew gathering around the ping-pong table, eating pizza. Even after a few beers, Luis is nimble and cunning. A bottle of Advil rattles ceremoniously in his back pocket each time he lunges for a ball.
“Marty gets cute with the backspin,” Jack warns, beer in hand. Next to him is Dave Mumbry, who took over all the dogshit accounts after Matt left.
“How’d you get so good at ping-pong?” he asks.
“The Army,” Costello says. “It’s the least selective fraternity in the world.”
He hears someone calling his name. Lilac perfume mingling with diesel exhaust. He turns to where Linda used to be, and then down to where she is. Linda, twenty-four years old, with a bullet in her spine.
“Five Star Pipe and Supply,” she says. “Is that your guy?”
“He was Matt’s, but now he’s mine again.”
“They ordered some brass but didn’t give me a PO number.”
“Ron gave me a verbal,” Costello says. “I gave them ninety-day billing.”
“Ninety days!” Jack shouts. “What is that, philanthropy?”
Costello follows Linda up the ramp. Doesn’t know whether to help push her.
“I’ll put him on a payment schedule for that stuff,” she says, “but nothing else leaves the warehouse until I see some money.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Costello says.
Later that night, Costello pulls into his driveway. There’s Rocha, revving up his Harley. And Connie running out the front door, encased in denim. Down to Chili’s, for a delightful evening of pillage and rape. She waves to him and off they go, her legs squeezing tight.
The house is dark and quiet. For a couple of hours, Costello sits at the dining room table, paying the bills. Still paying off the bust. Fifteen years without a vacation. Never taking her out to dinner, not once. A million Ragú dinners. But at least they never ran out of rats.
Later he turns on the TV. The Dodgers on the first night of their home stand. Down two runs in the eighth. Costello, anxious, muttering to himself, drinking straight from the two-liter bottle of Pepsi. He wanders over to the glass slider and looks out on the darkness. He turns on the pool light. A pretty shade of green and the lizard down below.
• • •
Wednesday afternoon, up in Baldwin Park, a forsaken road winding past broken cinder block, a driveway with no address, a dungeon of a warehouse, and Ron Ciavacco, proprietor of Five Star Pipe and Supply. Sitting at the counter, marking up a racing form, as Valerie, his sister and only employee, smokes and watches Dr. Phil on a small black-and-white. They’ve been going out of business for twenty-five years.
“The wolf is at the door, my friend,” Costello says, and gently explains the situation. The concept of paying for goods and services. Ron, a beggar and a chooser, asks for better pricing on globe valves. They shake hands. Ron wishes him luck at the WCPA awards banquet.
“I don’t care about stats,” Costello says. “Just as long as we win!”
At dusk, he hides from the eastbound traffic. Drives down Cherry Avenue, passing the cemetery on his way to the beach. The strand is dull and gray. Nobody goes in the water. He walks along the bluffs, smoking, counting the tankers in the harbor, a habit since childhood. Catalina Island, a distant mirage. Sixty years in SoCal and he’s never taken the boat to Catalina.
Listening to the Dodgers game on the way home. Our man from Santo Domingo dealing a shutout into the seventh inning. Gets home just in time. Big bowl of vanilla ice cream, the last two innings, and then the news. Absolutely beautiful. There’s a knock at the door.
“Hi, Marty!” Francine in her bike helmet.
“Now’s not a good time.”
She steps inside and Costello has no choice but to set her up with a bowl of vanilla. Be thankful for small mercies, Francine. The Nazis would’ve thrown you in a lime pit. Francine stares at the pictures on the bookcase, ignoring the travesty taking place right now in the top of the eighth. The manager, in his wisdom, pulling the young lefty after he gives up a walk. Let him work out of trouble, for chrissakes. Only way to become a pitcher.
“She said I could have her jewelry,” Francine says.
“What?”
Francine walking down the hall, turning on the lights like she owns the place. There’s no jewelry, no real jewelry, except her wedding ring. Katie has that. Francine in their bedroom, holding the rosewood jewelry box in her stubby hands.
“It’s nothing fancy,” Costello says. “You won’t impress anyone, if that’s what you’re going for.”
The box tucked under her arm.
“Fine. It’s all yours. Come on.”
Back down the hall, turning off the lights. Francine is going out the front door. She doesn’t say goodbye. A Bedouin in the night.
The Dodgers closer gets lit up and they lose in extra innings. At eleven o’clock, Costello turns on the news. And then Megan calls, just to say hi. He asks her about her junior college classes and she rants and raves about the stupidity of her fellow students. She hates Orange County. Fascist this, soulless that. She wants to travel. See the watery parts of the world. She talks through the weather and into the next commercial. Sports is next. Costello starts leaning toward the side table, getting ready to hang up the phone at his first opportunity. When he sees the Dodgers highlights coming on, he says, “Well, I’ll let you go.”
“What are you watching?” Megan asks.
“What? Nothing.”
She laughs at him. “We’re taking you out Saturday, whether you like it or not.”
• • •
On Thursday afternoon he drives east into the Inland Empire, alighting upon a paved, semi-incorporated nowhere called Mira Loma. Bromberg Enterprises, the Death Star, sitting in a ring of smog on the edge of the freeway, five hundred thousand square feet of blazing white concrete. Costello parks at the edge of a vast parking lot and walks a half mile through warm, gusty winds that play havoc with his hair.
Through the dark maw of loading dock #53 and into the maze. Towering rows of everything. Hundreds of warehouse crew, pushing silver gleaming hand trucks and hydraulic pallet jacks. It smells clean in here, no diesel exhaust, all the forklifts fancy and electric. A “No Smoking” sign every ten feet. At the far end a metal staircase leading to the offices of young men with advanced business degrees from accredited universities. It’s only a matter of time before Bromberg swallows up Ajax and every other rep in SoCal. Death from above. Eliminate the middleman. Chris Easton, younger than Matt, but already with a wife and kids and a mortgage. A bureaucrat with class and breeding, he sits Costello down, offers him coffee, soda, popcorn, hot dogs. They’ve got a whole circus up here. Costello breaks down the ballcock situation. Five hundred serial numbers for five hundred faulty units, written down by hand, his own, on a yellow legal pad, plus a flow chart of rebate and compensation. The factory rep running interference for the contractor, on behalf of the contractor’s wholesaler, so neither have to face the wrath of the builder. The gallant factory rep,
doing his duty, meeting his challenger. Pistols at dawn.
“It’s ridiculous how complicated this is,” says Easton, flipping the chart upside down.
“It’s what they call a Byzantine arrangement. But I’ve already been out on all the job sites, squared things with Lamrock. We’re switching out the defectives ourselves, all you need to do is sign off on the replacements so my contractor can pull from your shelves ASAP. The purchase order numbers are already plugged in and you get the percentage on everything. You really don’t have to do a goddamn thing.” Calm down, calm down. “I’m just saying . . . I’m just showing you what I did so I don’t have to answer questions later. It’s pretty much a done deal. Our long national nightmare is over.”
“Lamrock okayed this.”
“Ex cathedra.”
“What?”
“Lamrock okayed it.”
“Can you send this to me as an Excel sheet? I can’t show this mess to my boss.”
“You bet. There’s a gal in our office. She’s dynamite with computers.”
Easton laughs, like he just heard a joke, and gives back the legal pad. A new bag of Pings in the corner, a framed photograph of Easton standing next to Tiger Woods.
“Are you going to the WCPA tourney?” Costello asks.
“Harbor Municipal,” he says tentatively. “That’s a pretty ghetto course.”
“Not if you’re a hack like me.”
“They should have the tournament someplace nice.”
“We’re lucky there’s still a golf course in Southern California that lets us play. Lamrock had to pull a lot of strings to make it happen.”
“Have you actually met Lamrock?”
“If you have time,” says Costello, “maybe we could go down and double-check your stock.”
“It’s all right here,” Easton says, tapping his laptop screen. “Everything that comes in and out of here is all right here.”
“I know. I just want to see it.”
“Actually,” says Easton, “I’m not allowed down there at the moment.”
“Why not?”
“Long story.”
“Oh, yeah?” Costello crosses his legs, getting comfortable. This is the job. This is the beauty of every job. Listening to stories.
“I don’t have time to go into it. Just email me that sheet.”
“Tell me the general area where I need to look. I’ll use my Spidey sense.”
“You’ll get lost. I’ll call somebody.”
The liaison, a snaggletoothed black kid, arrives at the bottom of the stairs, driving an electric cart. Zipping down aisle 97B, a gob of tobacco under his lip.
“How come Easton stays up there?”
“Who?”
“Easton. He works upstairs.”
The kid stops the cart and looks around. “A couple weeks ago, a dude got stabbed over by will call.” Points ominously to a distant vector of the warehouse. “No one upstairs is allowed downstairs until the investigation is over. That side’s run by Cucamonga Dogpatch. Northside Onterios are up here, running all the trim. Most of the foremen are Northside, so that’s where the problem starts.”
“Are you in a gang?”
“No.”
“Well, Christ, be careful.”
“The best part is that the guy who did it already got fired for something else.”
“Does Easton know that?” Clever of young Easton, sending the old factory rep into the kill zone.
“No. We’re all getting longer lunches while they do the investigation. Don’t say nothing.”
“I won’t.”
The kid gets him a mobile stair unit with suction stops. Costello spends an hour aloft, counting boxes one by one, then has a cigarette on the edge of the loading dock.
Later, driving back to Anaheim, against traffic, he pulls off to get some In-N-Out. Orders a double double animal style. Outside on the stone benches, a warm night, the sky gray and pink. Katie worked a couple summers here. Good money for fast food. Gave her acne. Or maybe it was Megan. Cute round face, both of them, like their mother. Would be nice if the kids could come to the WCPA banquet, be there when the awards are announced. But what a bummer for them, hanging around with a bunch of plumbers and toilet salesmen on a Friday night.
He stops at Home Depot and buys shock treatment for the pool. Waiting at the register. The girl trying to change the receipt, looking flustered. There but for the grace of God.
In the fading light Costello stands at the edge of the deep end. The lizard is barely visible at the bottom. He dumps in two bags’ worth of calcium hypochlorite. Burns the nose. White cleansing death.
A year of radiation. A year of bedpans and vomit bowls. Gray wispy hair like cobwebs on her head. All so that we could have our long, precious goodbye. Pointless. It wasn’t for you. I knew the young and dancing you. Disintegrating every day, pale, nauseated, dementia, that wasn’t you. A thing died in our bed—it wasn’t you. I should’ve slit your throat, babe, while you were still you.
• • •
On Friday afternoon, before leaving the office for the tournament, Costello stops by Linda’s desk and asks for help. He holds up the yellow legal pad containing all his ballcock calculations.
“Do you know how to put this in Excel?”
“Just put it there,” she says, pointing to an empty spot on her desk.
“Doesn’t have to be anything fancy.”
She explains that she can email it to the guy at Bromberg as soon as it’s done.
“Great!” Costello says. “Saves me the hassle!”
“You’re late for the tournament,” she says, shooing him away.
Harbor Municipal. Par-three wonderland. The parking lot full of plumbing trucks. One of them just a filthy old milk truck with no windows or decals. Instead, someone has traced “Kelly Plumbing” in the filth, along with a phone number. Blessed are the plumbers. Old guys in coveralls dragging their bags and beer coolers. Young vato plumbers in their Dickies, swinging wedges and putters.
Costello walks up the ninth hole. Jack and Mumbry, totally blasted, are taking practice tee shots, trying to hit a foursome who are putting on the green.
“Fuck off,” one of them yells back across the fairway, his voice muffled by the sound of the 405 freeway, which is hidden behind a line of eucalyptus trees.
Jack gives the guy the finger, takes a pull on his Tecate. Mumbry points to the sand trap by the green, where a solitary figure is sprawled facedown.
“That guy passed out down there about an hour ago.”
“A hundred dollars if anybody tags him from here,” says Jack.
“Maybe he’s dead,” Costello says.
“A couple guys from Dinoffria Plumbing reported back,” Mumbry says. “He’s breathing.”
Ajax has a tent set up. Glorious standards flapping in the wind. A few plumbers stand around drinking, looking through catalogues, playing with the new faucet models.
Mumbry has orange chicken wing sauce all around his mouth.
“You missed the Hooter girls, Marty. They were giving out hot wings.”
Jack puts an arm around Dave Mumbry. “Collectively the girls opted not to fuck Dave.”
“I’m a married man,” says Mumbry.
“So am I,” says Jack. “It’s a common condition.”
Costello sits down on a folding chair. A young plumber is trying to figure out the action on the new ratchet cutters. Costello steadies a piece of one-inch copper and shows him how to clamp it on.
“Is this a sample one?” the plumber asks. “Can I have it?”
“What, free?” Costello shakes his head. “Not in this life, my friend. Who’s your wholesaler? I’ll have him bring some in for you.”
What they call pulling business through. Costello gives the kid his card.
Sirens. An ambulance rolling up the cart path. Everyone scatters as it accelerates down the fairway.
“Maybe that guy is dead,” says Mumbry, but the ambulance gets halfway to the green and m
akes a hard left, cutting through a treeline and onto another fairway.
“When’s the best ball start?” Costello asks.
“It got canceled,” says Mumbry. “There’s some disorganization going on.”
“Then fuck it. I’m having a whack.”
Costello with a nine iron. Bend the knees, let it rip. Losing the ball in the white sky, then the silence of a distant landing, four feet in front of the sand trap. Costello grabs a wedge and putter.
“If I don’t return,” he says, “avenge me.”
The grass is summer-brown. Hot winds whirling down from the freeway. Sirocco, an old crossword word. A ball whizzes past Costello’s head.
“Incoming!” Jack’s voice louder than the wind. Friendly fire.
The drunk in the sand trap rolls over. Lying there, quite peaceful, with an empty bottle of peppermint schnapps next to his head, is the man himself, Lamrock, patron saint of plumbing contractors throughout the whole of Christendom.
Costello pitches his ball over the trap, over the corpus of Lamrock. The ball rolls onto the green. The flag, at first, is nowhere to be found. But then he sees it floating in the water hazard, along with several empty beer cans. Costello drops his putt, saving par.
A golf cart cresting the hill, plumbers dangling out the sides, wielding golf clubs and forty-ounce bottles of beer. A blond Hooters girl driving, swerving, laughing. She skids onto the green and someone yells, “Marty!”
Rocha, riding shotgun, has his arm over her shoulder. “Hey, neighbor! Are you loaded or what?”
“I’m just trying to get in a few whacks.”
Rocha introduces his fellow technicians from Advanced Plumbing Specialists, and his young cousin, an apprentice. He introduces Mandy.
“This is crazy,” she tells Costello. “Most of the shit they send us to is so boring.”
“Yeah, we have a lot of fun out here,” says Costello, a little too brightly, voice cracking like a thirteen-year-old. Christ, the goofiness, it never goes away.
“Marty’s nominated for sales rep of the year,” Rocha says, drunk, grinning ear to ear, nudging Mandy with his shoulder.
“Wow!” Mandy says, with big mocking eyes.
Just once a piece like her, just once, but never. A bit trashy, but still, a time and place for everything.