“Merci,” she says with a smile.
He smiles back and tips an imaginary cap.
He shakes off the bad moment and moves down the sidewalk to the Mack, rolls the rear door part way up and slides the two-wheeler in face down, and locks the empty truck. He hustles back up to the store to get the check.
Lauren is absent and the young woman is at a display table poking around some fur hats. She picks one up and puts it on, looks at herself in a mirror on the table. The image would have made a great ad for the Sunday magazine in the newspaper. She admires her image from all angles, and it’s clear she is pleased. She turns to Grayson, who begins to look at some sort of long piece of fur on a different table. He picks it up and grimaces when he sees that the fur had a fox head at one end and a tail at the other. He drops the stole and wipes his hands on his pant legs.
“Have you seen a clerk?” she asks. She spoke with a French accent and it sounds as if she asked for a cleric, rather than a clerk.
“She should be right back.”
The young woman smiles and gazes at him as if she expects him to say more.
Grayson breaks the awkward silence. “Big sale on the mink hats?”
“Oh, no, I just need one,” she says, and holds up the hat. “I’m leaving for Chile soon.” She pronounces it chee-lay. “Winter is coming in the southern hemisphere.” The French accent is stronger now. She cocks her head. “And it’s always cold in the Andes.”
“Wow. Are you a mountain climber or an archaeologist or something?”
“No. Yes, or something.” She shakes her head and smiles. “The weather business.”
“Cool.”
Lauren The Townie comes down the steps on the fly but slows to a regal pace as she spots the French woman spinning the hat on her forefinger. The security guard must have alerted the upstairs office that they have a live one downstairs petting a hat and talking to the truck driver.
“She forgot my check,” Grayson mutters.
The French woman hands the hat to Lauren and Lauren says, “Six hundred dollars, plus tax.” The amount causes Grayson’s eyebrows to rocket up to a point just below his hairline.
The younger woman pulls a wallet from her coat pocket without saying a word. She slips out some bills as they walk over to the sales counter.
“Are you kidding me?” Grayson says under his breath.
The French woman will walk out in under five minutes with a purchase that would have cost Grayson about two week’s take-home pay. He’s pondering that when a thin, slicked down, ferrety fellow buttoned into a shiny suit appears in front of him. The man holds up a hand-written check.
“I have your money,” he says.
“Thanks, but it ain’t mine. It’s for The Man,” Grayson says, while taking the check. “You know The Man, right?” He writes “paid check” on the delivery receipt, and hands it back. “Sign that for me, will you, buddy?”
The young woman walks toward the exit. She turns, looks at Grayson and smiles. Out she went, and he relaxes. He’s been tense without knowing it.
“Where should I sign it?” the man asks.
Grayson, gloomy, gets snappish. “How about where it says ‘sign here’?”
In the breast pocket of the man’s jacket a silk handkerchief flourished. He produces a Bic pen from an inside pocket and signs the receipt with bold strokes, as if in defiance of George III. He replaces the pen, returns the receipt in an officious manner and shoots his cuffs.
“Is that it, or what?” the guy asks. He may have a suit and a haircut from Newbury St, but he still has a Revere attitude and accent.
“Yes, that is it, I’m afraid,” Grayson says. He pulls the back copy off the receipt and hands it to the guy along with the used carbon paper. “We used to have President Nixon call you to say congratulations right after you got a delivery, like he does with the astronauts and Super Bowl champs, but now, he’s too busy with the Watergate mess, so that is indeed it, as you say.”
The fur store fop seems at a loss.
“Look,” Grayson says. “I already put the cartons in back, my friend.”
“They go upstairs,” the man says, as if every child born of woman knew this.
“You know what?” Grayson says, looking at the signature on the receipt. “Warren, is it? Warren, you want them upstairs, hop to it, brother. It’s a tailgate delivery, means I didn’t even have to bring them inside, but I’m a big softie.”
Warren appears to be terribly disappointed.
“I will show myself out,” Grayson says, and leaves.
For his lunch hour he has his battered paperback of It Happened in Boston, written by some guy he’d never heard of. It was a weird book, strange and dark, and he would almost feel drunk while reading it and had a hard time shaking it off when he finished reading. He’d stop at a corner store and buy a PayDay and a Pepsi, find a place to park, and read for an hour.
He’s about to climb in the truck cab when a car stops beside him and the driver double taps the horn. Grayson turns to see his brother Hugh, in the company Galaxy.
Grayson opens the passenger side door and looks in.
“Hey,” Hugh says. “Are you going on your lunch break?”
“Probably. You buying?”
“Sure. It’s your birthday,” Hugh says.
Grayson climbs up into the truck and clips the delivery receipt to the board and picks up the microphone to hail Rosie.
“Yeah, I’m empty on Newbury Street,” Grayson says. He hears his voice echo over the company’s two-way radio in Hugh’s car.
“Take your dinner and call me after. I got a list of pickups a mile long,” Rosie shouts.
It seems to be Rosie’s hope that this would make Grayson wolf down his lunch and return to duty early. Rosie’s fantasy life appears to revolve around the drivers all taking very short lunch breaks, not using the full hour required by the union contract, and jumping back into the fray to rescue Rosie from his own ineptitude. Grayson clicks the mic button, shorthand to acknowledge his understanding, pulls the key out, looks at the Timex hanging from a clip on the heater. He jumps down and gets into his brother’s car.
Hugh says, “You looked surprised when I said it was your birthday. Did you forget?”
“No. Just kind of surprised you remembered.”
“Will Catherine call you, you think, birthday and all?” Hugh says.
“I’ve seen her once since the last week of January.”
“Keep your chin up, kid. Life can change in a second.”
“Yeah, okay, thanks, Socrates.”
They drive up Newbury St. to Mass Ave to Boylston on their way to the closest Burger King, which is over near Fenway Park. One thing that never has to be discussed, once they decide to eat, is where they would eat. There may be a discussion about which Burger King is the nearest, but that is the extent of it.
“I sold a new customer in Hartford,” Hugh says. “I got a call and a verbal commitment from them this morning.”
“Who?” Grayson asks.
“Colt.”
“Colt .45 malt liquor?”
“You wish it,” Hugh says, chuckling. “No, the gun maker.”
Hugh flashes his friendly smile. He’s picked up all the tricks of the successful, young sales executive, and dresses the part in his pin striped suit, starched, white button-down shirt and silk rep tie. With a smile and the duds, he looked like he’d been born in the manger of the Brooks Brothers Christmas display.
“A lot of freight?” Grayson says.
“It’s only short term, for now. If we do a good job we could get in on a regular basis. But, it’s a foot in the door. We’re helping them out, moving five government loads they can’t cover with their regular carriers.”
As always, Hugh is tense while driving; he grips the steering wheel like he was trying to break the car’s will. He had his license at seventeen but was never a confident motorist after being T-boned by a crazy man in a pickup truck trying to kill himself and his terri
fied wife. Hugh, miraculously unhurt, didn’t drive at all for over a year. However, staying put was anathema to him so he is forced to deal with his fear on a daily basis.
“Why are they busy now, with the war over?” Grayson asks.
“The government had all these M16 rifles made, and paid for, before the war was over, so they have to store them in the National Guard armories. They’ll fill the local armories first, which means five loads for Triple T, but we have to move them in one day. They’re running a bunch of loads all around the country. They’re going into storage, and will probably be destroyed someday, but being the government, they delayed the release date until everything was good and screwed up.”
“Congrats,” Grayson says. “Are you starting to get more into this job?”
“It’s something to do, for now,” Hugh says. “Gives me a cover story.”
“Because you’re really Batman?”
“This Monday I have a big meeting with the security guys from Colt and our people. Then we have to move the loads within a week. Your boss will be there.”
“Rosie?”
“No! Rosie?” Hugh snorts. “The Senior VP of Operations, Stephen Richardi himself, is coming up from Jersey.”
“He’s not my boss. I’ve never even seen him.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s not your boss,” Hugh says. “He calls the tune that everyone dances to, so he’s your boss.”
They’re sitting in a booth at Burger King, eating, when Hugh looks at him with a squint.
“You check out the security set up in Kakas?”
“Yeah, sure,” Grayson says.
Hugh says, “Hey, I told you why I took this job.”
“Don’t start.”
This talk makes Grayson nervous. They grew up in the same house, slept in the same room for sixteen years, but his older brother is different after his accident.
“I don’t want to hear it,” Grayson says.
Hugh smiles behind his cheeseburger. “Don’t be a baby.”
Grayson, changing the subject, says. “I did see a woman buy a six-hundred-dollar mink hat in less time than it took for you to buy cheeseburgers and fries. And with about as much thought.”
On the other side of the window glass, the sun hangs just off center in the cloudless March sky and exposes everything with a sharpness, a clarity that is disorienting after winter months of seeing the world in cataract drab. After a long winter in the old city, the salt-stained cars shudder at the stoplight, their rotted rocker panels shedding rust flakes while college kids pass by in the crosswalk. The students are colorful in their pricey peasant wear, and so stereotypical they seem like extras in a movie.
“What did she look like?” Hugh asks.
“She was the kind of gorgeous that hurts in the pit of your stomach.”
“Did you put a move on her?” Hugh says.
“Yeah, I offered her a spin around the city in a Mack truck.”
“You can’t mope around about Catherine forever. Move on, man.”
“This woman paid four times more for a bonnet than I paid for my first car.” Grayson fishes a French fry from the big bag, then looks in and paws around in it. “You have an extra salt?”
Hugh slides over a couple of packs.
“Does that bug you?” Hugh asks. “People buying fur, while other people can’t get enough to eat?”
Grayson thinks about it as he extracts his sleeve of fries from the big bag, dumps them back in, puts the empty sleeve on the table and pours the salt into the bag.
“Yeah, I guess it does. I don’t know,” he says, shaking the bag. “There might be someone out on the sidewalk, looking at us in here, saying, ‘How can those guys eat two cheeseburgers, and a large fry, when people go hungry?” He shakes his head. “I don’t know. Maybe she just gave a million bucks to the Jimmy Fund.”
“Imagine no possessions,” Hugh sang, his voice no worse than John Lennon’s.
“Screw him and Yoko,” Grayson says. “He has about fifty million bucks and the gall to sing that. Why doesn’t he give it all away, except for like five million, and see if they can scrape by on it.”
“The big shots just have the ideas for the rest of us,” Hugh says. He takes a sip of his soft drink. “They don’t live by them.”
Grayson’s attention is taken away from his brother when he sees the mink hat girl walk through the door at Burger King.
“Holy mackerel,” Grayson says. “There’s the chick who bought the hat!”
Hugh glances over his shoulder, smiles, and says, “Wow. What a coincidence.”
The woman walks straight over to their booth and puts her hand on Hugh’s shoulder and looks at Grayson, smiling. He sits stunned, silent.
Hugh says, “Remember Mrs. Nihill, the older lady, lived down the hall from me? She died a few months ago?”
“On Christmas Eve,” the young woman says.
Grayson nods, even though he has no idea who or what they are talking about.
“This is her granddaughter, Amy.”
“Oh,” Grayson says. He stands and offers his hand. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Amy, my brother Mike.”
“Didn’t he tell you? We’ve met, in a way,” she says.
Hugh slides over and she sits beside him, while Grayson sits opposite.
She keeps the high-beam smile at full strength, showing teeth gleaming white, as perfect as Chiclets. Those teeth would bring a dentist to his knees.
“I’ve been dying to meet you,” she says. “I’ve heard so much about you.”
“Me?” He looks over at Hugh. “What’s going on?”
For an instant, Grayson thinks Hugh is going to announce that he’s eloped with this woman, even though Hugh is seeing Corinne, the latest in a string of stunners dating back to his early teens. In addition to her knockout looks, Corinne has the added attraction, for Hugh, of being thoroughly bananas. Has Corinne been jilted?
Amy says, “Corinne wanted me to meet you, back in early January.”
“Corinne told her Catherine gave you the broom New Year’s Eve,” Hugh says.
“Meet me? What for?”
Amy smiles and cocks her head. “Corinne said you were smart, handsome and eligible. Why wouldn’t I want to meet you?”
“Are you a friend of Corinne?”
“New friend, yes. We met in the lobby at the apartment building, when? November? And later on, when I met Hugh, I said to Corinne, ‘Gee whiz, he’s so big and handsome. Where can I get my hands on one of those?”’ She keeps on smiling. “She also said you had a great sense of humor.”
That seems out of character for Corinne. Grayson has known her since junior high and, in his experience, she is almost entirely humorless. The only time he has ever heard her laugh was about ten years ago, when his cousin Donny fell out of the balcony at the Strand.
Grayson looks at his brother. “Where is Corinne?”
Hugh says, “She’s down with her aunt in Florida for a couple of weeks. She’s going to drive the aunt back home April first.”
At a loss for words, Grayson says the only thing he could think of to say.
“You sounded French in the store.”
She smiles and her eyes light up. “That was just for fun, pretending to be someone else.”
Hugh says, “You went in just to check him out, and end up buying a six-hundred-dollar hat? Can you return it?”
“Oh, I can always use a nice hat.” She smiles in a mischievous way; as if being wealthy is embarrassing and naughty, but also fucking great.
“She’s wicked rich,” Hugh says, looking at his brother.
“I’m not, my mother is.” She puts on a fake pout. “I live on an allowance.”
“Amy’s getting her masters at B.U.,” Hugh says.
“I did my undergrad at Brandeis, but I wanted to study with Howard Zinn in grad school. I’m so fortunate, I got Howard as my advisor.”
Back on his feet, but wobbly, Grayson says, “He advise you to
buy the mink hat?”
She forces a smile, perhaps disappointed that he isn’t impressed by her hobnobbing with Howard.
She sits close to Hugh, implying an intimacy which arouses some jealousy in Grayson. He doesn’t know if it’s because he’s without Catherine, or because he’s drawn to Amy; or maybe it is just sibling rivalry rearing up again?
She says, “Hugh told me that you’re a Teamster. Do you have a strong trade union consciousness?”
“What do you mean?”
She says, “Do you feel strongly about worker’s rights, labor’s struggle for a fair wage, dignity, and so on?”
He shrugs. “No, not really.”
Hugh says, “The Old Man is a big Hoffa supporter, from back in the early days.”
“Which is why he hated Bobby Kennedy,” Grayson says.
“I’m very pro-worker,” she says. “Unionism is a noble cause. So many people are no more than slaves, working for peanuts, at jobs designed to break their spirit, jobs with no chance to make a better life for their kids.”
Grayson pauses before speaking.
He says, “Management only cares about making money for the owner, because he pays their salary. I don’t expect them to care about me. I just want my check to clear every week.”
He doesn’t want to offend her, so he proceeds carefully. She nods, leans across the table, her face closer, her eyes focus on him, watching like she is Jane Goodall and he is an interesting chimp.
“But,” Grayson says. “They’re right up front with it. Produce or you’re gone. The union doesn’t care either, but since I pay them monthly dues, they make believe they do.” He looks at Hugh. “Did you tell her how the union threw The Old Man overboard so the business agent’s nephew could get a job?”
Hugh shrugs, and looks away.
Grayson turns back to Amy.
“My father was a driver. He got too old to keep up the pace the company wants. They fired him and it stuck because the union didn’t fight it. The fix was in. The same week, a new driver was hired and put on the seniority list, and it turned out the twerp was our business agent’s nephew. Betrayal can only come from the inside, so only the union could betray my father, and it did.”
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