by Pamela Morsi
It all happened so fast, Andi didn’t even have time to move. His face was a mask of fury and he was headed straight for Tiff. For an instant of horrified terror, Andi thought Tiff was being attacked. But as the man ran toward her, her coworker appeared more angry than frightened.
“Gil! What are you doing here?” Tiff asked angrily.
The man swathed her in a blanket, holding it closed in front.
She jerked away from him, but kept the cover wrapped around her, tucking it efficiently under one arm.
“What am I doing here?” he said. “What are you doing here, nearly naked in public?”
“Hey, buddy!” one of the men in the crowd called out. “Leave the lady alone.” As he stepped forward, another man caught his arm.
“Domestic dispute,” the second man said quietly.
His words stayed the intervention, but every eye was on the couple, seemingly ready to step in if things got out of hand.
If the man was even aware of the attention of the crowd, he gave no indication.
“How could you do this?” he asked her. “How could you parade yourself like this? Have you got no pride at all? No sense of what people think of you?”
“What people think of me?” Tiff repeated his question angrily. “I’ll tell you what they ought to be thinking. That I’m a single mom. A single mom with an ex who has trouble paying regular child support. So I’m working, making a living, earning money to take care of my child.”
“Doing this, being out here prancing around wearing next to nothing for all these creeps to slobber over and fantasize about,” the man said.
He nodded toward the crowd and the creeps in question did not appear to appreciate the description. They were restless now and murmuring.
Tiff was silently defiant.
“What can I expect to see next?” Gil asked. “Will you be giving lap dances down at The Horny Toad?”
“This is honest labor,” Tiff declared. “And unlike some people I don’t shy away from that. I’m not like some people who think that some jobs are beneath them. I don’t have lists of things that I won’t do. I don’t let my son do without because I can’t take jobs that I’m too smart or experienced or skilled to do. I take the jobs that are there. And if you’ve got a problem with that, well, hey, it’s just more fodder for the evil ex-wife complaints that you make to the boys in the bar.”
“I’d never say a word against you!” Gil snapped back. “Not because I owe it to you or because you don’t deserve it. I don’t do it because I care about our boy. I can’t even imagine what he thinks seeing you like this.”
Tiff’s gaze shot to the car with the gray primer bumper. Andi’s did, too. There in the backseat, peeking out the window was a very confused and unhappy-looking Caleb. Andi was fairly certain that it wasn’t the sight of his mother in a swimsuit, nor the implications of ogling that his father found so offensive, that were responsible for the expression on the little boy’s face. It was the spectacle of his parents arguing loudly and in public.
Tiff took a startled breath. She hadn’t realized that he was in the car.
“Why did you bring him here?” she whispered to her ex-husband through clenched teeth.
“I didn’t bring him here,” Gil answered. “I was taking him out for ice cream. I was driving down a public street. He looked over here and saw you…he saw you like this.”
Tiff peeled the blanket from her shoulders and threw it at Gil. Then she walked over to the car to squat down next to the back passenger door. The little boy rolled down the window.
“Hey, Caleb,” she said. “What’s up?”
Andi couldn’t hear the little boy’s reply, but she turned back to the front fender she was working on. She felt guilty, personally guilty. There was no logic to it. She’d given Tiff a job, that was a good thing. She just wished it was one she didn’t have to be embarrassed about in front of her son.
Jelly was seated in the rumpus room. Upstairs, Pop was cooking dinner. Jelly was hungry. It had been a long day and a lot of hard work, but it had been fun, too. It was so good being with Andi, being a helper to Andi. A Law & Order rerun was playing on the TV, but Jelly wasn’t paying close attention. The Assistant D.A. was Serena Southerlyn, not one of her favorites. Instead of really watching, she was leafing through the shiny silver-and-black photo book that bore a growling black panther, the high school mascot, on the front.
Inside were photos mostly of her sister. Andi looked young and happy, if a bit dorky with her big, messy-looking hair and oversize eyeglasses. Andi with the math team. Andi with the National Honor Society. In Jelly’s favorite, her sister’s grin was wide as she held high over her head, as if she’d just won a sports championship, the modest plaque for Outstanding Enterprise in Junior Achievement.
“Andi can do anything,” Jelly stated with absolute conviction.
Chapter 12
THE PHONE CALL was from Pete’s father. As usual, he waived any friendly greeting and went straight to complaint.
“Why didn’t you call me about that sex business opening on our corner?”
“Uh…well, Dad, I don’t think there is a sex business on my corner,” he said, with a lot of emphasis on the word my. “I think it’s a car wash.”
“It’s a car wash featuring sluts in skimpy clothes,” Hank said.
“Sluts? One of those women worked for us up until a week ago,” Pete pointed out. “And Andi Wolkowicz? She can’t be a slut, I don’t think most people even knew she was a girl.”
“The sneaky little bitch is doing this just to get back at me!”
“Earth to Dad!” Pete told him sarcastically. “When you screw people over, sometimes they’ll retaliate. But this doesn’t even seem like a payback thing. She’s just trying to make a living. What does it matter to you? I’d think you’d more likely be a frequent customer than a shocked citizen.”
“My constituents are in an uproar,” Hank said. “If she’s going to do this kind of thing, she needs to take it down on Doge Street. I’ve called the police. I’m going to get that place shut down.”
“Shut down for what?”
“Good God, Pete! Are you still that naive? You don’t need a reason for things if you know the right people.”
Through the next hours, through the day, Pete tried, unsuccessfully, to concentrate on his work, his business. Instead his mind was constantly drawn to the activity across the parking lot. And a dozen times, he found himself standing at the window with the toy binoculars trying to see what he could see.
Finally he locked them in his bottom desk drawer, so that he wouldn’t be so tempted. Then he immediately took a package of Mallomars out of his small office refrigerator and ate every last one.
If a man doesn’t get to have sex, he told himself, then at least he should be able to eat whatever he wants.
The atmosphere at the store continued to be heightened with tension. The employees were doing their jobs, the customers were buying their groceries but underneath the noises of creaking shopping carts, chirping bar-code scanners and piped-in music there was a hum of whispered chatter that was nearly as tangible as a crackle of electricity.
“Guthrie! Guthrie!”
Mrs. Meyer waved him over as she stood in the checkout line. He forced a good groceryman smile on his face and hurried to her side. She was buying one tomato and a small box of teabags.
“Have you seen what’s going on right outside your door?” she asked him.
He nodded. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, brightly. “Isn’t it nice to have one of our empty downtown buildings open up with a new business.”
After his discussion with his father, Pete was absolutely committed to taking the opposite view from the one Hank was so convinced about.
“Surely you’re joking!” Mrs. Meyer replied. “This is no joking matter, young man. This is a scandal and an outrage.”
“With all due respect, ma’am,” Pete said quietly. “I’m not joking and it’s not a scandal. It’s just a car wa
sh.”
“Have you not seen what they’re wearing?” Mrs. Meyer asked. “Or should I say, what they are not wearing?”
Immediately the very pleasurable image of Andi Wolkowicz bent over a car bumper flashed in his mind. He could feel the blush rising in his neck. He knew his ears must be vividly red and silently cursed his own pale skin.
“Washing cars means getting wet,” he told the older woman. “Appropriate clothing for workers getting wet might be a rain slicker. But it’s so hot in the summertime, I think an ordinary swimsuit is a fine idea.”
“An ordinary swimsuit!” The woman huffed self-righteously. “In my day a young woman would be arrested for showing up at a beach wearing something like that.”
“Uh…I guess…what’s that slogan? ‘You’ve come a long way, baby.’”
Mrs. Meyer was not amused.
“We may be downtown, Mr. Guthrie, but this is still a family area,” she said, adamantly. “There are three churches within five blocks of that place. And Curtis Elementary School is not far away.”
Pete nodded slowly. “I believe the elementary school is closed for summer recess. And the churches, well, I doubt the car wash will be open on Sunday mornings.”
Her brow came down angrily and her mouth thinned to one straight line.
“If that’s going to be your attitude, Guthrie,” she declared. “Then I…I am taking my business elsewhere.”
She handed him her tomato and tea bags, haughtily raised her nose in the air, marched past those ahead of her in the checkout line and sailed out the front door.
Pete glanced around to see that every eye in the store was focused upon him.
Smart move, Peterson! he said to himself, sarcastically. Get right into the middle of a controversy. Great show of business acumen.
Outwardly he gave everyone a nice smile and went around asking the supermarket version of what up, dude, “Are you finding everything you need?”
Saturdays were notoriously busy and this one seemed especially so. He wondered absently if the increased volume of shoppers was actually caused by the bikini car wash. There were certainly more people on the streets than he’d seen on any Saturday in recent memory.
More people in the store, of course, meant more sales, but it also meant more questions, more complaints, more spills, more over-rings and more shoplifters.
He caught a couple of the latter in the act. He turned onto the beverage aisle and there were two young teenage boys trying to stuff a six-pack of beer inside their pants. The problem of typical summer clothes having not apparently occurred to them. It was possible to hide merchandise under a coat or jacket. But when all you’re wearing is a T-shirt and some low-rise shorts, there weren’t many places to stash stuff. The two had broken up the beer box and had stuck individual cans in their pants pockets and in their underwear. They would never have been able to walk out the front door like that.
At the sight of him, one of the guys froze in place. The other took off running. Pete made no attempt to chase. Instead he picked up his phone and with one button he had Neal, the produce manager, on the line instructing him to apprehend the boy at the door.
“Do you have a gun or a knife?” Pete asked as he approached the boy still standing in the aisle.
“Uh-uh,” the boy answered, shaking his head.
“Okay, let’s go.”
The boy, who was only about fourteen, Pete guessed, did as he was ordered. The metal cans on his person clunked into each other noisily as he walked. These boys were either idiots or they were very new at this. Pete hoped it was the latter. He had a no tolerance policy for shoplifting.
He got a beep on his phone. It was Harvey, the stock crew supervisor.
“Guthrie,” Pete answered.
“Neal and I have got the kid,” he said. “We’re on our way to Neal’s office.”
“I’ll meet you there,” he answered and then hung up. The young guy beside him was still clanking and hanging his head down low, his chin almost lay against his chest.
The produce manager’s office was in the back of the store. An empty, windowless room, it was designed so that nobody would want to spend any time there, including the produce manager. Pete clicked a switch that turned on the ceiling fan, but that also activated the video camera. Holding someone against their will in a secluded area of the store could be a litigation nightmare. They needed their own record until the police arrived.
Pete indicated that the boy should sit on one of the mostly dirty, uncomfortable-looking plastic chairs. He did so, bending in half to lay his cheek on his knees. He wrapped his arms around his head creating a kind of figurative hiding place.
Lingering in the doorway, Pete gave the kid a little space. Almost immediately he could hear small shaky sobs sneaking out from the boy’s throat.
When Neal and Harvey arrived with the fleet-footed accomplice, the young guy straightened up and pretended that he was being tough. Neither fellow looked the other in the eye.
Pete continued to hang around as Harvey made the boys put their haul on the desk. Between them they had five beers. And the kid who ran had two candy bars that he’d tucked into the access pocket of his tidy whiteys. Pete cringed. Who would want to eat that chocolate?
Pete began filling out a company report form. He asked the boys their names. The tearful one was Devon Pardue. Pete was pretty sure he’d heard the name before. The boy’s parents probably shopped in the store. The runner identified himself as Bradley Terrington, Jr. Pete almost groaned aloud. Brad Terrington, Sr. was a prominent man at the country club. He was perhaps a decade older than Pete and played golf with Pete’s dad. He was also argumentative, a bit of a hothead and well-known for always needing to be right.
Peterson, he thought to himself, it might have been smarter just to let that kid get away!
That hadn’t happened and now, he would have to throw the book at the kid, no matter how hard his father retaliated.
Officer Mayfield arrived before Pete had even finished his stern lecture about the dangerous road of a life of crime.
Mayfield was twentysomething, blond with very short cropped hair and a permanent pale mask around his eyes from countless hours wearing sunglasses. He allowed Pete to finish his admonishments, but didn’t bother with any of his own. He ushered the two young guys out the rear entrance of the building and into the police cruiser. Once both the boys were in the backseat, he accepted the yellow copy of the form Pete had written up. They all knew the drill. Someone on the staff caught a shoplifter nearly every week. In the summer months it was more often.
“Thanks for coming,” Pete told the policeman.
Mayfield shrugged. “It’s my job,” he stated factually.
“I appreciate it nonetheless. Holding somebody in the produce office for any length of time is tough on us. It makes the store shorthanded and it’s just very unpleasant for everyone. So thanks for showing up so quickly.”
“I’ve been stuck on this corner on and off all morning,” Mayfield told him. “With all the traffic snarled up and the cascade of citizen complaints coming into dispatch, this is the busiest place in town today.”
Pete nodded slowly. “You’re talking about the car wash?”
The guy nodded.
“I think my father was one of the complainers,” he said.
“Your father, the alderman?”
“Yeah.”
“I talked to him personally,” Mayfield said. “I’ll tell you like I told him. I can’t shut down a business just because the surrounding businesses don’t like it. We’ve got to have some evidence that they are in violation of a state law or at least a city code. He’s going to talk with the Joffee brothers and other merchants on the block. He’s hoping they’ll join him in a zoning complaint. They’re calling it an S.O.B.”
“An S.O.B.? Andi Wolkowicz is a woman. And the downtown merchants shouldn’t be banding together to call anybody that.”
The officer eyed him curiously for moment and then explained t
he acronym.
“S.O.B. means ‘sexually oriented business,’” he told Pete. “And city code precludes the downtown from the establishment of any sexually oriented businesses.”
“Oh.” Pete was relieved that it wasn’t getting quite as mean as it sounded. “Well, just to get my opinion on the record, the place is fine with me. I don’t think it’s a sexually oriented business, and I don’t think it will hurt the downtown merchants. Truth is, I think it’s generated more shoppers in my store today. As far as I’m concerned any reason to make people come downtown is a good reason.”
Officer Mayfield nodded. “It’s good to know that everybody is not lined up against her,” he said.
Pete shrugged.
“I’ve been keeping my eye on things over there,” the policeman said.
Pete looked at him closely to see if he was making some little joke. The man appeared completely serious.
“I came here from Cincinnati P.D.,” he continued. “Down there I learned a bit about the gals that work in S.O.B.s. These women at this car wash, they’re just washing cars. But not everybody is going to make that distinction. Their critics won’t. And many of their customers won’t either.”
“Thanks for not allowing the screeching of angry voices to get the best of you,” Pete said. “And thanks for taking these kids off my hands.”
Mayfield gave him the very slightest of nods. “I’ll get them down to the station, put them in the box until Mommy and Daddy get there,” he said, glancing back at two occupants visible through the police car’s passenger window. “The young one, I’ve never seen him before. The Terrington kid, I’ve picked up a couple of times. Nothing major, just nuisance problems. I just hope his parents take petty theft a bit more seriously than they have truancy and vandalism.”
“Whatever you need me to do, just let me know,” Pete said.
As the police cruiser drove off, Pete headed back inside the store. He needed to get word to Andi about what Mayfield had told him. If the downtown merchants were out to get her, and he was sure his father was, then she needed to be warned.
