Fools Paradise

by Stevenson, Jennifer

Daisy felt a kiss coming on. She stammered, “I wouldn’t do it for anybody except m-me.”

  To her outrage, he drew back. The big lunk seemed to be thinking. Then he nodded. “Time to go back to work.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The almighty Pete Packard looked displeased, but Daisy had faced Marty Ditorelli’s displeasure all her life. An Irish clone of him didn’t scare her.

  Packard rolled his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. “I ast you not to start a riot with my boys and now I hear you kicked one of my stagehands in the nuts. You got anything to say about that?”

  Daisy said, “Never happened.”

  “He says you did.”

  “Did he log a grievance? Like, did he accuse me of, like, sexual harassment?”

  “Somebody heard him say it.”

  “Somebody needs to get their hearing checked.”

  “Badger Kenack is a valued member of this organization.”

  “Yeah, my grandfather thinks so, too.” This was probably a little too much mouth, but, jeez louise, Packard was pushy. What did the mean old geezer want? “The other boys have been very well-behaved.”

  Pete Packard turned a little redder. “Was that before or after you nutted Badger Kenack? Don’t answer that.” He breathed through his nose. It must be killing him, she thought, not to swear at me. He said, “This situation between your families has been around a lot longer than you. Now, I know it don’t necessarily penetrate your bubble head, but the International is lookin’ at Chicago right now. How we do things. We can be a good example, or we can be a bad example.”

  He swiveled his cigar to the other side of his face and leaned across his desk, eyeing Daisy narrowly. “I want us to be a good example. You gettin’ my drift here? Every warm body that gets sent out of this office is an example. Even you,” he said with disgust. “I’m on the line here with you. On your one side you’re a walkin’ candy store. On your other side, I got both Marty Dit and Bobby Morton Senior askin’ for favors for you.”

  “I’m not asking for a favor.”

  Pete Packard slapped the desk in front of him. “There’s easier favors I can do for them!”

  Daisy shrugged. “Okay. What can I do for you?”

  She watched his color darken another shade as innuendo bloomed inside his head.

  He said, “Keep your head down. Nobody likes a mouthy broad.” She smiled, and Packard stammered, “I—I mean, do what you’re told. Show up on time.”

  “Bring my tools. Clean and sober,” she finished for him.

  As if she hadn’t spoken, Pete Packard said, “I’m sendin’ you to the United Center tomorrow for the Whitewash put-in. It’s up to the steward whether he keeps you on to run the show. Be there at 7:30 a.m.”

  “With my tools, clean and sober.”

  “Shaddap.” Pete Packard eyed her, looking frustrated. “What did Badger do to get nutted? If I may ask,” he added with exaggerated courtesy.

  “Stepped over the line.”

  He showed surprise. “When?”

  “Nine years ago.” Daisy picked up her water bottle. “I may look sweet, but I carry a grudge forever.”

  “You’re a Ditorelli,” Pete Packard said morosely. “Gidaddahere.”

  When she told Bobbyjay she was on the Whitewash put-in at the United Center, he overreacted.

  “See, this is why your grandfather worries about you. You know that gig is all over roadies.”

  “And?” Daisy said, mystified. “My Dad was a roadie.”

  “And he ran away with a dancer,” Bobbyjay said agitatedly. “She wasn’t the first one he made a pass at, but she was the first one who said yes.”

  “Is that true?” she said, interested. “Mom won’t tell me anything.”

  His gaze shifted. “Er. My point is, there’s gonna be over a hundred guys there. It’s a shame I’m not on the call,” he added. “I can’t expect Badger keep an eye on ’em all.”

  Daisy’s blood pressure shot up. “You can’t expect—you can’t expect Badger—”

  “Well, somebody’s got to look out for you. It ain’t always a pat on the butt. Ask Liz Ryback.”

  “The non-dyke?”

  Bobbyjay cringed and looked over his shoulder. “You may as well know now, Daze. It’s—harder being a new woman in the Local than it is being a new guy. Liz got the hair yanked out of her head one night by one of the brothers. Wasn’t taking his meds, I guess.” Daisy felt herself go cold. Bobbyjay nodded. “That’s why your grandfather’s so bent about you workin’ the street. Especially,” he said, coughing delicately, “especially with this thing between our families.”

  Daisy looked over his head, thinking. “I’m surprised you were willing to get me the job.”

  He blinked. “You asked.”

  Oh, right. All she had to do was ask.

  “You want to call in sick? Pete Packard won’t be mad.”

  “No,” she said bitterly, “he’ll just think I’m a Ditorelli princess and write me off. I—I want this gig, Bobbyjay.” She thought about Liz Ryback, six feet of muscular non-dyke womanhood, getting her hair ripped out, and shivered. Suddenly she wasn’t indignant about Bobbyjay and Badger teaming up to watch over her any more. “I’ll be careful.”

  Bobbyjay looked relieved. “I know you will. You’re not stupid.” That choked her up. He doesn’t think I’m stupid! “It’s just, you don’t know what these clowns think is funny. And you don’t know your way around yet.” He put his hand over hers. She looked at it and, though he flushed, he didn’t take it away. “Promise me you’ll do what Badger says.”

  “I promise.”

  At six o’clock next morning Bobbyjay answered his cell. “Yo, Bobbyjay, this is Badger Kenack. I got called off the Whitewash in. Hotel industrial, that fuckin’ Kischmedling sound system nobody else can run.”

  “Couldn’t you turn down the money?” Bobbyjay said, annoyed.

  “I could turn down the money, but the office wants me on that sound system.”

  “So who’s going to watch Daisy?”

  “You are,” Badger told Bobbyjay. “I told Jack Yu to put you in my spot.”

  “But I’m at the opera!” Bobbyjay squeaked.

  “I know. I told Jack to expect you for the performance. Show up after seven.”

  Bobbyjay whooshed out a sigh. “All right. Uh, thanks, Badger.”

  First his family, now Badger. Pretty soon the whole fuckin’ Local would be calling him off the job to put out their fires.

  At least Badger was thinking of Daisy’s safety.

  But she would be unprotected for the whole put-in. Bobbyjay’s stomach twisted.

  For two bits he would call in sick himself and go down to the United Center. Try to bump somebody off the call, muscle his way onto Jack’s list.

  That would look good when the Opera House found out.

  Sighing in frustration, he shouldered his toolbag and trudged out to his Jeep. Daisy would have to manage on her own for the first twelve hours.

  “That’s okay,” she said, when he called her to tell her he couldn’t give her a ride to the United Center. “The Beemer came today.” She sounded depressed.

  “You’ll be fine,” he said, praying he was right. “Just do what your department head tells you and don’t mouth off.”

  “I’m not worried about the gig. It’s this car. Goomba’s been crowing for days about giving me a new car, and it’s a bajillion-dollar BMW. I’ll never hear the last of it.”

  Bobbyjay relaxed. She could handle her grandfather. “Welcome to the stagehand world.”

  “A rock show ‘in!’ Man, I am soooo jealous!” Wesley had said at six next morning while Daisy showed him how to run the espresso machine.

  “Goomba likes it with two shots of espresso. Give him the whole milk. He thinks it’s half-and-half but he mustn’t have all that fat. And wash out the cream jug when breakfast is over.”

  “You working the show as well as the in?” Wesley had said wistfully. “Nice sug
ar.”

  “I guess. If Jack Yu says. The street’s pretty busy this weekend,” she said, proud that she knew that stuff. “Okay, the waffles are in the oven. Remember to stick ’em in the toaster for one and a half pop-ups before you bring them to the table. I made honey butter, which he loves, so he might not be too grouchy that they’re not fresh.”

  “He ought to be grateful you’ve got a job,” Wesley said, glowering. “Those bums Tony and Vince don’t hardly do anything except eat and sleep.”

  “Thanks for covering me, buddy,” Daisy said, giving him a smooch behind the ear. “You’re the best.” She dashed out to the new Beemer with her toolbag over her shoulder so she wouldn’t have to watch him try to hide the boner in his jeans.

  It seemed all she did these days was exploit men’s weakness. If she weren’t so aware of the hugeness of the world, dangerous and full of stuff she didn’t know, she’d feel more remorse. Even the knowledge that Badger was hovering didn’t help.

  She had no brains or experience. If all she had was booty, well, all right then. She’d shake it at the world, until they all laid themselves down and howled.

  And she’d try to learn. Really, really fast.

  An hour later she was remembering that even booty had its limitations.

  “Out of the way, Ditso-relli,” Bobbert Morton brayed. He butted her in the back with the end of the truss he was holding.

  “I can’t,” she said out of the side of her mouth. They stood on the ramp leading off the truck onto the loading dock, waiting to bring their loads out on stage. “There’s a line of guys in front of me.”

  “Ditso-relli!” Bobbert said again and laughed coarsely at his own wit. He bumped her again.

  “Listen, you,” she hissed, rounding on him as well as she could with a hundred-foot coil of multi-cable cutting into her shoulder. “You’re shorter than my cousin Tony. Want to bet I can’t hit your nuts first try?”

  “Just a joke!” Bobbert said quickly. “Haw, haw! Got ya!” His eyes showed more anger than fear.

  It was going to be a long day.

  “It’s like this.” Jack Yu’s non-dyke wife told Daisy at the morning break. “There are guys in this Local who ought to have to catch their own food, know what I mean?”

  “Uh, no,” Daisy said, deeply grateful that Liz didn’t seem to hold a grudge.

  “They’re bored. They’re no Einsteins. And they have nothing to do all day long except think about who has more seniority than whom, who received a call they wanted, who makes more money, and who can get out of actually working while still getting paid.” She jerked her head in the direction of the Morton clan, who were looking in Daisy’s direction and guffawing. “Those hyenas are prime specimens.”

  “You talk fancy,” Daisy blurted.

  “It annoys the gentlemen,” Liz said serenely. “We use what we’ve got.”

  Daisy thought for the millionth time of her wasted years in school. “All I’ve got is my tits.”

  Liz Ryback looked her over critically. “Oh, I think there’s more in there.”

  “You think so?” Daisy felt pathetic gratitude. “Pete Packard says I’m mouthy.”

  “Mouth is good,” Liz said, “But it helps to know when it’s appropriate.” Her cultured North Shore voice coarsened. “Now I’m gonna hafta put you on truss focus with Bobbert Morton.”

  Daisy went cold. “He’ll kill me.”

  “Nobody else wants to work with him and they all have seniority over you. Relax. Think of this as an opportunity to study your enemy.”

  Daisy eyed her with horror, thinking of a whole afternoon watching her back, getting stuff dropped on her toes, not getting told what she needed to know so that she wouldn’t burn herself on a lighting instrument or have to do all her work twice.

  Liz said with a kind of hard-edged sympathy, “He’s not as smart as you are. And he has a shorter fuse.”

  Daisy swallowed. “Okay.”

  Liz nodded. “Go get ’em, tiger.” She strode off.

  Wigged out, Daisy guzzled from her water bottle.

  A second later she sprayed the deck with the mouthful. “Vodka! Aueugh! Dammit!” she yelled. “Vodka!”

  Her shrieks brought Jack Yu over from the speaker towers. “What’s the problem?”

  She was too rattled to stay quiet. “Somebody put vodka in my water bottle!” she choked out, still gagging. “Faugh! Ugh!”

  Jack Yu eyed her resignedly. “You want to file a harassment grievance?”

  She threw a glare at the corner of the stage where the Mortons stood howling and high-fiving each other.

  “No. I don’t get mad. I get even.”

  Jack glanced in the same direction. “Oo, that’ll scare ’em,” he said. He shrugged and walked away.

  She was on her own. Again.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Bobbyjay got out of the Opera House over an hour late. He hadn’t heard of any seismic upheavals, so he had to assume Daisy got through her afternoon all right. But she’d been at work almost twelve hours now and, according to Jack Yu, whom Bobbyjay phoned as he hurried through the parking ramp to the Jeep, she would also work the show.

  “Sure I need ya,” Jack told Bobbyjay. “I need every warm body I can get. I got a million followspots and enough fog for the Republican National Convention.”

  So Daisy was still on the call.

  When he got to the Arena, Jack sent him up the truss before he could find her. Once he was in his spot cage, however, he saw her on the deck, standing behind a followspot, with a roadie showing her the ropes.

  Jack would keep her on deck manning a fog machine or a confetti cannon, not in the air, he told himself. Not to worry.

  “Why am I the one going up there?” Daisy said, wishing she didn’t have to ask Bobbert. But there was no one else to ask. Liz Ryback was forty feet above the deck, clanking and swearing at something, and Daisy didn’t know another soul within sight.

  “Because I outrank you,” Bobbert said loftily. “It’s a little something called seniority. I got assigned the followspot. You’re lower than me,” he said with relish. “So I can bump you.”

  Daisy sighed. More hassle. Think of it as a shit sandwich, Liz had said. You eat one bite at a time. “What do I do?”

  “It’s easy,” Bobbert said, grinning. “You go up this ladder.” He pointed. “You walk across the truss and climb down into that cage underneath it.” Forty feet up the monkey-ladder, the truss hung from the roof, and on the corner of the truss a metal cage dangled. A half-size followspot angled down out of the cage. Daisy gulped.

  “You wear this harness.” Bobbert took the harness off and handed it to her. “Want me to show you how it goes on?”

  “No!” She already knew she didn’t want his hands anywhere near her.

  He shrugged. “Okay. Be sure to snap this line onto the fall arrester before you go up. Snap to the truss before you get off the ladder. There’s a safety line up there, you gotta snap to that as you walk along the truss.” Daisy realized he really meant it. She would be walking on top of a skimpy metal framework forty feet in the air. “Snap onto the cage while you’re running the spot. Don’t go anywhere without snapping on. It’s a snap,” he said, and cackled. “Don’t worry. I’ll be on the ground, spottin’ ya. Now I gotta get me a Coke.”

  Daisy felt there was more to the job than this, but she knew she wouldn’t get it from a Morton.

  The audience was starting to fill the seats all around the stage. She noticed one of the road guys standing nearby.

  Waiting until Bobbert had disappeared into the melee behind the speaker towers, she licked her lips, approached the roadie, and inhaled, willing her cleavage to pop up to the top of her overalls.

  “Uh, hi! Gee,” she said, simpering and hating herself for it. “I’ve never run a truss spot before. Can you, like, coach me a little?”

  The roadie looked up from his walkie talkie and did a double-take. “Why, sure thing, little lady.”

  Ten minu
tes later she felt a lot better. The roadie didn’t have time to take her up the truss to her own followspot, but he showed her stuff on a spare followspot until she felt like she could manage the steel and glass torpedo.

  “D’y’all understand about using the safety line and harness, darlin’?” the roadie said as he helped her with unnecessary care out of the operator’s seat.

  “Snap onto the fall arrester while I’m climbing up,” she said, reciting Bobbert’s instructions. “Snap onto the truss before I get off the ladder. Snap onto the safety line while I’m moving on the truss. Snap onto the cage while I’m running the spot.”

  “That’s right, sweetheart.” The roadie hesitated, then remarked, “Two martini lunch, huh? Y’all won’t drink your dinner, will you? Yore too purty to splash yourself all over the stage.”

  She ground her teeth. “I don’t drink at work. One of the guys put vodka in my waterbottle and I spit it right out.”

  The roadie nodded and chuckled. “Inventive little devils, ain’t they?” He patted her on the behind and wandered off, his walkie talkie stuck to his ear.

  Daisy made it to the foot of her monkey-ladder just as the stage left electrician came rushing up. “Get up there. We’re testing all the spots in five minutes.”

  He was gone before she could say, “Okay.”

  She looked up. It was a long ladder. The sides were wire rope and the rungs were hard plastic with little ridges on them. Like that would help her sneakers hold on while she was swinging around with her butt hanging out. She took a deep breath and grabbed the sides of the ladder.

  She nearly fell on her ass.

  Thirty feet upstage, Bobby Morton Junior guffawed.

  After five tries she was still struggling to mount the thing. Nearby audience members laughed and pointed and shouted advice.

  Then Bobbert strolled up. “Whaddayou tryin’ to do? I told ya I would spot ya.”

  She glared at him and forced words between her teeth. “I don’t know what that means.”

  “It means I hold the bottom of the ladder. Don’t forget your lanyard,” he said, gesturing.