Blue Collar, White Collar, No Collar

by Richard Ford

  Most people don’t realize how sophisticated pool tables are. Yes, tables have bolts and staples on the rails but these suckers hold together mostly by gravity and by the precision of their construction. If you treat a good table right it will outlast you. Believe me. Cathedrals are built like that. There are Incan roads in the Andes that even today you couldn’t work a knife between two of the cobblestones. The sewers that the Romans built in Bath were so good that they weren’t replaced until the 1950s. That’s the sort of thing I can believe in.

  These days I can build a table with my eyes closed. Depending on how rushed we are I might build the table alone, let Wayne watch until I need help putting on the slate. It’s better when the customers stay out of our faces, how they react when we’re done, how they run fingers on the lacquered rails and suck in their breath, the felt so tight you couldn’t pluck it if you tried. Beautiful, is what they say and we always nod, talc on our fingers, nod again, beautiful.

  The boss nearly kicked our asses over the Gold Crown. The customer, an asshole named Pruitt, called up crazy, said we were delinquent. That’s how the boss put it. Delinquent. We knew that’s what the customer called us because the boss doesn’t use words like that. Look boss, I said, we knocked like crazy. I mean, we knocked like federal marshals. Like Paul Bunyan. The boss wasn’t having it. You fuckos, he said. You butthogs. He tore us for a good two minutes and then dismissed us. For most of that night I didn’t think I had a job so I hit the bars, fantasizing that I would bump into this cabrón out with that black woman while me and my boys were cranked but the next morning Wayne came by with that Gold Crown again. Both of us had hangovers. One more time, he said. An extra delivery, no overtime. We hammered on the door for ten minutes but no one answered. I jimmied with the windows and the back door and I could have sworn I heard her behind the patio door. I knocked hard and heard footsteps.

  We called the boss and told him what was what and the boss called the house but no one answered. OK, the boss said. Get those card tables done. That night, as we lined up the next day’s paperwork, we got a call from Pruitt and he didn’t use the word delinquent. He wanted us to come late at night but we were booked. Two-month waiting list, the boss reminded him. I looked over at Wayne and wondered how much money this guy was pouring into the boss’s ear. Pruitt said he was contrite and determined and asked us to come again. His maid was sure to let us in.

  What the hell kind of name is Pruitt anyway? Wayne asks me when we swing onto the parkway.

  Pato name, I say. Anglo or some other bog people.

  Probably a fucking banker. What’s the first name?

  Just an initial, C. Clarence Pruitt sounds about right.

  Yeah, Clarence, Wayne yuks.

  Pruitt. Most of our customers have names like this, court case names: Wooley, Maynard, Gass, Binder, but the people from my town, our names, you see on convicts or coupled together on boxing cards.

  We take our time. Go to the Rio Diner, blow an hour and all the dough we have in our pockets. Wayne is talking about Charlene and I’m leaning my head against a thick pane of glass.

  Pruitt’s neighborhood has recently gone up and only his court is complete. Gravel roams off this way and that, shaky. You can see inside the other houses, their newly formed guts, nailheads bright and sharp on the fresh timber. Wrinkled blue tarps protect wiring and fresh plaster. The driveways are mud and on each lawn stand huge stacks of sod. We park in front of Pruitt’s house and bang on the door. I give Wayne a hard look when I see no car in the garage.

  Yes? I hear a voice inside say.

  We’re the delivery guys, I yell.

  A bolt slides, a lock turns, the door opens. She stands in our way, wearing black shorts and a gloss of red on her lips and I’m sweating.

  Come in, yes? She stands back from the door, holding it open.

  Sounds like Spanish, Wayne says.

  No shit, I say, switching over. Do you remember me?

  No, she says.

  I look over at Wayne. Can you believe this?

  I can believe anything, kid.

  You heard us didn’t you? The other day, that was you.

  She shrugs and opens the door wider.

  You better tell her to prop that with a chair. Wayne heads back to unlock the truck.

  You hold that door, I say.

  We’ve had our share of delivery trouble. Trucks break down. Customers move and leave us with an empty house. Handguns get pointed. Slate gets dropped, a rail goes missing. The felt is the wrong color, the Dufferins get left in the warehouse. Back in the day, the girlfriend and I made a game of this. A prediction game. In the mornings I rolled onto my pillow and said, What’s today going to be like?

  Let me check. She put her fingers up to her widow’s peak and that motion would shift her breasts, her hair. We never slept under any covers, not in spring, fall or summer and our bodies were dark and thin the whole year.

  I see an asshole customer, she murmured. Unbearable traffic. Wayne’s going to work slow. And then you’ll come home to me.

  Will I get rich?

  You’ll come home to me. That’s the best I can do. And then we’d kiss hungrily because this was how we loved each other.

  The game was part of our mornings, the way our showers and our sex and our breakfasts were. We stopped playing only when it started to go wrong for us, when I’d wake up and listen to the traffic outside without waking her, when everything was a fight.

  She stays in the kitchen while we work. I can hear her humming. Wayne’s shaking his right hand like he’s scalded his fingertips. Yes, she’s fine. She has her back to me, her hands stirring around in a full sink, when I walk in.

  I try to sound conciliatory. You’re from the city?

  A nod.

  Where about?

  Washington Heights.

  Dominicana, I say. Quisqueyana. She nods. What street?

  I don’t know the address, she says. I have it written down. My mother and my brothers live there.

  I’m Dominican, I say.

  You don’t look it.

  I get a glass of water. We’re both staring out at the muddy lawn.

  She says, I didn’t answer the door because I wanted to piss him off.

  Piss who off?

  I want to get out of here, she says.

  Out of here?

  I’ll pay you for a ride.

  I don’t think so, I say.

  Aren’t you from Nueva York?

  No.

  Then why did you ask the address?

  Why? I have family near there.

  Would it be that big of a problem?

  I say in English that she should have her boss bring her but she stares at me blankly. I switch over.

  He’s a pendejo, she says, suddenly angry. I put down the glass, move next to her to wash it. She’s exactly my height and smells of liquid detergent and has tiny beautiful moles on her neck, an archipelago leading down into her clothes.

  Here, she says, putting out her hand but I finish it and go back to the den.

  Do you know what she wants us to do? I say to Wayne.

  Her room is upstairs, a bed, a closet, a dresser, yellow wallpaper. Spanish Cosmo and El Diario thrown on the floor. Four hangers’ worth of clothes in the closet and only the top dresser drawer is full. I put my hand on the bed and the cotton sheets are cool.

  Pruitt has pictures of himself in his room. He’s tan and probably has been to more countries than I know capitals for. Photos of him on vacations, on beaches, standing beside a wide-mouth Pacific salmon he’s hooked. The size of his dome would have made Broca proud. The bed is made and his wardrobe spills out onto chairs and a line of dress shoes follows the far wall. A bachelor. I find an open box of Trojans in his dresser beneath a stack of boxer shorts. I put one of the condoms in my pocket and stick the rest under his bed.

  I find her in her room. He likes clothes, she says.

  A habit of money, I say but I can’t translate it right; I end up agreeing with
her. Are you going to pack?

  She holds up her purse. I have everything I need. He can keep the rest of it.

  You should take some of your things.

  I don’t care about that vaina. I just want to go.

  Don’t be stupid, I say. I open her dresser and pull out the shorts on top and a handful of soft bright panties fall out and roll down the front of my jeans. There are more in the drawer. I try to catch them but as soon as I touch their fabric I let everything go.

  Leave it. Go on, she says and begins to put them back in the dresser, her square back to me, the movement of her hands smooth and easy.

  Look, I say.

  Don’t worry. She doesn’t look up.

  I go downstairs. Wayne is sinking the bolts into the slate with the Makita. You can’t do it, he says.

  Why not?

  Kid. We have to finish this.

  I’ll be back before you know it. A quick trip, in out.

  Kid. He stands up slowly; he’s nearly twice as old as me.

  I go to the window and look out. New gingkoes stand in rows beside the driveway. A thousand years ago when I was still in college I learned something about them. Living fossils. Unchanged since their inception millions of years ago. You tagged Charlene, didn’t you?

  Sure did, he answers easily.

  I take the truck keys out of the toolbox. I’ll be right back, I promise.

  My mother still has pictures of the girlfriend in her apartment. The girlfriend’s the sort of person who never looks bad. There’s a picture of us at the bar where I taught her to play pool. She’s leaning on the Schmelke I stole for her, nearly a grand worth of cue, frowning at the shot I left her, a shot she’d go on to miss.

  The picture of us in Florida is the biggest—shiny, framed, nearly a foot tall. We’re in our bathing suits and the legs of some stranger frame the right. She has her butt in the sand, knees folded up in front of her because she knew I was sending the picture home to my moms; she didn’t want my mother to see her bikini, didn’t want my mother to think her a whore. I’m crouching next to her, smiling, one hand on her thin shoulder, one of her moles showing between my fingers.

  My mother won’t look at the pictures or talk about her when I’m around but my sister says she still cries over the breakup. Around me my mother’s polite, sits quietly on the couch while I tell her about what I’m reading and how work has been. Do you have anyone? she asks me sometimes.

  Yes, I say.

  She talks to my sister on the side, says, In my dreams they’re still together.

  We reach the Washington Bridge without saying a word. She’s emptied his cupboards and refrigerator; the bags are at her feet. She’s eating corn chips but I’m too nervous to join in.

  Is this the best way? she asks. The bridge doesn’t seem to impress her.

  It’s the shortest way.

  She folds the bag shut. That’s what he said when I arrived last year. I wanted to see the countryside. There was too much rain to see anything anyway.

  I want to ask her if she loves her boss, but I ask instead, How do you like the States?

  She swings her head across at the billboards. I’m not surprised by any of it, she says.

  Traffic on the bridge is bad and she has to give me an oily fiver for the toll. Are you from the Capital? I ask.

  No.

  I was born there. In Villa Juana. Moved here when I was a little boy.

  She nods, staring out at the traffic. As we cross over the bridge I drop my hand into her lap. I leave it there, palm up, fingers slightly curled. Sometimes you just have to try, even if you know it won’t work. She turns her head away slowly, facing out beyond the bridge cables, out to Manhattan and the Hudson.

  Everything in Washington Heights is Dominican. You can’t go a block without passing a Quisqueya Bakery or a Quisqueya Supermercado or a Hotel Quisqueya. If I were to park the truck and get out nobody would take me for a deliveryman; I could be the guy who’s on the street corner selling Dominican flags. I could be on my way home to my girl. Everybody’s on the streets and the merengue’s falling out of windows like TVs. When we reach her block I ask a kid with the sag for the building and he points out the stoop with his pinkie. She gets out of the truck and straightens the front of her sweatshirt before following the line that the kid’s finger has cut across the street. Cuídate, I say.

  Wayne works on the boss and a week later I’m back, on probation, painting the warehouse. Wayne brings me meatball sandwiches from out on the road, skinny things with a seam of cheese gumming the bread.

  Was it worth it? he asks me.

  He’s watching me close. I tell him it wasn’t.

  Did you at least get some?

  Hell yeah, I say.

  Are you sure?

  Why would I lie about something like that? Homegirl was an animal. I still have the teeth marks.

  Damn, he says.

  I punch him in the arm. And how’s it going with you and Charlene?

  I don’t know, man. He shakes his head and in that motion I see him out on his lawn with all his things. I just don’t know about this one.

  We’re back on the road a week later. Buckinghams, Imperials, Gold Crowns and dozens of card tables. I keep a copy of Pruitt’s paperwork and when the curiosity finally gets to me I call. The first time I get the machine. We’re delivering at a house in Long Island with a view of the Sound that would break you. Wayne and I smoke a joint on the beach and I pick up a dead horseshoe crab by the tail and heave it in the customer’s garage. The next two times I’m in the Bedminster area Pruitt picks up and says, Yes? But on the fourth time she answers and the sink is running on her side of the phone and she shuts it off when I don’t say anything.

  Was she there? Wayne asks in the truck.

  Of course she was.

  He runs a thumb over the front of his teeth. Pretty predictable. She’s probably in love with the guy. You know how it is.

  I sure do.

  Don’t get angry.

  I’m tired, that’s all.

  Tired’s the best way to be, he says. It really is.

  He hands me the map and my fingers trace our deliveries, stitching city to city. Looks like we’ve gotten everything, I say.

  Finally. He yawns. What’s first tomorrow?

  We won’t really know until the morning, when I’ve gotten the paperwork in order but I take guesses anyway. One of our games. It passes the time, gives us something to look forward to. I close my eyes and put my hand on the map. So many towns, so many cities to choose from. Some places are sure bets but more than once I’ve gone with the long shot and been right.

  You can’t imagine how many times I’ve been right.

  Usually the name will come to me fast, the way the numbered balls pop out during the lottery drawings, but this time nothing comes: no magic, no nothing. It could be anywhere. I open my eyes and see that Wayne is still waiting. Edison, I say, pressing my thumb down. Edison, New Jersey.

  Andre Dubus

  DELIVERING

  Jimmy woke before the alarm, his parents’ sounds coming back to him as he had known they would when finally three hours ago he knew he was about to sleep: their last fight in the kitchen, and Chris sleeping through it on the top bunk, grinding his teeth. It was nearly five now, the room sunlit; in the dark while they fought Jimmy had waited for the sound of his father’s slap, and when it came he felt like he was slapping her and he waited for it again, wished for it again, but there was only the one clap of hand on face. Soon after that, she drove away.

  Now he was ashamed of the slap. He reached down to his morning hardness which always he had brought to the bathroom so she wouldn’t see the stain; he stopped once to turn off the alarm when he remembered it was about to ring into his quick breath. Then he stood and gently shook Chris’s shoulder. He could smell the ocean. He shook Chris harder: twelve years old and chubby and still clumsy about some things. Maybe somebody else was Chris’s father. No. He would stay with what he heard last night;
he would not start making up more. Somewhere his mother was naked with that son of a bitch, and he squeezed Chris’s shoulder and said: ‘Wake up.’ Besides, their faces looked alike: his and Chris’s and his father’s. Everybody said that. Chris stared at him.

  ‘Come with me.’

  ‘You’re crazy.’

  ‘I need you to.’

  ‘You didn’t say anything last night.’

  ‘Come on.’

  ‘You buying the doughnuts?’

  ‘After we swim.’

  In the cool room they dressed for the warm sun, in cut-off jeans and T-shirts and sneakers, and went quietly down the hall, past the closed door where Jimmy stopped and waited until he could hear his father’s breath. Last night after she left, his father cried in the kitchen. Chris stood in the doorway, looking into the kitchen; Jimmy looked over his head at the table, the beer cans, his father’s bent and hers straight, the ashtray filled, ashes on the table and, on the counter near the sink, bent cans and a Seagram’s Seven bottle.

  ‘Holy shit,’ Chris said.

  ‘You’d sleep through World War III.’

  He got two glasses from the cupboard, reaching over the cans and bottle, holding his breath against their smell; he looked at the two glasses in the sink, her lipstick on the rim of one, and Chris said: ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Makes me sick to smell booze in the morning.’

  Chris poured the orange juice and they drank with their backs to the table. Jimmy picked up her Winston pack. Empty. Shit. He took a Pall Mall. He had learned to smoke by watching her, had started three years ago by stealing hers. He was twelve then. Would he and Chris see her alone now, or would they have to go visit her at that son of a bitch’s house, wherever it was? They went out the back door and around to the front porch where the stacked papers waited, folded and tied, sixty-two of them, and a note on top saying Mr. Thompson didn’t get his paper yesterday. ‘It’s his Goddamn dog,’ he said, and cut the string and gave Chris a handful of rubber bands. Chris rolled and banded the papers while Jimmy stood on the lawn, smoking; he looked up the road at the small houses, yellow and brown and grey, all of them quiet with sleeping families, and the tall woods beyond them and, across the road, houses whose back lawns ended at the salt marsh that spread out to the northeast where the breeze came from. When he heard the rolling papers stop, he turned to Chris sitting on the porch and looking at him.