Done Deal

by Les Standiford

  She wiped toothpaste from the corner of her mouth, giving herself a moment. “By then,” she said, “we’ll be bankrupt.”

  He wanted to say something, but he wasn’t sure what. Every argument seemed weary, even to him. Janice stuck the toothbrush back in her mouth and disappeared into the bathroom.

  Deal swung his legs down from the bed and sighed. He felt exhausted, as if he’d spent the entire night running in place. He was almost weary enough to do it: Forget DealCo and all the hassle, take the supervisor’s job with Kendale Homes. Security, security, security. Maybe it was the smart thing to do.

  He reached for the television remote and pointed it at the tiny set that rested on their dresser. The face of a local weatherman congealed gradually and Deal pressed the volume button in time to hear “…back to a normal summer pattern, high in the low nineties, an eighty percent chance of thundershowers. We’ll keep an eye on those developing tropical waves for you.”

  “Terrific,” he said, flipping the channel.

  He caught a brief glimpse of a reporter finishing a standup in front of a burned-out gas station, police milling about in the background. The place looked familiar but the image faded into another weatherman about to proclaim the same sad news. Deal snapped off the set and stood up.

  He was pawing through his sock drawer, looking for a mate to the only white one he’d come across, when Janice came out of the bathroom in her walking gear. She had gotten involved with a group from the condo, and he was glad for that, though he suspected they encouraged her more extravagant tastes.

  Her dark hair was pulled back beneath a sweat band, her breasts hidden now under a spandex top. She wore a dark leotard beneath that, and white socks crumpled in rolls at her sneaker tops. She looked like the kid he’d met fifteen years ago.

  Something in his gaze must have caught her. She stopped and sighed, then came to him. “Oh, Deal,” she said. She looked at him sadly for a moment, then reached to kiss him on the cheek.

  She started to pull away, but Deal held on.

  “I’m late,” she said.

  “Be late,” he said, nuzzling her.

  “Deal,” she said. But she arched her neck at the touch of his lips.

  He edged them backward, toward the bed. He licked the underside of her ear. “They’re waiting on me,” she said, but her breath was quickening.

  They toppled over onto the bed. “I’m already dressed,” she said.

  Deal had his hand hooked under the band of her leotard. “Not for long,” he said, his own voice thick, his fingers probing.

  “Oh, Deal,” she said again, lifting her hips against him. And then he was lost in the heat and the musk and the dampness.

  ***

  Though his eyes were closed, Deal had convinced himself that he was floating on a diving raft somewhere in the middle of a broad lake rimmed by snowcapped mountains. Where he lay, it was warm and pleasant, the planks as soft as cotton, the sun beating down on his bare body, drying him. There was a faint scent of jasmine, and of sex, and the comforting touch of Janice’s shoulder at his side. Only the slightest trembling of the raft to disturb him and the sound of quiet sobbing.

  Sadness, he thought. How could there be sadness in such a lovely world? And then he came awake.

  Janice lay with her back toward him, her shoulders shuddering, her face pressed into a pillow. Deal pressed his eyes closed momentarily, longing for the dream to take him up again, but what he saw instead was an image of fighter planes swooping low, strafing a deserted beach. He was in the picture somewhere, a gaunt man shaking a stick at the planes, his eyes as crazed as Job’s.

  He opened his eyes and moved close to her, his chin tucked over her shoulder. How many times had this happened, would it happen?

  “Janice,” he said. He reached to move the pillow from her face. Her eyes were squeezed tight, her cheeks streaked with tears.

  “Janice?” he repeated. He raised himself up and placed his hand on her shoulder. With his other hand, he began to knead the tautness at the base of her neck. Her sobbing began to subside. He moved both hands to her shoulders and pressed his thumbs into the long muscles of her back.

  Gradually, he felt the tightness fading, and after a few moments she sat up, wiping at her cheeks with a corner of the tangled sheet. She took a deep breath, her hands folded in her lap.

  “I’m trying to make this work,” she said, staring at her hands. “I am. I am.”

  Deal had the odd sensation that she was talking to herself, that he was not even in the room at all, and he put his hand atop hers to reassure himself.

  She glanced up at him. “I’m not going crazy, if that’s what you think.”

  “I know,” Deal said. “I know.”

  “Sometimes, things just get to be too much,” she said.

  Deal nodded. “I’m going to take care of everything, Janice. You don’t have to worry.”

  She glanced around the room again, and Deal saw it as an accusation. They’d had to sell the house in the Shores, almost a year ago now, and though they’d tried to keep contact, they’d apparently left most of their friends behind in the move. It had gotten to be a big city, Deal thought sadly. And he’d been so busy, busting his ass trying to stay afloat, that he hadn’t had time to put much of a personal life back together.

  “Mr. Penfield told me he wanted to talk to you last night,” Janice said, breaking into his thoughts.

  Deal nodded.

  She was staring at him. “Well, did he?”

  Deal felt the awful weariness piling down on him again. He’d managed to drive it away for a bit, and here it was, climbing back on his shoulders, ready to ride him around until he dropped, if it could.

  He sighed. “He said he had somebody else interested in the fourplex.”

  “And?”

  “I told him the same as last time. We weren’t interested.”

  She stared at him. “What was the offer?”

  Deal shrugged. “Three sixty-two five.”

  She nodded. “That means you could get three seventy-five.”

  “Maybe.”

  “The land is clear. Subtract the construction loan, that leaves nearly a quarter of a million dollars.” Her expression was determinedly neutral.

  “Which we could piss away.”

  She threw up her hands. “I don’t understand you. Look at how we live. We could buy a house…”

  “We can’t sell the fourplex, Janice.” He was trying to keep his patience.

  “You mean you won’t.”

  Deal bit his lip, trying to keep his voice even. “We don’t want to sell when the market’s down. We have to finish the building. Then we rent it out. We’ll have something to put down where it says ‘assets’ on the balance sheet. And a little cash coming in besides. We use that all to finance the next project. Then we can sell. Times get better, the property will be worth another hundred thousand, finished and generating income. We’ll be on the road again.”

  She seemed about to snap back at him, but forced herself to calm. “Deal, you’re building an apartment in a place where nobody wants to live. If it were worth anything, your father would have built on it when he was still alive. If it were a good investment, Mr. Penfield wouldn’t advise you to sell it. If he can find someone to buy it, take him up on it, for God’s sake.”

  “He means well,” Deal said. “That neighborhood’s coming back.”

  She stared at him for a moment, then shook her head in resignation. She turned and swung her legs over the side of the bed, bent to pick up her wadded clothes.

  “It’s not just you and me any longer, Janice. That’s the whole point. I sell out now, it’s all over. I’ll end up working for wages the rest of my life, we’ll never get anywhere. That’s not what I want for my family.”

  She turned to him. “Let me get this straight. You’d sell the building if it weren’t for us?”

  He threw up his hands. “Selling isn’t the
point. Hanging on is the point. Doing what you have to do until things get better. Believing in yourself, that what you do is right…” He knew his voice was rising, that any moment she would turn away, that he would lose her. “Janice,” he said, quietly. “It’s for us. For all of us.”

  She stared at him in silence, taking it in. Her anger seemed to have faded. He doubted he’d convinced her. But at least she was thinking about what he’d said, and that was a victory of sorts.

  After a moment, she glanced away.

  “Look at this,” she said, absently. She’d unfolded the leotard, was staring at a tear Deal had opened in the fabric.

  “I thought it was kind of exciting,” he said.

  She paused, then glanced up at him, finally gave him the smile he’d been angling for. “It was,” she said.

  “Let’s try it without the clothes,” he said, reaching for her hand.

  But she was up and hurrying down the hall. “Go to work, Deal.” She turned and shook her head. “Just go and get the damn thing built.”

  ***

  Deal was moving across what had been an empty traffic lane when it happened. Some idiot barreling up from nowhere, heading for the same open spot. Deal, still feeling prickly from the argument with Janice—as if he’d bullied her into silence—never thought of backing off. He’d made his move, had been there first. He cut his wheels and settled in.

  It was a black Supra, the windows smoked as dark as the paint, filling up his rearview mirror now. They were doing sixty-five, locked in by morning commuters on either side and the guy was maybe six inches off his tail.

  Deal saw the Supra’s headlights roll up, the lamps flash. The guy had to be crazy. There was a Sunshine bread delivery truck a few feet in front of them, Deal close enough to read the “Bring Baseball to the Tropics” sticker on its bumper.

  There was a flatbed carrying a load of coconut palms to the left, a pair of old school buses painted white taking up the right. Even if he’d been inclined to let the asshole past—which he wasn’t—there was no place to go.

  Deal glanced up at the windows of the nearest bus. Rows and rows of white-turbaned blacks, staring implacably into the blaze of sun that was just clearing the bank towers downtown. Yahwehs, he thought. Two bus loads of Yahwehs going somewhere at seven thirty in the morning.

  He didn’t know much about them—they dressed like some of the Black Muslims he’d encountered in college, back in the 1960s—but they seemed interested in things material as well as spiritual. They had bought up a bunch of hot-sheet motels around Seventy-ninth and Biscayne, which they had proceeded to paint black and white, with the emphasis on white. They were renting most of the motels, using some for temples, schools, whatever. A couple of coats of paint and tropical sleaze becomes Morocco.

  He glanced back at the Supra, which had inched closer to his bumper. Deal thought about slamming on his brakes—let the guy pile into him, use the insurance money to cover a paint job for The Hog, which had begun a serious fade from sitting out so much. Ever since they’d had to let the house go and move into the condo, he’d let Janice use the one underground spot for her VW.

  He lifted his foot from the accelerator, tapped his brakes lightly. The Supra fell back abruptly. Think about it, friend. Deal stared into the mirror, willing his thoughts backward. The sun was a white blaze on the Supra’s windshield—no way to see who might be driving. It closed in again as Deal accelerated.

  One of the Yahwehs—a big guy who looked like it’d take two sheets to wrap him—glanced down at Deal, then back at the Supra. The man’s gaze came back to rest on Deal. He lifted his brows as if to ask a question, then he turned back to stare at whatever his buddies had discovered.

  Deal remembered a recent news story. A pimp who’d had a certain interest in one of the motels transformed by the Yahwehs had come around to discuss things. A couple of big Yahwehs showed up and the pimp landed in the emergency ward at Jackson, a fracture in each of his arms and legs. There’d been some outcry about it, but the pimp lobby at city hall wasn’t very influential. Besides, the cops had been trying to clean up Seventy-ninth and Biscayne for years. If the Yahwehs could accomplish that, the city would probably let them paint the streets and the palm trees white.

  Deal saw his exit sign loom up overhead, then flash past. He’d been asleep. Only a quarter mile to the exit and two more lanes to cut across. He backed off the accelerator again and heard the whine of the Supra behind him as it dropped a gear. Fuck him. Deal had subs to check on at the job site. Miss this exit, he’d have to go all the way across the river, then be stuck in the hospital traffic coming back. Turn up late and the subs would have long since declared another holiday.

  It was tough, fighting this traffic every morning. He was used to heading the other way, against the river of cars heading downtown. For years, construction had been moving west, nibbling inexorably toward the Everglades. GDC, Kendale Homes, DealCo, munching away at the vegetable farms, reclaiming wetlands, throwing up subdivisions and office parks, metro council falling all over itself to issue permits and variances. But times changed, boom had slid into bust.

  GDC under indictment. DealCo wasted away. Others vanished completely. Only Kendale hanging on, so far. The lot where Deal was building his fourplex was saved from the days when there had been a real company, when his old man had been alive, when, in his old man’s words, “you didn’t need an interpreter to get a chalkline snapped.”

  Deal had never minded working with Hispanics. After all, he’d started in as a grunt working alongside the other framers and rough carpenters, more and more of whom spoke Spanish as the stream of immigrants from Cuba and points south increased to a flood. He’d picked up enough of the language to get by, was reasonably fluent in the basic topics of conversation on the job: carpentry, food, baseball, getting laid.

  No, it wasn’t accommodating himself to another language that bothered him. Furthermore, he admired the industry of the immigrants, even those his old man considered “pushy.” As far as Deal was concerned, they had a right. They’d been fucked over at home, wherever that was, and now they had come over here and were desperate to make it, simple as that. No, he had no problems with that. It was just that it was getting harder and harder for Deal to keep his own little part of the pie.

  Right now, he was a month shy of the due date on his construction loan, with maybe six weeks of work to go and the rainy season cranking up. He needed dry weather. He needed to kick the subs into hyperdrive…or else he needed to do as Janice wanted and sell out.

  Meanwhile, the Yahwehs had finally inched ahead. Deal glanced over his shoulder and motioned to a woman in a minivan. She waved him in. He cut his wheels, then winced at a shrieking of brakes behind him. The Supra had rammed in on his tail, nearly clipping the minivan, which had begun to fishtail wildly.

  Deal hit his own brakes instinctively, but felt a surge of panic when nothing happened. Because the traffic ahead was slowing for the tollgates, The Hog actually seemed to pick up steam. He glanced down wildly, hoping to see he’d somehow hit the accelerator, but sure enough, it was the brake pedal that was slowly sinking toward the floor.

  The sonsofbitches, Deal thought, even as The Hog rushed toward the back of the Yahweh bus that loomed ahead. He’d had The Hog in to the dealer three times for the brakes. First, they’d said it was shoes. Then, after he’d picked it up to find there was still no pedal, they’d said the cylinders were leaking. The last time, they’d flushed the lines and replaced the master cylinder. It had been doing fine for three days. Until now.

  Two of the Yahwehs sitting in the back of the bus, flanking the emergency door, had turned and were staring in alarm as Deal closed in. It was a converted school bus, with a high ass-end, and the two women were probably going to be safe. With any luck, The Hog would slide in under the floorboards of the bus, just about windshield level. The frame girders of the bus would come through The Hog on a line with Deal’s skull.

  They
were on the bridge approach now, climbing slightly toward the toll plaza. Deal checked the traffic to his right, found a solid wall of commuters checking for change, switching stations, applying lipstick, no one aware of his plight.

  The Supra, meanwhile, had not left his tail. Just behind, at the bottom of the hill, the minivan had broadsided to a stop, blocking the two right lanes. A roofer’s ancient pickup towing a wheeled tar pot slammed on its brakes and swerved to avoid the minivan. As the pickup jounced onto the shoulder, the tar pot tipped to the right and broke loose from the tow bar. The thing passed the pickup like it had been shot out of a sling, then slammed into a light stanchion.

  Deal knew about breakaway poles, how they’d been designed to reduce fatalities, but he had never seen one in action. He’d always doubted the principle, in fact. How could you hit one of the massive looking things and not die?

  The tar pot did die. It hit the pole and exploded, sending a wave of black over a bright new Cadillac just ahead. The pole, meantime, fell like a fighter going into the tank. It crashed down across the roofer’s pickup and the minivan, showering sparks and glass across the lanes.

  Ahead of him, the rear of the bus blossomed huge. The two Yahwehs were fighting to reach the aisle. They have seen the coming of the apocalypse, Deal thought. The Supra bore down mindlessly from behind. At least, he’d take that bastard out with him.

  He was staring at the big block letters EMERGENCY EXIT stenciled across the back of the bus when his hand locked on The Hog’s brake lever at his side, but there had been no connection in his mind. It was all reflex as he jerked up hard on the emergency brake and felt himself begin to spin, out of control.

  He saw the headlights of the Supra flash by, and felt a small surge of satisfaction—imagine the look on the bastard’s face—as he braced himself for a collision. “You could have done it smoothly, Deal,” he was thinking. “You might have applied gentle pressure to that emergency brake. Everything would have turned out all right.”

  He caught sight of the Yahwehs again, but too quickly to see how they were taking it. He saw a gull wheel past, thought he heard its scream, saw another lamp dome whiz overhead like a spaceship, the Supra again, a Cadillac with a horrifying black paint job, a flash of concrete, an abrupt thump, somebody groaning, then silence.