Invasion of the Blatnicks

by Neil S. Plakcy

“Well, shit,” Junior said. “Let’s get back to the site and bust something up then, before those guys do it all for us.”

  13 – Echoes of Words

  When Steve got back to the trailer, Brad came into his office and asked, “So how was your dinner with Andre the Giant?”

  “It was lunch,” Steve said. “And it was bizarre. We went to your favorite place. The Carbon Monoxide Café.” Brad sat down in the chair across from Steve’s desk and put his feet up on the windowsill. He was wearing a pink shirt.

  Steve told him about the plans they had been making, and how the union guys had come up and sung to them. “I wish I’d been there,” Brad said. “I love an all-male chorus.”

  Every so often Brad made a remark like that. He’d never made a pass or anything, but Steve hadn’t lived in New York for years without learning the signs. There was his voice, these occasional comments, and then there was something funny about the way his legs were reclining on the windowsill.

  Celeste buzzed. “It’s Cindy Levine again, on one this time,” she said. “You have to talk to this woman.”

  “Do I really?” Steve asked. “I know. I do.” Brad got up and strolled out as Steve picked up the phone. “Hi. We’ve had a hard time connecting.”

  “I thought maybe you didn’t want to talk to me,” Cindy said.

  “Nothing like that. You won’t believe how crazy it’s been down here.”

  Cindy had to confirm her airline reservations. “It’s tomorrow, you know,” she said. “I just wanted to make sure it was all right for me to come down.”

  Steve realized he had not told his mother Cindy was coming to Thanksgiving dinner. It’s all right, she can cope, he thought. “Sure. It’ll be fine.”

  She gave Steve her flight information and he wrote it down absently, almost like doodling. Then there was a silence on the other end of the phone. “Are you listening to me, Steven?” Cindy asked.

  “Huh? Yeah, I’m listening.”

  “Look, Steven, if you don’t want me to come to Florida, you can just tell me and I can save four hundred dollars on air fare. It’s not cheap to fly during blackout periods, you know.”

  “I know, I know. But I’m really glad you’re coming.” He winced as soon as he realized what he had said. Because he was so determined not to fall into the kind of argumentative relationship his parents had, he was too quick to go along with whatever Cindy said. He knew that wasn’t fair to either of them, but he didn’t know how to stop.

  “Well, that’s more like it,” Cindy said. “I’ve gotta go, sweetie, I have a meeting. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Bye,” Steve said bleakly.

  A little later, Uncle Max buzzed. “Could you come into my office? Junior and I have something to talk to you about.”

  While he walked down the hallway, Steve quickly ran over the events of the last few weeks in his head. Had he done anything terrible? Could they be planning to fire him?

  “Come in, sit down,” Uncle Max said when he saw Steve hovering in the doorway. “Junior and I were just talking about this union business.”

  Steve felt his shoulders relax and only then knew how nervous he’d been. I have to take it easy, he said to himself. I’m doing a good job. No one is going to fire me.

  “You know I have pretty strong feelings about unions,” Uncle Max said.

  Steve nodded.

  “And we’ll all agree Junior has a temper,” Uncle Max continued. Steve wasn’t sure if he should nod again so he did nothing. “So he and I have been talking, and we want you to handle this business.” Uncle Max stood up and started to pace behind his desk. “I want you to meet with the unions, see what they want. I won’t make this into a union shop, but maybe we can compromise. Set aside a certain percentage of the contracts for union contractors. That kind of thing.”

  He turned and looked directly at Steve. “You’ve got a good head on your shoulders, Steve. Don’t let these guys bully you around.” Uncle Max paused thoughtfully. “Bully. Theodore Roosevelt used to say that. Bully! I like that word. I’m going to use it.” He raised his fist triumphantly. “Bully!”

  Junior looked at Steve and nodded toward the door. They both stood up. “I’ll give Steve some pointers,” Junior said.

  Uncle Max was lost in San Juan Hill reveries. “Bully job, Junior!” He was pacing around behind the desk, murmuring “Bully!” when Steve and Junior left.

  “This is a good shot for you, Steve,” Junior said as they walked down the hall. “It’ll give you a chance to shine. If you can handle this, you might be able to stay with Thornton after this project is over.”

  “You think so?” Steve asked. Though he felt much more knowledgeable and skilled than he had in New York, and therefore more confident about job-hunting, it would be nice to remain employed.

  “Absolutely.” Junior sent Steve to the contract file to see how many union contractors there were on site versus the number of non-union ones. Steve made lists, compared contract terms, even did a breakdown by percent of all site work. It was very much like a business school project, and made him feel it was a challenge he could handle.

  Most of the non-union contractors had given up and left the site, and the two or three that remained were not subject to further harassment, but every now and then Steve would see one of the workmen who had sung to them at the Carbon Monoxide Café, and the guy would wink at him or smile and Steve would know that the trouble had not been eliminated, only postponed. He made contact with the chiefs of the union locals for carpenters, plumbers and electricians, and set up a meeting with them at the trailer after Thanksgiving.

  The next day Cindy caught a late-morning flight to Fort Lauderdale. At a few minutes past three, she was walking up the ramp from the passenger gates in the middle of a crowd when Steve spotted her.

  She was wearing clothes he had never seen her wear before-- a pair of tight blue jeans, and a pink polo shirt with the hanging-sheep crest of Brooks Brothers. Her dark brown hair was gathered into a ponytail. She was pulling a hand cart with a hanging bag and a small square suitcase on it. When she saw Steve she waved, and he felt as if his heart had cracked open.

  All of the sweetness and love he had felt for Cindy flooded into him, broke loose as if he had kept it dammed up. And he was flattered that she cared so much that she would try to change to keep up with him. He waved back and smiled.

  When she was free of the crowd, he leaned down and kissed her. It felt good to have his arms around her again, to smell the Chanel in her hair, to taste the slight strawberry on her lips. He had forgotten how petite she was. He thought that if he held her too tightly she might break.

  “Did you have a good flight?”

  “JFK was a madhouse. I didn’t even check my bags through.”

  Steve took the baggage cart. “I have to stop by the office for a few minutes,” he said. “I thought maybe I’d take you on a little tour of the site while we’re there.”

  “That’s OK. I’d like to see where you work.”

  She had a brand-new pair of L. L. Bean duck boots in the bottom of her suit bag, wrapped in tissue and stuffed into cloth shoe protectors. She took them out and changed into them while Steve drove and entertained her with stories of his family and his co-workers.

  He sensed that they were both trying hard to keep things light. But what he really wanted was to hold her again, to feel her heart beating against his chest. Before they got out of the car, he took her hand in both of his and looked into her eyes. She blushed and said, “Steven. Not now.”

  He introduced Cindy to Celeste and then took her back to his office. “This is where we came in,” he said, showing her the driveway on the big plan on his wall. “And this is where we are now. This is the Miccosukee Welcome Center -- it’s almost finished.” He pointed out the buildings, the lakes and parking lots and special features, like the flag court and the fishing pier.

  “It doesn’t look like any mall I’ve ever been to,” Cindy said. “I mean, where are the departm
ent stores?”

  As they walked out, Steve tried to explain the concept of the festival marketplace to her. “Serious shoppers go to department stores and regular malls,” he said. “The people who come to the Everglades Galleria will come for fun. They’ll spend money, sure, for entertainment and food and impulse shopping. But they won’t come here planning to buy refrigerators and evening gowns and power tools.”

  “Are you sure this will work?” Cindy paused at the edge of the dirt road to adjust her right boot, which was just a bit too large and kept slipping off.

  “I don’t know for sure. But Uncle Max has done this twice before, and he’s making money.”

  “It’s just that you sound so eager. You were never eager in New York.”

  “It’s hard to get enthusiastic over limited partnership syndications,” Steve said. “At least out here, you can see what you’re doing. I mean, building things. It’s really neat.”

  “Actually, I think it’s really dirty,” Cindy said.

  “See, it’s having an effect on you already,” Steve said. “You never used to make jokes in New York.”

  “I wasn’t making a joke, Steven.” Cindy pointed down at her boots, which were already covered with a fine layer of dust. “These boots were brand new and now they’re dirty.”

  “Boots are supposed to get dirty.” Steve waved his hand at the raw earth around them. “You put ‘em on and then you go slog around in the muck.”

  “Well, maybe I don’t want to slog around in muck.”

  Steve stopped. “We can go back to the trailer if you want.”

  Cindy bent down and brushed off her boots. “No, I want to see what you do,” she said. “Even if it means I have to walk around and get dirty and hear about a lot of construction stuff. If it’s important to you then I want to know about it.”

  Steve couldn’t stop looking at Cindy. There was something incredibly sexy about her devotion, about the way she had been willing to change herself to follow him. Finally he turned and started walking toward the giant chickee hut. “This is the Welcome Center,” he said, pointing.

  “I never heard of a mall having a Welcome Center.” Cindy trailed along behind Steve, watching carefully where she stepped. “Or having Indians, either.”

  “It’s part of the concept. The history of the Everglades, the Indian culture. There’s even a souvenir shop where you can buy handicrafts.”

  Steve took her all around the Welcome Center, which was nearly finished. He pointed out how the glass display cases had been installed, and how the recessed can lights were in, but still needed their decorative escutcheons. He showed her the small theater, where “The Miccosukee Experience” was to play every hour on the hour.

  “I’m sure it’ll be nice when it’s finished,” Cindy said.

  As they walked into Building A, the main mall, Steve saw it in a whole new way, as if through Cindy’s eyes. The rough, unfinished materials, the dirt and the dust, how it must seem like chaos and confusion to her. When he was on his own, he was caught up in how all the construction fit together, seeing a line of metal studs as the framework for a wall, a section of pipe as a floor drain, narrow gauge aluminum conduit overhead that telephone or power lines would run through. It was the complex web of infrastructure that underlies any building. But he didn’t know enough, didn’t have the language yet, to convey that to Cindy.

  They crossed into the first atrium court. “Careful of the open trenches,” he said. “We’re still doing some underground piping and laying conduits.”

  “I can’t believe you know so much.” Cindy stepped delicately over a trench and into a shaft of sunlight that streamed down from a hole in the roof. “Conduits and escutcheons and all this dirt stuff. You must have worked hard to learn it.”

  In that shaft of golden light, Cindy reminded Steve of an angel. He wanted to kiss her. “It wasn’t easy,” he said, swallowing hard, willing himself back. “There’s still tons I don’t know.”

  Most of the contractors had left by then, and the mall was quiet. The echoes of their words seemed to fly up to the unfinished steel trusses and roost there, waiting to take flight. “I work late, reading the plans and specs over and over again,” Steve continued. “It was the same kind of thing with learning about syndications. I understand now why Uncle Max was willing to hire me when all I really knew was how to learn.”

  “Why do you keep calling him Uncle Max? It’s not like he’s your relative or anything.”

  Steve shrugged. “He wants us to feel like a family here.”

  “It’s kind of a weird family to have. I mean, imagine if that receptionist was your sister, the one with the turban and the little cigars.”

  “You haven’t met my cousins yet,” Steve said. “Celeste will seem normal when you do.”

  They came to a long wooden ladder that had been propped up from the ground to the second floor, fifteen feet above. The ladder ended on a steel beam, but flat metal decking began just a few feet away from it.

  “Come on,” Steve said. “I’ll show you the second floor.” He started to climb.

  “Steven,” Cindy said. “I’m not climbing up that ladder. I can only change so much.”

  He looked at her. “I guess so,” he said. “After all, it’s taken me two months to get this far. Come on, let’s go back to the trailer. I have to get Junior to sign some change orders, and then I’ll take you over to my apartment.”

  Junior was on the phone when Steve walked in. “Come on, can’t you manage on crutches? I’ll help you.” He listened for a moment, then said, “You know you’re ruining my plans for Thanksgiving. Yeah, well, I hope you break the other leg.” He slammed the receiver down and turned to Steve.

  “Talk about wimps,” he said. “This friend and I, I mean this ex-friend and I, we were going climbing in the Rockies over the holiday. We had tickets, reservations, everything. Then he went and broke his goddamned leg. Now he says he’s not going.”

  It sounded perfectly reasonable to Steve. “Junior, he can’t climb mountains with a broken leg.”

  “He could try,” Junior said.

  “You could always go by yourself.”

  “Nah. That’s no fun. I’ll cancel the reservations, buy myself some kind of turkey TV dinner and spend the day in front of the tube. I can even come in here on Friday and get through some paperwork.”

  Steve could see Junior clearly, sitting in front of his TV set eating his turkey dinner out of a foil pan. “You could come over to my parents’ house if you want,” he said. “My mother always cooks way too much food. And we’ve got extra chairs.”

  Junior’s face brightened. “Hey, thanks, Steve,” he said. “I haven’t had a home-cooked meal on Thanksgiving since I divorced my second wife. That’d be real nice.”

  Then Steve remembered that the Blatnicks were coming to Thanksgiving dinner. And Cindy. How had he done this?

  “What’ve you got there?” Junior asked.

  Steve handed him the change orders without speaking. Visions of Thanksgiving dinner collided in his brain in a kaleidoscope of disasters. Junior signed the change orders in a big, sloppy hand, and said, “What time?”

  “Huh?”

  “What time is dinner? Can I bring anything?”

  Steve woke up. “Two-thirty,” he said. “Don’t bring anything. Here’s the address.” He scribbled his parents’ address on a yellow sticky and stuck it in the middle of the desk, and turned to walk out.

  As he was leaving, Junior said, “Hey, Steve. Thanks again.” He smiled, and Steve had to smile back.

  14 – Family Thanksgiving

  Two dead palm trees stood at the entrance to Mangrove Manor. At least Steve thought they were dead; their trunks were gray and several brown, shriveled leaves hung limply from the crown of each tree. He didn’t understand why they were still there, but perhaps the landlord thought that they embodied the hope of new life you had to have to live so far out in the swamps.

  Steve pulled into Caloosahatchee Court
and parked. If seen from above, or in the glossy rental brochure, the courts of Mangrove Manor resembled the root system of a mangrove, whose function was to collect dirt and debris and in the process form new islands of land that would eventually block streams and eliminate lakes. All of the courts fed from a central drive that led around the complex and back out to the main gate.

  “It’s very nice,” Cindy said, in a small voice.

  “It’s nearly new,” Steve said. “I’m the first tenant in my apartment.”

  Once inside, though, Cindy’s attitude changed dramatically. “You have so much space!” The foyer to Steve’s apartment was the size of the living room in the expensive, but small, one-bedroom Cindy rented in a chic building near Lincoln Center. “Steve! This is wonderful!”

  Cindy walked from through the big, eat-in kitchen, to the living room, with its sliding glass doors and balcony. “How much did you say you pay for this?”

  Steve told her. It was two hundred dollars less than she paid. “I guess there are reasons to live down here after all,” she said.

  “Come on, I’ll show you the bedrooms.” He led her back to the foyer and into the other half of the apartment. “This is my room,” he said, pausing in front of his door. “I have my own bathroom. This is the guest bedroom, and the guest bathroom.”

  Cindy walked into his bedroom and sat down on the bed. “Comfortable.”

  Steve turned on the overhead fan and made room in his closet and his bureau for Cindy’s clothes while she unpacked. When he turned back from the closet he bumped into her and it was as if an electric current passed between them. He said, “You know, we’re not in a hurry to get anywhere. We could relax for a while.”

  “I’m starving,” Cindy said. “The food on the plane was terrible. As soon as I’m unpacked you have to feed me.”

  They drove to a Tex-Mex place Steve had found between his apartment and the site. It was run by Cubans who had a tendency to use black beans and rice as an accompaniment to all the dishes, which Steve found distracted from the authentic cuisine.