Invasion of the Blatnicks

by Neil S. Plakcy

  “I think she’d love to.” Steve looked at his watch. “If we call her now, we could get over there in time for dinner. Then neither of us has to cook.”

  “I second that emotion.” Dolores picked up the receiver and handed it to him. “Dial away.”

  After dinner, Harold went to the living room to watch TV and Rita sat at the kitchen table with Steve and Dolores, going over the drawings Dolores had done. “These are very good,” she said. “You’re very talented, Dolores.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Berman.” Dolores hesitated. “Steve said the drawings were a little rough.”

  “Oh, not rough, exactly,” Rita said. “But we could work on them. Why don’t you come over tomorrow afternoon and we’ll put our heads together?” Dolores squeezed Steve’s hand and smiled.

  The next day, Steve ran into John Blake on a construction crew in one of the restaurants. The big room was full of light and the smell of fresh paint. Workmen were installing wooden booths and a pressed tin ceiling, and against one wall were a stack of decorative imitations of old advertising signs.

  “I been working steady since I got the cast off,” John said, holding up his arm. “I finally got me a nest egg saved up, and Mary and the kids are coming down tomorrow. We got a trailer rented about two miles down the road.”

  “That’s terrific,” Steve said. “I’ll come and visit you. I want to see Australia.” Suddenly Steve was enveloped by a bear hug from behind. “What the hell!”

  “Gotcha!” Dusty said, letting go.

  Steve turned around. “What are you doing here, Dusty?”

  “I didn’t want to be the only one left out of this gig. I signed up as a restaurant consultant to help these guys here set up the bar and the food service operation.”

  There were Blatnicks everywhere. Some were official Blatnicks, and others were just honorary. Every time he passed through center court, Richie or Jerry called him in to ask him a question. Morty’s Aunt Estelle and Uncle Joe were back, and they were always trying to do things like bring in a life-sized stuffed giraffe or use actual palm thatch for the ceiling.

  The other tenants were no better. Steve walked through the building every morning and every afternoon, and each tenant he passed had some kind of problem. They had sign bands hung wrong, or were getting hassled by the building department, or couldn’t find the right sewer connections.

  Maxine, Brad and Miranda were still making deals, bringing in new tenants and promising that they could finish design and construction in the three short weeks remaining. Whenever Steve finished a meeting or returned from the site there were always a dozen messages for him.

  On Friday, Rita and Dolores brought in a set of sketches for Steve to review. “Oh, I left the equipment catalog in the car,” Dolores said. “I’ll be right back in.”

  “I just want you to know how impressed I am with Dolores,” Rita said to Steve, while Dolores was out. “She’s got a lovely personality, she’s very bright, and very creative. I’ll tell you, Steve, if you marry Dolores you’ll spend the rest of your life keeping up with her.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your father is smarter than I am, more willing to take chances, to go all out for something. All the time we’ve been married I’ve had to struggle to keep up with him. It’s what’s made our marriage so strong. And, to be honest, it’s what made retirement so hard, because he wasn’t out there setting the pace any more. This Florida Club thing has gotten him started again. I don’t think I could have gone back to work if he hadn’t gone ahead of me.”

  Steve was left to wonder about his parents’ relationship when Dolores came back in and they went over the drawings for the salon. Rita had corrected the small problems with Dolores’s original sketches, while retaining the originality of the look. It was part classic, with a series of Doric columns around the perimeter, and part very modern, with high tech light fixtures, industrial chairs, and utility carts originally designed for operating rooms.

  Steve approved the drawings and asked what Dolores was going to do about a contractor. “Mrs. Blatnick wants Richie to coordinate everything,” Dolores said. “He’s already on site every day doing layout for Under the Covers. Mrs. B says he should be able to handle the salon, too.”

  “I’m not so sure that’s a great idea,” Steve said. “Richie’s just an apprentice carpenter. I don’t know that he’s capable of managing two construction projects.”

  “His grandmother’s paying the bills,” Dolores said. “If she wants to trust him, I’ll have to trust him, too. And you’ll keep an eye on him, too, won’t you?”

  “And on the other fifty tenants out there,” Steve said. “You can see how busy it’s getting here. I can’t promise I’ll do more for you than I can do for anyone else.”

  “I understand,” Dolores said.

  Uncle Max hired a new receptionist and promoted Celeste to be Steve and Junior’s full-time secretary. She helped them keep up with the flow of contractors’ change orders, telegrams to non-performing tenants, and the rest of the unending stream of paperwork that documented progress everywhere on the site.

  Steve was at work at seven in the morning, and worked every night until seven or eight o’clock, and only the thought of Dolores waiting at home drove him from his desk. On Sunday afternoon, he rode around Miami with Dolores and Mrs. Blatnick, looking for decorative props for the salon.

  They stopped at a cavernous warehouse in an industrial neighborhood near the Miami River. It was filled with old tin signs, farm tools, battered furniture and ragged toys. To Dolores, it was a storehouse of wonder. “Look at this!” she said, picking up a rusted toy train. “And those busts are wonderful!” She pointed to a group of plaster busts of famous statesmen.

  Steve didn’t think any of it was wonderful. He thought it was all crummy, debris that other more sane people had discarded. “She has a good eye, that girl,” Mrs. Blatnick said, as Dolores ranged through the warehouse. “She’ll be a good businesswoman.”

  “You think so?” Steve asked.

  “I know,” Mrs. Blatnick said. “I remember when I was her age, just getting started in business with my Herman. Oy, the hours I worked! Packing, unpacking, tagging the garments, checking the quality. And if something had a little rip at the seam, who do you think fixed it? Me! My Herman, he had a mouth on him, he was the salesman. He could talk the pants off a naked man. Dusty is like that, too, except that he’s no good. I ran the warehouse, I managed the shipping, until we started to make some money and Mimi came along.”

  “I never knew that,” Steve said.

  “Sadie!” Dolores called from the rear of the warehouse. The sound of her voice startled Steve, bouncing as it did off the high rafters. “Come back here. I want to show you something!”

  Steve realized he’d never heard Mrs. Blatnick called by her first name before, always Ma or Grandma or Old Lady Blatnick. He watched her navigate surely between the piles of old memorabilia, walking with a determined stride that was so unlike her usual hobble.

  They filled Steve’s trunk with small items, like old tin soldiers, wooden fish and dusty leather-bound books. They stacked piles of faded sheet music on the back seat next to Mrs. Blatnick and put stuffed dolls on the floor. Dolores arranged with the owner to bring the metal signs, the cigar store Indian, and the other large things over to the site by truck just before opening.

  While Dolores was filling out the delivery order, Steve and Mrs. Blatnick stood by the car. It was a bright, cool day, and in the distance they could hear the shouts of men working on boats on the Miami River, loading bicycles and refrigerators for Haiti, unloading fruit from other islands.

  “I don’t see how all this is going to go together,” Steve said. “It looks like a lot of junk.”

  “Trust her,” Mrs. Blatnick said. “This girl has a head on her shoulders.”

  Trust, Steve thought. It all came down to that. He had to trust what he felt about Dolores, trust her that she was dealing with him, his family and the ma
ll in an open, straightforward way, that she had put the scams like the baby switch behind her. Then she came outside, squinting in the sunshine, and her smile dazzled him, and he said to himself, yes, he would, he would trust her.

  Each day, Steve stopped by Under the Covers and Casa Dolores: Hair Creations to see how things were going. Richie showed an unexpected ability to manage construction projects. He spent his time walking back and forth between the two stores yelling at people long-distance on his cell phone.

  Later in the morning, Steve walked in to Under the Covers. Richie and Jerry were laying out the locations of the walls on the concrete slab floor. “All right, Dad, you take the idiot end,” Richie said, handing the beginning of a 25-foot tape measure to his father. “Put it down on the floor there by that mark. And hold it straight.”

  Steve watched, amused, as Richie carefully unrolled the tape and made a mark at the far end. “Hello, Steve,” Mimi said, coming in through the back service door. She and Wilma were carrying eight-foot metal studs.

  “Richie’s really got everybody working,” Steve said.

  “He’s got some of his carpenter friends coming over this afternoon to put these walls up,” Mimi said, laying down her end of the studs on the floor. “We’re just trying to have everything ready for them.”

  “I’m glad you’re here, Steve,” Wilma said. She put her end down and wiped her brow with her sleeve. Steve noticed she had abandoned her bride of Frankenstein outfit and was wearing a nice t-shirt and shorts from the Fish ‘n’ Fashion spring line. “I’m organizing people to visit Sheldon in jail. When can you go?”

  “Not until after the opening, Wilma. I’m too busy.”

  “I know he’d love to see you. He asks about you all the time.”

  “You’ll have to send him my regards, then,” Steve said. “I don’t get home until nine or ten o’clock every day, and I’m back here at seven in the morning. I’m working weekends and taking drawings home to look over. I just can’t do it.”

  “Don’t worry, Steve,” Mimi said. “Sheldon will understand. Besides, Wilma’s got lots of people to visit him.”

  “Everyone has been so nice,” Wilma said. “One of the maids at the hotel wants to go, and a parking valet Sheldon always said hello to, and then all the family.”

  “All right, back to work,” Richie said. “There’s still more studs out in the car.”

  “My son, the organizer,” Mimi said. She smiled proudly. “Come on, Wilma, let’s go.”

  From Under the Covers, Steve walked down the hall to Casa Dolores: Hair Creations. Two men in overalls were drilling trenches in the concrete for the plumbing lines that ran to the shampoo sinks. Richie walked in right behind Steve. “I didn’t know you were coming this way, cuz,” he said. “You could have carried a message for me.”

  He walked over to the men. “You need a 3” connector at the main valve,” he said. He pulled one out of his pocket. “Here. And remember, it’s one-inch copper pipe from the connector to the sinks, all right?” The guys nodded.

  “Plumbers,” Richie said to Steve as he walked out. “You gotta tell them everything.”

  Steve felt his world was turning upside down. Nobody was acting the way he expected. Dolores had a new personality for every occasion; Richie was turning into a good contractor; Aunt Mimi was carrying metal studs, using hands that had never touched dishwater; and Wilma had given up her cult and returned to her family.

  He didn’t have much time to think about it, though, because his radio crackled and another emergency loomed on the horizon. He took off at a run. It was no emergency, he discovered, but that was typical of his days.

  By the end of that week, just seven days before opening, the building had started to look ready. The parking lots were all paved, and the landscaping contractor had set all the big palm trees at the entrances. Teams of gardeners filled in the spaces around them with small flowering impatiens in red, white and pink and a big water truck came by twice a day to wet down the ground.

  Most of the big equipment, like the cranes and the earth movers, had gone on to other jobs, leaving a legion of carpenters, plumbers and tile setters in their wake. The big building hummed every day with the sound of hammers, shouted voices, and the creaky wheels of hand trucks and delivery carts.

  Bill Benzakry had delegated one of his superintendents to manage deliveries, and there was always a line of trucks waiting at the main entrance for access to the loading docks. Steve stood by the entrance at Driveway D and watched the activity. Even though it was Saturday, commercial carriers and moving vans waited patiently, while the courier services, who had dozens of deliveries to make all over Miami and schedules to meet, were allowed to bump to the head of the line.

  Inside the mall, the stores were taking shape. The glass storefront had been installed at Fish ‘n’ Fashion, and carpenters were finishing the cabinets. At Under the Covers, the walls were up and painted, and stone masons were polishing the new marble floor. All the underslab plumbing work was complete at Casa Dolores: Hair Creations, and the sinks were lined up in a row. The Doric columns along the wall had been framed out of big sonotubes, which were normally used as concrete forms, and the grid for the ceiling had been hung from the metal deck above.

  “Base to Steve,” his radio crackled with Celeste’s voice.

  He pulled it from a holster at his belt and pressed the “talk” button. “This is Steve.”

  “You’re due back here for the pep talk,” Celeste said.

  “I remember. I’m on my way.” He put the unit back in his belt and started walking toward the Welcome Center. He had four more tenants to see that morning, and who knew what problems to face that afternoon, and the last thing he wanted to do was waste a half hour listening to Uncle Max babble about personal challenges or far Eastern religions.

  “Right after the grand opening speeches, we’re going to have a balloon release,” Uncle Max said. “Throughout the weekend, the Fort Lauderdale High Marching Alligators will parade through the parking lots playing Dixieland favorites, and we’ll have wandering bands of small girls playing tambourines.”

  He paused to flip through his notes. “Every day during the first week, we have a different theme. On Monday, Responsible Parents of Dade County are sponsoring a condom giveaway. Tuesday we’ll have soap opera stars and their political views. Wednesday is Disease Day, with booths from all the major diseases displaying their symptoms and early warning signs. And so on.”

  It made Steve tired just to imagine it all. Uncle Max gave a brief lecture about the value of individual contributions to a group effort, and then let everyone go. After a brief break for lunch, Steve was back out on the site, roaming from tenant to tenant and contractor to contractor.

  Late that night he sat in his office, tired and debilitated. Dolores had gone home hours before. Outside, he heard the security director blowing his whistle, finishing the orientation session for new guards. It was almost ten o'clock.

  Steve had never felt so exhausted. He walked to the conference room and looked through the window at the creamy concrete of the Everglades Galleria. The exterior lights had been installed and the walls were washed with a gentle white glow. The sign had just been hung on the wall facing him, and the words Everglades Galleria shone in green neon.

  He felt warm and energized. Soon the mall would be open, shoppers would come through, people would buy things, enjoy the fountains and the benches and the landscaping. They would have a good time there. And, in Junior's words, it would feel great.

  He just had to make it until then.

  36 – Everybody Limbo!

  Steve worked from early in the morning until late at night, when he would collapse next to Dolores in his new bed. Sex seemed the only rejuvenating thing in his life.

  He got through the days on adrenaline and the catered junk food brought in to the office. There were bagels, Danish and cinnamon rolls in the morning, accompanied by big silver urns of coffee and tea. For lunch there were deli sandwich
es, burgers, French fries and dozens of multicolored cans of soda, beads of perspiration dripping down their shiny surfaces. For dinner aluminum trays of roast beef, chicken wings, roasted potatoes and steamed vegetables were suspended in cradles over tiny cans of Sterno.

  At meal times, Celeste or the new receptionist made an announcement over the radio and the team gathered in the lobby of the Welcome Center. There were dozens of people by then, including merchandisers brought in to help tenants with window displays and temporary laborers who carried trash and packing debris to the compactor behind Building A.

  On Thursday morning a truck knocked out the antenna that transmitted cell phone signals, and the mall was filled with desperate tenants and contractors lined up at the couple of pay phones. Just before lunch, Dolores appeared at Steve’s office. “Without my cell phone I feel like I’m a lost sheep,” she said, collapsing into a chair across from his desk. “Can I use your phone to make a couple of calls?”

  Dolores looked the way Steve felt. Tired, wrung out, running on adrenaline. “Here,” he said, pushing the phone towards her. “Be my guest. Dial nine for an outside line.”

  He continued scribbling out telegrams to non-performing contractors and tenants while Dolores made her call. After a while, he couldn’t help listening in. “But you promised me you’d deliver the chairs yesterday,” she said. “I’m opening a beauty salon on Sunday morning. Do you want me to tell the customers to stand while I cut their hair?”

  She listened for a minute. “How can I believe you, when you promised me that yesterday? I don’t care how you get them here, by I need them today. This afternoon. I tell you what, I’ll make you a deal. If they come in today, I’ll buy the deluxe chair covers. All right? Now, you know what today means, don’t you? Today, Thursday, April twelfth. Before midnight. All right? I’ll call you when they get here.”

  She hung up. “Nothing is going right.”

  “I know that feeling.”

  She had four more calls to make, handling all of them with that same mixture of pressure and negotiation. “That’s all for now,” she said to Steve when she had made the last call. “We’re ordering in pizza at Under the Covers. Your parents are there. You going to come out and eat with us?”