Invasion of the Blatnicks

by Neil S. Plakcy

  Just then, Celeste buzzed. “Steve, lunch is here.”

  “I should eat here,” he said. “Uncle Max makes announcements. Sometimes it’s the only time I see Junior.” He paused. “But I’d rather come out with you.”

  “That’s life,” Dolores said. “A balancing act between what you have to do and what you want to do.” She came over and kissed him. “Come see me when you’re in the mall.”

  Steve walked down to the lobby, thinking about what Dolores said. Maybe this would never end, this conflict he was always facing between job and family. Then someone gave him a plate and someone else asked him a question.

  He spent the next two days on the run, from the office to the mall and back again, running interference for tenants with their suppliers, with Uncle Max or Junior, and with the building department. By Saturday evening, he felt he had given as much as he could.

  That night at dinner, Uncle Max gave everyone a pep talk. “It’s just a few hours more,” he said. “By this time tomorrow, we’ll have an open shopping center. Tomorrow at noon, thousands of shoppers from all over South Florida will converge on this place in an orgy of conspicuous consumption. God, I love this business!”

  Uncle Max beamed. He was wearing a painter’s smock and a pair of khaki cargo shorts with a dozen pockets. Each of them was filled with scraps of paper on which he had taken notes as he walked through the building. He looked like a pharmacist on vacation in Patagonia.

  “It’s been a long and winding road, folks,” he said, “and it’s all happened because of you. You’re all terrific and I love every goddamned one of you. If we had saints in the mall development business, I’d nominate all of you.”

  “Don’t you have to be dead to be a saint?” Steve whispered to Celeste.

  “The evening is not over yet,” she whispered back.

  Uncle Max smiled broadly. “Now get out there and finish what you started.”

  It was almost seven-thirty and the sky over the Everglades was as dark as primordial muck. But inside the mall spotlights and neon signs glittered off shiny brass and polished marble. There were people everywhere, unloading trucks, unpacking boxes, setting up window displays. Steve stopped in at Fish ‘n’ Fashion, where they were having a problem with one of the aquariums.

  Morty was lying on the floor, wearing a pair of jeans and a polo shirt with a fish on it. Steve recognized it as part of Estelle and Joe’s line.

  Steve squatted next to Morty, who was working under the aquarium with a pair of pliers. “I can’t get this one screw loose,” Morty said. He sat up, took his glasses off and wiped the sweat from his face with the bottom of his shirt.

  “Let me give it a try.” Steve got on his back and pulled himself under the aquarium. The bolt holding the screw in place was tight, but he jimmied and wiggled the pliers until he felt the bolt give.

  By the time he sat up he was dripping in sweat, too. “Got it,” he said. Estelle and Joe came out of the back, where they had been tagging and folding khaki skirts and leather belts with beaded fish worked into them.

  “Good,” Joe said. “Then all we have to do is fill the tank with water and set up the fish.”

  “I draw the line at fish,” Steve said, wiping his forehead with the back of his arm. “I’ll come back in a little while and see how you’re doing.”

  He checked on the hanging of the Mylar kites in the common area, and then stopped in at the restaurant where Dusty was working as a consultant. Dusty was in the back at the service door, unloading cases of liquor with a couple of other guys. “Here’s another pair of hands,” Dusty said. “Steve, pitch in.”

  Steve helped them unload the truck until the cases of liquor were stacked in the storage room. “Hey, stick around,” Dusty said. “Later tonight, we’re gonna have to test the beer spigots.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Steve said, on his way back out to the mall. He stopped to rattle the cages where a band of spider monkeys was going to be on display. He did not want any more animals loose in the mall, not after his experience with Evelyn of the Everglades.

  He passed John working around the main fountain, replacing a few of the decorative 1” by 1” tiles that had somehow gotten broken. “How’s it going?” Steve asked.

  “I need more tiles,” John said. Steve radioed to Bill Benzakry, found out where the extra tiles were, and gave John directions. He felt confident and sure.

  Miranda passed by carrying a large cardboard box, and Steve gave her a hand. “I’m dead on my feet,” she said. “And I still have four more stores to do. These window dressers we hired are terrific, but there’s still more to do.”

  “Yo, Stevie!”

  Steve turned around. Richie was standing in the doorway of Under the Covers. “You gotta come down here,” Richie yelled. “We got big problems!”

  Steve dropped the box in front of the store where Miranda was headed and jogged back down the mall to Under the Covers. Richie was sitting just inside the door surrounded by pieces of metal shelving. “They don’t send instructions with this shit,” Richie said. “They expect you to be some kind of brain surgeon.” He shook his head. “I get this whole store built and then this one set of shelves knocks me down.”

  “I think that big piece goes into that other piece over there,” Steve said.

  “Gimme a hand, will you, Stevie?”

  Steve sighed and sat down. “Hand me a screwdriver.” Sheryl was unpacking boxes, and Mimi was pricing sheets and stacking them in a wooden armoire that looked like a reject from Victoria’s Secret. Wilma was clipping bras to a silver rack and Jerry was shooting plastic tags into slips with a little gun.

  It took nearly an hour before the shelving began to come together. As it did, Dolores came in and said, “I’m so glad I found you, Steve. You have to come to the salon. I have a terrible problem.”

  “I’ll be back later,” he said to Richie. Dolores led him down the hall at a run. “What’s the matter?” he called to her.

  “You’ll see.”

  When they got to the salon, Steve saw Mrs. Blatnick, who smiled and waved. She was pricing shampoo bottles and stacking them on an aluminum shelf. Dolores led him into the storage room at the rear. “This,” she said, pointing at a large box.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s the manicure station. I left it here until now, figuring I could just wheel it into place. But it won’t fit through the door!”

  Dolores’ face was a portrait in desolation. “All right, let’s take a look at it.” He pulled a cardboard flap away and saw what Dolores meant. It was just too big.

  “The quickest thing to do is take the door off and cut the drywall,” he said.

  “How can we do that on such short notice?” Dolores wailed.

  “Fortunately I have a cousin who’s a carpenter. You go get Richie while I start taking the door off.”

  “What if he won’t come with me?”

  “Use your charm.” Steve smiled. “And if that doesn’t work, remind him that his grandmother put the money up for this salon and he better be careful she doesn’t disinherit him.”

  Richie was there in a few minutes. Steve had taken the door off the hinges, and was prying off the molding with the claw of a hammer. “Where’s Dolores?” Steve asked.

  “She’s putting the rest of those shelves together.” Richie took the hammer from Steve. “Give me that. Stand back and watch a professional.”

  The molding came off. Richie found the seam between two pieces of drywall, and ran a knife through the sealing tape. He and Steve pulled the drywall off on both sides of the wall, bent back the metal studs, and pulled the manicure unit through. While Richie was retaping the drywall, Steve sat back and said, “I wonder why I haven’t heard anything on the radio lately.” He pressed a couple of buttons on the top of the radio. The battery was dead. “Shit,” he said. “I have to go back to the office. I’ll come back later.”

  He waved to the owner of the Chinese restaurant but had to defer problems there u
ntil he could get a new radio battery. At the office, Celeste gave him three messages and complained that he had been out of contact. She looked tired but totally in control. She knew where every member of the team was working and when they’d last had a break.

  As soon as he got back into the mall, he ran into his mother. In addition to her work for Under the Covers, she had picked up her old clients again, and was on hand to provide some last-minute decorating advice. His father had come along to help out.

  “I’m so glad I found you,” Rita said. “Come into the handbag store with me for a minute. I want you to tell me if you like this fixture better in the front or the back of the store. I’ve asked your father but he’s no help.”

  Harold was stepping on boxes and flattening them out when Steve and Rita walked in. “Rita, the boy is busy,” he said. “He doesn’t care whether the table goes in the front or the back.”

  “It’s all right, Dad.” Steve looked at the table, which was actually a series of stepped shelves in Plexiglas, where Rita had positioned it just behind the display window. It didn’t look right.

  Rita directed him and he moved it to the back of the store. But it didn’t look right there, either. “How about if you move those two cases to the back and put it on the side?” he asked. He moved everything around.

  “I like it,” Rita said. “But I don’t like those two in the back. Move one of them over to the corner.”

  Steve moved it, and Rita was happy. “This is so much better, all of us working together, isn’t it, than that job you had in New York?”

  Steve nodded. “It is.” He hesitated. It was finally time to tell them the truth. “Listen, I have something to tell you. I didn’t quit that job. I was let go just before I came down here, and I couldn’t tell you.”

  “We knew,” Rita said. “I called you there the day before you came down here, and the secretary said you didn’t work there any more. But we didn’t want to say anything.”

  “That wasn’t the right place for you,” Harold said. “You’ve made us proud of you here. You’ve showed how much you can do. They never would have let you out of a little box at that other job.”

  Steve stared at them. “You knew all along?”

  “Parents know things,” Rita said. “You’d better get back to work. You have a lot more to do before tomorrow morning.”

  Steve walked out, in a daze. The first person he saw was Dolores. “I’ve gotta tell you something,” he said. He pulled her into the service corridor and told her about losing his job in New York, keeping the secret from his parents, and then finding out they had known all along.

  “That should make you feel good. They knew the truth about you and still loved you. That’s when you know love is for real, when you know the truth.”

  “All right,” Steve said. “I need to ask you something. When I came to see you once I saw this guy coming out of your building. A dark-haired Latin guy. Who was he?”

  Dolores shrugged. “I don’t know. There were fifteen apartments in that building.”

  “You mean he wasn’t seeing you?”

  Dolores gave him a funny look. “No.”

  “And how about this business with the Blatnicks. Are you just trying to run a scam on them to get even for losing Morty?”

  Dolores laughed. “Look at me,” she said. There were bags under her eyes, and locks of her hair had fallen out of her ponytail and hung over her forehead. Her blouse was wrinkled and her jeans had smears of dirt on them. “If I were trying to cheat somebody, don’t you think I could come up with an easier way?”

  She took his hands. “I’m just trying to get ahead any way I know how,” she said. “I’ve got a lot of hopes and dreams and I’m willing to work hard to make them come true. I think you’re the same kind of person.”

  “With one difference,” Steve said. All his questions had been answered; all his fears were gone. He took Dolores in his arms. “You are my dream come true.” Just as they kissed, his radio crackled to life. “Here we go again.”

  Steve put his finger on the transmit button, but before he could speak, Dolores said, “I have to get back to the salon anyway. I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” Steve called as she walked out.

  He suddenly realized he had been transmitting. He pulled his finger off the button, and the next thing he heard was Junior saying, “Steve, I didn’t know you cared.”

  After he finished with Junior, he was assailed by another tenant who needed his help in setting up an electronic cash register. It went on like that for hours. By eleven thirty, he was bone tired. He was walking down an unlit back service corridor when he tripped on a hand truck and fell.

  His knee hurt. His right hand hurt, too, and he thought he was getting a headache. He sat back against the concrete block wall and started to cry.

  It was just too much. He had only so much of himself to give. Only so much time, only so much talent, so much energy, so much enthusiasm. The Everglades Galleria had drained away everything he had. He sat there sniffling for a few minutes, not bothering to wipe the tears away from his cheeks.

  It was dead quiet in the hallway. Then, somewhere in the distance, Steve thought he heard a calypso band. “I must be hallucinating,” he said.

  He swallowed hard, shook his head to clear it, even pinched himself. But the noise did not go away. He stood up, wiped his face, and decided to investigate.

  A couple of sound engineers were testing the acoustics at a wooden stage set up at center court for performances the next day. A black guy with dreadlocks was standing over a steel drum, and there were two horn players and a guitarist with him. They were jamming an infectious island beat. Steve started tapping his toe.

  “I like that,” Dolores said, coming up behind him. “It makes me want to dance.”

  Tenants and workers were spilling out of all the stores, coming up to the stage. A few people started to dance. It was nearly midnight and there was still a lot of work to be done, but it was time for a break.

  Morty and his aunt and uncle came up and joined the Blatnicks. ”Let’s dance,” Dolores said to Steve. Morty and Sheryl followed them out.

  A few minutes later, Richie and Dusty picked up an unused two-by-four and held it out. “Limbo time,” Dusty called out. “How low can you go?”

  The band picked up on it, and started to play a limbo song. The crowd gathered around Richie and Dusty and started to applaud. The mall manager appeared, wearing jeans, a t-shirt that read “Everglades Galleria” and earrings made of tiny tropical fruits. She sang the words to the limbo song in her gentle island accent, and Steve was transported for a moment, far away from the chaotic mall.

  “Come on,” Dolores said. “I’ll show you how to limbo.” She took his hand and together they danced out to the bar and slipped beneath it easily. A long line of people followed them. They stayed in line, clapping and bouncing in time to the music.

  “Now it’s your turn to go it alone,” Dolores said, letting go of Steve’s hand. He stood in line, watching her go back to join his parents and the Blatnicks on the sidelines, cheering. Even old Mrs. Blatnick was smiling and tapping her foot.

  The limbo stick was lowered, and Steve had to arch his back to get under it, but he made it. A number of people were eliminated. The mall manager kept on singing.

  He’d gotten his second wind by the time he was up again. He went way back and then twisted at the last minute.

  While he waited the next time, he saw how the crowd had grown. Almost everyone in the mall had to be there at center court, watching the limbo contest. Celeste, Uncle Max, Junior, Miranda, Brad and Maxine were all standing near the fountain, cheering and waving.

  The limbo stick seemed impossibly low, no more than two feet above the ground. Steve was sure he would fail, but he tried. He went way back, he twisted and wriggled, and suddenly he was through.

  Only one other man made it. The limbo stick went even lower. The other man went first, and fell on his back. Then it was Steve’s
turn.

  He thought limbo. He thought about his family in the crowd, even the Blatnicks. Even Sheldon Blatnick, languishing somewhere in prison while everyone else was having a good time.

  He thought about the Galleria staff, who had become a kind of family to him too, and he thought about the Galleria itself, the big sprawling parking lots and the fountains and staircases and all the stores and the people who had designed them, built them, leased and merchandised them. He felt strong and happy.

  He looked at the limbo stick. Everyone cheered. He went down, and back, and thought about his family, the mall, his family, the mall. Then he heard the applause, and he knew he’d made it.