"We've tried that from time to time in the past," says Stacey.
"Yes, but the key this time is we make sure the bottlenecks are processing parts for those late orders according to the same priority," I say.
"That's the sane approach to the problem, Al," says Bob,
"Now how do we make it happen?"
"We have to find out which inventory en route to the bottle-
necks is needed for late orders and which is simply going to end
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up in a warehouse. So here's what we need to do," I say. "Ralph, I want you to make us a list of all the overdue orders. Have them
ranked in priority ranging from the most days overdue to the
least days overdue. How soon can you have that for us?"
"Well, that in itself won't take very long," he says. "The problem is we've got the monthlies to run."
I shake my head. "Nothing is more important to us right
now than making the bottlenecks more productive. We need that
list as soon as possible, because once you've got it, I want you to
work with Stacey and her people in inventory control—find out
what parts still have to be processed by either of the bottlenecks
to complete those orders."
I turn to Stacey.
"After you know which parts are missing, get together with
Bob and schedule the bottlenecks to start working on the parts
for the latest order first, the next latest, and so on."
"What about the parts that don't go through either one of
the bottlenecks?" asks Bob.
"I'm not going to worry about those at the moment," I tell
him. "Let's work on the assumption that anything not needing to
go through a bottleneck is either waiting in front of assembly
already, or will be by the time the bottleneck parts arrive."
Bob nods.
"Everybody got it?" I ask. "Nothing else takes priority over this. We don't have time to take a step back and do some kind of
headquarters number where everyone takes six months to think
about it. We know what we have to do. Let's get it done."
That evening, I'm driving along the Interstate. Around sun-
set, I'm looking around at the rooftops of suburban houses to
either side of the highway. A sign goes by which says I'm two
miles from the exit to Forest Grove. Julie's parents live in Forest
Grove. I take that exit.
Neither the Barnetts nor Julie know I'm coming. I told my
mother not to tell the kids. I simply hopped in the car after work
and headed down here. I've had enough of this hide-and-seek
game she's playing.
From a four-lane highway, I turn onto a smooth blacktop
street which winds through a quiet neighborhood. It's a nice
neighborhood. The homes are unquestionably expensive and the
lawns without exception are immaculate. The streets are lined
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with trees just getting the new leaves of spring. They are brilliant
green in the golden setting sun.
I see the house halfway down the street. It's the two-story
brick colonial painted white. It has shutters. The shutters are
made of aluminum and have no hinges; they are non-functional
but traditional. This is where Julie grew up.
I park the Mazda by the curb in front of the house. I look up
the driveway, and sure enough, there is Julie's Accord in front of
the garage.
Before I have reached the front door, it opens. Ada Barnett
is standing behind the screen. I see her hand reach down and
click the screen door lock as I approach.
"Hello," I say.
"I told you she doesn't want to talk to you," says Ada.
"Will you just ask her please?" I ask. "She is my wife."
"If you want to talk to Julie, you can do it through her law-
yer," says Ada.
She starts to close the door.
I say, "Ada, I am not leaving until I talk to your daughter."
"If you don't leave, I will call the police to have you removed
from our property," says Ada Barnett.
"Then I will wait in my car," I say. "You don't own the
street."
The door closes. I walk across the lawn and over the side-
walk, and get in the Mazda. I sit there and stare at the house.
Every so often, I notice the curtains move behind the window
glass of the Barnett house. After about forty five minutes, the sun
has set and I'm seriously wondering how long I can sit here when
the front door opens again.
Julie walks out. She's wearing jeans and sneakers and a
sweater. The jeans and sneakers make her look young. She re-
minds me of a teenager meeting a boyfriend her parents disap-
prove of. She comes across the lawn and I get out of the car.
When she's about ten feet away she stops, as if she's worried
about getting too close, where I might grab her, pull her into the
car, and drive like the wind to my tent in the desert or something.
We look each other over. I slide my hands into my pockets.
For openers, I say, "So . . . how have you been?"
"If you want to know the truth," she says, "I've been rotten.
How have you been?"
"Worried about you."
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She glances away. I slap the roof of the Mazda.
"Let's go for a ride," I say.
"No, I can't," she says.
"How about a walk then?" I ask.
"Alex, just tell me what you want, okay?" she says.
"I want to know why you're doing this!"
"Because I don't know if I want to be married to you any-
more," she says. "Isn't that obvious?"
"Okay, can't we talk about it?"
She says nothing.
"Come on," I say. "Let's take that walk—just once around
the block. Unless you want to give the neighbors lots to talk
about."
Julie looks around at the houses and realizes we're a specta-
cle. Awkwardly, she steps toward me. I hold out my hand. She
doesn't take it, but we turn together and begin a stroll down the
sidewalk. I wave to the Barnett house and note the flurry of a
curtain. Julie and I walk a hundred feet or so in the twilight
before we say anything. At last I break the silence.
"Look, I'm sorry about what happened that weekend," I tell
her. "But what else could I do? Davey expected me—"
"It wasn't because you went on the hike with Davey," she
says. "That was just the last straw. All of a sudden, I just couldn't stand it anymore. I had to get away."
"Julie, why didn't you at least let me know where you were?"
"Listen," she says. "I went away from you so I could be
alone."
Hesitantly, I ask, "So ... do you want a divorce?"
"I don't know yet," she says.
"Well, when will you know?"
"Al, this has been a very mixed up time for me," she says. "I don't know what to do. I can't decide anything. My mother tells
me one thing. My father tells me something else. My friends tell
me something else. Eve
ryone except me knows what I should
do."
"You went off to be by yourself to make a decision that's
joing to affect both of us as well as our kids. And you're listening
:o everyone except the three other people whose lives are going
;o be screwed up if you don't come back," I say.
"This is something I need to figure out on my own, away
Tom the pressures of you three."
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"All I'm suggesting is that we talk about what's bothering
you."
She sighs in exasperation and says, "Al, we've been over it a
million times already!"
"Okay, look, just tell me this: are you having an affair?"
Julie stops. We have reached the corner.
She says coldly, "I think I've gone far enough with you."
I stand there for a moment as she turns and heads back
toward her parents' house. I catch up with her.
I say, "Well? Are you or aren't you?"
"Of course I'm not having an affair!" she yells. "Do you think I'd be staying with my parents if I were having an affair?"
A man who is walking his dog turns and stares at us. Julie
and I stride past him in stiff silence.
I whisper to Julie, "I just had to know . . . that's all."
"If you think I'd leave my children just to go have a fling
with some stranger, you have no understanding of who I am,''
she says.
I feel as if she'd slapped my face.
"Julie, I'm sorry," I tell her. "That kind of thing sometimes happens, and I just needed to make sure of what's going on."
She slows her walk. I put my hand on her shoulder. She
brushes it off.
"Al, I've been unhappy for a long time," she says. "And I'll tell you something: I feel guilty about it. I feel as though I don't
have a right to be unhappy. I just know I am."
With irritation, I see we're back in front of her parents'
house. The walk was too short. Ada is standing in plain view at
the window. Julie and I stop. I lean against the rear fender of the
Mazda.
"Why don't you pack your things and come home with me,"
I suggest, but she's shaking her head before I've even finished
the sentence.
"No, I'm not ready to do that," she says.
"Okay, look," I say. "The choice is this: You stay away and we get a divorce. Or we get back together and struggle to make the
marriage work. The longer you stay away, the more we're going
to drift apart from each other and toward a divorce. And if we get
a divorce, you know what's going to happen. We've seen it hap-
pen over and over to our friends. Do you really want that? Come
on, come home. I promise we can make it better."
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She shakes her head. "I can't, Al. I've heard too many prom-
ises before."
I say, "Then you want a divorce?"
Julie says, "I told you, I don't know!"
"Okay," I say finally. "I can't make up your mind for you.
Maybe it is your decision. All I can say is I want you back. I'm
sure that's what the kids want too. Give me a call when you know what you want."
"That was exactly what I planned to do, Al."
I get into the Mazda and start the engine. Rolling down the
window, I look up at her as she stands on the sidewalk next to the
car.
"You know, I do happen to love you," I tell her.
This finally melts her. She comes to the car and leans down.
Reaching through the window, I take her hand for a moment.
She kisses me. Then without a word she stands up and walks
away; halfway across the lawn, she breaks into a run. I watch her
until she's disappeared through the door. Then I shake my head,
put the car into gear, and drive away.
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21
I'm home by ten o'clock that night . Depressed, but home .
Rummaging through the refrigerator, I attempt to find dinner,
but have to settle for cold spaghetti and some leftover peas. Wash-
ing it down with some leftover vodka, I dine in dejection.
I'm wondering while I'm eating what I'm going to do if Julie
doesn't come back. If I don't have a wife, do I start to date
women again? Where would I meet them? I have a sudden vision
of myself standing in the bar of the Bearington Holiday Inn,
attempting to be sexy while asking strange females, "What's your
sign?"
Is that my fate? My God. And anyway, do lines like that even
work these days? Did they ever?
I must know somebody to go out with.
For a while, I sit there thinking of all the available women I
know. Who would go out with me? Whom would I want to go out
with? It doesn't take long to exhaust the list. Then one woman
comes to mind. Getting up from my chair, I go to the phone and
spend about five minutes staring at it.
Should I?
Nervously, I dial the number. I hang up before it rings. I
stare at the phone some more. Oh, what the hell! All she can do is
say no, right? I dial the number again. It rings about ten times
before anyone answers.
"Hello." It's her father.
"May I speak to Julie please."
Pause. "Just a minute."
The moments pass.
"Hello?" says Julie.
"Hi, it's me."
"Al?"
I say, "Yeah, listen, I know it's late, but I just want to ask you
something."
"If it has to do with getting a divorce or coming home—"
"No, no, no," I tell her. "I was just wondering if while you're making up your mind, there would be any harm in us seeing
each other once in a while."
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She says, "Well ... I guess not."
"Good. What are you doing Saturday night?" I ask.
There is a moment of silence as the smile forms on her face.
Amused, she asks, "Are you asking me for a date?"
"Yes, I am."
Long pause.
I say, "So would you like to go out with me?"
"Yes, I'd like that a lot," she says finally.
"Great. How about I see you at 7:30?"
"I'll be ready," she says.
The next morning in the conference room, we've got the two
supervisors of the bottlenecks with us. By "us," I mean Stacey,
Bob, Ralph and me. Ted Spencer is the supervisor responsible for
the heat-treat furnaces. He's an older guy with hair that looks like
steel wool and a body like a steel file. We've got him and Mario
DeMonte, supervisor of the machining center with the NCX-10.
Mario is as old as Ted, but plumper.
Stacey and Ralph both have red eyes. Before we sat down,
they told me about the work that went into this morning's meet-
ing.
Getting the list of overdue orders was easy. The computer
listed them and sorted them according to lateness. Nothing to it,
didn
't even take a minute. But then they had to go over the bills of
material for each of the orders and find out which parts are done
by the bottlenecks. And they had to establish whether there was
inventory to make those parts. That took most of the night.
We all have our own photocopies of a hand-written list Ralph
has had prepared. Listed in the print-out is a grand total of sixty
seven records, our total backlog of overdue orders. They have
been sorted from most-days-past-due to least-days. The worst
one, at the top of the list, is an order that is fifty eight days
beyond the delivery date promised by marketing. The best are
one day late; there are three of those orders.
"We did some checking," says Ralph. "And about ninety per-
cent of the current overdues have parts that flow through one or
both of the bottleneck operations. Of those, about eighty five per-
cent are held up at assembly because we're waiting for those parts
to arrive before we can build and ship."
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"So it's obvious those parts get first priority," I explain to the two supervisors.
Then Ralph says, "We went ahead and made a list for both
heat-treat and the NCX-10 as to which parts they each have to
process and in what order—again, the same sequence of latest
order to least late. In a day or two we can generate the list by
computer and stop burning the midnight oil."
"Fantastic, Ralph. I think both you and Stacey have done a
super job," I tell him. Then I turn to Ted and Mario. "Now, all
you gentlemen have to do is have your foremen start at the top of
the list and work their way down."
"That sounds easy enough," says Ted. "I think we can han-
dle that."
"You know, we may have to go track some of these down,"
says Mario.
"So you'll have to do some digging through the inventory,"
says Stacey. "What's the problem?"
Mario frowns and says, "No problem. You just want us to do
what's on this list, right?"
"Yep, it's that simple," I say. "I don't want to see either of you working on something not on that list. If the expediters give
you any problem, tell them to come see me. And be sure you stick
to the sequence we've given you."
Ted and Mario both nod.
I turn to Stacey and say, "You do understand how important
it is for the expediters not to interfere with this priority list, don't
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