The Story of Charlie Mullins

by Jim Wygand

  Shaw had government contracts, a number of which were with the Defense Department. Certain employees, Charlie included, had to have security clearances and that meant FBI investigations. The clearances were updated annually, although sometimes they went beyond a year before renewal. If it were known in the meantime that he was engaged to Gina, he most certainly would not get his clearance renewed. Without a security clearance, he would have a lot less responsibility. The fact that a clearance was not renewed would also raise the eyebrows of senior management. His career might grind to a halt and he would most certainly be fired. He did not like the idea of being drummed out of the company. Fred Perkins would most certainly volunteer to dismiss Charlie and would try to do it with as much humiliation to Charlie as possible.

  His life in Shoreville would change too. He tried to imagine how the local gossip mill would handle the news that he was engaged to a “mafia princess”. If he lost his job at Shaw there would be no more softball league to play in. He could still play with his buddies, but it would be different. There’d be no more bowling league. He’d still have his friends but he was not sure how anxious they would be to associate with him because of his new “connections”. They had their own careers to worry about and Charlie might wind up being a poison pill for his own friends.

  Gina was right. He was going to have to think this through. His life would change not just in terms of a new routine because of a wife. He would be taking on a whole new life.

  But he was determined that he would not lose Gina. He would make any sacrifice necessary to have her in his life. End of story.

  He pulled into the Shaw parking lot. The security guard gave him a mock salute and he said “Good morning, Mr. Mullins.” Charlie wondered if that same security guard would escort him out of the office, scrape the parking sticker off his window, and tell him he should not return if it turned out that he would be fired. He’d seen it happen to others in the company. One day the guy would be wielding his power, saluted by the security guard on his way into the parking lot, served hot coffee when he arrived as his personal assistant put his schedule on his desk. That same afternoon he would be escorted to the parking lot, carrying his own cardboard box of private “stuff” – pictures of his wife and kids, maybe a few personal files that had been closely inspected by the security guard – the same guard who saluted him in the morning – his corporate credit card would be chopped up and the pieces still on his desk. A bunch of papers – non-compete contracts, waivers of any right to seek legal redress, a promise to not recruit any company employees, and so on would have been shoved in front of his face for signature. He would watch forlornly as the security guard scraped his parking sticker off the windshield of his car. He would then be watched as he drove out the gate. In his rear view mirror he would see the security guard telling the gatekeeper that the man was not to be allowed back on the company premises unless otherwise advised by the personnel department. The fact that the guy had 5, 10, 20 or thirty years of service with the company would mean nothing. As far as the company was concerned, the guy was dead. The only thing that was missing was somebody yelling “Dead man walking!” as the poor guy carried his cardboard box down the hall to the elevator.

  Some of the guys Charlie had seen let go had been fired by Fred Perkins. Fred was particularly sadistic. He considered anyone who was being fired as someone who had been disloyal to the company and, therefore, deserved to be dismissed with as much cruelty as possible. The humiliation should be as public as possible in Perkins’ mind. Charlie would not give Fred Perkins that satisfaction.

  He walked to his building and took the elevator to the 9th floor where his office was located. He walked past Laura Metzer who was dutifully organizing her desk in expectation of Fred Perkins’ complaints. He felt bad that Laura might not have a friendly ear if he left. She was a nice person and Perkins certainly did not deserve such a longsuffering, dedicated personal assistant.

  He saw his office perhaps now for the first time. It wasn’t his. It belonged to the Shaw Corporation. His job was little more than a box on the company’s organization chart. He had never lived his job like a lot of the other executives at Shaw, but he was always honest and forthright in fulfilling his responsibilities. He realized that this could all be simply taken away because of the girl he wanted to marry. He chuckled to himself at the irony and phoniness of it. He would be suspect not because he had changed. He was the same Charlie Mullins but he would be judged because he fell in love with the “wrong” woman.

  Gina was right, people would come to fear him, not because of his position in the company and his authority but because his wife was the daughter of the head of the Philly mob. The company would fear that he could or would bring in organized crime. The government would take away his security clearance for fear that he would pass secrets on to the mafia, even though he had never before told anyone about Shaw’s government contracts. And it would all be because Gina had been born to the “wrong” parents and had the wrong uncle.

  Charlie entered his office, sat down to his desk and immersed himself in his work. The operating departments had sent in the drafts of their quarterly budget revisions and he had to go over them in detail before they came back as finals and Perkins would tear them apart over the slightest error in logic or even grammar.

  Charlie Mullins was a hard worker but his staff had never seen him as absorbed in his work as he was on this Monday. Charlie barely looked up from his papers throughout the entire day. He went out to lunch and came back in almost virtual silence.

  Billy Johnson, one of the junior financial analysts in the company commented to one of his co-workers, “Boy, Charlie is really deep in his work today! You think we are about to get hit with a wave of work?”

  “No more than usual, Billy, Charlie is not that kind of boss. He’s just probably got something on his mind. We’re coming up on the first round of budget review drafts so he’s probably concentrating. He’s a good professional and he doesn’t miss much because he pays attention. It’s probably no more than that.”

  But it was much more. Charlie was questioning his life for the first time. He had been born, raised, educated, and married in Shoreville. He went to work for the same company his father had worked for. It was not because he had no options, he just never questioned his life. He was comfortable in it. Don’t mess with a winning team was his philosophy. When Mary Jo left him he was grateful for his friends, at least the male ones, for being around and keeping him occupied with softball and bowling, pizza and beer, and the occasional happy hour at Jimmy Balsamo’s. Mary Jo was the one who left Shoreville; why should he? His career at Shaw was moving along satisfactorily and he was making good money. So, it just never occurred to him to question the way he lived. Now, however, with Gina in his life he had to seriously ask himself if what he had was what he really wanted.

  Gina’s life was a busy one. She had an enormous array of exhibitions, events, tutoring and a collection of interesting and talented friends to occupy her. Charlie had to admit that he rather enjoyed going out when it was with Gina and her friends. He assumed (correctly) that Gina’s friends knew who her uncle was and they accepted her in spite of it. He liked them for their loyalty to her as well as their down-to-earth way. They were good people, interested in bringing beauty to life. His close friends in Shoreville were like that in some ways, but they were not sophisticated. They were just good, hard-working and hard-playing people. But he knew that his life with them was largely confined to playing ball and bowling because they all went home to wives and families. They didn’t know of his loneliness at the end of each day. They didn’t know that his routines lacked meaning because there was no one there to share them. They liked him but they didn’t really know him.

  He admitted to himself that it was partly his own doing that his friends didn’t know him better. He was not one to share emotions and he kept his life private. It wasn’t his friends’ fault. He did shut them out of at least one important compartment of
his self.

  When the Shaw clock on his desk showed 5 pm, Charlie put his papers in his desk, stretched, and said good night to his colleagues, “See you tomorrow folks, quitting time.” He walked down the hall as he had done for years, took the elevator down to the lobby and walked to the parking lot. He saw other Shaw executives heading for their cars as well and he had to laugh inwardly at what his father had told him years ago. He thought of his father in his old Studebaker with no air conditioning driving out of the parking lot with the windows rolled up so no one could hear as he said “assholes” while waving goodnight. Today, Charlie Mullins’ life seemed to him extraordinarily ordinary.

  He drove back over the bridge. When he got home he called Gina. She was still at home and getting ready to go out with some friends. “Gina? Hey! Just thought I would try to catch you at home. Would it be all right if I drove up tomorrow night after work with some clothes? I’m taking you at your word.”

  “You don’t even have to ask, Mr. Mullins. I’ll be here. Shall I keep my hat on, as the song goes?”

  “Oh, Jesus, Gina, don’t do that to me! I might never recover in time to get back to work on Wednesday.” Charlie laughed, albeit a bit uneasily. The image of Gina waiting for him in nothing but a hat rushed through his mind and he was excited.

  “Well, I’ll be here. I’ll leave it to your imagination to figure out how I might be dressed – or undressed. Just get your Irish butt up here, OK?”

  “Right!”

  “Charlie,” Gina said, “have you been thinking about what I told you yesterday? Are you sure about all this?”

  “Never more sure about anything in my life, Gina. I’ll talk to you about it tomorrow. I want to look into your beautiful and mysterious eyes while we talk. But, yeah, I’ve given it a lot of thought today and I’ll be going over it again and again tomorrow, and for the rest of the week. I’m sure though that I love you and nothin’s gonna turn me around!”

  “That’s one day down and six to go, Mullins. Keep up the good work. Just remember, Charlie, no matter what you decide, I will love you always. You’ve made me happier than anyone ever has and if it all ended tomorrow, I would not have regretted a moment I spent with you.”

  “I hope you will say that ten years from now, Gina. Now, I’m going to fix some dinner and pick out some suits, ties, socks, and so on, to take up to Philly.”

  “Don’t bother picking any undershorts, Charlie. We can get some more navy blue silk boxer shorts up here,” Gina laughed.

  “OK, no undershorts. Got it! Gina, I love you and I’ll see you tomorrow. Good night, baby.”

  “Good night Charlie. Sleep well and dream about me.”

  Charlie rang off and went about his chores. He was floating. He was no longer alone. He wondered to himself if it would always be this way. So many of his friends seemed to have fallen into ruts in their marriages and their lives. But he remembered Tony Mazza telling him, “Charlie, I’ve been around a good bit and I was a real womanizer before I met Marie. You know something? There is no sex better than making love to a woman you truly love. It’s different and you never get tired of it. You want her pleasure and she wants yours. Nothing like it!”

  Charlie thought to himself, “Well, if it’s good enough for Tony, I guess it’s good enough for me. It sure seemed he was right when I made love to Gina last weekend. Maybe there won’t be any ruts!”

  Charlie separated a couple of suits, half-a-dozen ties, a blue blazer, 7 pairs of socks, and about 6 dress shirts – two blue and four white. When he looked at his underwear drawer he laughed out loud. He looked at his closet and was, for the first time, surprised to see that he had a lot of business attire and an equally large selection of athletic clothing – sweat pants, cross training athletic shoes, sweat socks, and cut off shirts. He had little sportswear in the form of casual shirts and pants. He had only a couple of casual shirts for those formally casual Fridays and two pairs of khaki pants to wear with a black or blue blazer. “Well,” he thought, “I now have some stuff at Gina’s place. But I guess I should improve my casual wardrobe now that I have a woman in my life. I can’t take her out wearing my sweat pants, and a suit at the trattoria would be a bit much!”

  He put his clothes into a travel bag and laid the bag carefully in the trunk of his car. He didn’t want anybody seeing a bag hanging from a hook in the back. Although Charlie traveled often on business he was now doubly careful to have anyone know that he had packed a bag. Someone like Sharon Gallagher or Diane Simms might just be especially curious about where he was going. Tomorrow would look just like he was leaving for the office like he did every other day.

  Again, Charlie checked the street before getting into his car to drive to his office. Again, there was no sign of anyone ready to follow him. As before he drove to the entrance to the bridge to Wilmington and checked as he drove for anybody following him. The coast continued clear and Charlie thought that Bill Gallagher and Bob Simms must have really told their wives a thing or two. He would find out tomorrow night at the bowling alley.

  He pulled in to the Shaw Corporation parking lot and returned the salute of the security guard. He could no longer look at the guard without thinking that he, too, might be one of those whose parking sticker was scraped off his windshield by the otherwise affable man. “Man’s inhumanity to man”, Charlie mused, remembering the phrase from a literature course he had taken in college. It was amazing how otherwise decent human beings could so easily turn into incredibly cruel people in defense of what is not theirs. He saw it in the Army but at least there you were being trained to kill in warfare. He figured however, that the principle was the same. Love of country and love of company probably arose from the same psychological roots somewhere in the recesses of the human mind. People needed to belong and maybe they would do anything asked of them to assert their belonging. He wondered if that was what kept Gina’s uncle in power too.

  His thoughts switched to what he was going to say to Gina’s uncle. He pulled himself up short and thought, “Whoa, Mullins. Remember that this guy puts his pants on one leg at a time. Don’t forget that. Regardless of what he does for his living, he is Gina’s uncle. It was luck of the draw, an accident of birth. Gina didn’t go off looking for an uncle and pick him. I’m going to talk to him as Gina’s uncle – not as Carlo Rizzo alleged mafia don.” He was surprised that he thought “alleged”. Was he rationalizing? Why didn’t he just think “mafia don” instead of “alleged mafia don”? “Maybe I don’t want to believe that he is really the head of the mob in Philly.”

  * * * * *

  Charlie entered his building and took the elevator to the 9th floor. Fred Perkins was in the same elevator and Charlie could not help but notice that the passengers gave Fred wide berth. It was as if they did not even want to get close to him for fear he might bite them or scream at them for crowding, whatever. “Morning, Fred.” He said to the fearsome Treasurer. Since everyone else had said “Good morning, Mr. Perkins,” they all waited with bated breath to see how Perkins would react. “Morning, Mullins”, Perkins grunted. They rode to the 9th floor in silence. When Charlie and Perkins got off on their floor, the elevator literally buzzed with comment, “Did you see the look on Perkins’ face when Mullins used his first name? I thought I would burst out laughing.”

  “Good thing you didn’t. He wouldn’t have done anything to Mullins, but I bet he would have discovered your name and department and had you whacked!” The passengers laughed uneasily and each got off at his respective destination.

  As they walked to their offices, Perkins asked Charlie, “Mullins, you’ve been quiet these days, are you working on those budget reviews?”

  “Yeah, Fred, they’ll be ready before the weekend and that will give the departments another week to make their adjustments and come back with their revised figures. Do you want to see the reports before I send them back?”

  “No need!” Perkins growled, “I can wait for the final figures.”

  Charlie knew that Fred Perki
ns would not give any advance signs of his concerns. He would wait for the final revisions and set his traps for each department head so he could catch them by surprise. He liked to “sucker punch” people. He had no room for dialog. He would catch one minor error of logic or arithmetic, or even a grammatical error, and then mercilessly drill into his interlocutor who would have to sheepishly return to his office to re-do his work.

  Charlie wondered what would be Perkins’ reaction if he just walked into his office one day and said, “I quit.” For sure, Perkins would probably be speechless for the first time in his life. Charlie said good morning to Laura Metzer as he passed her desk and entered his own office.

  Again, he worked with incredible concentration until lunch time. He went out to lunch, stayed out the requisite hour and walked around downtown Wilmington before going back into his building. Four hours later he was on his way to the parking lot to drive to Philly.

  * * * * *

  When he reached Gina’s apartment he rang the doorbell. Gina opened the door and asked, “Have you lost your key already, Charlie?”

  “Oh, God, I completely forgot I had the key!” Charlie said, “Sorry Gina.”

  “Oh Charlie, don’t apologize. Just remember that this is now your place as much as it is mine. Don’t be so formal.”

  “Sorry, Gina, it’s just lack of practice.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out his key ring, “See? I have my key. Just silly of me, I guess.” He stepped into the apartment and moved to kiss her. She melted into him and for a moment he forgot that his suit bag was still in his car. “Oh, jeez. I left my bag in the car, Gina. You get me so confused…”