Full Spectrum 3 - [Anthology]

by Ed By Lou Aronica et. el.

  Bernie rushed into the office, a five-dollar bill in his hand and Stan in tow. The smell of gasoline and body odor overpowered the cigar fumes, and Ronald felt the office closing in on him. Resotech had been a lot more spacious.

  “Ronnie, how many air filters have I put in during the last six weeks?” Bernie asked, grinning. He turned to Stan and said, “Now listen close, wise ass.”

  Ronald shook his head. Stan was the third sucker Bernie had taken on this bet. “Twenty-seven,” Ronald said without checking the back sales invoices.

  Bernie stepped out a peculiar victory dance he saved for this particular bet and stuffed the five dollars in the breast pocket of his greasy blue coveralls. The two of them, Stan and Bernie, were a mismatched pair, Stan as bulky and awkward as Bernie was handsome and smooth.

  Stan looked incredulous. “Hey, you guys set me up.”

  Luke stepped back and rested an elbow on the file cabinet as Ronald pushed his chair from the desk to sit facing the two. He folded his hands on his lap and feigned patience while Bernie went through part two of the wager.

  “Fine,” Bernie said, putting his hands in his coverall pockets, a devil-may-care stance. “Double or nothing he can do it with any part you’ve used.”

  “Okay, you twerp bastard.” Stan grinned with confidence as he pulled another five from his wallet. “Double or nothing.” Bernie reached for the bill, but Stan balled it in his fist and glared. “How many PCV valves have I used?” he asked Ronald.

  “Since when?”

  “Uh… six weeks.”

  “What type of PCV valve?”

  Luke laughed; Stan was frowning. “All right, pal, just 892-C’s.”

  Ronald sat back. Stan, six weeks, ninety-one invoices, 2.8 liter V6 autos only; piece of cake. “Fifteen.”

  Stan looked blank. He unballed his fists and started counting on his fingers. Bernie snatched the second five, laughing. “You’re a fucking computer, Ronnie,” he said, slapping Ronald on the back. “Break down and join us at McCollough’s Pub and the first beer’s on me.”

  Ronald nodded. “Yeah. Maybe.”

  “All promises, but you never show,” Bernie said, shrugging. He grabbed Stan by the shoulders and pushed him out the door.

  “Those boys won’t ever learn not to bet against Bernie,” Luke said. “Never seen the guy lose, but they’ll bet anyways. Never learn.” He sat on Ronald’s desk and put his cap back on. “So, tell me how my little Jessica’s going.”

  Ronald looked down at his inventory control charts and traced an index finger along an upper control limit. “Great. Great.”

  Luke rubbed a hand over the bristles on his chin. “Must be a happy little girl,” he said, his voice edged with something like suspicion and understanding improbably combined. “Every time I ask you that, I get two ‘greats’ in a row.”

  Ronald felt the muscles tense in his lower back. “Well, she’s still teaching. She likes it.”

  Variables. He’d exhausted the obvious. It wasn’t a standard correlation. Employee theft and hot cocoa. School boards and crawling records. Time away from home. And…

  “Yeah,” Ronald said, retracing the inventory control lines. “She likes it.”

  * * * *

  He bolted upright in bed. “My God!” he said aloud, almost shouting.

  Jessica stirred next to him but didn’t wake. He could barely make out her form in the darkness; he could hear her breathing and smell the wine.

  He crawled from bed as quietly as he could and made his way downstairs. The numbers had been rearranging themselves in his head, balancing, contrasting, screaming for his attention until he awoke.

  Once he turned on the living room lights, he arranged the minutes table for Jessica’s time away from home next to the inventory control parts for Luke’s garage.

  Scattergram: an x/y axis chart that would show the correlation inherent in two recurring events, even if that correlation were improbable. Absurdly Hidden.

  Fan belts showed no correlation.

  Nor air filters.

  Nor oil sales.

  Spark plugs did, a correlation coefficient of .92, close to perfect. Then a T-test to be sure. As spark plug sales rose, Jessica’s time away from home lengthened; as they fell, so did her time away.

  Spark plugs. And.

  * * * *

  Bernie leaned casually against the office doorway, flipping the last spark plug in the garage off his thumb, up in the air, and catching it. Replace the spark plug with a 50-cent piece, Ronald thought, and he’d look like an old-time con man.

  Uncle Luke, on the other hand, was livid.

  “What the hell do you mean you sent all the spark plugs back?”

  Ronald shrugged and tried to ignore the feeling of a fist in his stomach. “I had to send them, Luke. The whole shipment was defective.”

  Luke began pacing tight circles on the concrete floor, scratching furiously at his left armpit. “Well, Christ, Ronnie, how the hell do you know they were all defective? You didn’t test any of them. You wouldn’t even know how to put one in!”

  Casual. Control. “They had some kind of, uh, goop. It was all over them and they smelled like acid or burnt rust or something. Any idiot could see they were useless.”

  Luke had stopped pacing and was shifting helplessly from one foot to the other. “Aw, Christ, Ronnie. If we had extras in inventory there’d be no problem.”

  Bernie broke in. “Boss, if you want me to go down and buy a load from Mobil—”

  Ronald gripped the arms of his chair.

  “Jesus,” Luke said. “Buy the goddamned things retail at triple markup? All right, all right, but just one case. Christ, Ronnie, I hope like hell you put a rush order on the new shipment.”

  Ronald resumed breathing—he’d just realized he’d stopped. A single case would get Jessica home at 3:43. “Of course I ordered more, Luke. Should be here in two days.”

  Luke winced, but seemed to be holding his temper. He turned around to Bernie. “Get Harris to rearrange the schedule. Move up everything he can that he knows needs sparks. Aw, Christ, customers are gonna be pissed.” He shuffled out of the office, muttering.

  Bernie flashed an overly composed smile from the doorway. “Stan!” he called over his shoulder, and Ronald swiveled his chair to face the door.

  Stan lumbered over from the garage floor. “Yeah? What ya need?”

  “Look,” Bernie said, putting a hand on Stan’s shoulder, “how about a little sales bet? Ten bucks says that in the next three days combined we sell less fan belts than just yesterday.” With his other hand he continued to flip the spark plug.

  Stan looked astonished at first, but then frowned. “You’re suckering me again. What, did Ronnie tell you something about fan belts? I’m not stupid, Bernie.”

  Bernie exuded nonchalance, kept flipping the plug. “Hey, if you don’t want to play—”

  Stan grabbed the spark plug at Bernie’s next flip. “Okay, pal, I’ll play your game. But my rules this time. Not fan belts. Spark plugs.”

  Bernie did a flawless imitation of someone turning pale. “But, Stan—”

  “No buts! Take the bet or I tell everybody you’re a swindler.” Bernie nodded weakly, and Stan left laughing.

  Bernie leaned in the office and gave Ronald a wink. “Break down and join us at McCollough’s, Ronnie. First drink’s on me.”

  Ronald smiled. “No promises at all, Bernie. Tonight’s a definite home night for me.”

  The number of butterflies in Beijing increased 3.24 percent. In Albany, eighty-seven telephone poles toppled.

  * * * *

  “How was school?” He met her at the door. It was quarter to four in the afternoon.

  She looked at him as she set a stack of papers on the kitchen table. “It was fine,” she said, her voice wary.

  “Anything fun happen?” He felt the confidence and spoke easily.

  Jessica leaned with one hand on the kitchen table, the other hand in the pocket of her blue cardigan. �
�A few things, yes.”

  He walked from the sink and stood beside her, drying the dishwater from his hands with a towel. “So tell me some of them. I haven’t heard a funny school story out of you in two months.”

  She took off her sweater and sat down slowly, never taking her eyes off him. “All right,” she said, “I’ll tell you one.”

  “Great,” he said. “Do you want a cup of coffee?”

  She didn’t go out that evening.

  After dinner she excused herself to the bedroom, and he heard the phone being dialed and her whispers. He smiled. The living room stereo was tuned to an easy-listening station. He turned the lights low and waited for her to come downstairs.

  The next day there was still only Bernie’s case of spark plugs at Luke’s garage. He made dinner for her that night, a London broil, one of three dishes he knew how to prepare. They laughed when the cooking meat set off the smoke alarm. She stayed home.

  “You really don’t mind I’m a blue-collar worker?” he asked.

  She unbuttoned his shirt and removed it from his shoulders. The collar, of course, came off with it.

  The evening after, they went out for ice cream after supper and walked through Setterman’s Park until sunset.

  On the third day, the next shipment of spark plugs arrived.

  * * * *

  He dashed from behind the dumpster to the brick retaining wall and fell, face forward, from the weight of the case of spark plugs. For a second all he could see were elusive, peripheral stars and the capital C of the Champion logo.

  Last one, he thought. His breath came in barely audible squeaks. Last one.

  He made the run to his car, popped the trunk, and heaved the case in. Twelve boxes, total.

  “If you need spark plugs,” Luke’s voice said from behind him, “I’ll just give you a goddamn set.”

  The little breathing squeaks all pulled together into a strained squawk of surprise, and every bit of energy and tension drained from Ronald’s limbs. He felt like a puddle.

  Luke strolled out from the far side of the retaining wall. He was there, Ronald thought. He was right there watching.

  “They were bad!” Ronald yelled, and he realized he sounded just as guilty as he was. “They were just like the last shipment. I was going to drive them back myself and get some good ones because I knew how upset you were the last time”—while he was saying this, Luke had opened one of the boxes and removed a ring case of six perfectly healthy spark plugs—”and even though some of them look good they’re all defective and won’t make any sparks, so what good are they as spark plugs?”

  Luke stared at him.

  Ronald realized what he needed more than anything else in the world at this moment was some of Bernie’s fast talk and charm.

  “I’ll buy them!” He pulled his wallet from his back pocket and began digging out credit cards. “See? MasterCard, Luke, and it has a $2000 limit with just $58.69 on it. I wasn’t stealing them. We can ring up the sale right now. You can call the number and check. It only has $58.69 on it.”

  Luke pulled a case from the car trunk. “Don’t wanna even talk about it,” he said, then walked back toward the garage.

  Ronald sank down against the car, crouched on his heels with his back against the bumper. He buried his face in the sleeve of the arm set across his knees. With the other arm he still held out the MasterCard.

  * * * *

  When he arrived home at 6:26, Ronald wasn’t at all surprised not to find Jessica waiting, not to find any note saying where she had gone. He poured himself a scotch and water and sat on the living room sofa, his feet up on the coffee table.

  Due to overtime work at NASA, the consumption of wrapped sandwiches rose 14 percent. Three junks sank off Taiwan.

  After a second scotch and water, Ronald said, aloud, “It’s not my fault. How the hell am I supposed to keep a service station from selling spark plugs?”

  After a third glass, he shouted, “It is my fault! It’s all my fault! I shouldn’t have lost the position with Resotech. I couldn’t have lost it!”

  He went for a fourth drink, but the scotch bottle was nearly empty. He poured what little was left and held the glass up to the cove light over the kitchen sink. “That’s about one-eighth,” he said. “Yeah, definitely one-eighth.” He finished it with a swallow and grabbed his car keys.

  Bernie’d won seventeen bets with Ronald’s help. Little twerp owed him seventeen beers. Eight ounces a glass, one hundred and thirty-six ounces. One point eight repeating six-packs. One point zero six two five gallons of beer.

  He started the car. Two point four miles to McCollough’s Pub.

  He parked on the street outside the bar; the parking lot was filled from the Friday-night crowds. The bouncer stared at him when he walked in, so Ronald tried to stand straight and walk evenly. He had to elbow his way through the crowd. My God, he thought, there must be a hundred and eighteen people in here. Rock music blared over the sound system, and Ronald had to pause and close his eyes every few steps through the crowd. His head throbbed. He looked around, trying to spot Bernie, and finally ran into Stan at the bar. The mechanic was staring into his beer mug, apparently fascinated by watching the bubbles in the beer head popping their way down to the liquid.

  “Hey, Stan,” he said, poking the man’s shoulder. “Where’s Bernie? He owes me some beers.”

  Stan glanced over, looking a bit dazed from the break in concentration. “Oh, hi, Ronnie.” Then he turned his entire body toward Ronald. “Ronnie? Ronnie!” Stan threw his arms around Ronald in a bear hug, and Ronald felt his breath pressed out of his lungs. Stan was laughing wildly.

  “I win! I finally won! That little twerp bastard finally loses one. Ronnie, it’s nice as hell to see you!”

  Ronald struggled for a breath and tried to keep his balance, a combination he realized the scotch was making difficult. “It’s, uh, nice to see you too, Stan.”

  Stan put a hand to his head and kept laughing, although he suddenly seemed embarrassed. “I’m sorry, Ronnie. It’s just Bernie bet me thirty bucks that he could invite you to McCollough’s twenty times in a row and you’d never show. He’s only asked you seventeen times, and here you fucking are.”

  Stan hugged him again, and Ronald felt nauseous from the thick air, the noise, and the press of the crowd. “C’mon,” Stan said, “they got a table near the back. I’m gonna show you off and win my prize. I can’t wait to see the twerp’s face.”

  Bernie’s face, Ronald saw, did not let Stan down. When he and Stan reached the back table, Stan tapped Bernie on the shoulder, and when Bernie turned he dropped his beer mug halfway through the motion of sipping from it. But his face was nothing like Jessica’s, whose hand Bernie was holding across the table. Her eyes went wide and empty.

  Ronald wasn’t sure what his own face was showing, but it must have been something impressive. Stan took him by the arm and said, “Hey, what the hell’s wrong with you, Ronnie?”

  “My wife.”

  Stan looked at Jessica, then at Bernie, his face slowly changing. “Oh, shit,” he said. “Bernie, you’re fucking scum. Oh, shit, Ronnie.”

  Bernie was suddenly very busy. To Ronald, he sputtered, “No lie, she’s your wife? I just met her tonight. Just met her.” To Stan he said, “Hey, I owe you money, don’t I? We can go to the bar and have them cash a fifty.” He finally seemed to realize he was still holding Jessica’s hand, and pulled back as if he had touched a hot plate. Quieter, but not so quiet that Ronald couldn’t hear him, he said, “Jessica, there’s no way he could have shown up here. There’s no way.”

  Stan lifted Bernie from the chair by his shirt collar. His blue shirt collar. “I’m sorry Ronnie, I didn’t know. The twerp hit on her weeks ago when she wandered in alone. He’s been meeting her here ever since. I didn’t know she was your wife.” He dragged Bernie off in the direction of the bar.

  Too much at once, Ronald thought. Too many variables. Then he felt the anger swelling in him, and he wasn’t
sure where it should go or who deserved it most.

  Jessica had lowered her head. “I needed to see him one last time, Ronald.” She was stirring her mixed drink with a swizzle stick, slow circles, the ice clanking against the glass. “I don’t know why I came. I guess I was breaking it off.”