D b, p.4
D. B., page 4
To make ends meet he took a side job hauling trash and dragging dead water heaters out of dank basements for twenty extra scoots a week. Later he tried the door-to-door bit, Fuller Brush, Electrolux vacuums, but never got past the training—all that snappy flesh-pressing etiquette was lost on him. It wasn't that he hadn't given the real workaday world a spin. There had been plenty of false starts, jobs with “promise” and “opportunity for advancement.” But then he'd fuck the dog—forget to show and that would be it and he'd return to the trailer and watch Geena get ready for her night shift at the diner and he'd tell her how he'd been unfairly fired or let go due to lack of work.
“What I need,” he'd say, “what I need is a good lawyer to sue their ass. Like Sam Cisco.” He knew Sam from the bar and they'd spent many drunken hours scheming.
“Sam Cisco's not a real lawyer, hon. He got his degree from the back of a magazine. He runs around calling himself Esquire. Us girls call him Assquire. And that hair . . .”
“What's wrong with his hair?”
“Toupee city—rug-o-rama.”
“I'd watch it,” Fitch said. “You don't want him drawing up slander papers with that silver pen of his.”
She held out her hand and made it quiver. “Sam Cisco can't even make change. And what kind of man leaves his business card instead of a tip?”
Fitch squinted at her, trying to discern whether or not she was telling the truth. It was just like her to put him off a good idea. He suspected that part of her enjoyed seeing him squirm under her ruthless logic—it had teeth and often sent him out into the night puzzling where he'd gone wrong as she took a small event, say a ketchup stain on the carpet or forgetting to shut the screen door and letting a few mosquitoes in, and whipped it up into high crimes and misdemeanors. Her mother, a razor-thin widow who worked at a beauty parlor, was ten times worse and had no problem listing Fitch's many faults in her nicotined rasp of a voice. She also left news clippings for him. The articles were usually hard-luck stories or cautionary tales of fallen men who'd resorted to crime, repented, and now worked happily as mail carriers or bus drivers, aware that things could have been better, that they'd defeated themselves, dug too deep a hole, or else just didn't catch enough breaks and would get old and die, gumming about their squandered opportunities. Some of the men had found Jesus or the love of a good woman, for which they seemed to be a little too thankful.
“Well, Sam got Fred a fair settlement,” Fitch reminded Geena. “Four figures, medical, and apology from the company.”
“Didn't Fred stick his hand in a band saw?” He looked across the counter at her. “On purpose,” she snapped. “What kind of fool sticks his hand in a band saw on purpose?”
“I'm not sayin' what Fred did was right, all I'm sayin' is that Sam Cisco made the company pay. He's the defender of little people, shield for the workingman.”
“I know, Phil,” Geena said impatiently. “I've got an apron full of his cards.”
“Well, in my case it's just plain and simple discrimination is what it is. Picking on the little guy. Trickle-down meanness. Less fortune for the less fortunate.”
Of course, he didn't tell her how it was entirely his fault—how his heart wasn't in it or how they'd caught him sleeping on a pallet in the back room or slipping tools into his lunch pail or sticking hairpins into the punch clock to steal time.
“Give me a break, Phil,” she said, squinching her hard brown eyes at him. “Eladio, the guy Nick pays a dollar twenty-five an hour to scrape dirty dishes is a little guy.”
“Eladio is an illegal and . . .”
“And . . .”
“Come on, baby, I'm tryin' real hard here to do us some good.”
“Good?”
“That's what I'm all about.” He cut her with that smile of his, a crooked little thing he'd practiced in the mirror, as he reached out and tried to rub her shoulders, but she pushed him away and lit another Kool.
“Put the charm away, Phil,” she said. “I gotta go to work. And fix your fly, you're open for business.”
“Whoa,” he said, looking down and zipping up. “Almost let the livestock out. See, I'm all warmed up.”
She leaned over and sniffed his hair. “It wouldn't hurt you to shower once in a while.” She took a drag and passed him the rest of the Kool. “Now move out of my way. I'm ovulating.”
“So?”
“So we used the last of the condoms, plus I'm not in the mood.”
“Come on, Geena, I've got disabled sperm, you don't have nothin' to worry about.”
“Very funny. Now move.”
“Where you going?”
“Work—you know what work is, don't you?”
It was one of those questions with no right answers. It instantly melted the smile off his face and snatched his mind away from the dirty little scenarios pinballing around his brain as she quickly gathered up her apron. After slipping on her shoes she gave him a peck on the cheek and was gone.
Geena worked at Nick's America #1 diner, owned by a large Greek named Nick who everybody called Cyclops because he'd lost an eye in a grease fire and wore a black felt eye patch to cover the curdled orb. As if to compensate for his accent and unpronounceable last name, Cyclops had become an overzealous American-history nut, his bible Hendrik van Loon's The Story of America, a rambling, highly opinionated view of American history written with real drama and sweep. The diner's menu featured an American flag on the cover and had specials named after chapters in the van Loon book. There was the Uncle Tom and Puffing Billy (chili and cornbread), the President Santa Ana and the Vacuum (cheddar cheese omelet with hot peppers), and for dessert the New Zion at Twenty Below (hot sundae with a submerged brownie). Every plate came with small paper flags attached to toothpicks and a placemat on which Cyclops had mimeographed a page from van Loon, usually something about the French and Indian Wars or Ben Franklin and his bathtub.
When things were bad between them, Geena would come back from the diner smelling of fryer grease and dried ketchup and demand that Fitch massage her feet, slapping his hand away when he tried to creep it between her legs to the magic kingdom. But when things were good between them, all he had to do was stare at her box for a couple of hours—keep the heat lamps on her, basically put her on notice that his sap was rising and that he was full of love and compliments and wanted some reward. If she went into the kitchen to make some ice tea and linger over the dishes, Fitch followed her, giving her his best Brando stare, mumbling, “You look good, Geena. In fact, you look pretty close to fine. How about we have ourselves some love practice?” He watched her dress and undress, fold laundry, file her nails, all the while keeping that thousand-watt stare on her until she gave in and led him to the small, hot bedroom and let him go to work on her while she watched My Three Sons on the black and white, going on about her late father's uncanny resemblance to William Demarest. Later, after he'd laced into her several different ways and he was lying there picking at his moles and smoking, she'd start in on him about the rickety TV trays and how they needed some furniture that didn't come from scratch and dent sales, some new drapes, a hi-fi system, and one of those refrigerators with an icemaker to replace the leaky and rattling Frigidaire they'd bought secondhand. It had become increasingly clear to her that if Fitch wasn't going to do anything about it, she'd just have to work more double shifts at the diner or start moonlighting as a cocktail waitress.
So Geena started pulling doubles at the diner and Fitch responded by landing a job sweeping floors at the Georgia-Pacific warehouse. He knew he was losing her because she no longer demanded foot rubs or laughed when he did his Dean Martin impression. Instead she arrived home too exhausted to even yell at him for leaving apple cores out on the windowsill or for hanging his dirty socks over the shower stall.
He started looking for shortcuts.
Sam Cisco counseled him to do a slip-and-fall number on Georgia-Pacific. “Nothing too dramatic,” Sam said, handing Fitch another of his cards. “Remember the word lumbar—it's a very painful region. Tell them you can't feel your toes and then go see this man.” Sam passed him a slip of paper with a number on it. “That's Doc Spungin's number—a good man who I guarantee will arrive at a favorable diagnosis. And if it goes to trial he'll heave the Merck Manual at them and woo the jury with his mastery of medical lingo and Latin.”
Fitch hesitated and Sam sent him on his way with a hearty slap and a wink. “Trust me, they'll pay through their corporate noses if they want to protect their reputation.”
He quickly scrapped the slip-and-fall scheme when on Friday he found a job-safety pamphlet stapled to his punch card. The pamphlet depicted two men cheerfully lifting wooden crates with their legs, spotting each other on ladders, and painlessly enduring assaults on their toes—Hi-Lo tires and dropped lumber—all because they were wearing their steel-toed safety boots. On the back someone had written “FYI” in black grease crayon. They were on to his plan to bleed the company dry with fraudulent lawsuits. So Fitch held on to the job and learned to shut his brain off and drive the dust mop across the cement floor, chasing dust bunnies and mouse turds into neat little piles. And after his probationary month was up he began to experience tiny and unexpected bouts of job pride. He talked pension with the old-timers and discussed making the jump to shipping and receiving, where it was possible to get promoted, or “bumped up” as the guys called it.
But then Geena left in August, calling him pathetic, sick, and twisted as she slammed the trailer door in his face and went to blubber and stew in her mother's knickknack-laden den. He tried calling her but got an earful from her mom, who seemed to Fitch to be a little too pleased with the situation. She informed him blithely that her daughter planned to D-I-V-O-R-C-E him ASAP. He hung up on her, figuring Geena would cool off and return to extract a list of promises from him. All he'd have to do is toe the line for a couple of months and convince her that he was a changed man. But after a few days it became clear to Fitch that she wasn't going to call, that she'd pretty much given up on their future and the more he thought about it the more he figured it was for the best.
A week later, her brother Gary, a barrel-chested linoleum installer, arrived in his pickup truck and began loading up her clothes. When Fitch offered to help, Gary pushed him into a busted recliner. “Take a load off and watch some television,” he said, smirking. “Maybe I Dream of Jeannie's on.”
For a minute he thought about taking a swing at Gary. Instead he went out back and shot Blatz bottles with an air pistol.
ON AN UNUSUALLY muggy September evening Sam Cisco dropped by to serve Fitch with divorce papers. He signed them while Sam advised him in complicated legalese that not only would he do well to avoid the diner but he should give up any hope of a reconciliation.
“It's over, Fitch,” Sam said. “Get on with your life. Living well is the best revenge.”
Fitch told him he'd keep that in mind as he studied the papers. In return for assuming several thousand dollars in joint debt, he got to keep the lime-green Dodge Dart, two aluminum kitchen chairs, the vinyl sofa, two braided rugs, all dry goods and condiments, the clock radio, the wandering Jew and scraggly ficus, a mismatched set of plates and saucers they'd picked up at a garage sale, the eight-track tape player, the television, and a pair of oven mitts shaped like trout. Fitch had fond memories of chasing Geena around the trailer with the mitts on, telling her the fish were biting as he grabbed her ass.
Geena's departure became the talk of the trailer park. The old women he met at the mailboxes avoided his gaze; jailbait rode by snapping their gum at Fitch, making sure he got an eyeful of their training bras when they came by asking him to buy beer for them. A gangly long-haul trucker who lived two trailers over offered Fitch the advice “If it flies, floats, or fucks, it's cheaper to rent, budro.” Several of the local widows and unmarrieds took turns dropping by the trailer bearing crumb cakes and pitchers of friendship tea with orange slices floating in it. They were mostly chubby women with bad complexions, severely tweezed eyebrows, and frazzled hair from too many home dye jobs who thought Fitch somewhat desirable because he kept to himself, had straight teeth, and possessed the dirty charm of all skinny men.
One night Pam Tarantino brought him a pan of scalloped potatoes topped with crushed Fritos and burnt Velveeta and tried to give him a back rub with some Wesson she'd scented with rose petals and Jean Naté afterbath oil. He ate the totally good potatoes but took a rain check on the back rub when he saw that Pam was wearing a pair of French cuts and had an open sore on her calf that looked like a tiny red mouth. She started crying and Fitch felt obliged to comfort her with an awkward hug but she turned on him, suddenly angry. “Can't you see I'm trying to be a better person?” she said. “I've lost weight, waxed my bikini line. I've even swore off bikers and drywallers.”
“How do I fit into that equation?”
She socked him in the arm and stormed out of the trailer calling him a faggot loud enough for his ever-curious neighbors to hear.
The next day at work he got called into the office by the shift supervisor, a pale, schlubby guy whom everybody called Tits behind his back.
“Have a seat,” Tits said.
Fitch sat and Tits proceeded to hem and haw about mandatory cutbacks due to the piss-poor price of lumber and about Fitch's lack of seniority on the job totem pole as he slid a pink slip across the cluttered gray desk, licked his lips, and asked him to sign it. “Just a little release signature is all we need to prevent any unpleasant and frivolous legal thumb wrestling.”
The flickerings of job pride Fitch had felt just hours ago gave way to a sudden blast of soon-to-be-jobless fury as he stared at the pink slip and Tits, who was perched in his swivel chair examining his uncallused hands and tapping his loafers against the desk. Deep down Fitch knew he hadn't exactly given body and soul to the company but he'd put in his eights, worked weekends when asked, and taken orders from knuckle draggers who fervently toed the company line. He'd taken the job to get Geena off his back. But she was gone and here he was getting his job nuts handed to him by a man who hid in his office all day listening to the radio and reading Popular Science.
Fitch briefly entertained the idea of trashing the office but changed his mind when he saw a piece of rebar easily within the man's reach. Not wanting to catch some steel to the skull, he signed the pink slip and checked the box indicating that he was accepting a voluntary dismissal, or more accurately, Fitch thought, the unlubed I'm-just-doing-my-job-middle-management dildo.
“Here you go,” Tits said, sliding Fitch's paycheck across the desk. “Feel free to use me as a reference.” He tucked the signed pink slip into a manila folder stuffed with them. Apparently the bottom of the totem pole was a crowded place.
“That's it?”
“Unless you have any questions.”
Fitch shook his head.
“Okay then,” Tits said, pointing at the door. “Thanks for taking the time. Good luck. It's a jungle out there.”
“Sure thing, Tits,” he said, watching as the man's face turned red and he quickly folded his arms across his chest.
“Get out,” he snapped.
He didn't bother to shut the door behind him because a squat-shouldered guy who worked as a loader stood waiting outside the office, smoking his last cigarette and gnashing his jaw in anticipation of his dismissal.
“I can't catch a break,” said the man.
“Me either,” Fitch said.
On the way out to his car Fitch snapped his broom in half and pummeled the time clock with a chunk of two-by-four. Outside he found Tits's Impala, let the air out of the tires, and bent the antenna.
A week later Fitch hit the road in his lime-green Dodge Dart. He'd paid two hundred dollars for the car and found that a two-hundred-dollar Dodge Dart didn't get you very far or for that matter score many points with the plentiful hippie chicks who he'd heard were crazy for free love with strangers. The only thing that looked good behind the wheel of a Dodge Dart, he decided, was an old blue-haired lady on her way to church or some social gathering. Fitch recalled his departed mother and tried to imagine her behind the wheel of the Dart, riding the brake pad, muttering about the recklessness of teen drivers and bakery deliverymen.
His recollection was ruined when the Dart thumped over a swollen jackrabbit carcass, and as he surveyed the dramatic plume of old blood and rotten gore sprayed across the road like an exclamation point, the excitement he'd felt was replaced with a gnawing sense of dread. But a mile later the open-road joy returned and he looked out through the Dart's bug-spattered windshield, admiring the deep pool-liner blue of sky that stretched forever into the distant mountains. He rolled down the windows and let the wind suck through his hair. Getting out of town was exactly what he needed. It was the closest he'd felt to being free in a long time, even though he was out of work and at the moment had no plans of ever working again. And women? Fuck them. He would stick and move. From now on he was gonna be open-road Fitch, duke of the two-lane blacktop, the stars for a roof, a woman in every state or something like that. But after he'd filled up the tank twice and mashed his knuckles replacing a fan belt, his drifter dreams began to crumble. It took money or rich parents to drift around and get into small adventures and at the rate he was going he would be broke in a week.
That night he found a small roadside bar, a green and white aluminum-sided double-wide that had been added on to so many times it now resembled an overgrown children's fort. The parking lot was full of motorcycles and dusty pickup trucks. He planned to get drunk and plot his next move.
The place was an alcoholic gulag heavy with the aroma of vomit and spoiled beer, suitably smoky and dim. Half a dozen bikers were milling around, drinking and palming dope and swag under the tabletops as a posse of loggers looked on, running ruined fingers through sawdust-filled beards and waiting for the inevitable fight. Through it all, a thin waitress circled the room with a rag in her hand, taking silent drink orders and shoving the occasional meat hook away from her ass.
