“Why not?”
“Well, because Jenna’s coming back for the next game, and because I stink.”
“You don’t stink,” Claude said.
“Sure I do. But it’s ok. I don’t have to be a superstar to have fun. I like being on the team.”
“You know your coach’s uncle is a union brother of mine at Rhode Island Electric. I could have him put in a good word for you, maybe convince your coach you should be playing more, you know, maybe let her know that if she can find a few starts for you there might be something we could do for her in return.”
Jamie laughed. “What, like store huge items in the stockroom? Daddy, if I want to play more, all I have to do is practice and I’ll be good. But I don’t feel like doing softball drills twenty-four hours a day. I have a life. Besides, Allison got her father to speak to the coach about playing more, and we all think she’s a bitch because of it.”
“Jamie,” Joan said, “watch your language.”
“It’s true,” Jamie said. “Lyndi’s dad’s the chief of police, and she’s a benchwarmer just like me. We don’t care.”
They arrived at the bus and Jamie climbed on.
“See you tonight,” Joan called.
“See you tomorrow,” Claude said.
As Jamie disappeared toward the back of the bus, Claude put a hand on his wife’s shoulder.
“I’m going to the Dub,” he said. “Don’t wait up.”
Chapter 3
To get to the Dublinner Inn, patrons had to park in the vacant lot next to Pablo’s XXX Video, cross the street, walk past the recently-defunct Li Phan’s Lucky Star Restaurant and the long-defunct El Salvador Laundromat, and take a left down three cement stairs to the bar’s front door. Above the stairs hung a sign, hand-painted four decades earlier by the original owner, repainted with spray cans two summers ago by members of the Diablos Por La Justicia gang. Together, the two paint jobs spelled Dublinner GrInnGo Go Fucking Home and featured a smiling leprechaun dressed in a green and gold suit with black horns and a large black penis.
The Dub had two televisions, one at each end of the bar, and a dart board. The local joke: darts sticking randomly from the walls, ceiling, bar, even the floor—everywhere except the dart board.
Aside from alcohol, the Dub sold peanuts and potato chips. Popcorn was free, and patrons were allowed to bring in pizza or hot wieners from the joint two doors down. Tall customers ducked to enter through the front door. The Dub had no windows, seven tables with seven seats at each table, and seven stools at the bar.
On the wall near the entrance, a white board proclaimed in magic marker “If you’re not here to drink, get out,” a motto conceived and written by Frank Dombrowski. In the lower right corner of the board, the bartenders kept a tally of women served since September 1, 1991: ninety-six. At one point, someone altered the corner to read “women, blacks, hispanics, and asians served,” leaving the tally at ninety-six, but Dub owners Ted and Maury, aware that a few of the regulars from the union at Rhode Island Electric were Black, Hispanic, or Asian, erased it quickly and made personal apologies to anyone who might have been offended. Though Ted and Maury acknowledged they knew who wrote the phrase, they never publicly confirmed his identity, and everyone from Rhode Island Electric assumed it was either one of the elderly Irish men who played noontime games of cards at the Dub or one of the handful of middle-aged Irish men who refused to leave each night until the bartender put away his broom, put on his coat, and held his finger over the light switch.
When Claude entered the Dub, he ordered a pitcher of beer and sat down next to Frank. The conversation among the six people at the table stopped.
“Oh boy Bugsy, you’d better watch yourself on Monday,” Frank said. “The boss is gonna be waiting for you at the door about this Foster thing.”
“Who ratted on me?” Claude said.
“Nobody fucking ratted on you,” Frank said calmly. “Junior and Jeff had to explain why Foster ain’t done yet.”
Claude looked around the table for confirmation.
“Feeney came back with Schulke after you left,” Scotty said. “They went through the work orders, and compared what was on the shelves with what should have been on the shelves. There were two fewer one-oughts, and two more 477s.”
“But that’s bullshit,” Claude said. “Anybody could have taken those off by mistake. Schulke doesn’t have any proof I did it.”
Frank shook his head. “Three hours ago you were kissing Jeff’s ass about this, and now you’re talking tough? Jeff’s in danger of missing a goal; that’s money out of his pocket. You need to be ready for the boss come Monday, Bugsy, that’s all I’m saying. Tell any story you want, but don’t finger Jeff and Junior for your screwup.”
“Hey Bugsy,” Scotty said with both hands on his beer mug, “what are you sweating about? You’ve still got a performance warning to give, don’t you? Take the written warning and keep your nose clean until it clears.”
Rhode Island Electric had a three-three-three disciplinary program. Three levels: oral warning, written warning, decision-making leave. Three probation periods: six months, twelve months, eighteen months. Three categories: attendance, conduct, performance. Keep screwing up and keep moving toward termination. Keep clean and go back to square one.
Dan Thompson turned to Claude. “Bugsy, you’ve already got warnings, and you mouth off to Schulke like you do? What do you have, rocks for balls?”
“More like rocks for brains,” Scotty said.
Except for Claude, everybody laughed.
“Whether I’ve got a warning to give is not the point,” Claude said. “They’ve been looking to get me for a long time. If the sheet says seven spools of 477, I go to where the 477s are and get seven spools. We’re busy. If somebody keeps putting shit on the wrong shelf, orders are going to get loused up. Why should I get written up because things are on the wrong shelf? For all I know, Schulke knew the one-oughts were there and didn’t say a word, trying to catch me. He’s the damn supervisor. He’s supposed to know where everything is. Why do I have to eat my last performance warning for someone else’s screwup? The whole thing is bullshit.”
No answer came from around the table as six mugs rose to six mouths.
Dan attempted to ease the tension. “Hey Frank, tell us the Bugsy story again.”
It worked. They all laughed around the table, save Claude, and Frank told Dan to get his junior lineman ass over to the bar and bring back two more pitchers and he’d tell him the story, which most everyone had heard many times, and always looked forward to hearing, and which Frank loved to tell when he had the right audience and a lot of beer.
#
At first, Claude was known as “Jackie’s kid.” It wasn’t a nickname, just a description. Everyone at the company knew Jackie Amognes, the union president, but few guessed this skinny 19-year old was any relation.
For one thing, Claude didn’t look much like his father. Jackie was a short man with a pot belly, white hair, and cheeks that sagged over the sides of his neck. For a man his size, he had large feet, feet which pointed at ten o’clock and two o’clock when he walked. Jackie also had unusual eyes: the black part always seemed big, and the blue part larger still, leaving a set of eyes with very little visible white.
Claude’s eyes were about the last thing people noticed about him. The first thing they noticed, back then, was usually a large, festering pimple on his face or neck. Those who continued looking next saw a weak chin, prominent upper teeth, indentations where cheeks belonged, and small, circle-shaped ears. Claude was short, too, though taller than his father and much thinner.
The big reason, however, that Rhode Island Electric employees had difficulty placing the two at the same dinner table was the stark difference in personality. Jackie’s brazen bombast seemed incongruent with Claude’s skittering apprehension. How could one beget the other?
Incongruent or not, it was true Jackie loved an argument. Arguments brought attention. Few things
satisfied Jackie more than forcing an opponent to submit in front of a rapt audience. Although Jackie sometimes used sound reasoning to induce submission, relentless yelling remained his tactic of choice.
During contract negotiations one time, management sat some fresh blood across the table, and, as Jackie saw it, the new collection of master’s degrees paid far too much attention to trends and directions and numbers and far too little attention to Jackie Amognes. So Jackie stood up and announced that these negotiations were going no further unless one of the plums coming the union’s way was a job for his son. Well, immediately the master’s degrees began buzzing about the wisdom of repealing the rule against hiring relatives. Jackie said hold it right there, you guys aren’t listening. He didn’t want the rule changed – hell, that’d mean every pecker in the company would be hounding him to get a job for a cousin, an uncle, a goddamn grandnephew, and he didn’t want that.
He wanted a job for his son. And although Claude did not at the time have gainful employment, it hardly mattered. Jackie got Claude the job to show the new shirts he could do it. He didn’t want to change the rule, but he wanted everyone to know it didn’t apply to him. Simple as that.
Soon thereafter the two sides shook hands, ratified a four-year union contract, and took in a basketball game from the company president’s luxury box. Not long after that, Jackie’s kid reported to his new job in the company’s meter reading department.
Right away, Claude took to the position. He liked his yellow company pickup truck. He liked walking around the nice neighborhoods rookies were usually assigned. He liked working alone. He also liked the idea that he had a fixed number of meters to read on each route, and that if he hustled a little each morning, he could spend much of the afternoon laying on the grass watching the women jog Blackstone Boulevard until it was time to return to company headquarters and pick up his next day’s assignment.
The pay was good, he lived at home, and the drinking age was still eighteen.
Three years later, the pay was a little better, Claude had his own apartment, and the drinking age didn’t matter. He had been dating Joan Knowlton for more than a year, and although she wasn’t fond of his dingy apartment, she regularly spent the weekends.
One afternoon, when Claude picked up his assignment for the next day, a route with which he was well familiar by now, he noticed he was scheduled to check the meter of DiCecco’s Pizza, a new place on Chalkstone Avenue. A note on the card said the previous occupant, a veterinarian, closed his practice eight months earlier but never called to shut off his electric service.
Because the veterinarian closed his office in October, by the time his electric bill was seriously past due Rhode Island Electric was already into the cold-weather period when state law forbade it from shutting off anyone for non-payment. Since the empty building used virtually no electricity all winter, the amount due was low, and the bill did not attract much attention in the collections department. On April 15, when shutoffs could resume, the company sent a termination of service notice to the building’s owner, who passed it on to Mr. DiCecco. Because he couldn’t risk having the electricity turned off so early in his new business venture, Mr. DiCecco paid the bill and saved his argument with the landlord for another day. To bolster that argument, Mr. DiCecco requested a read so he’d have all the numbers in order when he sat down with the owner. The request went on a route card and the route card went into Claude’s mail slot.
And so it was that on a beautiful, 85-degree day in early May, Claude Amognes called on DiCecco’s Pizza to do his job, to look at the face of an electric meter and write down the numbers indicated by the dials.
#
Dan Thompson returned to the table at the Dub and placed two pitchers of beer in the middle. Each man at the table filled his mug, and Frank began speaking about the colorful Jackie Amognes and how the company used to be back in the good old days. In fact, Frank had everyone in such stitches about Jackie that by the time he got around to DiCecco’s Pizza on Chalkstone Avenue, both pitchers were empty.
No problem; Scotty rectified the pitcher situation, and Frank proceeded.
“You shoulda seen him then,” Frank said of Claude. “He’s so skinny, his company uniform top fits him like a pup tent fits an Ethiopian. Supposed to be short sleeves, but they hang three inches off his arm. He’s got this collar, but no neck to fill it.
“So anyway, it’s a really hot day in May, and Claude has on shorts. He parks his company truck near the golf course, and figures he can do a whole side of Chalkstone Avenue before eleven o’clock, then cross the street, do some more reads, and go to DiCecco’s Pizza to read their meter and grab a sandwich. That way, he can read a couple more meters before the people in the offices go out for lunch. That’ll help him finish his route early so he can swing by the East Side and, you know, watch the boobies bounce on the boulevard.”
The others at the table hooted and whooped, and Claude couldn’t hold back a smile.
“Now it’s noon time,” Frank said. “Claude goes to the pizza place, and the boss’s daughter is behind the counter. Blonde chick. Tits out to here, tightest ass you ever saw. Eighteen years old and dumb as a rock. Would rather be doing anything but fronting her father’s pizza parlor.
“Well, must’ve been a while since Claude looked in a mirror, ‘cause he starts flirting with her. And she must’ve needed glasses pretty bad, ‘cause damned if she don’t nibble the bait. He’s got some beer at his pad; she’s got some friends and no plans for Friday night. She’s doing a lot of smiling; he’s harder between the hips than a diamond in deep freeze.
“But Claude’s no dummy. He knows the worst thing he can do is stick around and let her look at him for a long time. He sets the meeting time and gives her the address, then he wants to read the meter and head someplace to jerk off as quick as he can.”
The bartender interrupted. “Should I send for hot wieners?”
Definitely, the table agreed.
“I’ll go get them,” Claude said.
Some of the table members flinched in surprise.
“What, don’t you want to hear the rest of the story?” Nate said.
Claude didn’t. He was thankful for the opportunity to let Frank finish without him. He rose, collected everyone’s money, and left. But as he sat in the wiener joint, puffing on a cigarette, waiting for the order to be prepared, he couldn’t help recalling the events of that day. In the end, in his mind he put himself through the very story he sought to avoid.
#
The truth was, the exchange with the pizza girl left him feeling high. As she led him to the cellar stairs, he was already concocting a plan to keep Joan away come Friday.
At the top of the stairs, Claude opened the door and flipped the light switch, but no light came on.
“Veterinarian probably left the light on, and the bulb burned out,” he said to the girl.
“Could be,” she replied. “Since my father took this place over, I don’t think anyone’s even been down there.”
Claude took the flashlight from his belt and trotted down the stairs. At the bottom, he shined the light along the side wall until he spotted the meter.
He hopped over a small puddle and strode toward the meter, but at his third step something bit his neck. He slapped his neck and took another step. He felt another bite on his leg, and brushed his thigh with his hand. Then more bites on his neck, which he tried to swat with his flashlight hand. Then more on his legs. All of a sudden, Claude felt bites over his whole body: on his arms, his legs, his neck, his face, and began slapping himself frantically. He waved his flashlight into the dark, but saw nothing. At the last the flashlight caught part of his own arm, and Claude gasped at what he saw: his arm was black with fleas. He looked at his legs, and they too were covered. He let out a loud shriek and dashed up the stairs.
The pizza girl heard his yell and leaned into the doorway to look down the stairs. When she saw Claude she screamed, and scrambled back into the hallway.
At the top of the stairs, Claude stopped and looked at her, as if to ask what to do. Her body language startled him—he saw horror in every message she conveyed – and several of his body parts began shuddering the amplified vibrations of panic.
“Get out, get out, just get out!” she screamed.
As she lurched to close the cellar door, Claude ran into the main part of the pizza place and out the front entrance. The fleas were still biting him. In his reflection in the storefront window he saw he was covered with bugs, and he shrieked again when he realized he was being bitten in places like the inside of his ear and the inside of his boxer shorts.
He sprinted a few yards to an insurance agency and pounded on the window. Nobody home. He turned to run toward the next business, but after a few steps could no longer bear the bites and dropped to the ground to try to roll the fleas off him.
“Call an ambulance,” he yelled, though there was nobody around. “Call an ambulance. Somebody call an ambulance.”
Claude jumped to his feet and sprinted. He came upon an office with a man working near the front window and banged for his attention. A human! When the man looked up and their eyes met, Claude dashed to the front door, but the man beat him to the spot and held the door so Claude couldn’t enter.
“Don’t come in,” the man yelled. “Don’t come in.”
“Call an ambulance,” Claude shouted. “I’m getting attacked by fleas. Call one quick.”
“I will,” the man replied. “I’ll call an ambulance.”
But Claude continued to push the door and the man continued to hold it firm. When Claude jumped back to resume slapping, the man locked the door before moving to a phone to dial the fire department.
“Find some water,” the man shouted at last. “The ambulance is on its way. Run to the golf course. Find some water and jump in.”
Although the fleas kept biting, hearts can only race at top speed for so long. Panic began converting to despair. The golf course was a long way from there. For another few counts, Claude continued slapping himself in front of the office. But then he remembered a small fountain he’d passed on his way from the golf course, so he turned and sprinted toward it.