Collected Short Stories: Volume V
by
Barry Rachin
Copyright © 2016
This short story represents a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
*****
Table of Contents
Will the Rain Hurt the Rhubarb?
Damaged Goods
Jesse Caldwell loathed Miranda Huffington, the business secretary at Patterson Toyota. Whenever the mechanic delivered repair orders to the front office, he kept conversation brief as possible, scrupulously avoided making eye contact or inadvertently staring at the woman’s deformed leg. Jesse had even considered taking a job with another dealership to be rid of the wretched woman. For her part, the only time Miranda paid Jesse even the slightest mind was when he did something wrong, which was why she was presently standing in the repair bay wearing an evil expression. “No signature on this form.” Miranda waved a three-part invoice truculently in the air.
In her late twenties, the business secretary exuded no joie de vivre. She lurched about Patterson Toyota with a profound limp, her body pitching forward in a herky-jerky manner as though she were about to take a pratfall and end up on her keister from one humorless moment to the next. Miranda wasn’t exactly ugly. Rather, she was one of those infuriatingly nondescript types who, despite her infirmity, might have been reasonably attractive if, once in a blue moon, she smiled or cracked a joke. The operative term here was ‘might have been’. But the dark-haired woman didn’t and so she wasn’t.
Jesse signed off on the brake job and handed the three-part invoice to the secretary, who swung about on her heels with less than military precision and hobbled disjointedly from the repair bay. A lilac-scented perfume lingered in the stale air until it was quickly overwhelmed by the stench of exhaust fumes and burnt rubber.
Well thank you, too, and have a stupendously nice day, Ms. Huff, Huff, Huffington.
Al Florentine, the repair manager approached from the showroom floor. “What a clod!” Jesse muttered as Miranda retreated back to the comfort of the heated showroom. “That troll treats mechanics like garbage.”
“She ain’t so bad.” Al assumed a mollifying tone. The middle-aged Italian with the swarthy complexion and sloping shoulders arranged appointments when customers called the dealership. He also assigned work orders and oversaw the repair bay operation. “No worse than the last few goofballs in her position.”
The manager had a point.
The previous secretary arrived late most days and couldn’t file properly. A record labeled ‘Munson’ might, if lucky, end up in the ‘M’s but that was it. She never bothered to position the manila folder to the rear between the MT’s and MV’s. It was organizational chaos pure and simple such that, inside of a month, customer accounts were a garbled mess, a regular automotive Tower of Babel. The middle-aged woman who preceded her was a menopausal hypochondriac with a drinking problem; she lasted a sum total of two months before filing a bogus disability claim.
If nothing else, the grim-faced Miranda Huffington was an anal-retentive workaholic. All customer records had to be properly indexed. She retyped the entire Rolodex file on pristine, three-by-five cards and, using a desktop publishing program, revamped several of Patterson Toyota’s customer care forms. At a staff party Mr. Patterson presented the new employee with a mahogany plaque acknowledging her ‘exceptional team spirit and personal initiative’.
“Miranda’s had a tough life,” Al blurted.
“How so?”
The repair manager clearly knew something about the dour-faced woman to which no one else was privy but waved a hand distractedly in the air. “More to the point, what you got against her?”
The question caught Jesse off guard and he felt his face flush with shame. “There’s a busted water pump on a Celica needs replacing.”
“The water pump can wait.”
Thirty feet away an acetylene blow torch fired up as a mechanic began loosening the corroded bolts on a blown muffler. “I dunno.” The rusty muffler fell away from the undercarriage of the car hitting the cement floor with a dull clatter. Jesse’s brain had reached the temperature of the softened bolts scattered about under the hydraulic lift. He waved a stubby finger in the air listlessly. “She’s a sadistic bitch!”
“That’s a bit of a stretch,” Al chuckled. “Miranda ain’t a bad sort. She’s just…” Without bothering to finish the sentence, the man smiled weakly and wandered back into the showroom.
*****
Shortly after joining Patterson Toyota, Jesse signed a lease on a studio apartment off route 106 in Plainville, Massachusetts. In his late twenties, the move was Jesse’s first real taste of independence. He took the apartment for a year, paying the first and last month’s rent plus a hefty security deposit. On June first, Jesse Caldwell bought a secondhand dresser and end table at the Salvation Army thrift shop, threw his lumpy bed in the rear of his Ford F-150 pickup truck and drove off to a new life. Or so he thought.
The new life was, in truth, no different than his stultified old life, except that now the mechanic returned home from work to a claustrophobically tiny, studio apartment. He had his dirty movies – small consolation – but in the bargain had bartered away something ephemeral yet infinitely essential. The apartment at Beacon Woods Estate was quiet – excruciatingly so. Jesse kept the radio blaring from early morning until he lumbered off to work.
Weekends he relaxed by the pool, twirling his high school ring in endless circles like the revolving drum on a Tibetan prayer wheel. The residents seemed friendly in a neighborly sort of way but kept their distance. Sunning themselves on chaise lounges by the pool, the women were, for the most part, white collar professionals - twenty-something school teachers, secretaries and businesswomen with no particular interest in a grease monkey with calloused hands, burgeoning beer gut, salt and pepper hair.
So where were the eligible women his own age? Probably living elsewhere. Or, like his sister, Eunice, married, divorced, divorced again and now living with a new lover. What difference did it make? From Jesse’s perspective, finding a life partner, a soul mate, had devolved into a scavenger hunt.
One Saturday night toward the tail end of the following summer, an unfortunate incident pushed Jesse over the edge. With nothing to do, he had been stir-crazy all day, totally and irrevocably alone. Following the eleven o’clock news, he killed the lights and crawled under the covers. Two doors down, a Hispanic couple was blasting the radio ridiculously loud – a riotous mix of salsa and Latin jazz. Jesse finally dropped off to sleep but woke before dawn to angry voices. He glanced at the mint green numbers on the bedside clock. Five-thirty.
“Where the hell was you?” A gruff voice filtered down from the floor above.
“None of your business, Shit-for-Brains!” The woman was drunk, slurring her words.
Jesse knew the couple, but only to offer a brief greeting as they checked mail or passed in the lobby. Lean and morose with a nervous tic, the guy was a roofer. His shrimpy, dark-haired girlfriend worked at a Burger King. At least once a month, she slipped out alone bar hopping and came home sloshed. The roofer and his wayward girlfriend cursed each other, hurled insults back and forth but nothing ever came of it. Eventually the accusations petered away and they went off to bed. Sometimes Jesse heard the dysfunctional duo moaning with lust, the sexual release heightened by the foul-mouthed sparing - the titillating foreplay of culturally-challenged dimwits.
But this was different. The woman never stayed out all night. “I ask questions but get no answers,” The roofer growled. “Where’d you spend the night?”
“Put a ring on the third finger of my left hand and I’ll answer your moronic questions.”
Fluffing the pillow, Jesse placed his hands behind his head. This was about as entertaining, as a carnival freak show. “One more smart-mouth remark,” the roofer snarled, “and I’ll slap you silly.”
Dead silence.
Jesse eased up on his elbows and listened attentively. Don’t feed into his homicidal rage. Back off. Leave the room. Go take a shower. Keep your pie hole shut. Don’t say another solitary thing. Don’t –
“Asshole!”
Two sets of feet scurried back and forth about the one-bedroom flat, followed by the crash of overturned furniture as the roofer beat his unfaithful lover. Jesse jumped out of bed and rushed up the stairwell taking the risers two at a time. By the time he reached the apartment, the door was already ajar. Several male residents, who lived on the same floor, were restraining the boyfriend. The distraught girl sported a chipped tooth and black eye. A clump of hair was missing off the top of her head. Like an oversized dust bunny, the frizzy strands lay in a jumbled heap on the living room rug. Five minutes later police arrived and carted the roofer off to the lockup. The following week, Jesse spotted the lovebirds lounging by the pool. A shadowy bald spot on the right side of her scalp, where the boyfriend yanked the hair out, remained but new growth was filling in nicely.
In early August when the letter to renew his lease arrived from the rental agency, Jesse called home. “How you doing, Mom?”
“Good and you?”
“Well, that’s just it. Five hundred bucks a month for a hole-in-the-wall, efficiency apartment… this complex is grossly overpriced. Plainville isn’t really all that convenient to where I work, and things can get a bit lonely especially when nobody’s around on holiday weekends and …” He paused to catch his breath. Such a mortal embarrassment - a grown man in his mid-thirties tucking his tail between his stubby legs and escaping back to the safe haven of his parent’s home!
“For crying out loud,” Mrs. Caldwell interrupted in a face-saving gesture. “Don’t waste your hard-earned money on some crappy, sardine can of an apartment. Cancel the lease and come home where you’re always welcome.” She slammed the receiver down mercifully sparing him any further mawkishness.
Jesse lowered his grizzled beard into his hands and had a good cry. Stumbling into the bathroom, he washed his face, patting the mottled skin dry with a terrycloth towel. Then he pulled a cardboard box from the closet and began packing the cutlery, dishes, pots and pans for the eight and a half mile trip home.
*****
At noontime Al Florentine was back again standing near the tire balancing machine. “Wanna grab lunch?”
Jesse’s head was buried under the hood of a Camry sedan checking the transmission fluid. “Give me a few minutes and I’ll be done with this bag of bolts.”
At a Friendly’s situated two blocks from the dealership, the waitress took their order and ten minutes later set a bowl of chili in front of the repair manager and tuna fish sandwich with a diet Pepsi next to Jesse. “Last December when the boss was away in Vegas,” the repair manager stirred his chili, directing his words into the spicy broth, “I interviewed Miranda for the job.” He sprinkled a bag of oyster crackers over the top of his chili. “The girl attended junior college for a couple years, but that didn’t work out so hot. What with her handicap, she wasn’t much of a party animal.”
“She told you all this during the stupid interview?”
“Not exactly,” Al qualified.” The repair manager pursed his lips and spoke tentatively. “Got a problem with her gimpy leg?”
Jesse opened a bag of potato chips and splayed them on the plate alongside the tuna melt. “At first, but I don’t hardly notice it now.”
Up down, up down, up down. When she crossed a room it seemed as though the woman was placing her right foot in an endless progression of shallow potholes. Now the mechanic hardly paid any attention. Or perhaps Jesse logically associated the secretary with the odd gait – so much so that, if she suddenly began walking with fluid grace, that might have seemed equally peculiar. “No, her handicap don’t bother me.”
“She’s a beekeeper. The half dozen hives in her back yard brought in over two hundred pounds of honey last year.”
“How’d you learn that?”
“During the interview.”
Jesse tried to picture his personal nemesis decked out in an alabaster bee suit with dark veil and calfskin gloves. Beekeeping – yes, that would be the perfect pastime for an antisocial control freak like Miranda Huffington.
“It’s really amazing stuff how honey bees arrange things. In July and August when the weather gets too hot, they’ll fan the entrance with their wings to cool the hive. Amazing stuff, I tell you!” The more Al raved about Miranda Huffington’s stupendous bees, the more infuriated his coworker became. “Wanna hear something funny?” He rushed ahead without waiting for any response. “In late August all the drones get the bum’s rush.”
“What’re drone?” Jesse muttered.
“Male bees. They don’t do much of anything other than play footsie with the queen and gorge on honey. In late summer, the female bees close things down for winter and the drones become persona non grata.”
“Persona what?”
“What with the frigid weather coming, there ain’t no place for moochers and deadbeats.”
Jesse raised the tuna fish sandwich to his lips but, felt a sharp pang – acid reflux – and promptly lowered it to the plate. “So the drones get kicked out in the cold to die a miserable death?”
“That’s right,” Al confirmed. “With absolutely no say in the matter.” The middle-aged man raised the spoon to his lips and ate with gusto making a raucous slurping sound as he shoveled the brown beans into his mouth. Al didn’t speak again until the food was gone. “Just before we broke for lunch, I was in the office shooting the breeze with Miranda and she says, ‘That Caldwell never remembers to sign the goddamn work orders. If I didn’t know any better, I might think the nitwit was screwing with my brain.’” Al snickered as though at some private joke. “Then, without skipping a beat, she adds, ‘Is the jerk dating anyone?’”
Jesse’s eyebrows scrunched together. “She called me a nitwit... a jerk?”
“You’re missing the point.” Al reached across the table and tapped Jesse forcefully on the forearm. “All the time I’m eating this chili, I been considering your options and it all boils down to this. Your personal circumstances ain’t more promising than that rusty minivan with the blown cylinder head over by the dumpster, and all the while Miranda Huffington limps through life in search of a good-time Charley.”
The waitress arrived and warmed Al’s coffee. When she was gone, Jesse leaned over the table. “I got this problem with the opposite sex.”
Al grabbed another roll, sawed it in half with a knife, smearing a pat of butter down the middle. “There’s medication for that,” he replied, lowering his voice several decibels. “Not that I ever needed any.”
Jesse wagged his head in protest. “No, it’s got nothing to do with plumbing.” A group of high school students wandered in and were seated at a booth near the back of the restaurant. “In social situations I just get tongue-tied... never know what to say, that’s all.”
“A personal shortcoming... so now you got something in common with the woman. Ask her out.”
“A date?” Jesse felt lightheaded. “She’d laugh in my foolish face.”
“Not hardly!” Al wiped the bowl clean with what was left of the roll. “Miranda thinks you’re a bit rough about the edges but salvageable... an automotive diamond in the rough, so to speak.” Al belched, loosening his belt buckle several notches. “The woman might be a sourpuss cripple, but I seen women like her mellow like a vintage Bordeaux when treated halfways decent.”
“That’s a tad melodramatic,” Jesse groused, “and I still don’t see -”
“This is what you do,” Al counseled. “Ask the broad out on a date. Treat her like there ain’t no female on the planet half as desirable.” He waved his hands frenetically in the air. “Sex on her terms, not yours! You don’t lay a perverted pinky finger on the woman until she sanctions it.” Several customers at adjacent tables looked up from their meals. In addition to a lingering dizziness, Jesse was developing a brutal case of heartburn.
“If there’s a freakin’ foreign flick from Kazakhstan playing at the Avon Cinema that she wants to see, you go and read the subtitles and tell her it was just about the finest movie you ever seen.”
“Okay,” Jesse muttered. “I think I understand.”
Clearing away the empty plates, the waitress placed the bill on the table. Al Florentine pulled a twenty from his wallet. “My treat. You pick up the tab next time.”
*****
At five o’clock the mechanics packed up their tool chests and went home. Office help generally followed a half hour later. Jesse lingered in the repair bay until quarter passed the hour then meandered into a cramped office off the main showroom. “The Blue Grotto, it’s a fancy schmancy restaurant on Federal hill.” If you got nothin’ better to do, I was wondering...” Miranda glanced up from a pile of service orders strewn across the desk, her features as inscrutable as Sanskrit.
“A date?” She laid the yellow NCR copy she was processing on the desk and smoothed the edges with the spatulated tips of her fingers. “Never been there myself but I heard they got valet parking.”
Jesse cringed. He knew that the gourmet restaurant was notoriously expensive but hadn’t factored the added expense into the price of the meal. Miranda kept her eyes focused on the paperwork littering her desk. “It’s against company policy.” she spoke in a gravelly monotone.
“What is?”
“Secretaries fraternizing with the work-bay help… Mr. Patterson told me so when I was hired.”
Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud! Jesse felt the turgid blood congealing in his brain. He shuffled halfway to the door on wobbly legs when her voice sounded again. “On the other hand, there’s no mention of it here.” She was clutching a copy of the Paterson Toyota employee handbook. “And I should know. I revised the manual... all thirty-five pages.” She sandwiched the three-ring binder between a row of paperwork neatly stacked on her desk. “I’m not doing much of anything tomorrow night.”
“Pick you up around seven,” Jesse replied. “I’ll make reservations.”
*****
Saturday afternoon, Jesse found his mother hunched over the kitchen table stripping the skins off a bowl of Clingstone peaches. Earlier in the week she brought home a bushel of fruit purchased at a farmers’ market. The flesh, which clung to the pits, was softer and juicier than the freestone variety sold in the grocery stores.
Crooking her thick neck to one side, Mrs. Caldwell sniffed the air. “What’s that god-awful stench?”
“English leather.”
Mrs. Caldwell gawked at her son. “Got a date?” Jesse’s head bobbed up and down. A squat woman with a doughy nose, Mrs. Caldwell lifted her watery blue eyes heavenward. “I’ll be a grandmother yet!”
Jesse watched her dice the blanched peaches into bite-size pieces which she tossed into a copper pot simmering on the stove. When the pot was half-filled, she sprinkled a generous cup of sugar over the fruit. Quartering a fresh lemon, she drizzled the juice over the mix.
“What’s with the lemon?”
“Brings out the flavor.” Mashing the soggy wedges in the palm of her hand, she drained the last few drops. “Opposites attract,” his mother chuckled at the clever repartee, “even in food.” She stirred the ingredients thoughtfully with a wooden spatula. “So who’s the lucky girl?”
“Just a secretary from work.”
The bubbling peaches exuded a tart aroma. “Can’t go out on a first date looking like an ignoramus.”
“What?”
“That grease spot on your fly isn’t going to endear you to anyone. Go back in the bedroom and change your pants.”
“The others are in worse shape.”
Mrs. Caldwell eyeballed the thickening slurry before reducing the heat. “Take them off. I’ll clean the stain by hand.”
In the bedroom Jesse removed his pants and returned to the kitchen. “I never said anything about a first date,” he groused.
Now that the mixture had thickened Mrs. Caldwell proceeded to ladle the steamy fruit into individual preserve jars. A yearly ritual, she always steeped the preserves in a separate pan of water for ten minutes before tightening the lids. “Yeah, well...” She scrubbed the cloth with a wet rag and dish detergent. “The stain... it’s thinning away to nothin’. Don’t hardly show now.” She handed him the soggy pants. “Throw them in the dryer and I’ll run a hot iron over them when they’re dry.”
Drifting back to the stove, she teased a spoonful of fruit onto the ladle. “Taste.”
Jesse nibbled at the hot fruit. A look of sublime joy ebbed across his grizzled face, the dark eyes scrunching shut. “Don’t get much better than that!”
“Go dry your pants,” his mother barked.
A half hour later as Jesse was inching down the driveway, the front door burst open and his mother waddled down the bricked steps. She thrust a jar of the homemade jam through the open window. “Geez,” Jesse bellowed. “It’s hot as hell!”
“Give the fruit to your girl friend.”
“She ain’t my girlfriend. Just a ...” He left the sentence dangling.
“You tell her I don’t use no pectin. Nothin’ artificial to thicken the spread. It’s all-natural, fresh-grown. .. none of that high fructose, sicky-sweet, corn syrup crap.”
“Yeah, okay.” Releasing his foot from the brake, he continued down the driveway toward the street. Before Jesse reached the highway, he cracked the glove compartment, tossed his mother’s unsolicited gift into the cavity and slammed it shut.
*****