Fire Sale

10 Unions? Not a Prayer!

“Heavenly Father, Your power fills us with awe, and yet You condescend to love us. Your love pours down on us constantly and as its proof, You sent us Your darling Son as a precious gift to bring us close to You.” Pastor Andrés’s public voice was deep and rumbly; with the mike overamplifying him, and the faint Hispanic accent, he was hard to understand. At first I strained to follow him, but now my attention wandered.

When Andrés first came into the meeting room with Billy the Kid, I’d been startled enough to wake up for a moment: the pastor was the man I’d bumped into yesterday morning at Fly the Flag-the one who wondered if I were drunk at nine in the morning. His church, Mt. Ararat Church of Holiness in Zion, was where Rose Dorrado and her children worshiped. I knew the ministers at these fundamentalist churches wielded tremendous authority in the lives of their congregations; maybe Rose had confided her fears about sabotage to Andrés. And maybe, in turn, Andrés had persuaded the plant owner to explain why he wouldn’t bring in the cops to investigate the sabotage.

It wasn’t possible to squeeze past all the people between me and the front of the room to talk to him before the service; I’d intercept him on his way out at the end. If the service ever did end. Every now and then, what seemed to be an approaching climax jerked me briefly awake, but the pastor’s deep voice and accent were a perfect lullaby, and I would drift off again.

“With Your Son, You show us the way and the truth and the light, with Him at our head we will move through all life’s obstacles to that glorious place where we will know no obstacles, no grief, where You will wipe away all our tears.”

Nearby, other heads were nodding, or eyes shifting to wristwatches, the way we used surreptitiously to peek at each other’s test papers in high school, all the time imagining no one could tell our eyes weren’t glued to our own desktops.

In the front row, Aunt Jacqui had her hands folded piously in prayer, but I caught a glimpse of her thumbs moving on some handheld device. Today, she was wearing a severe black dress that didn’t quite match the evangelical mood of the meeting, despite its color: it was cinched tightly to show off her slim waist, and the buttons down the front ended around her thighs, allowing me to see that the design on her panty hose went all the way up her legs.

Next to me Marcena was sleeping in earnest, her breath coming in quiet little puffs, but her head bobbed forward as if she were nodding in prayer-no doubt a skill she’d learned at her fancy girls’ school in England.

When we’d left Morrell’s condo at six-thirty, her face was gray and drawn; she’d slumped in the passenger seat, groaning. “I can’t believe I’m going to chapel at dawn after three hours’ sleep. This is like being back at Queen Margaret’s, trying to make the headmistress believe I hadn’t crept into hall after hours. Wake me when we’re ten minutes from By-Smart so I can put on my face.”

I knew how little sleep she’d had, because I knew what time she’d gotten in last night: three-fifteen. And I knew that because Mitch had announced her arrival with considerable vigor. As soon as he started barking, Peppy joined in. Morrell and I lay in bed, arguing over who had to get out of bed to deal with them.

“They’re your dogs,” Morrell said.

“She’s your friend.”

“Yeah, but she isn’t barking.”

“Only in the sense of barking mad, and, anyway, she provoked them,” I grumbled, but it was still me who stumbled down the hall to quiet them.

Marcena was in the kitchen, drinking another beer, and letting Mitch play tug-of-war with her gloves. Peppy was on the perimeter, dancing and snarling because she wasn’t included in the game. Marcena apologized for waking the house.

“Stop playing with Mitch so I can get them to lie down and shut up,” I snapped. “What kind of meeting went on this late?” I took the gloves away from Mitch, and forced both dogs to lie down and stay.

“Oh, we were inspecting community sites,” Marcena said, wiggling her eyebrows. “What time do we need to set out? It really takes almost an hour? If I’m not up by six, knock on the door, will you?”

“If I remember.” I shuffled back to bed, where Morrell was already sound asleep again. I rolled over, hard, against him, but he only grunted and put an arm around me without waking up.

I assumed from Marcena’s suggestive grin that site inspections meant she’d been out with Romeo Czernin in his big truck, having sex at the CID landfill golf course, or maybe the high school parking lot. What point was there in acting so cute about it? Because he was married, or because he was a blue-collar guy? It was as though she thought I was a prude whom this kind of teasing would both offend and titillate. Maybe because I’d told her the kids were talking about their affair, or whatever it should be called.

“Let it go,” I whispered to myself in the dark. “Relax and let it go.” After a while I managed to doze off again.

Morrell was still asleep when I got up at five-thirty to give the dogs a short run. When we got back from our dash to the lake, I opened the door to the spare room so Mitch and Peppy could wake Marcena while I showered. I put on the one business outfit I’d left at Morrell’s. It was a perfectly nice suit in an umber wool, but when Marcena appeared in a red-checked swing jacket I did look like a prude next to her.

There’s no easy way to get from Morrell’s place by the lake to the vast sprawl beyond O’Hare where By-Smart had its headquarters. My own eyes sandy with fatigue, I threaded my way along the side streets, which were already full, even at this hour. I had the radio on, keeping awake to Scarlatti and Copeland, mixed in with ads and dire warnings about traffic mishaps. Marcena slept through it all, through the radio, through the woman in the Explorer who almost creamed us as she pulled out of her driveway without looking, the man in the Beemer who ran the red light at Golf Road, and then gave me the finger for honking.

She even slept, or skillfully feigned sleep, when Rose Dorrado called me back around a quarter to seven.

“Rose! I owe you an apology. I’m sorry I suggested you could be involved in sabotaging the plant; that was wrong of me.”

“I don’t mind, you don’t need to mind.” She was mumbling, hard to hear over the traffic sounds. “I think-I think I worry for nothing about what is happening-a few accidents and I am imagining the worst.”

I was so startled I let my attention slip from the road. A loud honking from the car to my left brought me back in a hurry.

I pulled over to the curb. “What do you mean? Glue doesn’t fall accidentally into locks, and a sackful of rats doesn’t just drop into a ventilation system.”

“I can’t explain how these things happen, but I can’t worry about them no more, so thanks for your trouble, but you need to leave the factory alone.”

That sounded like a rehearsed script if ever I heard one, but she hung up before I could press her further. Anyway, I couldn’t afford to be late out here; I’d have to worry about Rose and Fly the Flag later.

I gave Marcena’s shoulder a tap. She groaned again, but sat up and began putting herself together, putting on makeup, including mascara, and fishing her trademark red silk scarf out of her bag to knot under her collar. By the time we turned onto By-Smart Corporate Way, she looked as elegant as ever. I glanced at myself in the rearview mirror. Maybe mascara would further enhance the red in my eyes.

By-Smart’s headquarters had been designed along the utilitarian lines of one of their own megastores and appeared as big, a huge box that overwhelmed a minute park around it. Like so many corporate parks, this one looked tawdry. The prairie had been stripped from the rolling hills, covered with concrete, and then a tiny bit of grass Scotch-taped in as an afterthought. By-Smart’s landscaper also included a little pond as a reminder of the wetlands that used to lie out here. Beyond the wedge of brown grass, the parking lot seemed to stretch for miles, its gray surface fading into the bleak fall sky.

When we’d tapped our high-heeled way across the lot to the entrance, it was clear that the building’s utility stopped at its shape. It was constructed from some kind of pale gold stone, perhaps even marble, since that seemed to be what covered the lobby floor. The lobby walls were paneled in a rich red-gold wood, with amber blocks set into them here and there. I thought of the endless rows of snow shovels, flags, towels, ice-melt in the warehouse on Crandon, and Patrick Grobian, hoping to make the move out here from his dirty little office. Who could blame him, even if it meant sleeping with Aunt Jacqui?

This early in the day, no receptionist sat behind the giant teak console, but a sullen-faced guard got up and demanded our business.

“Are you Herman?” I asked. “Billy the Ki-young Billy Bysen invited me up for the morning prayer meeting.”

“Oh, yes.” Herman’s face relaxed into a fatherly smile. “Yes, he told me a friend of his would be stopping by for the prayer meeting. He said you should go straight to the meeting room. This lady with you? Here, these passes are good for the day.”

He handed over a couple of large pink badges labeled “Visitor,” with the day’s date stamped on them, without even asking for photo IDs. I didn’t think Herman’s sudden friendliness was because we knew a member of the family, but because Billy the Kid made the people around him happy and protective-I’d seen the same reaction in the truck drivers who’d been teasing him on Thursday night.

Herman also handed us a map, marking the route to the meeting room for us. The building was constructed like the Merchandise Mart, or the Pentagon, with concentric corridors leading to labyrinths of cubicles. Although each corner had a black plastic tag identifying its location, we kept getting turned around and needing to retrace our steps. Or I kept getting turned around; Marcena stumbled blindly in my wake.

“You going to pull yourself together before we meet Buffalo Bill?” I snarled.

She smiled seraphically. “I always rise to the occasion. This one just doesn’t seem to need my best effort yet.”

I bit back a retort: I couldn’t win at any sniping interchange.

I knew I was on the right trail, or corridor, when we started meeting other people heading the same way we were. We got a lot of stares-strangers in the midst, women, to boot, in the midst of a sea of gray-and brown-suited men. When I double-checked that we were going the right direction, I found people assumed we were vendors from outside the company. I wondered if morning church was a required ritual for doing business with By-Smart.

As we looked around for seats together, a woman whispered to me that the front row was reserved for the family and for senior officers of the company. Marcena said that was fine, the farther from the center of the action the better. We found two chairs together about ten rows back.

When Billy the Kid had invited me to the prayer meeting, I’d pictured something like the Lady Chapel at a church where a friend of mine is in charge-statues of Mary, candles, crucifixes, an altar. Instead, we were in a nondescript room in the interior of the fourth floor, windowless except for the skylights. I saw later it was a kind of multipurpose room, smaller and less formal than the auditorium, where employees could hold exercise classes or other activities that weren’t exactly work related.

This morning it was set up with chairs fanning out in concentric half circles from a blond wood table in the middle. Old Mr. Bysen arrived just before the session got under way, when everyone else was seated. A thickset man whose midsection had expanded in old age, he wasn’t fat, but certainly substantial. He carried a cane, but he still walked briskly, using the cane almost like a ski pole to propel himself along. An entourage, chiefly of men in the ubiquitous gray or brown, clustered in his wake. Billy the Kid, in jeans and a clean white shirt, entered with Andrés at the tail of the parade. His reddish-brown curls were slicked down heavily. In this room of gray-and-white men, Andrés’s dark skin stood out like a rose in a bowl of onions.

There were a few women besides Marcena and me; one of them arrived in Bysen’s entourage. She appeared both deferential and self-assured-the perfect personal assistant. Her face was flat, like a skillet, and covered in heavy pancake. She was carrying a slim gold portfolio that she unzipped and left on the desktop, open so that both she and Bysen could see it. It was she who sat at Bysen’s right hand as the inner circle fanned out in the padded chairs; Aunt Jacqui, who arrived a few minutes later, only rated the front row.

Morning service seemed to be where Bysen held court. Before the prayers started, a number of people came up to hold low-voiced conversations with him. The skillet-faced woman paid careful attention to them all, jotting notes into the gold portfolio.

Besides the pastor and Billy the Kid, there were four other men at the table; people waiting for their moment with Bysen would engage with one or another of those four, but everyone, I noticed, had a smile and a quick word with Billy. At one point, he happened to catch sight of me in the audience; he gave his sweet shy smile and a little wave, and I felt momentarily cheerier.

After about fifteen minutes of attending his vassals, Bysen nodded at the woman, who put away her portfolio. This was the signal for everyone to get back to their chairs. Billy, blushing with importance, got up to introduce the pastor from Mt. Ararat, with a few words about his own involvement in South Chicago, and how important church life, and Pastor Andrés’s work, were for that community. Andrés gave an invocation, and Billy read a passage from the Bible, the bit about the rich man with the unfaithful steward. When he’d finished, he took a seat near his grandfather.

We started with prayers for everyone involved in By-Smart’s far-flung enterprises, petitions for the wisdom of management to make good decisions, petitions for the workers here and abroad, for the strength to do what was required of them. As Pastor Andrés moved into his address and the rest of us dozed, Bysen kept his attention fixed on the minister, his heavy brows twitching.

I was dozing myself when the tempo of Andrés’s voice picked up. His voice became louder, more declamatory. I sat up to pay attention to his conclusion.

“When Jesus talks about the steward who has misused his master’s gifts, He is talking to us all. We are all His stewards, and to those whom the most is given, from them is the most expected. Heavenly Father, You have bestowed on this company, on the family who owns it, very great gifts indeed. We beseech You in Your Son’s name to help them remember they are Your stewards only. Help everyone in this vast company to remember that. Help them to use Your gifts wisely, for the betterment of all who work for them. Your Son taught us to pray ‘Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.’ The success of By-Smart leaves much temptation in its path, the temptation to forget that many who labor are heavy-laden, that they will present themselves to Your Son with many, many tears for Him to wipe away. Help everyone who works here in this great company to remember the lowest in our midst, to remember they have the same divine spark, the same right to life, the same right to a just return for the fruits of their labor-”

A loud clatter startled me. Mr. Bysen had pushed himself out of his chair, shoving his walking stick so that it had bounced on the floor. One of the gray men at the table jumped to his feet and took the old man’s arm, but Bysen shook him off angrily and pointed to the stick. The man stooped for it and handed it to Bysen, who stumped toward the exit. The skillet-faced woman quickly slid the gold portfolio under her arm and followed him, catching up with him before he reached the door.

In the audience, everyone had woken up and was sitting straighter in the uncomfortable chairs. A buzz went through the room, like wind through prairie grasses. Marcena, who’d jerked awake at the commotion, nudged me and demanded to know what was going on.

I shrugged in incomprehension, watching the man who’d retrieved Bysen’s stick: he was having an angry conversation with Billy the Kid. Pastor Andrés stood with his arms crossed, looking nervous but belligerent. Billy, scarlet-faced, said something that made the older man fling his arms up in exasperation. He turned his back on Billy and told the rest of us that the service had been going on longer than usual.

“We all have meetings and other important projects to attend to, so let’s end by bowing our heads for a minute, and asking God’s blessing on us as we try to face the many challenges we encounter. As Pastor Andrés reminds us, we are all only stewards of God’s great gifts, we all carry heavy burdens, we all can use divine help on every step of our journey. Let us pray.”

I bowed my head dutifully with the rest of the room, but glanced at Aunt Jacqui from under my eyelashes. Her head was lowered, her hands were still, but she was smiling in a secretive, gloating way. Because she wanted Billy to be on the hot seat with his grandfather? Or because she enjoyed turmoil for its own sake?

We sat silently for about twenty seconds, until the gray-haired man announced “Amen,” and strode to the exit. As soon as he was gone, the rest of us burst into excited conversation.

“Who was that?” I asked the woman on my left, who was checking her cell phone as she got up to leave.

“Mr. Bysen.” She was so astonished I didn’t know that she sat back down.

“Not him. The man who finished the service just now, the one arguing with Billy the-with young Billy Bysen.”

“Oh-that’s young Mr. William. Billy’s father. I guess he wasn’t too pleased with the minister Billy brought up from the South Side. I see you’re a visitor-are you one of our suppliers?”

I smiled and shook my head. “Just an acquaintance of young Billy from South Chicago. He invited me here today. Why was Mr. Bysen so upset by Pastor Andrés’s remarks?”

She looked at me suspiciously. “Are you a journalist?”

“Nope. I coach basketball at a high school on the South Side.”

Marcena was leaning across me to listen in on the conversation, her nifty little fountain-pen recorder in her hand; at the journalism question, she gave a wolfish smile and said, “I’m just a visitor from England, so the whole thing was confusing to me. And I had trouble understanding the pastor’s accent.”

The woman nodded condescendingly. “You probably don’t get too many undocumented Mexicans in England, but we see a lot of them here. Anyone could have told young Billy that his grandfather wouldn’t enjoy hearing that kind of message, even if the pastor had delivered it in plain English.”

“Is he Mexican?” I asked. “I wasn’t sure from the accent.”

Marcena kicked my shin, meaning, they’re giving us information, don’t get their backs up.

Our informant gave a meaningless laugh. “ Mexico, El Salvador, it’s all the same thing; they all come to this country thinking they have a right to a free lunch.”

A man in front of us turned around. “Oh, Buffalo Bill will get that nonsense out of Billy’s system fast enough. It’s why he sent the Kid down to South Chicago.”

“But what nonsense?” Marcena looked and sounded hopelessly ignorant; she was almost batting her eyelashes. What a pro.

“Didn’t you hear him talking about workers and the fruits of their labors?” the man said. “Sounded a lot like union organizing, and we won’t stand for that at By-Smart. Billy knows that as well as the rest of us.”

I looked to the front of the room, where Andrés was still talking to Billy. With his short, square body, he did look more like a construction worker than a minister. I suppose he could have been a union organizer: a lot of the little churches on the South Side can’t support a pastor, and the staff have to work regular jobs during the week.

But would Billy have really tried to bring an organizer into Buffalo Bill’s prayer service? The impression I’d gotten last Thursday had been that Billy loved his grandfather, that he thought only the best of him.

Billy clearly also was attached to Andrés; as the room cleared, he’d stayed next to Andrés, and his posture suggested embarrassment and apology. As I watched, the pastor put a hand on the young man’s shoulder, and the two of them made their way out.

I suddenly remembered my own mission with Andrés. Calling out that I’d be back in a minute, I threaded my way through the chairs and sprinted after them, but by the time I got to the far exit they had disappeared into the maze. I ran down the hall, checking different turns, but I’d lost them.

When I got back to the meeting room, a couple of janitors were folding up the chairs, stacking them on pallets along the wall. When they’d finished with that, they opened a door and began pulling out exercise mats. A woman in leotard and tights carried in a large boom box; Aunt Jacqui, who’d disappeared when I was trying to find Andrés, came back into the room in her own exercise gear and began doing stretches that emphasized the smooth curve of her buttocks.

The man who’d told us By-Smart wouldn’t allow unions followed my amazed gaze, his own resting on Jacqui’s rear end as she bent to the floor. “Aerobics meet here next. If you and your friend want to work out, you’d be welcome to stay.”

“So By-Smart does it all,” Marcena laughed. “Prayers, push-ups, whatever employees need. How about physical sustenance? Can I get breakfast? I’m famished.”

The man put his hand in the small of her back. “Come to the cafeteria with me. We all get a little hungry on church mornings.”

As we followed our guide back through the maze, we could hear the boom box begin an insistent beat.