Firing offence

TWELVE

The Nutty Nathan’s warehouse was adjacent to the offices and occupied about eighteen thousand square feet of the entire building. Since the bruise below my eye was still healing, I avoided the office altogether and went in through the service entrance.

It was late Friday afternoon, and the women in service dispatch sat in a semicircle discussing the weekend. I walked by them quickly and with my head down, but not quickly enough to escape a whistle and then some laughter.

I took some concrete steps up to a locked door that opened onto the warehouse loft. Upon my promotion to upper-level management I had been given a skeleton key that fit all the locks in the building, necessitated by my frequent trips to the warehouse to check inventory while writing the copy (“Only 10 to Sell!”) of the ads. I used the key in this lock as I turned the knob and stepped into the loft.

The warehousemen called this area “the zoo” because of the cages along its wall that contained the heistable goods: small appliances, boom boxes, tapes, accessories, and anything else that could be stashed underneath an employee’s jacket. A large sign in read lettering hung on the wall near the first cage, and read, “Lock all cages. Don’t tempt an honest man.”

One could look down from the loft and survey the entire warehouse. It was arranged in five long parallel rows that ran the length of the building. Between each row was twelve feet of space, an allowance for the swing of forklifts that would then have a straight shot to the truck bays located directly beneath the loft.

There was a twenty-five foot drop to the warehouse floor. A three-tiered railing ran along the edge of the loft, broken only at one point to allow entrance to a caged lift that was used to move stock from one level to the next.

This time of year, as Fisher had overemphasized, the “barn” was full to capacity because of the annual fourth quarter load-in. Boxes rose from the floor and approached the legal limit, which was gauged by their proximity to the ceiling sprinklers. In several spots one could step off the loft directly onto the top of a row of stock.

I pulled open the metal gate, entered the lift, and hit the lower button on an electrical box hung over the railing. The crate lowered me in spasms.

I stepped out and walked past the bays where returning drivers were checking their manifests with the assistant warehouse managers. It was payday. Several of the drivers looked as if they had cashed their checks earlier at the liquor store. I could hear the deliberate farting of young warehousemen, and, after that, commentary and laughter as to the degree of looseness of their respective sphincters. By the time I reached Dane’s office this had degenerated into a discu nas tssion of an activity called “jamming,” which involved gerbils and then other progressively larger mammals.

The glass-enclosed office of Joe Dane, the warehouse manager, bordered the last bay. I looked in and saw the delivery manager talking on the phone. I rapped on the glass. She looked up, smiled, gave me a shrug and an exasperated look, and waved me in.

Their office smelled like cigarettes and fast food. Dane was an unashamed slob, but his female coworkers had tried to humanize the place with remnant carpeting, Redskins pennants, and stick-up Garfield cats, one of the strangest fads to come to D.C. since the Carl Lewis haircut.

Jerry Chase hung up the phone, mouthed the word asshole, slumped back in her chair, and dragged on her cigarette. The cherry from the last one was still smoking in the ashtray. I perched on the edge of her desk and butted it out.

“A good one?” I asked, looking at the phone.

“Oh, yeah,” she said, the smoke breaking around her mouth as she talked. “We miss a delivery, and the customer starts about how he makes two hundred dollars an hour, he can’t afford to sit another afternoon off and wait for a delivery. I wonder if he knows how many important people like him I talk to every day. I’m so tired of hearing that. If a guy really makes that kind of dough, then he wouldn’t get hurt missing a couple hours of work. To top it off, these problems always come up Friday afternoon payday.” She chin-nodded through the glass towards the drivers. “You think I can get any of these guys to go back out on a delivery now? They’ve been half in the bag since this morning.”

“Well, the day’s almost over,” I said, hoping to slow her down, though admittedly she had the worst job in the company.

“And people want to know why I drink,” she said, giving me a knowing look. “So what brings you down to the underworld?”

“I’m looking for Dane.”

“He got wise and split early. The ‘my baby’s sick’ routine.”

“Yeah, well. Maybe his kid really is sick.”

“Maybe,” she said, tossing her cigarette in the ashtray. I crushed it for her.

“Why don’t you ever put those things out?”

“That’s the man’s job,” she said, and shook her hair in what she thought was a sexy manner. She had a P.G. County haircut that had gone out of style at about the time that Charlie’s Angels was entering its third season.

“Take care, Jerry.” I walked out and closed the door behind me.

The warehouse had the same musty odor as the stockroom, though its rows were perfectly aligned, the floors relatively dirt-free. Except for the true summer months, it always seemed cold here, and the combination of naked steel girders, unfinished concrete, and bleak lighting heightened that chill. The young men in here worked a hard day every day, beneath insulated flannel shirts and gloves. Their occasional laughter almost alway s al ths came at the expense of each other, and the turnover was tremendous.

I walked down the center aisle, dwarfed by the cardboard walls at my sides. A kid I knew gave me a short horn-blast of recognition as he motored by on his forklift.

The barn was loaded. I took note of what we were heavy on as I walked. I would have to start dumping some of these goods, or, more likely, advertise the bait that would lead into the overstocks.

At the end of the aisle I turned left to the far corner of the warehouse, the section entirely occupied by videocassette recorders. I noticed the Kotekna VCRs that Rosen had purchased at the electronics show. Virtually none of them had moved. I made a mental note to remind Fisher that these “dogs” would have to be shipped out to the floors.

Aware of someone behind me, I turned to face two warehousemen I had never met. They were standing four feet apart and looking at me with solid stares. I nodded but got no response.

The man on the left was leaning on a pushbroom. He was of average height, with a dark, bony face and a careless goatee. His nose was narrow and flat, his eyes almost Oriental in shape. A red knit cap was cocked on his head, filled high with dreadlocks. He wore a vest over a thermal shirt, and had the loose-limbed stance of a fighter.

His partner was a black albino with mustard skin and eyes the color of a bad scrape. There was one small braid coming from the back of his shaved head. He wore striped baggies, a faded denim shirt, and leather gloves. He was so tall that his posture and bone structure suggested deformity. There was a dead, soulless look in their eyes that I had seen increasingly on the faces of men in Washington’s streets as the eighties dragged murderously on.

I walked towards them. When it was clear that they weren’t going to move, I walked around them. I felt an inexplicable humiliation, like a child who later regrets walking away from a certain ass-kicking at the hands of the schoolyard bully.

I heard them chuckle behind me, and I turned. The dark one with the pushbroom blew me a kiss. Then they both laughed.

I walked out of the warehouse. In the parking lot I noticed that my fists were balled and shoved deeply in my pockets. Climbing behind the wheel of my car, I felt weak and very small.

Joe Dane lived in old Silver Spring, on a street where the houses were built very close to the curb and had large, open porches and deep backyards. I parked my heap in front of his place and was up on his porch in six short steps.

I knocked on the door, behind which I could hear children laughing and playing and falling harmlessly to the floor. After that came a woman’s voice, raised halfheartedly to attempt sternness, then footsteps.

The door opened and Sarah Dane stood in the frame, wiping her hands dry with a dishrag. The lines around her eyes deepened as she smiled up at my face.

“Hi, Nick.”

“Sarah.” I leaned s.“H in and kissed her on the cheek.

Her baggy pants were frumpy and her sweatshirt featured a circular medallion of vomit centered between her breasts. Four kids and the raising of them had widened her hips and prematurely aged her face. But she had the relaxed beauty of contentment.

“Is Joe around?” I asked.

“He’s in the backyard,” she said, tugging gently on my jacket and pulling me through the doorway. “Come on in.”

I followed her into the living room as she made a path through the toys scattered on the throwrug. The arms of the sofa had been shredded by cats. As we walked, she touched the heads of two children orbiting her legs.

We moved into the warm kitchen where a cat was haunched down, its face buried in a small yellow dish. Water boiled in a tall pot on the gas stove. Next to it sat an open box of pasta.

I looked through the screen of the dark back porch. Joe Dane was walking slowly through their garden, his hands in his pockets. Sarah folded her arms and leaned against the refrigerator.

“You look good, Nick,” she said, focusing on the fading purplish area below my eye. “But I see you’re not really staying out of trouble.”

“I don’t go looking for it,” I said. “You look good too, Sarah.”

“Don’t bullshit me, Nicky. I look like hell.” She grabbed some hair off her face and wound it behind an ear. It was fairly useless to tell her that I was being sincere.

“What have you all been up to?” I asked.

A small towhead, wearing fatigues and carrying a plastic machine gun, ran by. I tapped him on the shoulder. He ran back, socked me on the knee, and disappeared into another room.

“You’re looking at it,” she said, without a trace of regret.

“You’re awfully lucky to have all this.”

“All this,” she laughed. “The funny thing is, I do feel lucky. This is what I want.”

“How about him?” I asked, jerking my head in the direction of the backyard.

“Joe’s the worrier of the family. Of course, he’s out in the world every day, he sees other people with more than we’ve got. More money, that is. And this town can influence you, make you feel like if you’re not wearing the four hundred dollar suit or driving the right import, you’re lower than dirt. I’m insulated from all that crap, here with the kids.” She looked me over. “How about you? You seeing anyone?”

“Not really.”

“Talk to Karen?”

“No.” The four of us had spent many evenings together in the early days of our marriages.

“Here,” she said, handing me two can sng of ours of beer from the refrigerator. “Go talk to him. He could use it.”

“Thanks, Sarah.”

I stepped out onto the porch, which creaked beneath my feet, and pushed open the screen door. As I walked across the yard, I noticed the kids’ Big Wheels had worn a semicircular track in the grass.

Joe Dane was a broad, bearlike guy whose gut had begun to creep unapologetically over his belt. Though he was only a few years my senior, his graying beard made him look much older. There was a look nearing relief on his creased face as I approached.

We had befriended each other early on at Nathan’s. He came to me for advice on record purchases, and I to him on the latest films to catch. My opinions on music were solely based on taste, but his movie knowledge came from advanced studies and a Master’s in Film Theory, a degree he had earned but never used professionally.

“Nick,” he said tiredly. “What brings you out here to ‘Pottersville’?”

I let that slide and said, “Just wanted to say hi. Your kid sick?”

“No, I just bugged out a little early.”

I cracked both beers and handed him one. He winked and had a long swallow. I pulled on his shirtsleeve and brought him out of the garden to two ripped beach chairs that faced back towards the house. A calico cat slunk across the yard, brushed my shins, and settled into a ball beneath my chair.

“So, what’s happening in music?” he asked, though he appeared uninterested. “I’ve been out of touch.”

“You haven’t missed much. This year it’s the neo-folk movement, though there’s nothing ‘neo’ about it. Tracy Chapman comes out doing the same shit Joan Armatrading was doing ten years ago, only Tracy’s younger and has a funkier haircut, and she walks away with all the press and the awards.”

“It’s the same in film,” he said. “There’s very little in the way of originality right now. The film schools are cranking out mimics and technicians, but there isn’t any soul.”

“What about your boys, Scorsese and De Palma?”

“Scorsese’s still a true visionary, a genius. Goodfellas, man, that was a piece of work. The first time I ever saw a cocaine high, visualized, up on the screen. And the violence was real, not stylized. Real. But De Palma?” Dane snorted and dismissed the director with a wave of his hand. “De Palma used to have that crippling Hitchcock fixation, and the critics hated him. I got a kick out of him, though. I mean, I had the sense, when I was watching his films, that I was witnessing the work of a madman. Then he does The Untouchables, and the critics love it. But it was pretty much just a straight narrative thing, don’t you think? And the centerpiece of the film, the shootout at the train station-he managed to rip off both Eisenstein’s Odessa steps sequence and himself at the same time.”

“Rip-off?” I said. “You used to call that ‘homage.’” ize="3"›“Whatever. De Palma used that one hundred percent slow motion sequence once before, in The Fury, a much better film in my opinion, what with its theme of patricide and its dark humor. Godard called that the most honest use of slow motion he had ever seen on film.” Dane rubbed his forehead and swallowed more beer, then said, “It’s all bullshit anyway.”

With that remark we sat in silence for several minutes. The calico emerged from under my seat, and with a low crawl slowly crept up on a group of sparrows that had lit in the middle of the yard. I watched as they scattered and flew away.

“I heard Jimmy Broda got it while I was on vacation,” I said, a careful indifference in my voice.

“Yeah,” he said, closing his eyes as he killed his beer.

“It surprised me, the fact that he was a gonif.”

“Well, he was.”

“You have to fire him yourself?”

“Yeah.”

“You got a soft heart, Joe.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

I finished my beer and crushed the can. “I talked to our lady in personnel. She has his reason for termination down as ‘job abandonment.’ You told her that, so theft wouldn’t be on the kid’s record. Am I right?”

His face tightened. “Sure. He was clean, up until the time he tried to boost that box. No reason to have that on his permanent record.”

A strong, stocky little boy ran from the side of the house and slowed to a walk as he neared us. He had his old man’s pug nose and his mother’s round eyes. Dane turned him around and locked him gently between his knees. He rubbed the kid’s shoulders with his big hands.

“There’s one thing I can’t figure out about that whole deal,” I said. “The kid’s grandfather phoned me after the boy was fired. So I went to their apartment, and the grandfather shows me this VCR that the kid had bought for him.”

“So?”

“So why would a kid lift an eighty dollar piece, then turn around and pay for a VCR worth two bills? Why not steal the more expensive item, if you’re going to steal?”

Dane brought his child up into his arms and hugged him rather roughly. His eyes were closed and I wondered if he’d heard me. Then he opened his eyes and spoke.

“You’re talking about a nineteen-year-old kid, Nick, and you expect him to do something rational.” He put down his child. “You think too damn much.”

“And you brood too much,” I said, rising from my chair. “Why don’t you go on inside. I’ve got to get going.”

“Don’t tell me not to brood. The hole is just getting deeper and deeper around here.”

I looked at his beautiful kid, then at him, and said, “You’re right. A single guy like me just can’t understand your ‘problems.’ ” I shook his hand. “So long, Joe. Thanks for the beer.”

I walked across the yard and looked through the screen door. Sarah was stirring the pot of pasta, the child in the fatigues sitting at her feet. I went around the side of their house and to my car without saying good-bye.

When I entered my apartment, the top light was blinking on my answering machine. I pushed t he bar. The tape rewound, then the unit made several noises that sounded like locks being turned.

The message began: “Mr. DeGarcey, this is Maureen Shultz. I reached John Heidel. He’s not sure exactly where Eddie and his friends went, only he knows they went south… He did give me some more information on the girl. Her parents are from Elizabeth City, in North Carolina… anyway, that’s where she grew up. That’s all I got out of John, I hope it helps… If you talk to Eddie, tell him his father and me… tell him we said hello.”