The Way Home

PART THREE
SIGNAL 13
TEN

The job was north of Logan Circle and south of U Street, in a section of the city that people in the past had broadly called Shaw, but now got called Logan by many real estate agents and some residents. In midtown the homes were row houses, mostly, some topped with D.C.-signature turrets, all backed by alleys. There were houses here and there whose disrepair went back generations, but the majority had been restored and remodeled, and the general impression was one of transformation.

A white Ford cargo van rolled down U Street, its two occupants in matching blue polo shirts, taking note of the sidewalk parade, people strolling past restaurants, bars, and boutiques. Different skin colors, a mash-up of straight and gay, non-flash money and hipsters, heads, hustlers, and intellectuals, young couples, bike messengers, old folks who remembered the fires of ’68, everyone trying this new thing together. It wasn’t perfect because nothing is, but down here it seemed as good as Washington had ever been, and for some, it was a dream realized.

To Chris Flynn, it just looked like a nice place to live. But he figured that he would never be able to afford to buy a place in this zip code. Weren’t any carpet installers who owned property here. The ones who carried mortgages here, he reckoned, had gone to college.

“Dag, boy, it sure is different than it was,” said Ben Braswell, his big frame sprawled on the bench, his arm on the lip of the open passenger window.

“It was the Metro system did it,” said Chris, thinking on something his father had once said, explaining the positive changes in the city. “Every place where they opened subway stations, the neighborhoods improved around them. Public transportation got all this shit going again.”

“Took, like, twenty-five years to happen.”

“Point is, it happened.”

“Yo, man, pull over,” said Ben, rubbernecking the diner that bore his name. “I need a half-smoke now.”

“After this job, maybe,” said Chris.

“Chili, mustard, onions,” said Ben, his gentle eyes gone dreamy. “Sweet tea. Maze on the juke…”

“We don’t do this installation, we don’t get paid.”

“How we supposed to work if we don’t eat?”

“How you supposed to pay for your half-smoke if you don’t work?” said Chris.

“True,” said Ben.

Chris was going to have to disappoint him. There wasn’t time to stop anywhere because they were already behind. After this install they’d have to drive back out to Beltsville in Maryland to pick up the roll for the next job, then head over to a home in Bethesda to complete it. Ben would understand.

Chris turned left off U into the residential section of the neighborhood. “If we get done quick, we’ll have time for lunch.”

They found a spot on the street close to the job site. A real estate agent was standing outside the row house, talking on her cell, a look of annoyance on her face as she spotted the van, recognizing the magnetic sign on its side that read “Flynn’s Floors.”

“Wait here,” said Chris. “Let me get up with this woman before we unload.”

Chris got out of the van and approached her. She continued to talk on her cell and did not acknowledge him. She was in her midfifties, with a short, spiky, gelled hairdo. She was blond, heavily made up, and had crinkle-bunny lines from age and too much sun. Her petite figure seemed shapeless under her loose, sleeveless purple dress.

The “For Sale” sign mounted on a post behind her had her photograph on it, arms crossed, smiling, with two young people, also smiling, standing behind her. In big letters, the sign said, “Mindy Kramer,” and below it, in smaller script, “The Kramer Dream Team.”

“I’ve got to go,” said Mindy Kramer into her phone. “They finally got here.” She shut the cell’s lid with an audible snap and looked at Chris. “You are?”

“Chris.” He did not use his last name unless asked.

“I expected you earlier.”

“We got hung up on another job-”

“And now I have to leave and meet a client on Capitol Hill. I’ll let you in and then I’ll come back and lock up when the job is done.” She looked past him to Ben, seated in the van, slouched, his blue Nationals W cap worn sideways on his head. “Mr. Flynn said his crews were bonded and insured. I assume that includes you and your partner.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Let’s take a look at the room.”

She marched up the granite steps that led to the front door. Chris turned to the van and did the darting-tongue thing, and Ben smiled. Chris followed Mindy Kramer into the house.

Chris admired the structure and its craftsmanship as soon as he walked inside. Chair rail molding in the dining room, wide-plank hardwood floors in the center hall, plaster walls. No furniture, though. Whoever once lived here was gone.

“This way.” Mindy Kramer cut a right through open French doors.

Chris stepped in, rapping his knuckles on the door frame out of habit and curiosity. As he expected, it was solid wood, not the Masonite he saw in so much new construction. The space was about fourteen by twelve, he guessed, and would be called a library on the listing, as it held a wall of built-in bookshelves. He looked down at the worn carpet that covered the floor.

“It should be a pretty straightforward job,” said Mindy Kramer. “I went with the cable. Mr. Flynn said the loop pile would be fine for a medium-traffic space.”

“It’ll work,” said Chris, pulling his Stanley tape measure off the belt line of his Dickies where he kept it clipped. He laid down the tape and measured the length and width of the room, which was close to his estimation, and mentally noted that his father had ordered a larger roll than was needed to do the job. This meant that he hadn’t liked Mindy Kramer or that he foresaw complaints from her or multiple post-job visits. When the customer showed arrogance or attitude up front, they tended to pay extra. Chris’s father called this the “personality defect tax.”

“Is what you brought sufficient?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Chris. “It’s gonna be fine.”

“There’s a walnut floor under this carpet, but it needs sanding and refinishing. Nice hardwood is preferable to carpet when you’re selling a home, of course, especially to younger clients, but I don’t have the time or inclination to go that route. I just want to get some carpet down and bring in a few pieces of furniture here and there so I can flip the property. I bought it at auction for a song. The previous owner was a gay gentleman who had no surviving heirs… ”

Chris nodded, trying to keep eye contact with her. All she was doing was bragging on how savvy she had been and how much money she was going to make. Telling a stranger this because she was insecure. He was not impressed.

“We’ll get started,” said Chris. “It shouldn’t take us long.”

“Here’s my card,” said Mindy Kramer, handing him one. “Call me on my cell when you’re almost done and I’ll shoot back over and give it a look. Tell me your number, Chris.”

Chris gave her his cell number. She punched it into the contacts file of her phone and typed in a name.

“I’m going to call you Chris Carpet,” she said, proud of her cleverness, “so I can remember who you are when I scan through my contacts.”

Whatever, thought Chris. But he said, “That’s fine.”

Mindy Kramer hit “save” and glanced at her watch. “Any questions?”

“That’ll do ’er,” said Chris, giving her the redneck inflection that she no doubt expected.

Ben had already slipped his kneepads over his jeans and was tying a leather multipocket tool belt around his waist when Chris emerged from the house. Ben and Chris wore the same type of belts and in their pouches they kept their pro-shop razor knives. As Ben finished tying his belt off, Mindy Kramer got into her C-series and, cell phone to her ear, sped away.

Chris put his pads on, and he and Ben went around to the back of the van. They untied a red towel from the end of the out-hanging carpet and removed the roll and its sister roll of padding. They carried the carpet inside, came back and got the padding, took it up the steps, and placed it beside the roll they had stowed in the hall. It was hotter in the house than it was outside, and both of them began to perspire. They had done one job already, so it was the second time they were sweating into their polo shirts that day.

“In here,” said Chris, and Ben followed him into the library.

Ben sized up the job, liking that there was no furniture to move and that the space was virtually square. “Looks easy.”

“Can you take up the old carpet?”

“What, you too busy to help?”

“I gotta check in with my father. I’ll only be like a minute. I’m sayin, get started, is all.”

Ben commenced taking up the old carpet in the library. He started in a corner as Chris walked from the room and reached into a pocket of his Dickies for his phone. He wandered down the hall to what had been a living room and punched in his father’s number.

“Hey,” said Thomas Flynn. “Where are you?”

“Down at that job off U Street.”

“The Dream Team there, too?”

“Just Mindy. She had to bolt, but she’s coming back. We were late gettin down here. That job in Laurel set us back about an hour.”

“I’m in the warehouse. My guy says you were late getting started this morning.”

“A little.” Chris was a bit annoyed that his father was still checking up on him so closely. At the same time, he told himself that it was business, only business.

“Ben sleep in again?”

“Wasn’t Ben, Dad. We were just a little late. We did the job in Laurel quick, but the guy had a problem with the bubbles. I had to talk to him for a while. Explain why it looked that way.”

“They all belch about the bubbles, son. Did you tell him they’ll flatten out after he walks on it?”

“Yeah, I told him.”

“The bubbles go away. They do flatten.”

“I know. So that’s done, and now me and Ben are gonna knock this out.”

“And then that job in Bethesda, right?”

“Yes. We’ll get that done, too.”

“It’s money for all of us,” said Flynn.

“Right,” said Chris.

He walked down the hall, slipping the phone back into the pocket of his work pants. He could hear Ben chuckling, saying, “Chris, come in here, man,” and then, almost in wonder, “Oh, shit.” For a moment, it reminded Chris of Ben’s voice coming from his cell down the hall at Pine Ridge, how Ben had talked to himself at night, how his talking had bothered others, how it had been a comforting sound for Chris.

Chris stepped into the library. Ben was sitting on the faded, scuffed walnut-plank floor, the worn carpet and corroded padding peeled back. A piece of the floor, a cutout, had been removed and was propped up against the wall.

There was an old Adidas gym bag, the kind with the stiff handles that was popular before Chris and Ben’s time, on the floor beside Ben. It had been zipped open.

Chris could see cash. Green money in stacks, held together by bands.

“Oh, shit, ” said Ben, grinning up at Chris.

Chris felt a rush of excitement. Found money did that to a man, even a rich one.

But Chris did not smile.

Thomas Flynn warehoused his inventory at a space on Sunnyside Avenue, a long loop of road holding cinder-block and concrete structures in an industrial park in Beltsville, Maryland, north of College Park. Flynn didn’t own the space, called Top Carpet and Floor Install, but paid in-and-out charges to keep his goods there. TCFI’s main business was installation, subbed out from one of two big-box retailers serving the PG County do-it-yourself trade.

Flynn stood before a large wooden stage at the head of the warehouse. The stage had holes in it and air was blown up through the holes, a hovercraft effect that allowed one worker to handle a large piece of carpet and spin it around while he laminated or cut it.

Beside Flynn was one of Isaac’s crew, a young curly-haired man named Hector who wore a blue polo shirt displaying a breast patch company logo, the L’s in “Flynn’s Floors” depicted as vertical, slightly bent carpet rolls. Amanda had come up with the design, along with the idea that the employees wear the shirts. She said that with the shirts the installers looked as if they worked for a “real” company. Flynn agreed to it, with the childish condition that his polo shirt be red, to separate him from the others. Also, with his black hair, he felt that red looked good.

“You gonna take that Berber roll with you, right?” said Flynn.

“That job is not today,” said Hector.

“I need to get it out of here. Otherwise I’ve got to pay, like, rent for it. You’ve got Isaac’s van, haven’t you?”

“Yes.”

“C’mon, I’ll help you put it in.”

They found the roll in Flynn’s section. He checked its tag, on which was written the customer’s name, and he motioned for Hector to grab an end.

“The Berber popular,” said Hector, grunting as he lifted.

“I can move as much as they give me,” said Flynn.

He was, and always had been, a good salesman. He sold like a factory rep, not an untrained retail salesman with an eye on the clock or a better job. He was a professional carpet-and-floor man. He knew the product thoroughly, explained its advantages, and, because he was a good listener rather than a fast talker, made many deals.

The problem was not with sales. Through referrals and his own acumen at closing, Flynn had as much business as he could handle. The problem was with installations and installers.

Flynn still had Isaac and his crew, and they were golden. Isaac had been with him for many years and would be with him as long as Flynn had work. Isaac had built on to his house in Wheaton, one of the many unconventional “Spanish mansions” seen in the area around Veirs Mill and Randolph roads, had a daughter in college and a son who was learning the installation trade. He would never live in El Salvador again. Isaac’s crew came and went, usually leaving the country due to unpaid taxes or immigration complications, but even though the faces changed, to a man they did quality, responsible work. No wonder Flynn’s mantra was Thank God for Hispanic workers.

Flynn and Hector loaded the roll into the van.

Hector looked at Flynn sorrowfully and said, “No more job today.”

“We didn’t make much money today,” said Flynn, always careful to use the inclusive pronoun. “But we will tomorrow. I’ve got something for you every day this week.”

“Okay, boss.”

Hector drove the van out of the lot, Flynn thinking, Yeah, these Spanish guys like to work. Not like Chris and his crews of parolees.

There were plenty of installers with tough pasts. Ex-offenders, bulls, and badasses of various colors and ethnicities, all on the young side. None had gone to college. This wasn’t the place for students looking for summer jobs. Flynn had tried one or two out, and they hadn’t been able to cut it. It was hard, demanding work. The goods were heavy and bulky, and much of the job time was spent on one’s knees.

Many of the installers drank heavily at night and used marijuana and other drugs. Flynn could smell the alcohol in their sweat, could see the misery in their eyes nearly every morning. Unhealthy skin pallor was another giveaway. When Flynn interviewed a potential worker, he took note of his teeth. A guy had fucked-up teeth, it meant he came from little means or was raised by people who didn’t care enough about their own kid to see to his dental hygiene. Whites from East Baltimore had the worst choppers.

Because it was hard work, and because the success of his business depended on their diligence and conscientious manner, Flynn compensated his installers relatively well. A sharp, hard-charging bull could make fifty, sixty grand a year installing carpets, but guys like that were rare. Chris’s guys were lucky to make twenty-five to thirty thousand. Flynn put a little extra on Chris’s check, due to the fact that he was a crew chief, so Chris made about thirty-five.

Thirty-five tops, thought Flynn, as he walked into the TCFI offices to drop off a check.

“Hey, Tommy,” said a young woman behind one of two computers in the office.

Flynn couldn’t remember her name. She was usually outside smoking in the morning when he came by, a gregarious Laurel girl, chubby, with a Route 1 hairstyle, one of those burn perm things.

“How’s it going, sweetheart?” said Flynn.

“It’s Susie.”

“I knew that. Sweetheart suits you better, though.” Susie smiled, and Flynn dropped an envelope on her desk. “Give that to the boss, will you? I don’t want him to send the cavalry out after me.”

“Your son was in this morning,” said Susie.

Susie made eye contact with the girl seated behind the other computer, a pretty, fair-skinned strawberry blonde, voluptuous for her thin bone structure, couldn’t have been more than two or three years out of high school. Flynn had noticed her before but had never heard her speak.

“Say hello to Katherine,” said Susie. The girl looked down at her desk in a self-conscious gesture and smiled.

“Nice to meet you, darling,” said Flynn.

“And you,” said Katherine.

“Chris never says more than a couple of words to me,” said Susie, once again glancing at her office mate. “Course, I’m spoken for. But he doesn’t mind talking to Kate.”

“It’s Katherine,” said the woman, gently correcting her coworker.

Kate would be twenty-seven now.

“Chris is just shy around girls named Susie,” said Flynn, forcing a grin. “Not like me.”

“He doesn’t even look like you,” said Susie. “All that blond hair.”

Again the girl named Katherine looked down at her desk.

“He got that from his mom,” said Flynn, then comically puffed out his chest and made a bodybuilder’s pose. “But he got the beef from me.”

“Get out of here, Tommy!” said Susie, her boisterous, wheezy, Marlboro Light-inflected laughter trailing Flynn as he left the office.

Out in the hot sun, he put on his shades and walked to his van.

Kate would be twenty-seven. Amanda and me would be getting her ready for a wedding, or visiting her where she works, some professional job in New York City, maybe, or Chicago.

Flynn passed a guy he knew in the parking lot but did not say hello.

Chris is twenty-six. No college, time in prison, his days spent on his knees, laying carpet.

Flynn opened the van’s driver’s-side door.

Thirty-five grand a year, tops.

He got into the van and fitted his key to the ignition.

What’s going to happen to my son?