Fools Paradise (10 page)

The non-dyke just looked at her oddly again, with half a smile that clearly said,
It amazes me that you're still alive.

“Don't piss off the journeymen,” Bobbyjay muttered.

She turned. “That's a journeyman?”

“New century. Girls and guys are all brothers. And sisters. Look, we'll talk on the way home,” he said as if she were the dumbest thing wearing shoes. She opened her mouth to tell him not to patronize her, but he'd already left.

She got the lecture anyway. On the way home Bobbyjay explained why she had to eat dirt from everybody in the Local.

“It's just how it is. You're new. You're coming in late over the heads of younger apprentices, the sons of journeymen. Everybody knows you've got Bobby Senior and me and old man Dit—uh, your grandfather behind you. Now you got to prove you don't think you're the shit. Uh, special.”

Don't forget Badger Snoopster Kenack.
“I don't think I'm special,” she said hotly. She thought of how Badger had looked at her while trying not to clutch his balls in public. She'd wanted to make him look at her like that since she was thirteen. Her eyes stung with frustrated tears.

“Well, what were you doing, talking like that to the journeyman moving the lift?”

“I almost fell off, he was pushing that thing so fast!”

“Telling One-Ton Jepson he's short is not nice.”

“Wonton? What kind of a name is that?”

“One-Ton. He's named for his pickup truck. It's, uh, compensatory.”

She blinked. “Big word, Bobbyjay.”

“Sorry.” He looked guilty.

“The point is,” she said, “it's not fair. They get to pick on me and I have to shut up? That's not who I am. I'm the peacemaker.”

They stood at a stop light. Bobbyjay turned an incredulous look on her. “Peacemaker.”

“Yeah,” she said. “It was me who put a stop to the bloodshed, back when. Between our grandfathers.” She felt her chest tighten, telling the old story. “I was two years old. Goomba and Badger and Daddy came home all beat-up and bloody. I got all upset.” Goomba hadn't told that story in her hearing in a long time. “I said, ‘You stop fighting. I love you so much.' And Goomba said, ‘I love you so much
angelina
, I'll do what you say.'”

Maybe Goomba didn't care any more. God, maybe she'd undone a lifetime of good work by getting engaged to Bobbyjay. But what else could she have done? Goomba had looked about to strangle Bobbyjay with his bare hands when the gun misfired. She touched her chest over the tight place.

Bobbyjay didn't seem impressed by the famous peacemaker story. “It wasn't you, it was our Moms—yours, mine, and Mikey Ray's. They ganged up on the men.”

“It was not! It was me! I told them to stop!”

They got into Bobbyjay's Jeep. He said, “Nope. The moms rule.”

Suddenly she didn't believe her own story.

She was a legend in the family. Yet when Bobbyjay doubted, she realized how unlikely the legend was. Maybe it was just another of Goomba's affectionate fantasies. Worn out, now, like her fantasies about Badger.

“That's the Morton version,” she guessed. Of course they wouldn't credit a baby Ditorelli, a female baby at that, with making the peace.

“If you had a role—” Bobbyjay began, making a concession.

“I made the peace!” she yelled. Her chest hurt bad.

“Well, sure,” he said amiably, bumping out of the parking ramp onto Washington. “But I'd say it was because you told the truth when it needed to be told. That's not the same as peacemaking.”

“But you say I shouldn't tell the truth at work.”

“You only got away with kicking Badger in the balls 'cause he's Marty Dit's best friend. Shit, that was Jack Yu's wife you called a dyke to her face. She's been a journeyman for twenty-five years. She kicked my ass when I was an apprentice, and she was a lot tougher on me than she was on you today.” Bobbyjay put his hand on her knee, watching the traffic while he talked. “You're just new, Daze. You'll be kickin' ass and takin' names yourself, someday. For now, you've got to pay your dues like the rest of us.”

Daisy was only half listening. Bobbyjay's take on her peacemaking legend set her world spinning.
Have I been making a jerk of myself all these years? Speaking my mind and fighting with all my cousins? Would Tony stop pinching me if I was nicer to him?
In a family like hers, where everybody was a bit of a kid inside, and they lived like lion cubs, cuffing each other and tumbling around with their emotions hanging out, she might not even notice if she was being a jerk. Maybe she had completely misinterpreted Tony's pawing. Was he just hitting back, the way the guys at the Opera House did?

Humility overwhelmed her.

Bobbyjay let go of the gearshift and took her hand in his.

She recognized that Bobbyjay had skills that she lacked. Not just work skills, but social know-how.

He's not even stuck up.
He believed those senior journeymen outranked him, too. He wasn't putting her down affectionately, the way Goomba would.

She breathed in rush hour smog and felt her chest ease.

Her respect for Bobbyjay took a leap. When she raised her eyes from his big strong hand to his big strong face, tan and calm like a surfer's, she thought about him apologizing for using big words that nobody knew, and a wave of warmth overwhelmed her.

“Okay. You—you made me understand,” she conceded.

He flashed cow eyes at her and blushed.
What if he isn't in love with me? What if it's just lust?
He might go cow-eyed over her but he definitely didn't want to marry her.

Did any of the guys really love her? She suddenly felt sorry for poor little Wesley with his sixteen-year-old thing keeping him up at night, living with a slutty-looking cousin in too-tight low riders.

She slid her hand out of Bobbyjay's.

“I understand now about the clothes,” she said quietly. “You were right.”

“You said that yesterday,” Bobbyjay said, waving off her apology. “I ain't makin' you eat dirt, Daze. We get enough of that from our families.”

“We do, don't we,” she said and forced out a laugh. “But I'm glad I kicked Badger.”

Bobbyjay's head swiveled around fast. “Why did you, anyway? Don't tell me he had the nerve to hit on you.”

She swallowed. “Well, not recently. Not ever, really.” She looked through the front windshield at sweaty yuppies in suits rushing through the intersection in their uncomfortable-looking shoes. “One time.” She was aware of Bobbyjay listening intently beside her. “One time. When I was about thirteen.”

“Jesus Christ!” Bobbyjay burst out.

“It's not what you think. I put on makeup all by myself for the first time. Goomba sent Badger to pick me up from school.” She wasn't quite ready to say,
I wore it for Badger.
“And he told me not to wear makeup like that, because guys would want to do something, and I said, What, because,” she gulped. She'd never told anyone. “Because he was always telling me what to do and I—”
I had the hugest crush on him.
“I was tired of it. So I said, What. And he grabbed me and he shook me around and he stuck his tongue in my mouth and—”

And Badger had handled her in a way that thrilled her and fulfilled her wildest fantasies, until it went on too long, until he squeezed too hard, until she got scared and squeaked and wriggled.

“And then he said
that's
what, and I had to look like a nice girl if I wanted to be treated like one.” She pulled in a deep breath. “He's very old-fashioned,” she said dismissively.

That excuse sounded lame today, after two days of wrestling with the intricacies of journeyman etiquette.

“You never told Marty Dit?” Bobbyjay said, half a question in his voice. “Naw. Your grandfather would have killed him.”

“He's never done it again. Just, he gives me these sarcastic looks sometimes, like, Am I behaving myself.” She wished her crush on Badger had died, after the awful, contemptuous way he'd mauled her, but the horrid truth was, her crush had only intensified.
I'm not the kind of girl you love,
she thought.
I'm the kind you maul.
Tears welled up and threatened to spill out. She waited until Bobbyjay was merging left, his face turned away, so she could swallow them down.

“Huh.” Bobbyjay sounded thoughtful. “On the other hand, if Marty Dit knew all along—” He stopped and sent her a guilty look.

“If? If Goomba knew?” Her voice rose. “What do you mean?”

But she knew. She remembered suddenly looking away from a circle of beery, braying stockbrokers' faces to see her grandfather watching her from across the room. He was just standing there, letting her suffer. Like he couldn't make himself punish her, but he would stand by and watch someone else do it for him.

That made her so mad.

A fire burned through her. She felt a fierce resolve to take them all down a peg.

She would get good at stagehanding. She would figure out the rules and work them, until all of them, from Pete Packard and Goomba and Badger on down to her cousins Tony and Vince and every bum at the Opera House, was forced to treat her with respect.

Bobbyjay pulled up in front of the two-flat. He looked at her soberly as if trying to plumb her thoughts.

“You've been great today,” she said, putting her hand over his on the gearshift, wondering how she could use him to teach her menfolk a lesson. “I'll do better tomorrow, I promise.”

His hand turned under hers, and he fiddled with the diamond on her fourth finger. “You're doin' great, too. Keep your pecker up. We'll show 'em all.”

“We?” Her breath caught.

“Sure. We're in this together.”

Goomba's face appeared at the living room window of their two-flat, and her heart sank. “So we are.” She swallowed. “See you tomorrow morning.”

“Mañana, babe.”

She lugged her toolbag out of the back of his Jeep and went inside to start supper.

Thursday, Bobbyjay swapped shifts with Mikey Ray and drove from the Opera House to upper Michigan Avenue, the sacrifice of a whole afternoon's doubletime. But Daisy had asked. Her mom was freaking her out. He wanted to take Mom Ditorelli aside and tell her to look out for her daughter better.

He met them in the Bloomie's bridal salon. Daisy looked mutinous, her mother calm and determined.

“'Sup?” he said, stooping to kiss Daisy on the cheek. She flashed him a grateful look and he was glad he had come. “How'd you get the day off?” he whispered to her.

“Asked John Tannyhill. How did you?”

He didn't tell her.

“Bobbyjay,” Mom Ditorelli said, “how wonderful that you could make it. You can tell Daisy how you like the dresses.”

Dresses plural, he thought. He sagged a little. “Sure, Mom Dit—uh, Fran. Only—” he looked around desperately at white leather easy chairs.
White. I ask you.
He was acutely conscious of his sooty work clothes and steel-toed boots. There wasn't a thing in sight he dared touch. “Where can I sit?”

A dark, foreign-looking woman with a pinched face came up and threw a sheet over one of the white chairs. “Voila,” she said. “Please, be comfortable.”

The chair was really, really comfy. That boded no good.

The saleslady brought out a dress the size of the Shubert Theatre's main curtain. Daisy sat beside Bobbyjay, looking crushed, while her mom jabbered with the saleslady.

Bobbyjay took Daisy's hand. “You okay?” he said quietly.

“Pay attention, love,” her mom said.

Daisy squeezed his hand and let go, but she tipped her knee over to touch his. That pretty much resigned him to not moving.

After about a week they dragged Daisy into a back room with fifty-seven dresses. And eventually she came out.

His tongue stuck in his throat. “Guk.”

She looked like an angel. Her hair was kind of fluffed up and flying out behind her, and her bosom and shoulders rose out of this foamy white stuff like peaches in whipped cream, and her waist seemed to be about three inches around.

“You like?” her mom said.

“Eghk.” He swallowed hard. “Yes.”

“How much does he like it?” Fran asked Daisy.

Daisy looked him over critically. “That's a seven out of ten. Try the next one.”

He sent her a pleading look, but she disappeared into the back again.

The next dress was very drapey. He could see the shape of her hips under it. The top covered what the last dress had showed, clear up to her chin. Over a frilly lace collar her face looked severe, like a nun or something. Only—those hips—he licked his lips.

Fran glanced at Bobbyjay. “Well?”

“Told ya. Three, tops.”

“Five,” Bobbyjay croaked, eying the way the curve of her butt came and went as she swanned around the room, glaring behind her at the mirrors.

Fran raised her eyebrows.

“He's a tit man,” Daisy said, and smiled at him over the lace collar.

He crossed his legs. “Uh, I gotta go back to work in ten minutes.” He folded his hands over his crotch, too.

“Hold that thought,” Fran said, and dragged Daisy away.

They squeezed three more dresses into fifteen minutes. Woman-talk flew like bats diving at his hair: ivory lace, bodice pleats, goring, plenum, veil, bustle, train. He tried not to flinch. Two more minutes and he would bail.

“So we like the first dress top with the second dress skirt and a medium train, stiff veil, and a garnet rose coronet with the seawrack hairstyle, chatelaine pearls, no gloves, clocked bone hose, and stacked heels,” Fran said, looking at her notes. “Just out of curiosity, what's the damage?”

The saleslady said, “About eight thousand.”

Daisy choked. “No! I won't do it!”

Bobbyjay shut his eyes.
We're on a mission here, remember, Daze?
“I can pay for it,” he croaked.