Fools Paradise (15 page)

It was too much to hope that Raybob would take over as family scapegoat.

“I'm engaged to Tony's cousin. Please,” Bobbyjay said, not knowing how else to put it to this rocket scientist. “Pop wants to win this election. Let's make this work, okay?”

“You're supposed to be on my side,” Bobbert said with resentment. “How am I supposed to explain to the head carpenter where I been all afternoon? I let Tony Dit stuff me into my own roadbox?”

“I'll think of something to tell him. You just back me up.”

“Thanks, Bobbyjay,” Bobbert said.

Bobbyjay looked at him with surprise. “Don't thank me yet.”

When they got down onto the stage, Tannyhill demanded to know whether Bobbert had been in a bar and if he was fit to work.

“He got locked in his roadbox, Tanny,” Bobbyjay said and looked at Bobbert for a quick wink. “Dumb kid bet one of the guys he could get out in fifteen minutes. Been watchin' that Houdini movie, I guess. I just found him.”

Tanny looked at Bobbert with disgust. “I'd send you home, only the day's almost over and I need another pair of hands on deck. You look like shit,” he added, examining Bobbert's rumpled clothes.

“I almost smothered,” Bobbert whined, and Bobbyjay kicked him on the ankle.

“Good,” Tanny said. “Get to work now.”

Bobbyjay watched his cousin mooch out on deck and pick up his end of a batten. He had a feeling he hadn't heard the last of this.

Daisy spent the afternoon coiling cable. This was thick black rubber stuff with a multiple-copper-wire core, heavy as sin. It lay sullenly on the deck and dared her to unsnarl it. When she tried coiling it over her shoulder, the cable bit down heavily until she could barely lift it. When she tried to untangle its twisted coils, the heavy connectors on the ends whacked her on the shins, and a faintly sticky black stuff rubbed off onto her clothes and every exposed inch of her skin.

Weasel had led her to this corner of the stage an hour ago and she had only succeeded in recoiling two lengths of cable.

“Untie each one, coil it up again, and tie it shut. Pile 'em over here,” Weasel had said.

She'd challenged him with suspicion. “What's the point? They're already coiled and tied.”

“So you learn how to do it. We have an extra couple of hours you can practice in. Learn while you earn, that's what being in a union means. Then you won't hold everybody up figuring it out during an loadout.”

With that Weasel had walked away, leaving her, she was sure, to one of those dumb jobs they give the new kid. Like roofers sending somebody out to buy nails ‘with the heads on the other ends.'

Exhausted and frustrated, she stopped and stared resentfully at the neat heaps of coiled cable.

Somebody must be good at this. There were seven long cables and sixteen short ones, all rolled neatly into piles, with a length of black cotton cord—'tie line'—tying them shut so they wouldn't uncoil themselves into a messy snarl like the one at her feet.

She looked around. Nobody in her corner. Nobody watching. No line of sight, a new term she'd learned here, from any corner of the seating area—”the house”—beyond the open main curtain.

She walked to the heap of fifty-foot cables. There had to be a way around this bullshit.

With another glance over her shoulder, Daisy lifted the first cable coil off the pile, flipped it over, and dumped it four feet away. Then she untied the tie line holding it together and retied it in a nice bow knot.

Let Weasel try to prove she hadn't uncoiled and recoiled that bundle of cable!

Quickly she did this with every other coiled cable, until she was left staring at the last one, an evil bundle of black rubber spaghetti as thick as her wrist.

“I'm going to figure this out. Or kill you.”

And for the next hour she uncoiled and recoiled and swore and banged her shins, working on the same length of hundred-foot cable. Her hands were black with grime by the time Weasel came around to inspect her work, but by then she felt that she could probably have actually coiled all those cables herself. There was a way to heft it so that the cable's snaky urge to twist itself worked in your favor and made it lay down tidily. She was proud of herself.

Weasel grunted when he saw her work. “Nice try, Killer. Now do the rest of 'em.”

“What do you mean?” she said as indignantly as she could fake it. He'd called her ‘Killer!' Her new nickname was already in place!

“Yo.” Weasel pointed at one of the ones she had cheated on. “Suppose I want to use the male end of that multi-cable?”

She flushed. Was this more harassment? “You're being rude.”

“Wouldn't dare, Killer.” He picked up the end of the cable with short, shiny brass rods coming out of it. “Male.” Then he showed her the other connector, all holes. “Female. Say I pick up the male end and try to drag it over there. Here, you do it.”

Reluctantly she grabbed the end he held out to her and pulled. It wouldn't budge. She yanked harder. “Darnit!” The entire weight of the hundred-foot coil lay on top of the end she was holding. She glared at Weasel. “Of course it won't move. It's on the bottom.”

“But it was on the top before.”

She bit her lip. “I recoiled it wrong.”

“I doubt that. Look at this one.” He pointed to the cable she'd actually worked on. “Lays smooth, don't it? If you don't move the piles carefully, they tangle just a little bit. And then this happens.” Weasel patted her on the shoulder. “Nice try. Do 'em all. Don't look at me like that,” he added. “Suppose I'd made you run all that cable the way it is now? In front of the guys?”

She hissed out a long sigh. “I get it.”

He nodded. “Hey, is it true Marty Dit is gonna run for the Board again?”

“Ask him,” Daisy said and went back to work.

Next day at lunch, she told Bobbyjay what had happened with the cable and he just laughed. “Clever. Next time you'll know to flip 'em carefully.”

They sat in their own booth in the back of Herm's. Whether out of respect for their nonexistent relationship or because they were eating somewhere else, the other guys left them to their privacy. Whatever. She was grateful to be away from them for an hour.

“Next time he'll have something else horrible for me to do.”

“Did you know how to coil cable before today?”

Daisy rolled her eyes. “No.”

“So now you know.” He bit off half a double dog.

“He called me Killer,” Daisy offered. “I think he doesn't hate me.”

“Nobody hates you, Daze. It's just the system. They show you how to do stuff and you figure out who you are and it takes a while to get it all right. You have to find your place.”

She groaned. “It's as bad as Goomba's house. Everybody gets to pick on me and make me bring them coffee, and they throw their dirty socks on the floor and they belch and fart and pinch me.”

“Anybody pinches you, tell me,” Bobbyjay said seriously.

Don't tell him. Tony will kill him.
“They just brush against me. And not lately,” she added, feeling more cheerful.

“And Weasel's working on your moniker.” Bobbyjay's concern surprised her.

“True. You're treating me really nice, too.”

He flushed bright pink. “Everybody should treat you nice.” For an instant she thought she saw the cow-eyes again, but then he cleared his throat. “They hassling you at home about, about us?”

What does that mean? Us. I should never have necked with him in the rumpus room.
She said cautiously, “Goomba hasn't said anything about the wedding for a while.” That was a slip. She should have said ‘the engagement.' Sometimes Daisy worried that Bobbyjay was taking this fake wedding thing too seriously. “He's all worked up about the election. Again.” That was depressing. “I'd so hoped he would be over that nonsense this year. Of course having to get ten thousand dollars' worth of work done on your car would bend anybody's wa, I guess.”

“I guess,” Bobbyjay said, still pink.

An unwelcome suspicion assailed Daisy. “Uh, does your family, like, your grandfather and your dad and all, are they taking this engagement seriously? I mean, nobody on your side,” she lowered her voice, “suspects anything?” She watched closely.

“Nope, they all swallowed it,” Bobbyjay said, sounding sad.

“Weird. My Goomba is so convinced it's not real.”

Bobbyjay looked startled. “What about all that loveydovey peace-on-earth stuff? He's always saying how excited he is and what he wants to do for us. It's embarrassing. How does this mean he doesn't believe it?”

“I can tell,” she said darkly. “He's testing me. We have to be on our guard, Bobbyjay. He's going to come up with some hideous gimmick to make us both miserable and try to prove it's not—we're not—you know.” She blushed. Suddenly it seemed cruel to keep rubbing it in that this engagement was going nowhere. He'd been a total brick, getting her this job, taking care of her at work, sticking up for her at the fish fry. He wouldn't even let her buy her own lunch. Surely she didn't have to keep hurting his feelings, did she?

If Bobbyjay was heartsore, he didn't look it. “Well, what can he do? Long as we never admit the truth, he's stuck.”

That was why she had to keep hurting his feelings. That word ‘never.'

She said baldly, “If we never admit the truth, we're liable to wind up married. We've got to find a way to get these guys settled down. Without—without going too far. Only, how?”

“For starters, we could pay for his car.”

Her voice rose. “How can I? I haven't even got paid by the Opera House yet!”

“Well,” Bobbyjay said, “I had more in mind that I would pay. It was my family messed up his car.”
He finally admitted it!

Daisy felt dumb for feeling good about that. “No. If anybody should pay, it's them.”

“Daisy, ‘they' are ‘me.' I'm the enemy too,” he said, looking strained.

“No. I forbid you.”

He seemed to accept this argument, weak as it was.

“Besides, if you pay, it's the same thing as a confession.”

“It might settle him down. A lot. Instead of a big headache, suddenly he's getting new upholstery for free.”

“I won't hear of it.” If she could do nothing more for Bobbyjay, she could stop him from taking the fall for this one stupid thing the other Mortons had done.

“Would you rather be stuck in this engagement?” he said, and she remembered all over again that Bobbyjay wasn't stupid at all.

Don't sound too eager. It'll give him the totally wrong idea.
“Well. Y-y-e-e-e-s.”

“There ya go,” he said and spread his hands, not looking the least bit hopeful or triumphant.

“It's a question of how far you'll go to protect them,” she said, not sure how she felt now. “That's what they want to know.”

“That's what they always want to know.”

She eyed him. “Would you actually get married? To stop the fighting? For good?”

Bobbyjay leaned across the scarred formica, glancing over his shoulder as he put his lips nearer her ear. “I wouldn't do it...for them.” At a distance of two inches his face filled her world.

Daisy felt a kiss coming on. She stammered, “I wouldn't do it for anybody except m-me.”

To her outrage, he drew back. The big lunk seemed to be thinking. Then he nodded. “Time to go back to work.”

The almighty Pete Packard looked displeased, but Daisy had faced Marty Ditorelli's displeasure all her life. An Irish clone of him didn't scare her.

Packard rolled his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. “I ast you not to start a riot with my boys and now I hear you kicked one of my stagehands in the nuts. You got anything to say about that?”

Daisy said, “Never happened.”

“He says you did.”

“Did he log a grievance? Like, did he accuse me of, like, sexual harassment?”

“Somebody heard him say it.”

“Somebody needs to get their hearing checked.”

“Badger Kenack is a valued member of this organization.”

“Yeah, my grandfather thinks so, too.” This was probably a little too much mouth, but, jeez louise, Packard was pushy. What did the mean old geezer want? “The other boys have been very well-behaved.”

Pete Packard turned a little redder. “Was that before or after you nutted Badger Kenack? Don't answer that.” He breathed through his nose.
It must be killing him,
she thought,
not to swear at me.
He said, “This situation between your families has been around a lot longer than you. Now, I know it don't necessarily penetrate your bubble head, but the International is lookin' at Chicago right now. How we do things. We can be a good example, or we can be a bad example.”