Mrs. Stanyon lived in a development on the east end of Northridge Township. I had been up there a few times before. In fact, one of the broads I'd been banging – Lois Kranz – lived a few streets over from Doris.
I pulled out of the tract of houses and onto Broad Street. It was one hell of a hot day. The sun was beating down and there wasn't a breeze in the air. The road back to town is a wide, macadam jobber, newly finished. It cuts through a big forest for a couple of miles and then you come into town. Northridge is a funny place. It's an old town with an old railroad depot and buildings like out of the Gay Nineties. But as soon as you get out of the old town a half-mile in any direction, there's all sorts of modern shopping centers, schools, and housing developments.
It all started in the late fifties, when everybody started moving up from New York. I liked it better the old way; I got plenty of good memories from when I was a kid, running around in the woods, having apple fights in the orchards, and like that. Now, most of the orchards are gone and pretty soon there won't be any woods left. On the other hand, as long as they keep coming in, I'll never have to sweat for work, being a plumber and all. And I gotta admit, putting it to middle-class, Bronx pussy is a lot better than romping in the woods with the guys.
I thought about my job as I rolled down Broad to town. Carl was gonna be pissed. It was a pain in the ass, having to answer to him all the time. Sometimes, when I think about it, I get really teed off at myself. I mean, here I am, twenty-three already, out of high school five years, and not a pot to piss in. I got no big expenses. I live with my parents still, and I don't have any payments except for the Impala. All a guy would need in a growing town like this is a stake, and he could go into business for himself. Hell, I could run my own business. The truck could say Pete Novak on it instead of C. Arlotta amp; Son, Plumbing and Contracting.
But I never was any good at saving or planning ahead.
As I got closer to town the stores and new buildings began to pop up along the road. Going by the big A amp;P center, I passed Charlie Dee, one of the local cops and a drinking buddy, and we honked at each other. A little way further down, I passed Billy Gilcher in his '68 Merc, but I didn't honk that wiseass son of a bitch.
Then I was on the main drag of the old part of town. It's a pretty narrow street with potholes up the ass and old store-fronts that are gonna be torn down by urban renewal, if they ever get around to it. Carl keeps the office down here cause the rent's cheap; in our line, you don't need to be in a fancy place in one of the shopping centers.
I hung a right and pulled into the lot we share with Al the barber and Ed's Grill. The three of us are in an old building made out of cinderblocks.
When I went inside, Carl was on the phone. He's a fat, bald guy of forty-five or so, with a big red nose on him from all the booze he puts away next door at Ed's. I flopped down in a chair across the desk from him and threw down Mrs. Stanyon's bill and her check.
"OK, Mrs. Longo, right away," Carl was saying. "I'll send up one of the boys right away." He hung up the phone and looked at me, then grabbed the bill and check.
"There was a lot of work," I said. "The pipe was clogged up good."
"An hour and a half you were gone," he said. He was pissed. "An hour and a half and all you charged her was ten bucks?" He looked at me like I was some crazy stranger.
"Yeah, well, it was just a snake-job, that's all," I said. "How could I charge her more?" I was trapped; it was a weak argument, but what could I tell him? That the job took ten minutes and the rest of the time we were banging?
"Ah, sweet Jesus!" He slammed a meaty fist down on the desk and looked up at the ceiling. Then he glared at me. "How long you been working for me? Five years? How many times I gotta tell you, it's ten dollars just to go out there and look! If to fix takes a couple minutes, OK, ten dollars. If there's a wad of toilet paper and it takes five minutes, ten dollars, OK, OK. So there's a big turd, it takes ten minutes, still OK, ten dollars. But – Jesus Christ – when it's an hour and a half, you don't charge ten dollars! You think I got time to burn? You should have charged her triple!"
"But, Carl," I said, "it was just that…"
"Never mind, never mind," he said, waving a hand in front of me. "We ain't got time. Listen, get out here and see what the story is. And don't fuck around this time, don't fuck with my business!"
He handed me the slip; he didn't know the half of it.
"Mrs. Longo," I said, reading the address. "Isn't she that fat broad on the PTA?"
"Yeah," Carl said. Then he made what was supposed to be a joke. "Probably got her fat ass stuck in the toilet seat."
I rose, unsmilingly. I wasn't about to let him smooth things over that easily. "I'll get going right away," I said. "Listen, Carl, where's Tony?"
"Next door, having lunch."
"Carl, how 'bout letting me grab a bite, OK?"
He frowned and stared up at me for several seconds. Then he wiped the sweat from his brow and was about to say no, when the phone rang. He grabbed it and brought it to his ear.
"Carl Arlotta," he said. A pause. "Oh, Mrs. Lebwohl, how are you? Trouble? Overflowing, huh? OK, Pete, but ten-minutes, you understand? Ten minutes! No, no, Mrs. Lebwohl, I was talking to one of my boys here. Yes, I'll get right on it…"
I didn't waste any time beating it out of there and ducking into Ed's. The place was empty, except for Ed behind the bar and Tony, sitting across from him on a stool. It's a small, dumpy place, narrow and dim. The fan overhead wasn't doing much. I was sweating like a bastard as I sat down next to Tony.
"Hey, Tony," I said. "Ed."
"Hey, Pete," Ed said. Tony nodded at me, his mouth stuffed with a bite of meatball hero.
"It's one hot mother out there, huh?" Ed said. He's a tall, skinny guy, about forty, with a bald spot and a lot of pock marks on his face.
"It's no better in here," I said. "When are you gonna break down and get an air conditioner?"
"Well, I don't know," he said, pouring me my usual, a glass of Rheingold. "There ain't that many bad days like this. Most of the time, you don't need it. There's no point in wasting money."
"Listen, Ed, gimme a wedge, like Tony got. I'm in a hurry."
Tony turned to me, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "The old man riding you?" he asked. He was a younger version of Carl, beer belly and all. Already, his hair was receding and he was only twenty-three, like me. We graduated in the same class.
"Yeah," I said. "About the job at Mrs. Stanyon's. What was he doing, bitching about it to you?"
"Yeah," Tony said. "You know the old man. Time is money and all that crap."
I took a long swallow, then another that emptied the glass. I reached over the counter and served myself, pulling down the lever and holding the glass. Ed was out back fixing my hero. I slid a quarter for the beer over toward the edge of the counter.
"I gotta go out on a job at Mrs. Longo's," I said.
"That's that fat PTA broad, right?" Tony asked, just before shoving the wedge between his fat lips and biting down with a loud smacking.
"Yeah," I said. "Listen, Tony, your old man say anything like he thought maybe I'm screwing around or something? I mean, he doesn't think I'm playing around with any of them broads, does he?"
Tony smiled and washed down his mouthful with beer. He turned his face to me. "No, he didn't say nothing like that. Why do you ask?" He looked at me with a knowing leer.
"No reason," I said. "I just wonder, because I know that's what you think, right?"
He gave me this silly grin, like we were two kids peeping through a knothole at naked ladies or something. Tony is what you'd call a loser. He has a lot of girlie mags and stuff like that, but he never seems to get any of the real thing. I don't think I ever even seen him dance with a girl, and I've known him for ten years.
He's got me figured for a real swinger, which shows he's got something on the ball. I guess he's smart enough to guess what goes on at some of these homes I visit. But I never told him anything, because pal nor not, he's the son of my boss. Anyway, we're not that close, really. I work with him and I went to school with him, but he was never one of my real close buddies. We just don't have nothing in common. Most of the guys I pal around with got something on the ball, and know how to score with the broads. Tony's not a bad guy, but he's a dud.
Then Ed came out with my wedge. I threw him a buck and started eating. After just a few bites, Tony slid his big can off the stool and headed for the door.
"See you guys later," he said.
I waved and finished off the second beer. Ed poured me another. When I finished eating, I lit a cigarette and blew a thick stream of smoke up at the ceiling.
"Just one smoke, and then I'm off," I said.
"Hey, Pete," Ed said, "anything ever come of that egg deal?" He was leaning back against the shelf where all the bottles were displayed.
"Naw," I said. "It wasn't paying like I thought. I was only making twenty cents a dozen and I couldn't sell enough. You didn't say nothing to Carl, did you?"
His face wrinkled up, like I was insulting him. "Do I ever?" he asked. "Come on, Pete."
"OK, sorry," I said. "It's just that my ass'd be in trouble if he ever found out about it."
I should have known better. Ed and I had been pals since I started drinking. He was the first guy to serve me, and I wasn't yet eighteen. We've been close ever since and have gone out raising hell on many a night. He's one of those guys who likes to keep young by hanging out with the kids. Anyway, he's known about all my little money-making schemes right along and he knows how I'm sick of taking Carl's crap, sick of working for peanuts, sick of everything in this town. Even the action, broad-wise, isn't enough to make me really satisfied in Northridge. A guy like me can get broads anywhere.
The egg action, like all the others, was a little plan to make some money on the side, save up so I could go into business for myself and be my own boss so I could travel and live good. With a big, growing town like Northridge, a guy could make plenty, then hire people to run things while he did what he wanted, where he wanted. I can't understand guys like Carl, who work all their lives like slobs even after they got enough stashed away to live it up good.
Anyway, about the eggs. One of the plumbing jobs was over at the Northridge Egg Farm, on the south end of the township. I got friendly with the owner there and we worked out this deal where I would buy eggs from him wholesale and sell them to broads on the job. There's a big demand for natural, fresh food these days, you know, with ecology and all, and it seemed like a good idea. For a month or so I was doing pretty good, giving each customer of Carl's a pitch as I fixed the drain or whatever. Most of my deliveries I made after work, in the evenings. Once in a while, I'd bring a few dozen along in Carl's truck. The fact that it never got back to Carl was due to my way with women. I asked them not to mention it, and they didn't.
Well, it was OK, but there was no real money in it. Twenty cents a dozen profit is pretty good if you're selling 'em by the truckload, but I wasn't. So I gave it up. One of these days, I'll hit on a scheme that'll get me where I want to go in a hurry.
I spent the afternoon running around on various calls for Carl, but my mind wasn't on the work. It was eating at me, the feeling I wasn't going anywhere and there wasn't much I could do about it.
Then, on Friday, two things happened that changed everything. Tony and I were out at this unfinished house, putting in the pipes from the john to the septic tank. At ten, we sat down under a tree and broke into a six-pack of Miller's.
"Hey, did you hear the latest news?" Tony asked me, wiping the sweat from his fat face and rubbing it across his tee shirt.
I took a long swallow of beer. "No," I said. "Why don't you make my day complete?" I was still in a rotten mood, and Tony's boring company didn't help any.
"Well," he said, "Johnson sold his farm to the Rossetti brothers – I found out yesterday – and they're gonna start leveling and laying out roads next month."
"No shit?" I looked at him, interested now. The Rossetti brothers were the biggest developers in the area. They had been after old man Johnson to sell for years, but he was against turning his land into a huge tract of homes.
"What made him do it?" I asked.
"Don't ask me," Tony said. "But figure what it means. Shit, in a couple years from now we'll be so busy we won't know what to do." I could see the dollar signs swimming around in his fat eyes.
It was true, all right. That tract was at least a mile square. There was gonna be a lot of stopped toilets and leaky faucets instead of cows and clover.
I felt my stomach tighten up. Christ, not only were they gonna get rich fixing the plumbing, but Carl and Tony would probably get a good hunk of the installation work. There was gonna be plenty of gravy for them, all right, but what about me?
We went back inside the house. For the rest of the morning I couldn't think right. My mind was filled with schemes, anything, just so I could get up enough to go into business for myself and tap some of that action. But it was no good. By noon I hadn't come up with anything at all that would raise me a quick couple thousand. That's how much I figured it would take for office space, my own truck on time, of course – ads in the local papers, tools of the trade – I was using Carl's – and some dough left over in case things were slow at first.
After lunch, Carl sent me out Maple Hill Estates, another big tract that had been up since '67. A Mrs. Ayres was having trouble with the sink. I went out feeling depressed as hell. When I left three hours later, thanks to Mrs. Betty Ayres, I had the answer to my problem.