splat chapter twenty-five

SPLAT CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

 

Suzie noticed a new billboard as she passed the back of the airport. It was for the doctor's cancer clinic. It showed a woman reclining in a lounge chair, her hair wrapped in a turban, the strong, comforting hands of a massage therapist on her shoulders. It's The Way To Go. 800-FOR-CURE.

There was an accident on I-75 somewhere north of her. She was in a construction zone, stopped and creeping for over an hour, watching the water temperature rise, sweltering, afraid to run the air conditioning because the loaner's engine was running hot.

She passed the old closing-down Ford assembly plant around the back of the airport at a leisurely thirty miles an hour. She felt pity for the old assembly workers who were being dumped. She could see the new air traffic control tower looming up behind it and a crane looming over that, still far away, part of the airport expansion. The new one was twice as high as the old one. It was like a baton, 400 feet in the air, with a tower shaft and a head, crowned by a parapet and a conical roof. Like a space age plastic dildo.

She painfully coursed onto the Connector and began merging, riding the bumper of the car in front of her at twenty five miles and hour and watching the city come in to view. From this exact distance, the pencil Bank of America building on North Avenue looked exactly the same height as the penis Westin and the castle 191 Building and the rubix cube Georgia Power a dozen blocks south, and the praying hands missile silo just going up in Midtown, a dozen blocks further north. Suzie thought about the cosmic coincidence here. Like how your pinky finger held out as far as you can is exactly the same width as the sun and the moon both. Oooh. Suzie was still stoned.

As she drew closer to the wonderful City of Oz, the skyline receded, and then the capital buildings loomed up in white marble, and then she started passing under Memorial real slow, and there was Grady Hospital on the curve. Slowly, slowly, watching heat rising in the lanes around her. After that, traffic slowed down dramatically, and Suzie abandoned the highway and got off at Freedom Parkway to take the surface streets.

It was 6:37 when she pulled into the parking deck. She was way late. She was sweaty, her nerves were rattled from trying to cut corners and get to work a split second less late. But she wasn't even dressed yet, and it was going to be a busy night. She clocked in, and scurried up the stairs to the servants' quarters to pull on her uniform. The Service Manager was going to write her up for being late. She hated getting into trouble.

There was a flyer taped to the mirror in the servants' quarters. It was slapped up there crookedly. She hopped over to read it while struggling into her pantyhose.

Notice. Effective Immediately, The Dress Code For Wait Staff Has Changed.

Suzie groaned and rolled her eyes. Another indignity. And we're supposed to pay for it. Blah blah, now they wanted oxford shirts and club ties for the men instead of ruffled, stiff-collared tuxedo shirts and bowties. The women had to wear club ties, too, with the stupid club emblem printed all over it. And it wasn't good enough to dress in regular knee-length tuxedo skirts, now they had to be short tuxedo skirts. No longer than fingertips.

Suzie dropped her hand to her side to see, and glanced down. Mid thigh. Halfway up to her butt. A good foot shorter than just below the knee, which was hard enough to deal with when she knelt down and bent over to get things out of the sideboard. Black stockings? Heels? No way.

She charged downstairs to ask Chef for her old job back. Enough is enough. But when she got to the kitchen, she saw several cops standing in a loose cordon around the Latino porters, who were bunched up along the central work table. The porters had their heads down; it was eerily silent in the room. She could hear the taps dripping in the sink. Chef was in his office with a guy in a dark suit, they were looking at papers on his desk and talking. Chef looked up and saw her at the bottom of the stairs. Suzie panicked and ran back upstairs, suddenly, irrationally afraid they would come after her.

She found Yolanda pulling salad plates from the dumbwaiter. 'These salads really took their time getting up here,' she complained. 'My tables are hungry.'

'Something bad's happening downstairs,' Suzie said. 'There are cops down there. The porters are in some kind of trouble.' Yolanda delivered her salads, then whirled downstairs to see what was going on. She was back in moments with a frown on her face.

'Immigration,' she said heavily. 'I mean, Homeland Security. They're checking papers.'

Suzie felt her stomach twist. How many of the porters were legitimately legal? How many had papers? What would the cops do with them? They were nice people. They had families. 'Are you okay?' she asked significantly, thinking it would be rude to ask if she was legal herself. Yolanda nodded. 'What's going to happen to them?' Yolanda shook her head and shrugged. They went back to work.

That evening the place was messier than usual. The trash got full and overfull, and nobody came to pull the bags and give them empty ones. Dirty dishes piled up in the bus trays and nobody came to haul them to the kitchen. The waiters finally loaded them onto the dumbwaiter themselves and sent them down, but they came back up the next time they hit the button.

When they ran out of glasses, Suzie looked around in the pantry at half a dozen racks of dirties stacked up in the corner, and decided to go have a look downstairs.

The kitchen was limping along without the porters. The cooks were cooking, but nobody was straightening or cleaning or carrying or toting or fetching or prepping. The place was a mess. She stumbled along to the storeroom and found two racks of tumblers on a dolly. As she was pulling it along the treacherous floor to the dumbwaiter, she ran into Manny, apparently the only legal immigrant in the Club. He looked haggard, worried. He kept his eyes down and was silent as they passed.

Later, when she was clocking out, she found him doing dishes. 'Oh, Manny, I'm so sorry,' she cried. 'What's going to happen?' He looked very sad, and shook his head and mumbled something. 'Can I help you clean up?' Manny said no. He looked miserable. The porters were like family and he was just as sorry as the ones sitting in jail now. The camera glared balefully at them.

When she arrived at work the next day, she found a bunch of temps shadowing Manny around the kitchen staying out of the way of the cooks. He was showing them how to operate the dishwasher. They stood around casually, bored. Interested in everything but the idiosyncrasies of the Hobart.

Chef was standing at the fringe of the group, watching Manny train his new porters, making notes to post the operating directions for the Hobart in Spanish as well as English. He wasn't impressed with any of the new porters so far, but it was by far the lowest level job in the kitchen, and he needn't expect too much of them right away.

Suzie went up to him after clocking in, He saw her and nodded. 'Um, Chef,' she said hesitantly, 'I was wondering if you've thought about my job in the kitchen.' He looked at her, staring. She twisted her knuckles together. Maybe he didn't remember.

He looked back at his notes, looked up at the new porters for a moment, looked back at his clipboard. 'You know,' he said, finally looking her in the eye. He sighed. 'We just don't have room right now.' He paused. Suzie tried not to fidget. 'And you're not really the type of person we want to have cooking in our kitchen.'

Suzie stood there looking at him. 'We?'

He shook his head dismissively. 'I just don't think you'd make a good cook, that's all. I don't want to waste your time, or mine.'

She summoned her courage. 'You think that? You've never seen me working in the kitchen. I'm very competent doing prep work.'

He looked sly. 'You make a pretty good waitress. Why don't you stick to that? It's less stressful.'

'Because I want to cook.'

'Do you really?' He looked her up and down slowly. 'Well,' he said, looking back at his clipboard. 'Not here, anyway.'

Suzie marched upstairs to the dining rooms, hurt, banished, thinking about whipping up a page from the Anarchist's Cookbook to throw at Chef. She spent time folding napkins and polishing silver, dreaming about random terrorist acts committed on Chef's person, sharpening diatribes to pierce him with as he lay dying.

Twenty minutes later they all trooped down to hear the menu, and Chef stood there haughty and superior, tripping a string of rapid French off his tongue, then turned crisply and marched back to his office. Suzie didn't hear a word of it. She was watching him with deep resentment and ill will, and thinking thoughts that started with How Dare He.

She noticed a knot of the new porters washing dishes, talking and handing plates lazily back and forth, tossing silverware into a bus tray full of water. They looked all around them as they worked. A Sous-chef in kitchen whites stood nearby, keeping an eye on them. She'd never seen him in the kitchen before. This new Sous-chef was a tall white guy getting a little beefy in the middle. He stood straighter than a lot of the Sous-chefs, and didn't have any burn scars on him. He also had no sense of humor. He just stood and watched, as if he had dark glasses on, fingering a wire whisk-looking thing he held in one hand, and mumbling.

She waved over at the black cooks, but couldn't catch anyone's attention. They were all nervous and quiet, keeping their heads down, doing their jobs. Suzie felt watched as she turned around and headed up the stairs. Now that she knew she couldn't come back, she was really missing the friendly ambience of the kitchen.

The assholes were there, as usual, coming up the stairs like three warriors with drinks in their hands at the stroke of eight. She lobbed imaginary grenades at them as they ascended. The weapons failed to dislodge the enemy. Suzie's attitude got worse.

She left them to settle themselves in the Honeysuckle Room, and armed herself with a basket of bread and a butter dish before going in to say hey.

Ed was his usual bombastic self. 'Honey! This here's our favorite waitress, come here and give us a little kiss.' There was bold laughter from the guest. Suzie looked daggers at him. She passed out menus, made up something for the specials, and waltzed out to order more drinks.

She came back in with the drinks. The guest was that consultant guy, Bob, who attended the good doctor Bling when she first started upstairs. He was just concluding his introduction of whatever business he was there to discuss. Suzie dallied around the room while he passed out shiny brochures showing smiling, happy people in business suits and uniforms, posing in front of office buildings and industrial sites. Big Behemoth Consulting.

She stood in front of them for a few minutes, waiting for Bob to wind down. She cleared her throat. It was hard to tell exactly what he was trying to sell them. She tapped her foot. They ignored her. Something to do with taking Jerry's business to a new level. She felt her ankles starting to swell. She shifted her weight. Some software package.

Finally, she turned and headed out to the pantry to find something to poke at for a few moments. But just as she got to the door, the consultant paused, surprised, and Ed said in a whiny voice, 'What's the matter, Sugar? Ain'tcha going to take our orders?'

So she came back to stand in front of them again. Shrimp cocktail, spinach and artichoke dip, chicken salad in little bite-sized pieshells. Main courses all on the regular menu. More drinks. The consultant wanted wine, so she flounced out impatiently for the wine list, only to have him choose the cheapest red with hardly a glance.

Ed eyed her greedily when she returned with more drinks. 'When you going to get your new uniform, honey?'

Shit. She forgot about that little annoyance. 'I just found out about it tonight,' she complained. 'It's going to take me a couple of days to get alterations.'

He leered, his pudgy lips rolling back away from his teeth. 'You know, I'd love to go along shopping with you. Help you pick things out.' He wiggled in his seat. 'Black stockings, huh?'

She looked at him suspiciously. 'What, did you write the new dress code yourself?' He grinned. She wasn't sure.

'I just want to see more of those legs,' he explained happily, grinning like a coon dog - Ah jus cain' hep masef.

'Leave me alone,' she snarled.

Suzie returned to the pantry to wait for their appetizers and see about the drink order. The dumbwaiter came up, groaning and squeaking, from the kitchen. She lifted the door. The food was a mess. They'd left the lids off the appetizers, and just piled the plates on top of each other on a tray. She sorted it out, gathering the shrimp up and dusting them before re-arranging them around a wiped-off bowl of cocktail sauce on a plate. Then she peeled the pastry plate from the dip plate. It came up with a sucking sound. She scraped the gray-green slop off the bottom with her finger, and then retrieved the pastries, which were all over the floor of the dumbwaiter. Suzie looked into the corner as she picked up one of the chicken salads. Hmm, not very sanitary. She checked the pastry for gunge before putting it back on the plate.

Ed was fiddling around in his lap, looking absent-minded and content. He started up with a whine. 'Where you been, Girl?' Suzie ignored him. Jerry and Bob never looked up.

Jerry was explaining the idea behind his new temp agency. 'The bottom line is,' he said as she plopped the plate of dip in front of him, 'is all about getting the work done for the least amount of money, right? Usually that means moving the operation to India and getting rid of all those high-wage workers here at home.'

'That's sound business practice,' nodded the consultant, picking up his fork to stab at a pastry. 'There are tremendous cost savings and tax breaks in outsourcing. And often better-quality work. No unions.' He put a pastry in his mouth and began to chew. 'Less regulations, so you can work them harder. No benefits costs.'

Ed summed it up. 'What's good for the bottom line is good for the world.'

Suzie finished serving their appetizers. 'Either way,' she commented dryly. 'It puts those loyal employees at home out of a job.'

Bob finished chewing and swallowed, putting the fork down and going for another one with his fingers. 'Let them find another job,' he said dismissively. 'It's not like what they do is important. A trained monkey could do most of the work.'

Suzie thought of how hard she worked and how much intelligence it took to satisfy these jerks, and took aim at the consultant. 'You know, a trained monkey could do your job,' she said, looking down at him. 'All you do is sit there and chatter and be sociable.' She smiled thinly.

Bob smiled back, but he was affronted. Ed was amused. 'Hell,' he agreed, 'you'd groom the nits out of Jerry's hair if he'd let you.'

After a moment of silence, Bob picked up the conversation. 'I assume you give your employees the usual psychological and motivational tests?' he asked, choosing another delicious morsel. 'Our software comes with a complete profiling system.'

'We don't need it. Our people come pre-sorted. We just look at their sheet. The violent ones get shipped off to the military. Then we organize the others according to offense and skill level.'

Bob the consultant nodded absently and thought about what he wanted to say when Jerry stopped talking.

Jerry explained how they had it all figured out. Service workers needed to be neat, organized, and manually dexterous, so they were going to place pickpockets and petty thieves in restaurants and retail stores. Under armed guard, of course.

Office clerks had to be anal-retentive, able to concentrate; and that was a great fit for forgers and embezzlers. Factory workers had to withstand repetitive work over long periods, often in confined areas, so they needed the kind of employees that could be bolted into place. A lot of crazies would end up there, along with computer hackers and the like, who enjoyed solitary, sedentary, infinite tasks. As for versatile criminals, that is, people with four or more convictions in different criminal realms, they were earmarked for Management.

The consultant sat there and let Jerry talk, because a talked-out client signs the contract. He also let Jerry talk because he was beginning to fantacize, staring at Jerry's nose and thinking about the pitch he'd make to the senior partners the next morning. They were really listening to him these days, after he'd given them the scoop on Doctor Bling .

'Of course a business like this is so much more than an employment agency,' Bob said wonderingly. 'It's a barrel of money for you, and our system will track it.'

Jerry went on, ignoring the pitch. 'I can guarantee the same low low wage they'd get in India or Malaysia, with the same output per worker. And the company's product will be made right here at home, by Americans. Think of the savings in shipping costs. And we've got a friendly government, not at all like those unstable sons of bitches.'

Bob was no longer listening. He couldn't care less about selling Jerry software now. He was witnessing the birth of a brand new way to affect labor costs, the largest contributor to the bottom line. Private label workforces. Bonded employee leasing. Everyone's labor problems solved. Cheap, controllable, replaceable units; like machines. He couldn't think of a business that wouldn't be excited to switch to My Labor ForceTM. 'We're going to have to complete rewrite the payroll software,' he mused, slipping his BlackBerry out of his pocket.

Suzie came in to clear the dishes. Back in the pantry waiting for their main course, she scraped the plates into a dangerously full trashcan. There were two bus trays full of dirty dishes sitting on the floor under the dry sink. Trying not to disturb anything, she balanced her plates on top of the stack on the counter.

The main course came up in the dumbwaiter. She raised the door gingerly, expecting to see a new mess. And she was not disappointed. Evidently the new porters didn't know where the plate lids were kept, because all the plates had been tossed onto a tray in the dumbwaiter without lids, and the plates were stacked haphazardly, and she had one hell of a time chasing carrots and picking up peas. She had to remold the mashed potatoes, and scrape up the sauce and dollop it back onto the meat. She had to pull some broccoli spears out of the gungy corners and wipe them off. Suzie got a better taste of their food by licking her fingers than she ever did picking at it.

She went back to the room with their main courses looking presentable.

Jerry was still rattling on. This time, it was all about his ex law firm that was working with state representatives to rewrite certain statutes in a special session of the legislature  'We're fixing to pass new legislation, next week, as a matter of fact. A blow for God against liberal humanism.' He nodded at the consultant. 'We're going to make it illegal to teach anything but scientific fact in our schools.'

Suzie paused, filling the wine glasses. 'Scientific fact?' she asked doubtfully.

'Yeah,' Bob retorted. He was smarter than her. 'Scientific fact. Like electricity. Chemistry. Not unproven theories about how mankind descended from the beasts.'

She looked at Jerry in dismay. 'Are you banning the teaching of evolution?'

Bob drew himself up stiffly and explained it to Suzie. 'Evolution in all aspects is contrary to true science. There is no empirical evidence for the hypothesis of evolution.'

She was taken aback. 'But DNA, archeology, cosmology, they all point to evolution.'

He shook his head. 'All of the empirical evidence supports the Creation Model.'

'There's evidence for creation in six days and nights? It's scientifically possible?'

'The proof is the Word of God.' Jerry looked away from her as he spoke, sounding weary, like she was some disembodied voice asking stupid questions, and he wished she'd go away. 'At best, evolution's explanation for the origin of mankind is silly. A child's fairy tale.'

Suzie stood there with a hand on her hip, holding some bit of trash she'd picked up off the table, taking it all in. Then she turned and walked out of the room.

Bob turned to Jerry. 'I understand that the Board of Ed is meeting next month to replace the word Evolution with Biological Changes Over Time in the textbooks.'

Jerry nodded; he knew all about it. 'My firm is acting as advisor on the new textbook design. It brings God closer to the everyday world.' The consultant approved heartily. 'The next step is to make religious education compulsory. I'd like to see it get equal time in the public school curriculum.' Jerry savored his words for their sound-bite potential.

Suzie was in the pantry with rolled-up sleeves, racking dozens of dripping glasses. The new porters had finally come and cleared away the racks and trays full of dirty dinnerware. There were still piles of dishes and clusters of glasses waiting to be racked and tubbed, and she worked as fast as she could to clear away the backlog without getting her sleeves filthy.

When she went back in with the dessert menu, Jerry was starting to talk about his investigation of Doctor Bling's  new therapy. Jerry realized that Bob had gotten in on the same ground floor, and the conversation quickly became arcane. Ed was quiet. He looked bored, impatient. He winked at Suzie.

'Jerry signed his wife up for treatments,' Ed said proudly. 'That's how good it is.' The consultant looked at Jerry with hopeful concern. The developer also looked at Jerry with hopeful concern. The two looks were different. 'How's it working for her?' Ed asked him.

Jerry slugged back the rest of his wine. 'Well, she hasn't been the same since the chemo, anyway. So it's hard to tell.' He knocked back the rest of his liquor. 'She's just not herself any more,' he said in a low voice. 'More like a ghost. I'm worried about her.'

Ed made sorry noises, but secretly thought Jerry's wife was whiney and bitter. He'd never liked her. What he was waiting for was for Jerry to get some young piece of ass that he could fuck on the side. His thoughts turned to nearer objects as Suzie came back into the room. Too bad she showed not the least bit of interest. But she was so cute and spunky. Like a pixie. A fuck fairy.

She breezed through the room collecting empty plates, then back through for the wine glasses, and then back in with fresh drinks and the dessert menu. Ed didn't get a word in edgewise, Bob went to the bathroom, and Jerry lit a cigarette and sat in a gray cloak of smoke.

'You know?' Ed asked out of the blue, after deciding on peach ice cream. 'My car just isn't running right, and my mechanic got himself thrown in jail.' He swaggered toward Bob to explain. 'A little thing on the side he was involved in.'

Suzie said, 'And you're too cheap to take it to the dealer.'

He sat up straight and made a point. 'You know, I can't stand dealerships. I used to work in one. They're crooked to the bone.'

They were still talking about mechanics and cars and car races and the speedway down in Griffin when she came back with their desserts, which she'd had to transfer to clean plates upon retrieving them from the dumbwaiter.

'No,' Ed said, drooling at the sight of his ice cream. With sparkles. 'Just give me a good old Georgia boy knows how to fix cars, that's what I like.'

'I know somebody like that,' Suzie said.

He licked his lips, covered with cream. How sexy he looked, like a pig at a trough. 'Really. Maybe I should call him up and have a little talk about my problem.'

Suzie thought about it. Maybe they'd get along. Maybe Nelson would appreciate the referral. Maybe he'd soak Ed for all kinds of work his car didn't need. 'He's down in Riverdale,' she offered condescendingly. 'Stoner's Auto Repair.' She reeled off the number. 'Ask for Nelson.'

'Stoner's. Nelson. Thanks, Baby Doll.' He wrote it down on his cloth napkin and stuffed it into his pocket.

Ed ambushed her just after dinner, when the others were all making going back to the bar noises and he sneaked off to the bathroom. He surprised her as she was coming through the door with the carpet sweeper.

'Hey, Honey, I nearly forgot to tell you. Wait till I show you this.' He pulled a folded piece of paper out of his jacket pocket. 'You are just going to love this.' He made a flourish unfolding it. 'Lookie here and let me show you where we're going to set you up in a brand new apartment all your own. Just a few short months and you could be living right here.' He slipped an arm around her waist.

Suzie rolled her eyes and backed off. 'I'm not moving from where I am, thanks,' she insisted, feeling frantic. 'And I certainly wouldn't live anywhere where you knew where it was.'

He finished unfolding the paper and dropped his finger onto the map. Suzie was looking at it from a different angle than she was used to, but she saw the railroad and Moreland Avenue right away. His pudgy finger pointed to exactly where she was living on Seaboard Avenue, and an artist's rendition showed shops below and condos above. It looked like a row of pre-1920s shops downtown.

'Here,' he said, moving his finger slightly, 'The doctor has the corner, next to the Marta Station.' Suzie bent over and saw a Starbucks and a Wolf Camera drawn in nearby. The developer pointed to a shopfront he'd had put in just for her. 'Look, Honey, just for you,' he said, slapping her butt. 'The Suzie Q Cafe.'

Suzie felt sick. Then she saw the name of the new development down in the corner of the paper. The Emerald City. From that point on, she was apoplectic. He came at her for a thank you hug, and she slapped him hard in the face. He looked startled.

'You did this on purpose,' she accused, feeling murderous. 'You know where I live?'

He started to smile, rubbing his face with one hand. He was getting excited to see her so emotional. 'That's my neighborhood, you dumb fuck,' she said, punching him in the arm. 'What do you think you're doing? You can't rip it down and put up that shit. How dare you?'

He reached for her breast. She chopped at him with the broom handle, and felt it connect. 'How are you going to pick up your teeth with a broken arm?' she barked at him, backing out of the room.

 * * *

next, suzie blows a fuse