Jim Gavin - Middle Men - Stories

The house is dark and quiet. For a couple of hours, Costello sits at the dining room table, paying the bills. Still paying off the bust. Fifteen years without a vacation. Never taking her out to dinner, not once. A million Ragú dinners. But at least they never ran out of rats.

Later he turns on the TV. The Dodgers on the first night of their home stand. Down two runs in the eighth. Costello, anxious, muttering to himself, drinking straight from the two-liter bottle of Pepsi. He wanders over to the glass slider and looks out on the darkness. He turns on the pool light. A pretty shade of green and the lizard down below.

• • •

Wednesday afternoon, up in Baldwin Park, a forsaken road winding past broken cinder block, a driveway with no address, a dungeon of a warehouse, and Ron Ciavacco, proprietor of Five Star Pipe and Supply. Sitting at the counter, marking up a racing form, as Valerie, his sister and only employee, smokes and watches Dr. Phil on a small black-and-white. They’ve been going out of business for twenty-five years.

“The wolf is at the door, my friend,” Costello says, and gently explains the situation. The concept of paying for goods and services. Ron, a beggar and a chooser, asks for better pricing on globe valves. They shake hands. Ron wishes him luck at the WCPA awards banquet.

“I don’t care about stats,” Costello says. “Just as long as we win!”

At dusk, he hides from the eastbound traffic. Drives down Cherry Avenue, passing the cemetery on his way to the beach. The strand is dull and gray. Nobody goes in the water. He walks along the bluffs, smoking, counting the tankers in the harbor, a habit since childhood. Catalina Island, a distant mirage. Sixty years in SoCal and he’s never taken the boat to Catalina.

Listening to the Dodgers game on the way home. Our man from Santo Domingo dealing a shutout into the seventh inning. Gets home just in time. Big bowl of vanilla ice cream, the last two innings, and then the news. Absolutely beautiful. There’s a knock at the door.

“Hi, Marty!” Francine in her bike helmet.

“Now’s not a good time.”

She steps inside and Costello has no choice but to set her up with a bowl of vanilla. Be thankful for small mercies, Francine. The Nazis would’ve thrown you in a lime pit. Francine stares at the pictures on the bookcase, ignoring the travesty taking place right now in the top of the eighth. The manager, in his wisdom, pulling the young lefty after he gives up a walk. Let him work out of trouble, for chrissakes. Only way to become a pitcher.

“She said I could have her jewelry,” Francine says.

“What?”

Francine walking down the hall, turning on the lights like she owns the place. There’s no jewelry, no real jewelry, except her wedding ring. Katie has that. Francine in their bedroom, holding the rosewood jewelry box in her stubby hands.

“It’s nothing fancy,” Costello says. “You won’t impress anyone, if that’s what you’re going for.”

The box tucked under her arm.

“Fine. It’s all yours. Come on.”

Back down the hall, turning off the lights. Francine is going out the front door. She doesn’t say goodbye. A Bedouin in the night.

The Dodgers closer gets lit up and they lose in extra innings. At eleven o’clock, Costello turns on the news. And then Megan calls, just to say hi. He asks her about her junior college classes and she rants and raves about the stupidity of her fellow students. She hates Orange County. Fascist this, soulless that. She wants to travel. See the watery parts of the world. She talks through the weather and into the next commercial. Sports is next. Costello starts leaning toward the side table, getting ready to hang up the phone at his first opportunity. When he sees the Dodgers highlights coming on, he says, “Well, I’ll let you go.”

“What are you watching?” Megan asks.

“What? Nothing.”

She laughs at him. “We’re taking you out Saturday, whether you like it or not.”

• • •

On Thursday afternoon he drives east into the Inland Empire, alighting upon a paved, semi-incorporated nowhere called Mira Loma. Bromberg Enterprises, the Death Star, sitting in a ring of smog on the edge of the freeway, five hundred thousand square feet of blazing white concrete. Costello parks at the edge of a vast parking lot and walks a half mile through warm, gusty winds that play havoc with his hair.

Through the dark maw of loading dock #53 and into the maze. Towering rows of everything. Hundreds of warehouse crew, pushing silver gleaming hand trucks and hydraulic pallet jacks. It smells clean in here, no diesel exhaust, all the forklifts fancy and electric. A “No Smoking” sign every ten feet. At the far end a metal staircase leading to the offices of young men with advanced business degrees from accredited universities. It’s only a matter of time before Bromberg swallows up Ajax and every other rep in SoCal. Death from above. Eliminate the middleman. Chris Easton, younger than Matt, but already with a wife and kids and a mortgage. A bureaucrat with class and breeding, he sits Costello down, offers him coffee, soda, popcorn, hot dogs. They’ve got a whole circus up here. Costello breaks down the ballcock situation. Five hundred serial numbers for five hundred faulty units, written down by hand, his own, on a yellow legal pad, plus a flow chart of rebate and compensation. The factory rep running interference for the contractor, on behalf of the contractor’s wholesaler, so neither have to face the wrath of the builder. The gallant factory rep, doing his duty, meeting his challenger. Pistols at dawn.

“It’s ridiculous how complicated this is,” says Easton, flipping the chart upside down.

“It’s what they call a Byzantine arrangement. But I’ve already been out on all the job sites, squared things with Lamrock. We’re switching out the defectives ourselves, all you need to do is sign off on the replacements so my contractor can pull from your shelves ASAP. The purchase order numbers are already plugged in and you get the percentage on everything. You really don’t have to do a goddamn thing.” Calm down, calm down. “I’m just saying… I’m just showing you what I did so I don’t have to answer questions later. It’s pretty much a done deal. Our long national nightmare is over.”

“Lamrock okayed this.”

“Ex cathedra.”

“What?”

“Lamrock okayed it.”

“Can you send this to me as an Excel sheet? I can’t show this mess to my boss.”

“You bet. There’s a gal in our office. She’s dynamite with computers.”

Easton laughs, like he just heard a joke, and gives back the legal pad. A new bag of Pings in the corner, a framed photograph of Easton standing next to Tiger Woods.

“Are you going to the WCPA tourney?” Costello asks.

“Harbor Municipal,” he says tentatively. “That’s a pretty ghetto course.”

“Not if you’re a hack like me.”

“They should have the tournament someplace nice.”

“We’re lucky there’s still a golf course in Southern California that lets us play. Lamrock had to pull a lot of strings to make it happen.”

“Have you actually met Lamrock?”

“If you have time,” says Costello, “maybe we could go down and double-check your stock.”

“It’s all right here,” Easton says, tapping his laptop screen. “Everything that comes in and out of here is all right here.”

“I know. I just want to see it.”

“Actually,” says Easton, “I’m not allowed down there at the moment.”

“Why not?”

“Long story.”

“Oh, yeah?” Costello crosses his legs, getting comfortable. This is the job. This is the beauty of every job. Listening to stories.

“I don’t have time to go into it. Just email me that sheet.”