“The team drowned during spring training,” he said.
I heard him laughing to himself all the way back to his cubicle. I had gotten almost no sleep the night before, and I was really on edge. There were so many things eating at me that I had difficulty thinking, so I had bigger things to worry about than Sam. For starters, there was a New York State Client Death Form on my desk and two Incident Report forms with a yellow sticky from the Michelin Woman attached to the top one. It read:
Duffy-This needs to be completed and on my desk by the end of the day. Claudia.
She was a real joy. A client is dead and two close to it, and her concern is getting the state their fuckin’ forms. I wasn’t in any kind of mood for her bullshit today. The only redeeming thing going on today was that she’d be distracted by the board members. She likes to impress them, so she’d have on her newest polyester stretch pants and she’d be obsessed with making a good presentation for the day.
I saw Monique coming back to her cubicle with a cup of coffee in her special coffee cup with the Nefertiti head on it.
“Duff, I’m so sorry to hear about Walanda, Mikey, and Eli,” she said. “You must be hurtin’. If there’s anything I can do, please let me know.”
“Thanks ’Nique, I truly appreciate it,” I said.
She meant it. Monique and I weren’t exactly close, but we respected each other and I think we had a mutual understanding about each other. It’s hard to explain, but I think people can tell when you really respect them and when you’re just trying to make an impression.
The various board members were filing in and I had yet to see Hymie. L. T. Espidera, the guy who owned six car dealerships in Crawford, came in, making his usual loud and obnoxious entrance. He epitomized the type of board member I despised. I was convinced that his entire motivation for being on the board was to get on Hymie’s good side so that eventually Hymie would sell him his dry cleaning headquarters. That shop happened to take up prime real estate on Main Avenue in the heart of the city. If Espidera had that piece of land, he would have not only the majority of car dealerships in town, he would also have them all in ideal locations.
Espidera liked people to call him “LT” because he thought it sounded macho. He was a late thirty-something guy who kept in what I call “gym shape,” meaning his body looked good but you could tell that if you hit him in the gut he would puke for a month. Just to piss him off, I always called him by his given name, Lawrence.
“Hi Lawrence,” I said. “How are the Hondas moving?”
“Fantastic, Duff, couldn’t be better,” he said. “Hey Duff-getting any Ws in the ol’ squared circle?” It was a dig because I knew he knew my record.
“Oh yeah-didn’t you hear?” I said. “I knocked out Mike Tyson. First, I bit him, then I knocked him out.”
Espidera shot me with his thumb and forefinger. He winked at me and ran his fingers through his mulletted, jet-black hair. His skin was a ridiculous tanning-hut brown.
Claudia came out of her office, hearing a board member and not wanting to miss an opportunity to suck up.
“Good morning, LT,” she said. “Thanks for coming in on such short notice.”
“No problemo, Claud,” LT shot back.
“Duffy, did LT tell you about the new committee?” Claudia said. It startled me because she never acknowledged my presence when board members were in. It was as if being just a lowly staff member in the presence of greatness made me unworthy.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Claudia,” I said.
“LT is going to be the board representative on our Quality Assurance Ad Hoc Committee. The committee will oversee things like record-keeping and risk management. After we have our emergency meeting, we’ll invite you in for the first of what will be bi-monthly meetings.”
Now her talking to me made sense. It was another opportunity to stick the whole paperwork thing to me, only this time, with the added strength of throwing in a board member. It was just an extra special treat that Espidera was going to be involved.
Recently, Espidera donated an old piece of property that at one time had been an old hotel. It was in disrepair and way out in the middle of nowhere, and several agencies had gotten together to convert it into a women’s shelter. The plan was to make the old hotel a halfway house for addicted women and their children. I was convinced that Espidera donated it for the tax break. Also, because of its location, it had no marketable value.
Next in was Dr. Gabbibb. I was figuring he was going to come right over and chew me out with a series of DAT, DAT, DATs, but he surprised me.
“Good morning, Doofy,” he flashed me a big toothy smile. He had on a Jason Giambi jersey today. “Notar feeleends I hepe?” He extended his hand.
This was pretty bizarre for the most arrogant man I ever met.
“Sure, Doc,” I said.
“Doofy-you dar dinto du Yankees, no?”
“What’s that, Doc?” I asked.
“DAT, DAT, DAT, DAT, shit… excuse me,” he yelled.
“Oh yeah-sure, I love the Yanks.”
“Ere’s two teeckits I can’t use,” he said.
I loved the Yanks and the tickets were for the September 11 game against the Mariners, right behind the dugout, but I just couldn’t. I didn’t know what his motive was, and I didn’t want to be indebted to him.
“I can’t, Doc, I’m going to be away then,” I said.
“DAT, DAT… shit,” he said. He couldn’t have been too upset because he only let out two DATs.
Finally, he turned his attention to Claudia, who was anxious to talk about her committee. Claudia kept on about how the new committee was going to ensure that our paperwork was always in compliance. It was crystal clear that she was trying to get a reaction from me in front of the board members. Before I could respond to Claudia’s bait about the new committee, I heard Hymie’s entrance.
“Where’s that goy friend of mine?” Hymie said. “The one who should be wearing the Star of David on his trunks, he’s a Jew in harp’s clothing!”
“Hymie!” I got up to greet my buddy. “Shalom aleichem! My friend,” I said.
“You hear this schmeckel?” he said. “He’s not foolin’ me-he’s not a Jew-but I love ’im.” He pinched my cheek.
I smiled and looked down at the four gray hairs and multiple liver spots that made up his scalp. He was about five foot six, with glasses and two Miracle-Ears turned up to maximum. He had on his tan Sansabelts and white shoes.
“Hey Hymie-shalom,” LT said.
“Oh, hello, Lawrence,” Hymie said.
He also turned and greeted Claudia, and soon after that they went in the boardroom to talk privately about Walanda’s death and to wait on the rest of the board. They’d probably also talk about my written warning. Hymie wouldn’t be pleased, but he wouldn’t stand in the way of what had to be done because he knew that type of influence wasn’t right. I understood that, and I wouldn’t ask him for anything different.
After the board met privately for about forty-five minutes, they called Monique and me into the boardroom to introduce us to the quality assurance process. Besides Claudia, Hymie, and Espidera, the committee was made up of Mrs. Sheila Silver, a board member and retired social worker; Rhonda Bowerman, the executive director of the Eagle Heights Jewish Unified Services, which was about forty-five miles away; and Gabbibb.
Sheila Silver was a goof. She had an MSW degree and passed her certification, so she was a certified social worker, but as far as I could tell, she had never worked a day in her life. She was in her early fifties, with jet-black hair, overplucked eyebrows, and every possible type of plastic surgery you could imagine. She weighed about 115 pounds and talked incessantly about losing weight, dieting, and exercise, though she always had an injury of some sort that kept her from actually doing much other than hiring a personal trainer. She was always coming from or going to her therapist, her hairdresser, her ob/gyn, or the manicurist.
Sheila was married to an ophthalmologist who was the first guy in Crawford to do laser surgery. They were set financially, but you couldn’t pay me enough to deal with Sheila. Don’t get me wrong, she wasn’t mean, she was just incredibly self-absorbed. The type of person that never wanted to offend you, not because she didn’t want to hurt your feelings, but rather because she didn’t want anything to bother her conscience. Sheila knew social work theory and kept abreast of current events, but she had never actually gotten her hands dirty working with real people.