A Trashy Affair (19 page)

“Wish I could believe that. Gotta go, Jane. I need to get my act together. I’ll call.”

He stood without facing her, simply let her arms slide down his back releasing him, and walked out her kitchen door. Embarrassed by his tears, she guessed, but she would gladly have wiped them away, taken him into her bedroom, and held him tight.

Chapter Seventeen

Of course big, bad Blackie Tauzin did not call. He’d shown her his weakness, his shame. Well, he could run but he couldn’t hide, not when he lived right across the street and his truck made enough noise wake any dead ancestors who might be buried on Jane’s property. Jane sighted the rear end of his big-ass truck as it left the Cane View lot and disappeared down the road when she went out to get her Sunday
Clarion
.

After a leisurely breakfast spent browsing the newspaper and still no sign of her letter about restoring the recycling program, she put on some clothes and set to work on her proposal. Appending the pictures, she filled in the rest of the documentation and put it on her flash drive to take to work on Monday. If she could find the time to proof and fine tune the entire form amid answering calls, directing people, and buzzing the staff in and out of the offices, she’d print the required multiple copies and mail it by Friday well ahead of the deadline. Take that, Nadia Nixon! Jane swore the woman doubled her out-of-office business simply to force her reluctant receptionist to stop work and hit that damn buzzer—as if terrorists or anyone else planned to storm the parish council offices.

Dinnertime came and darkness, still no sign of Merlin, no roar of his truck, no phone call. At ten p.m. as she considered giving up and getting into bed—alone—his unmistakable Ford returned home. After waiting a half hour to give him a chance to call, she ran a brush through her hair and put on a little lipstick, but she refused to primp for Merlin Tauzin. He’d have to take her in her day-off duds if he wanted her. As Waldo implied, a modern woman could make the first move, and that she would do. She crossed the street since it seemed Merlin wasn’t planning to, skirted his truck parked aslant in the white lines of his space, and rang the bell. To her surprise, he came to the door rather than trying to hide out and filled that space in the frame as only he could. One of his hands clutched a tall aluminum beer can.

“Hey, Jane. Kinda late, huh?” He swayed and braced himself by putting the other hand on the doorknob.

“You were going to call me.”

“Didn’t say when. Did I?”

“Anytime today would have been fine. May I come in?”

“Ah, sure.” He stepped aside and followed her into his small living room. A large, black leather recliner sat in front of a flat-screen TV almost as big-ass as his truck. Merlin dropped into his seat and gestured Jane toward a card table with two folding chairs that sat in the dining area beneath a Cane View-supplied lighting fixture having four frosted glass globes decorated with pink rosebuds.

Jane sat, crossed her legs, and tried to keep one foot from shaking with impatience. “Did you have a nice Sunday?”

“Less see. Oh, yeah. I took Granny to Mass at Holy Mom’s, had dinner with her at Magnolia Villa, went over to my mother’s place and watched football with Harley, had a few beers. Thass about it. You?”

“I finished my Super Fund proposal, did some laundry, and waited for you to call.”

“Thass good. I got to leave early tomorrow for Intracoastal. Figured I’d call when I got back, see.” He tired to suppress a burp, but it got by him. “Excuse me.”

“Didn’t you tell me there is some rule about twelve hours between bottle and throttle?”

“Only beer. Be fine by the time I get to work.” Merlin craned his head back and finished the last drops in the can. He crushed the aluminum in his fist. “Las’ one. Here, to put in your recycle barrel.” He offered it to her on his open palm like a fine, glittering jewel for her delectation.

Jane rose and took his offering. She stroked his long jaw, stubbly even after a Sunday morning shave. “I worry about you, Merlin. I truly do. Drive safe.”

“I’ll call. When I get back.”

“Sure. Don’t get up. I know the way out.”

She kissed his cheek and left before she cried. All the way across the parking lot, the road, her yard, she kept thinking, “Second chance gone.” Didn’t appear he wanted one after all.

****

Merlin Tauzin doubled over in his recliner. He wanted to vomit and probably should to get the alcohol out of his system before morning. The trouble with being Catholic was the family and the Church would be really upset if he killed himself. Liquor took longer than a gunshot to the head or stretching on a piece of rope, but it got you buried in holy ground with everyone standing around saying, “What a shame.” Hey, an insight about his drinking. He should write that down to tell his shrink.

Jane left in such a hurry she failed to close his front door. He watched her progress back to the old homestead. See Jane run. Run, Jane, run. Be safe, Jane. Safe from me.

****

Before dawn, Jane heard Merlin’s truck take to the road. She prayed to God and her mother’s cosmic powers that he had sobered up and would arrive safely at Intracoastal City. Maybe that was all she could do for him now or in the future. She strove to put Merlin out of her mind, but when she pushed her trashcan with its fancy wheels to the curb on Thursday night, he might as well have been standing by her side offering her another smashed beer can for recycling. He invaded her dreams and crushed her hopes for both of them.

Rising early from a restless night, she planned to get to work before seven-thirty and run copies of the proposal prior to punching in and well before Nadia took up her post by the time clock. CLANG, CLANK, CHUG. The garbage truck blocked her drive as Mellow crossed the street and wheeled her neighbor’s container to the lift. Jane waited patiently behind the wheel of her little hybrid. She gave the garbage men a friendly finger wave. They glanced away and pulled the truck up to the stop sign without taking her trash. Throwing her transmission into park, she got out and cried to them, “You forgot to take my garbage!”

Mellow let go of his handhold on the back of the truck and trudged toward her. “Can’t, Miss Jane. Mr. Burl says you done modified yo’ can so we can’t take it no more.”

“I don’t understand.”

Mellow studied the steel toes of his work boots. “I was telling the other collectors how nice your container rolled and how I wished all our cans had wheels like that, and Mr. Burl, he overheard. Said was I putting down the quality of his receptacles. I sez, ‘No sir, just saying.’ And he sez, ‘If you know what’s good for you, tell that woman she can’t mess with my cans without I cut off service.’ I didn’t mean to cause you no trouble.”

“That’s okay. I’ll ask Mr. Babin if I can use his can again. Just don’t let that slip to Burl Oubre. There’s probably an ordinance against it.”

“I won’t. This mouth is shut.” Mellow pinched his big lips together, went back to the truck, and motioned to his brother to move on.

Another setback in the garbage wars, but she would not let that ruin her day. She had her proposal polished shinier than an oil slick and would get it in the mail today to redeem a small part of Ste. Jeanne d’Arc Parish, which was her job, not answering telephones. Jane glanced at her watch. Oh hell, thanks to her talk with Mellow, she’d get to work on time, but not early. There went her lunch hour, the only time she could get away from the reception desk to run the required copies of her forms.

****

Jane almost welcomed Nadia’s nit-picking and frequent trips to the bathroom in the waiting area. The harassment kept her mind off of Merlin, his pain, his problems. At one p.m., she asked Angela Savoy to mind the desk in order to allow her to use the big office copier to spew out six collated copies of the original document. She’d still have plenty of time to shove them into a large, brown envelope and get them in the mail. Angela, having given up dieting for the sake of the baby, now showed her pregnancy but made no announcement to her fellow employees or confession to Nadia Nixon. Jane supposed she never would. One day Angie would “get sick” at work, take the day off, pop that baby out, and quit as soon as her parish insurance paid the delivery bills at the rate this was going.

In the small copier room, Jane sat on top of several stacked boxes of paper and waited for the last page to print. Very careful not to spill or leave any crumbs, she drank coffee and ate an energy bar. Setting her scanty lunch aside when the copier finished, she checked each document to make sure no pages were missing or misprinted, then clipped each one together and shoved them into the pre-addressed envelope. She tossed the wrapper from her lunch into the wastebasket full of old toner cartridges that should be recycled, tucked the forms under her arm, and headed, coffee mug in hand, to the door only to run headlong into Nadia Nixon.

“Angela told me you were in here working on your lunch hour.”

“Just some printing I needed to get done and of course, I couldn’t desert my post at the front desk to do it.”

Nadia’s grim lips twisted as if she suppressed a smirk. “Are you trying to bring the labor people down on us? Next thing you’ll say is we denied you your lunchtime. Thirty minutes is mandated by law, and we generously allow an hour. I see your scheme. In a day or two, I get served for making you work without a break. Won’t happen on my watch. Marshall, you are fired.”

Nadia plucked an empty paper carton from a corner and chest-passed it to Jane. “Clean out your desk. I’ll have your pink slip ready in a jiffy. Don’t bother trying to claim unemployment either with the file I’ve kept on your transgressions.”

Jane knew she’d been set up for this moment, yet like a pickup truck stuck on a railroad track, she couldn’t get out of the way of the locomotive. “You’re firing me for working?”

“For not taking your mandatory lunch break.”

Jane nodded toward the wastebasket. “I had lunch, coffee and an energy bar. The wrapper is in there and my mug still has coffee in the bottom.”

“You cannot eat and work at the same time. Get it? I never thought you were dense before today, Marshall. Go to your desk and pack. The guards will be along to escort you from the building.” Now, Nadia allowed the full extent of her victory to show on her face with the baring of her large, square teeth in a huge grin. Executing a tight, military turn in the small space, she left to fill out the paperwork. Another Friday, another victim flattened beneath her heels.

As the shock passed, Jane realized Nadia had made one mistake. In her haste to announce the firing, she’d failed to tear the grant forms out of Jane’s hands. Most certainly, all her work would have been put through a shredder in order to concoct further evidence that the environmental project manager neglected her duties and had not completed and submitted the documents. Jane placed the brown envelope, address downside, into the bottom of her box and holding both it and her head high she marched to her former office and emptied the personal contents on top of it.

Her next stop, the reception desk, required her to pass the cubicles of the lower-ranked employees. No one spoke to her, but she heard the whispers, “Nadia fired Jane,” fearful and implying “Who’s next?” Didi said gleefully to Tonette, “That means the receptionist job is open again.”

At least her circumstances made someone happy. The guards waited for her. Really, she had nothing more to do than take her purse and empty lunch sack out of a drawer and place them in the box. Nadia allowed no plants, personal pictures or mementos, and Jane had what mattered most in the bottom of the box under her files of complimentary letters, references, and news clippings about her various projects.

“I’m so sorry, Jane. I should have said you went out for lunch. I didn’t know you could get fired for working.” Angela dabbed at her eyes with a tissue.

“This would have happened sooner or later. Have a healthy baby, then get the hell out of this place,” Jane advised.

Nadia paraded through the door and waved a sheaf of papers in Jane’s face like an ugly cheerleader taunting an opponent with a pair of pompoms. “Sit, Marshall. Sign here and here. This packet explains your COBRA rights. Read it and sign.”

Before putting her name to anything, Jane read the top form, “Dismissed for refusing to take a lunch break as mandated by law.” She took a pen from the desk and wrote in the space below the accusation, “Because of being assigned extra duties outside my job description, I was unable to complete my regular work during normal working hours. Jane E. Marshall.”

Nadia’s infuriated face reddened at the rebuttal. She ripped off the pink copy of the form and threw it on top of the belongings in the box. Her square-fingered hands rooted beneath it weeding out the articles on Jane’s achievements. She flipped open a folder, read a letter of praise, and snorted. “Jane Marshall is thoroughly devoted to making this world a better place,” she read in a pinched and mocking voice before letting the folder fall closed.

“Those are my personal files if you don’t mind,” Jane said before the woman could delve any farther.

“I don’t mind. You’ll need all this claptrap to get another job. Just don’t put
me
down as a reference because I’ll let them know the kind of person you really are.”

Jane stood, clocked out at two-fifteen, and allowed the guards to escort her onto the elevator. “Sorry, Miss Jane,” one said sheepishly when they arrived in the lobby. The other held the heavy courthouse door open for her and her box. She made her way alone to her car.

Driving directly to the post office, she paid for the mailing of the grant forms out of her own soon to be empty pocket. From there, she headed straight for the unemployment office to file a claim because no matter what Nadia said, she could collect if she fought hard enough—and she would.

Chapter Eighteen

Jane reached home before she let herself cry. Once she got all the water out of her system, she made a pot of the herbal tea her mother claimed calmed the nerves and started crunching numbers. Car and mortgage payments paid for the month. Check. Enough in her account to cover the renovation loan, utilities and the other two items until the end of January. Check. After that, finances got dicey.