The Bikini Car Wash (19 page)

“Thanks for bringing this back,” she said. “This is my work uniform. I’m sure I’d get my pay docked if I showed up without it.”

He chuckled.

“Well, I guess I’ll see you around then, Wolkowicz,” he said.

“Yeah, sure.”

They stood facing each other uncertainly for a moment. Finally Andi offered a handshake. Pete took it, but then he leaned forward and planted a kiss on her check.

“Bye.”

He headed down the stairs. “Thanks for the game, Jelly,” he said.

Andi’s sister offered a “you’re welcome.”

At the bottom of the steps he turned. “I really will see you around,” he said. “I have binoculars in my office.”

The fireworks of Saturday night and the respite of Sunday in no way prepared Pete for all hell breaking loose on Monday morning. He arrived at his office to find the hallway crowded and a meeting going on in the conference room.

He greeted people he saw as cordially as his befuddlement would allow. He spotted Seth Joffee who returned his nod of greeting.

“Could you step into my office a minute,” Pete said.

His neighbor’s son, comanager of the nearby Joffee’s Manhattan Store quickly complied. Seth, the younger brother, was just a couple of years older than Pete himself. The two had never been friends, but always friendly. They’d known each other since Little League.

Pete shut the door behind him.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“You don’t know?”

Pete shook his head.

“Then you must be the only one,” Seth told him, handing over a bright yellow flyer.

Pete read the document aloud. “Merchants and Citizens Alliance for Morality.”

He glanced up at Seth, surprised. Then he read the rest of the announcement inviting everyone to the organizational meeting at Guthrie Foods.

“This is about the Bikini Car Wash?” Pete asked.

Seth nodded. “Yeah, there are some people really stirred up about it,” he said.

“All these people?”

Seth shrugged. “It’s hard to tell who’s angry and who is just
being careful. For us, foot traffic in our store was better on Saturday than we’ve seen in months. Dave and I were practically doing the happy dance. But if it starts to sour, well, we just don’t want to be on the wrong side of this issue.”

Pete nodded slowly.

“Guthrie Foods is the anchor of this whole downtown neighborhood,” Seth continued. “If you’re going to be opposed to this then we are, too.”

“Guthrie Foods is not opposed to the car wash,” Pete said.

Seth raised an eyebrow and chuckled lightly. “I guess your dad didn’t get the memo. He’s the point man for the organization.”

Pete’s brow furrowed and he shook his head. “He might have volunteered our meeting room. But my father’s on city council. He can’t take the lead in an advocacy group.”

“He’s not the actual chair of the group,” Seth said. “The chair is Doris Kepper. You’re father is just the guy doing all the talking.”

“Oh crap!”

Seth nodded agreement.

The two went back into the hallway and Pete stayed on the edge of the crowd. He didn’t need to see his father. Utilizing a microphone, his voice could be heard even by those who couldn’t even get close to the conference room door.

“This is a community of families, decent families,” Hank was saying. “We can’t allow women tainted by big-city immodesty to come in here and undermine the moral fiber of our young men and boys.”

Pete raised an eyebrow. It was the same kind of “she’s not one of us” argument he utilized against Andi’s coffee shop idea.

“We all know what this kind of business means,” Hank con
tinued. “They say they only wash cars, but the truth is they are washing young minds. Washing minds free of all the values that our families and schools and churches have tried to teach them.”

There were mumbles of agreement. Pete could see several people in the hallway nodding.

“I don’t want to say these women are bad. Maybe they are just rudderless and naive. Perhaps they don’t fully understand that the men they attract to this…this business, if you can call it that. These men become hangers-on, vagrants. They’re susceptible to alcohol abuse and drugs.”

There were hisses of fear and disgust.

“And it’s not only the boys in our community that are irreparably injured by this,” Hank went on. “Think of the young girls, riding by on the city bus. They’re headed to vacation Bible school or piano lessons and they are confronted, on our public streets, with this insidious evil. This subjugation of women. Is this the self-image we want for our daughters?”

“No,” someone shouted.

“Hell no!” someone else agreed.

“As merchants and neighbors, parents and grandparents, we must take a stand against this lewd public display. I ask you, fellow citizens, what next? Will we see peep shows and prostitutes on our sidewalks. The road to obscenity and debauchery is a slippery slope, and you and I can both see the city of Plainview beginning to slide.”

Pete walked back into his office and once more he closed the door. He walked over to the phone. Took one deep breath before picking it up. He dialed 911.

The dispatcher answered almost instantly.

“I need the fire marshal,” Pete told her. “I’ve got an over-
occupancy of the second-floor conference room area at Guthrie Foods. It’s a dangerous safety hazard and I need the crowd dispersed.”

As soon as he’d finished his call, Pete walked over to his window and picked up the Jungle Jeff Safari binoculars. He spotted Andi almost immediately. She was wearing a sundress swimsuit cover and was busily engaged in sweeping the lot clean. Just keeping the place up was a big improvement for the corner.

He watched her, trying not to get distracted by his memories of Saturday night. She’d been very certain about their timing being wrong. He couldn’t argue with that. But he wasn’t willing to just move on. There had been something special between them and he wasn’t about to write it off without finding out what it was.

He still had his eyes on her when she straightened and focused her attention on something in the street. Pete scanned over to see what she was looking at and saw Plainview’s hundred-foot ladder truck was turning into the Guthrie Foods parking lot.

Well Peterson, that’s not going to be all that helpful with this morning’s customer count.

The long firetruck pulled up directly in front of the store main door. A half dozen guys got out and walked inside. At least they were wearing T-shirts instead of helmets and protective clothing.

It was only a couple of minutes before they reached the hallway.

The fire marshal, a grizzled old veteran of a very dangerous profession, didn’t waste any time. As soon as he came upon the crowd in the hallway, he started moving people out of there.

“Clear this hallway!” he called out. “You’ll need to move downstairs. We’ve got to clear this hallway.”

As he worked his way toward the conference room, people generally recognized the voice of authority. They began leaving.

“What’s going on?” he heard his father ask. “What’s going on?”

When the fire marshal made it to the doorway of the conference, Hank voiced the same question directly to him.

“We need to move people out of this room,” he announced.

“We’re conducting a meeting,” Hank answered.

“Yes, sir, but the placard here on the door clearly states this room’s maximum capacity at thirty,” the man answered him. “There’s more than twice that number in here. That’s an unsafe situation. We need to remedy it immediately. Let’s clear the room now, people. Make an orderly departure if you will.”

As men and women began filing out of the conference room, Pete headed in that direction. He could hear his father furiously berating the aging, white-haired fire marshal as if he were some snot-nosed kid.

“I’m sorry,” the man told him evenly. “Safety concerns are not negotiable. Once we became aware of the problem, we had no choice but to clear the area.”

“Who notified you?”

The fire marshal shook his head. “I don’t know who called it in, but once we’re notified of a situation, we have to check it out. You were clearly in violation. I have no choice. I have to follow the law.”

“The law!” Hank said the word as if it were a curse. “I
make
the law, do you understand that?”

“Yes, sir, I do,” the fire marshal answered. “That’s your job and mine is to carry it out.”

His father’s jaw was tightly set, his eyes glaring. Pete knew from experience how angry his father could get. Hank was enraged.

“I’m going to have to write a citation,” the fire marshal said firmly.

“Give it to me,” Pete told him. “It’s my building, my store, my responsibility.”

The old fire marshal nodded and stepped closer to the doorway where Pete stood. He pulled out a pad and began writing on it.

His father had begun pacing. His complexion was dark as a beet and his expression furious. Nostrils flaring, he kept slapping his fist into his palm.

He stopped directly in front of Miss Kepper and addressed her angrily.

“Doris, we must have a traitor on the store staff,” he said. “You have to find out who it is and give him his walking papers. And I mean today! I will not tolerate disloyalty.”

“I don’t think we can ever know for sure who did it,” Miss Kepper told him. “It’s not the kind of thing that anyone would admit.”

“I admit it,” Pete spoke up immediately. “I called it in.”

All three faces in the room stared at him incredulously.

“What?”

“You?”

“Yes,” he answered. “There were too many people here. They weren’t authorized to be here. I’m responsible for the people in this building. I knew it was a safety hazard. I had no choice but to call the fire marshal.”

“Damn it! You disrupted our meeting,” his father complained.

“No meeting was ever cleared with me,” Pete said. He glanced over at Miss Kepper. “Was there some reason that I was not informed?”

The woman’s expression was concerned. “Mr. Guthrie called the meeting,” she said. “I just…I just assumed that he could do that.”

“Understandable error,” Pete said. “But in the future the answer is ‘no.’ My father cannot call a meeting without my approval. He can’t, my mother can’t, my Aunt Sylvie out in Idaho can’t. And you, Miss Kepper, or should I say Madam Chair of the…what is it? the Merchants and Citizens Alliance for Morality. You cannot either. We’re running a grocery store here, not a lobbying firm.”

“Why you worthless girly pissant! You don’t tell me what to do!” his father hollered.

“I can as long as I’m CEO.”

“Don’t push me, boy. I put you in that job and I can take you out of it!”

“Can you?” Pete asked, his tone deliberately conversational. “Replacing me takes a majority vote of the board of directors. There are only three of us on it. You vote me out. I vote me in. Shall we have Miss Kepper get my mother on the phone in China? I’m sure she’ll be interested to know that you’re now putting our family business squarely in the middle of a controversy. And that you, after sixty years of being a self-serving philanderer, have inexplicably become the spokesman for decency and morality.”

Hank’s face was so red it looked like he might explode.

“Do you want Miss Kepper to call her,” Pete prodded. “I’m willing to take my chances with her vote if you are.”

“You are just like her,” Hank screamed at him through clenched teeth.

“Thank you, as always.”

Powerlessness was not a feeling to which Hank Guthrie was accustomed. He did not allow people to dispute him. He certainly never allowed that from his son. Being shown up in the presence of Miss Kepper and the fire marshal was more than he could take. In furious frustration he grabbed a pitcher of water from beside the lectern. He hurled it in Pete’s direction. Pete dodged unnecessarily, his father missed by a mile. But the pitcher shattered against the wall in a hail of broken glass and splattered water.

Hank cursed vividly and stormed out of the room.

Pete turned to the old fireman beside him and offered him a tight smile. “My father is having a bad day,” he said. “I’m sure that I can trust your professionalism in what is repeated about this incident.”

The fire marshal tore off the piece of paper from the top of his pad and handed it to Pete.

“The fine is $250,” he said. “I came here, I cleared a room and I wrote you a ticket. There’s nothing else to say.”

“Thank you,” Pete said.

The fire marshal half turned and tipped his hat. “Ma’am,” he said. “Mr. Guthrie.”

As soon as he was gone, Pete crossed the room and set the ticket on the table in front of Miss Kepper.

“Pay this out of Miscellaneous Expenses, please. And could you ask Meggie to put together our best goodie basket and have it sent down to the station house.”

“Yes, Mr. Guthrie,” she answered.

There was something in her tone that was new. Pete noticed it immediately. She had never been even remotely disrespectful. But this was, he realized, the first time he’d ever heard respect. He almost felt badly. As if he should reassure her that he understood why she’d done what she had done. But he knew better than that. She wasn’t a member of the family. She was an employee. And she had messed up. She had assumed. She had forgotten who was her boss. And Pete knew the woman was smart enough never to let it happen again.

“Do you still want me to try to locate your mother?” she asked.

Pete shook his head. “I don’t believe that will be necessary,” he said. “Why ruin her vacation.”

Jelly sat in the rumpus room looking again at the big brown photo book that smelled like the attic. On the TV in front of her, Detective Rey Curtis was having trouble with his wife. Jelly understood that. Sometimes even people who love each other have trouble.

She showed him the old black-and-white photos of the long-ago prom with fake palm trees and streamers hanging from the ceiling.

“This is my mom,” she said, holding up the picture of two couples dressed in elegant formal wear from another era. She moved her finger to the other side of the photo. “This is Pop.”

There was another picture of the four of them sitting together at a table. Pop had his arm around another woman, a dark-haired woman who looked familiar, but Jelly didn’t recognize her.

Another photo showed Mom dancing with a very tall man with a square jaw and a big grin. Her mom was smiling, too. Smiling in a strange, dreamy way that was not so much like her.

“Mom was so happy,” Jelly told Rey. “I don’t know why. But when she’s looking at this guy, she looks so happy.”

“That’s the way the groceryman looks at Andi,” Jelly revealed, lowering her voice to just above a whisper. “But Andi doesn’t look happy about it at all.”

Jelly turned the page and there, posed within the center of a big heart strewn in crepe paper flowers was the strange man and Mom. They were kissing.

She studied the photo for a long moment. “I wonder if he’s got her swimming suit in his pocket?” she asked.