The Bikini Car Wash (2 page)

“Greg,” Pete said, gravely. “You’ve got to see that we’re in this together. Do you honestly think those national chains are going to stick with you if I stumble?”

“Guthrie! Guthrie!” A well-dressed older woman called out for his attention.

Pete stopped in his tracks, gave her a quick half smile and held up his hand as a polite request for her to wait.

“You have to give me a fighting chance here,” he continued to admonish over the phone. “I’m not asking for a better deal. I’m just asking for the same deal you’d give to them. Our companies have been doing business together for years.”

“Guthrie!” the woman said again, impatiently.

This time Pete completely ignored her.

“If you can give me another percentage point, it will do us both a lot of good, Greg,” he continued. “When times are tough, we local yokels have got to stick together.”

The woman began snapping her fingers annoyingly.

“I’m waiting!” she pointed out loudly.

Pete interrupted his conversation. “Let me call you back, Greg. I’ve got a customer.” He clapped the phone shut and, forcing a well-practiced smile on his face, turned to the well-heeled, well-coifed and seriously frowning older woman.

“Yes, Mrs. Meyer,” he said politely. “What seems to be the problem today?”

“
Mr.
Guthrie,” she began with great emphasis on the title. “I want you to know how disappointed I am with the applesauce section.”

“Something’s wrong with the applesauce?”

Mrs. Meyer gestured broadly taking in the entire canned fruit section. “Where is the Sweet Moon Applesauce?” she asked. “I have looked high and low on these shelves and it is nowhere to be found.”

Pete didn’t even have to look at the shelf to know the answer. “We don’t carry that brand anymore,” he told her.

“You don’t carry it?” Her tone was incredulous. “When was that decision made?” she asked haughtily.

“Ah…I’m not sure exactly,” answered. “Maybe last year.”

“Well, I certainly didn’t hear anything about it.”

“Mrs. Meyer, this is a supermarket. We make a lot of product decisions that the typical shopper might not be aware of.”

“One would think that the management of this store would have the decency to inform a loyal customer about any changes that might directly affect her.”

Pete was at a loss at how to answer that.

“I’m very sorry, Mrs. Meyer,” he tried. “If I’d realized that it was important to you, I certainly would have let you know.”

“Well, it certainly is important to me,” the woman stated.
“I only want applesauce once or twice a year, but today I want it and it’s not here.”

Pete glanced up at the shelf in question. “We have four, no, five other brands of applesauce available,” he said. “How about trying one of those?”

The woman made a disdainful huffing sound.

“I can’t imagine how you can just willy-nilly wake up one day and decide to change everything in the store,” Mrs. Meyer complained. “I’ve been shopping here my entire adult life.”

“I know you have,” Pete agreed. “But we haven’t changed everything, we’re making small, tiny, minuscule changes.”

She raised an eyebrow in disbelief.

“I don’t see why you need to make any changes at all.”

Pete cleared his throat and tried giving her the logical explanation. “Sweet Moon is packed in the Far East,” he said. “These days we’re limiting ourselves to local producers and national brands. It saves our customers money as well as the unseen costs of international shipping on items that we make right here.”

“That means nothing to me,” Mrs. Meyer said. “I like Sweet Moon because it has larger pieces of apple in it. These are pureed to the point of baby food.”

“That’s how most people like it,” Pete pointed out.

“I am not most people!” Mrs. Meyer declared, unnecessarily. Pete had weathered enough encounters with the woman over the years to have no doubt of that.

“Maybe you could write a letter to the applesauce companies and encourage them to come out with a line of product with bigger apple pieces.”

That suggestion clearly appalled her.

“Young man, do you think I have nothing better to do with my time than to try to improve the products at your grocery store?”

What Pete thought was that the woman had nothing at all to do but frequent his grocery store, and nothing to say that wasn’t a complaint. He glanced down at her basket to see that today’s purchase was a small can of Le Sueur peas and a bottle of vitamins. That served to remind him that she was a lonely old woman and that maybe she didn’t buy much from his store, but it was everything that she bought.

“I’m awfully sorry, Mrs. Meyer,” he said with deliberate kindness. “I’ll ask Miss Kepper to make sure that you are immediately informed of all the product changes in the store. And for today, maybe I can direct you to the produce section. We have some really nice looking Rome apples that you could cook this afternoon into exactly the perfect consistency.”

Mrs. Meyer allowed him to show her, but she wasn’t happy about it.

Once she had huffed off, Pete made his way back through the store. Keeping his eyes open, he spotted a leaking mayonnaise jar, an open bag of cookies, half-eaten and left on a shelf, and an inch long toy car, lost in exactly the perfect spot to cause a calamity for an unsteady senior citizen. When he reached the checkout area he forced the big friendly smile back on his face. His customers needed to see him looking cheerful. And he’d found that his employees made fewer mistakes if it seemed like he was happy with their work. As soon as he reached the door to the office stairway, the smile disappeared.

Pete Guthrie knew that most people in Plainview consid
ered him a very lucky man. He’d grown up as the only son of one of the city’s oldest families. In high school he’d been both a scholar and an athlete. He’d done well at the state university, graduating
cum laude.
And after a brief, and very flashy, marriage to a former beauty pageant winner, he had come home to be handed the family business.

He had a fine house, an expensive car and a number of local women stepping all over each other to get his attention. Pete hardly noticed. He didn’t have time to notice. His life was consumed by the day-to-day challenge of a keeping a quirky, family-owned store viable in a world of big-box grocery magnets.

Upstairs he walked down the dreary, ill-lit corridor without even noticing it. The door to Miss Kepper’s office was open, and he stopped at the entrance for a quick word. The aging spinster had worked for Guthrie Foods longer than Pete had been alive. She knew every aspect of the operation. And without her help, Pete was pretty sure he never would have made it through the first five years.

“Have you found someone to take on the advertising?” he asked.

Miss Kepper shook her head. “I’ve talked to several candidates, but no one is quite who we’re looking for.”

Pete nodded, acceding to her judgment. “Okay, well, keep at it. The right person is bound to walk though the door eventually.”

The woman agreed.

“Do you have the mailing address for Mrs. Meyer?” Pete asked.

“Mrs. Meyer?”

“You know, the older lady who complains about everything.”

“Oh, her. Yes, yes I think I do.”

“Good. Could you make a note to yourself to send of copy of every product decision to her.”

Miss Kepper looked horrified. “You’re joking,” she said. “We have about thirty ‘discontinues’ a week and at least that many new products.”

Pete nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “And Mrs. Meyer says she wants to hear about every decision we make. So I’m going to bury that old woman in mail,” he said. “Send her notices until she screams for mercy. The last thing I need is another senior citizen looking over my shoulder.”

As soon as the words were out of Pete’s mouth, he wished he could call them back.
Way to go, Peterson,
he thought sarcastically to himself.
Why didn’t you just call her a dried-up old maid?

Miss Kepper was definitely a person in the over sixty-five age category. And she was fiercely loyal to Pete’s father, who was, without question, the senior most likely to be looking over Pete’s shoulder.

The woman’s back stiffened slightly and Pete knew that he’d offended her. Unable to fix that, he instead gifted her with the one thing he knew she would truly be grateful for.

“Listen, I’m going to be working in my office for a while,” he said. “Could you hold all my calls? And could you phone my dad and ask him if he could come by here tomorrow.”

“Certainly,” Miss Kepper answered evenly. The color in her cheeks was the only sign of what those words truly meant to her.

For decades the worst kept secret in the break rooms of
Guthrie Foods continued to be that Miss Doris Kepper was in love with Hank Guthrie, Pete’s father.

The two had met in college in 1962. Hank had been a “big man on campus,” football star and president of his fraternity. Miss Kepper had been a shy mouse hoping to complete an associate degree and land a job as a secretary. She had fallen for him; hook, line and sinker. It had been her homework, her term papers and her class notes that allowed him to make good grades while leading a wild social life. He’d grown so accustomed to taking advantage of her crush on him, that he’d just never stopped.

After graduation, the lovelorn young woman followed Hank to Plainview and he’d given her a job. The success of the grocery store chain in the 1970s and ’80s was due in large part to her hard work. Pete’s father had been appropriately grateful. But, it seemed, never inappropriately grateful.

After an extended period of merry bachelorhood, his dad had married socially prominent Madeleine Grosvenor. And she had, in due course, provided Hank with his son and heir.

All this, while Miss Kepper kept her nose to the grindstone and gazed longingly from the sidelines.

Pete, at one time, had thought this was funny. Certainly his father found it very amusing. He’d been making jokes among his friends at the woman’s expense for years. Hank called Miss Kepper the Vestal Virgin of Guthrie Foods. He found it hilariously ludicrous that a woman would, for all intents and purposes, give up her own life and future to bask in the shadow of his personal glory.

Back in high school, Pete and his buddies, in that inordinately cruel way young teens find so irresistible, had devised
their own unpleasant name for her. They’d called her “Miss Kepper-legs-closed.” In hindsight, Pete realized that part of his animosity toward the woman stemmed from a misplaced sense of loyalty to his mother. As well as a big misunderstanding of who uses who in relationships.

Now, working with Miss Kepper on a daily basis, he’d come to like and admire her. And to feel sorry for her and guilty about her. Miss Kepper genuinely loved his father, without, as far as Pete knew, ever getting anything in return. And she treated Pete both with the respect of an esteemed employer and the inexhaustible protectiveness of a doting parent. For that, he could certainly put up with his father’s snide interference for a few hours once in a while. Hank’s infrequent trips to the store were now the only time that Miss Kepper ever saw him.

Pete continued on down to the corner office. Inside, the perpendicular banks of windows gave him a perfect view of the corner of Grosvenor and Fifth Street. He had seen it so many times, he no longer even noticed it. Behind the desk were the portraits of the three other men who’d run this company, their names on little brass plates below their photos. Henry Peterson Guthrie stood in front of a tiny clapboard store wearing an apron and holding a broom. Henry Peterson Guthrie, Jr. sat for a formal photograph that made him look portly and presidential in wide lapeled pinstripes. Henry P. “Hank” Guthrie, III looked tall and tan in a Guthrie Foods golf shirt with a professional grade titanium club slung casually over his shoulder.

Pete, otherwise known as Henry Peterson Guthrie, IV, didn’t wonder what his own photo might look like. He was in
no mood to waste his time, energy or his cold hard cash having his portrait taken. When his dad had this job, the money came rolling in. These days every dollar had to be tracked down, hogtied and practically dragged through the door. And it was Pete’s responsibility to do most of the dragging.

He crossed the room to the small compact refrigerator in the corner of the room. Opening it, he pulled out a bag of chocolate Mallomars from his stash inside. Pete ripped open the bag and set it on the desk before fishing out a cookie and stuffing it in his mouth. He closed his eyes for a moment, savoring the taste. Then, with a sigh, he pulled the cell phone out of his pocket and sat down at his desk to make the return call to the distributor.

ANDI’S BROW WAS
covered with sweat, her T-shirt was smeared with grease and her hands now sported a number of minor burns as she sat the bubbling casserole in the middle of the kitchen table.

She had never been much of a cook, but how could she be? Andi had been her father’s daughter. She’d spent all her after-school time helping him out at work. Jelly was the one who had stayed home with Mom. Now that it was too late, Andi really wanted to be able to feed the family the way they’d always been fed. She wanted to cook.

How hard could it be? she’d asked herself. She’d explored her mother’s recipe box and found it to be full of unhelpful secrets, like “dash of complement spices” and “cook to cloudy.” She was determined to fix at least a few of the dishes that were her mother’s specialties. And this was one of them.

“Dinner!” she called out. She got no immediate response. With a long-suffering sigh she went down the basement stairs.

When they were still kids, her mother had sectioned out the laundry area from a place she called the rumpus room. With its worn furniture, television and Ping-Pong table, it was still the most likely spot to find members of her family any time of the day or night.

Her sister was sitting on the couch cross-legged, elbows on knees with her face in her hands. An open photo album lay on her lap, but her eyes were glued to the TV.

“Jelly, turn that off and go find Pop. Tell him it’s time for dinner.”

Jelly’s brow wrinkled and she looked at Andi with confusion. “We’ve still got perps,” she answered. “We don’t eat until after all the perps are caught.”

The
perps,
or perpetrators, were the bad guys on Jelly’s favorite cop show,
Law & Order
. Without the ability to tell time, Jelly relied on cable programming to let her know when to eat, sleep and wake. Preemptions and changes in the schedule could cause great upheaval. As could apparently, a casserole being done too early.

“You’ve seen that one a hundred times,” Andi told her sister. “Remember, that’s the one where the ex-wife tried to frame the new wife to protect her son.”

“I know,” Jelly said. “But they haven’t caught him yet.”

“Believe me,” Andi told her. “It always turns out the same way.”

Jelly seemed skeptical.

“Go out in the garage and get Pop,” Andi insisted. “I’ve fixed a great meal and I don’t want it to get cold.”

Andi headed back up the stairs. She’d set the table exactly as her mother had taught her. The same plates, the same
flatware, the same meal, it was almost the same. But almost, of course, is never quite good enough.

It was nearly ten minutes before the three of them were finally seated around the table, the way families were supposed to be. The way they would have been if her mother was still there.

Her father, at age sixty-six, was still good-looking. He was of average height and described himself as “wiry.” His hair, once dark brown, was now mostly gray, and it started a bit further back on his forehead these days. He was quick with a laugh or a joke, unfailingly generous to his friends and neighbors, and completely at ease with Jelly and those he called her “like-minded friends.” Walt Wolkowicz had married late in life. He and Ella, Andi and Jelly’s mother, had thought it might be too late for children. But they had been blessed with twins. If the reality of those daughters had ever been a source of grief to them, they never said. Her parents had had the perfect marriage. They were true soul mates, two halves of one fused history. Totally in love every day of their lives.

Andi had wondered, more than once, if her inability to find any man she could really settle for was because her parents had set the relationship bar way too high.

“You don’t have to fix these meals, Andi,” her father told her. “Jelly and I have gotten used to eating light in the evening.”

“I wanted to do it,” Andi assured him. “You two need a healthy home-cooked meal.”

“The food at the center is very healthy,” Pop assured her.

Her father, long since retired from his small car wash business, was a volunteer taking lunchtime meals to elderly persons stuck at home. Pop was the driver and Jelly delivered
to the front door. It was a good job for both. The church charity that ran the service provided them with a hot lunch every day.

“I’m sure it’s fine,” she agreed. “But it’s not the same as home.”

Since the dish was hot, Andi dolloped out generous portions around the table.

“What is this?” Jelly asked, wrinkling her nose.

“It’s Mom’s chicken-asparagus casserole,” Andi answered. “Remember, you always loved it.”

Her sister shook her head. “It’s something, but I don’t think that’s what it is.”

“Jelly, just say grace,” Andi ordered.

The three joined hands around the table and bowed heads.

“Dear God,” her sister prayed. “Thank you for all the stuff we get. And please make Andi’s cooking taste better than it does.”

“Jelly!”

“Don’t interrupt me, I’m praying.”

At the head of the table, her father was loudly clearing his throat to stifle his laughter.

“And please make sure the D.A. sends that
perp
to Rikers Island for twenty-five to life. Amen.”

Her father was still trying to hide his grin as the family began eating.

“Where did you go today?” Andi asked him. “I really don’t think you should leave Jelly just sitting alone in a restaurant like that.”

“I wasn’t alone,” Jelly piped in. “The waitress was watching me. Her name is Tiff.”

“I had an appointment,” Pop answered. “And your sister is perfectly safe sitting in a public place.”

“I don’t think so,” Andi said. “And what kind of appointment did you have. I could have taken you.”

“I can get around town on my own, thank you very much,” he said. “And you and Jelly got to spend some girl time together.”

“I’m perfectly happy to spend time with Jelly, but I don’t want her being left on her own waiting for me,” Andi said. “I don’t think Mom would have allowed it.”

She saw her father raise an eyebrow, but he didn’t argue. Instead he changed the subject.

“How goes the job search?” he asked her. “Any luck?”

“Not yet,” Andi answered. “My interview with Guthrie’s was a complete waste of my time. I am so overqualified, they should have gotten on their hands and knees to thank me for applying. But the old biddy who was doing the hiring was just totally negative.”

Her father nodded.

“Well, I want you to know that I admire you going out there day after day trying. I never cared for that sort of thing at all,” he said. “It goes against my nature to make myself look good in somebody else’s eyes. And that’s what you’ve got to do if you want to get hired. I guess that’s why I always worked for myself.”

Andi sighed. “I’d be delighted to work for myself,” she said. “I could be the first self-employed corporate contributions professional. All I’d need is fifteen or twenty million dollars and I could really find some wonderful charities to give it away to.”

Her father laughed. Jelly did, too, just to be sociable. Andi was certain that she didn’t get the joke, but getting it wasn’t the point to Jelly, it was all about laughter.

“I walked by your old place today,” Andi said. “I’m surprised that Guthrie hasn’t used that corner for a gas station or something.”

Her father hesitated as he finished a bite. He had a strange look on his face, before he set his fork on the edge of his plate and pushed it forward and out of his way. “He hasn’t used it because he doesn’t own it,” Pop said.

“I thought you sold that property to them years ago.”

“I thought I did, too,” Pop said. “Hank agreed to everything but just never got around to signing the deal and paying me the money. So I still own it. I still pay taxes on it.”

“Really.” Andi was intrigued.

“Yeah, I don’t know what happened. I called the man and his attorney both a dozen times over two years and nobody would ever say anything more than it was still ‘in process.’ I finally gave up. I guess they just changed their mind.”

“They changed their mind? Pop, don’t you know there are legal remedies for that kind of thing?”

Her father shrugged. “Sweetie, there are things worth fighting for in the world and there are things that are not. I try to have the wisdom to recognize one from the other.”

Andi admired her father’s honor and his willingness to turn the other cheek, but she knew people in town sometimes took advantage of that. He was a better man than Plainview often deserved.

“The Guthries are lucky you didn’t sell it to someone else.”

Her father shook his head. “Nobody else ever showed any interest. I guess there’s not much anyone could do with it.”

“What do you mean that there’s not much anyone could do with it,” Andi said. “It’s on one of the busiest corners in
the whole downtown area. Half the people in town drive past it every day.”

Her father nodded. “Yeah, it does seem a shame that it’s just sitting there costing me money.”

“I should open up some kind of business there,” Andi said, absently.

“Yeah, you probably should,” her father told her. “When a person has a job and a regular check coming in, it’s always hard to risk that by going off on your own. But when you’re unemployed, well, what’s that old saying, ‘when you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose.’”

Her father’s words caught Andi’s attention.

“You’d be okay if I opened some kind of business in that place?”

“Sure,” he said. “If you can think of something to do with it, you ought to do it. You probably won’t get rich, but it sure wouldn’t hurt to have some cash in your pocket and to build back your savings. You’ll need it to move back to the city one day.”

“I’m not moving back,” Andi reminded him. “I’m staying in Plainview.”

“Well, then, you’ll need an income even more,” he said. “It may be a good long while before business in this town begins to pick up again. I’ll let you have the building for free. You can pay me after you make your first million.” He chuckled.

Andi did too. It seemed pretty unlikely.

“The building’s way too small for a shop or a restaurant,” she said. “It would be a good size for an office. But who needs an office with a drive-through?”

“That’s been my problem with it all along,” her father said. “I can’t tear the place down because it’s part of an architec
tural conservation zone. I can’t expand, because the lot is undersized and pie-shaped. I couldn’t add so much as a closet without getting into the easement of Guthrie’s property. It was fine for what it was, but I could never figure what else to do with it.”

“Maybe it could be a drive-through coffee place,” Andi suggested.

“I don’t know how much demand there is for that kind of thing,” Pop said. “But it sure doesn’t hurt to look into it.”

“Great!” Andi said, feeling surprisingly pleased and optimistic. She forked a big bite of casserole in her mouth and discovered why her father had pushed his plate away and why her sister was playing with hers.

“Yuck, this is awful!”

Jelly and Pop nodded.

“You can’t cook, Andi,” her father pointed out. “You never could. And I don’t know why you keep thinking you can, ’cause you’re terrible at it.”

“Mom was so good at it,” Andi said.

“She was. But you’re not,” her father said. “So what do you girls think? How about some nice cheese and crackers? Maybe we can slice up an apple.”

Jelly nodded enthusiastically.

Andi was still mourning her epicurean disaster as she carried the casserole to the garbage disposal. “I don’t get it,” she said. “I did everything I was supposed to do. And it looks just exactly the way Mom’s used to look.”

Her father chuckled with wisdom born of experience. “How things look, as often as not, completely fool us as to how things are.”

The next morning Pete was sitting in front of the computer screen in his office, poring over a plan-o-gram from the distributor. The latest changes involved squeezing the books and magazines section to add more dietary supplements. The distributor was supposed to be doing constant research about what people wanted to buy. But Pete wasn’t sure if, in this tough economy, his customers were truly more interested in organic gingko than they were in John Grisham.

He heard his father before he saw him. The booming voice that stood out in any crowd poured down the hallway. His father was talking with Miss Kepper, jovial to the edge of flirty, without ever quite pushing past what was acceptable between employer and employee.

“I wish I had you with me at City Hall, Doris,” he heard his dad tell her. “Every two weeks they deliver a mountain of paper for me to go through and it’s really cutting into my golf time.”

His father laughed as if he were joking, but Pete knew there was more truth to his words than he wanted to admit.

Upon retirement, Hank Guthrie had run for, and been elected to, the Plainview city council. It was not that he had any great interest in politics or municipal governance. The day-to-day operations were run by a team of bureaucratic professionals. The five aldermen were elected ostensibly to oversee their work. The positions were compensated at the rate of one dollar per year. That meant, for the most part, the position of alderman was held by the affluent or the retired. Hank Guthrie qualified on both counts.

Naturally gregarious, and a glutton for attention, sitting on the council gave Pete’s father an important position in the
community, without any of the risk and headache of operating a business.

“If my boy gives you one moment of grief,” Hank said to Miss Kepper. “Hand in your notice and come help me out. You know, I just don’t feel like myself without you as my right-hand man.”

Alone in his office, Pete rolled his eyes. Why did he have to do that? he wondered about his father, not for the first time. Why couldn’t he just be kind to her without holding out this carrot that the two of them could be together? Pete sincerely hoped Miss Kepper didn’t take the bait. He would hate to lose her but, worse than that, he would hate for his dad to once more put her into a position that drew public attention. He could imagine a tabloid headline: Lovelorn Old Maid Persists As Grocery Owner Groupie Well Into Retirement.