The Bikini Car Wash (9 page)

Pete reached for the bag of Mallomars at the edge of his desk. He listened for fifteen minutes as his father criticized virtually everything that he’d ever done. Pete was not unaccustomed to this and he’d acquired the helpful ability to listen intently while removing his emotions. He’d learned the skill from watching his mother. And he’d had many years of practice on his own. Pete listened as if it were someone else’s conversation and he was just an observer. As an observer, he could only marvel that the man who could never remember to show up for award ceremonies, birthday parties or parent-teacher conferences had such a steel-trap memory of his son’s every misstep, slight or momentous. From his failure to make the All-Star team in Little League to the story in this morning’s newspaper, it was all, to Hank Guthrie’s thinking, evidence of his son’s innate inferiority to his father.

“It’s just like marrying that little tart of yours,” his father blathered on.

Pete was immediately sucked back into the moment. There were places where his father’s opinion was off-limits.

“No!” Pete stated firmly into the phone. “My divorce and my ex are not your business. Don’t even go there. You’ve made such a mess of your marriage, you can’t give anyone
advice on that score. Besides, all that’s history. It doesn’t have anything to do with the store.”

The sudden push-back shocked Hank into momentary silence. Unfortunately, it was only momentary.

“I don’t give a damn about Minx or your marriage,” the older man said. “But both say a lot about your character. A man who lets a woman run around on him, that’s a man who’s not in control. And if you’re not in control, then somebody else is controlling you.”

“No one is controlling me,” Pete said. “And I am controlling the store. You are
not
controlling the store. So why don’t you stop calling here and acting like you are.”

Pete slammed down the phone. He immediately regretted it. Losing his temper was losing control.

Still angry, he got up from his desk and headed out of his office. Down the hallway, Miss Kepper’s door was open and he glanced in just long enough to see her face. Her expression, one of disappointment and distress, was to be totally expected. Her loyalties were divided. She was always on Pete’s side, but she loved Hank.

“I’ve got my phone,” he said simply and moved on quickly, leaving no time for discussion.

He walked down the drab hallway to the stairs. His mood immediately lightened as he entered the light and activity of the store. He liked the store. He loved Guthrie Foods. He had since he was a kid. He enjoyed the energy and the feeling of accomplishment. He’d thought that managing the store would be like working in the store. But, of course, it wasn’t always. Pete wasn’t afraid of hard work, or hesitant of making big decisions. But some days the responsibility for all these em
ployees, for his customers, for the community and to his family heritage, weighed more heavily than others. And the time spent trying to save three cents on a product or two minutes out of a workweek, turned out to be the most frustrating and the most important. It was always the one thing that only he was in a position to do.

He remembered to smile and nod at the cashiers as he passed.

He stopped to help on checkout three.

“Cody, I think we should put the box in like this, upright,” he said. “It gives the sack a more open form and that makes it easier to pack.”

The young man nodded as he allowed Pete to help him.

The new bring-your-own-reusable-bag policy was a great money saver and good for the environment. But with carryalls of every shape and size, bagging had become more of an art than a science. In a solid-bottomed tote, the best place for the eggs was on the bottom, as long as the stuff on top was not too heavy. But if the sack had just seams or curved out, the eggs went on top, just like they do in plastic store bags. In the past, a bagger might have been free to utilize a near infinite number of store bags. Today, if the customer brought in three bags, they wanted their groceries to fit in them, and without being so heavy that they couldn’t easily lift them out of their car.

Most of the baggers at Guthrie’s were easily able to adapt to these changes. For Cody, a young man with Down’s Syndrome, inconsistency was a challenge. But he tried hard, was quick to apologize when he messed up, and was a favorite among the cashiers.

Pete made his way into the aisles. He greeted people he knew, answered questions for shoppers and picked up trash as
he went through the store. Finally, on the far end of Aisle Nineteen, he located Harvey, the stock crew supervisor. He was a weathered but wiry employee who’d been with the company all of Pete’s life. He was working alongside the two guys and one woman on his team. Nearby a grocery cart was loaded almost to capacity with items being cleared off the shelf.

“How’s it going?”

The older man shrugged. “This dang trail mix sure didn’t sell,” he answered.

Pete nodded, picking up the package.

“The price is off for the kind of demand we get,” he agreed. “It may be more organic and healthy than the stuff in the bags, but it looks the same. Folks just won’t pay a dollar more to try something that only
might
be better.”

“They should have introduced it for the same price,” Harvey said. “Then once people tried it, they could slowly move it up to cover the costs.”

“Yeah,” Pete agreed. “They probably did that in other markets and thought they had built enough reputation to just show up here. Our folks just don’t eat as much of this grazing stuff as they do in California.”

Harvey laughed. “It’s ’cause we get to wear our coats all winter,” he said. “We look stout anyway, we might as well eat what we want.”

Pete began helping him clear the shelf. The end displays on each aisle were the most active product areas in the store. Each month merchandisers paid for the prominent placement of their products. So last month’s merchandise was out and new things were brought in. It was labor-intensive for stockers, but it was very good for business.

“I’d bet you’ve got something better to do than follow me around today,” Harvey said.

Pete shrugged. “I know you’re down to a bare-bones crew,” he answered. “If I don’t help you, I’d need to take someone off the checkout line.”

Harvey nodded.

Pete had avoided layoffs by not filling positions that came vacant, and by hiring part-timers. It helped to keep the store profitable, but it made for heavy strains on productivity.

“You know I’ve been thinking,” Harvey said.

“That’s always dangerous,” Pete pointed out.

The older man grinned, adding to the joke. “I do it so rarely it doesn’t pain me much.”

The two men chuckled together.

“Maybe we could cross-train more of the staff,” Harvey said. “If we could get most everybody competent in more jobs in the store, then we could utilize whoever is on the clock.”

Pete nodded, hearing the man out. Cross-training was often fraught with push-back from employees. The extra effort required to learn a new task was frequently resented. And there often existed an entire hierarchy, in the minds of some workers, as to which jobs were acceptable and which jobs were beneath them. Pete did all he could to counter the latter mind-set, showing by example his willingness to do whatever needed doing. He was just as quick to fill in for a cashier as he was to do “cleanup on Aisle Nine.”

“I haven’t said anything,” Harvey said. “Because I know your father was a true believer in specialization, but—”

Pete cut him off. “My father is not running Guthrie Foods.”

Harvey’s eyes widened and Pete realized that he’d spoken
more sharply than he should. He forced a wide grin to his face to counter his tone. “And times are a lot different now than when my dad ran the store.”

The older man nodded slowly. “That’s right,” he said. “Times are different.”

“I certainly think it’s an idea worth looking at,” Pete said.

“We could start small,” Harvey said. “We wouldn’t want to go storewide the first day. Just test the waters, see if we can get it going.”

“Let me think about it for a day or two,” Pete said. “And we’ll talk again.”

“Okay. Sure, think about it.”

“And I do appreciate your input,” Pete continued. “We need everybody in the store to be thinking about how to make things work better. So…so thanks.”

Pete continued to help with the end displays for a few minutes before he was called to the loading dock to haggle with a driver who was a day late and half the order short.

By the time he got that sorted out, he only walked through the produce department before he was called to the checkout. He subbed for the front end manager while she took an early lunch. He cleared up over-rings and ran down uncoded prices for an hour. He didn’t mind that. He wasn’t so thrilled about the personal check that failed the scancheck. The scancheck was a fraud prevention system. Its compact reader could electronically verify the validity of an account and rate the risk of it at point of sale. That was good news for the retailer. Not always such good news for the customer.

Pete was called to register five. When he stepped up, the
cashier handed him what amounted to a worthless piece of paper.

“It’s a code three,” she told him.

Pete nodded at the cashier and then turned his attention to the customer. He didn’t know her, but he figured she was about his age. She had two quiet children eyeing him and a third, a gooing cheerful infant, was strapped into the shopping cart.

“There seems to be a problem with your check,” he said quietly.

Neither the mom nor the kids looked surprised.

“Maybe, you…ah…do you have a credit card?”

“It was declined,” the cashier told him.

The woman looked cornered, ready to bolt. The weight of her humiliation created a heaviness in the air making it hard to breathe.

Pete glanced at the grocery bags already loaded into the cart. She was buying bread and milk, peanut butter and diapers. If she’d had a six-pack of beer or a carton of cigarettes, even a frozen pizza he might have been able to fault her. But he knew that if he had three kids and needed to feed them, he didn’t know what he might have felt compelled to do.

He hesitated only a minute before scrawling his initials next to the amount on the check.

“Give me a copy of the receipt,” he told the cashier. She quickly printed it out and he stapled the two pieces of paper together.

“Is this your current address and phone number?” he asked the customer.

The woman’s “yes” was almost inaudible.

Pete nodded. “We’re going to hold this,” he told her.
“When you get some cash together, you can come pick it up. I’ll give it to Miss Kepper. Her office is up the stairs over there.”

“Okay,” the woman said. Her voice was still tentative.

“Great,” Pete said, feigning an enthusiasm he didn’t feel and smiling broadly at the kids. “You have a real nice day. And thank you for shopping at Guthrie’s.”

As the young woman hurried out with her kids and her groceries, Pete knew he would probably never see his money. And even if he got paid, the family would most likely never shop here again. No matter how gently a situation like this was treated, it always left a bad taste in the mouth.

When the front end manager returned to her post, Pete went over to the deli section and asked them to fix him a sandwich. As he waited, he stood near the windows, watching the rain. It was no longer an angry torrent, but a steady, gentle gift to his landscaping.

When he heard his name called, he turned back toward the counter and noticed the light was on inside Wolkowicz’s car wash. She was undoubtedly still there. What on earth was she doing? Suddenly, he was very curious to find out.

“Meggie, may I have two sandwiches today?” he asked the woman behind the counter.

ANDI DIDN’T KNOW
what she was doing. That was a very unusual experience for her. Typically, she made certain she knew exactly what she was doing. Every move she’d made in her life had involved research, list making, spreadsheets and risk analysis. Even when she might be making a mistake, like leaving the city to move back home to Plainview, she hadn’t allowed herself to get by without weighing the options and the outcomes. Life was too crazy not to plan ahead.

Today, she had no plan.

She’d rejected out of hand Cher-L’s suggestion of a wet T-shirt and thong car wash. That was an idiotic idea, not even worthy of consideration. She was definitely not doing anything like that. Still, she’d had the lights and water turned on in the building, and she had made no move to try to sell the stored supplies. Today she was looking at the equipment. Her father had always treated his equipment as kindly and gently as he treated his kids. But this gear had been lying
around for almost a decade. The good news about not having a conveyer or an automated brush system, Andi decided, was that an old compressor that attached to hoses and wands wasn’t all that complicated. The vinyl was leaky and there was a bit of rust on everything, but nothing was irreparably damaged.

She began cleaning the metal using one of Pop’s old tricks. Dousing it with cola then scrubbing it down with aluminum foil. It worked pretty well.

An aging blue Taurus pulled up beneath the overhang. Andi glanced up curiously and saw Tiff emerging from the driver’s seat. She was wearing cropped jeans and a scoop-necked T-shirt, her long blond hair was loose and hung down to the middle of her back. She walked around the car and opened the back door. A towheaded boy in shorts and a hoodie muscle shirt emerged. He was carrying a video game and hardly glanced up as his mother directed him toward the building.

Andi got up and opened the door to welcome them.

“Hello.”

“Hi, Andi,” Tiff said. “I’d like you to meet my son, Caleb.”

“Hi, Caleb.”

He looked up quickly with a smile and a wave before refocusing on the tiny screen in his hands.

“Whatcha playing?” she asked.

“Lego Star Wars.”

“Are you good at it?”

Caleb nodded. “Too good,” he answered. “I got it in
kindergarten.
” He said the last word with enough emphasis to suggest the time was aeons in the past. “Nobody even plays this anymore. All the other kids have new games.”

“No, they don’t,” Tiff corrected. “Lots of other kids have dads out of work, just like you.”

Caleb shrugged and sighed.

“You’ve still got something to play and lot of kids don’t even have that, right?”

“Yeah, right,” he agreed, with only the vaguest hint of sullenness to his tone.

“So go play your game while I talk with Miss Andi.”

Caleb walked across the room to an empty corner, crossed his legs and sat without once taking his thumbs off the controls.

“Don’t stop what you’re doing,” Tiff said to Andi.

“I was just cleaning up this equipment,” she replied as she seated herself on the wooden workbench. Tiff hoisted herself up beside her and inspected the pieces that she’d completed.

“Still thinking to sell this stuff?” Tiff asked.

“Yeah, yeah, I guess so.”

A silence lengthened between them.

“Guess what I just saw happen in the grocery store.”

“What?” Andi asked.

“I was in the checkout behind this woman with three kids,” she said. “They rang her up and she handed the cashier a credit card. The card was declined. So she tried to pay with a check. But they put it in that check security gizmo and it was declined, too.”

“Oh, jeez!”

“I know,” Tiff said. “I knew I should just walk away, get in another line, but it was like some horrible traffic accident. I just couldn’t look away.”

“So, what happened?” Andi asked.

“They called Guthrie over and I thought that if it were me, I would have just died of humiliation right on the spot,” Tiff said. “But he was pretty cool about it. He told her that he’d keep her check and she could come back and pick it up when she had the money. He even thanked her for shopping at Guthrie’s.”

“He thanked her? With a straight face?”

“Pretty much. He actually smiled at the kids. I guess it must have been about the kids. Wouldn’t that be horrible?”

“Yeah, horrible.”

“I felt sorry for her,” Tiff said. “But at the same time I was thinking, ‘I’m so glad it’s her and not me!’ That’s exactly what I was thinking. Because I know that next week or next month, it absolutely could be me.”

Andi looked at Tiff, nodding sympathetically and secretly glad that she had her father to live with and his retirement saving to live on. But she was pretty sure that Pop had never made plans for long-term support of Andi. Having one daughter that would need his help was more than enough.

“I’ve got to find something,” Tiff said. “Even if it’s not something…something that I’d normally consider doing.”

Andi’s brown eyes gazed assessingly into Tiff’s blue ones.

“You’re thinking about the car wash.”

Tiff nodded. “I mean, Cher-L has a point. You don’t see any of those titty-bars down on Doge Avenue going out of business. What if a guy could get a pretty good show and his car washed at the same time?”

Andi shot a quick glance toward Caleb. “Are you sure you’d want to do that?”

“No,” Tiff replied. “I’m not sure at all that I want to do it.
But I
am
sure I don’t want my son to see me trying to pass a hot check at the grocery store.”

Andi nodded.

“And honestly, how bad can it be? I don’t mean we should do the wet T-shirt or some kind of costume with pasties. But we could wear bikinis. We won’t be showing off anything the whole world couldn’t see at the community swimming pool.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s true,” Andi agreed.

“I think…I think we ought to try it,” Tiff said.

Andi sighed. “I’ve been thinking about it, too. I look at the opportunities for this building and I just don’t see much. If times were better, maybe it could be some kind of office. But there’s empty office space all up and down the street. We’d just be one more FOR RENT sign.”

“Times are going to get better,” Tiff assured her. “And when they do, well, you could come up with something entirely different. But this bikini car wash thing is something that could work now.”

It could work. It was a possibility. It was an opportunity. Still, she knew there were plenty of excellent business ideas that should never see the light of day. She feared this might be one of them.

“Let’s talk to Cher-L and maybe, between the three of us, we could give it a try,” Andi told her.

Tiff’s eyes widened.

“We’re really going to do it?”

Andi glanced down at the equipment she was cleaning and then back up at Tiff.

“It’s a seasonal business,” she said. “I’ll only be able to keep it open through the summer. And we can’t know for sure that
it would even make money,” she said. “It’s not like I could guarantee any decent wage.”

“I’ll work for tips,” Tiff assured her. “I just need a chance.”

“I’d have to ask my father,” Andi said. “This is still his building and his equipment.” She looked around and allowed herself a moment of remembering what the place was like when Pop had it open. “I can’t imagine that he’d say ‘yes’ to this,” she admitted, shaking her head. “He’s a very straightlaced kind of guy.”

Tiff shrugged. “Still, it’s worth asking, I think,” she said, then added apologetically. “That’s why I’m here asking you. And that’s why you’re asking yourself.”

“I’ll call you after I talk to Pop,” Andi told her.

As she watched Tiff and Caleb drive away, she felt a sense of deflation nearly overwhelm her. Uncharacteristically she had refused to even weigh the pros and cons. The thrill of opening her own business just couldn’t permeate the disappointment of a plan based on everything that she absolutely wasn’t. It was easy and pleasant to imagine herself handing out frothy lattes to friendly faces of drive-up customers. It was not so pleasurable to imagine herself in a skimpy bathing suit being viewed and judged by the same kind of creeps who had made fun of her in high school. Somehow, over the years, in all her imaginings, she’d return to Plainview in triumph having made it big in the city. Instead she was returning as a thick-thighed late bloomer, bending over car bumpers in a bikini.

Andi shuddered unpleasantly at the thought.

The equipment was looking much better and her stomach was beginning to growl. She was just thinking to brave the rain once more and head back to the house when there was an unexpected knock on the door.

Andi glanced up to see Pete Guthrie on the other side of the glass. Her brow furrowed, puzzled. He smiled at her. What on earth was that about?

“It’s open!” she called out.

She watched for a moment as he fumbled with the knob. Somehow she felt no compulsion to help him. Pete Guthrie had always been the golden boy. The guy who had everything. That could have spurred envy or jealousy in anyone. But with Andi adding in her own attraction to the guy, well, resentment was just a natural outcome.

“Have you come to run me off the property again?” she asked him. She heard the anger and defiance in her voice. She wanted to sound cool and confident, but he brought out the defensive.

“Nope,” he answered. “I brought lunch.” He indicated the two brown paper bags he carried.

“Oh…” Andi was surprised and wary. “I…uh…I was just about to catch the bus for home.”

“I…uh, I saw your light on in here and thought you might be hungry,” he said.

Andi’s gaze narrowed. “Is that what you do up there in the exalted corner office of Guthrie Foods? Look down on the street and think about who is hungry?”

She was baiting him.

“Hey, that might not be such a bad habit for a groceryman,” he answered with an orthodontically perfect grin.

Nobody deserved to be that good-looking, she thought to herself. He looked a lot like his dad, and like his dad, time just enhanced the handsomeness.

“May I sit?” Pete asked, indicating the empty length of table beside her.

“Sure, grocery guy, I’m sure you’re used to making yourself at home. I should probably charge rent.”

He laughed and handed her a lunch sack. “Maybe you can put this on account.”

“On account of you brought it.”

“You’re quick.”

“I’ve had to be,” Andi answered. “When you’re a target you have to keep moving to stay out of people’s way.”

Pete seated himself beside her. “Were we that hard on you?” he asked. “High school is no place for fragile teenage sensibilities, but was it hideous?”

Andi wanted to answer “yes.” It was very strange to have him sitting beside her as if they’d been friends. They hardly knew each other and they’d never had anything to say. It was Pete Guthrie and his pals who had made high school miserable for her. That’s what she’d always thought. But looking back, they had all been more annoying than cruel. And much of her teenage unhappiness had other root causes.

“It was fine,” she answered him, honestly. “I’m no delicate flower. And I wasn’t back then. I had enough confidence in myself that I could take all the geek and lesbo taunts that your crew could dish out.”

Pete was nodding as he unwrapped his sandwich. She felt his khaki-covered thigh against her own. He might be older, less sculpted than in his bygone days, but his legs were still muscular and masculine.

Andi crossed hers at the knee to put some distance between the two of them.

“My crew?” he asked. “Funny that you’d think of them that way. I had such a weird, diverse group of friends. Many
of them had nothing in common but me. I guess I never thought of them as a crew.”

He chewed on the thought a moment, but didn’t dispute her.

“And I could never figure out if I was a preppy or a jock,” he said. “I frequently got accused of both. Do we pick our clique? Or do other people define who they think we are? What did you think?”

“I just thought you were puffed up and lame,” Andi answered.

“Oh, well, if we’re being honest, then that’s pretty much what I thought, too,” he admitted. “But isn’t that what high school is all about?”

His self-deprecation was strangely alluring. She resisted by frowning at him.

“Look,” he said, turning slightly to meet her eye to eye. “If I was mean to you, I’m sorry,” he said. “And for the record, I never started, repeated or passed on any comments about your sexual preference. That’s really nobody’s business.”

“I’m not a lesbian,” Andi stated flatly. “I was just a tomboy.”

“Oh…well, great, fine…I mean…uh, me neither.”

“You’re not a lesbian?” Andi found herself enjoying his discomfiture.

“Well, no, I’m not, but that wasn’t exactly what I meant. Are you going to eat your sandwich?”

Andi unwrapped it and took a bite. It tasted wonderful. “What is this?”

“It’s shaved turkey with roasted peppers and goat cheese,” Pete answered. “It’s my favorite.”

Andi wasn’t sure if she was just that hungry or if it was the best sandwich she’d ever tasted, but she savored it.

“I’m completely over all that teenage angst and persecu
tion. So don’t give it a thought. I’m sure you have great high school memories,” she told him. “Everybody liked you and respected you.”

“Nobody even knew me,” Pete said with a chuckle. “I didn’t even know me. I was so busy trying to be the guy everybody expected, I didn’t even figure out who I was until after college.”

“Then you’re ahead of me,” Andi said. “I thought I had everything figured out until a few months ago. Now, day by day, I’m less and less sure.”

“That’s the work thing,” Pete told her. “It’s unsettling to lose your job, to be out of work.”

“I didn’t lose my job,” she corrected him quickly, maybe too quickly. “I resigned and moved back home.”

He nodded and chewed.

“So given your crappy high school experience,” Pete said. “And with the worst economy since the Great Depression, you’ve decided to return to Plainview on a permanent basis.”

“My mom died,” she stated bluntly.