Gold Diggers of 2014, part 2
“Gold Diggers of 2014,” Part 2
“Where do you want it?” the guy asked. “The tray, I mean.”
“Dunno,” I explained, as I threw my hands palms upward (now that they were free of the heavy load.) “Nowhere. Everywhere, I guess. We’re supposed to carry it around the room.”
“All evening? Why, that’s ridiculous.” After casing the joint for a few seconds or so, Richie Rich nodded toward a cozy corner, and as he led the way, I followed. It was awesome how graceful he was carrying that tray of glasses around. He didn’t bump into anybody, and he didn’t spill a drop. We stopped in front of an waist-high pedestal, with artsy-fartsy carvings of grapes and leaves and such all up and down the column. On top of it sat a sculpture of a grinning fat kid, who, if he hadn’t been naked, could have been the twin brother of Big Boy from the fast-food restaurant of the same name.
He made me hold the tray –“Just one more second, okay?” while he removed the sculpture and set it against the wall before parking the tray in Big Boy’s spot. “Voila!” he said. “You’re free at last.”
I always thought that rich people put on airs, but this one seemed down-to-earth, except he had this dreamy quality about his eyes which made me feel a little self-conscious when he looked into mine. “The name’s Darryl Dodge, by the way.” When I shook his hand, I noticed that it felt smooth and soft, as if he and manual labor were virtual strangers -- but then he had picked up that heavy stone sculpture without a single grunt. So I was completely confused. “And you are --?”
“Oh. Uh, I’m Liz Bennett.”
“It’s lovely to meet you, Liz, if I may call you that?”
“Why not? Everybody else does. Well, I suppose I’d better look busy. Thanks for your help.” When I started to walk away, I felt a gentle tug on my sleeve.
“Hold on a moment, would you please? I was wondering if you could do me a favor –“ this Darryl person said, with his hand still on my arm. “Do you see that man over there, the one who’s about the same age as I am?”
I nodded, but to tell you the truth, all these rich folks looked alike to me.
“Well, we know each other-- I mean, our relationship is at some point between acquaintances and friends, but for the life of me I can’t remember where I met him. Seeing him here puts me in a somewhat embarrassing situation. I don’t want to duck out on him -– don’t get me wrong, I’d love to talk to him -- but if he starts reminiscing about old times, I’m afraid of not hitting the right reference points. The last thing I want to do is make him feel uncomfortable.”
What did any of this have to do with me? “I’m sorry?”
“Oh, I know this sounds convoluted, but bear with me. I’m fairly sure I knew him at a university, but which one? That’s where you come in.” He squeezed my arm. “I’d like you to get close enough to eavesdrop on his conversations. All I need to find out is if he went to Harvard or Yale.”
Wait. Was he telling me that he went to Harvard and Yale? This was starting to get a little too rich for my blood and way out of my league.
“Gee, I don’t know, Sir–“
“Darryl.”
“Darryl. I’m not really good at spying on people –“
“Come on, you can do it,” he begged, with a puppy-dog look on his face which I couldn’t resist.
“Oh, okay, I suppose I could give it a try –-“
“Atta girl!” Darryl broke into a smile like the kind you see in toothpaste commercials, with tiny star-bursts reflecting off the perfectly-straight pearly whites. “Just mill around and see what you can find out. There may be a little something in it for you, an honorarium perhaps. I’ll wait for you in the general vicinity of the entrance, all right?”
Ho-boy, what had I gotten into? That’s two times in less than a week I was talked into doing something I really didn’t want to do, first by Janie and then by Mr. Sweet-talking Rich Guy. That’s a personal weakness you’d never find in Delphine DeLauro, the heroine of Blonde Entrepreneur. She set her own course and damned if she’d let anybody get in her way. Not only that, Delphine was a woman of her word. The least I could do is try to keep mine.
I wish I could say I knew what I was doing. I tried to appear inconspicuous as I wandered around the room, stopping every now and then near the designated target. Listening as hard as I could, I didn’t hear the guy reminiscing about college experiences back in the day. He did sound like a windbag though, I’ll tell you that much.
Meanwhile, Darryl’s request gave me a chance to use the mingling time to check on Janie. She seemed to be doing just fine, thank you very much, charming the pants off the Beer Baron. (Not literally, but you know what I mean.) From what I could see, she was using every tool in her flirting-tool box.
She was chatting up her “googolaire” over by Big Boy’s former pedestal, now the perch for my deserted cocktail tray. I noticed that many of the original wine glasses were gone, and some, not all, had been returned empty, like beer bottles and cans ready to be cashed in at the Cost Cutter for the five-cent deposit. Not only that, the cheese display in the middle looked as if had been attacked by a street gang of starving mice. “Excuse me,” I said, wedging myself between Janie and her new-found crush, and picked up the tray, weighing much lighter than before.
Right after I removed the tray, the beer baron bent down and picked up Big Boy and replaced it in its rightful spot. “My, you’re strong!” Jamie gushed, at least having enough smarts not to add “for a geezer.” With her eyelashes in full-flutter, she asked, “Do you work out?”
When I finally managed to catch her eye, I shook my head and mouthed the word “no,” but she shot me a quick frown and returned her full attention to Mr. Got Bucks. As for me, all I had to show for the evening was garbage, which I carried over and slammed on top of the service bar. “Ready for a refill,” I told the Head Volunteer. “And this time keep it under a hundred pounds, will ya?
“My, you seem to be taking your responsibilities seriously, my dear. I wish I could say the same for your darling little sister.” The Head Volunteer pointed across the room to Janie, who at this point was actually feeling the old codger’s puny biceps through his monkey suit.
“Oh, she’s been a busy little bee from the moment we arrived.” (Which was true.) “She’s very socially conscious, too. Right now she’s doing her part for economic equality.”
At that point, the Head Volunteer started removing the wine glasses one by one. I’ve seen snails in our yard move a lot more quickly. You’d think the guy was being paid by the hour, but of course, like the rest of us that night, he was working for nothing.
“Looks like this will take a while,” I said. “I’ll be back.”
I found Darryl waiting by the front entrance, just where he said he’d be. “You’re here!”
“You sound surprised,” I said.
“Should I be?” His smile lost a little bit of its luster, and his voice was impatient. “Well? What did you find out?”
“Nothing very useful. Sorry. All I heard was your friend’s one-sided conversation. He was going on and on about some kind of megabucks real estate deal, I guess.”
Darryl’s eyes got rounder than that nasty tray. “Really! But, uh, what about our mutual Alma Mater – - was it Yale or Harvard?”
“Beats me.”
“Damn. Was he wearing anything unusual?”
“Huh? What d’you mean, like some kind of obnoxious men’s cologne? I didn’t see anything strange about his outfit, other than the typical rich guy’s suit and tie –“ I snapped my fingers–- “Wait! His tie clip – - I noticed it because it was kind of cute. From where I was standing, it looked like this little bitty bull dog.”
“That’s it! An Eli!” With that this virtual stranger gave me a bear hug. “I should have known. You can always tell a Yale man – - but you can’t tell him much.” One of those famous “awkward moments” followed as Darryl waited for my laugh. (Which didn’t come.)
“Well, I guess I’ll be running along. Nice meeting –“
“No! Wait!” The movie star grin resurfaced. “There’s that matter of compensation.”
“What? Oh, no. That’s okay. Forget about it.”
“Now, now! We had an agreement, remember?” Darryl dug into his pocket to pull out his billfold and then turned his back to open it, just like my Dad does whenever he pays the tab at the Cost Cutter. Darryl partially turned his head to look back at me. “Ah, you wouldn’t happen to have change for a hundred, would you?”
That’s when I laughed.
Finally facing me with what Miriam Maudlin Shipman calls a “sheepish look,” Darryl stroked his squared-off chin.
“This is, well, it just isn’t my night.” Before this he was all smooth-talk; now he sounded a little jagged around the edges. “One embarrassing moment after another. Let me make it up to you. I’ll get in touch – like on Facebook, or something. Liz Benson, right?
“That’s Bennett, but I’m not on Faceb--” I started to say, but by then he was three-quarters out the door and most likely didn’t hear me.
To be continued vvvv
Gold Diggers of 2014 Part 3
Gold Diggers of 2014 Part 3
Flash forward a week, maybe ten days, and I’d put all that stupid business at the Verdana Club behind me. It didn’t take long for the truth to sink in, that what’s-his-name had stiffed me out of the dough he’d promised. As far as I was concerned, all ties linking me to the One Percent had been broken.
Janie, I’m sorry to say, was not about to let it go. Like some airhead in the an old school romance novel, she’d “set her cap” on snaring a prospective bridegroom, in her case that seventy-something meal ticket. Now here’s a chick who’d rather die than pick up a newspaper, not even the comics page, but every morning after the Verdana gig, she got up early and snatched the East Hogwash Pennysaver off the front porch long before our dad got a chance to check the Mets score. She’d rifle through the paper until she found the Society Page, which was like a treasure map to her. All the rest of us got to read were Janie’s cast-off pages, bled-through with highlighter ink or squared-off holes where she’d cut out all the articles with the slightest mention of Sherman Collins.
Me, I was more realistic, such as getting to the Burger Blaster on time. Even that wasn’t easy one day in particular when I had to maneuver around a group of protestors marching back and forth in front of my workplace. They were all carrying signs saying “Fair Play for Fast Food Workers” and “Citizens for a Living Wage.” I felt funny crossing a picket line and sure as hell didn’t want to be a whatchamacallit – - a “scab.” Even so, I was expected to show up at my job, and like Delphine DeLauro, the Blonde Entrepreneur, I honor my commitments. Or at least I try.
Despite the controversy going on outside the building, I’d thought things were going well at work until Wally got all up in my face, with his own face all stern and boss-like. “You wanna explain this?” he demanded, waving my time card around as if it were Exhibit A in a homicide trial.
“What? I haven’t been late in months. If anything, I always punch in early.”
Wally started nodding like a bobblehead doll. “That’s just it. You gotta keep strictly in the parameters of the Schedule. No extra hours or minutes. No overtime. That comes directly from Mr. Blankenship. He insists that we follow the Corporate guidelines.”
None of us shift-workers ever saw the franchise owner in person. Brankenship was one of those whosiewhatsies – a “silent” partner - who rakes in a ton of dough from a lot of different companies while delegating the day-to-day operation of the business to his designated staff, namely clowns like Wally.
Though I can’t say that Wally was the world’s best micro-manager. He must have missed the training session which advises supervisors to reprimand employees in private. Here he was yelling at me right on the sales floor, in full earshot of my co-workers. In front of the customers, too. I bet they enjoyed it , too – watching somebody getting chewed out was a hell of a lot more entertaining than the Connect-the-Dot paper placemat under their burgers and fries.
“Okay, Wally, have it your way.”
“Don’t say that here! Oh! I almost forgot what I wanted to tell you in the first place. Mr. Blankenship wants to cut down on overhead. So, starting next week, there will be a schedule change.”
Finally! I had asked and asked for more hours, and at last my wish was coming true. Miriam Maudlin Shipman was right when she wrote: “It pays to be persistent.”
Wally was persistent too, but not in the way I’d hoped. “On your scheduled days, we’re gonna ask you to come in an hour later and leave an hour earlier until further notice.”
How’s that for – whatdyacallit - irony. After the shock hit me, I did some quick calculating in my head. “Seriously? That’s only fifteen hours a week! And you’re only paying me minimum wage. How am I supposed to live on that?”
Not only that, it would leave me with practically nothing to help out my parents. Every week after I cashed my chickenfeed paycheck, I’d go to give my mom a portion of it to cover room and board, and every time she’d refuse until I insisted that she take it. Not that I’m bragging about being such a generous person – but I’d have to pay a lot more for rent and stuff if I weren’t living at home. So it was only fair. I knew that my mom wouldn’t mind letting me skate, but I didn’t want to put her in that position. My options had been swept off the table, like so many crumbs from a sesame seed bun. Wally had put me in a really bad place.
“This sucks,” I said under my breath.
“Excuse me?.” Wally cupped his hand over his ear for dramatic effect. “I’m sure I didn’t hear you right. I’d hate to have to write you up for insubordination.”
For a minute there I thought about fighting back. I sure as hell had something on Burger Blaster that would shut down the joint quicker than changing the channel whenever that creepy funeral home commercial comes on. I can’t forget the day when, on the lookout for cheap raw materials for my experiments, I’d asked about how the BB disposed of the grease they used to nuke the French fries in. “Do you recycle it or what?”
Wally’s answer shocked -– shocked! -– me. “Yep, we recycle, we really do. We use the same batch over and over again.”
At that point, an older couple sitting in a nearby booth had overheard us. Each spit out a huge mouthful into a napkin and hightailed it out of there as if somebody had yelled “Fire!” You can imagine the can of worms that would be opened if someone - say, a disgruntled employee - decided to notify the County Board of Health.
Not long after that I found out something even more scandalous. True, the BB used and reused the grease, but eventually it got so nasty – dark in color with ancient flakes of fried potato and lord knows what else floating around in it – that even Burger Blaster couldn’t use it any more. So from time to time late at night after closing a couple of goons would haul the sickening batch away in a barrel and secretly dump it straight into the Kikkerzompkill, otherwise known as Frog Creek.
You can understand how much a pollutant that yucky stuff would be in the water and the harm it would do to the delicate lungs, gills, and skins of the little amphibians, fish, and other wildlife who made East Hogwash’s natural waterway their home. One quick email and the State Department of Environmental Conservation would be padlocking the entrance of the Burger Blaster quicker than you can say Kikkerzompkill.
So you could say I had the goods on the Burger Blaster and had been keeping the Environmental card close to the vest for a few months. Maybe I was waiting for the right opportunity to play it. Maybe this was the day, BUT–- something held me back.
Did I worry about old folks and little kids getting sick on the overused French fry grease? Sure. Didn’t I care about the well-being of all the little froggies and the fishies? Of course. But notifying the authorities just because Burger Blaster screwed me personally would make me just as hard-hearted and mean-spirited as the Corporation. Delphine DeLauro never stooped down to the level of her enemies. And neither would I.
Or maybe I was just chicken. I reached way down deep and tried to come up with something like bravery. “Look, Wally, give me back those ten hours or I’m outa here.”
“You sure? Half a loaf is better than –“
“My original hours or I walk.”
“Then so long! Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”
I ripped off my cap and the Burger Blaster shirt-jack, rolled them both up and shoved them into Wally’s beer belly. He followed me half-way out the door and screamed, “And don’t even think about applying for unemployment!”
Meanwhile, the protestors got an earful of all this, so they raised their signs higher, and their shouts got louder. One guy yelled right at Wally. “We were thinking about taking a break and buying a bunch of burgers. But you can just forget about it now!”
I guess they were going to take their business elsewhere. Like me.
To be continued vvv
Gold Diggers of 2014 - Conclusion
Gold Diggers of 2014 Conclusion
I couldn’t believe that I’d totally forgotten about the cooking oil disaster back in the garage. Still, the mess had to be dealt with, no question about it. But I still needed help, and with Janie suddenly out of the picture – not that she’d be much good - I had to swallow my pride and ask Darryl to lend me a hand. Of course this involved explaining to Darryl how the cooking oil happened to be in the garage in the first place, so that meant divulging my secret. I had no choice but to come clean, but somehow I felt I could trust him.
So we both got into his sorry excuse for a vehicle, which miraculously managed to sputter along, all the while splattering drops of oil on the mean streets of East Hogwash. We made a quick stop at the nearest discount store to pick up some generic paper towels, a couple of sponge mops, and four bottles of off-brand detergent. I’d heard news reports that after all those off-shore oil spills, environmental activists used heavy duty dish liquid to de-grease the wings of marine birds, so I thought maybe using the stuff full-strength would help take the curse off a concrete floor. At least it would be worth a shot. Unfortunately, the cost of the cleaning supplies had emptied my funds, with no possibility of refilling them anytime soon.
It goes without saying that it took hours to make inroads on the greasy garage. It hadn’t taken very long for me to realize that Darryl wasn’t used to doing manual labor, so I lost precious time having to show him how to use a mop. Eventually we made a good team, with the two of us working our butts off getting the job done. Toward the end we located the guilty pink-colored barbells, which had rolled every which-way across the once-slippery floor. We returned them to their original container which we replaced on the shelf, though to be perfectly honest with you, I was tempted to heave all those pink weights into the trash. Janie would never miss ‘em.
Well, all of that’s history – things have changed a lot since then. I got another job, this time at different chain restaurant – the Pasta Palace. Unfortunately, the hours and hourly wage aren’t that much better than the Burger Blaster, but since the Pasta Palace has table service, at least that means the chance of earning some tips. The work involves hauling food around on these huge circular trays – again! Like the one at the Verdana Club, trays are just like that obsessed detective in the Les Misérables DVD – they keep stalking me.
I haven’t given up my long-term goal of developing an alternative fuel, but I’ve put the project on the back burner for a while. I’m thinking about looking into student loans and signing up for a couple of chem courses at Downstate University at Hogwash this fall, just to get some idea of what the hell I’m doing.
Darryl’s all for my enrolling in college. I’ll say this much for him – he’s pretty supportive. For my part, I try to encourage him, too, without getting pushy about it. As far as his employment prospects go, his dance card is empty at the moment. But he’s looking. Give him credit for that.
Once or twice I casually mentioned that his career prospects would be better with just one quick email or phone call to a couple of his rich friends -- er, acquaintances. But he insists that he’s tired of being a parasite, that whatever he does, he wants to do on his own. And I respect him for that.
We’ve get along together pretty well. I don’t want to say we’re “dating,” ‘cause that would involve spending cash which neither of us has to spare. Between the two of us we’re hard-pressed to come up with the dough for a small latte at Kneadbucks. So when we get together, we pick an activity that doesn’t cost anything, like taking long walks around the DUH campus or canoeing down the Kikkerzompkill.
I think that Darryl has put his musical career on hold, as I haven’t seen his guitar lately. Maybe it’s in hock. Poor old Darryl’s going through some tough times right now, like coming up with his rent and so forth. Every so often he’s had to resort to crashing on our living room couch. My father rolls his eyes, but he’s pretty much cool with it. But my mother keeps asking Darryl how he’s “doing,” meaning she wants to find out if he’s got any chance of ever striking it rich. She pressures me, too, when she demands to know if the relationship is “serious.”
“No, Mom. We spend a lot of time telling jokes.”
That isn’t too far from the truth. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m no expert on love, but I do know that once a couple stops having fun together, it’s all over.
Oh! I almost forgot – Janie. As you might have guessed, her dream of hitching herself to the Beer Baron’s wagon never came true, but Mr. Collins did offer her a position at the distributorship. This came as complete surprise to the entire family, since none of us thought we’d ever see the day when Janie would be gainfully employed.
She works at the main office at the reception desk, where she answers phones and greets customers. Even when she was little, Janie always said wanted a career in show business. Maybe that’s still the back-up plan if the rich husband thing fails to work out for her. Since Janie’s main responsibility at her new job is to be “pleasant” – which isn’t an automatic part of her personality - she gets opportunities to practice her acting skills.
Like me, my little sister is still single, but she’s got a boyfriend. Janie’s going out with a co-worker, a beer truck driver by the name of Corky, Corey, something like that. Needless to say, Corky is a long, long way from becoming a “googolaire,” but he’s good about sharing the unsold Muckenmire’s products left on the truck at the end of his shift. When Corky shows up at our door, he presents these leftover brews to her like candy or flowers, and every once in a while he slips her a twelve-pack.
