Chapter 51

Ernie put the last mop head in a plastic bag and tied the bag closed. He carried the bag over to the dumpster and tossed it in. When he heard it hit the side of the dumpster, he said, “I like the sound of that. My week in hell is over.”

Ernie turned around to find Leo standing behind him with his arms crossed against his chest. Putting a weak smile on his face, Ernie said, “It has been nice knowing you, Sir.”

“So you think your week in hell is over?” Leo asked looking Ernie straight in the eye.

“It isn’t?” Ernie asked with a sinking feeling in his stomach. Dan had told him that if he lasted the week doing this job, then he would get his job back at the pizzeria.

“Come with me. I want to talk with you a little bit,” Leo said. Ernie followed Leo over to his pickup truck. He was surprised when Leo tossed him a plastic bottle of cola and said, “Sit down.”

“Yes, Sir,” Ernie said taking a seat on the rear gate of the pickup truck.

“This week was just a taste of what your life can become, if you don’t take every opportunity to improve yourself. Dan was nice enough to give you a chance to learn something important. I don’t know if you got the lesson or not, but I’ll tell you one of the things that you should have learned this week. Life is what you make of it. You screw around, and you’ll end up here or someplace even worse. It is that simple,” Leo said.

“Yes, Sir,” Ernie said. He had figured that out after about the third hour on the job.

Leo settled on the rear of the truck and said, “I don’t know what your impression is of Dan Parker, but I think the world of him. He’s a hard worker. He worked on my crew for a week. I never had to get on his ass. He was right there asking for the next thing to be done. He worked his ass off and never complained. I never had anyone who worked as hard as he did.

“He’s not only a good worker, but he’s a good man. I know that because I watched how he treated the rest of the crew. He treated the Mexicans like real people. Lots of guys think they’re better than the Mexicans and act like it. Not Dan. He treated them with respect. He helped them when he could. His Spanish was horrible, but he still made the effort to say good morning, please, thank you, and good night in Spanish.

“Do you know any Spanish, Ernie?”

“No,” Ernie answered realizing that he had never thought about greeting his coworkers in Spanish.

“I kind of noticed that you expected them to talk to you in English,” Leo said.

“You’re right. I never really thought about it,” Ernie said. He had wondered why the rest of the crew was kind of stand-offish in dealing with him. It had never dawned on him that he hadn’t made any effort to know them.

Sighing, Leo said, “You’ll never make friends or influence people, if you don’t learn to treat everyone with a little respect.”

“You’re right, Sir,” Ernie said.

“You worked with my crew for a week. Did you make one friend? Will one of those guys greet you on the street next week with a smile?” Leo asked.

“No,” Ernie answered with a frown. He remembered how Juan had talked about Dan and how after a year or more, he still remembered the guy with fondness. He doubted that one man on that crew would even remember his name next Monday.

“I didn’t think so,” Leo said shaking his head sadly. He said, “You were doing hot and nasty work with a bunch of folks stuck in the same situation and you found nothing in common with them. I find that sad.”

“It is pretty sad,” Ernie said in agreement. He always figured Whites were dumping on Blacks, but this whole week he had done just the same with the Mexicans. He didn’t feel very proud of himself at the moment.

“Let me tell you a little story. I know this fellow that has problems learning things. Fifty years ago that fellow would have ended up doing the kind of job that you did this week. He’d have been a ditch digger, janitor, or some other bottom of society job. Even today, it was likely that he’d be a worker bee doing some job that paid minimum wage. Instead, he owns a business and is doing real good for himself. He’s doing so good that he can afford to help others,” Leo said.

“How did he do it?” Ernie asked.

“He worked his ass off,” Leo said. He laughed at the look on Ernie’s face and said, “It was a little more complicated than that. He figured out what he wanted out of life. He set a goal that would take him there and he worked to achieve it. Everything he did was to help him achieve his goal. With a direction in life, there was nothing that could stop him. He’d go around life’s roadblocks, ‘cause he knew where he was going.”

“Oh,” Ernie said thinking this was the same advice that Jimmy had given him.

“You don’t know where you want to be ten years from now. You need a direction. You’d better find one, before you end up back here working for me,” Leo said.

“Yes, Sir,” Ernie said.

Leo reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a check. Handing it over to Ernie, he said, “Here’s your paycheck for this week.”

“Thank you,” Ernie said taking the check. He glanced down at the check and was surprised by the amount of money he had earned. He said, “Thank you.”

“Get out of here,” Leo said standing up. It was late and he wanted to get home to his lovely wife Maria. It amazed him to this day that the lovely little lady from Mexico had allowed him into her life. That was the day he started thinking about starting his own crew, rather than working on one. Making her happy had given him a direction in his life.

“Yes, Sir,” Ernie said standing up. He realized that he hadn’t even taken a drink out of the bottle of cola that Leo had given him.

“If you screw Dan Parker over, you better hope that I never hear about it,” Leo said gruffly.

“Yes, Sir,” Ernie said watching the man get in his truck. After the truck had driven off, Ernie said, “I owe a lot of people apologies.”

Dan finished paying for the ticket to the movie and turned to Sally. Smiling at her, he said, “Let’s get some popcorn. You can’t go to the movies and not eat popcorn.”

“Great,” Sally said enjoying the Sunday afternoon date tremendously. She had been shocked when Dan had asked her to go out on a date with him. He arranged for Sandra to watch over the pizzeria for the entire afternoon, so that he would have a full five hours alone with her.

“I really enjoyed lunch,” Dan said as they walked over to the food stand holding hands. It was nice to walk along holding hands with her. They reached the line to get popcorn. Although it was Sunday afternoon, there was a longer line to buy popcorn than there was to buy a ticket.

“I did too,” Sally said. They had gone to a seafood restaurant and eaten a very nice meal. The place had been quiet and they had talked the entire time they were there. Thinking about it, Sally realized it had been the first time that the two of them had just gone out together. She enjoyed holding hands with him.

“We’re going to have to do this again,” Dan said wondering how it was that he had never spent an afternoon alone with Sally. It seemed to him that he had always thought about, and treated, Ann and Sally as a single entity.

“That would be great,” Sally said with a smile. It was nice being treated special like this.

They reached the head of the line and Dan ordered popcorn and drinks for the pair of them. After paying an amazing amount of money for their movie snacks, Dan said, “For the price of the popcorn and drinks, a person could buy a large pizza, a bottle of soda and rent a movie. No wonder our Wednesday night movie special at the pizzeria is so popular.”

“No business talk on our date,” Sally said with a grin as they walked towards the theater. They were each carrying a soda and popcorn. She already missed holding hands.

“Sorry,” Dan said before he realized that they had not made any agreements about him not talking business.

“Just teasing,” Sally said. Shaking her head, she said, “Sometimes I think that you are too serious.”

“Me? Serious? When?” Dan asked with a smile. Juggling the drink and popcorn, he handed their tickets to the guy at the podium in front of the hallway to the theaters.

“Yes, you and you’re serious almost all of the time,” Sally answered.

Together they walked down the hall towards the theater. Dan said, “I guess I have been a little too serious. I’ve been trying to get things set up for the rest of my life. I figure that if I put in a little extra effort now that the rest of my life is going to be pretty nice.”

“That’s a good thought, but things change. For all we know, people will decide that pizza is the food of the devil and stop eating it,” Sally said. She didn’t think it was likely that pizza would ever disappear from the American landscape, but change was a fact of life.

“I know,” Dan said. They reached the theater and entered the large dimly lit room. The vast majority of seats were empty. He looked around and said, “It looks like Sunday afternoon matinees are not very popular.”

“Well, it is a nice day and I imagine that most people are doing things outdoors,” Sally said.

Winking at Sally, Dan said, “They are fools to do that when they could be at a movie theater with their girlfriend.”

She laughed and asked, “Where do you want to sit?”

“Pick a seat,” Dan said gesturing to the nearly empty room.

“Center and center,” she said. She preferred sitting in the center of the row where she could look straight ahead at the screen. She didn’t like to sit up front where she had to look up at it or all of the way in the back.

“Center and center it is,” Dan said. He led the way over to it and sat down. He fumbled a bit while getting his cup of soda nestled in the holder and spilled some of his popcorn.

“Messy messy,” Sally said noticing. When he shrugged his shoulders in response, she said, “Alison would be over here cleaning up that mess in a second.”

“I know,” Dan said. He glanced up at the movie screen and saw that they were still cycling through the ads of local businesses.

Sally said, “That woman lives to take care of a house. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Same here,” Dan said. She was always moving around the house making sure that everything was clean and in place. He looked at her for a second and then said, “I’ve been meaning to ask you about that. How do you feel about Alison living with us?”

“I like it,” Sally answered. Having someone around the house that took care of the place was very nice. She was fond of Alison, but was afraid at times that she would end up viewing her as a live-in maid. Ann and Dan were her lovers, but she didn’t know how to classify Alison’s role in her life.

She said, “There are times when I don’t understand it, though.”

“What do you mean?” Dan asked.

“She’s not my lover. She’s not my sister. I don’t know what she is,” Sally said.

Dan nodded his head and said, “You think of her more like a servant.”

“Yeah,” she answered.

That was a very accurate description of how she treated Alison.

“You and Ann are going to have to establish your own relationship with her, if this is to work out,” Dan said feeling a little guilty. It seemed to him that he was getting the most out of the weird relationship.

“You’re right,” Sally said.