“A labor lawyer, right.”
A sprinkle of sweat dribbled across her forehead and dissolved in her perky right eyebrow. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t want to know any more about me. The date was over already.
I had her figured like this: she thought she’d lost the Friendly Skies and entered the Hick Zone, instead, the minute her first-class cabin hit Texas air space.
I knew she worked as a programming director for some Hot Rock radio station in Minneapolis. When she got two weeks off, she decided to visit her cousin Maisie, whom she hadn’t seen since they were little. Maisie’s an old pal of mine from law school; I was desperate enough to accept when she suggested fixing me up with her cuz.
As we passed through the rusty warehouse district on the outskirts of the Ship Channel, with its acrid fish and petroleum smells, Missy’s eyebrows jumped even higher. Merle slurred songs about pot smokers, big cities, prison wardens.
I love Merle. The man knows his stuff.
The whole time, Missy’s lips stayed Ziplocked. I could only guess the vile things she thought about my taste. I wasn’t like Maisie. I hadn’t gone the glamorous route, with rich divorce cases and property settlements. I didn’t make the kind of money that got me into restaurants called maisons or poissons or whatever the hell they are. Clearly, Missy had expected someone else. Her pissiness unsettled me, but in the meantime I was happy with her hair.
The meeting has already started by the time we arrive at the storage house, near the docks. From several yards away, the building smells of bananas and other old fruit, maybe of some kind of pesticide, tart and acidic. Joe France, a big man with skinny legs (he wears a pair of tattered, cutoff Levi’s stiff with grease), stands watch at the door. He winks at me, tugging on the frayed orange bill of his Astros cap, and Missy and I slip inside.
“—too high, they’re just too damn high!” Glenn Golding is yelling at Hughie Clark, who is standing on a strawberry crate in a dark corner of the room.
“Glenn, goddammit, I’ve told you, it’s not about the dues,” Hughie shoots back. “It’s the voting rights we gotta concentrate on. You get it? Priorities.”
“Yeah, well, my priority is eggs and bacon for my wife and kids in the morning,” Glenn says. A few men mutter agreement behind him. “If I’m paying out my ass each month to the union — ”
“If you get your voting rights back, you can vote to slash the cockamamie dues!” Hughie says. His hair is a pale, indistinct color, like gum that’s been chewed too long.
Maybe fifty men are scattered throughout the building, a mix of old and young: thick, thready-armed guys, the weekend-hunter types in red-checked shirts, smelling of Old Spice and Skoal; then the hippies with their tie-dyes, their ponytails swinging out from under oily Peterbilt caps.
The heat is enough to knock you flat. Missy sort of folds in on herself against the corrugated steel of the wall, like a notebook slamming shut. I catch Hughie’s eye and give him a nod.
“Good. Hal’s here,” he says. “He can straighten this out.” He steps to the floor and offers me his crate.
When I went to law school in ‘82—I was twenty-eight, full of pluck the brisk spring morning I enrolled at the University of Houston — I dreamed of addressing large crowds on matters of justice and fairness and hope. What I spend my time doing, instead, is showing up at sweltering old buildings like this, trying to persuade defeated men not to take their losses so hard. Of course, I never put it that way. I use the words “hope” and “justice,” but then so does the President, and these fellows were savvy enough to tune him out a long time ago.
In ‘82, bad as things were, none of us figured American labor would end up this flat on its ass.
When I take the crate, turn and see Missy, wilted and angry next to the door, I feel, even more than usual, the tin cup full of ashes I call my career swirling around in my belly.
I want to tell the men, “Go out, get drunk, and laugh, boys. That’s all you’ve got. I’m all out of answers.” But I don’t. I stand up straight, smooth the sleeves of my T-shirt. Wrinkled blue numbers tumble down the front. “You want results?” I ask.
The men all nod. Either that, or they’re shaking the sweat from their hair. One old fellow waves his arms, thin and wan.
“We’re going to get results! This is a fine local, and the union leadership ought to be proud of it. This little glitch — it’s nothing, it’s piss water. Don’t worry about it.”
“But what are you going to do?” someone says.
Leap at the raggedy moon. Stop a speeding bullet with my teeth. Raise old Lazarus from the dead, treat him to a Happy Meal at the nearest Mickey D’s. And all on minimum wage.
“I’m going to meet with the leadership on Monday.”
Hughie’s shaking his head.
Missy looks like she might throw up on her shoes. Her hair has fallen at least an inch.
“I’ll get your dues lowered,” I promise.
“It’s not about the money!“ Hughie erupts.
“I know,” I say. “But Hughie, man, one step at a time. Slow and easy. Play it smart.” Even I’m starting to tune me out. “If we limit the amount of cash the leadership gets each month, the rest of what you’re after will follow.”
“We’ve tried that!” a young man yells from the back. He’s standing next to a bright-yellow forklift with an empty box in its arms. His hip is cocked, his hands loose and meaty by his pockets: a rough, don’t-fuck-with-me stance, volatile, precise. “Didn’t do doodley-squat!”
“There’ll be no meetings on Monday,” Hughie tells me. He tells me he’s seeking solid action tonight.
“So,” Missy says, pacing the dock. Broken glass cracks beneath her heels. The air smells of gasoline, oil, thick and rich as the glaze on the blueberry doughnuts Driscoll’s used to serve. The diner was right next to campus. I’d study there, dawns, before my contracts class, playing Merle on the nicked old Wurlitzer. The six A.M. folks — bus drivers, bank tellers, security guards — tapped their booted toes to his twang; like a bowl of dirty rice, his spicy voice made my reading go down easy with my always lukewarm coffee. “Is this, like, where the Teamsters come to beat people up?” Missy asks.
“They don’t really do that. That’s just a myth. Well, sometimes they do. But not here.”
Beneath the sodium lights, her hair looks crinkly and sharp, like several layers of tinfoil, as many as you’d need, say, to keep the pieces of a small chicken fresh in the fridge.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I guess I’ve spoiled your evening. I’ll take you back to Maisie’s as soon as they’re finished in there.”
“Okay.” She holds my gaze long enough to confuse me — it’s like she’s checking me out, interested. But then she walks away, down the dock.
Joe France emerges from the storage house to tell me the men have taken their vote: on behalf of the membership, Hughie and Joe are going to pay a midnight visit, tonight, to Frank Wilson, the union president. “I’m sorry, Hal,” Joe says, baleful and repentant. “I know you think this is wrong.”
“Just watch yourself, okay? Frankie’s no pushover, man, and he’s got all sorts of people watching his back.” Missy stares at me skeptically, like someone who can’t believe her CD player is stuck on the same tune, and I’m aware that all my lines are clichés. I have nothing more to offer, I want to tell her. Believe me, I’ve tried. For years I’ve tried. But she doesn’t care. All she wants to do is get home.