“This was a family business in those days, Vinnie. Ray and his dad, Don Tarkington, ran it. Don got it from his father, who started the Blue Ribbon in 1926. It was a nonunion shop and I suppose the labor people would say all three of the Tarkingtons were paternalistic exploiters of the uneducated working man and woman. And they were. But when Betty Keeson slipped on the wet floor and broke her arm, the Tarkingtons paid the hospital bill and there was ten bucks a week for food until she could come back. And every Christmas they put on a big dinner out in the marking-in room-the best chicken pies you ever ate, and cranberry jelly and rolls and your choice of chocolate or mince pudding for dessert. Don and Ray gave every woman a pair of earrings for Christmas and every man a brand-new tie. I’ve still got my nine ties in the closet at home. When Don Tarkington died in 1959, I wore one of them to his funeral. It was out of style and Mary gave me holy hell, but I wore it anyway. The place was dark and the bouts were long and the work was drudgery, but the people cared about you. If the extractor broke down, Don and Ray would be right down there with the rest of us, the sleeves of their white shirts rolled up, wringing out those sheets by hand. That’s what a family business was, Vinnie. Something like that.
“So when Ralph died and Ray Tarkington said he’d already hired a guy from outside to run the washroom, I couldn’t understand what in hell was going on. And Ray says, My father and I want you to go back to college. And I say, Great, on what? Bus tokens? And he hands me a cashier’s check for two thousand dollars. I looked at it and couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I say, What is this? And he says, It’s not enough, but it’ll get your tuition, your room, and your books. For the rest you work your summers here, okay? And I say, is there a way to thank you? And he says, yeah, three ways. First, repay the loan. Second, repay the in terest. Third, bring what you learn back to the Blue Ribbon. I took the check home and showed Mary and she cried. Put her hands right over her face and cried.”
Vinnie was looking at him now with frank amazement.
“So in 1955 I went back to school and I got a degree in 1957. I went back to the laundry and Ray put me to work as boss of the drivers. Ninety dollars a week. When I paid the first installment on the loan, I asked Ray what the interest was going to run. He says, One percent. I said, What? He says, You heard me. Don’t you have something to do? So I say, Yeah I think I better go downtown and get a doctor up here to examine your head. Ray laughs like hell and tells me to get the fuck out of his office. I got the last of that money repaid in 1960, and do you know what, Vinnie? Ray gave me a watch. This watch.”
He shot his cuff and showed Vinnie the Bulova watch with its gold expansion band.
“He called it a deferred graduation present. Twenty dollars interest is what I paid on my education, and that son of a bitch turns around and gives me an eighty-buck watch. Engraved on the back it says: Best from Don amp; Ray, The Blue Ribbon Laundry. Don was already a year in his grave then.
“In 1963 Ray put me on your job, keeping an eye on dry-cleaning, opening new accounts, and running the Laundromat branches-only in those days there were just five instead of eleven. I stayed with that until 1967, and then Ray put me in this job here. Then, four years ago, he had to sell. You know about that, the way the bastards put the squeeze on him. It turned him into an old man. So now we’re part of a corporation with two dozen other irons in the fire-fast food, Ponderosa golf, those three eyesore discount department stores, the gas stations, all that shit. And Steve Ordner’s nothing but a glorified foreman. There’s a board of directors somewhere in Chicago or Gary that spends maybe fifteen minutes a week on the Blue Ribbon operation. They don’t give a shit about running a laundry. They don’t know shit about it. They know how to read a cost accountant’s report, that’s what they know. The cost accountant says, Listen. They’re extending 784 through Westside and the Blue Ribbon is standing right in the way, along with half the residential district. And the directors say, Oh, is that right? How much are they allowing us on the property? And that’s it. Christ, if Don and Ray Tarkington were alive, they’d have those cheap highway department fucks in court with so many restraining orders on their heads that they wouldn’t get out from under until the year 2000. They’d go after them with a good sharp stick. Maybe they were a couple of buck-running paternalistic bastards, but they had a sense of place, Vinnie. You don’t get that out of a cost accountant’s report. If they were alive and someone told them that the highway commission was going to bury the laundry in eight lanes of composition hot-top, you would have heard the scream all the way down to city hall.”
“But they’re dead,” Vinnie said.
“Yeah, they’re dead, all right.” His mind suddenly felt flabby and unstrung, like an amateur’s guitar. Whatever he had needed to say to Vinnie had been lost in a welter of embarrassing personal stuff. Look at him, Freddy, he doesn’t know what I’m talking about. He doesn’t have a clue. “Thank God they’re not here to see this.”
Vinnie didn’t say anything.
He gathered himself with an effort. “What I’m trying to say, Vinnie, is that there are two groups involved here. Them and us. We’re laundry people. That’s our business. They’re cost accountant people. That’s their business. They send down orders from on high, and we have to follow them. But that’s all we have to do. Do you understand?”
“Sure, Bart,” Vinnie said, but he could see that Vinnie didn’t understand at all. He wasn’t sure he did himself.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll speak to Ordner. But just for your information, Vinnie, the Waterford plant is as good as ours. I’m closing the deal next Tuesday.”
Vinnie grinned, relieved. “Jesus, that’s great.”
“Yes. Everything’s under control.”
As Vinnie was leaving, he called after him: “You tell me how that German restaurant is, okay?”
Vinnie Mason tossed him his number 1 grin, bright and full of teeth, all systems go. “I sure will, Bart.”
Then Vinnie was gone and he was looking at the closed door. I made a mess of that, Fred. I didn’t think you did so badly, George. Maybe you lost the handle at the end, but it’s only in books that people say everything right the first time. No, I frigged up. He went out of here thinking Barton Dawes has lost a few cards out of his deck. God help him he’s right. George, I have to ask you something, man to man. No, don’t shut me off. Why did you buy those guns, George? Why did you do that?
Thump, the circuit breaker.
He went down on the floor, gave Ron Stone the salesmen’s folders, and when he walked away Ron was bawling for Dave to come over and look at this stuff, might be something in it. Dave rolled his eyes. There was something in it, all right. It was known as work.
He went upstairs and called Ordner’s office, hoping Ordner would be out drinking lunch. No breaks today. The secretary put him right through.
“Bart!” Steve Ordner said. “Always good to talk with you.”
“Same here. I was talking to Vinnie Mason a little earlier, and he seemed to think you might be a little worried about the Waterford plant.”
“Good God, no. Although I did think, maybe Friday night, we could lay out a few things-”
“Yeah, I called mainly to say Mary can’t make it.”
“Oh?”
“A virus. She doesn’t dare go five seconds from the nearest john.”
“Say, I’m sorry to hear that.”
Cram it, you cheap dick.
“The doctor gave her some pills and she seems to be feeling better. But she might be, you know, catching.”
“What time can you make it, Bart? Eight?”
“Yeah, eight’s fine.”
That’s right, screw up the Friday Night Movie, prick. What else is new?