Blue Collar Blues (17 page)

Graciella was supervisor of the Paladin sewing unit, which was one that Cy was investigating. The Paladin was a new sport utility truck that was due to debut in September. The assembly plant was having a fit because the front back seat cushions didn’t fit.

Cy was sitting at an empty sewing machine. Sitting just in front of him was an attractive young woman who kept turning around to smile at him. Seventy percent of the workforce were women between the ages of fifteen and twenty, and many of them were looking for mates.

“Ms. Perez?” he called out to Graciella. “Could you come here for a moment?”

Graciella rolled her eyes at the woman as she came toward him. “Yes, Mr. Tyler?”

“You’re aware of the problems the assembly plants are having with the front back seats?”

“Of course. But my operators are doing their best with what they have to work with. They work hard every day—”

He stopped her. “I’m not suggesting that they aren’t working hard. After speaking with the mechanics, I’ve realized there’s a problem with some designs and the machines.”

“Why don’t you get the situation corrected?” Her voice was hard. “You expect us to do excellent work with inferior equipment?”

Around him several workers giggled.

Graciella had never spoken to him like this before. And, to be honest, Cy was turned on by her attitude.

“New machines aren’t necessary. The gauges are the problem.”

Graciella hissed. “You know that’s not the truth. Champion is just trying to get off cheap. These jobs should be sent all the way back to the drawing board.”

Graciella had a point. The machines in the Mexican plants weren’t as new as the ones in the American plants. Still, the machines were built to last fifty years, and had a lot of life left in them. “Call a mechanic over here, Ms. Perez, and I’ll prove my point.”

It turned out that the main problem was with the gauges. The tack sew seams were supposed to be one-quarter of an inch and the finish seams were set up to be five-sixteenths of an inch. Even the mechanics mixed up the metal plates once in a while when they installed them—which is how the sewing operator ended up using finish gauges on tacking machines.

Having discovered the problem, Cy made a call to Plant Engineering to get the gauges color-coded to distinguish one from the other.

Cy also learned that with only three mechanics to service eighty people, oftentimes the workers had a long wait to have their machines repaired. Sometimes, one mechanic told Cy, the workers would try to repair the machines themselves. Also, with the high temperatures in Mexico, the machines were always breaking down. It was a common problem that needed to be addressed.

Once the mechanics carried out Cy’s instructions, he returned to Graciella’s station and asked her to bring everyone under her supervision back to the unit. With everyone standing around him, he removed his jacket and sat down at the machine. He sewed the entire seat cushion from start to finish. When it was completed, he compared the cushion he’d sewed to those they’d done the day before. He took the whole group and the cushions over to the build area. The builder first tried to put on the cushion that Graciella’s team had made. It didn’t fit correctly. Then the builder placed Cy’s cushion on the mock seat, and it fit almost perfectly. With a minor engineering change, the problem would be solved.

Cy left early that day so that he was home to greet his children when they returned from school. But still Juana hung back. Nothing he did made her warm to him. She was old enough to understand that her mother and father’s relationship was a sin. And her mother’s sin seemed to be irreversible.

“Anybody want pizza?” Cy asked that night.

Gregor plopped his chubby body on Cy’s lap. “Me, Father. I want Domino’s like the TV says. Can you buy that for me?”

Cy realized that his son was now proficient in English as well as Spanish. Cy cringed inwardly when he thought about the day he’d have to explain his other life to his son. Would his children ever forgive him? How could he explain to his son that he lived in another country with another woman?

“Gregor,” he said, slipping him off his lap carefully, “let’s ask Juana.”

But Juana ignored them.

“I’ve got a thought, Gregor,” Cy said, trying to deflect Juana’s chill. “Would you like to go to the bullfights this weekend? Your mother and I used to attend them all the time.”

“Cy,” Graciella said, smiling nostalgically, “that was so long ago.”

“Let’s do it.”

There were cheers from Gregor and Graciella, but not from Juana.

After dinner when the children had gone to bed, Graciella and Cy were in the living room sitting in a stiff silence. Graciella interrupted Cy’s reading to tell him that when he had taken Gregor out for pizza, Juana had asked her a cutting question. Juana had said, “How do you know how well his wife is living? You only know what he tells you. You don’t even know his address. All you have is a pager number to contact him by. It’s like he is spitting in your face.”

Graciella had slapped her. But it was obvious to Cy that their daughter’s question had lingered.

Early Saturday morning, the six-hour drive to Tijuana for the bullfight was fun, though Juana was silent all the way. Gregor made up for it with his high spirits. Caesar Castanéda was fighting. His rare appearance in the Plaza Mexico was being hailed as
“¡Buena suerte!”

Cy purchased the best seats, at $35.25 American, and they were well worth it. The action they witnessed at the ring was incomparable. Every second was filled with colorful matadors and the huffing and snorting of the black bulls. Even the noticeable smell of bull manure didn’t dampen the excitement.

Glancing at Graciella, Cy felt like he had been transported twelve years back in time when he and Graciella had attended their last bullfight. The action in the ring had prompted more action later, a night of beautiful sex. His instincts told him that Juana had been conceived on that memorable evening.

They returned to the Villa Vera Hotel, and Juana and Gregor collapsed into sleep in their own room. Cy and Graciella had gotten a suite, with adjoining rooms. Now, as they prepared for bed, Cy felt himself weakening. The memories were too strong between them, and he found himself powerless to resist Graciella.

In the semidarkness, Graciella’s brown body gleamed as if she were wet, coming out of the sea. She moved slowly toward him and he felt her sweet breath encircle his neck, like a necklace of honied berries. He could feel her breath against his face, his chest, his stomach, his hips. Graciella stroked his throbbing member so gently, so lovingly, Cy thought he would scream in exultation. When she lowered her head and closed her hot mouth over his sex, he clutched the sheets and pushed his hips forward. Carnal pleasure rippled through his body from the balls of his feet to the top of his head as she began feathering kisses along the length of him with the tip of her tongue. Soon he felt the bed dip slightly beneath his buttocks as she straddled him.

Cy shuddered and released the fluid that expressed his pent-up passion.

In the dark, Graciella smiled and said, “Now, my darling, I will make love to you tonight in such a way that you have never experienced before . . . not even with me.”

What had happened to his promise?

__________

As slowly as shadows creep at the setting of the sun, weeks passed in the Richardsons’ household. It was now mid-June, and in some ways Tomiko felt more adjusted to Detroit. R.C. had finally taught her how to drive, so she wasn’t as dependent on Herman and Bonnie to do everything for her.

With Magic Markers, R.C. highlighted the best shopping centers, the supermarkets and hairdressers, on her map. She practiced daily, and before long she knew exactly where to go and how to get there. R.C. was proud of her for insisting on her independence.

And he’d also come through on her working papers. She hadn’t yet received her so-called green card, but she had been doing some commercials for R.C.’s dealerships. She liked the work, but she was more worried about her marriage. There was something seriously wrong and Tomiko didn’t know what to do.

Tomiko felt out of sync.

R.C. had been spending more and more time out of the house. He talked nonstop about his horses, especially Livewire, who had not placed in the Preakness. Most weekends Tomiko didn’t even see R.C., and sometimes he wouldn’t come home until the wee hours of the morning, when she’d already gone to bed.

Tomiko had only Bonnie to brighten her weekends. Yesterday had been a perfect Saturday in June. The sun sparkled like the color of burnished brass, and Bonnie suggested that she and Tomiko go shopping. They dressed in their most colorful outfits and went to all the best stores. Bonnie even took Tomiko to Birmingham’s Bishop & Company, style and wardrobe consultants. When Tomiko noticed that the proprietor’s name was Sydney Bishop, she raised an inquisitive brow.

“Bonnie, isn’t she the one who stars in the Champion commercials?” Sydney had just walked into the store, and immediately the workers scrambled to greet her.

“Sure is.” Bonnie turned, browsing through a rack of silk dresses that were similar to the ones that Tomiko owned. “Pretty smart lady, that one is. She also owns a chain of Champion dealerships.”

“Oh, so that’s why R.C. is so interested in her. She’s his main competition.” How interesting, Tomiko thought.

This morning, Tomiko couldn’t budge from bed. R.C. hadn’t even come home last night. They were making love less and less often. Now he was shutting her out again. Things were so strained between them that Tomiko was beginning to wonder if he was seeing another woman. Worried, Tomiko talked with Bonnie, who assured her he’d come around.

Tomiko couldn’t reach R.C. He talked about the Derby race day in and day out. He ran the tapes over and over. It was an obsession, the kind of obsession that Tomiko wanted to be for him. Though she had no idea how much he had won or lost gambling on the thoroughbreds, she knew their marriage deserved more of a shot.

Dawn’s shell-pink fingers reached through the tightly closed blinds, unlatching a new day. Tomiko turned over, then stretched her long body. Turning her head to her right, she noticed that the pillow beside her bore no sign of use. It was the third time he’d done it. What was going on?

The sound of birds chirping merrily outside her window gave her the motivation to leave the bed. Looking in the mirror as she brushed her teeth, she stopped in midstroke. After washing her face, she went into the kitchen and scavenged the cabinets. She found what she was looking for and put on a kettle of water.

Everyone kept telling her how young she was, she thought, as she placed chamomile tea bags over her puffy eyes, but she wasn’t stupid. Lately, she looked like shit. She couldn’t help but wonder if her husband was avoiding her because he was having a problem performing sexually.

Tomiko spent most of Sunday cooking a special dinner for R.C., waiting for him to come home. At around two in the afternoon, he sauntered into the house without so much as a word of explanation. He looked terrible. His shirt was unbuttoned, his pants unzipped, and his eyes were bloodshot. He went downstairs to his private study and Tomiko didn’t see him for the rest of the afternoon.

After they ate her elaborate dinner quickly and in silence, the phone rang. R.C. picked it up and Tomiko heard him laugh as he’d never laughed with her.

Trying to keep herself busy, she flipped through the newspaper to the movie section. She loved American movies. By watching movies, she could learn more about Americans in two hours than she could reading a four-hundred-page textbook. Bonnie’s advice to rent ethnic movies had turned out to be a fantastic way to learn about African American culture.

Later, she heard the hearty sound of his laughter, and assumed he was still using the phone. She quietly picked up the extension and listened. But the only gossip she gleaned was a dial tone.

“Dammit, Bonnie!” he shouted. “Where’s my whiskey?”

“Let me fix it for you, R.C.” Tomiko ran to the head of the steps.

“Never mind. Bonnie’ll get it.” The tone in R.C.’s voice sent chills down her spine.

Tomiko couldn’t bear any more. “I’m going to bed. I’ll see you in the morning. Good night, R.C., Bonnie.”

Tomiko was in a deep sleep when the phone awakened her. The voice mail answered before she could.

Sensing that something was wrong, Tomiko got out of bed to check the voice mail.

“This is Sergeant Peters at the Seventeenth Precinct in Detroit,” the message said. “We have Mr. R.C. Richardson in our custody.” She could hear him clearing his throat. “R.C.’s been charged with a misdemeanor and is unable to make this call himself. I suggest you contact his attorney.” Tomiko had no idea who R.C.’s attorney was. She knocked loudly on Bonnie’s door, waking her. Sleepy but calm, Bonnie located the number for R.C.’s attorney.

“Tomiko, I think we should wait until at least seven A.M. to call.”

“Okay, okay,” Tomiko said nervously.

When the clock struck seven Bonnie dialed the home of Mr. Bellows. No answer. They waited another hour and called Mr. Bellows’s office. Bonnie spoke for Tomiko. It took a few minutes before they were referred to the cell phone of his personal secretary, then his voice mail, then back to his secretary again.

“This is very important,” Bonnie screamed into the receiver. “Mr. R.C. Richardson, one of Mr. Bellows’s biggest clients, is in jail in Detroit. I would appreciate it if you had a forwarding number.”

Bonnie rolled her eyes. “Mr. Bellows is out of state until Wednesday,” she repeated to Tomiko. “She wants to take a message.”

“Can she connect us with Mr. Bellows’s associate?” Tomiko asked.

When they finally reached Mr. Bellows out of town, he assured Tomiko that he would have R.C. released that morning.

Exhausted, Tomiko went back to her bedroom. She took a seat on the sofa. A new movie had just begun:
Indochine.
The countryside reminded her of home, and it made her so sad she began to cry. Before the movie ended she dialed her parents.

“Hi, Dad. Did I wake you?” It was 10:00 A.M. here, the middle of the night in Japan.