“Do you know this woman?” he asked me.
“No,” I said. “Don’t know her.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Kathy said, herding Lula and me out of the office. “I’m sure Jim can find jobs for them.”
We followed Kathy down the hall, into the main production area and through a door marked “Ladies’ Locker Room.”
“You can have lockers 17 and 18,” Kathy said. “You can get suited up and leave your personal possessions in the lockers.”
“Say what?” Lula said.
“Everyone working on the floor needs to wear a sanitary cap, booties, and a jumpsuit,” Kathy said. “You’ll find them in your lockers. I’ll tell Jim you’re here, and he’ll meet you just outside the locker room.”
Lula looked at the jumpsuit assigned to her. “I picked out a special celebratory ice cream outfit for today, and this is going to ruin everything. I don’t see where this is going to contribute to my experience.”
I shrugged into the jumpsuit and covered my sneakers with the booties. I didn’t care a lot about it since I hadn’t worn a special celebratory ice cream outfit. I put the yellow disposable shower cap on, and Lula looked horrified.
“You look like a idiot,” she said. “You look like a giant deranged minion from that movie Despicable Me.”
“Are you getting dressed? Or are you going home?”
“I’m thinking about going back and demanding a office job. It would be something more suited to my wardrobe and unique talents.”
“What talents are we talking about?”
“Office worker talents. I got a lot of them. And I got a good chance of getting a excellent office job because I got cards. You gotta take what they give you, because you got almost no cards. You got the woman card, but it’s about worthless on account of you’re thin and white. I’m a plus-size black woman. Bam! That’s three cards. It’s like I hit the political-correctness jackpot. Only thing better than what I got is if I lost a eye or a leg to police brutality.”
“That’s horrible.”
“No way. It’s using what God give you. I got a personal relationship with God, and I know he’d be disappointed in me if I didn’t use my gift cards.”
I guess she could have a point with using her gift cards, but I didn’t think those cards were going to help her when she had to figure out how to read a spreadsheet.
“I have to go to work,” I said to Lula. “I’ll try to hook up with you at lunch.”
“They give us ice cream for lunch, right?”
NINE
JIM WAS WAITING at the locker room door. He looked like he drank a lot of beer and was ready for retirement.
“So,” he said. “You want to make ice cream?”
I adjusted my shower cap. “Mostly I want to make money.”
“I hear you. We’ll start you out on the cup dropper and filler. It’s a real no-brainer. You watch the empty cups when they come on line and make sure they’re straight. If they aren’t straight you fix them. Then you watch that the ice cream goes in them okay. If it doesn’t go in perfect you pull the screwup off the line. If it happens three times in a row you shut the machine down by hitting the big red button that says ‘Stop.’ A buzzer will go off and I’ll come over to take a look.”
I gave him thumbs-up and he walked away. A minute later the machine went into action. After forty-five minutes of watching the cups go by I was hypnotized. I jumped up and down, stamped my feet, and sang “Happy Birthday” to myself. After an hour and a half I was afraid I was going to go into a catatonic stupor and face-plant into a pint of mint chocolate chip.
A young woman tapped me on the shoulder. “You get a fifteen-minute break,” she said. “I’ll watch the machine.”
I shuffled off to the break room next to the locker room and went straight to the coffee machine. Two women were at a round table that seated six. I got my coffee and sat at the table with them.
“I’m Tina, and this is Doris,” one of the women said. “How’s your first day going so far?”
“I’m having a hard time concentrating. All those cups going by one after the other. It’s hypnotic.”
“You get used to it,” Tina said. “You need to drink a lot of coffee. And if that doesn’t work I’ve got some red pills that’ll perk you up.”
“Aside from the boredom it seems like an okay job,” I said.
Doris drained her coffee cup. “Yeah, as long as you don’t get turned into a Bogart Bar.”
I leaned forward a little. “I heard about that. Did you know him?”
“Sort of,” Tina said. “He was here every day, but he mostly kept to himself. He’d come in and get coffee and take it back to his office. I guess when you’re the guy who has the power to promote or fire you can’t get real chummy with the folks.”
“Why do you think he was killed?”
“Someone didn’t like him,” Tina said.
“Did you like him?” I asked her.
“He seemed okay. I didn’t have much to do with him.”
“What about Mr. Bogart? I met him for the first time today, and he seemed grumpy.”
“He huffs and puffs around the floor a couple times a day. Doesn’t say much to anyone. Everything goes through Jim.”
“Bogart is big on image,” Doris said. “Everyone has to look happy when he’s on the floor. We get suited up in yellow because he thinks it’s a happy color. His slogan is ‘Happy ice cream made by happy people.’ ”
“Is everyone really happy?” I asked her.
She shrugged. “I’m happy.”
“Me too,” Tina said.
I looked at my watch. My break was over. I went back to my station and stared at the cups for two more hours. Every once in a while I had to straighten one. At precisely one o’clock the young woman came back and sent me to lunch. The break room was filled with second-shift lunch people. They were all brown baggers. Harry Bogart didn’t operate a cafeteria. There was free coffee and tea, and there were vending machines.
I went to my locker and called Lula.
“Where are you?” I asked her. “Did you get an office job?”
“I’m here with Connie. They said they didn’t have no office jobs available, and it don’t matter anyway because cheap-ass Bogart don’t give away free ice cream to his employees.”
“What’s going on at the bonds office? Am I missing anything?”
“We got cupcakes instead of donuts this morning. And a new copy of Star magazine came out. I didn’t get a chance to read it yet, but it got a guy on the cover that looks like one of the Property Brothers, but I think it might just be a look-alike. Imagine three guys out there lookin’ that good. And the real Property Brothers can even sing. You ever hear them sing?”
“No.”
“I think they should be on Live at Daryl’s House and then I could see my two favorite shows at one time.”
“I thought your favorite show was Naked and Afraid.”
“I got a lot of favorite shows. Mostly the common ingredient is hot men. Daryl got a real dope band, and the best part is Daryl’s hair. He’s got one of them blond flip-back things going. If I was white I’d want hair like Daryl. He’s like Farrah Fawcett only with a lot of testosterone.”
“Anything happening at the office besides cupcakes and the Star?”
“Vinnie came in, and he was on a rant over Eugene Winkle. How long you gonna be working at the ice cream fun factory? Vinnie’s not gonna be happy to hear you’re moonlighting.”
“I’ll go after Winkle tonight.”
“Are you nuts? The man is a bridge troll. How are you gonna bring him in?”
“Do you want to help?”
“No!”
I disconnected, pulled a couple dollars out of my pocket, and fed them into one of the vending machines in the break room. I got a packet of peanut butter crackers, a candy bar, and more coffee. I sat at a table with four women and introduced myself.
“I see you’re going for the high-protein vending machine diet,” one of the women said to me. “I’m Betty, and this is Miranda here to my right.”
“I didn’t pack a lunch,” I told them. “I thought there might be a cafeteria.”