Mr. Taylor from Bangor, Maine, was next up for delivery. Ever the meticulous accountant, he had given me a preprinted and completely accurate set of directions. Now that’s helping out your mover.
We pulled up at the Taylor house at the stroke of eight. The house was a brand-new Toll Brothers ranch on a golf course. He was very pleased with it. A group of Latino workers were pouring what Mr. Taylor called an Okeechobee porch in the back sunroom by the pool. It was made of smoothed orange and tan Florida pebbles cemented together and evidently a very Naples thing. Mr. Taylor seemed to know all the very Naples things already. He was wearing a pressed pair of khakis and a polo shirt. In the driveway was a brand-new BMW ragtop with Collier County plates they didn’t have in Bangor. Mrs. Taylor was wearing a pastel sundress, and the son was splashing in the pool. The Taylors had shed Downeast like a reptile shedding skin. Mr. Taylor explained to me that everything was going into the garage except a few cartons because their Maine stuff didn’t really fit with the lifestyle here.
He was right. They’d all do very well here in Naples. I was happy for them. For myself, I was not happy; I kept hauling all this furniture down here for people, and as soon as they saw it in the Florida sunshine, they didn’t want it anymore. I could see their point . . . it’s just that it made what I did absolutely pointless.
We finished up the paperwork, and Mr. Taylor signed off on everything. He handed me a fifty and gave me two tens for Tommy. We took off down I-75. I fished out one of the tens from my pocket and handed it to Tommy . . . then I fished out the other one and handed it over. Tommy opened his Cape Codder thermos and poured himself an eye-opener. It was 10 a.m., for crissakes. I watched him cut up his lime and growled at him. I kept the fifty in my pocket. Screw him.
Alligator Alley due east from Naples to Fort Lauderdale is one of America’s great drives. It’s a hundred miles of two-lane blacktop, ruler straight, knifing through the middle of the Everglades. It’s a great road going east in the midmorning but a bitch any earlier because the sun is directly in your eyes the whole way. It’s the same going west in the late afternoon. You can’t see shit. We passed a huge Seminole Indian reservation, massive empty ranches, and lots of signs saying PANTHER CROSSING. This is the final habitat for the remaining dozen or so Florida panthers. Between housing development, Big Ag, and the cars and trucks, I didn’t give the panther very long odds. Alligator Alley hasn’t got a single strip mall, gas station, theme park, motel, condo, tourist trap, or traffic light. I usually stop somewhere about 50 miles in to feel a bit of the silence and the vastness. I don’t linger, though. It’s spooky out there. Just a couple of yards from the roadway on either side is the swamp. Sometimes at night, I’ll pull over to take a leak and all I can think about is that an eighteen-foot alligator’s going to explode out of the water and pull me in. This road is slated to become part of I-75 in a year or two. That will be too bad.
Our penultimate stop was Mr. Warren, going to Galt Ocean Drive in Fort Lauderdale. The neighborhood is called the Galt Ocean Mile and consists of nineteen oceanfront towers highly coveted by those for whom that kind of thing is important. High-rise moving work has its own challenges. I would have to deal with a surly building superintendent, and there’d be lots of rules about when we could work, another set of rules about where we could put the truck, and, of course, loud complaints from the residents about the noise, the truck, use of the elevator, and the overall inconvenience we’d be causing everyone. People always forget that they moved in at some point and caused the same commotion. These high-rises can really mess up the schedule, though; if there was another mover working the building, I’d be dead in the water.
We cruised through the rest of Alligator Alley and met the sprawl at the junction of Route 27. We threaded through twenty-eight miles of the usual Florida thing to the ocean and parked in front of Mr. Warren’s high-rise. Unloading in front of me was a United Van Lines truck. The driver had four guys with him, which was a very bad sign because it meant a big move. This was going to take some finesse.
“Hey, United, you going to be here long?”
“Who’s asking?”
“Me. I’m the North American behind you. I’ve got twelve hundred to drop off on the sixteenth floor.”
“What time is it now?”
“It’s about one thirty.”
“I’ve got thirteen thousand to drop in one little fuckin’ elevator. Up on the twenty-second floor I’ve got two long carries and a shipper who flew in this morning on a broom. I’ll be done around five thirty if they let me finish. I hate these fuckin’ places. I’ve already seen the sign. It says: ‘No use of freight elevators after 5 p.m.’ I don’t know if the super’s going to enforce that or not.”
“Did you ask him?”
“Fuck no.”
“How ’bout I buy you and your guys lunch and you let me sneak my twelve hundred in while you’re eating?”
“Lunch? What’s lunch? Get real, driver. Face the facts. I’m here the rest of the day. Sundays are forbidden, so you’re unloading Monday. Go to the beach, go get laid, go enjoy yourself.”
“Sounds nice, but I’m loading twenty-one thousand out of Key West on Monday.”
“No shit?”
“No shit.”
“I wisht it was me, but at least somebody’s getting loaded out of this sandpit. God, I hate Florida.”
“We have a lot in common. So you’ll let me buy you lunch and unload?”
“Not a chance, driver. Your problems aren’t my problems.”
“How about lunch plus fifty bucks?”
“Nope.”
“How about lunch plus a hundred?”
“How about you give me your load out of Key West?”
“So no dice, really?”
“No dice, really. Look, I’ve got to get back to work. I’d like to help you out, but . . .”
“OK, driver, I understand. See ya.”
This was not good. I had told Gary in Fort Wayne my truck was empty. I don’t often lie to Gary, but the truth in this case would have cost me my load out of Key West and a six-day net of over $10,000. That’s too high a price for the moral high ground. It’s one thing to lie to a dispatcher; they know we lie to them just like they lie to us. It’s quite another to be caught outright. If I wasn’t in Key West with an empty truck on Monday, I might as well go over to Mayflower. Gary would starve me to death. I’d be pulling overflows for months.
I decided to talk to the building superintendent.
“Hi. I’m Driver Murphy from North American—”
“Another mover. So help me God, you guys make my life hell. All you ever want to do is tie up my elevators and piss off my residents.”
“Nah, that’s not true at all. All we ever want to do is empty the truck and go drink beer. Do you have a note from Mr. Warren about a delivery today?”