Men of Business: take 2

It still needs a lot of work, I know. Please help me! I hate to demand a lot in an informal critique, but could you be as precise as possible? Specificity seems to help me best... Please assist the poor little girl crying in the corner...

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So this summer, my family had dealings with the Mafia. No one believes me, but it all happened. Cheesy threats, goons with twenty-inch necks, heavy Italian accents, the works. It’d all be really funny if it weren’t true.

Let me tell you about Richard Conti. The guy’s shorter than me. Five feet, tops, with slicked-back black hair, getting gray on top. Has to use half a cup of gel every morning, I swear. He seemed really friendly the first time I met him. He’s a lawyer; I suppose he’s got to do that. Otherwise he’d never get more holdings. Anyway, he owns about half of Providence and a good deal of the rest of the state. A hundred and fifty buildings, he’ll tell you proudly if you ask him. And this summer, he decided he wanted another one.

We ran an artisan bakery that turned out the best bread I’ve ever tasted. The guys who worked there were great. They were all Guatemalan Indians, and the most devout Catholics I’ve ever met, except they were willing to work on Sundays. It was a small building with two ovens, massive mixers, and four tables to form the bread by hand. The place always had someone in it, a baker or a packer or someone at the counter. On holidays, it was just me, sometimes my dad, and sometimes Catherine. I ran the wholesale department for six summers, starting when I was fourteen. Called people every day in the summers and on holidays: “Hi, this is Bess at Daily Bread, just callin’ to see if you need anything for tomorrow.”

I despised calling customers. I loathed it. If I never see another telephone in my life, it’ll be too soon. Every day, I had two solid hours of talking to purchasing departments, chefs, and inept assistants with my voice an octave higher than normal. I made myself sick with my sweetness in the face of customers. There were a few places that were really nice when I called, but the rest were wretched. Chefs are the angriest people on earth. People tell me no, they know people who would stab little furry animals and laugh about it, but chefs would do it just because the bread looked a little funny and they wanted to set an example. Roberto from Roberto’s was the worst. He would call if the bread was five minutes late from its six o’clock drop-off, or if one loaf was overcooked, or the raccoons got it before he did. He called me up on the fourth of July once, about five years ago. Now, in Bristol they have this parade that’s been going since before we won the revolution. We’re real patriotic in Rhode Island. Anyway, he calls because the bread’s not there at nine in the morning. The driver missed him because the parade was setting up. This guy’s restaurant is on the parade route, and it’s going on right now. He says he wants me to get it there. I tell him I’m fourteen. Through my tears, I tell him I don’t have a car, much less a license, and I’m the only one here. Tough, he says. Get him the bread. Later he calls back and apologizes for the words he used about me and the “Mexican” driver who needs to “learn to speak fuckin’ American.” By that time we’ve found someone to get him his bread. He says oh, that’s okay, he doesn’t need it till five. Roberto gives me headaches beyond the help of painkillers. A dollar fifty-one a baguette. That’s cheap, and he only gets twelve. He doesn’t get to complain.

It’s been five years since that conversation, and I’m tougher now. I’ve been sworn at and threatened by chefs and managers so many times, it’s hard to scare me. Conti, however, proved to be a different kind of threat.

So my sister and I are calling customers one day in our little wholesale cubicle in the basement. It’s about eleven and the smell of cinnamon has finally penetrated the ceiling. Cat has been talking with Roberto about the fact that he needs to order more bread or we simply can’t deliver to him anymore. When she hangs up, she fills in the order sheet and hands it to me to type.

“Je deteste les clients,” I say to Cat, snatching the slip without looking up from the computer. Getting yelled at by chefs is a miserable experience; I’m almost glad we’re closing the business, just so Cat and I don’t have to deal with the idiots anymore.

“Juste trois heurs,” she reminds me with a heavy sigh. It’s Thursday, and we get to go home at two today. Five sourdoughs, four peasant, six Tuscan loaves, all sliced, I type rapidly to the rhythm of the Celtic drumming Cat let me choose. If I type quickly enough, I can get several invoices out in a minute, but my hands will hurt like hell later. Two years ago, this job put me into physical therapy for carpal tunnel. Unfortunately, the owner’s daughter isn’t entitled to workman’s comp.

We speak French to each other, just for practice mostly. It bugs Dad because his grandparents used to speak German around him when they didn’t want him to understand, and he doesn’t speak French either.

“Qu’est-ce qu’il y a ici?” Cat asks as the visitors come into view. I look up from the sixty-seventh invoice in a row and rub my aching hands.

Conti comes into the basement in a three-piece suit with his lawyer and these two guys. I only got a little glimpse of them, but they were big. Like I said, twenty-inch necks. Biceps as big as your head. Dark blue t-shirts with hardware store logos on them. One of them’s missing a tooth. Dad greets them at the stairs, gives us a look that tells us to stay in the office and says, “Hi, Mr. Conti, what can I do for you today?” He leads Conti away from our line of sight, just outside the cubicle wall. Conti’s our landlord at this point, and we’re in our last month in the building. We had tried to sell the business to this great guy, Arnie, but Arnie had a heart attack on the day of the signing and his wife wouldn’t let him buy the bakery. I understand why. Any deal that endangers your life can’t be a wise idea.

We can’t see Dad and Conti and the guys, but we can hear them.

“Hey, Bill, how’s Arnie doin’ these days?”

“Better. He should be out of the hospital before next Wednesday.” Pleasant as anything. Dad’s a salesman by trade. He didn’t want to be, but that’s what he’s best at and he needs to bring home something at the end of the week. Dad doesn’t bake. He can’t really cook, for that matter. He just runs the business end of things at Daily Bread. His day job is selling phone systems to major companies on the East Coast. He knows how to talk to people and he knows how to organize everything but his own papers. However, the bakery loses thousands of dollars a year no matter what he does; that’s why we’re selling it. I think he wants to get out of this business as much as I do.

“Listen, Bill,” Conti says with an edge that says listen or else, “I need you out of here a week early. I got someone who’s seriously looking at the building.” That’s a damned lie. To this day, there’s still a “For Rent: Fully Equipped Baking Facility” sign in the window. Dad reminds him that the deal with Arnie fell through and the guy’s still in the hospital, showing no signs of buying when he gets out. We need the bakery and the equipment so that we can keep providing product to the customers. (I wouldn’t have minded stopping early, but we promised them bread through August 31, and Dad says you should never back out on your word. Even if they’re not going to follow through with their end of the bargain, i.e. paying you, you have to keep your promises.)

For a second or two, nobody says anything. Then Conti says, “You and me, Bill, we’re men of business. Businessmen, right?” Cat looks at me and gestures like the Godfather, thumb to middle finger, shaking her fist a little. I shush her so I don’t miss a word of the conversation. His accent is hysterical. It’s too stereotypically Italian to believe. Besides, someone that small can’t be intimidating. I should know; I can’t scare anyone. Conti goes on, “We understand when things go wrong. But these men, they’re not like you and me. They work with their hands.” And we hear cracking knuckles. Honest to God, cracking knuckles. I look at Cat, and her mouth’s wide open too.

“Il est de la famille,” I whisper to Catherine, and she does the Godfather thing again and says, “Il lui donne une offert qu’on ne peut pas refuser.” One of Conti’s thugs pokes his head around the cubicle wall and Cat hands me another order slip hurriedly, a blank one. He doesn’t understand French; we’re safe. He goes back out and we give this big sigh of relief. Sighing runs in my family on both sides. I swing at the air with my imaginary crowbar and say, “C’est l’homme qui casse les kneecaps.” Cat laughs out loud, but there’s fear behind her eyes. When you’re faced with a guy like Conti, with certain pain, you have to speak French and laugh if you want to stay sane.

“I’m sorry, Mister Conti, but we need to stay here until the thirty-first. I’m sure your client will understand.”

Conti mutters something barely audible about regretting this. Then he and his thugs leave without getting what they want, and Dad collapses in a chair in the wholesale cubicle. “So that was exciting,” he says, rubbing his hand. He seems to have survived with nothing more than a too-firm handshake. I love my dad. “Your mother won’t believe this.”

We tell my mom about this whole scene and she knows it’s true. She’s the only one in our family who isn’t scared of Conti at all. Mom says if any of us come home with bruises, she’s calling the police. Dad says not to worry. Conti won't try anything down the street from the police station, but Mom's still on her guard. She calls my aunt the next day and tells her about it. She’s just gotten to the part where Cat does the Godfather thing and she waits for an answer. Then she says, “You don’t believe me, do you?” And she waits some more, and she says, “You know, all I ask is that you believe me. I need to tell someone about this, and I’m not a liar, you know that.” And she hangs up, like that.

We started moving out on the twenty-eighth. When Dad tried to unlock the door the next day, the key didn’t work. The son of a bitch changed the locks two days early. It’s been two months now, and Conti's still got security guards standing at the back doors of the empty bakery just in case he tries to break in. They were there the whole time we moved out the computer systems and files so that we couldn’t steal anything that Conti owned. Like the three-ton mixers, or the brick ovens bigger than my bedroom. For God’s sake, my dad would never steal anything. Conti should know that by now. My father is the most honest guy in the world.