Thick black arm hair and an annoying helping of “good mornings” unlocked the door to let the three of us inside. The first guy, a Macy’s Day Parade balloon covered head to toe in denim, barely fit through the door. A shorter guy wearing a green polo tucked into blue slacks walked behind him. His scalp bounced a battalion of dandruff on top of hair perfectly parted to the side.

“Everyone take a seat and we’ll be with you as soon as the interview process starts.” gorilla arms said. “And if you need anything ask for Johnny.” He looked around the room waiting, staring. I wasn’t sure if I should stand on my chair and start clapping. “Johnny,” he said, looking around and pointing to the name tag on his stripped polo. When it dawned on him that the three of us wanted nothing to do with his company pride, gorilla arms Johnny shut the door behind him.

Gold wallpaper covered in nicotine stains from businessmen drinking away the night wrapped around the three of us inside the Valley Hotel’s conference room. Before our arrival hotel staff set up metal folding chairs, artfully arranging them on the red carpet with what appeared to be giant neon green cocks every fifteen inches or so. Each glowing, throbbing cock pointed towards the front of the room where a folding table sat in front of an eraser board. I imagine Johnny, with company cheer wrote, “Welcome to the DeMoulas Job Fair, Where Family Gets It Done.”

The Balloon man stood up, walked to the table and took a fistful of free mints from a wicker basket. He savagely opened a few and jammed them in his mouth. “Does anyone care if I go first?” He asked with yellow teeth stained in minty goo. “I need to get home; the main event wrestling matches are on later. Youse guys watch wrestling?”

I glanced at the short polo guy, but his face was planted in a science fiction magazine. The bouncing tits of alien women taking over earth was entirely too hot for him to stop for a moment and respond. I shrugged my shoulders. I didn’t care if he went first, and I certainly didn’t care about wrestling.

In the window, facing outside, I noticed pebbles arranged like a peaceful Zen Garden, as if to say, being inside the Valley Hotel’s conference room is an experience of peace and calm for all who enter. It inspired me to open my wallet where I kept a folded Saint Francis of Assisi saint card my grandmother had given me for my first holy communion. Outside the crease the card remained pristine for the last thirty years.

The door opened and a small woman with a clipboard in her hands called out, “Justin Carns?” The Balloon man stood up giving his seat cushion a much-needed breather.

“That’s me,” he said.

The tiny woman with large librarian glasses looked up at the enormous body before her and smiled in a timid way.

I memorized the words on the back of the card years ago. Growing up in my neighborhood with a Catholic church on every corner, one was bound to run into a priest, nun, or a religious fanatic, and if they saw the card in hand, they’d ask you twenty questions. “You do know he was given the wounds of Christ, right?” If you didn’t return with “Stigmata,” they’d cuss you out. One priest, Father Manchette, took a yardstick across my ass in front of the entire class. Sister Agnes poked my arms until little bubbles of blood popped up from my skin. You better believe I learned the words on the back of the card, “The deeds you do may be the only sermon people will hear today.” I repeated those words walking up and down Dorchester Avenue until Jesus unzipped the sky and turned on the lights.

“Alexander Lando?” The old woman with the clipboard said. The kid rolled up his magazine and stuffed it in his back pocket. She let go of the door, but the waif of a man slipped through the closing crack.

I was the last one. No one else had entered the room since the three of us. I’m not even sure why I’m at the job fair, nor what kind of job I could do. Every job I’ve had in my life hasn’t been on the up and up. I stole my first car outside Kelly’s Cork and Bull when I was fifteen. I didn’t make it a mile up Old Colony before the cops snagged me. My grandfather gave me the ass-kicking of a lifetime and my grandmother wouldn’t look at me for a week. It all went downhill from there. Cars, cash registers, houses, wallets, watches, you name it. If I wanted it, I took it.

My old man was sent up to Walpole when I was a teenager. He got life, and not for being the best safecracker in Southie, but out on a job, a man came home, and Dad shot the guy. Unlucky for my father the man he shot was a firefighter. A local hero who had saved two kids in a fire the year before. They had Dad inside for life before I had the chance to hug him goodbye. He taught me everything I needed to know about cracking safes and lifting wallets. I watched him in the garage test drills, stethoscopes, and sledgehammers. It was the best father-and-son bonding time I had with the guy. And what he couldn’t teach me at an early age, I asked him about in letters and the occasional visit to Walpole. If someone needed a business or home safe popped, they called me. My only rule was no banks. Once you get into banks then the feds get involved and nobody wants a bunch of black-tie-wearing protestants coming after you.

Truth is, I knocked up my girl, Nora. There’s no one like Nora. I met her when we bumped into one another at the bubbler in the library, two thirsty doe-eyed people surrounded by dead words. I was there to get a book on precious metals, and she had copies of Keats, Shirley Jackson, and Rimbaud under her arms. Names that meant nothing to me. No more than five feet tall, but those chestnut eyes and matching hair hypnotized me.  What I thought of the most was lying in bed with her and watching her look at an open book through black-rimmed glasses. Nothing could ever take her away from the pages, and she liked reading to me. Sometimes Dickens, but he was too dry. I liked it when she read Chandler, Flannery O’Connor, and Hemingway. It’s not that I can’t read, I just don’t like it all that much, but listening to Nora felt like she’d written the words herself, and I was the proud partner of the world’s greatest living novelist. Well, after a couple of years Nora got pregnant. She had her job shelving books at the library, but we’d soon have a child, and I could no longer risk being sent to the hoosegow for popping safes.

I decided I needed to go straight and get an honest job. The Electrician’s Union wasn’t taking on new apprentices due to the economy. The dock workers over at Conely Terminal told me the same thing, like the struggling economy of 1978 had anything to do with unloading one of the fifty thousand ships that comes into the harbor each week. So, yeah, here I am, at the Valley Hotel waiting to interview with the company men and women of DeMoulas.

I found the ad in the Herald. The ad said, “your future starts here,” written over a giant black-and-white picture of a pineapple and a loaf of bread. I thought I could be a butcher; they make decent money. Even as a baker, either job sounded like something I could learn at DeMoulas. I’d like my future child to look up to me. I want Nora to be proud of her working man. She never said anything bad about how I made money to pay the bills, but I noticed not long after the baby news, she stopped reading stories to me.

I’m fond of glowing yellow lights over Saint Francis’ head. His expression looks as if God himself was coming down from above to sit on his head, and with wide open arms Francis welcomes the giant ass of the universe to swallow him whole. “I really can use this job, Francis. If you could send a prayer up to Jesus for me, I’d really appreciate it.” I reinforced my request with a couple of Hail Mary’s and an Our Father for good measure.

“Patrick Hughes,” a voice called out. It was the small woman with the clipboard.

The small grey-haired woman led me down a long hallway and into another room. At the front of the room four people, two men and two women, sat at a long folding table with a banner clipped to it. It read, ‘DeMoulas Bringing Fresh to Your Table Since 1917.’

“Have a seat, Mr. Hughes,” a man wearing a green company polo said. “I’m Phil Loon, and next to me is Shelly Watson, Candice Gallo, and over there with that big gold watch is our district manager, Archie Ellis.”

I nodded my head and smiled a bit to let them know I was happy to be among such meaningful scholars, and wonderful men and women of leisure.

“One thing I noticed, Mr. Hughes,” Shelly said, I could smell her cheap perfume floating off her pink and gold polyester pantsuit, “You don’t have much work history.”

“I worked for my grandfather in his shop for many years.”

“Doing?” Phil Loon asked.

“You know, tune-ups, oil changes, cleaning the place up. Pops is old, and he didn’t want to sell so I kept the place going.”

“Uh-huh,” Loon replied.

“How old are you Mr. Hughes?” Candice Gallo with breasts heaving out of her low-neck cashmere sweater asked.

“I’m thirty-seven.”

“Why would you like to be a part of the fine, fine tradition we have at the DeMoulas?” Loon asked.

My entire life I had never interviewed with a company before. Everything I did for money was talked about on barstools, on drives to Fenway, or right after a job was finished. No one ever asked me what I want to do and why I’d like to be a part of something. I felt I’d already been a part of a tradition for years. And sure, it’s not the same traditions your family and neighborhood are a part of, but where I’m from we all look out for one another. We don’t snitch or go to therapy. Everyone is taken care of within our maze of triple-deckers. From the bridge to the harbor and in every bar, bakery, corner store, and church we know one another’s names.

“I shop there. I think the food is wonderful,” I said like an idiot.

“That’s nice, Mr. Hughes, and we are so grateful that you shop with us, but it doesn’t really answer the question,” Candice Gallo said.

What did they want me to say? If you give me the job, I’ll stop being a box jockey. If I cut their meat and stock their apples in the shape of a pyramid, I’ll turn inward and realize I’m a child of Jesus and I’ll never steal again? I wanted to tell all four of them the truth, but I didn’t. It’s better to tell Father Boyle at St. Monica’s than a stranger. At least Father Boyle can absolve my sins.

“I want to start a better path forward with a good company,” I blurted out. “My girl, she’s three months pregnant and I think it’s time for me to take a step on the golden road of opportunity.” I’m not entirely sure where I was pulling this complete horseshit from, but one thing I know about company people is they eat up all things hokey. They swallow heaping spoonfuls of giant turds. For them, it’s all about broad slogans inching their way out from the mouths of nonbelievers who’ll eventually surrender and allow themselves to be molded by a company. The chunkier the lie you buy the better it is for them.

 

Archie Ellis twisted the band of his gold watch, and Phil Loon wasn’t lying, that thing shined underneath the lights. I bet I could sell it at Peter Sullivan’s pawnshop, and get enough to pay the rent, bills, and for me to go to the bar and get good and drunk.

“Alright, Mr. Hughes,” Archie Ellis said, “I think we’re going to give you and that baby you have coming a shot. What do you think you can do?”

“I’d like to apprentice cutting meat. I think that would put me on a good path.”

Archie’s white crew cut punched itself into my vision. His head twisted and rotated. A smack from his lips clicked back and forced itself forward like an unwelcomed knock at your door.

“There’s a line of men waiting to be an apprentice butcher. I can put you on the list, and in a year or two we’ll get you over there, Patrick. I think we’ll get you on the cleaning crew for now. You do a respectable job keeping up with the floors, the toilets, the storefront windows, and we’ll have you grinding meat in no time.”

Cleaning up other people’s shit rings in a public toilet, great! Forty hours a week spit-shining windows and mopping floors. Sounds like a wonderful way to make me believe in the trap. I’ll get to the point of hating myself so much that I’ll surrender. Take me now you titans of industry.

“You have a pay rate in mind?” Phil Loon asked.

Sure, how about twenty dollars an hour? How about me being the richest janitor in Southie? With that kind of dough, I could move me and Nora and the baby to Quincy or even the Cape. Yeah, I’ll take twenty an hour.

“Seven dollars an hour?” I replied. I kicked myself for lowering my standards.

“It would be a wonderful world if we all started out making seven bucks an hour,” Archie said, twisting his gold watch in front of me. The other three joined in with a chuckle. Then they stopped right when Archie stopped. “Kid,” he said, “Let’s get real. We’ll give you minimum wage, two dollars and fifty cents an hour. Every six months if you do a good enough job, you’ll get a nickel raise.”

The skin on my stomach wanted to leap forward from my spine, and slug them all with an enormous flesh hammer, but I nodded and agreed to the minimum wage. I told them they wouldn’t regret it, which they basked in for a good fifteen seconds. They liked seeing me in line and lowering my standards just so I could feel the sweet sting of being on my hands and knees spit-shining toilet seats.

“We’ll need you to report for janitor’s orientation next Monday morning at eight,” Archie said, looking over my clothes. “Get yourself a white button-down shirt and black slacks. You cannot wear flannel shirts and jeans at the DeMoulas.”

I walked up to the table and shook all their hands. Thanking each one. I told Phil Loon he had nice shoes, and I complimented Candice’s sweater, twice. I told Shelly her pink suit really suited her and asked her where she got her fabulous perfume so I could buy some for Nora. I shook Archie Ellis’ hand hard and long enough that he had to stand up and throw fake compliments at me.

The other three stood up and surrounded me. We shook hands and they shot smiles in my direction. A huddle of compliments worked their way in me and around me. Shoulders touched and “excuse me” with a smile was handed out like a winning scratch ticket. I bumped in and out of their bodies like a pinball, Saint Francis burned in my pocket.

“See you Monday, Patrick,” they all said. “And welcome to DeMoulas!”

The woman with the clipboard opened the door for me and said, “congratulations.” I walked out into the lobby of the hotel and watched all the people coming and going. I looked at the name-brand luggage next to their feet. The jewelry on their fingers and around their necks. I noticed what kind of shoes they were wearing and what brand shirts they wore. I could come back and take it all if I wanted, but for now I had to be happy that I found a job beneath my real skill set in life. I put my hand in my pocket and rubbed the picture of Saint Francis. His carboard sheet heart glowed against my palm. Have you ever loved yourself just enough that the world stopped making sense?

The blue paint of my Nova needed a cleaning and wax. The black leather interior needed a vacuum and there were entirely too many empty coffee cups on the floorboards. I put the key in the trunk, turned it and opened it. Inside, my black duffel bag was full of my tools: drill, stethoscope, hammers, clips. I checked underneath a blanket and made sure the Remington pump shotgun was there, and never touched. I popped open a shoe box I kept for small things I took on jobs like rings, money clips, rare coins. I tossed Archie Ellis’ big gold watch next to a stack of baseball cards wrapped in rubber bands, followed by a wallet I dipped out of Candice’s purse.

I stared at the yellow lights above Saint Francis’ head and shut the trunk. It would be hours before the sun went down and hotel staff would turn from fully loaded into a skeleton crew. I need to call Nora, and tell her I got a straight job, and not to wait up for me. Across the street the big Mister Donut sign read “Hot Coffee.” I’ll need a ton of it if I intend to stay awake until after dark.

The parking lot was eerily quiet by midday. Trash picked up with the leaves and blew around the back of the hotel lot that connected to the Mister Donut. The fall chill slinked its way down the back of my flannel. The radiating yellow light of Saint Francis gripped my throat, “You wanderer on the path. There is no path, only wandering.” I ordered two large coffees and three crullers to go.