The World Played Chess (9)

“How much are they paying?” I asked, which was ballsy, given I was unemployed and had no prospects. I had worked summers since I was fourteen, all the money I earned going into the bank to pay for college. I wanted to go to Stanford and had applied at the behest of my high school counselor without telling my parents, figuring I’d never get in. But I had been accepted. It was a bittersweet moment opening the telegram the admissions office sent to our house. My mother and father, the hardest-working people I knew, simply couldn’t afford four years of Stanford tuition while also paying college and professional school tuition for my four older siblings, and private school tuition for my five younger siblings. It had been too much for me to ask. I was headed to a community college with a journalism program and would reapply to Stanford before my junior year—if we could afford it and I still had the grades to get in.

Mike laughed. “More than you’re making sleeping. Five bucks an hour, under the table.”

That was serious money. Minimum wage was just under three bucks and you had to pay taxes. “Yeah. I’ll do it.”

“Get dressed.”

“Today?” My head pounded.

“They’re looking now. I already talked to Todd about you.”

“Who’s Todd?”

“Your boss if you don’t screw it up.”



I took a cold shower, which made my hangover worse, the cold water reminding my body of the abuse from the prior evening. I threw on a T-shirt and jeans and a pair of scuffed military jungle boots. I had bought the boots at an Army-Navy surplus store in San Mateo when I pumped gas at the Chevron station on the El Camino Real. Gas, I had learned quickly, ruins tennis shoes. Just eats up the rubber. The jungle boots were used, meaning priced within my budget, which was as close to free as possible. Black, with a thick sole, they gave me an inch in height and a foot in attitude. The uppers, pea-green cloth, extended six inches above my ankle.

Mike did not wait for me or leave the address, but he said the remodel was on Castillo Avenue, just three blocks east of Hillside Circle, where Hillside Drive climbed into the Burlingame Hills. “You can’t miss it. You’ll see my car parked in the street.”

Less than two miles from home, the job location would be good for gas consumption and allow me to sleep as long as humanly possible, since I intended to make the most of my summer nights before college.

I jumped into the Pinto and drove down the hill, turning left on Castillo, and parked just past Mike’s MG Midget. The sun burned bright, the temperature hovering around eighty degrees, which was warm in Burlingame for early June. I figured I’d meet Todd, get approved, and start work the following morning. Then I could go home, eat something to settle my stomach, take two more Tylenol, and go back to bed.

I didn’t see anyone in the front yard, so I walked down a sloped driveway recently jackhammered into chunks of concrete that now sat in a pile. I passed through a shaded garage to the backyard where Mike and William stood knee-deep in a three-sided rectangular trench extending off the back of the house. They wore cargo shorts and had ditched their shirts. A third man, who I deduced to be Todd, stood watching them. He didn’t appear much older than Mike or William—maybe late twenties or early thirties. He combed his red hair in a pompadour, the way my dad wore his hair. A thin red beard and mustache covered much of his mouth and chin.

“Vincenzo!” William set down a pickax and greeted me in the glib manner he greeted me after softball games—smiling and with a chuckle in his voice. William had curly brown hair that extended to his shoulders and a Fu Manchu mustache, both already showing gray strands despite his being only thirty. His face was tanned and weathered from too much sun. From what Mike had told me, William was a Vietnam vet, and a free spirit who smoked a lot of pot and didn’t take life or anything else too seriously.

Todd gave me a look that was less than welcoming. “You Vincent?” He flicked a toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other, displaying small teeth, like a piranha’s. He didn’t offer his hand, just eyeballed me up and down with his thumbs hitched at his belt. In a long-sleeve cotton shirt, jeans, and pointed cowboy boots, he looked like a Montana rancher appraising a steer. He stood a couple inches shorter than me, at least in my jungle boots, but he carried himself much bigger. Silver-framed glasses, which must have been a strong prescription, magnified his blue eyes, reminding me of my grandmother’s eyes. Fair skin with freckles likely explained the long sleeves and pants.

“Yes,” I said, still uncertain about the protocol, whether to extend a hand or not.

“You want a job?” Todd asked, his voice so soft I barely heard him.

“I do,” I said.

“We start at seven.”

“Okay.” I figured I would start in the morning.

Todd now looked to be suppressing a smile, a joke only he had heard. It was like he knew I was hungover. Maybe Mike had told him?

“You got work gloves?” Todd asked.

“Yeah.” I pulled a pair of my mother’s gardening gloves from my back pocket. Mike had brought his work gloves up to the house and told me I would need a pair. I had hoped the gardening gloves, like the jungle boots, would help me look the part.

Todd’s grin became something between derisive and disgusted. “Those aren’t work gloves.” He walked into the garage and rummaged through a five-gallon white bucket, handing me a pair of well-worn, stained leather gloves. “Those are work gloves.” His tone made me feel like an idiot.