“Y’all want to come inside?” said Ali.
“What for?” said one young man.
“You can watch television.”
“Ya’ll ain’t even got cable. Or a remote.”
“Play foosball if you want,” said Ali.
“That shit broke,” said the other young man, and he and his friend laughed.
Ali went back into the office, thinking, He’s right, it is broke. He made a mental note to get some duct tape and fix it, when he found the time.
Thomas Flynn’s last stop of the day was at a Ford dealership in the Route 29 corridor of Silver Spring. It was where he bought his E-250 cargo vans and had them serviced. He dealt with the manager, Paul Nicolopoulos, a good-looking silver-maned guy in his fifties taken to double-breasted blazers and crisp white oxfords. Nicolopoulos always introduced himself as Paul Nichols to his clients, just to make his life easier. Increasingly, many of his customers were Hispanics and other types of immigrants, and they had trouble with his name, which his proud Greek immigrant grandfather had refused to change.
“Just give me the cheap stuff,” said Nicolopoulos, watching Flynn measure the space with his Craftsman tape. They were in the used-car office, set up in a trailer. Nothing about it was plush.
“I’m gonna sell you the olefin,” said Flynn. “Twenty-six-ounce commercial, level loop.”
“The service guys walk through here all day with their boots on, and they’re not delicate. It’s like they got hooves.”
“The olefin’s made for high traffic. It’s not pretty, but it’s plenty tough.”
Flynn drew the tape back into the dispenser and clipped it onto his belt. He produced a pocket calculator and began to punch in numbers. He typically took the cost, added his profit, then tacked on the personality defect tax or, if he liked the client or owed him something, gave him a discount. In this way he arrived at a final figure.
“Don’t hurt me,” said Nicolopoulos, watching Flynn calculate.
“I’ll only put the head in,” said Flynn.
“Pretend that I’m a virgin,” said Nicolopoulos.
“I’ll be tender and kind,” said Flynn.
“Afterward, will you brush the tears off my face?”
“I’ll take you to McDonald’s and buy you a Happy Meal.”
“Thank you, Tom.”
Flynn closed the calculator and replaced it in his breast pocket. “Twenty dollars a square yard, including installation and takeaway.”
“Is that good?”
“I dunno. Did you give me a good price on my vans?”
“I did the best I could.”
“Me, too,” said Flynn.
“When can you put it in?”
“Early next week.”
“Perfect,” said Nicolopoulos.
Out in his van, Flynn called in the order to the mill. He phoned Chris, who was still in Bethesda with Ben, and checked on the status of the job. The two of them were slow, but Chris was conscientious and did decent work. Flynn tried not to lose patience with Chris, though sometimes, depending on his mood, he did become agitated. The trick was to avoid comparing Chris and Ben’s work to that of Isaac and his crew. No one was as fast or efficient as Isaac, but in general Chris and Ben were fine.
Which wasn’t the case with some of the other ex-offenders Flynn had tried to help. At the urging of Chris’s friend Ali, he had hired, at various times, several men who had once been incarcerated at Pine Ridge. A couple of them, genial guys named Lonnie and Luther who had been in Chris and Ali’s unit, had issues with drugs and alcohol, rarely reported to work at an acceptable time, and dressed inappropriately. Another, a large man named Milton, could not grasp the mechanics of installation. Flynn ran a business that grew and was perpetuated by referrals, and who he sent into his clients’ homes made or broke his reputation. He had to let them go.
There was one guy, a quiet, polite Pine Ridge alumnus named Lamar Brooks, who Flynn had hired and who had acquitted himself well. Lamar was ambitious, had his eyes wide open, and quickly learned the trade. After six months he bought a van and tools, went out on his own, and started an installation service, subcontracting for small carpet retailers in the Northeast and Southeast quadrants of the city. Flynn saw the failure of Lonnie, Luther, and Milton as insignificant in the face of Lamar’s success. And though Chris did not verbalize it, Flynn sensed that Chris appreciated his efforts on behalf of his friends, and that alone had been worth the aggravation a few of these young men had caused.
“So you guys are almost done?” said Flynn into his cell.
“Should be out of here in a half hour,” said Chris.
“What are you doing tonight? You want to come to dinner?”
“Can’t.”
“You have plans?”
“Yeah.”
“I met a young lady named Katherine today,” said Flynn. “Works over at TCFI?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Are you seeing her?”
“A little.”
“Don’t be so effusive,” said Flynn.
“I’m busy here.”
“What’s her story?”
“I gotta get back to work, Dad.”
“All right. Come by for dinner sometime; your mom misses you. I’ve got a book to give you, too. Guy named Paul Fussell.”
“I’ve read Fussell.”
“Have fun tonight,” said Flynn.
“I need to finish this job… ”
“Go.”
Flynn headed home. It had been a decent day. No serious fires, no major mistakes. Not too busy, but he had closed a couple of deals, and there would be steady work for all his people in the coming week.
Inside his house, he greeted Django, an adult Lab-pit mix they had adopted fully grown from the Humane Society at Georgia and Geranium after Darby’s death. Django had gotten off his circular cushioned bed that sat beside the couch in the den, and met Flynn at the door after hearing Flynn’s van pulling into the driveway, the distinctive sound of its Triton V-8 jacking up the beast’s ears. Django’s tail was spinning like a prop, and Flynn rubbed behind his ears and stroked his neck and chin. Django weighed eighty pounds and was heavily muscled. The pit in him was most visible in his blockish head.
Amanda’s car was out on the street, so Flynn knew she was home, despite the utter quiet in the house. In the early evening she liked to pray the rosary in their bedroom. She would be up there now, making the sign of the cross, reciting the Apostles’ Creed, touching the crucifix and then the beads as she proceeded into the Our Father, the three Hail Marys, and the Glory Be.
He had come to accept Amanda’s devotion to Catholicism and Christ. He no longer thought it was square or weird, or a Stepford wife phase she was going through, as he had when she became deeply religious in the early days of their marriage. He was thankful for the comfort that religion gave her, even as he was unable to buy into it himself. He had learned to share her with the one he had once called “Uncle Jesus,” whom he thought of as an unwanted relative who had camped out in his home, and in turn Amanda had stopped trying to convert him.
Flynn grabbed the plastic wrapper from that morning’s Washington Post, which Amanda saved daily, off the kitchen counter. Django began to bark, knowing that the plastic container was no longer a protective cover for the newspaper but was now a shit bag for his nightly walk.
“Let’s go, boy,” said Flynn, and ecstatically the dog followed him down the hall to where Flynn grabbed his harness and leash off a peg.
