Russell remembered as they approached downtown. “In the parking lot of Fisker’s Furniture. This fat guy in a nightgown and one of those long nightcaps standing next to this big old bed. He was waving a wand and there was this sign that said, ‘The Celestial Bed.’ It was freaky. I just kind of looked at it and walked on.”
“Let’s check it out,” Manny said. With a jerk of the wheel he changed lanes and made a hard right, racing through a yellow light. They pulled into the parking lot. It was empty. As they idled there, Manny looked carefully around him.
“What are you talking about? Celestial Bed, my ass. I ain’t seeing no Celestial Bed, pal.”
“I’m telling you I saw it earlier. Go in and ask if you want.”
Manny shifted the transmission into park and shook his head. “Right. I’m going to go walk into Fisker’s Furniture and ask to see ‘The Celestial Bed.’ Yeah, right. What do you think I am, some kind of fool?”
“I’m just telling you what I saw.”
“Well, you see it now?”
“No.”
Manny clicked his tongue. “Say it,” he ordered.
“What?”
“Say, ‘There ain’t no Celestial Bed.’”
Russell barked a bemused laugh and repeated, “There ain’t no Celestial Bed.”
“Say it again,” Manny insisted.
“Oh, come on.”
“Say it again, and mean it this time.”
“There ain’t no Celestial Bed.”
“All right,” said Manny, now thoroughly humored. “Let’s get out of here.”
Abruptly reversing, he spun the car around and squealed out across four lanes of traffic, gunned it through a red light and sped out of town.
A guard walked toward them as they approached the gate to the quarry.
“Flip him off,” Russell sneered, poking Manny in the ribs. “Flip him off and ram the gate.”
Manny swatted him and leaned out the window. “We’re here to see Felix Contreras.”
The guard nodded, opened the gate and waved them through. Men covered with dust worked among roaring machinery. Mountains of sand and gravel rimmed the pit. They drove slowly to a corrugated tin building where they were directed to Felix’s office. He was on the phone when they walked in and greeted them with a hesitant wave, holding his hand in the air while he continued his conversation with a strained expression. Noise from the machines outside vibrated the fake wood paneling of the windowless room. Fluorescent tubes glared from a cracked fixture. A fan tried to ventilate the room, but succeeded only in rustling the pages of a company calendar tacked on the wall behind the desk. They remained standing, although they could have seated themselves on a sagging couch. Felix hung up and loosened his tie. Sweat beaded on his brow as he addressed Manny.
“Hi. What are you doing here?”
He turned to Russell and nodded, letting his gaze linger on him a moment.
“Hey, Felix. You know Russ Pinske?”
“Afraid not.” He extended his hand. “Good to meet you.”
“Yeah, Russ is an old friend of ours. He just got back in town. I told him about you always looking for help.”
Felix sighed. “Guys, I wish you’d been here about a month ago. I got a full crew now. Nothing open except for haulers.” He looked hopefully at Russell. “You got a commercial license?”
Russell considered whether he should reveal that his ordinary license had expired a while ago, but said only, “No.”
“That’s all I need now. But who knows—a week from now could be different. Here,” he reached under a stack of papers on his desk and handed over a card. “Give me a call if you don’t find anything else. Jobs open up all the time.”
Relieved, Russell turned to leave. Manny stayed behind.
“You coming by tonight?” he asked.
“No,” Felix said. “I’m coaching Ernesto’s Little League tonight. We’ll probably stop by, but it depends on Liz. She’s feeling tired all the time these days.”
Manny nodded. “All right. Later on.” He walked to the door where Russell stood.
“Take it easy,” Felix called out from behind his desk. “Thanks for coming by.”
Manny cranked the volume on a disco station as they jostled along back roads. A hawk circled in the hazy, humid sky. Fields of corn and beans blanketed the rolling land, interspersed with clumps of trees. Russell didn’t know exactly where they were, but Manny seemed to know where he was going, and he seemed to want to get there in a hurry. He muscled the wheel and swerved onto another road, sending gravel and dust flying behind them. They crossed a bridge over a creek and Russell recognized the road they were on.
“OK, I know where we are. I went to grade school out here.”
Manny turned the radio down. “Yeah, I want to show you something.”
Kingsford Elementary School used to be out in the country. New houses now sprawled across land that had once been dairy farms and alfalfa fields.
“Charlie Jenner built this whole subdivision,” Manny boasted. “I wired a lot of them back when I was an apprentice.”
“Wow,” said Russell, at a loss to say anything else in the face of the countryside’s transformation. Manny smiled and shot down the road to the highway. They drove to the job site and pulled into a dirt lot next to a couple of trailers.
“There it is,” Manny said, cutting the engine. “Used to be a soybean field. Look at it now.”
Russell looked. Rebar twisted out of concrete pilings sunk deep into the fertile loam. Men worked on scaffolding along a partially completed wall, while earthmovers cleared and leveled the perimeter. Manny opened the door, leaving the keys in the ignition.
“I can trust you with The Imp?”
“You know it,” Russell assured him, glad to be offered wheels.
“Pick me up at four-thirty. Don’t be late.” He reached in the back seat, grabbed his hard hat and tool belt, got out of the car, and walked to one of the trailers. Russell slid into the driver’s seat.
The car glided into a space right in front of the Red Rooster Inn. Back when Carl tended bar here, he lived in one of the apartments upstairs. It was there that Russell first met Guy Bogel and Gary Pierce, who shared a place with an ever-changing rotation of shiftless
