exposure experience jolted Noel upright. “Must leave.” He didn’t turn to speak directly to her. “I shouldn’t have come.” His moist fingers on the wineglass stem slid to the half-full bowl. He bent forward and reached to set it on the coffee table, pivoted, and shuffled feet backwards around the table.
His eyes focused on Melanie’s right hand releasing the next fastened button. “What? What’s the matter?” Her eyelids dropped to half-mast; lips trembled as breasts jutted forward. “I’m not too old for you am I?” She reached, both hands encircled retrieved wineglass, righting temporary slant.
“No.” He hadn’t wanted to display fear or lack of interpersonal skills. “I don’t feel comfortable ... the union questions and all. Dino’s my friend. He trusted me.”
“Let’s sit at the kitchen table.” Widened eyes pleaded. “Please. We’ll have a nice dinner. No more questions.” Putting wineglass on the coffee table freed her hands to button blouse.
Noel, distracted by a multi-colored cat from origins unknown that scampered and brushed stomach fuzz across front loafer top, said, “No. It’s best I leave now.” Left foot stepped backwards. When Melanie rose from the sofa, he stopped turn toward the kitchen fearful the cat circled behind.
“At least you can give me a hug.”
Noel felt like loafers had been sucked into the carpet up to the ankles, a loose carpet thread stuck to dark navy-blue socks. After three steps, Melanie flung arms around his neck, upper body pressed into his. With the feminine warmth attacking exposed pores and trying to radiate through cloth, Noel’s physical urges competed for control. After all, he’d agreed, no matter how forced, to eat, if not enjoy dinner. Her face burrowed into right shoulder allowed the choking perfume to refill nostrils. He clasped the delicate hands encircling pulsing neck veins and pulled them apart. He rocked back, turned face momentarily to cough. Her eyes, he thought, glistened with fresh tear moisture. No. He had to exercise willpower and do it now. “I must go.”
The last words she spoke before he released the kitchen door a shout of “Shoo, Buttons.”
Noel’s drive to Kanosh apartment afforded him time to try and unravel unending confusion. Melanie acted sluttish. Why had he acted so righteous? Bill McNamar in the warehouse break room speculated the real reason Ms. Stark advanced to vice president had been because she lacked one or more genes God bestowed upon all other women. Stark’s missing genes, Bill said, replaced by a dominant male gene.
Noel didn’t know what to believe. He’d observed her warehouse behavior with its command, testosterone-like directness, and steadfast assuredness. Never was it soft, compliant, and geared to forge a consensus. Yet, a prissy female would’ve been ignored. He could respect a results orientated woman in a man’s work world.
In Melanie’s living room, Noel’s conscience trumped any desire to stay longer. His quelled qualms she could inflict pain at work vanquished his initial stay-away fear. Her age comment surprised him; he’d never have thought that. If rumor and his calculations matched fact, she celebrated eight more birthdays than he. He detected no unsightly wrinkles. A brownish neck blemish could’ve been a faint birthmark or a dark freckle. He didn’t regret being socially nice to her, but he anguished the betrayal of Dino. Well, at least not total betrayal.
When the first time came to make love to a woman, he wanted the memories to be unforgettable. A night planned by him, a night lasting forever in memory if not in fact. Not a quickie wham-bam reward for violating the trust of a friend.
Which would be worse: dashing out or if he’d never arrived at all?
Three
“I say strike now,” shouted Bill McNamar, a wiry, large featured man with full-bodied lips that stretched wide to adorn a tanned face beneath dyed black swept-back hair. A supporting chorus of you-tell’ems and whoops echoed unabsorbed by union hall textured ceiling tile.
President Dino Vikolas had summoned members of Amalgamated Warehouse Workers Independent Local No. 1 to a rare midweek meeting. Four days previous, the union vote authorized its executive committee to call a strike. All meeting long Noel sat quiet as a church mouse in a middle row, elbows tucked in, and head tilted to avoid recognition and Dino’s gaze. Even if Dino didn’t know, Noel endured the piercing shame of an imagined wearing of Judas’s cloak.
With metal clinks and feet shuffling, union members rose in mass from folding chairs to overfill the hall with repetitive chants: “Strike, strike, strike.” From the corner of his left eye, Noel caught sight of a slender, gaunt figure striding along the far wall to stop in front of Vikolas. The rambunctious members choked voices in mid-chant. The familiar graying pigtail rubber-banded above shoulder blades swung sideways as the man pivoted to face Noel and fellow union members.
“We’ve been at the table for three months now. For what?”
“Nothing,” called out a voice behind Noel.
Noel didn’t hear a folding chair creak or scrape the floor.
“That’s right,” McNamar said, joining pig-tailed Bob Hunter at the front and waving off a baton-sized wireless microphone. “Company takebacks in health insurance, increased back-breaking productivity standards worthy of slaves, and for a few of us with double-decade seniority, a lousy twenty-five cents an hour increase.”
An approving murmur swept past Noel.
“You can’t feed a family with a quarter. Voted Sunday we strike. Today, I say let’s do it.”
Repeated chants of strike, strike, strike reverberated from the hall’s ceiling and walls encouraged by uplifted hand waves by both men. Noel never heard either Bill or Bob so enraged. Before today, Bob spoke of caution and patience, not radical strike action. Bob’s cracking voice parroted the smoldering anger Noel overheard before the meeting from smokers lined up outside the entrance cursing and berating Dino’s inaction. At the podium, Noel’s friend, Union President Vikolas, appointed the union’s chief negotiator, twice raised backhand to wipe a furrowed brow. Noel dismissed lunchroom rumblings of a fomenting covert drive to unseat Dino. Three years ago after a university scholarship denial, Dino helped Noel obtain the present warehouse job.
“Guys, guys, calm down,” Dino urged. “We’ll get nowhere shouting. I’m as fed up with the company as you all are. Un-channeled emotion only hurts us.”
McNamar turned on his heel to stare down Dino. “Like hell.” His retort darted through the silence aimed at Dino’s head. “Hell, you’ve been saying that for months. Be a leader; be a man. We won’t get anything unless we strike.”
Renewed strike chants invaded Noel’s ears, faded like mountain echoes. He heard a louder McNamar. “Strike’s all that management understands, responds to.”
A voice behind Noel yelled, “You tell’em, Bill.”
McNamar flashed thumbs up on a raised, extended right hand. “They think.” McNamar gulped; hairy backhand wiped a turned-head mouth. “They think they can wait us out, appeal to our spouse’s fears. Look at the letter the cowards mailed to our homes?”
McNamar held a white paper sheet high above head and with two hands tore it in half, then in two again. The tossed pieces fluttered to the floor accompanied by strike-strike-strike chants. McNamar’s outstretched palms-down gesturing hands signaled for quiet. “This is a strong union community. Stores can’t exist without food. We’ll follow every damn truck; picket every receiving dock.
