LA CRETA (Short Story By 200motels) [Continued]

Like Satan, she was known by many names, all of which related to that most alluring and reviled aspect of the female physiognomy. They called her: La Concha, La Zorra, La Cajeta, La Almeja, La Panocha, La Pepa, La Chocha, La Cuca, La Chucha etc. But most workers referred to her as “La Creta.”

Where other people had a brain, she had ears, eyes and painted mouth connected by a string of reptilian synopses for purposes of destruction and disruption. Her genetic circuit board was programmed for the continuation of her species, the god’s eye of which being a chubby pre-adolescent boy whose father had long ago been driven from the scene, and her survival in this job, which was the first time in her life she had ever experienced anything more than the groveling monocell reality of a legal secretary in a one lawyer office.

Her brother, Roberto, a production foreman on the night shift, had gotten her in at San Juan Bagels when her previous employer had retired, and she had repaid the favor by trying to convince the boss to fire him. She had started out at the lowest rung of a low-end office: answering telephones, running errands, doing idiotic, meaningless little tasks in the administrative office of a commercial bakery, but she soon rose in importance due to the general incompetence and indifference of her colleagues. She also displayed a certain talent for the lying, deceit and backstabbing that are necessary for promotion in any social structure. Outrageous defamations that would doom her in any office of even medium intelligence went over well with her boss, Pato, who was somewhat infatuated with her in the style of repressed married men who would never go so far as to make a pass at a female subordinate but nevertheless permit themselves to be wound around her elegantly manicured and varnished finger.

Her influence expanded in direct proportionality to the cubic displacement of her posterior. Pato Gonzalez, noting her relative honesty in a cash business where the receipts had a propensity for sticking to the fingers of their receivers, many of whom his obsequious blood relations, came to rely on her more and more.

She learned the value of putting people off their stride by complaining and unpleasant behavior. In the summer she complained that the air conditioning was set too high, causing her colleagues to swelter in the heat of their basement office, located under a bagel oven. In the winter she complained it was too warm, the end result being that everybody had to bundle up in sweaters and coats.

She refined her technique until she became perfectly horrible and insufferable to everybody but Pato Gonzalez, to whom she was the model of obsequious civility.

She became adept at passing false or incomplete information to her co-workers which led to stupid, costly blunders that diminished their effectiveness and their value in the eyes of the boss. Finally, when he determined that he needed somebody to be his eyes and ears in the 46th Street factory, she emerged as the only logical candidate.

So it came to pass that she became the factory manager with authority of several score of workers without ever having managed anything in her life.

Her job on 46th Street consisted of processing the orders that came from the Broadway store, making sure that the managers kept the place running, that the bakers knew what to bake, that the expediters prepared the deliveries. In the other direction, she kept Pato Gonzalez apprised by telephone of the activities of the factory on a minute-by-minute basis.

In this she was aided by a sophisticated network of surveillance cameras the images of which were transmitted to a large-screen video monitor suspended from the ceiling across from her desk. Sitting at her desk, she could monitor every corner of the factory: the loading dock facing 46th Street where tanker trucks delivered 50,000 pounds of flour three times a week and forced it by pneumatic pressure through a network of pipes into huge storage tanks from which it was piped in turn into hoppers. From there it fell into the dough mixers, where it was combined with water heated by computer control, yeast, salt, sugar and other natural ingredients and mixed into 400 pound batches of dough that plopped out into gigantic buckets which were lifted by a hoist suspended from the ceiling, moved laterally across the room and dropped into huge, clanking machines that cut it into little five ounce balls of dough. The balls of dough marched like little soldiers on a conveyor and fell over the edge into rows of cups which lifted them to the ceiling and dropped them into forming machines which molded them into ring shapes. Another conveyor transported them to women waiting at the end who delicately lifted them and placed them on wooden planks dusted with cornmeal. A man removed the boards and stacked them into aluminum racks that were rolled into a steam bath that encouraged the dough to rise like an incubator.

Think of it as a maternity ward. The flour and water are infused with life by the introduction of the yeast, a living organism that bears so much similarity to human tissue that it is used as a substitute in medical experiments. Isn’t it conceivable that the Roman Catholic doctrine of bread being the flesh of Christ might spring from some innate, pre-scientific animist intuition about the nature of life? When you consider the godly nature of such a mundane object as a piece of bread, it opens the mind to phantasmagoric meditations on the nature of life itself and our relationships with all the other objects of the universe. No less an authority than Pato Gonzalez, Master Baker, was fond of saying “When I see the bagels coming down the conveyor, I have the same love in my heart for them that a father has for his children.” Like all cosmic fools, Pato had more than a little of the prophet in him.

Seated at her desk La Creta was able to track the progress of the carts of raw dough as they were removed from the steam box after they had been allowed to rise to their optimum size and deposited in a large, room-size refrigerator which stopped them from growing. They were left in this cooler just long enough for the hint of a crusty exterior to form.

The racks of dough were then rolled out to the baking area, two tunnel ovens approximately one hundred feet in length. The boards of dough were removed from the racks and placed at the beginning of the conveyor where a wire-mesh roller device delicately lifted the bagels off the boards.

Here the newly born dough babies began their Long Trek to full-fledged bagelhood, first passing through a boiling baptism of water super-heated to 180 degrees, which toughened their insides to a mouth-satisfying chewy consistency. They emerged from their steamy, murky bath into the loving care of an attentive nurse who lovingly showered them with flakes of stinky onion, garlic, beige sesame, black poppy, snowy white pretzel salt, whatever…

From there they walked like shamans over a bed of red-hot tiles, tanning their little bottoms to a rich bronze hue before proceeding into a long tunnel oven that finished the process by tanning their exteriors to resemble the golden sunworshippers who inhabit the Copacabana beach on a long, sultry February afternoon.

Sitting at her desk and cracking gum with her sharp little teeth, La Creta was able to monitor all these processes on the giant screen suspended from the ceiling above her door. She certainly had an interest in seeing the production run smoothly so that she could report back to Pato at the Broadway store.

But what really transfixed her were the human dynamics that occurred between the workers. As an untrained, unskilled administrator who spoke execrable English and wrote it not at all, who knew nothing of industrial production techniques or even the rudimentary principles of business, she had achieved her position of responsibility largely as a result of fortuitous mistakes and coincidences, not to mention subterfuge and vicious lying behavior. She understood this and was comfortable with it. What are you going to do? Life in New York can be tough for a woman with a child and no man. Let the next guy take it in the neck! She had a position to defend.

Everybody was a potential threat to her, even the guy who swept the floor, if he should (God Forbid!) enter in tandem with another worker or organize a cohort to rebel against her and challenge her authority. What if she were to lose control! Pato would never hesitate to replace her with the next obsequious backstabber to walk in the door. God knew, there were legions of those pounding the pavement right now.

She had a gang of girls, Blanca, Raquel, Zoila, Irene who were devoted to her. They brought her tidbits of gossip and unquestioningly did her bidding. Also, it was possible for her to eavesdrop on conversations taking place between managers in the Quality Control office and among the staff of the retail store by way of the intercoms built into the telephone system. One time, during a conference between manager and mechanics in the Quality Control office about some oven parts, one of the managers abruptly turned and lifted the phone receiver to make a call to Canada.

Instead of a dial tone, he heard a click at the other end.

Turning to the other men, he silently pointed a thumb in the direction of her office. Then he made a vulgar hand gesture meant to signify masturbation. All the men smiled.

Tags:   None

© All rights reserved.

Posted on 12/26/2005 ( Permanent Link )
Read 761 Times
 Send to Friend