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Johnny was already persona non grata in the office of La Creta, whom he had tried to seduce in his own inimitable grease monkey style by telling her up front, “Why don’t you quit playing hard to get and admit that you want me, bitch?”
Frank Perdue, who was across town apologizing to a customer for some rancid, moldy bagels that the night shift had delivered to his gourmet deli, was immediately called back to the factory to separate Johnny Pato and La Creta.
La Creta had gone through the roof and threatened Pato Gonzalez with a lawsuit alleging (what else?) sexual harassment, and was also threatening to call the police.
Pato didn’t want to fire Johnny because it was summer and Johnny, who knew a little bit about refrigeration systems, was in charge of keeping San Juan Bagels’ tired, leaky compressors running. The compressors, which Pato had bought third- or fourth-hand, had multiple Fire Department violations against them for leaking enough refrigerant gas into the atmosphere to raise the earth’s temperature by several degrees. These compressors were so old that the gas intended for them was obsolete, so Johnny, who by some miracle held an E.P.A. license, was able to keep them filled using whatever gas he could get his hands on by hook or by crook. It didn’t help that the tubes that carried the gas down to the freezer compressors were so clogged with sludge, an analogy being arteries blocked by cholesterol, that the roof compressors had to work twice as hard to pump and were constantly burning out.
Frank Perdue had brought in a couple of competent refrigeration contractors to give him estimates on what it would take to bring the system into compliance, but when he confronted Pato Gonzalez with the figure, which ran into the multiple tens of thousands of dollars, Pato just gave him a sly, snaky con man look and instructed him, “Let Johnny take care of it.” He was paying Johnny ten dollars an hour.
The first thing Frank Perdue did when he got back to the factory was to prohibit Johnny Pato from going anywhere near La Creta’s office. He then took written depositions from La Creta and from King Bongo Rock who, while not being at the scene of the actual harassment, had been close enough in the vicinity that he had witnessed La Creta’s tearful flight. After Frank Perdue had typed up the statements, he presented one to La Creta for her signature. When he went to King Bongo Rock with a statement that essentially said, “I saw Ms. Rodriguez crying,” King Bongo Rock, all blown up with self-importance, insisted on multiple wording changes, which Frank Perdue, bored to tears with all this unbelievable nonsense, considering he had a million other things to do, was obliged to go back in his office and re-type the stupid thing to King Bongo Rock’s satisfaction.
King Bongo Rock was a master of taking a simple function and turning it into a Gordian knot of obfuscation and complication in order to enhance his own importance. If you told him to take a forklift and a couple of men to the trailer, which was parked directly across the street, and get a bundle of cardboard boxes for the packers, he would come up with multiple reasons why it couldn’t get done before he eventually relented and did it. Just trying to get him to sign a one-paragraph statement, which was taken verbatim from his own recollection, was already a backbreaking exercise in futility.
“No, I didn’t say I saw her in the hallway, I said I saw her in the stairwell. You have to change that.”
“I didn’t say she was crying.”
“C’mon Bongo, you said she was crying.”
“I said she looked like she was crying. I didn’t actually see the tears. You have to change that, or I won’t sign it.”
“She didn’t tell me that Johnny insulted her. She told me that he was rude to her.”
“Look, what the hell is the difference? This is just a bunch of horseshit! I got other things to take care of!”
“If you don’t change it, I’m not signing it. This could end up in a court of law, and then I’d be responsible."
Finally, Frank Perdue wrote a formal violation letter for Johnny Pato to sign, duly witnessed. The conditions as set down by Pato Gonzalez, were that Johnny avoid all contact with La Creta and that he enroll in anger management therapy (about the third go-round for Johnny with the anger management). This was funny coming from Pato Gonzalez, who was the most abusive, explosive temper in the place. Pato was afraid to scream at the workers, for fear they would run to the union to complain, but he loved to pick fights with his managers and his head factory mechanic, Nestor. For Pato Gonzalez, who could be unctuously sweet when he needed something from you, business was completely a function of naked aggression and dominance. Everything was personal with him, and he particularly loved abusing Johnny, who was his older brother by a couple of years. Frank Perdue had determined that this was a beef going back to their childhood in Hunt’s Point. Maybe at one point Johnny was the cool brother with the duck’s ass haircut and Pato was the fat, nebbishy nerd, and Pato had spent the rest of his life getting even.
Johnny signed the statement with humility, accepting the conditions. He told Frank Perdue, “I swear to you, she manipulated me into this.”
“I’m not saying no,” said Frank Perdue, “I know what that cunt is capable of from my own experience with her.”
“She and I used to be close.”
“I know you did. You used to spend a lot of time in that office with her. But I always thought she was being nice to you because you’re Pato’s brother. I guess now she has decided you’re not an asset anymore.”
“I used to drive her home to her house in Brooklyn. Shit, she used to call me to come pick her up in the morning and drive her to work.”
“Well, that didn’t mean she wanted you to fuck her.”
“There’s more that I can’t tell you about.”
“Johnny, you’re my friend. I like you and I hate her. Just stay away from her. If you need something from her, call me and I’ll take care of it.”
“Cool,” said Johnny, and he went back to work.
“Shit,” thought Frank Perdue, “Now I’ve got another headache.”
La Creta never set foot anywhere near the parking lot, just as she had never been on the roof or stuck her head in any of the engine rooms infested with rodents and waterbugs that were Tato’s little kingdoms. She saw herself as the mind of this prehistoric creature of a production facility, so retarded was it that the obvious entropy of its various extremities never communicated to its brain.
She was preoccupied by her own survival, and in her mind that meant ensuring that the place remained dysfunctional. Her reasoning was that she had been brought in to ensure the continuing flow of product. The fine details of the situation, worker safety, hygiene, product integrity, record keeping – she had no knowledge or interest.
A true woman of her times, she was consumed by what she saw on the TV screen, as though she were watching a schmaltzy Mexican soap opera on Tele-Mundo.
One of the male leads in this telenovela was the second floor production foreman, Gustavo Hernandez, a white Argentinean. A former Buenos Aires policeman, Hernandez, who went by the name Porteño, would proudly lift his shirt or his pants leg to show admiring acquaintances his bullet entry scars.
Porteño was a hardened working stiff, a ten-year factory veteran who had started in the walk-in freezer, learning every job in the place until he had been appointed foreman. He had the brawny physique of a stevedore and a sensitive, alert, tough guy face that made Latin women swoon. He emitted an aura of invincibility and a sense of masculine entitlement, along with a loud, boisterous attitude of triumphalism that grated all the more on La Creta because it was combined with a native intelligence and shrewdness that were at least the equal of her own. All the rest of him she might have dismissed, were it not for his intelligence. To watch him day after day on the TV screen manhandling heavy racks of dough, expertly mastering the mixers and ovens, operating the machines and effecting repairs, the authority he exercised supervising workers, made her fell insignificant and inconsequential. Since she was watching him in a real-life performance on television, the comparison to all the fake TV stars was all the more devastating because El Porteño actually knew how to do useful things!
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Posted on 1/16/2006
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