“I believe in second chances,” he said. “Show up on time, do your work, don’t make any trouble.”
“I can do all that,” said Andy, and backed out of the office before Jack Kincaid could change his mind.
•••
On his first night, Andy met the two men whom he’d go on to work with for years. There was Martin, a skinny black guy in his twenties who talked nonstop, and Arturo, who was middle-aged and Mexican and barely spoke at all. Martin had a carefully tended puff of an Afro and wore jeans that drooped low enough to display six inches of blinding-white boxer-briefs. Arturo wore jeans, too, only his were stiff and new-looking, cinched with a leather belt with a giant buckle that, per its engraving, he’d won riding bulls.
“Hey, man, welcome,” said Martin, and Arturo lifted a hand and gave a quiet “Hello.” Andy had introduced himself, and they’d gone right to work restocking the garden center, two hours of lifting fifty-pound sacks of mulch and peat moss. Martin plugged in his earbuds, bobbed his head, and chanted rap lyrics under his breath. Arturo, too, had an iPod, but he hadn’t turned the volume up enough so that Andy could hear what he was playing. They didn’t talk much, other than the necessary exchanges about when it was time to wheel over another pallet of bags, until 3:00 a.m., when they stopped to eat.
There was, as Mr. Kincaid had promised, a break room in the back of the cavernous store, with a microwave, a machine that sold sodas and another that sold snacks, four round tables with folding chairs, and a refrigerator where they could keep what they’d brought from home. Martin went to the fridge and pulled out a plastic bag from 7-Eleven filled with half a dozen Slim Jims, a box of Nutter Butter cookies, a quart of Pepsi, and a bag of Funyuns, which Andy hadn’t seen since the 1980s and didn’t realize people were still eating. Arturo walked to the front of the store, unlocked the doors, and came back with a thermos full of steaming coffee and two cardboard trays loaded with enough food for half a dozen men. “Please,” he said, offering Andy the trays. Andy saw stacks of foil-wrapped tortillas, containers of beans and rice and garlicky pork and chicken in a rich-smelling brown sauce, guacamole and salsa with chunks of pineapple and cilantro. It all smelled amazing, but he had packed himself a pair of clumsy peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches, a bag of baby carrots, an apple, and two bottles of PowerUp. “I’m okay,” he said.
Arturo then offered the trays to Martin.
“You know this stuff gonna give me the runs.” Martin shook his head, then selected a tortilla and layered on cheese and beans and spicy pork.
Arturo didn’t seem to hear, or at least he didn’t respond as he took a seat. Martin ate the burrito he’d claimed not to want almost daintily, using a scrap of tortilla to scoop up every bit of cheese and sauce. Then he plugged some crumpled bills into the vending machine and came back with another bottle of Pepsi. He took a long swallow, belched, recapped the bottle, then said, “You ever notice that white people never drink Pepsi? Just Coke. No Pepsi.”
Andy, who hadn’t noticed, shook his head. When Arturo offered the trays again, Andy helped himself to arroz con pollo, beans, and tortillas.
“Arturo’s wife runs a food truck,” Martin said. Andy took a bite of the beans, piping hot and perfectly seasoned.
“This is delicious. Thanks.”
“What’s your deal?” asked Martin, pronouncing the word like dill, as in pickle. “Where’d you come from? How’d you end up here?”
“I grew up near Philadelphia, but I’ve been living in New York for a while.”
“What’d you do before this?”
“I was a freelance consultant,” Andy answered. Over the years, he’d collected meaningless job descriptions—the woman at one of the parties Maisie had taken him to who’d said, “I’m in the art world” (“I bet that means she’s a seventh-grade art teacher,” Maisie had sniffed); a guy at a photo shoot who’d said he was a stylist, then looked at Andy like Andy had just crapped on the floor after he asked, “So, like, hair?”
“I style everything,” the man had answered, and stalked off to join the rest of his whispering, black-clad crew. Worst of all was one of Mitch’s college friends, a guy Andy had met on a golf course in Florida, who’d said he was a freelance consultant, without telling them anything else. Freelance consultant, Andy had decided, was what he’d say if anyone had questions about his work that he didn’t want to answer . . . and if they kept asking, he’d just throw in the word finance.
“So you went from ‘consulting’ ”—Martin hooked his fingers into air quotes—“to working the night shift here at Wallen.”