King of Hearts

"It's still nice to hear that people appreciate something you do," she said. Gonzo got the strangest smile on his face before he spoke.

"Peg, I really appreciate it when you..."

"Think very carefully George Zocara," she said, interrupting him. "Because, if you say something nasty, I'll never do whatever it is again."

That ended the conversation. Marcus and I tried our hardest not to laugh. We spent the rest of the afternoon getting ready for the picnic that evening.

Marcus had already filled me in on what was going on. There were a few details that hadn't been talked about yet. And I had some questions. The jist of it was though, that there were plenty of jobs available. Some of the guys would be warehouse help and others would be plumber's assistants. There were a smattering of other positions including truck drivers and gofers. One of the things that Gonzo hadn't mentioned was that some of the guys weren't going to be able to work here. The company's insurance and liability bonds wouldn't allow them to hire anyone with a felony.

Just as the sun started to go down, we all met at a nice park that was only a few blocks away from Gonzo's house. We grilled steaks, hamburgers, hotdogs, fish and some other things that I didn't recognize. We had a good time renewing old acquaintances. I did spend the majority of my evening looking out of the corner of my eye for that Mustang. But I talked to Beth and Alicia so we could figure out where we were. Alicia and I wanted to get jobs too. We got together and got Marcus to bring it up. Gonzo said that he'd look into it.

When we got back to his house that evening, he told me that Alicia and I should probably just come to the meeting at the office the next morning. Beth had decided that she didn't want to work.

"I'm already working," she said. "I take care of myself."

"But Beth, you take care of yourself by fucking a bunch of guys. They're really the ones who take care of you," I said.

"Well, I'm not as lucky as the two of you," she said. "So I have to fend for myself."

"What do you mean?" asked Alicia.

"Alicia, Trey is like your boyfriend. The two of you have a relationship. So he just does things for you," said Beth. "And Christina has Marcus. The two of them don't even have sex and he takes care of her like...well I don't know why he does all of that shit for her. But I'm on my own. Besides I don't have any kind of skills that they'd pay for. I don't know anything about tools or any of that other stuff. I dropped out of school and never finished high school. No one is going to hire me. I'll be okay."

Bright and early the next morning Marcus and I went to work with Gonzo. Most of the guys there were given applications to fill out and hired on the spot. About half of them were sent to the warehouse to start their orientation. The rest were sent elsewhere. By nine o'clock, some of the guys were sent home. They were the guys who had felonies and lied about it. By ten o clock only Marcus, Trey, Digger, Alicia and I were left in the large room next to the office.

The old lady who'd been giving out the assignments called Trey's name.

"Warehouse or Crew?" he asked.

"Neither," said the woman. "He wants to speak to you personally."

"I knew I wouldn't get hired," said Trey. He headed to the bank of elevators the woman pointed at.

"You," said the woman pointing at Digger. "You're to report to the offices above the warehouse after lunch. Until then I need you to fill out these papers. After you're done you can go and look around the warehouse. This should solve any problems you have with security."

Digger looked confused. "I'm going to miss the orientation," he said.

"You don't need the orientation," said the woman. "You're not going to actually work in the warehouse. You're going to be the warehouse manager's assistant. So your orientation will be different. Ray figured that since you're used to telling these guys what to do, you should continue to do it."

Digger looked really happy.

"Marcus Brown," she said. Marcus looked really nervous.

"Yes ma'am," he said.

"Oh boy," she said. "That won't last long." He looked at her strangely.

"Fill out these forms and then report to the third office on the second floor. You're going to be George's assistant," she said shaking her head.

Then she sat down and started working on something. "Uhm, what about us?" I asked.

She looked up at me strangely. It was as if she'd never seen me. "What do you mean?" she asked.

"Don't we get jobs?" I asked. I handed her our applications. "We're as strong and as capable as any of the men."

She looked at our applications and pointed at Alicia. "Warehouse," she said. Get over there now before you miss your orientation.

"Crew," she said pointing at me. "Your orientation is next door to hers, hurry up."

"Thank you ma'am," I said, and ran next door.

The orientation was just getting under way when I got there. Crew was comprised of a bunch of different titles and jobs but what we really did was to support the actual plumbers. My ex had built an impressive business over the past three years. It had been a lot of skill, with a little bit of luck thrown in.

I couldn't help but feel a bit responsible for his success. Ray, no one here called him King or Mr. Heart, had gotten involved in plumbing through my father. He'd completed his apprenticeship and started working on his contractor's license while he ran the club.

After he left me, he'd settled here and decided to become a plumber. He knew a guy here who owed him a favor. Johnny Hallo was the son of the owner of a large residential construction firm. Johnny got him hired to do the plumbing on one of the new homes they were building.

Ray put the same degree of planning and thought into plumbing that he'd done with running the club. He was soon being given entire houses to do the plumbing on and was saving the company money. Johnny convinced him to take the state test and get his contractor's license in South Carolina.

Less than a year after moving here, Ray signed a deal with Hallo Construction to design and contract the plumbing for all of their new homes. The Hallos built or renovated more than a thousand homes and small buildings a year. Ray had to hire a staff and lots of other plumbers. His business expanded quickly and now he had offices in two other nearby states. He also had a regular plumbing business that was on call 24/7 to handle emergencies.

My biker boy was a rich man now. Of course, he still occasionally went out and oversaw plumbing jobs. Our orientation was broken up into two sessions. During the morning session, we got our safety gear and had a long occupational safety workshop. The company took safety very seriously and fines were imposed for breaking safety rules.

The afternoon session was more intense. We were taught about all kinds of tools and devices that plumbers use. We were taught to identify and the purpose of different types of pipes and joints and what they were used for. That was in case a plumber sent us to get a certain tool or part; we'd have some idea of what we were looking for. Our purpose was to save time and wear and tear on the experienced, skilled plumbers.

At the end of the day we were given a test. Our group had ten people. The two lowest scores on the test would be gofers. Gofers made minimum wage. The next two lowest scores would be drivers. Drivers took the crews to their locations and also ferried people and parts back during the day. Drivers got two dollars above minimum wage. You also had to have a valid driver's license, to be a driver. The rest of us would be plumber's assistants. The PA's were paid 11 dollars an hour, with a raise every thirty days if you hadn't screwed up too badly.

I wanted to be a PA badly. Unfortunately, we had to wait until the next morning to find out our scores. After work, Alicia and I waited for Marcus, Trey and Digger to show up.

Digger showed up first grinning from ear to ear. Alicia looked evilly at him. "Digger what did you do to her?" I asked.

"He kept coming into the room and ordering me around," she spat. "And I thought we were friends."

"We are," he smiled. "...Just not during business hours. During business hours, I'm your boss."

"You're always my boss, dummy," she smiled. "You're the leader of the club."

Marcus showed up in time to hear that. He smiled too. "Alicia, if he gets on your nerves let me know. I'll send him a really huge order."

"But then she'll just have to fill it while I sit back on my ass," laughed Digger.

"Yeah, but I'll request all of the paperwork be done in triplicate and you can barely turn a computer on," smirked Marcus.

"Marcus, you wouldn't," whined Digger. "We're friends."

"Not during working hours," said Marcus. We all laughed until Trey came into the room.

"So what are you doing Trey?" asked Alicia. "Are you going to be a plumber's helper like Christina? I know you're not warehouse."

Trey just looked at us intently.

"He didn't hire you?" asked Marcus quietly. "That doesn't seem like him? He's usually pretty fair minded."

"And he recognizes skill too," said Trey, breaking into a smile. "I'm going to work as the assistant to the head of security. I was practicing my suspicious stare on you guys. I have to work on keeping all of you guys safe, but also making sure that you guys aren't stealing anything." He smiled again.

"I was really sure that he'd be carrying a grudge from our little fight," he said. "But he said that anyone who'd fight that hard for something he wanted was a person he wanted protecting his people and his equipment. Security is in charge of everything you know?" He turned and looked at Alicia.

"What's that miss?" he asked. "Copper pipes are very valuable."

"What are you talking about, idiot?" asked Alicia.

"Stand up and spread 'em," said Trey, pushing Alicia against a wall. He started grabbing all over her ass. "Okay, there aren't any pipes in here."

"No," said Alicia. "The part where the pipe goes is more towards the front. And the only pipe that goes in there is yours. And I'd better be the only woman you're practicing your inspection techniques on too."

"We aren't allowed to do that to women," said Trey. "We don't actually even do it to guys. We just escort them to the security room and call the police. I spent all frigging day learning all kinds of things that we can and can't do. I had to learn fire safety, evacuation stuff, what to do for severe weather, all of that crap. My head is about to explode. I just want to go out for a nice ride on my bike to clear my head."

"Oh, I am so there," said Marcus.

The guys went out for a ride, including Gonzo who pulled out his bike too. He hadn't ridden it in a couple of years so he was really rusty. The women stayed with Peg. We relaxed in their yard and talked about our days. Beth seemed really depressed.

"Are you okay, Beth?" I asked.

"Shit, it just seems like everyone has new exciting shit to talk about except for me," she said.

"We tried to get you to come with us," said Alicia.

The next morning, Gonzo, Marcus and I went to work early. It was mostly because of me. I was dying to find out my score. I wanted to be a PA badly.

I went into the office and started hinting around with Sally, the older woman who ran the office, but she wouldn't say a word.

"Sally, can you tell her whether or not she's a PA?" asked Marcus.

"She's not," said Sally sadly. "I wanted to break it to her gently, sir."

"I worked so hard," I said. It was hard for me to stop the tears.

"Can she take the test again?" asked Marcus. "Who grades the tests anyway?"

"I do," said Sally. "And it wouldn't matter. This isn't a bad thing. And she doesn't need to take the test again. She passed it. She had the third highest score. But the decision was made by someone above my pay grade."

"Who made the decision?" asked Marcus.

"I can't say," said Sally. "Your friend, Alicia, had the same thing happen to her. She had the sixth highest score in her group. But instead of being a warehouse runner, she's going to be the warehouse secretary. She'll still get the same pay and incentives, but it'll be less physical. Plus, since your friend Dennis has no computer skills, she'll do the bulk of the paperwork."

"So what will I be doing?" I asked.

"You'll be working with me," she said. "I'm sure in no time you'll probably have moved into another area and be ordering me around too."

In less than two hours, I'd grown to like working in the office. It was much less sweaty work and Sally was a fun person to work with. She knew the value of asking a person to do something instead of ordering them around. She knew almost everyone in the company and talked about them all as if they were her children.

The only person she wouldn't talk about with me was Ray. She protected every smidgeon of information about him as if it was the crown jewels. Even though he came and went through his own private entrance, everyone in the building knew when he came and left. His exhaust system sounded like a fucking race car. You could hear it all over the building.

After the first couple of days, I'd met most of the managers and a lot of the long-time employees. They all looked at me strangely at first. I heard a couple of them ask Sally, "Is that THE Christina?"

"Sally," I said to her once. "Why am I THE Christina?"

"This is a great place to work," she said. "We all love Ray. And you're THE Christina who broke his heart."

I didn't have much to say after that. The next day I asked her if Ray ever used the stairs and came through our office. "All the time," she said. I hadn't actually seen him once and I'd been working there for almost a week.

I figured that he was avoiding me. He'd cared enough about me to get me a better, easier job, but he was hiding from me. I couldn't believe that my Ray was so afraid of me that he was hiding in his own business. Wouldn't it have been easier to just fire me, or send me to work somewhere else?"

There was also the fact that I wanted to talk to him. I hadn't seen him in more than three years. He'd just disappeared on me without a word. The Ray I knew and loved was fearless. From the way that he'd easily dispatched Trey, he probably still was. So I couldn't imagine him being afraid of me.

Over the next few days, I made it my mission to find out as much as I could about Ray and his new life. The people I worked with were cordial and friendly. They talked about each other and they talked about themselves. But they wouldn't talk about Ray at all. I kept trying to come up with details about what happened to him after he disappeared or even why he disappeared, but I got bupkiss.

I started to think that since I'd been working for him for almost a month, that the two of us not running into each other was more than a coincidence. He was probably avoiding me. I wasn't going to put up with that. I started going in to work a little bit earlier, hoping to catch him coming in. I also tried staying a little bit later. Neither technique got me any closer.

I spoke to Marcus about it. He'd seen Ray lots of times since we started working there. Even Alicia who had never met him before we came down here had spoken to him on several occasions. She was clearly enamored of him. She actually gushed when she spoke about him.

I decided to take the bull by the horns. All of the personnel records were in the office and I had access to them. I found Ray's home address. One evening while the guys were out for a ride, I decided to drive by and see what his house looked like. I borrowed Peggy's car and drove there. It was in a gated community. So obviously Ray wasn't struggling financially. I parked a couple of houses down the street and looked over the place. It was a beautiful sprawling ranch house. I memorized every detail of it. The house had a wrought iron fence in front of it that was open. I crept closer to the house and looked into the backyard. It was beginning to get dark, but I could make out a very beautiful deck and a pool and what looked like a hot tub or spa. There were other shapes in the huge yard that I couldn't make out.

The house had a huge attached garage. The garage looked like there was room for at least four cars. As I walked around the property, I felt almost as if I was talking to him. Oh Ray, I thought. Your house is so beautiful. This probably could have been our house. This should have been our house, but I was just too stuck on what I thought I wanted. I guess you knew better than I did what was good for us. But then you always did. From the time we ran into each other in that hallway and we just said, "Fuck it," you always took care of me. And you did a far better job of it than I'd have done myself.

Ray, I still don't know why you left me. Did you just grow up and leave me behind or did you think that I wouldn't have gone with you?

The light from your window, dances on the street outside.

Silhouettes on a blind tell me you're not alone.

And I know that you've got your reasons, but you're tearing me to pieces inside.

It's...Before I could even finish my thought lights and a piercing siren robbed me of everything in my mind.

A huge guy in a security uniform grabbed me and threw me down on the grass. He rolled me over onto my stomach and cuffed my hands behind me.

He threw me into what looked like a police car but had the markings from some private security firm on them.

Twenty minutes later he dropped me off at the actual police station. "I caught her skulking around in the backyard of one of the houses in Chandler court," he told the officer in charge.

"Did you ask her why she was there?" the officer asked.

"Nope that's above my pay grade," said the security guard. "You guys always tell us to leave the interrogating to the trained professionals. All I know is that there have been several break-ins throughout the neighborhoods that border Chandler court, but none actually in our subdivision. The people there pay our security firm to keep it that way."

The guard turned and walked out of the police station. The officer in charge turned to me. "So what were you doing there?" he asked. "And why were you tress passing in the backyard?"

"I wasn't trespassing," I said. "A friend of mine lives there and I just wanted to see his house."

He looked at me suspiciously. So if I call him and have him come down here, he'll vouch for you and drop the charges, right?" he asked. I nodded.

"I hope so young lady," he said. "...Because if he doesn't, you're going to need your phone call, to get yourself a lawyer or get someone to bail you out."

I was taken to one of the interview rooms to wait, while he called. While I waited I considered all of the possibilities. I was sure that Ray would come down here and get me. He might be upset that I'd interrupted him from screwing whoever he had in his house. But at the same time, I'd been shocked because I suddenly had a clue as to why Ray had left me. The silhouette of Ray's partner had definitely been a female's, but she didn't look as if she was fully grown. Maybe Ray had a taste for the young stuff and I'd never known it.

The thought of it, both shocked and sickened me. I wondered if Digger and Marcus knew.

A few moments later, the door opened and the same officer who'd put me in the room led me out of it.

As I sat down on a stool he and the other officers in the room all looked at the other end of the room where a woman was standing. Even from where I was sitting, I could tell two things. The first was that she was without a doubt the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen in real life. She looked like a fucking supermodel. But there was something off about her. As she came across the room the angelic look on her face vanished. Anger flashed across those blue eyes. She was dressed incredibly. She had a long duster type trench coat on. Under it she wore some type of light, spangled sweater. She had on a leather skirt that showed off incredible legs and her shoes had at least five inch tall heels. They were open toed shoes that showed off her pink toenail polish that matched her fingernails.