The Bikini Car Wash (5 page)

Hank was so obviously proud of himself, that Pete was left speechless.

“I doubt the damn fool ever even realized that I’d screwed him,” Hank said.

Pete remembered the hostility in the voice of Wolkowicz’s daughter. She knew all right.

Andi was pretty sure that most women of twenty-eight years of age got to make their own decisions about Sunday mornings. She did not. Her family got up early and attended services at St. Hyacinth’s. On a cranky, bad-hair-day morning, Andi had made her one halfhearted protest to her father.

“Why do I have to do this?”

Pop’s expression was not judgmental, but it didn’t suggest any flexibility either.

“It’s what your mother would have expected of us.”

So they went to church as a family. The three of them crammed together in the front seat of the pickup truck.

St. Hyacinth’s was a beautiful old building, with its towering stained-glass windows and Gothic revival architecture. Andi had grown up in this church, as had both her parents. The creaking wood floors and well-worn pews were as familiar as anything in her own home.

The founders of the parish, grandparents of today’s congregation, had immigrated from Poland in 1892. The entire village had left together and settled en masse in Plainview. They were a tight-knit community, wary of strangers and quick to stick their noses in each other’s private lives. Everyone knew everyone and everything anyone had ever said or done. And they were all completely comfortable with allowing whatever entered their minds to come right out of their mouths.

“You look very nice today, Andi,” Mrs. Pietras told her. “Doesn’t she look nice, Margaret?”

Margaret, aka Mrs. Zawadzki, a heavyset woman of a certain age, was dressed in vivid purple, wearing an overblown hairdo first made popular in the mid-80s. She turned to give Andi an assessing glance.

“Yes, very nice,” she agreed. “It’s such a shame that you’ve never married. Is there still hope?”

Andi was momentarily taken aback. Both women’s eyes were on her with expressions of sympathetic concern.

“Uh…what do you mean?”

“Is there someone special on your horizon?”

“I couldn’t say,” Andi answered, her tight smile disguising
the annoyance she felt. “I haven’t really had time to look out on my horizon lately.”

“Oh, you really must,” Mrs. Zawadzki said. “I mean with your sister as she is, well you are the only one that your father might be able to count on for grandchildren.”

It was all Andi could manage not to roll her eyes.

“Thanks for the heads-up,” she told the women and moved on as quickly as possible. She took her seat in the pew and deliberately kept her head down.

The guys from her childhood catechism class who were still unwed were not what she would think of as potential mates. The girls from St. Hyacinth’s married in their early twenties and what they hadn’t snapped up seemed pretty much picked-over.

Andi hoped to appear absorbed in her prayer book, as she privately steamed. That kind of nosiness was what she couldn’t stand about her hometown. Everybody thought they had a right to be in your private life, critiquing your choices. It was infuriating. Anonymity had been one of the great lures of the outside world. In Chicago nobody knew or cared if she was dating or who it might be.

When the service finally started it was comfortingly familiar. And it was great to sit next to Jelly who sang out boldly on every hymn. In the places where she didn’t recall the words, her “ums” and “ahs” were voiced as passionately as the actual lyrics. Of course, Andi imagined that um and ah were as meaningful to Jelly as a line like “then let the world obeisance due perform.” It was meant to be a joyful noise. Her Jelly certainly managed that. If her sister’s singing bothered the other worshippers, at least no one complained.

Andi remembered a Christmas concert when they were
girls, when the choir director had publicly hushed Jelly in the middle of a song. Angered, Andi, who was slightly left of completely tone deaf, had belted out the remainder of the tune, horrendously drowning out better voices, embarrassing the teacher, the chorus and basically the entire student body. She had not one regret about that. In fact, just remembering it had her smiling.

People had a right to their expectations. But they didn’t have a right to insist that other people live up to them. Growing up with Jelly had taught her that.

After the final benediction, she hoped to make a quick and silent exit. Unfortunately that was not to be. Before the last reverberations of “Amen” bounced against the walls, her father was immediately surrounded by a flock of women, each of whom seemed to have some silly question for him, or problem she needed to discuss. It was this way every Sunday.

Normally, Andi would remain with her father and sister as Pop made his responses and offers to help as he slowly worked his way down the aisle. Today, however, Andi went out the other end of the pew and made her way back to the church door.

Outside, in the cool shade of a giant sycamore, she waited, eager to get home and get busy on her project.

Todd Kozlowski, a guy she’d known since kindergarten, came over. His wife, Bekka, was shepherding their toddler.

“You are looking so hot these days,” he told Andi. “I’m sure my talking to you makes my wife jealous.”

Andi gave a little laugh, not sure if one should accept jealousy as a compliment. Todd had asked her out a couple
of times when they were both in the high school math club. While he had always seemed like an okay guy, she had never felt they had much in common. Math formulas alone did not make for successful dating discourse.

“You’re looking great, too,” Andi told him, then added quickly. “And so is Bekka.” She waved at the woman across the lawn.

He glanced back in his wife’s direction. “Oh no, she looks like a total whale,” he said with stark honestly. “But it’s my fault. She’s not really fat, she’s pregnant again.”

“Oh! That’s wonderful.”

Todd shrugged and shook his head. “It’s not wonderful yet. She’s still in the ‘I think I could throw up any minute’ phase. It should start being wonderful in a few more weeks.”

Andi smiled vaguely and nodded. She didn’t know that much about having children.

“Well, congratulations a little ahead of time then.”

“Thanks,” he said. “I love kids and Bekka’s a great mom. With the economy like it is, we probably wouldn’t have decided to have another kid just now, but stuff happens.” He shrugged sheepishly. “I think that’s good. Bekka says all the best things are those we don’t plan.”

Andi nodded. “Maybe so.”

“So what are you doing out here alone?”

“I’m waiting on Pop and Jelly,” she answered. “For some reason my father is the most popular guy in the church after services. He always gets bombarded with questions. I guess it must be about meals on wheels. It takes him twenty minutes to get out of the building.”

Todd laughed. “Those old gals may be hungry all right, but
I don’t think their interest in Walt Wolkowicz has anything to do with meals on wheels.”

Andi furrowed her brow, befuddled. “What are you talking about?”

“Your pop has definitely become the senior most likely to succeed. When it comes to the over-fiftys, he’s the most eligible bachelor in town. He even looks good to the forty-something divorcees.”

Andi was completely taken aback. She glanced up to see Pop emerging from the church door, surrounded by chattering females.

“My pop is not a bachelor,” Andi pointed out. “He’s a widower. And my mom just died in October.”

Todd nodded. “I know it’s hard to get your mind around it,” he said. “It’s one of those tremendous gender inequities. My mom says everybody expects women to be in mourning for at least two years after her husband dies. But it’s perfectly acceptable for men to be picking up phone numbers at the funeral.”

“My father is not like that,” Andi insisted. “He and my mother were very much in love.”

“Of course they were,” Todd agreed. “But life is for the living. And he seems very much alive.”

Andi glanced up at Pop once more. He’d made it to the bottom of the steps, but a woman in a big yellow hat had her gloved hand on his arm and was staring up adoringly into his eyes. He was grinning down at her.

“Ewww,” Andi muttered under her breath.

A few minutes later she caught up with her father and Jelly in the parking lot, a quartet of gone-to-seed groupies still in tow. Now that the truth had been shown to her, there was
absolutely no missing it. These women all had household projects they wanted him to look at, books they wanted to share, chores they needed a man’s opinion on. Mrs. Gaspar even claimed to have fifteen pounds of fresh summer sausage that needed to be cooked up on a grill.

They were fawning over her father and were condescendingly saccharin-sweet to her sister.

Andi was disgusted and decided to take the situation in hand.

“Excuse me, ladies,” she announced loudly. “We really have to go. I have a rack of lamb warming in the oven and you know you mustn’t wait too long to drizzle it with rosemary sauce.”

Her words stunned the ladies present. Andi had never cooked a rack of lamb in her life, but she’d eaten one with rosemary sauce in a Chicago restaurant and it had been fabulous. She wanted to let these women think she was a gourmet chef. She didn’t want any of them trying to load up her father with home-cooked meals.

Unfortunately, her family was as caught off guard by her remark as the widow horde.

“What’s a ‘wreck a lam’?” Jelly asked.

“Never mind. Get into the truck,” Andi whispered.

As they pulled out of the parking lot, her father questioned her.

“What was that all about?” he asked.

“Those women,” Andi complained. “Jeez, Pop, they’re after you. You’re still grieving and they’re coming on to you, trying to take advantage.”

“To take advantage?” Pop chuckled. “I doubt the ladies of the church have intentions to ravish me.”

“Well, maybe not that, but they are desperate, though I wouldn’t put it past Betty Broniki.”

Her father laughed. “Old Bett has always been a gal who goes after what she wants.”

Andi huffed. “And she wants to get her hooks into you. They all do. Making excuses to lure you to their houses and tempting you with casseroles.”

He grinned at her. “Don’t worry, Andi,” he said. “I can’t be had so cheap. At the very least I’m holding out for pierogi.”

“Pop!”

“You’re taking this too seriously,” her father said.

“It is serious,” Andi said. “Mom just died and here are these women, her friends, stumbling across her grave to get to you.”

“Nobody is stumbling across anybody,” Pop said. “And Ella would have thought this all a wonderful entertainment for the community.”

Andi knew he was right. Mom hadn’t had a jealous bone in her body. This wasn’t about her mother. It was about her father.

“Pop, you’re such a great catch,” she said seriously. “Hardworking, honest, faithful, kind, there’s not a widow at the church who wouldn’t give her eyeteeth for a chance with you. I’m just worried that…that your dating skills might be a bit out of date. These women could use their…wiles in ways that you’re not expecting.”

“Women had their wiles back in my day as well,” her father told her. “I think I can handle myself. And try not to worry. I’m not interested in a relationship with any of the women at the church.”

Andi nodded, grateful.

“I like pierogi, too,” Jelly announced. “But not radish.”

Andi looked at her sister momentarily puzzled. “Radish? Oh, Pop said ravish, not radish,” Andi said.

“What’s ravish?”

Pop gave Andi a look. “It’s the same as radish,” he told Jelly. “Only it actually tastes worse.”

“Then I sure don’t want any,” Jelly said.

They continued their drive home and ate their pitiful microwaved lunch around the table. Afterward Pop made an excuse to leave and took off in the truck.

It was only then, as he was driving away, that Andi realized he’d said he wasn’t interested a relationship with any of the women at church. What he hadn’t said was that he was not interested in having a relationship.

ANDI HAD SPENT
the entire weekend perfecting her business plan presentation for city council. And she hadn’t skimped on the details. She put it together in a PowerPoint including current photos of the car wash building and an overlay that she drew herself of how the new business would look. She called it Corner Coffee Stop. And she was even keeping the retro lettering of the current car wash sign. It was a perfect use of the historic building, she decided. She really got into the excitement of it as she put all the figures together and speculated with growth charts and impact data. She loved doing this. She missed doing it. In the last months of job hunting she’d been so focused on her financial needs and her obligations she’d forgotten just how much personal satisfaction she got from doing something that both challenged her and allowed her to utilize her natural gifts and acquired knowledge. Just the sheer pleasure of the task had her excitement in overdrive. Presentations to the council were limited
to three minutes. She came up with enough talking points to give a day-long seminar!

She boiled it all down on Monday morning, making it direct, fact-filled and to the point. From there she began practicing her delivery.

She went over it twice in the silence of the house while Pop and Jelly were out doing the rounds of meals on wheels. By the time they came home, she was ready to try her words out on living, breathing human beings.

Andi set up her laptop in the living room and had her father and sister pretend to be the city council. Jelly really got into the pretending part. She hurried upstairs to her room to retrieve a top hat that she’d worn once on a Halloween long past. Why she thought the aldermen might wear top hats, Andi didn’t know, but her sister certainly looked cute in it. And maybe it helped. Andi was not one of those speakers who imagined her audience naked, but imagining the council wearing ill-fitting top hats really cut down the intimidation factor.

She went through her presentation, presented her argument. The drive-through coffee business should be exempted from the traditional regulations governing restaurants because it is not, in any sense, a restaurant. Corner Coffee Stop would not serve any person inside the building. The average length of time a customer would occupy the bay would be less than five minutes.

“This business would be an appropriate and revenue generating use of a currently vacant building. And it offers safe and convenient access to goods and services for the elderly, physically handicapped, families with small children in the vehicle or anyone on the go in downtown Plainview.”

Andi ended her spiel with a “thank you” and Jelly rewarded her with cheers and applause. While she appreciated the enthusiasm, she looked for keener insight from her father.

“What do you think?” she asked her dad.

He smiled. “I think all the scholarship money for that expensive graduate school wasn’t wasted.”

Andi blushed. “It’s not exactly what I thought I’d be doing at this stage of my life.”

“You were thinking CEO of a Fortune 500?”

She chuckled and shrugged. “Closer to that than to becoming a Plainview barista.”

“Well, Andi, I’ve always believed it’s more important to like what you do than do what you like,” Pop said. “You need to make enough cash to get by, but beyond that, it won’t make you any more or less happy.”

“When I start making enough to get by,” she told him. “Then I’ll try wondering about the happy part.”

The council meeting was held at City Hall in an ornate and cavernous room, obviously designed a century earlier for what had been anticipated to be a much larger community. Ten rows of folding chairs sat at a distance from the curved dark wood dias. A half dozen high-back seats were arranged around the council table, each with a name plaque in front. Alderman Houseman, Alderman Gensekie, Alderman Brandt, Alderman Guthrie, Alderman Pannello. In the center was Mayor Gunderson-Smythe.

Andi, Pop and Jelly were the first people to arrive. That was Andi’s fault. She’d been too concerned about being late. Now she was early which, for some reason, made her more nervous.

Pop walked around the room looking at all the old maps
and town memorabilia on the walls. Jelly pulled a big photo album out of her bookbag and flipped through it contentedly.

A staff person from the city arrived to put out copies of the agenda. Andi saw she was “Item 6.” She showed it to her father.

“I’m worried that Jelly won’t be able to wait this long,” she told him.

He shrugged, unconcerned. “If she gets restless, then we’ll leave,” Pop said. “You can take the bus or call me to pick you up.”

Andi nodded. “You can’t let her applaud,” she said. “Maybe we should tell her that.”

Pop laid a hand on Andi’s cheek. “Just let go of that,” he said. “Jelly is not going to mess this up for you. This is not high school. The real world is much more accepting.”

“You’re right,” she agreed, glancing across the room toward her sister. “Jelly never really messed things up for me. I always managed to mess them up for myself.”

“Not tonight,” Pop said. “Tonight you’re going to be a smash.”

Andi took heart that her father would be right.

Within a few minutes, the room filled with people, some well dressed, some barely dressed. There were senior ladies with hair that looked almost blue, and tattooed girls with hair that was definitely purple. Some men were in suits and some in shirtsleeves.

Mr. Gilbert from Code Compliance nodded to her in a businesslike manner before taking a seat among the staff.

As the council arrived, Andi silently assessed them. Mayor Gunderson-Smythe was a petite fortyish woman who reminded Andi of her kindergarten teacher. Brandt and Pannello were
recognizable as older versions of men she’d seen before, but wasn’t sure where. The one who really caught her attention, of course, was Hank Guthrie. Growing up she’d seen him a million times in the grocery store. She hadn’t realized he was on the council.

“Why didn’t you warn me that Hank Guthrie is an alderman?” she whispered to her father.

Pop seemed surprised with the question. “I didn’t think it would matter. Guthrie won’t put his own interests ahead of what’s good for the community. The downtown needs another business. If he goes against the idea, it won’t be personal.”

Andi wished she had her father’s confidence.

“Try not to put too much on this,” Pop added. “People can always smell desperation. It’s a fine idea. If it comes about, then that’s great. Just remember that a lot of excellent plans never come to be. That’s just how it is. The prayers unanswered are often the ones that prove to be the biggest blessings.”

That was one of the things Andi most admired about her father, his absolute faith in ultimate good. But Andi preferred trusting what she could control.

The meeting was called to order with the flag pledge followed by a lengthy discussion of the minutes of the last meeting and reports from various city departments. As the talk of stop signs, potholes and sewer pipe dragged on, Andi found herself stifling a yawn. She glanced over at Jelly. Her photo book sat open on her lap, but she’d laid her head on Pop’s shoulder. Andi was wishing she could take a little catnap as well.

On the other side of her, a young man in a sport coat was rapidly texting on his phone. It was then that she noticed that
most everyone in the room, under the age of sixty, was focused on a phone, PDA or BlackBerry.

Why do these people come to these meetings if they’re not going to pay any attention, she wondered.

But the idea that most people weren’t paying attention buoyed her somehow and her anticipatory jitters just fell away. By the time the agenda reached “Item 6” she was as completely composed as she’d been in Pop’s living room.

The presentation went perfectly. Andi made every point that she had in her notes.

“Exemption from these regulations can be granted by the council on grounds of reasonable hardship,” she concluded. “As no expansion can be permitted on the building due to its historic designation and required setbacks to adjacent property, I believe this constitutes a reasonable hardship. And I ask the council to grant my business, Corner Coffee Stop, a variance to this city ordinance. Thank you for your consideration. I’ll be happy to answer any questions that you may have.”

There was a long, thoughtful moment of silence as the council members sifted through their papers.

Alderman Gensekie, a white-haired gentleman with a bow tie was frowning a little. “So, what you’re saying is that people will drive up in their cars and you’ll pour them a cup of coffee?” He looked at the other councilmen and then toward the chief of police at the staff table. “Is that legal, I mean to drive around with a hot cup of coffee?”

Andi tried to keep her jaw from dropping. Fortunately, everyone around him quickly assured the aged alderman that it was done all the time.

“You can get a morning coffee at all the hamburger places out on the interstate,” Alderman Pannello assured him.

“Really?” Gensekie seemed genuinely surprised. “Just seems like it would be a safety hazard driving around with hot coffee.”

Alderman Brandt was thumbing through her handout. “You’re from Chicago, Ms. Walcowski?”

“Wolkowicz,” Andi answered. “Andrea Wolkowicz and, no, I’m not from Chicago. I lived there for several years but I’m from here in Plainview. My father has owned this building since 1979.”

The next question came from Mr. Houseman. It was one Andi was ready for. It pertained directly to her request for exemption on public toilet facilities and she thought she handled it well. A follow-up from the mayor was also one she’d anticipated and Andi was very pleased with the response she was getting.

Then Alderman Guthrie asked what Andi perceived as a stupid question. “These statistics about drive-through coffee, are those national statistics?”

“Yes, sir,” Andi answered.

Guthrie made a dismissive sound followed by a comment that was openly skeptical. “Maybe it would have been better to somehow filter out the East Coast and the West Coast. What those people do and buy, well, that’s just meaningless around here.”

Both the council and the audience chuckled and began muttering in agreement to that. Guthrie was clearly enjoying his little bit of humor at Andi’s expense. He was grinning broadly and looking around at his fellow council members and at the audience, but he never allowed his gaze to fall on Andi. She knew that technique from her corporate meeting days.
Marginalize the presenter by uniting the rest of the table in humor. It created an us-vs-them mentality and the person not laughing was definitely on the outside looking in.

Andi needed to counter that move as quickly as possible. If she could have come up with a snappy comeback, it would have been perfect, but she had to be careful. Any joke at the expense of the council or the community could completely backfire. So she gave up the measure-for-measure flanking with a direct assault.

“Your Honor,” Andi said, addressing Mayor Gunderson-Smythe. “I’d like to request that Alderman Guthrie, as the adjacent property owner and a person who previously offered to buy this building, recuse himself from these deliberations.”

The mayor nodded sympathetically and opened her mouth to speak, but before a word came out, the silence in the building was filled by Guthrie.

“Hold it right there, young woman!” he said loudly. “Are you suggesting I cannot be impartial?” His tone changed to incredulity. “I don’t know what kind of people you’re accustomed to encountering where you live in Chicago. But we hometown hayseeds are not so lacking in old-fashioned virtues like integrity and justice. We’re not people to be swayed one way or another by a business deal gone bad ten years ago. And if you’re going to disqualify your neighbors, well, in a town this size, well, we’re all neighbors here.”

Murmurs of agreement swept throughout the room.

“But just to reassure you on this council’s sense of honesty and to counter even any perception of bias on my part, I will recuse myself,” Guthrie continued. “I
will
actually step out of the building while this is decided. We are a small city, but we
are a city of rules. And unlike bigger places where elected officials hold out their hands for bribes and allow businesses to operate under the assumption that the laws just don’t apply to them, we here in Plainview bend over backwards to ensure fair play for everyone. And if it happens that you are to become a merchant here, I would encourage you to adopt that attitude yourself.”

Guthrie then rose to his feet and made his way through the audience and out the front door, his progress slowed by shaking hands and receiving pats on the back.

Andi saw her hopes for the Corner Coffee Stop slip out the door with him.

He had successfully portrayed her as the outsider, demanding to be freed from the rules that governed everyone else. The council voted against her three to one.