Two Tales for the Twenty-Twenties

By B. Patrick Conley

BUFFY’S BURRITOS
“Illegal immigration,” “undocumented workers”—Mike Leahy and many Americans have heard these terms every day, but for Mike, these phrases have existed mainly as vague abstractions. A chance meeting with an old high school classmate initiates a whole series of events that propel Mike past the nebulous world of abstraction into the very real and enigmatic world of undocumented workers—a world in which both businesses and governmental agencies can profit, a world in which there is no minimum wage, no pension, no sick leave, and absolutely no security. For many of the workers, the only reality they know is work, and for many employers and even governmental agencies, the only reality is accounts receivable. While struggling to deal with this bizarre world, Mike also finds himself struggling with his own personal passions.


INVERSION: THE ROUNDHOUSE TURNAROUND
Does greed or political connections or sex trump everything? Sometimes these factors rule over all—even over science and engineering. Adam Holman, an electrical engineer, works for a company that promises to deliver what has never been done: a fully solar-powered freight train. Fully aware of the current technological limitations and coping poorly with a failed marriage, Adam nevertheless dedicates himself to doing the impossible all the while skeptical of its success. His boss, however, has no doubts whatsoever as she steams through the dinner-party set, promising—and sometimes seducing—investors into pouring money into her company. Meanwhile, Adam labors on. So, too, does Lynn Bledsoe, who works for a rival firm with less ambitious but more realistic goals. Her main struggle centers on her personal life—a life her family disapproves of. All the characters experience a series of inversions in a world dubbed the Roundhouse Turnaround.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jun 10, 2019
• ISBN: 9781728314921

B. Patrick Conley

Patrick Conley enjoys living with his family, teaching his students, and writing an occasional novella. Some of his more recent works include the following: A Cool Mist Rising; The Grail: Sacra Moneta; May the Better Team; Public Schools, Private Scandals; 2044; Tales of Youth and Age; Conversations with the Living and the Dead; and Playing with Chaos.

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© 2019 B. Patrick Conley. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 06/05/2019

ISBN: 978-1-7283-1482-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-1492-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019907200

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

BUFFY’S BURRITOS

BY

PATRICK CONLEY

A FOREWORD & A FOREWARNING

All characters in this work are fictitious; accordingly, anyone looking for resemblances to living or deceased people will be disappointed. Fiction allows us an escape from reality and a retreat from the mundane even as it teases us into believing, of only momentarily, that this world of letters is real. However, if the characters and situations remain as flights of imagination, perhaps the stories themselves may provide some small element of truth.

CONTENTS

Chapter 1     Buffy’s Burritos

Chapter 2     Katrina’s Bounty

Chapter 3     Uncle Sam’s Game

Chapter 4     Alex’s Lament

Chapter 5     Mike On Call

Chapter 6     Mission Accomplished—Almost

Chapter 7     The Affair That Wasn’t

Chapter 8     The Affair That Was

Chapter 9     Dolores’ Dilemma

Chapter 10   Don’t It Make Your Brown Eyes Blue

Chapter 11   Mike’s Date

Chapter 12   Status Quo in Flux

CHAPTER ONE

Buffy’s Burritos

Just how the hell did he do it? Three or four (who’s counting?) drinks had jarred Tom Hall’s characteristic complacency. I mean the son of a bitch is thirty-eight years old and owns construction companies in St. Louis, Baron Rouge, and Memphis He’s also got I don’t know how many meat packing plants in Texas, Iowa, and Nebraska, and now he’s opened up a chain of restaurants in Chicago, St. Louis, and Cleveland. At this rate he’ll own half the country before he hands over the whole thing to his kids—that is, if he has any.

Most of those who bothered to listen to Tom Hall’s rant just dismissed it as drunken stupidity and there was a lot of that circulating in the conference room of the local hotel, which served as the venue of the twenty-year reunion of old West High. By nine o’clock most of the superficial pleasantries had run their course, and a few like Tom Hall had yielded to envy, wrath, gluttony, pride, and all the rest of the seven deadly sins. Still, Tom’s question had echoed what most of us had been wondering ourselves. Tom Hall had been class president, so it was only fitting that he had exercised his past leadership by plumbing the abyss of our deepest thoughts and bringing the common concern out for all to consider. By all rights of birth and privilege, Tom should have been the richest person there, but he wasn’t, not by any measure. The son of a bitch Tom had referred to was Alex Devereux, whose father had owned a small trucking company back when Alex was a senior in high school. By small, I mean that he owned three trucks, but at any given time only two of them could haul a load. The third served as an in-garage junkyard, supplying spare parts when needed and some were always needed. In contrast, Thomas Q. Hall’s parents owned a Chevy and a Subaru dealership and belonged to the locally prestigious Westview Country Club. When TQ was born, it was said, he came from the womb with a tanned complexion, swinging a golf club in one hand and an extra dry vodka martini in the other. Everyone liked good, old T. Q. Hall or at least said they did whether he was sober or drunk, and he was drunk most of the time. During high school, most people just ignored Alex Devereux.

Now you would have thought that Alex Devereux had been everyone’s best buddy twenty years ago. Danny Diggs and Damien Pitts hovered around him like flies at a picnic. They had both lost their jobs and now needed the good graces and blessing of Alex Devereux if they ever had hopes of paying back student loans and making it. The ten-year reunion had been sparsely attended because only those who had already succeeded in the world attended to congratulate each other. But this twenty-year affair differed. Broken marriages and failed careers had prompted many to return to reminisce and search for new jobs and, in some cases, new mates.Misery loves company, so they say, and there was a lot of misery going around.

Hey, TQ, remember me? Alex Devereux.

Who could forget you? Your name bounces around the financial section of the news every day and in every way. What’s this I hear about your restaurant going nationwide?

O, TQ, it’s not really my restaurant. It’s Buffy’s, you know the sophomore you used to go out with. She’s over yonder by the bar, probably getting another drink. Come with me, and I’ll re-introduce her to you. So, Alex, followed by Danny Diggs and Damien Pitts, took off in the direction of the bar with good old TQ trailing after. After pausing to shake a few hands and recall the good old days, which really never were, Alex reached the bar where Buffy had enthroned herself. Buffy, what’s that you’re drinking?

Why, Alex, a Bloody Mary, of course, the signature drink of Buffy’s Burritos. It took us two long years to get that liquor license and I’m still celebrating.

Well, Buffy, you remember old TQ, don’t you?

Why, of course, nice to see you again TQ. Are you still hustling Chevys and Subarus?

Still selling cars in the family tradition.

Well, you know, sometimes traditions are meant to be broken. Buffy gazed straight into Tom Hall’s eyes, an action that made me wonder just what traditions she was talking about. Buffy still had blond hair or at least still used the same hair dye as she had twenty years ago, but in twenty years she had put on twenty or more pounds. Apparently she still used the same red, blood red, lipstick she had used two decades ago even though most of the women at the reunion either used no lipstick or, if they used any at all, applied it sparingly and applied very subdued shades. But there really wasn’t much subdued about Buffy. She sported a red sleeveless dress that came down about halfway on her thighs (less so when she was seated) and garishly red spiked heels. Her year-round tan had already leathered some of her skin around the shoulders and her nails were carefully manicured and painted in a bright red that matched her dress.

Alex slung his arm around Buffy’s shoulders and neck. Even with the long-sleeved white shirt he wore, anyone who cared to observe would have noticed the massive muscles that lay under recently acquired fat. No one ever said that Alex hadn’t worked hard. In high school, he would sometimes miss school on a Friday or Monday when he had to help his dad load or unload trucks. David Devereux couldn’t afford union wages, so he enlisted his family members to do as much work as they could. On weekends, when the popular crowd was partying, Alex worked. I know because on some of those weekends I’d work with him.

Suddenly Alex’s eyes caught mine. Mike, Mike Leahy, what the hell are you doing over there in the corner? Come on over and have a drink. I’ll buy. What you got there?

Ginger ale, I’m driving.

OK, Mike, I respect that. Me and Buffy here hired a chauffeur for the evening, one of my drivers who needed a little extra cash. While Alex’s attention had momentarily been diverted to me, Buffy and TQ carried on an eye flirtation whose meaning remained both obvious and obscure. I hear you’re teaching at the old school and coaching soccer.

Yeah, that’s right, Alex.

Another good reason not to drink. I told my workers that if they get a DWI, they’re fucked both by me and the government. You’re not exactly on company time tonight, but I guess in the neighborhood and all, I guess you’re always on company time.

Alex, you always could figure things out, especially the unwritten rules. I added, all the while eyeing the wordless flirtation going on between Buffy and TQ. Maybe Alex could figure things out on a business level, but on a personal one I wasn’t so sure. Well, he certainly wouldn’t be the first one in that department.

Well, Mike, if I can’t buy you a drink, at least let me give you this, for old times sake, Alex declared loud enough that I knew he was ending the conversation. Here, take these. He handed me an envelope that contained a fifty dollar gift certificate to Buffy’s Burritos. Enjoy.

Actually, I didn’t know that the gift certificate amounted to fifty dollars. I had just assumed it was one of those buy-one-get-one-free come-ons, so I was surprised when I stopped by Buffy’s place after Saturday practice around three-thirty-in the afternoon. The August heat had fried me, and I so longed for a drink after five hours of simultaneously refereeing and coaching scrimmages. The sixth day of tryouts consisted of four one hour scrimmages with short breaks in between each game, mainly for my benefit as I scribbled down notes about each player, who wore a number scrawled or pinned on the front and back of white or black T-shirts. I had tried to make the selection as fair as I could, but almost one hundred students were trying out for only twenty-four spots. Actually, the team shouldn’t carry so many players, but I had unofficially arranged a dozen B games so that everyone on the squad would get to play a minimum of twelve games. The football coaches hadn’t said much to me during that first week of practice at least not until Saturday morning when Tyler Walker, the head football coach on a staff of nine meekly asked me. Hey, Mike, you’ve got cuts today, right?

Yeah, Tyler, there’s no way I can keep a hundred players, even twenty-four is a few too many.

Yeah, well, don’t forget to remind them that they can still go out for football and all those six practices will carry over for football.

Will do, Tyler. How times had changed. When I was in school, those who didn’t make football went out for soccer, but roles had reversed, partially because of demographic changes, partially because of the publicized concussion crisis, and partially because of reasons I still didn’t fully understand. While times had changed, the athletic director hadn’t. He still allocated nine coaches for the forty kids who went out for football but only one for the one hundred who tried out for soccer. Maybe next year I’ll have an assistant or two, I thought to myself. As it turned out, I did, but for this year I was on my own.

You didn’t even need to be a soccer coach to select the top ten players. Their speed, athleticism, and skill displayed themselves every time they touched the ball and often even when they hadn’t. The difficulty lay in determining which boys would fill the remaining fourteen spots. After the scrimmages ended, I talked with each one of the boys who remained. I’d post the names of those who made the squad on Monday and had arranged the matches so that those who seemed to be the best players battled it out in the final scrimmage. Still, thirty or more who had played earlier watched the remaining sessions. A few walked away, realizing that they had no chance. Before each game, I congratulated all for the work they had done in the August heat and invited them to try out again next year no matter what. They could still play for club teams or in the church leagues. They could also go out for football. But none of these words offered much consolation for those who had dreamed of being the next Messi or Ronaldo. Dreams both inspire and delude. I had dreamed of a lifelong marriage, but that wasn’t to be.

So, after trying my best to deal with the disappointment of almost three dozen boys, I headed off to Buffy’s Burritos, coupons in hand. The nearest franchise was located in a strip mall only half a mile from school. I later learned that Alex had located almost all of the restaurants less than a mile from a high school and, in one case in Toledo, right next to the school. He had geared advertising for the lunch crowd to adolescents and to adults he pitched the virtues of low-priced margaritas and Bloody Mary’s for dinner. The building lay between a hair salon and a dentist’s office and appeared completely non-descript except for the bigger than life sign of a slimmed down Buffy Devereux with a buttery smooth, lightly tanned complexion, holding a Bloody Mary in one hand and a drink dubbed the Margarita Sangre in the other. The hair of this idealized Buffy lacked the straw-like stringiness of its real life counterpart and had a gentle, golden sheen. The figure wore a tightly fitting sweater that accentuated oversized breasts and a mini-skirt from which projected slim, perfectly shaped legs. Alex swore that the image reflected his beloved partner Buffy, but it seemed far more like an image of the actress who played in the TV series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Because of re-runs on several cable channels, even the current high school crowd associated the TV show with the restaurant. I pulled the door open and strolled in to an eerie silence but then reflected that it was three –thirty on a Saturday afternoon, too late for lunch and too early for dinner.

Hey, Mr. Leahy, how can I help you? Miguel Esperanza greeted me with a broad smile and enthusiastic voice. He was a student in my fourth period English II class.

I thought I’d redeem some of coupons Alex Devereux gave me last week at the high school reunion.

You a friend of his? Miguel’s tone had shifted and he spoke in almost a whisper. He seemed wary.

No, I think he gave me the coupons as a way of telling me to get lost.

Miguel shifted back to his earlier enthusiasm. There are worse ways of telling someone to get lost. Let me see what you’ve got there. He looked over the card and shook his head. Man, he must have really wanted to get rid of you. You’ve got over fifty bucks to spend here. You look really hot. How about a Margarita Sangre for starters?

Miguel, you don’t seem quite old enough to serve me. It’s against the law.

That’s OK, Mr. Leahy, it won’t be the first law that’s broken around here, Dolores Esperanza interjected as she came from the kitchen. Dolores was a senior and had been my student in the same English II class that Miguel was now in. She was seventeen but looked thirty with tired drooping eyes and shoulders.

Dolores, you’re the one who needs a break. You look worn out.

Oh, it’s nothing, Mr. Leahy, I come in at four on Saturday morning and don’t get off until closing, around midnight.

I wasn’t sure how to respond and felt a bit guilty for my earlier self-pity. Then a voice from the kitchen sounded. Nos ahogamos en nuestro sudor y nadan en un rio verde de dinero.

My Spanish wasn’t that good, but I think the anonymous voice said something like, We drown in our own sweat and they swim in a green river of money.

Then another voice added, "Si, es verdad. Beben nuestra sangre y engorgan." Roughly translated, Yes, it’s true. They drink our blood and get fat.

I stood nonplussed, not knowing how to respond. So, I ordered two burritos and a glass of iced tea, thanked Miguel, and wished Dolores well.

Mulling over what I had just heard, I took a bite of my burrito. It was good, but Alex always delivered a quality product when he wanted to. But now, just like TQ Hall, I wondered, How did he do it? And at what price?

CHAPTER TWO

Katrina’s Bounty

For most, Hurricane Katrina was a disaster, with floodwaters and gale winds toppling homes, careers, and lives. Even now, fifteen years later, people still suffer the effects: Many are still in debt, many are still restoring or rebuilding homes, many are still trying to regroup their lives, many are still mourning the loss of the 1, 833 people who died. Fifteen million people were affected by the flooding. The devastation staggers the imagination. One researcher estimates the cost at 250 billion dollars, a sum so large that it defies comprehension, especially by those of us reeling from a 250 dollar utility bill or car repair.

For a few, though, Hurricane Katrina was a goldmine. David Devereux’s small trucking company expanded from two, three if you count the one vehicle used for spare parts, to over thirty. After Katrina struck, David’s two trucks just happened to be sitting idle. That would change as emergency supplies were rushed to provide aid. Devereux Trucking hauled some of the first loads of tents and canvass that provided superficial cover for the devastation. He got quick approval for a loan to purchase more trucks to haul more blue canvas and medical supplies. He worked round the clock. When he wasn’t driving, he was out hustling vendors for blue canvas, medical supplies, bottled water, and anything else that might help alleviate some of the misery of Katrina.

I learned all this and more six months after the reunion on a gloomy February evening when Alex Devereux surprised me with a call.

Hey, Mike, I can trust you, right? I mean not to say anything.

"Sure, Alex, He sounded more than a little drunk, so at the time I could without hesitation or any hint of conspiracy, agree not to report anything he said. More than half of it was probably just drunkard’s baloney, so I’d let him ramble on. He did for over two hours.

"Me and my dad were busting our ass hauling tarps and medical supplies to New Orleans and to the whole lower Mississippi, All along Highway 55, convoys of trucks were racing down. No one paid any attention to speed limits or logbooks or weight limits. Dad had big signs announcing Katrina Relief all in big, red letters. Man, those signs just gave us a free pass to keep on truckin’ without any of all that legal bullshit that gets in the way. We could run down and back all in a day. But three days of hardly any sleep was makin’ us punch drunk and kinda giddy like we’d been drinkin’ the whole time instead of working our butts off. Anyways a bunch of truckers stopped for food and fuel at a little