The Practical Navigator Read Free Page A

job!”
    â€œNah, you’re just saying that because you’re seeing your January move-in date fly out the window. You’ll be lucky now if it’s next January. Good luck explaining it to your wife.”
    Wham!
    Nails shriek and wood splits as what was going to be the framing for an inner kitchen wall goes down, the victim of Luis’s twenty-pound sledgehammer.
    â€œKnock it down, Luis!” Michael calls. “Every bit of it!”
    Robert Caulfield looks pale. “Michael, for the love of Christ, how can I prove to you I want you on this job!?”
    Breathing an inner sigh of relief, Michael turns to gaze at Robert Caulfield. Too often it’s like this. Workers, men barely getting by, are most often open and honest, willing to give you more than you give them if you treat them with honesty and respect. Those hiring are just as often suspicious and manipulative and more than happy to take advantage of you at a moment’s notice. Maybe it’s not their fault. Maybe they’ve been screwed one too many times in the past. Still. Is it any wonder Michael feels the occasional need to throw off his clothes and run naked and gibbering down main street, waiting for God knows who to take him away to somewhere safe and sane? The world is that crazy.

 
    3
    It’s around eleven when Michael arrives at the office to find that his receptionist, accountant, purchasing agent, and secretary, Rosalina Guerrero, is, as usual, at her desk, working.
    Michael’s office is in a low-set building on a shady side street near a church. He shares the building complex, more like a series of converted trailers than anything else, with a landscape architect and a man who tutors high school students on college aptitude tests. Both the architect and the tutor seem to consider both a contractor and each other beneath them and so all seldom speak to one another.
    Rosalina, called Rose, is a dark-skinned, amber-eyed, overweight woman in her mid-thirties who will suffer fools but always makes sure they know she disapproves of them. Rose, who has never married, and much to the alarm of her Mexican mother, whom she lives with and cares for, has no children, can be sarcastic in both Spanish and English, is effortlessly organized and coldly efficient, and Michael, who is neither, would be lost without her. Beyond that, she has forgone paychecks without telling him on more than one occasion.
    â€œMorning, Rose.”
    Rose doesn’t so much as glance up from her computer screen. “It’s after ten, Michael, it’s no longer morning. I’m already on chapter four.” When not working on her computer, Rose reads. Thick, serious-looking books are almost always on the desk alongside her time sheets and she averages one every two days. Michael lightly waves the check in front of her. She looks at it, then takes it. She studies it a moment and, deciding not to be unimpressed, raises a heavy, unplucked eyebrow. “And this is?”
    â€œBack payment plus an advance.”
    â€œDo I want to know how you pried it loose?”
    â€œNo, you don’t.”
    â€œI’ll take it down to the bank and deposit it before that poca cagada changes his mind.”
    â€œPoca cagada?” asks Michael.
    â€œLittle turd.”
    Michael smiles. “I learn something from you every day, Rose.” It’s a statement of fact as well as a compliment and Rose nods, accepting it as both. Michael turns toward his adjacent office. The door is open. His desk is not nearly so well ordered as Rose’s.
    â€œOh, Michael, a doctor—” Rose checks the message pad up on her desk. She hesitates, wanting to get the pronunciation right. “Akrepede’s office called. She reminds you to stop in around noon today for your…” Rose looks up at him, her tawny eyes curious. “Annual ? ”
    Michael tries to hide his surprise.
    â€œNothing wrong, is there?” asks Rose. Just a