The Quarantine Chronicles: Day 8

“A word, Mr Bajruku.”

Hammel regarded me with his usual casual air and smiled. I’m sure on some level, the sight of a middle-class working man in a room with him was amusing. The way I imagine the sight of a man swimming in deep waters amused a shark.

He studied my face and demeanor more thoroughly. Determining it was serious, he dismissed his colleagues with a word. I watched them go as they passed me. They smelled of cigarettes and a musk scented cologne. They hadn’t quite decided what to make of me yet. The feeling was mutual.

Hammel gestured to the seat across from his makeshift desk that he was using. It was really a plan table the Field Site Supervisor used to lay out the blueprints and coordinate the operations for the day. Matt modified it before he left.

“I’m in need of your assistance.”

“Looking for a raise already,” Hammel joked.

“A flight actually.”

Hammel raised an eyebrow.

“For my family. Not me.”

“That’s not exactly a small ask.” Hammel watched me carefully. He didn’t look as if he was deliberating a decision, like he did the night his goon held a gun to my head. At present, he was simply observing and waiting.

“I can be of greater service to you than I am now,” I stated replying to the unspoken yet obvious question. I knew he wasn’t going to ask me why I wanted the flight. Besides the answer being obvious, he was a businessman, and as such his concerns were singular in nature.

“Mr. Rossi, I do admire your precocity for bending the rules. And although I found my niece’s antidotes about your past amusing, I’m not sure what you can offer-“

“Mr. Rennet,” I cut him off.

“Pardon?”

“Mr. Rennet,” I confirmed, “I can get you a seat at the table… a different table, than you’re accustomed.”

“Is that so?” Hammel tried to pretend he wasn’t interested, but men who traveled in the circles that the Bajruku family did knew there was much more to my boss than Development. Rennet had his hands in so many pies he’d ran out of fingers. He sat on every city board that bore an ambiguous name with even more vague agendas. I didn’t know any other G.C. owners with an office of lobbyists on retainer.

Hammel readjusted, “How would you even get an invitation to these seats?”

Hammel’s gaze narrowed on me as his head tilted slightly to the side. A predator studying an unfamiliar creature.

“By the end of this week my site foremen is going to submit a report to me and my uppers containing a substantially low manpower tally. At which point Mr. Rennet’s bean counters will determine it’s more cost efficient to shut down the site than keep it open and this little … arrangement we have will effectively end.” I gave him a moment for his mind to run through the hassle of finding another set up this secure and readily available. Once the annoyance of that task had firmly taken hold, I offered an alternative. “Or …I can maintain the count and even experience a spike at the other sites I’ve been given which are dangerously close to being shut down. Thus making me, in this strange reality, the most valuable person in the company.”

Hammel connected his own dots from there. Slowly the validity of this plan checked out point by point, leading him to the next natural question.

“And what makes you think I want to sit at his table?”

“Mr Bajruku, your niece has told me about you. Perhaps not as much as she has told you of me, but” Hammel leaned forward, apparently intrigued for the first time in this exchange. I continued, “You’re not a gangster. Though you wear the hat well. You don’t want a name or involvement with the family politics. You are aware enough to know that although your older brother has pictures on his wall with every President since Reagan his influence has a hard cap… His reach can’t quite grasp what you want.”

Hammel leaned back in his chair and lit a cigarette. His deep hollow eyes showed my words behind them rolling around like the Powerball tumbler.

“And what is it I want, Mr. Rossi?”

I scoffed. I thought the answer was apparent, it was my turn to lean forward.

“The deck is being reshuffled all around us.” I gestured to the emptiness outside on the street; the emptiness in the building, “You want to ensure that you’re closer to the top when all of this is over, and the next hand starts.”

Hammel smiled, dropping the cigarette on the floor and putting it out with a twist of his foot.

“You know, where I’m from you don’t engage in relationships outside of your race and religion… Hell, we’ve just got to the point where we accept different tribes, but I dare say you would have been good with my niece.” It was a simple statement to an outsider, but I knew it was probably the highest compliment he would ever give me. Hammel took a breath, “I will look into flights.”

He got up to leave placing a hand on my shoulder.

“You should know, you are with me now. Which means my goals are your goals. My problems, are your problems.” He removed his hand from my shoulder and buttoned his Tom Ford tailored jacket. “I may not be a gangster Mr. Rossi, but I do employ quite a few.”

The inference was clear as he exited the room. I sat back down. I didn’t know whether to cry or celebrate; both would have been appropriate. I could have stopped myself, I knew. Could have taken Finn’s mother as a sign. I didn’t, and the part that I was trying not to think about was just how little I considered giving up. How stubbornly I clung to the idea of thriving while all around me everyone was just thinking about surviving; thinking about caring for one another.

I don’t know why I couldn’t come to grips with it. Why I couldn’t just lock myself in the house like everyone else and stream movies. It wasn’t in me. I’d worked all my life and had nothing to show for it. I wasn’t happy, I wasn’t comfortable, I wasn’t important, I wasn’t well-off, and I wasn’t in love. And then one day, life decides to give me a shot… at everything… all at once. Sure, I stumbled out of the gate but I was closing in on the finish line. Then, in life’s grand comedy, the whole world was thrown into chaos. People dying, companies folding, armies on the streets, gangs in houses. I could still see glimpses of the finish line that I was so close to, but my view was obstructed by the tornado that stood between it and I. Still I ran forward with increasing speed, closer to danger every minute.

Would Hammel get my family out? Yes. Would he keep my ambitions afloat? Sure, but at what cost. I was starting to swim out so far, the water was turning dark and I could no longer see underneath me.

‘Ultimately it didn’t matter,’ I told myself. The more I sat there thinking about it, the more it was true. People were suffering and dying, people were hiding, scared, locked in their homes. The ripple effects of this pandemic were unfathomable at present. No one knew what personnel would still be considered valuable after this. Which companies would survive? How difficult would it be to get a job and start over with literally millions of people in this city unemployed going after the same job. All I really knew for certain is that things would be different. I, for one, wasn’t going to be left on the side of the road wondering: ‘what if?’

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“Let me just recap because I want to make sure I’m hearing this right,” my brother was doing a poor job hiding his anger, “You had an opportunity to get a flight for all of us and you left me out?”

The call from Hammel came sooner than I expected. I’d barely gotten settled at home when the phone rang.

“Ralph, you are going to the Ivory Coast, the plane is heading to Colombia. Tell me you see the difference in those two locations?” I was beginning to get annoyed. The plane usually stops in Miami to refuel but they were going to stop in Saint Marteen where Brittany and my daughter would discreetly get off the plane and meet a friend of mine. It was a huge favor. I could only imagine the strings he needed to pull.

“Did you even ask?”

“Ask if they could hang a left in the Caribbean and drop you off the coast of Africa before heading to their destination in South America?”

“No, smartass. Asked for a different flight. Heading East.”

“Of course not! I knew the answer.”

“You knew shit!”

Brittany dropped the pot loudly on the stove. Ralph groaned and lowered his voice. She had previously tried to appeal to his sense of reason but had given up very quickly. Logically it all made sense, everyone knew. Ralph knew me, however, and his gut told him that I never even asked. That I never even considered anyone’s problems but my own.

In my mind that wasn’t completely accurate. I was simply trying to settle one problem at a time. Or was that just what I was telling myself.

Ralph got up to leave. This conversation had been dragging on for close to an hour. He got to the stairs and stopped.

“You know what, London? I want you to look at yourself for a minute. How many decisions are you making for other people? How many guys were at your site today? And by extension how many families have you exposed to a threat?” He stared at me. His eyes wild. “You think it’s just Finn’s mother? Finn’s asymptomatic. He’s given it to fifty other people. How many people end up needing a respirator or dead but because people like you overwhelmed the system and they don’t get one? Answer me!”

“Ralph!” Brittany yelled, “The baby is asleep.”

Ralph looked to respond but didn’t. He kept his anger focused squarely on where it should be. He walked close to me and spoke at almost a whisper.

“People will die not because your boss plays croquet at the governor’s mansion… but because of you; his most trusted junkyard dog.”

He returned to the stairs and began his ascent. “The loyal soldier… Sir, yes sir….”, He said saluting me mockingly.

I wanted to combat what he was saying, I wanted to defend myself, rip apart his argument along with his jawline but what could I say? He hadn’t said anything untrue. He’d left no openings for me to exploit. When I left my house everyday it was a selfish act. When I pressured the Trades and vendors to honor their contract it was a selfish act, fueled by a desire to please Mr. Rennet. I wasn’t thinking about the people fighting for their lives, I wasn’t thinking about the overwhelmed healthcare workers that were sacrificing themselves sleeping at their desks to try to stem the tide.

They were considered heroes, saving the entire city from going under. As for me, I was drowning alone. There was no calvary coming around the corner for me. My options were simple: take advantage of the opportunity I’d fought my whole life to get while in the process risking others, or squander my shot and sink into an abyss of oblivion. Pushed down deeper and deeper by the weight of what could have been, what should have been, who I could have been.

Most people I knew could survive this. To many it wasn’t a big deal; they weren’t as ambitious. The Governor would pay the rent, Federal would pay unemployment, and they would sit at home drinking. To them what I was describing should have been a no brainer. To me, it was a death sentence. It was a fall from a mountain, from which I was unlikely to climb back up.