Easygoing

88 the minnesota review Daniel Foltz-Gray Easygoing Everyone was so upset by the news that not even Ruth, who restocked the pop machine, could get a rise out of them, and she had just the week before called them such a good-natured crowd. They sat heavily at the small tables, sipping coffee and smoking. None of the custodians had reaUy believed they would be let go except Ralph Beck, who was not a bit surprised. One of them shook out his fingers like a spider and said: "I never learned to type. What would I do with typewriters if I had them?" But Ralph Beck, the foreman, a turnip-faced man wearing a red cardigan sweater closed by the middle pair of buttons, said: "Do you think I need this little piece ofjob? Do you know what I make days?" In the silence the vending machines seemed alive, filling the room with the soft breath of sleep. Ralph Beck removed a pencil from his shirt pocket and wrote the figure on the lunch bag before him. Just then Steigerwald, the custodial company rep, came to the door. He was the troubleshooter sent from downtown to save their skins, though they shouldn't have needed saving since they had done nothing: a young man powerfully built, just three years out of Pitt, with a voice like a slap and a worm of yellow hair that crept to his eyes. He had been by each night since the break-in. And with each night the news he brought up from the building super got worse, until tonight . . . But now he was smiling. He called Beck outside; he waved him faster. When Beck had gone, Twila, the girl on nine, said: "Can't they make up their minds? I'd rather have them let us go than to put up with this." Scovern said if he was going to steal something it would be something lighter. "Fuck them," Jack Testa said, "if they can't take a joke." But Marybeth Bloom gave him such a shot of a look that he said: "Oops." Someone asked Ray Waters what was up, but Waters only shook his head — shortly, as if nodding from sleep, and his green eyes had a faded look. Ray Waters didn't know, and he felt that if anyone knew, he should. But lately he had found himself in the dark: Beck wouldn't talk to him; rumors missed him altogether. What sort of senior custodian missed rumors altogether? No sort, he told himself, for he was senior in name only, he was ... he couldn't recall the term — something to do with foltz-gray 89 straw. Was it his fault someone took twenty-three electric typewriters from his own floor? Still, he could understand their being irritable; it wasn't easy to be let go simply because somebody had to be let go, simply because the office managers squeezed the landlord, who squeezed the building superintendent, who squeezed . . . them, because they were easiest after all. But it made just as much sense to let go the office workers instead, who after all had keys, vices: all the same possibilities for theft. He had said so to Beck the day before, but Beck said "Just do you job," in that hurried cranky suspicious way e'd picked up in the last week and which he'd passed on to (or got from) Steigerwald, like a virus only management caught, which confused him since they were all on one side— or were supposed to be. But they'd been cool to him, downright rude to him, as if . . . because it had happened on his floor ... as if ... . But was he a security guard or a janitor? A straw-something was what he was. Suddenly Beck's head, very round, very patchy, appeared in the doorway . "Look here," he said, "let's meet back at nine. Here." From his drill sergeant's voice, Ray Waters guessed two things: one, that something had changed in their favor; and two, his boss Steigerwald was outside listening. Scovern rose to go. "That time," he muttered. People pushed back chairs, and the drawn-out shriek...