The World Played Chess (19)

“William said you stayed late to finish up.”

“I didn’t get it all done by five.”

“I know. I came back to make sure you locked up.”

Which meant he didn’t trust me to do it right.

“Well.” He cleared his throat and shifted the toothpick. I fully expected to be fired. “I figure a guy who would hump concrete in the hot sun all day is willing to work hard. You want a job?”

It took me a moment to find my voice. “Yes, sir.”

“Don’t call me ‘sir.’ My name’s Todd.”

“Okay.”

Todd smiled, this time like I had no idea what I was getting into. He turned on the heels of his boots and walked to the front yard. I followed. He removed the toothpick and used it to point to the roof of the house. “I’m going to need you to tear off the roof.” Todd explained we were adding a second story to the single-story home. “I don’t have a harness, so you’re going to have to do it from inside the attic.”

“Okay.” I assumed a harness was something I’d wear to keep from falling off the roof. The pitch was steep. I still wondered how I’d remove the shingles from the inside.

Todd returned to the garage and grabbed a crowbar. “Grab the Sawzall,” he said.

He spared me further embarrassment by pointing to a machine that looked like a sawed-off shotgun with a long blade at the end. William had used it the day before. The blade cut like a handsaw on speed.

“You ever used one before?” Todd asked.

“No.”

He plugged the saw into an extension cord and gave me a fifteen-second crash course. Seemed simple enough. I grabbed the saw and the extension cord and followed Todd through the kitchen door into the house. The family that owned the property had moved out during the remodel. In the hallway, Todd pulled down a collapsible ladder using a string hanging from the ceiling. I followed him up the rungs into the attic. A single bulb attached to one of the rafters provided a dull light. Though it was still early morning, the temperature already bordered on hot and the air, suffocating. I could only imagine how hot the attic would get in the heat of the day and how difficult it would be to breathe.

Todd moved to the pitch of the roof, which was only about five feet in height and required that we hunch over. “You tear out the insulation,” he said. The insulation looked like pink cotton candy with a brown paper backing stapled between the roof joists. “Then you punch a hole in the shingles using the crowbar. Once you’ve removed the insulation and knocked off the shingles and tar paper, you can use the Sawzall to cut the one-by-four slats, then the roof joists. Got it?”

“Got it,” I said, realizing I wasn’t just removing the shingles but the entire roof.

“Don’t kill yourself or cut off a finger. I’m not bonded, and I don’t have health insurance.”

I wasn’t sure what that meant or what to say, so I just said, “Okay.”

“Get it done by the end of tomorrow. I have a dumpster coming midmorning and I don’t want to pay to keep it another day,” Todd said. “Everything gets thrown in the dumpster.”

That was it. Those were my instructions. On-the-job training, I guess.

Years later, as a lawyer representing Monsanto, which produced a spray-on asbestos fire retardant, I learned more than I ever wanted to know about the harm asbestos could do to the human body, including mesothelioma, a cancer that causes the lungs to lose elasticity and the person to suffocate. Experts say the disease could be caused by a single asbestos fiber inhaled into the lungs. I didn’t know this back in 1979, but given the year and the age of the house, I would worry that the insulation in the attic was asbestos, and I never took a deposition of a dying former asbestos worker without thinking of that hot summer day in the attic of that home in Burlingame. I feared I might someday sit in that same chair answering the same questions.

Todd’s truck departed, and a moment later, William’s El Camino arrived. I descended the accordion ladder and walked into the garage. William looked like I had felt the prior morning, tired and hungover. Bags, too large for a man his age, protruded beneath his eyes, and he moved with lethargy as he alternately sipped from a Styrofoam cup and inhaled a cigarette dangling from his lips.

“Vincenzo,” he said in his deep voice, but this time without humor or excitement. “You still working here?”

“I guess so,” I said.

“Too bad. You had a chance to get out while you still could. I thought for sure Todd would fire you.”

“What? Why?”

William smiled, squinting as the cigarette smoke wafted up to his blue eyes. “I’m just giving you shit. Todd called me last night. Said he couldn’t believe you got all that rock broken up and into the foundation ditch. He said anybody that would do what you did with a hangover and without complaint had to be a good worker.”

“How’d he know I was hungover?”

“Experience,” William said with his distinct chuckle. “You looked like shit. Todd doesn’t care what you do on your own time so long as the work gets done. Because you got the work done, he was able to schedule the foundation inspector for tomorrow morning, and the concrete pour for the afternoon. That puts us ahead of schedule. What’s he got you doing this morning?”

“Tearing off the roof,” I said.