The World Played Chess (31)

Chapter 8


June 7, 1979

The following morning, Todd arrived at the jobsite with his toothpick in place and told me we would begin framing the second floor while waiting for the concrete foundation to set. Mike had accepted a job at an insurance company and would no longer be working on the remodel. I was happy for him, sad for me. I’d miss not having him around, but it also meant more responsibility and maybe less grunt work.

I had the job of cutting the lumber Todd and William needed to frame the walls. Todd’s instructions on the use of the miter saw had been simple, but precise. Measure twice. Cut once. Cut the board too small and I wasted the board. With the job underbid, every inch of lumber mattered, even reusing the boards we’d saved from the roof. Todd didn’t tell me the latter. He didn’t have to.

I also had the job of cutting and nailing in place fire blocking between the first and second floors, and in the walls being constructed. Todd and William shouted out measurements using just about every body part to describe the precision needed. “A pubic hair short of eleven and three-quarters.” Or, “An inch shorter than your pecker, so three inches.”

After tearing down and breaking up, seeing the walls go up felt like we were accomplishing something productive, which lifted our spirits. We laughed and smiled, even Todd. I stacked the remnants of wood by size so if William or Todd needed a shorter length, say for framing a window or a door, I didn’t have to cut a new stud. I also used the remnants for my fire blocking. William said we would frame all day, then use bracing to hold up the walls. In the morning Todd would bring in a crane to lift a massive glulam roof beam in place that would form the new roof peak, and structurally tie all the walls together.

The sun blazed. William and I worked with our shirts off. Todd covered every inch of his freckled, pale skin beneath a long-sleeve cotton shirt and a floppy jungle hat.

With faded blue jeans, my boots, and a fair dose of eighteen-year-old hubris, I felt pretty cocky even before William pointed out the two young women watching us work from the bedroom window of the house next door. I recognized them to be the same women who had driven by the house and nearly caused me to screw up the concrete pour. The limbs and leaves of large maple trees obstructed a portion of the view, but we could see the women, and they could see us. They looked about my age, maybe a couple of years older.

William said, “Vincenzo, they’re definitely in your ballpark.” He caught their attention and waved and smiled, and they waved and smiled back, not the least bit embarrassed to have been caught watching us.

“Well, I know they’re not waving and smiling at two of us,” Todd said, meaning him and William.

I smiled and tried not to look like an embarrassed idiot.

The heat turned up quickly when the two women walked out a sliding glass door onto their backyard pool deck wearing bikinis.

“Vincenzo!” William said, smiling.

Definitely not teenagers. I guessed early twenties. The one who had driven the Mustang had light-brown hair and wore a navy-blue bikini with white polka dots. The dark-haired passenger who had lowered her glasses to stare at me was built like a gymnast, with a washboard stomach that put mine to shame. I pointed this out to William, who just kept uttering my name, stringing it out like an announcer at a ball game. “Vincenzo . . . this could be your lucky day.”

As we worked, I would occasionally catch Todd watching me. He didn’t say anything, but his shit-eating grin was only partially hidden by his mustache and beard. I initially thought he was concerned I would get distracted and screw up the board cuts, but I soon realized Todd was assessing me, the way he had that first day when he told me to break up the concrete blocks. I suspected Todd still thought of me as a naive kid who had grown up in the Burlingame bubble, which was mostly true. Though I wouldn’t admit it—none of my friends would have—I’d graduated high school a virgin, and I could count the number of dates I’d had, not including proms, on one hand. Going to an all-boys school didn’t exactly foster healthy relationships with young women.

For the next few hours, the two women dove into the pool with a splash and came up shouting at one another, or listened to music as they lay in lawn chairs, acting now as if they had no idea we watched.

“Oh, they know we’re here,” William said. “And they know exactly what they’re doing.”

His comment was a spot-on imitation of Paul Newman in the movie Cool Hand Luke, the scene when the prison chain gang worked in the blazing heat, tantalized by a woman washing her car. Just about every eighteen-year-old young man who’d watched Cool Hand Luke, myself included, fantasized about Joy Harmon fondling a garden hose while wearing a skimpy sundress soon to be soaked with water and phallic suds. I figured this afternoon was the closest I would get to anything even remotely close to Joy Harmon, who the actor George Kennedy called his Lucille.

The show continued for much of the afternoon, then the two women went inside. I looked between the maple leaves to the bedroom window, hoping they’d go upstairs and take off their swimsuits, but they weren’t Lucille and I wasn’t Paul Newman.

We worked past five again. When we finished, I was beat. Todd looked around the tripod legs of the miter saw where I’d swept a pile of sawdust and thin scraps of leftover wood. The largest scrap was no longer than a couple of inches.

“Where’s the rest of it?” Todd asked.