3 Excerpts from Mr. Jefferson's Piano & Other Central Harlem Stories Page 6

  I first learned Desmond was in the hospital when his wife called the office. She spoke with Henderson, who was his manager, and told her he’d a heart attack. When Henderson told me, my first thought was, I bet he’s still ruminating about that money for the work he did.

  Whenever a super does repair work outside of his normal duties, we write up a contract for the work with a description of the job, the supplies needed to do the job, the amount of time the job will take, and any cleanup activities. Normally, I’d send a roof job out for one of our maintenance teams to repair. If the roof were in bad shape, the job would go downtown to an issuer like Vinny Santelli, who cared less than two cents about the contractor or the quality of his work. Desmond bugged me about doing the job for two weeks, claiming he could do it with no problem. Our maintenance teams had too much roof work and I knew this one wouldn’t get repaired until next spring. After looking at Desmond’s work on similar jobs, I decided to hire him.

  To be on the safe side, I also sent one of my lead mechanics to check the job before Desmond started it. He reported that the super could handle the work since it was patching over large areas of a small roof. As long as he didn’t remove the old roof, which contained asbestos, we were safe. As per procedure, my deputy director approved the job, including the supplies. Desmond picked up the supplies and did the work. He didn’t get complaints from the super of the building or other tenants about leaving debris on the roof or in the alley, nor did he track roof grime through the building while he worked. I always like Desmond’s work because he was neat and cleaned up good.

  Desmond submitted his work log to me. I wrote up the mod for $990, then sent the mod to my deputy director, who signed it and sent it to Stanley Randall. Since everybody knew about the job, his signature should have been easy to get, right? Wrong! I thought Des was recreating the constitution the way Stanley carried on. He sent the paperwork back, saying I hadn’t spelled out the job well enough. I attached a technical description of the work along with before and after pictures of the roof to the mod and sent it back. Stanley sent all the paperwork back to me again. This time, he complained in his note that the language was too technical. I rewrote everything and submitted the paperwork for the third time to Stanley.

  By this time, Desmond was going crazy. He was angry that he did work two months ago and nobody wanted to pay him. I made an appointment to see Stanley, but he put off seeing me for two weeks. In the meantime, he sent a senior Maintenance supervisor to inspect Desmond’s work. He was worried Desmond removed asbestos roofing and left it in the yard. The supervisor didn’t find anything like that in the alleyways or on the roof. He told the director Desmond’s job was one of the better jobs he’d seen. But that was not enough for Stanley. He still wouldn’t sign Desmond’s mod and he wouldn’t tell me why.

  Four months went by since Desmond did the roof work. It was sticking in his gut that he did good work and he wasn’t paid for it. He pressured Henderson to tell him what really happened because I wouldn’t. I’d been making up stories every time Des asked me about the mod because I didn’t want him to do anything stupid. He supported a wife that was wheelchair bound. He did everything for her, including changing her diapers when her home attendant didn’t show up. He couldn’t afford to lose his job.

  Once Des learned Stanley Randall was the villain, he did just what I feared he’d do. He stormed into Stanley’s office to confront him. He screamed at Stanley to sign the mod or else. Henderson, me, and another manager heard the commotion in Stanley’s office. We got there just in time to pull Desmond out of the director’s office and walk him around the block to calm him down. Two days later, Desmond’s wife called to say he was in the hospital with a heart attack.

 

 

  The noise from the beeping monitors brings my mind back to the present. I watch a machine breathe for Des, forcing his chest up and then down. I know I won’t be back to see him again. I hate seeing an active man whose spirited walk, dapper clothes, and vivid derbies that belie his seventy-five years on this earth look so fragile. I’m right. I don’t see him alive again.

  The next time I see Des, I don’t see him. He’s due for cremation in forty minutes. I’m attending the memorial service in the crematorium’s chapel with Fabian Evans, my secretary, and several other cars full of supers and Desmond’s family.

  Stanley finally signs off on the mod for the roof job Des did almost a year ago. He signs it three months after we bury Des. The city sends the check to Desmond’s widow along with several other checks, but they send them in Desmond’s name. After Des died, his widow closed all of his accounts. She can’t cash any of his checks. Henderson and I return the checks, asking the city to change the name on the checks to Desmond’s wife. It’s been three months since we had that conversation with payroll. I wonder if Desmond’s widow will still be alive by the time she sees the checks.

 

  MR. JEFFERSON’S DUELING BOOK COVERS

 

 

  2008 cover 2016 cover

  It isn’t often in life we get a redo. Let me tell you about mine. The first edition cover of this book and its interior were a huge disappointment for me. Like a cavity in a sensitive tooth, I felt such pain at how my first book looked and read. At least one reviewer, some of my friends, and a few colleagues also noticed the obvious errors in spelling and punctuation in the book. Nobody was particularly crazy about the original cover artwork either.

  I decided to show you that cover, but don’t get confused as to which one to buy. They look totally different, don’t they? The cover on the left is the old one. The colorful cover on the right is the current one. Having 26 other book covers and novels under my belt, I think it’s the best one too! Anyway, the pain and embarrassment about my first book stayed with me. For eight long years, I wondered what I could do to change the way the book looked both inside and outside.

  Back in 2008, I was a newbie to Amazon’s Kindle. At the time, Create Space didn’t exist. With a private publisher doing all the work for me, I didn’t need to know anything about book publishing, marketing, or production. Hell, I was so happy that anybody wanted to publish my novel that I foolishly allowed my publisher to handle everything. I never asked them what they were doing. I didn’t ask how to do anything or why the publisher did what she did. I didn’t ask for passwords and codes so I could go online and learn for myself either. I trusted my publisher to a fault and that was my fault.

  I didn’t publish another book with them. I continued to write and I continued to wonder to do about that first edition. I checked with my union and they suggested I write to the publishers and ask them to remove the book from Amazon’s sales page. I’d already asked Amazon, but they couldn’t do it unless the publisher who had all the passwords and access codes requested it. I sent emails to the publisher, haunted their websites and other publisher sites, all to no avail. I learned later they had gone out of business. Now I was stuck with a book I’d written that needed severe editing and an eye-catching cover.

  I tried a bunch of different editors through the years but none of them seemed quite right for me or my subject matter. Fast-forward six years. In 2014, I finally found an editor who understood my needs. She connected me with a book cover artist who created attention-getting covers and book trailers. While all 26 books that I published with her have been romance novels, my gut said she’d be perfect choice to edit my memoirs too. Time will tell if my revised second edition sells. Once again, my gut says that it will. I hope I’ve made you curious enough to buy my workplace memoir.

  Thank you for reading this mini-version of selected stories from the second edition of my anthology, Mr. Jefferson’s Piano & Other Central Harlem Stories.

  BL Wilson

 

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