CHAPTER 17
Little brown sausages/Lying in the sand/
I ain't no extra baby/I'm a leading man
Goin’ Out West
Tom Waits

The noon whistle blew, it’s shrill echo bouncing off the walls of the shop. The machinery that filled the shop; drill presses and buffers mostly, whined down to a stop as low chatter and the clang of tools hitting metal workbenches rose. Sully Branford wiped the sweat on his brow with a dark blue rag he kept in his back pocket.
     The shop air was thick with oil and sweat and made the men and women who worked in it feel sluggish and tired. Ten hours a day the shop ran, churning out bathroom faucets for the rest of the world to wash their hands with. It was a union shop, which meant sanctioned breaks and biannual strikes, but to the people who worked there, well, it was a job.
     Sully headed into the locker room with the rest and pulled out a black metal lunchbox and a five gallon jug of water from his locker. Sully learned a lot of tricks on the job, one of them being to keep hydrated if you want to make it through the day. He shut the locker and headed off with the rest to the lunchroom. For Sully and most of the others, the lunchroom was the last place on earth you’d want to sit and eat a meal. With it’s folding tables and chairs, acoustic tiled ceiling and fluorescent tube lighting, the lunchroom was sadly, like millions of other lunchrooms around the world.
     And like the other lunchrooms, this was one where the stories got told. The “sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, waistoids, dweebies, dickheads” they all congregated in their groups and much like the villages of a thousand years ago, they talked shit. Sully was not one to talk it much, but he did enjoy listening. The topic today? Where to spend your two weeks.
     “Vegas, baby, Vegas,” Arturo, the young arc welder shouted, making a dice rolling motion with his right hand.
     “Ah fuck that,” Ginnie, number three drill press spat. “The only difference now between Vegas and Disneyland is that it’s easier to get drunk and laid at the Matterhorn than the Mirage.”
     “You oughta know!” Arturo said.
     “Damn right, I oughta,”  Ginnie said with a sly grin. “And the polaroids to prove it.”
     “Nah, I’m good anywhere the fish are biting and there’s plenty of sky,” Wayne, from tool and dye said. “Eleven months and two weeks in this place and I need to see something natural or end shooting up the place.”
     All nodded in agreement.
     “Two weeks,” Stan, the shop steward said under his breath. “We were put on this earth for two weeks of freedom a year. Two weeks of doing whatever we want, within our means. Fish, gamble, sleep in. Two weeks. How far that gonna get you on a union pay to drill holes in metal?”
     The group ate quietly for a moment.
     “Jesus Stan,” Arturo said, “Bet you shoot rays on sunshine out your ass in bed.”
     The group erupted with laughter.
     “Bet Mrs. Stan gets fuckin’ blinded by the sunshine eminatin’ from your ass crack!”
     That laugher and cat calls continued, until Stan, shaking his head slowly, let slip a grin. When the laughter had died down, Sully pulled out a piece of torn newspaper he had folded neatly from his overalls pocket. He unfolded it and gently placed it on the lunch table for all to see, his hands softly patting out the creases. Necks crained.
     “Whaddya got there, Sully?” Ginnie asked.
     It was a half page newspaper ad for a place called “St. Agrippina.”
     “Saint Agri-Agrip-“ Ginnie tried to pronounce.
     “Saint Agrippina, “ Sully helped. “It’s an island in the Caribbean.”
     “You wouldn’t believe it,” Wayne read. “Huh. Does that price include airfare?”
     “Seems to be, Sully said.
     “Bet it’s like those timeshare things where you gotta sit through a spiel about buying some crappy condo,” Ginnie said.
     “You wouldn’t believe that it was possible for you to stand in clear jade waters. To pass through something called ‘Customs’. To hear a language you never heard before,” Stan read from the ad. “You going, Sully?”
     “I think we’ll take the grandkids,” Sully said. “Take them someplace that doesn’t look familiar to them.”
     “I’d double check on that price though,” Arturo said. “Stuff like this – there’s always a catch.”
     “Give us a break, Ralph Nader,” Ginnie said. “Like it’s a trip to a leper colony or maybe they’ll get eaten by pygmy cannibals?”
     “Pygmy cannibals?” Wayne said.
     “I didn’t know pygmies came in different sizes,” Stan said.
     “National Geographic asswipes?” Ginnie said. “Try switching it out for “Jugs” sometime.”
     “Thought they were the same thing,” Wayne said.
     “Sully, save yourself from these uncultured, boob obsessed union hacks,” Ginnie said. “And get your wife and grandkids on that fuckin’ plane.”
     Sully smiled. He’d already made reservations.