Michael hesitated, then shook the proffered hand of his new foreman. It was Michael's first day at the General Motors axle plant in Buffalo, NY. He did not like to shake hands.
"They always call me Michael, not Mike," he answered the foreman's inquiry.
Michael looked odd. He was thin, and his thin red hair was graying. In this summer heat, most of the axle plant workers wore tee shirts and dungarees that were infrequently washed. He wore spotless faded old-fashioned coveralls and a freshly laundered white dress-shirt. The practical jokers soon discovered Michael's exaggerated startle upon being goosed. They plagued him with goosing his first week on the new job. Then he started carrying a monkey wrench in his left hand. The last goose produced a startle that cost the prankster a nasty swollen eye.
Michael's fellow workers might have been even more careful of him had they known of the Glock nine-millimeter automatic which he had concealed in a felt-lined mold in the bottom of his ancient two-suiter. The United States Attorney's Office however did have knowledge of Michael and this more lethal weapon. They ordered surveillance by one of their part-time stringers.
So, Michael became Lola's quarry. She worked the tool crib at the plant. These occasional assignments put zest into existence for her. Now, she applied her elaborate make-up with special care. A new hunt gave a rush that put the self-blaming out of her mind. She had once had a Michael of her own. After 17 years together, her Michael left without a word. Lola knew he blamed her for Annie bleeding to death after that back-alley abortion. Too often after that, she heard old ladies cluck, "Like mother, like daughter." She welcomed anything that offered the chance of smothering her gutted, split-open, empty grief. Hunting could do that, she knew.
The axle plant had over a thousand workers on the day shift, but locating Michael was not difficult. On the way to lunch she heard someone hoot at him in his white shirt, "Hey Michael, you covering for the Super today?"
In the cafeteria, Lola watched him. Michael wiped as much of his table clean of crumbs and coffee as the other occupants would allow. He wiped the seat before he sat down. As he ate his baloney sandwiches and, peeled and ate an orange, he read an article from a worn copy of the Reader's Digest. When he finished, he poured half a cup of condensed milk from a glass jar into a container of coffee, drank the mixture, then ran quickly through his Rosary.
The pale yellow milk lit a memory for Lola, the color of Annie's skin after she had bled to death. Lola tossed her black hair trying to shake loose the image of her dead daughter, her martyred daughter. Life would not let her off that easy.
A young stud machinist apprentice, with a tiny gold ring in his ear, swaggered to the lunchroom bulletin board. He tacked up a computer graphics depiction of the international sign favoring legalized abortion. His walk and his black coat hanger in a red circle negated by a red slash both sneered defiance at the lunchroom.
The stud returned to his table of buddies. Lola watched. Michael approached the poster, methodically inspected it, then starring over the head of the stud; he quartered the sheet of paper and crumpled the sections, tossing them one by one into the rubbish. Lola expected a fight. But it was the stud's friend that Michael had nearly blinded with the wrench hanging in full view from the loop in his Coveralls.
Lola sauntered back to her station at the tool crib, planning her campaign. She had buried guilty sadness beneath her over-ripe good looks and she sensationalized this seductive beauty with her manner. The tool crib job gave her the opportunity to flirt and gossip with every man in the plant. She had an uncouth good nature but women either loved or hated her as they watched vicariously her tantalizing of men. The strategic location and her demeanor made Lola the plant rumor switchboard.
Lola with her friendly, flirtatious manner and position at the center of things got all the plant news, first. She was also an important part of that news. Everyone had stories about Lola. And as she launched into this latest assignment the whole shop wondered what it was that she saw in Michael. They attributed her coming on to him to her well known poorly regulated lust and questionable taste.
She was alert to word of this new Michael in her life, sent to relieve the tedium. She learned Michael had a virtue that redeemed his oddness in the eyes of many. He knew the axle plant's machines better than mechanics that had been there for years. The assemblers on the line started waiting to submit repair chits, until Michael was up for the next job.
For a long time a certain married man from personnel had, unaccountably to himself, failed in his pursuit of Lola's favors. Lola passed a couple of double entendres his way. There was a close brush of bodies between them. Soon Lola had him pouring out information about Michael. Michael had asked for his transfer here from the Detroit stamping plant even though it cost him seniority; Michael lived alone in a motel near Stolka's Bar.
Lola's handler at the US Attorney's office checked dates. Michael had asked for the transfer during the week that CNN featured "Campaign for Life." Reverend Billy Day Orr announced, "Campaign for Life will shut down that bloody assembly line in Buffalo, run by the antichrist Davidson." The Davidson Woman's Clinic was a regional center for abortion located in Buffalo, NY
.Michael avoided Lola and the tool crib as much as he could. Her appearance and the sexual innuendo he had picked up about her, frightened him. When he had to approach her, he did so with exaggerated belligerence. Over the factory din he shouted at her, "That number eight rat-tail bastard you give me was crap! Get me a new one!"
"Wasn't that you carrying the big skull and cross-bone sign in front of the Davidson Clinic on Saturday?" Lola spoke in a husky teasing voice. Eye make-up and crimson lipstick worked well for the dark haired full-figured woman, even in a tool crib.
"What's it to you?” said Michael. “Could you get me a decent number eight rattail file, please?"
"Hey, hey, hey, honey buns. I just wanted to say `Howdy to a fellow traveler.'" And she flashed those exciting eyes of hers at Michael.
"Fellow traveler?" said Michael.
"No. I just meant, me and Rose, we got picked up by the cops at the clinic. `Harassing,' is what they claimed we were doing. All those cops wanted was a free feel."
"Oh," said Michael.
"We went limp. Like they tell you, in them classes. Well, they don't tell you everything in them classes... What did you do with that file I gave you?"
"We need good people out there ... The file? I threw it in the scrap."
"Hon, you can't do that. Every tool I give out has a control number."
"You aren't going to try to charge me?"
"No," she sighed. "Keep your shorts on Michael. Just remember next time." She reached back into her pigeonhole racks and came out with a brand new number eight rattail. "Here, take this one. I been saving it for somebody special. "She blew him a kiss.
A bolt of excitement sent sweat dripping down his armpits and forced Michael to abruptly snatch the file and walk away. Lola called after him, "You don't have to thank me. Just leave a pink lady for me with the bartender at Stolka's."
The afterimage of Lola's breasts and flashing eyes, stayed with him. His heart thumped in his ears. He found he had returned to work at the wrong grinder.
Michael longed for his estranged wife, Ursula. A disturbing thought intruded; was Lola available? He shuddered at having allowed that idea into his mind.
Such thoughts careening in his head spoiled the stabilizing effect of his end-of-the-day routine. The dinner he ate when he was away from Ursula, two Big Macs, a large order of fries and a chocolate shake, lost its appeal. His body demanded those calories to fuel his torment. He choked the food down.
Picking up the ones he had left the previous day, he dropped his soiled shirt and coveralls at the Laundromat with the Korean. The Korean offered as usual, "Oksan iron shirt for you? I make you good price."
Michael was tempted to agree, so that he might get a look at the Korean's wife. As soon as he realized the reason for his hesitation, he shook his head violently to rid himself of the thought and hurried off.
In the heat of his room, Michael absorbed himself in ironing. The heat seemed to conjure before him wobbling images of Lola and of the Korean woman. Neither the TV nor the air conditioner had responded to his tinkering. He had no western movie or evangelist preacher to dispel the image of Lola in a kimono, the Korean woman in a bikini, both of them nude. Again and again he flushed them from his mind.
Expecting little he had phoned the motel owner about the non-functioning appliances. He slammed the phone down, “Stupid, incompetent...!"
He stripped to his jockey shorts. He was a thin, hollow-chested man. He had the knobby elbows and the overdeveloped forearms of a mechanic who had worked too long with hand-tools. A few strands of gray hair curled in the sweat on his almost hairless chest. He looked in the mirror at the patchy baldness of his head and worried that the baldness was from too much masturbating or from some other disease.
He weighed the idea of masturbating right then. It might be a necessary thing, in order to escape these terrible sexual thoughts. Would the relief be worth the guilt? No. Unless he could believe the evil one, the devil himself, had forced all these sexual temptations in his way.
He brushed that idea aside and dialed his home number in Detroit. He was sure that talking to Ursula would help. No. A busy signal.
Michael remembered how much he and Ursula had wanted a baby to care for. He wanted it so badly that he could even then smell the odor of baby, could imagine that odor in their childless house.
Michael's grief had evolved from guilt and bitterness towards himself into hatred and obsession with a target, Dr. Robert J. Davidson. Rage at Davidson poured over Michael and drowned the sexual passion that thoughts of Lola and Ursula had aroused. He took the Model 21 Glock automatic pistol from its snug concealment. He stroked its smooth blue matte finish as he held it to his nose and inhaled the aroma of gun oil. He released the clip and ejected it from the handle, worked the action, pointed the pistol at the bare hanging light bulb, slowly squeezed the trigger and exclaimed “bang” as the hammer clicked. He cleaned the weapon, oiled it and lovingly replaced it. He felt better.
Michael was curious that Lola had known to suggest he buy her a drink at Stolka's. At 8:00 he prepared for his nightly visit there by dressing in red plaid shorts and a striped shirt, both starched and neatly ironed.
The bartender whistled as he entered. "Hey Michael, what kind of an outfit is that, you're always wearing, anyway?"
Michael answered only, "A shot and a beer, please."
Getting no rise out of Michael, the bartender played it straight. "A very attractive dame left you a message."
"What message?"
"She said you should meet her. Campaign For Life is meeting at St. Agnes' school hall."
Michael thought for a long, long time before deciding that a quick look into the meeting might steady his resolve for tomorrow.
Reverend Billie Day Orr was leading the meeting in the school hall. General Billie, as the "soldiers" of his campaign liked to call him, wore dungarees and a western style shirt. He sat at the front table chatting and handing out Xeroxed photos of the great Satan, Doctor Robert J. Davidson.
As Michael entered the room he saw Lola fanning away the heat with a movie magazine as she pulled at the top of her gossamer, peasant blouse. She smiled at him. Reverend Orr was about to speak so Michael was relieved of the necessity of crossing the room to join Lola. Accepting a cup of grape Kool-Aid and a coconut washboard cookie covered his anguish.
Reverend Orr launched into a soul-blistering account of a handsome young couple that had gone astray. The beautiful young girl had wanted to keep their baby. Her parents forced her to accept a date at Dr. Davidson's "assembly line to hell." The boy pleaded with Reverend Billie, "Save my baby!"
"I am going to save that baby! Are you with me?" he shouted. The crowd in the room roared its assent.
Michael picked up one of Reverend Orr’s pictures of Doctor Davidson by the doctor’s helicopter. Immediately after the closing prayer, Michael made for the door. Lola called to him, "Michael, wait up."
He halted a moment. She reached to touch his arm, "It was so nice of you to come to the meeting, Michael." Her lacquered nails made the undersurface of his bare forearm tingle. "Did you like our strategy session?"
"They got so much, they got so much ..." he stumbled.
"Love, yes, they are so full of love,” Lola said.
"I've got to go," Michael said.
"You are shy,” she said emphasizing the ‘are’. "I guess that goes along with goosey, doesn't it?"
Michael turned redder and stammered, “I don't, I don't know what..."
"Oh, come on Michael. Everyone knows you're goosey. I think it's cute. Goosey guys are supposed to be the sexiest things."
"I don't, I don't know about that," he said.
"Would you like a cold beer? I live around the corner, "Lola said.
Michael struggled with himself bitterly but Lola's closeness, or perhaps some receptive odor of her body stripped away his defenses. He quickly followed her.
Lola's one-bedroom apartment was crowded with overstuffed furniture and tasseled velvet pillows. An icy beer promised to help him relax but his hateful erection gave him no quarter. He pointed to a picture of a plump dark-haired young woman, "Your daughter?"
"Was," Lola answered her voice trailing off, “Annie--- poor baby, died---having an abortion."
"Kids," he said shaking his head.
"So, I do what I can for other people's children."
It seemed to Michael as if it was someone else that put the exploratory hand on Lola's bare shoulder. At first, he felt no resistance only subtle compliance. He set the beer on the floor and pulled her to him. The beer can teetered and spilled.
Lola spoke out with a rush of bitterness, "What about you Michael, what do you do, to save little girls and their babies?"
"I will do my share," he said as he buried his muzzle in her neck. Both their breaths came quicker.
Lola's body had gone abruptly from soft and inviting to rigid and demeaning. She held him just millimeters from her, "You mean something besides, drink Kool-Aid and yell, `Go get `em Reverend Billie'"
"You have no idea!" He said panting, slavering at her throat and yearning to crawl into her soft flesh and in that luxury to clench and stretch till he was free. He thought, there is license before battle. Patton was a great Christian general. He understood. "If my men can fight across Europe then they can Fuck across Europe" Am I not a soldier of Christ.
She restrained his exploring left hand, "Michael, fornication is a sin. Unless ... Tell me why I should let you."
Michael said, "Tomorrow, I will kill him."
"Who are you going to kill, tomorrow?"
"Davidson," he said.
"Dr. Davidson, the abortion guy?"
"Yes!" He twisted his hand free and used it to ply her where she was soft and warm.
"How will you do it?"
"I have Davidson's picture," Michael grunted. Thrusting against her he said, “I have an Automatic Pistol.”
“So I see,” she said smiling.
He pulled away, eyes flashing wild he exalted, "I am the fist of God!"
Swept along by his exultant confession and her own crescendo of arousal Lola opened her mouth for his great descending kiss. Then she took this would-be Soldier of Christ to her bed and voluptuously enjoyed him. The knowledge that she had defeated him gave permission to the pleasure she took in it.
Michael returned to his room where he loaded thirteen hollow-point rounds into a clip and slid the clip up the Glock's grip. He carefully cleansed himself, put out freshly ironed clothes for his final day of work and slept the sleep of the innocent.
Lola did not rest so easy. After her victorious climaxing and after the departure of her second Michael, she stripped the soiled linen from her bed. She remembered the bloody sheets from Annie's home made abortion.
Lola thought, Was it because of me? Was she ashamed of me, afraid of me? Who was I to tell her abortion was a sin? Who was I to tell her anything?
Lola thought of the use she had made of her body that day, of the despised skill with which she had betrayed that man, a tormented man who thought he was on the mission of a saint... or of an angel.
Her body had rejoiced in it. Now she felt leprous. "But I meant it for you, Annie," she whimpered.
She dredged up a remnant of tough self-confidence and made a brief call to her supervisor in the US Attorney's office. "I think we got a clean bust on this creep," she said into the black mouthpiece.
"Yeah, I got it on tape. Everything."
"The meeting, too."
"Looks good for racketeering convictions on Orr and maybe even the Saint Agnes PTA. It was their hall."
Lola put down the phone and in the evening’s heat let a cleansing tepid soak restore her.