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(Continued)
Hansen put ads in the paper, and I took on apprentices. I could tell in two hours if somebody had the knack, but two weeks was my boot camp trial period. I put them through hell and back but, when the 3500 came out in 1978, I had three foxhole-worthy techs under me. I was pulling in big bucks, had my own apartment and was sober for over three years.
***
In July of 1980 I had a “make nice” call. This was Hansen’s term for fix the copiers they had and try to sell or lease them something we got a bigger profit margin on. It was the McComb Insurance Company in the old Blackmon Building on Exeter Street.
I waltzed in and got directions to the copy center. I introduced myself to Ruthie Katz, who ran the place. They still had hand-cranked ditto machines, if you can believe it, along with some non-Xerox make machines that were more maintenance trouble than they were worth.
I spread out my blanket on the floor and started to work. Next thing I know Ruthie’s helping heft the machines away from the wall, kneeling right beside me, not caring one iota about her clothes or looking feminine. She was genuinely interested in how things worked and why her copier was a piece of junk (which it really was). She saw how I placed each part I removed on my repair blanket in a certain order.
I told her about a book Hap Harrison recommended to me, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It’s the only book I’ve ever read. The guy was an alcoholic like me who talked about repairing stuff using a Zen approach. It blew me away. Overnight I became a better repairperson and made my outfit read it cover to cover. Some nights when things were closing in on me, I’d open it at random. It was my way of meditating.
Anyway, I gave Ruthie an overview to the Robert Pirsig process of repairing things and all the while I sized her up. There have been thinner women in the world and prettier, but she was so comfortable to be with. Every once in a while someone came by with a copy job which they always wanted yesterday, and she never blinked or told them how backed up she was or that the machines were down. I fixed the copy room units and then toured the company’s two floors, working on the bosses’ personal copiers, intimating as I went that I’d have to be back in a week and that repair costs this year alone on the machines they had would outstrip what new copiers (the 4800 had just come out) might run them.
For the next few days I couldn’t get her out of my head. Any women I’d ever been with growing up, in Nam or Boston, weren’t exactly the type you could go nuts over. So a week later I was back at the Blackmon Building just to sort of check on things. Ruthie was up to her elbows with jobs but took some time over coffee to talk. I fixed a few glitches and was higher than a kite when she asked me if I’d like to go to lunch sometime. We settled on Friday.
I thought lunch might mean going out so I scouted the area for some decent places where we could get a table and talk. When I got to the copy center that Friday, she said we’d make do in the building cafeteria. In the basement there were a bunch of institutional tables and chairs and a row of vending machines.
Damned if she didn’t head over to a big fridge and come back with a hamper. I always felt egg salad was the most neglected sandwich, too pedestrian by today’s standards. But she’d made egg salad sandwiches that were a work of art together, mayonnaise with a curry kick, slices of Irish bacon, homemade half sour pickles and real brewed ice tea instead of a mix.
She came right out and said she was forty-three, unmarried and lived with her typical Jewish mother, a real handful, bedridden but alert as hell, who needed quite a bit of care. She had a home nurse who watched her while she was at work, but the rest of the time she was the sole caregiver.
I decided to lay it on the line about my past, how I was pretty much a screw-up in the army and how copiers and AA had changed my life. I didn’t want to bore her too much with technical stuff, new units that were coming on line, specifically the 6800 full-color
PPC. Instead I let her vent about the frustrations of being the “copy lady.” Men always wanted to tell off-color jokes or make risqué comments. It didn’t bother her, as she knew a few dirty stories that would curl their hair. It was more the dynamics of the office, and how rude people were when it came to using the machines. Would it kill anyone to put the copier back to its original settings! What does that take--three seconds to push a few buttons or hit the reset? Or how about the people doing their personal flyers who leave fluorescent green paper in the tray! And employees (men) who, when the machine jams, haven’t a clue, but they start pushing buttons, opening up drawers and poking pens and Swiss army knives into the guts of the machine before they admit defeat and do a runner. The next thing we knew it was three o’clock, a long lunch even for an executive.
***
For the next two decades egg salad sandwiches weren’t the only thing occupying our lunch breaks. Seeing her at night was mostly out because she had to take care of her mother. I never felt comfortable doing it on her couch anyway. Some strange noise or moan from the sick room was sure to interrupt the moment. My place was too far away for our “nooners” and Boston hotels can run you as much as a decent black and white copier.
We stole moments in nooks and crannies in her building, restaurant bathrooms and even a few church pews. We only had one vacation together, a long, intense weekend when she paid a nurse an arm and a leg. We went to Falmouth on the Cape, ate ourselves silly with seafood and screwed like there was no tomorrow. But the real highlight was on our way home. We stopped off at an old office park in Brockton. She led me into the place, chatted up the old geezer who ran things and dragged me into a back room. She went over to the corner and with a Vanna White flourish pulled off a dusty tarp.
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