Al thought he and his women were discreet as possible with their affairs. If he was real busy, and couldn’t go by to see one, she was very understanding about it. He only saw them during the day, while he was on route to or from doing a work order in their building. If he wasn’t assigned a work order for the building, Al didn’t go by their apartment. They just waited until he showed up. At least, that’s what he thought they were doing.
Patricia, though, was starting to get suspicious. One day she called Al into her office. She sat down behind her desk with her arms folded on top of it. She wasn’t smiling.
“Have a seat, Al.”
He took off his cap, and sat down on the chair directly in front of her desk. He held his clipboard in his hand.
“Why do I have female tenants calling and asking for you to fix their stuff all of a sudden? I never had tenants ask for you by name before recently. But lately, some of them are calling, and asking specifically for you to do their work.”
He needed to know who was calling for him. He couldn’t help but ask.
“Who are you talking about? Are they complaining about my work?”
“I’m not going to name names. But, I know who they are.”
He realized that he was playing verbal Poker with a master player. She was holding the best cards right now. He had to stay cool.
“Well, I don’t know why any tenant would call for me, Patricia. Why don’t you ask them?”
“I have. They all say you do good work, and you’re nice and polite.”
He knew he had to appear to be serious about the situation. Patricia could smell bullshit from a mile away.
“Pat, you can’t blame a brother for doing good work and being courteous.”
He kept a serious look on his face, and met Patricia’s stare for stare.
“You do good work, it’s true. But I can blame a brother if he’s doing more than repairs around here with these female tenants.” She wasn’t smiling, and she wasn’t bluffing.
He made up his mind that he needed to call her bluff before she asked for more detailed information. He needed to be indignant. He started to wring his cap in his hand to show that he was offended.
“Pat, don’t look at me. You know my Code. You better look at some of these other brothers around here first!”
He needed to deflect her attention away from what she suspected. He couldn’t afford to have the site manager up in his face. Patricia was just as determined to get her point across.
“Look, Al. My job is to look at all of you brothers. I know how it is in the field. Women show up at the door half naked most of the time. You telling me you’ve been able to resist a naked woman for six years here? I don’t think so. But what I do know is, you better not get caught if you’re doing anything, or else your ass will be outta here, fast, my brother!”
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