THE BLUE SUIT
Unvarnished heart to heart conversations between Josh Resnek and the mayor’s Blue Suit.
Tuesday was gorgeous. Still a bit chilly with the wind but growing a bit warmer under the sun. The spring, I think, does not want to happen. When the spring comes so late as it is this season, there is the tendency to think that the summer will be cool like the spring – not without warmth- but sunny, sometimes hot for a few days, but cool overall. That’s what I’m predicting. But then, what do I know about anything?
I picked up the Blue Suit at Sal’s Cleaners. He had a button sewn onto his right sleeve.
“Sal’s does a great job,” he said to me as he sank into the passenger seat and slammed shut the door.
“I know,” I said. “I get my clothes done at Sal’s. Just brought in a pile last week,” I told the Blue Suit.
“Hey, the Blue Suit called out to me. “I’ve got a story for you if you’ve got a story for me.”
I thought about that offer for a moment.
“I’ve got a Sal’s story for you,” I told the Blue Suit.
“I’ve got a city hall story for you,” the Blue Suit replied. “And it is quite a story, especially if it is true. I have every reason to believe it,” added the Blue Suit.
“You start, Josh,” he said.
“OK.”
“This story is a few years old but it sings about Carlo, the way he thinks, the way her treats people. iIt highlights how he likes getting all his needs free if he can,” I began.
I told the following story to the Blue Suit. Is the story true? I believe it is but I can’t swear to it.
“The mayor took his dirty cloths into Sal’s. He asked that they be cleaned.. When he came back several days later to pick up his clothes, he asked if the fellow behind the counter at Sal’s (who related this story to me) could take something off for the price of the cleaning. At first, the Sal’s employee balked. Then he thought about. Not wishing to disappoint the mayor, he took 10% off the bill.
“The next time the mayor brought in his cloths to be cleaned, the mayor demanded that the fellow behind the counter take off another 10%, which escalated when the mayor then demanded his cleaning to be done for free.
The Sal’s employee refused.
The mayor took the heat.
“The hell with you people. I’ll get the Asians to do it for free,” the mayor allegedly answered.
“The mayor left, never to be seen at Sal’s again,” I told the Blue Suit.
“How’s that for a story?” I asked the Blue Suit.
“If it happened that way, I’m not amazed,” said the Blue Suit. “OK, now me,” said the Blue Suit.
“I was listening in to a call that Carlo got a few days ago from someone at city hall. It seemed like an important call. I watched the expression on Carlo’s face as he listened to the caller on his cell phone inside his bedroom on Abbott Street. One moment he was laughing and couldn’t catch his breath. The next moment he was moaning softly.”
The Blue Suit said he thought the mayor was losing it.
‘”This is bad. This is bad. This is very bad,”’he said to whomever he was speaking with, according to the Blue Suit as he told it to me.
The Blue Suit laid out the story as he had overheard it: “A female city hall employee entered the office of a high level city hall employee to ask a question or to deliver a message. That’s a message not a massage, Josh. What she saw, caused her shock and despair. She is said to have trembled just a bit and looked around to make sure she wasn’t in trouble,” the Blue Suit told me.
“So what happened? What caused her to be so uptight?” I asked.
“The official she came to see was reading a pornographic magazine which was open on this desktop and which he was viewing when she walked in,” the Blue Suit told me.
“What happened next?” I asked.
“The woman ran out of his office and went up to Human Resources and filed a complaint,” the Blue Suit told me.
“What happened next?”
“Shortly thereafter the Everett Police arrived. The police interviewed the woman. I believe the city hall official was interviewed as well,” the Blue Suit told me.
“How embarrassing,” I said to the Blue Suit.
“Can I ask you this?” I said to the Blue Suit.
“You can ask me anything, Josh,” he answered.
“Do you know what kind of pornography the city official was looking at?” I asked him.
“What kind of pornography did the magazine he was holding depict,” I asked. “Do you know? Yes or no?” I asked.
“I know but I’m not saying. It was too disgusting.”
“I need to get the name of the city hall official. He needs to do some intensive therapy – the kind Anthony DiPierro must do to think his way out of the racism he practices. I think the same kind of treatment for pornography addiction is merited for the city hall official who got caught,” I said.
“What’s up with a city hall official who is studying pornography behind his desk during the workday?” I asked the Blue Suit.
“What’s up, you ask, Josh. I’d tell you what’s up but this is a family newspaper.”