Now and Again (24 page)

B
y August, Max Gray's file was so full of documents that Maggie had to create another, which she labeled “Mickey Grant.” And her dresser drawer was so full of what she called evidence that she had to move the sweaters to a shelf in her closet. “Spring cleaning!” she announced when Lyle asked her what she was doing.

“It's not spring, it's summer,” said Lyle.

“My goodness,” said Maggie. “I'm behind.” But something had shifted, and inside Maggie, it was spring. It was as if she had spent the past twenty years not only keeping house and mothering, but also training for some clandestine project that was so top secret, even she hadn't been told what it was. Still, her intuition told her that a revelation was coming and that she had better be ready when it did.

She received a letter from George's lawyer saying that Tomás's documents had been received and forwarded to an attorney in another state, since cases had to be handled in the correct jurisdiction. Every time she tried to write a letter to Sandra Day O'Connor, the words sounded inadequate or easily dismissed. Finally, she wrote about Tomás's innocence and about how George was the victim of a prosecutorial vendetta for failing to inform on others, only mentioning at the end the cover-up concerning toxic munitions. Finally, she wrote that she too had been a Rainbow Girl, which had instilled in her a desire to work for the greater good, and that she would welcome any advice on how she should proceed. Then she signed her name and dropped the envelope off at the post office before she could change her mind.

One oppressive day in the middle of a week when the temperature had reached 100 degrees for five days in a row, Maggie returned from lunch to find a report titled
Prisons and Profits
sitting on Valerie's desk. Since Valerie was nowhere in sight, Maggie carried it with her to the cool dungeon of the file room, where she could read it undisturbed. The article talked about the revenue generated by three-strikes laws, where offenders would get mandatory sentences of twenty-five years to life for their third criminal conviction.

Attached to the article with a paperclip was a newspaper story about the Supreme Court Ruling referred to in the article, the one that upheld the harsh laws and sentencing. The majority opinion had been written by Sandra Day O'Connor.

There must be some mistake, Maggie told herself as she copied the set of documents and made her way back to the basement to add them to Mickey Grant's file. Sandra Day O'Connor was a highly educated woman of the world. She was a wife and mother of three who was revered by many and respected by all. How could she have upheld such draconian measures? There must be some vantage point from which things would be clear—if only she could find it! But then it occurred to Maggie that the justice had been duped and used. But duped and used by whom? Despite the August heat and the flagging air conditioning and the blazing inner furnace that had powered her up and down the stairs to the file room five times by one o'clock, her blood ran cold and a rush of adrenaline caused her heart to thump and her muscles to tense in preparation for confronting…but what exactly was the threat? And why did she think she could do anything about it?

Just as Maggie was deciding she should put all of the original documents back where she had found them and shred all of the copies she had made, she heard a rustle of fabric somewhere in the vastness of the file room. She hadn't turned on the lights when she entered and whoever had come in after her hadn't turned them on either, so the only illumination came in thin, mote-speckled shafts from the windows high above her. Was she being followed? Had someone discovered she was stealing documents? And was that person trying to keep her from passing on the information she had learned?

The rustle of clothing came again, and with it, the slightest tap of a shoe against the concrete floor and the soft hiss of air being sucked in and then expelled again. Should she continue to hide, or should she start to whistle, as if she were happily engrossed in some minor secretarial task? Filing—she'd say she was filing. But who in tarnation would she say Mickey Grant was if whoever had just entered the basement grabbed the fictitious file out of her hands and demanded an explanation?

Slowly she tensed her muscles and straightened her knees until she was standing. Slowly she slipped the article into the incriminating file and replaced the file in the drawer and eased the drawer shut. As she did so, she hummed a hymn from church, softly at first, and then a little louder:
If I get there before you do, Comin' for to carry me home. I'll cut a hole and pull you through, Comin' for to carry me home.

Cut a hole in what? she wondered. Even getting to heaven seemed like a prison break.

The shaky notes covered the sound of the file drawer, but also the sounds coming from other parts of the room, so she wasn't expecting it when Hugo suddenly put his arms around her from behind and spun her into his arms, stifling her cry of surprise with a forceful kiss. Before she could stop him, his hand was up underneath her blouse and he was whispering in her ear, “You knew I was following you, didn't you? You wanted to find a place to be alone.”

“Oh my goodness, Hugo. I didn't…You startled…I can't…”

“Oh, yes,” breathed Hugo. “Oh, yes you can.”

“I have to go!” cried Maggie in alarm.

“What's the big rush?”

“The director has asked for these files ASAP. If I don't get them back to him quickly, Valerie will come looking for me, and you know how Valerie is.”

“What files?” asked Hugo, nodding at Maggie's empty hands, which were pushing against his chest.

“The ones I've come to get!”

“Why? What does he want them for?”

“I don't know, and I wouldn't tell you even if I did. What kind of assistant would I be if I gossiped about my supervisor's business?” Maggie felt on surer ground now, and her air of authority seemed to be having a good effect because Hugo took his hands off her breasts and moved a step away from her.

“Well, don't keep me waiting too long,” he said. “I'm not what you'd call a patient man.”

It thrilled and repelled Maggie that Hugo was the sort of man who took what he wanted and that he wanted her. All the way home, she tried to shake off the notion that she had a dark side after all, and when she was unsuccessful at that, she told herself that all people had a dark side, but they had a noble side too, and it was how they used their various sides that mattered. She told herself that it didn't take anything away if doing a good thing entailed a few thrills and indiscretions along the way. And then she told herself that people with no experience of the underbelly of existence would have none of the tools needed to fight against it.

That evening she arrived home to find two letters in the mailbox. One was her letter to Sandra Day O'Connor, which had been returned unopened. The second was from the new appellate attorney, saying he had received Tomás's documents from a colleague and asking her to call. It was only when the two envelopes were lying side by side on the kitchen counter that she noticed that both the lawyer and the former justice were in Phoenix, Arizona.

Phoenix, she thought as she dialed the attorney's number.

“First the good news,” said the attorney, who answered the phone himself. “The arresting officer in the case was later investigated for a string of false arrests. That's very good for your man Tomás. The bad news is that I'm overworked and understaffed. And I'm going to need to hire a private investigator. All of which means I'll take the case if you can foot part of the bill.”

“I don't know how I'll do that,” said Maggie.

“How about we trade services, then? You could come to work for me to offset some of the cost. Just until I find someone else.”

“Can I think about it and call you back?”

“Absolutely,” said the attorney with a chuckle. “It's not as if Tomás is going anywhere.”

Phoenix, Maggie thought again. Sandra Day O'Connor was in Phoenix, and even if the idea of meeting the justice in person was far-fetched, once it had occurred to her, she couldn't get the notion out of her mind. Besides, a letter wasn't the right form of communication for her message, which had grown far beyond the individual cases of Tomás and George and even beyond the fact that radioactive substances were putting soldiers and munitions workers at risk. Human beings were being trafficked for corporate interests right underneath everyone's noses! The judicial system was being used for private and political ends! Slavery was legal, at least in certain circumstances! All of which was far too much for a flimsy letter to convey. She would go to Phoenix, but first she had to get the rest of her evidence out of the prison, which, given the tight security and Hugo's increasingly aggressive state of mind, wouldn't be so easily done.

L
yle had driven the forklift for four years, and whenever MacBride, who was the deputy director of fulfillment and shipping, said, “You're doing a great job, Rayburn. Keep it up and there's bound to be a promotion in it,” Lyle always said, “Yes sir” and felt pleased even though he never really expected anything to come of it. But now he wondered if he should knock on MacBride's office door and ask more about the promotion. When he mentioned it to Jimmy Sweets, Jimmy encouraged him. “Hell yeah,” said Jimmy. “What are you waiting for?”

After that, Jimmy would bring it up whenever they were alone. “Did you do it?” Jimmy would ask, and then he would say, “Try it on me. Pretend I'm MacBride and see if you can convince me to give you a raise.”

“Not a raise,” said Lyle. “A promotion.”

“The only reason anyone wants a promotion is to get a raise,” said Jimmy. “Otherwise there wouldn't be any point.”

“I'm waiting for the next time he stops by the floor.”

But when MacBride came through ten minutes later, he said, “He's always in a better mood after he turns in the monthly report. I'll ask him after that.”

“Don't wait too long,” said Jimmy, “or he'll give the promotion to someone else.”

Lyle could imagine himself saying, “About that promotion, sir,” but he wouldn't know what to say next. Jimmy could probably give him an idea of the words to use, but Jimmy was fond of pulling people's legs, and it might be hard to tell if he was being sincere in his advice or setting Lyle up as part of a joke. And it wasn't as if Jimmy, who had worked as a supervisor in the shipping operation for fifteen years, had ever gotten a promotion himself. When Lyle finally said, “How would you ask him? Let me hear you do it,” Jimmy replied, “First of all, it isn't about what you want. It's about what MacBride wants. You don't catch a fish by dangling pretty girls or chocolate cake under its nose. You use worms.”

“Sure,” said Lyle. “But what does that have to do with it?”

“Once you figure out what MacBride wants, you tell him how you can help him get it. You make him believe he can't get it without you.”

“How do I do that?”

“The particular words aren't important, but you have to make yourself seem indispensable to the operation at hand.”

It sounded very complicated to Lyle, and he almost gave up on the idea altogether. “Heck,” he said. “I'm happy where I am.”

“But underutilized,” said Jimmy. “Not to mention underpaid.”

When Lyle saw Jimmy in the break room the afternoon the monthly report was due, Jimmy winked at him and said, “It all boils down to tactics and execution.” Then he told Lyle that above everything else was strategy and goal-setting. “There are only a few real goal-setters in the world, and most of them are CEOs and generals. They set the agenda, and then it's up to the rest of us to get things done. MacBride is in tactics, and you,” he said giving Lyle a poke in the chest, “you're in execution.”

It sounded like a death sentence to Lyle, who had never asked himself any of the large questions Jimmy not only asked, but seemed to have an answer for. But once the idea of a promotion had occurred to him, it was like standing on a cliff looking down at a swimming hole. The only way to shut the cycle of indecision down was to jump.