The Glass Factory (5 page)

I ask her, “Don’t you know there’s a mousse shortage?”

She shakes her cotton-candy conk and laughs at my joke, then she springs like a coiffed gazelle into a yellow convertible and
Vrrooooms!
off to work. I realize now I could have used the ride.

Rosita uses hot wax (no thanks), so I’ve got to shave my legs and underarms with a razor rough enough to plane a door. I hate job interviews.

Elvis’s friends come by to carpool, and I charm them into driving me to the bus stop. Billy doesn’t move from the couch.

I never knew the term “Bus Stop” was so open to interpretation. It takes me an hour and a half to determine that no buses are stopping here this millennium. I guess we’re all supposed to drive. Having given myself nearly two hours’ head start, I’ve now got fifteen minutes to make it to an interview in a town I’ve never heard of. I get to a deli phone and call a cab. Twenty minutes later a cab comes for me, takes us on a long ride and drops us at the door to absolutely nowhere. It takes me several minutes to realize that the place I’m looking for is a warehouse a thousand feet from the road. Going to have to check the classifieds for used cars.

Sweaty and stressed-out—and it’s only 10:15—I arrive and I find out I needn’t have rushed. The place has set up about twenty-eight interviews for “10:00
A.M.
sharp,” and the wait begins. They get to me just before noon. I tell them I’ve taught Survival English before, and they stop me in mid-speech to tell me that they are
not
interested in having me teach the immigrant workers filling the place anything besides what they need to know to follow simple commands. Like “fetch,” “roll over” and “play dead”?

The next two jobs—the ones that wanted “bright, intelligent, innovative, fast learners”?—are boring, repetitive and mindless. Now that’s false advertising. The last one wants a urine sample. I piss in the cup and shove the wallet-sized copy of the Bill of Rights I carry down into the specimen jar. Should be in a museum: “Piss Fourth Amendment.”

I just don’t have time for this shit anymore, but without the income I can’t get to where I need to be in order to skewer Morse’s head on a stake. It’s just taking so
long.

We hitch a ride to the hospital. It’s eight miles out of the guy’s way but I talk him into it. Sometimes the truth works, too.

Dr. Chu is kind enough to see me, but it still takes sixty dollars to confirm that I need to see the lung specialist who isn’t available until next Tuesday. Damn. But I do get some help. The accounts payable clerk is one of those exceedingly rare lifers, permanently adhered to her institutional chair, who has
not
become a bloodless paper handler. She tells me the hospital has an income-based financial assistance program, but I have to apply for Medicaid first and be rejected. Makes sense. I ask her where the County Office of Social Services is, she tells me Coram.

Where the hell is Coram? Only about fifteen miles southeast of Running River, but twenty dollars each way by cab or three hours by bus. Screw this. Turns out we’re walking distance from the train station. Running River’s a pretty nice-looking North Shore village. It’s good to know there are still some trees left on Long Island. Two hours later Antonia and I are chugging through the Sunnyside train yards and into the tunnel under the East River to Penn Station. We spend the night at my friend Charrito’s and the next day I take all my stuff out of storage, sell half of it to the guy running the place and haul the rest downtown to sell it for whatever I can get. It takes all day for my music, my clothes, my couch, my comforts to fetch $350 in American money. And I take it.

Friday morning we’re back on Long Island and I’m answering ads for used cars. The first two are pieces of crap, but the third has just been tuned to sell, and I bully the guy down from $500 to $225 in three minutes he’ll probably never want to go through again (the ad said $750), but I’m already a week closer to death and not one minute closer to nailing Morse. The heap has a single sun-faded fuzzy die, minus its partner, dangling from the rear view mirror. I reach up reflexively to yank it off, then decide to leave it. They tell me God does not play dice. And He has the house advantage.

We drive to Coram so I can waste the afternoon at Social Services. Two claims processors are trying to screen seventy hot, frustrated people who spill out of the room and into the hall.

Another fraction of my life is gone forever by the time they get to me. They ask me for “Evidence of Identity,” which turns out not to be as easy as I thought. I learn that the card I’ve been carrying for more than a decade is
not
my Social Security card but the “receipt,” and that they need to see the actual card—which means I lost it maybe twelve years ago and I have to apply for a new one, which will take three to four weeks at least. This is time I don’t have. It takes another couple of hours to find out we’re not even close to being eligible for Medicaid because we’ve got too many assets. I was honest and said I was living with family and that I had just bought a car. I won’t make that mistake again.

Saturday morning we drive to a bank so I can apply for a short-term loan to cover medical costs. They’re digging into my credit record when I realize that this is one of those S&Ls that my taxes are now bailing out. So I’ve got a better credit record than they do and they’re checking
me
out! None of this makes me feel any better. I still don’t know what I’m going to do about paying the doctor bills. I suppose I could probably run them up, die, and have them bill my estate. But then I remember they really do that. So Antonia will be four years old and $30,000 in debt.

I don’t think so.

So what do I do?

I think. I know how Morse does business. He’s slick, tough and greedy, but his cockiness sometimes makes him a bit sloppy. I nearly nailed him for tax evasion two years ago. If I can prove he’s still at it, the IRS will pay me ten percent of the first $75,000 recovered, capping the reward at $100,000, which would provide nicely for Antonia, at least until she’s eighteen. There must be a few weak links in his chain of power, I’ve just got to find one. Something he’s done that’ll cost him a
lot
of money if I can get him on it.

And if that doesn’t work,
then
I’ll kill him.

“Hospitable economic climate,” huh? Not for me or anybody else I’ve met out here, it isn’t. Chain stores I thought were national institutions are closing up, putting thousands out of work, others are “trimming” staff by fifty percent, and those who are left with jobs are being blackmailed into double overtime at no compensation because if they won’t do it, there’s a long line of people who will.

By Saturday night I can’t take any more and I find myself slouching on the couch next to Billy with about the same dazed stupor overcoming my features. Billy’s excuse is the six empty beer cans in a rough semicircle around his feet. Mine is just mental strain, physical tension and extreme mortal anxiety. There isn’t enough beer in the world to fix that (although some have tried).

“Man, that Elijah Watson can steal a basketball from a moving train.”

I look over. Billy spoke to me. I’ve had other things on my mind, but I’ve learned to go for an opening wherever I can find one. I could use someone in this house who answers me back.

“It’s those long arms,” I say. “And twenty years of practice on the toughest playgrounds in the city.” Pause. Then: “What happened to your arm?” I’ve noticed he doesn’t use his left arm. He tells me he’s had almost no use of it since nearly two years ago while playing high school football he was tackled and landed on an upturned shard of broken beer bottle left on the field from the previous week’s victory party. Ouch. That explains a lot, but not enough. His arm may be no good for football, but I’ve seen a lot of torn cartilage in my years and his doesn’t look that serious—I mean, he can open beer cans and change the channel pretty well with it. No, this kid doesn’t
want
to move. I sense he needs help, but more than I can spare for anybody else right now.

Or so I think.

Sunday morning we all finally submit to the pretense of going to church as a group, and the Old Testament reading is a command from Proverbs to “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves,” and “not to stand idly by while your neighbor bleeds.” Though it doesn’t say anything specific about your neighbor slowly wasting away from lung cancer, I figure that’s the general idea. After church Billy refuses the car ride, says he’ll walk back with Antonia and me. That’s news to everybody. We stop at a bakery and Antonia blackmails me into getting her pistachio cookies. I hand the cashier a fifty-dollar bill. She checks it carefully and
snaps
the change as she counts it off.

“You’ve done this before, I see.”

We’re halfway through the bag when Billy takes us past the school and stands at the fence, staring at the football field.

“This is the last time I fought for anything,” he tells me. “At least I knew what was up. The game had
rules.
There’s no more rules to follow.”

“Sure there are.”

“Like what?”

“Like it says in the Bible: to fight for the little guy.”

“The little guy ain’t always right.”

We stare for a few more minutes, then walk past this school where for twelve long years he learned he was useless for anything other than football—and now he can’t even do that. I tell him mistakes in life should be like mistakes in the kitchen—throw them right out.