The Glass Factory (15 page)

“Okay, I’ll level with you,” I say, flipping my wallet open to a photo of Antonia. Whoops. Wrong side. I flip it over and repeat the gesture, flashing my old badge.

Kelly smiles nervously. “You’re a cop?”

“Relax, ma’am. I left my rule book behind years ago.”

“Then why do you still carry that badge? Isn’t that illegal?”

“Legalities have not been working for me lately.”

“Oh. Well, I’ve got a meeting with the Graduate Studies Committee—” She’s gathering her things.

“Then why did you order coffee? No, wait. This is not starting out the way I’d like. Let me tell you something. Then you can go if you want. It’ll only take a minute.”

She hesitates. I’ve got too many dangling threads already. I don’t want another loose one.

“I’m trying to solve a crime.”
That
gets nowhere. Okay: “I’m also trying to protect Long Island from a company that’s poisoning the environment with toxic waste.”

“Then why are you talking to me?”

Because I have no freaking proof. Dammit.

“The man who owns this company—well, he hurt me. I know what he’s doing is illegal, but I’m not a cop anymore, so it’s not going to be easy to build a case against him.”

She asks, “Then what is your method?”

Right. My method.

“Let me tell you something: I’ve been an American citizen for more than ten years, but I still get a lot of doors slammed in my face for being a dark-skinned
latina.
But it was a lot worse my aunt’s day. One time they wouldn’t even let her in to a movie theater. Said she was bringing in her own food. Was she mad? You bet your ass. What could she do? I’ll tell you: She spent the night gathering moths from all the porch lights in the neighborhood, then she got someone to go back for her, smuggle in a jar of moths and set them loose in the darkened theater. They all went for the projector lamp and ruined the show.” I look into her eyes, giving her a moment for the description of my method to sink in. “I want to release moths in his theater.”

Slowly, she nods. I tell her, “It’s a very fucked up situation, and I can’t fix it. But I’ve got to try to do some good, whatever I can.”

“Sounds a bit like teaching at SUNY.”

“And you probably pictured yourself reading Emily Dickinson and Alice Walker aloud to wide-eyed, rapt youths under the spreading elms of a northeastern university.”

“Something like that.”

“Another idealist goes down in flames. Well, Virginia Woolf isn’t too far off.”

“If they read it.”

“But how much of that is their fault? I mean, all the math I was taught in school was
wrong.
Twelve times two does
not
equal six times four.”

“Uh—”

“Then why are two twelve-packs of beer cheaper than four six-packs?”

“I guess I never thought of math that way. I mean, we’re all used to indeterminacy of meaning in literature, but—”

“But you’re always taught that numbers speak for themselves, immune to subjective interpretation. Bullshit. You Americans aren’t trained to haggle. Most of the time you get everything handed to you with a price tag on it that’s not negotiable. And you pay. But not us, the unenlightened masses of the underdeveloped nations of the world. No, we’ve got to bargain for a frigging pound of tomatoes every day in the open market. They ask for twice what it’s worth, and you’ve got to bring ’em down or else you’re a darn fool. Now here they train you from the moment you go to school never to question prices. Check out all those math problems they give you: ‘If you have twelve apples at fifteen cents apiece and eight oranges at four and a half cents apiece and a half-pound of grapes at three dollars and thirty-nine cents a pound and you only have two dollars and twenty-five cents, how much more do you need? Choose from answers a, b, c, or d.’ Right? They
never
say: ‘e: How much do you need to
bargain
the guy down?’ Whoever heard of such prices? Three thirty-nine a pound for grapes! It tests the same math skills, doesn’t it?”

“I have to admit that it does.” Kelly considers this new perspective. “We
are
creatures of duty … I never looked at math that way.”

“What do you look at?”

She lets out a cynical, quiet “Ha!” reaches into her book bag, pulls out a book. It falls open to a page with a bookmark in it.

I read from the passage she has highlighted: “Let us return to get a ‘glimpse’ of the disseminal structure, i.e., the no-possible-return of the letter, the other scene of its remnance
[restance].
We have already recognized the effects of the indivisible framing, from frame to frame,
from within which
psychoanalytic interpretations (semantico-biographical or triado-formalist) drew their triangles …”

I ask, perplexed: “Your parents approve of this?”

“As a matter of fact, they don’t.”

This may be a break. I haven’t had many. And I realize that I’m rubbing my throbbing forehead. With clammy hands. Too much coffee, maybe.

Kelly says, “I bet you’ve got some strange stories.”

“I don’t have the stomach for them right now.”

“Just one. Over easy.”

“Over easy?” My tongue feels thick, gelatinous, alien. I swallow. “Okay. Ethics question: fine points of the law. I once busted a guy for selling pot. But he kept smiling at me, so I knew something was wrong. I look close: the stuff didn’t look or smell right. Wouldn’t fool anybody for a minute, so the guy must have been working a variation on the basic envelope switch. I ask: ‘What is this garbage?’ He says: ‘We put oak leaves in a blender, man. It’s legal, bitch.’ Now you tell me what I should do.”

“Bust his ass for calling you a bitch.”

“That’s good. What I mean is, I can’t bust him for pot, ’cause he isn’t holding any, and I can’t bust him for selling phony merchandise just because the
real
thing is illegal …
Oh God.”

Now I’m really getting sick. Like seasick. I ask for some cold water and lean back, then lie down on the bench.

“You want some Rolaids?” Kelly asks.

“Sure. Thanks.”

She reaches into her bag and pulls out what would be a year’s supply for most people. “A lot of people have this reaction to literary theory,” she explains, feeding me two of them.

“Thanks.”

“Derrida and Rolaids. It’s quite a combo.”

I explain that it must be the chemotherapy. It takes a long time when you have to stop every third word and suppress the urge to retch. Antonia wants to climb on me and Kelly, thank God, kindly takes her off me and shows her around the room, holding her up to the window to look out while I recover.

When I’m well enough to sit up I order a cup of chamomile tea. Antonia comes back and asks me if I’m okay. I tell her I’m better. Better enough to take a stab. I ask Kelly, “Do you know Samuel Morse?”

“We both use the same cable TV company, if that’s what you mean.”

“No, really.”

“Everybody knows Sammy Morse. Why?”

Suddenly I’m very nearly sick again, but it passes.

“Kelly, I’m afraid of losing my grip and going under before I get a chance to finish this. I’m feeling around in the dark, trying to find all the angles the Feds have missed, or ignored, without a friend to help, and I need one. I don’t suppose you know what that’s like.”

Pause.

“What can I do?” she says.

“Introduce me to some trustees …”

CHAPTER SIX

The story of the hunt is always told differently by the lion.
—African proverb

“FIL, IT’S YOUR BOYFRIEND,”
says Billy, dangling the phone from one hand, both eyes on the TV.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” I mumble, irritated. Okay, so I’m not so original before I’ve had my coffee, okay? “Hello?”

It’s Jim Stella. “Dinner tonight?”

“Who’s buying?”

“Wha—? Who—?”

“Dinner tonight sounds fine.”

“Great: Whaddaya want? Chinese? Mexican? There’s a new Indian place on Route 347.”

“You know, I really feel like plain old American food for a change.” I can barely keep down a slice of bread and a glass of water.

“Terrific—I know just the place. Vincentio’s. Best veal
parmigiana
on the island.”

“Um, really, I’ve been having too much rich food and wine lately.”

“Oh I get it. Gotta watch the figure, huh?”

“Right. So—American?”

“Sure, you can just get a plate of spaghetti if you want.”

“It’s a date.”

Did I miss something?

The Memorial Day holiday is Monday, but today is the actual day, and all the local schools are rehearsing their bands down on Main Street. I figure Reggie Einhorn might just be old-fashioned enough to have taken today off. I figure right.

He lives in a house most folks probably don’t picture when they think of Long Island. It’s a company shack that’d be more at home in Ludlow, Colorado, in the early springtime of 1914 than here. Sheets of fake linoleum bricks nailed to the frame are eaten away and peeling back, revealing the rotting 2x4 beneath. The interior hasn’t been dusted or swept since Mrs. Vera Einhorn keeled over from kidney failure three years ago.

Colomba told him I’d be coming over. He thinks I’m trying to get a job with Morse. I figure if I can get him to talk about his job in detail, it might give me a clue as to how they
really
handle the toxics at Morse’s facility (another possible weak link). But getting men to talk can be pretty hard. And none of the workers are talking to me right now. I need to get to know this guy first. He’ll talk when he’s ready.

He’s already up and shaving when I show up on his sagging doorstep with a bag of groceries.

“I don’t have any trouble getting around,” he growls, but he puts the milk away in his fridge. “What’s this?”

“Tea. Mind if I make some?”

“Go ahead.” And he goes back to finish shaving. He’s a big guy, almost six feet if he stood up straight, but his back is curled with a permanent stoop from years on the shop floor. Most of the muscle has gotten sinewy and saggy, but he was a tailgunner in the Pacific from 1943 to 1945, so I bet he could once do Russian leaps and touch his toes. He’s still got a fair crop of hair, almost pure white, which makes his red face look redder. He keeps trying to scratch an itch inside his ear.

I check the fridge. Mustard and half a hot dog. Typical. “Don’t you have any bottled water?”

“At two bucks a gallon? Not on your life, girlie.”

I reluctantly bring some tap water to a boil, find the teapot (obviously Mrs. Einhorn’s purchase), swish some hot water in it to warm it up, open the box and steep the leafy blend for five minutes.

“Vera was always making tea,” he says. “Me, I’m a coffee drinker. But she’d always be up early, makin’ herself a cup of tea. Didn’t help much.”

“What do you mean?”

He sits down with a mug in front of him.

“She was always tired. And clumsy. Walking around like a boxer who’d taken one too many kidney punches. If it wasn’t one side it was the other. Then her blood pressure went through the roof …”

Reggie stares at his mug of tea for a long time. Then he tries a sip, makes a bitter face and says: “Bleah! What is this?”

“It’s tea.”

He gets up, spits it in the sink and dumps out the mug. He reaches up, groaning with the effort, opens a cabinet and pulls out one of those fluorescent cardboard cylinders filled with quick-dissolve crystals of sugar, coloring and somewhere way down the list of polysyllabic chemicals, freeze-dried tea. He heaps three spoons of powder into his mug, then adds hot water. His movements are restricted, painful.

“Now
this
is tea,” he says. “Try it.”

It’s a sugary confection that bears no resemblance whatsoever to a plant once grown in China. The aftertaste makes my nausea rise. “Well, it covers up the taste of the mimeograph machine fluid. Is that what they do down at the factory? Add saccharine?”

“Hey: Mr. Morse is concerned about us, young lady. He warned us not to drink the tap water in the washroom.”

“That’s the solution? Water coolers?”

“I know it ain’t a popular idea among you kids, but some of us are actually loyal to our company. We work hard for them, and they provide for us. If there were more people like Mr. Morse, this country’d be in a lot better shape, young lady.” He keeps calling me that. Pretty soon he’ll be asking me if my mother knows I’m here. “No cheap talk, no speculation. He just goes in and gets the job done.”

“Like the way his lab technicians came up with the first practical liquid crystal display nearly twenty years ago and he squelched it because it would’ve made his then-current line obsolete, and now the Japanese are leading the LCD field?”