The Glass Factory (30 page)

“Come on, Billy!”

“What? Where!”

I point the way and run. I don’t know how thick the flaming wall of PCBs is. I’m going to have to hope. Gunshots. Jump. I clear the gap.

On the other side of the life/death barrier, I hit the ground and fall. Limp. Feet on fire.

I die.

I’m trying to escape the darkness, slow-motion running through a thick, black, mucky swamp, sinking into deadly toxic waste that eats through my feet and chest like acid. Buried in the mud are razor-sharp objects that slice into my feet at every step, leaving them shredded, hanging on by ribbons. Sheets of broken glass.

Long, plastic hoses are attached to my body, flooding me with insecticides, and PCBs, and carbon tetrachloride, and lead, and all the various poisons I’ve been fighting, leaking into me. And the hoses start constricting around me until I can hardly breathe. Until I can’t breathe. I manage to twist and find a slack spot so I can breathe again, but the hoses tighten and tighten again until I can’t breathe. Again. This is it, I panic. This is it. No more breath.

Somewhere in the cold distance there is the sound of breaking glass.

And I slam into the hard darkness. I’m flat on my face, a great unseen weight pressing down on me. I’m alone, hugging my mother, the earth. Incredible, crushing weight. I push against it, but I can’t break away.
¡No, mami!
Let me go! Please!
Por favor, lo siento, mami.
I’m sorry,
mami,
but please let me go. I promise I’ll stop them. I’ll stop them
mami.
I’ll try, I’ll try, I’ll try, but you’ve got to let me go on for a bit longer so I can do it … Yes …
Gracias, mami
…
Gracias
… I promise I’ll do everything I can to stop them …

I push away …

And I wake up to one more day of life.

“Jesus, Filomena, I told you not to exert yourself.”

“Sorry, doc. I saw my chance. I had to take it.”

Another doctor pushes in beside Stan: “May we observe you? No one’s ever run through a smoking cloud of PCBs before and lived to tell about it.”

“Fuck off.” I mean that in a nice way.

“Larry, why don’t you leave us alone for a bit?” says Stan.

Larry goes, “Wohhh wohhh wohhhh!” and is gone.

“Filomena, this is not making me look good.”

“Is that all you’re concerned about?”

“No! And you know it! I’m concerned about
you.
You almost got yourself killed.”

“Yeah. How about that.”

“Now, we’ve determined that most of the pain that you felt was temporary, caused by the steel shards coated with toxic residue. They burned a lot, but almost all of those wounds are superficial. Much more serious are the burns on your feet and the damage to your lungs from smoke inhalation of God knows what chemicals and enough PCBs to—”

His voice trails off. He makes some vague gestures in the air with his hands.

“To what?”

“That’s just it, Filomena. We have no data. No live human subjects exist that we can examine quantitatively. Running through a trough of flaming chemicals isn’t considered a control experiment.”

“So am I going to make you famous?”

“You’re going to get me fired if you don’t behave.”

“Oh, come on …”

“I mean it!”

“Oh. Yes, sir.”

“Now: I’m going to start you back on chemotherapy.”

“Okay. Tomorrow.”

“Why tomorrow?”

“Because I already feel enough like shit, okay? You got any painkillers? These burns are a real bitch.”

“Filomena, it isn’t ethical for me to attend you now that we’re—”

“Fucking. The word you want is ‘fucking.’“

“Must you speak that way?”

“I’ll stop when you give me some painkillers.”

He shakes his head. “Okay, okay.”

Five minutes later he’s back.

“I’ve got to go home,” I say.

“Filomena, don’t start that again—”

“My kid hasn’t seen me in
two days!
Don’t you know what that means? No, of course you don’t. I’ll stay in bed. I promise. As long as there’s a phone.”

“Why a phone?”

“To run a phone sex service. What do you think? To do some goddamn police work!”

“Keep your voice down! Please?”

I smile at him. “Close the door.”

“Filomena—”

I grab his hand. I squeeze.
“Te deseo. Ahora.”
He’s concerned. I pull him closer. It hurts. I hug him to me. I love it. “Close the door.”

It locks from the inside.

We do it right there. Highly unethical. But the best medicine. With his help I have a shuddering orgasm that leaves me without feeling in my legs for a couple of minutes.

Or is that the painkillers?

Billy and Stan help carry me past Colomba’s chicken coop and up the stairs to bed. Antonia clings to me like she almost forgot what I looked like. I sure like looking at her, too. I tell her mommy has just a little more work to do, just a little, and that if she counts off five, hmm, make that seven days, then she’ll have me for all time. So she counts to seven right away. I also tell her I’m not moving from our bed for three to five days. Stan will make sure of that.

“Boy, you really turned into the Toxic Avenger the other night,” says Billy.

“Just what I’ve always wanted to be: A comic book superhero.”

Colomba serves me breakfast in my sickbed. Toast, real coffee and two freshly laid chicken eggs, fried. Yum.

Stan, very severe, gives everyone in the house some last minute instructions about what I’m not allowed to do, which is basically everything.

As soon as he’s gone Billy and I get to work.

“Okay, what have you got?” I ask.

Billy that one-time wastrel has stolen half an armful of invoices from the billing office of Morse Techtonics
and
last year’s Visitor’s Log! He didn’t even know about that. He just saw it and figured it might be useful. I pat him on the head and tell him, “See? There’s something up there after all.”

He smiles all awkward and shy like he’s just been morphed into Tom Sawyer or something, but there’s a tinge of pride in the smile, too. Real pride.

I flip through the log as fast as I can—it takes a couple of hours to decode all the hastily scribbled signatures—and I find enough public servants have been visiting Mr. Morse to fill the entire party ticket, and a few names that sound curiously reminiscent of some mid-level organized crime figures. I call Van Snyder. It sounds good to him so far, but of course it’s not enough. Not yet.

We switch to the invoices. I call up the New York representative of Ergot Importers to ask about some model numbers. The guy can’t seem to find the invoice. Imagine that. I call up the computer customizer. At least that’s what the invoice says they are. They apologize for the shipping delay, which is odd, because I’m holding a copy of the bill of lading from the exporter, indicating that the shipment went out months ago. I call the exporter, and they find an original that verifies the shipping date.

And you know what’s funny? I’ve called three different numbers in three different states and gotten three different people, but in the background a radio is playing
the same song at every one.

WBIW. A local station.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

All governments are brothers under the skin.
—Michelet

NOT THAT THERE’S ANYTHING
I can do with that information. Not yet. But at least Antonia’s presence is no longer the only thing keeping me from slitting my throat. Now I have hope. Besides, it’s pretty cute to watch a four-year-old attempt hip-hop steps, especially the head spins. She’s got to watch less MTV.

She’s an only child, so she wants to know all about family relations. I explain that Aunt Colomba is daddy’s sister, and that her three children, cousins Rosita, Elvis, and Billy are brothers and sisters.

Antonia says, “I don’t have a sister.”

Oh, no: “Who talked to you about that?”

“Nobody.”

“Uh-huh. Just like ‘nobody’ broke the jam jar this morning.”

“That’s right.”

Bless her if that doesn’t make me laugh. It hurts my stitches though.

Wai-Wai telephones to ask if I need cheering up. I tell her to come on over. Then I get a burst of inspiration, or anyway what passes for inspiration when you’ve been lying on your butt for three days. I call Gina and ask her to come. I figure between the two of them some sparks ought to fly and maybe we can get something done that’ll lift me out of this funk hole.