The Glass Factory (6 page)

“Nobody keeps spoiled pea soup on the shelf. The smell alone would be unbearable.”

He says: “What are you talking about?”

“I guess I am babbling, aren’t I?”

“You sure are.”

And not one inch closer to my goal. Whatever that is. No, I know what my goal is, all right, the question is, How do I get there from here?

I get the answer from Colomba. We get home, lunch is served, and she hands me yesterday’s classifieds, with four job openings circled in red. Two of them are at Morse’s computer factory.

CHAPTER THREE

What’s the point of women joining
the mainstream if the stream is polluted?
—Bella Abzug

WELL, THIS HERO
is spending the night before battle trying to get her kid to eat her vegetables. I explain the importance of eating a variety of other foods, and I get nods of understanding, but no cooperation.

“You’ve got to eat your veggies, Tonia,” I say. “Popeye eats his spinach, that’s why he’s so strong; Bugs Bunny eats carrots, that’s why he’s so smart.”

“But Bugs Bunny doesn’t eat
other
food,” she says.

Colomba laughs. I have to admit she’s got me. “Three and a half years old and she’s got me.”

“Mommy, you’re silly,” says Antonia.

Oh, no. My kid has finally discovered that her mother’s not rational. I’ve had her fooled for almost four years but no more.

Monday morning I call to confirm an appointment I haven’t made with Techtonics, Inc. Typical Morse operation: The frenzied receptionist is too overworked to admit she’s never heard of me and squeezes me in for 11:30. Rules are for
gringos.

I decide it’s okay to leave Antonia with the family today. I wouldn’t want to take her to Morse’s place anyway. I think you’ll back me on that one. I kiss and hug her goodbye, fire up the heap and head west. The words “East Carthage” are superimposed on my Hagstrom’s with the same authority as the words “Carthage” and “Minoa,” yet it is conspicuously absent from the reality I’m driving through. In less than a mile “Minoa” becomes “Carthage” without passing through this intermediate stage. Okay … But I’m too busy dealing with a guy in a black ’Vette riding my butt at 65 mph the whole way. Fuckhead. Like he’s in a bigger hurry than I am.

Morse Techtonics is a snappy, new steel-and-reflective-glass building with enough bevels and angles and shrubs to make it look like an oversized high-tech greenhouse, pristine and green and gorgeous, but it smells as bad as in Minoa. I’ve got to find out what that smell is.

I’ll admit I’m a bit nervous about running into the guy himself and blowing it all too soon, but I’m banking on my knowledge of Morse’s character, and I figure the Personnel Office is probably pretty far from the Executive Suite. Besides, he’s only seen me dressed for battle. I’m fighting a whole different way this time.

I win the first hand, and breathe a lot easier after I sign the Visitor’s Log, pass under the handheld metal detector and am directed to a quiet suite of rooms down a long hall in the opposite direction from the front offices. Two other applicants are ahead of me, hot-waxed legs crossed, seams straight, flipping through supermarket magazines that promise Better Sex in Three Days, and How to Get Him to Commit, but absolutely
nothing
about How to Murder a Bloodsucking SOB. And they say it’s got “Everything today’s woman needs to know.” For shame.

I check in with the receptionist, who says she needs “another” copy of my résumé (she won’t admit she can’t find it), so I hand her one from my genuine leatherette business case. Much of it is actually true.

My sister interviewees do not look at me. Okay, I don’t particularly want to be seen, anyway. I’m taking the place in—large parking lot outside (more than a thousand cars), six loading docks, and a pretty large office staff, or so it seems. Nice water cooler, too. This receptionist is only screening calls for the Personnel Director. A one-to-one boss-secretary ratio is getting pretty rare these days. But my immediate use for this info is if this place is big enough, maybe I can get lost in this system. I hope so.

The door opens and the first woman ahead of me is told to go in. She’s a good ten years younger than me, blond, svelte, and looks like she gets plenty of dates but might need a few lessons in Getting Him to Commit. The other woman is even younger, looks like she’ll be graduating high school in about three weeks. I shift in my chair and flip open the company newsletter. Shipments are steady, which is about as rosy as a report gets these days. And the execs have sacrificed a ten-foot walk to the building for a twenty-foot walk so the row flush against the plant can be designated for “Handicapped Parking Only.”

A loud burst of confident male laughter explodes on the other side of a flimsy partition, the door adjacent to the room where the interviews are being conducted opens, and out steps a man in a light-gray summer suit. He’s young, in his early thirties, but already going soft around the belly and jowls, and his dirty blond hair is getting pretty thin, too. Must be the fumes. Even with three air conditioners running, the place still smells of the stuff. The guy plants his briefcase on the receptionist’s desk like he’s Pizarro conquering
terra incognita
for the Spanish Crown and starts putting the moves on her. He’s crude, obvious, but careful enough to tread that fine gray line between flirting and sexual harassment.

When he asks to see the “Winston file” and she has to bend way forward in that loose-fitting dress to open the “W” drawer I lose interest and start checking out the back issues of the newsletter. A tiny paragraph on the inside back page of the February issue suggests that some new air-handling ducts for the molding room may be arriving before the workers keel over from the fumes. It does note that the first requests for new ducts were made six years ago.

“Here’s
a long-stemmed wineglass,” I hear from over my shoulder. I look up and he’s staring at me. He is
not
holding a wineglass.

“What did you say?”

He kind of clownishly backs off like he’s fending off an imaginary Popeye blitzed on three cans of spinach. “No, no, no: He’s hit, he’s going, he’s
down,”
and he doubles over and falls to his knees in front of me.

Well.
That
was different.

“What’s your name?” I ask him.

“Hey, that’s my line.”

“All right: Fuck off.”

“I like my line better.”

“Words are not your exclusive property, Mr.—?”

He smiles. “Okay. Stella. James Stella. But you can call me—”

“Jim.”

“Right.
Or Jim-bo.”

“I’ll stick with ‘Mr. Stella’ for a few minutes, okay?”

“Okay,” he says, dusting off his knees and sitting down next to me. “’Til when?”

“’Til you tell me what you do, Mr. Stella. Don’t give me that look. I saw you looking at my résumé. You know everything about me and I know nothing about you. Now is that fair?”

“I’d hardly call your résumé ‘everything’ about you, Ms. Filomena Buscarsela of six-one-seven West Two Hundred and Fifteenth Street, New York City.”

“It’s everything you’re gonna get for now, Mr. James Stella of Meyers, Craig, North, Robinson & White, Attorneys-at-Law.”

He looks at me. I go on: “An upside down business card at twelve paces. Not bad, huh? It’s that Andean air. I’ve got eyes like a condor’s.”

“Hmmm. What else did you get from this condor?”

Oh yeah:
His
interest is piqued. I tell him: “Oh, strength, perseverance—and I can smell a skunk two miles off.”

He’s not fazed. “What do you smell now?”

I give him a long, languid look. “I don’t know. And I’d like to find out.”

Funny thing is, it’s the goddamned truth.

I have the interview, which is for a data entry clerk in the billing department, oh boy, and they tell me they’ll let me know in about a week. James Stella is waiting for me. He asks me to lunch. I accept. I throw on this huge pair of sunglasses as we step into the hallway. Ten feet from the exit the security guard jumps to open the door and I get a sudden heart flutter, and half-grab Mr. Stella by one shoulder so I can stare at his chest:

“Is that your school tie?” I ask, just as Mr. Samuel Morse himself walks
right
past us on his way to the elevators. But he’s in the middle of bullying some bootlicker into submission and doesn’t notice me.

“Look Vinnie,” I hear Morse say, “The Kim expansion’s gonna open up thirteen hundred local jobs, so you better make sure the committee knows that—”

“But the unions are saying it’s only going to be three or four hundred full-time jobs, and the Pine Barrens people are all over the press. They’ve got a
lot
of community support this time. This ain’t the right way of doin’ it—”

“Don’t tell
me
how to do business—”

“No, no, no, Mr. Morse, but the timing—” And the elevator closes. Goddamn …

Back to my other reality, James Stella has already said, “Uh, no, I got this off the rack at Macy’s. Twenty-eight dollars, marked down from forty. Real silk.”

“Oh. It’s nice.”

“Thanks.”

He’s not sure what to make of me, but that’s currently working in my favor. We get into his European luxury sedan and he drives us to a place that’s about six times fancier than I expected. Business is good.

“Don’t tell me you eat here every day,” I say.

“Only with very special clients.” This guy’s about as smooth as a loan shark on payday.

He does the whole bit. Orders a full bottle of wine even though I tell him it’s too early in the day for me; he sweeps that aside as if I were a child insisting on a carrot when he’s offering banana splits. I tell him my mother warned me about accepting candy from men like him.

“I bet your mother’d approve of a lawyer bringing in six figures.”

“Is that including decimals?” He smiles at me. “Nah, Ma’d probably have gotten down the shotgun.”

“Shotgun wedding, huh? You know, for you, it’d almost be worth it.”

I laugh. It sounds forced to me, but I think I’m supposed to be quivering with anticipation, so I guess it fits. Shit, I might as well go the whole hog, here. Trick #17-B from the Old Book: I start imitating him. He takes a drink of wine, I take a drink; he adds salt, I add salt; he cuts his meat, I cut mine. Take it from me, it’s subliminal, and it drives men
wild.
Guilt? Sure—but there’s that “good cause” clause in the contract.

He does a fair job on the bottle of wine (I remain resolute and stick to water after one glass) then orders two espressos, without asking me, and the check while I leave a breadcrumb trail to my groin wide enough for a blind ox to follow.

“But not if you work for Morse,” I say.

“Huh?” His credit card clatters drily in the tray.

“Workplace flings leave me flat.”

“Oh, that.” I’ve succeeded in constructing an elaborate network of unspoken complexities between his sex organ and mine, and he tramples recklessly through it like a half-rutting boar to reach his goal: “Morse Techtonics is just one of my clients.”

“How many others do you have?”

“Hundreds. We’re a big firm. I usually have a dozen or so at a time.”

“So what are you doing for Morse?”

A smirk crosses his lips. He chuckles at my no-nonsense business talk.

“I’m trying to help make the zoning for the Kim site more profitable.”

“Oh. That’s not going to be too easy, with all those environmental problems they’ve got.”

All traces of the smirk have vanished.

“What do you mean?”

“You know that smell?” I say.

“Do I ever. I’ve had my nose right over those vats.”

“Really? Tell me about it.”