The Glass Factory (7 page)

“Why?”

He’s getting cagey. It’s time to act up a bit.

“I’m just very sensitive to office conditions,” I say, leaning forward and putting my hand near his. “My last administrative position was in one of those ‘sick buildings.’ I got a headache every single day.”

“Aww, you poor thing. Well, the air quality in their offices is pretty damn good. Way above EPA standards. That’s the advantage of being in the same building as Mr. Morse. He knows what kind of poison he’s got in those vats, and he ain’t about to let any of it get near him.”

“So what
is
making that smell?”

“Well, it’s not one thing that’s doing that. That’s a couple of hundred chemicals, and two dozen are bona fide killers.”

“Go on,” I slide a finger over his hand as I reach for my water.

“Ninety percent of Morse Techtonics’s profit is PVC computer casings and wiring. PVC: Polyvinyl chloride?”

“Yeah, I know about that stuff.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Those guys in the molding room are breathing in enough parts per million to flambé their livers over the next couple of years.”

“What’s the lethal dosage?”

“In the air? You’d have to breathe in a thousand ppm for a couple of weeks. Not very likely.”

“How about ingesting it?”

“Oh sure, with a side of fries?”

“I mean by accident.”

“By accident? You’d have to take a swim in the molding vat.”

“So humor me.”

“Well, let’s say you weigh about a hundred twenty pounds—”

“Thanks.”

“So we’re talking roughly fifty kilos, which means fifty thousand milligrams of vinyl chloride, or about two ounces.”

“Two fluid ounces?”

“Yeah. But it’d be pretty noticeable. You can’t exactly hide the taste with oregano.”

“But I mean if someone fell into the vat, they could easily swallow that much.”

“Oh sure.”

“And it’d be fatal?”

“Look: Taking a header off the Hoover Dam would be fatal, too, but you don’t see people selling tickets to that, do you?”

I laugh again. His credit card, his jokes. My plan.

“What about Kim Tungsten?”

“What about them?”

“It’s the same smell.”

“Oh, that? Sure, they use a lot of PVC. Everybody uses PVC. But the Tungsten place is an old tool and glass factory. Some of the workers started there as kids forty, fifty years ago, doing the spit-and-polish routine with rags and elbow grease. Nowadays they use a lot of industrial degreasers, like trichloroethylene, Circosolv, Fleck-Flip, Triad—”

“And what are the health effects of that one?”

“Pretty much the same. Hey, nobody’s going to get lethal exposure and not know about it. Like I said, you’d have to take a bath in the stuff. They used to decaffeinate coffee with it,” he says, pointing to our cups.

“With toxic chemicals?”

“Hey: You can drown in a vat of water, too. Nobody goes around calling that a ‘toxic chemical.’“

“And nobody dies from a fifty-gram dose of it, either.”

“Say, you’re a fast learner.”

“That’s what the want ad asked for.”

Now he laughs. Actually, we’re getting along pretty well, but this turn in the conversation reminds him it’s time to sober up, get back to work. He orders a refill espresso.

“How about dinner?”

“Tonight?” I ask.

“Sure, why not.”

“Not tonight. I haven’t seen my kid all day and we need to see each other.”

“Oh. Tomorrow?”

“Okay.”

“Okay? You’re saying okay to a—a date?”

“Sure.”

And he goes
yes!
like a tennis player who’s just aced a serve. I shake my head and chuckle. I guess this I’m-still-a-clumsy-college-kid act works on some of these local babes. Otherwise, why would he use it? He drives me back to Morse Techtonics. I pretend I’m looking for a pencil to write down his phone number. Before he can stop me I open his glove compartment. Tissues, small change and—condoms. I’m sure Meryl Streep could pull it off. As for me, I let out a shamefully acted giggle and give him a knowing look as I return them to their enclosure. “Maybe later” is the message I hope he’s getting. At least he gets the “later” part, because a slight incline towards me gets checked in mid-lean.

“I’ll come by for you around seven,” he says, as I get out.

“Why don’t we meet there instead?”

“Why? Something about you you don’t want me to know?”

I bend forward to talk through the window and give him just the briefest glimpse of the upper curve of my breasts. “What do
you
think?”

Pretty flagrant, huh? I will definitely get time in the penalty box for that one.

He smiles and pulls away to park his car. I give him a few minutes to disappear from the lobby, then I head back into the building. I tell the security guard that I left my sunglasses in the Personnel Office. He passes the metal detector over me, front and back, then escorts me all the way there and waits. I pretend to be looking, but it’s hopeless with a cop watching me. I’m only about ten feet from the personnel files, but they might as well be under armored glass along with some artifacts from King Tut’s tomb and guarded by the mummy’s curse. Fortunately, I know how to work a glass cutter.

I’m pretty good with curses, too.

Not today, though. I tell the guard I “Must have left them in the restaurant” and thank him for his help as he guides me straight back down the hall and opens the exit door for me. Doesn’t even count as a try. Mr. Stella is one possible angle, but I need more. I walk back to my car and sit there looking at the loading docks, but they too are fenced-off and guarded. From this side, anyway.

Every workplace sucks in some way, and every one has a pissed-off worker.

I need to find him.

I get to Colomba’s house and Antonia catapults through the air, full of life and love for me alone. I, too, smother her with kisses. I’ve been spending all my time with her lately, so I can’t help longing to be away for a spell, then I spend a few hours away and I feel like it’s been days. I don’t let her out of my sight for the rest of the evening. We go to pick up ice cream for the family dessert, then I read to her from the few books we brought with us. After we say our prayers and I’m tucking her in and kissing her on the forehead she tells me:

“I don’t have any balloons.”

I look around. “No, you don’t.”

“Where are the balloons?”

“What balloons?”

“The balloons from my birthday!” Like it should have been obvious.

“Your birthday’s not coming for another three months. Maybe we’ll celebrate it in Ecuador.”

“With balloons?”

“I hope so.”

“I only get one birthday,” she says.

“What do you mean, only one birthday?”

“Rosita has two.”

Of course. Rosita still has favors pinned to her message board from her last two birthday parties. I try to explain to Antonia that we each get one a year, and that she’ll have lots and lots of birthdays, my sincerest hope, but she is not convinced.

I stroke her forehead until she sleeps. All our problems should be so ephemeral. Where are the balloons of yesterday’s birthday parties? They fade from glory faster than cut flowers, limp, rubbery and lifeless within twenty-four hours. Then I think, hell, most men get that way within twenty-four
minutes.
But balloons aren’t as much fun. Generally.

Sweet dreams, my child.

The hospital sure makes me feel young again. Elderly patients crammed elbow to elbow in the hallway watch me hungrily as I walk past them to check in. I haven’t exactly thought of myself as being enviable, but I can see by the lost looks in their watery eyes that my youth is something desirable to them, and gone forever. But I doubt any of them would be willing to trade with me.

The clerk punches my name into the terminal, confirms my appointment and tells me to have a seat. Fifteen minutes later a nurse leads me to a spotless examination room with floor-to-ceiling windows flooding the place with light. It’s certainly an improvement over the last place I was examined in. Her tag says Dora. Dora records my weight, blood pressure, temperature, then instructs me to strip into a hospital gown and wait. Vertical blinds make for privacy, so why do I feel so aware of all my scars as I unclothe my imperfect body—my thighs are holding up, but my postpregnancy abdomen will never be completely flat again—and suddenly feel cold, barefoot and barely wrapped in a thin piece of cotton cloth? The forensics microphone hanging from the ceiling doesn’t help any.

I’ve got a few minutes alone with nothing but my own ugly thoughts that I keep at bay by focusing on the room’s blandness. I think the Zen Buddhists would call it emptying your mind, or something like that. Soon the doctor comes. He’s maybe a couple of years younger than me and a bit taller, with dark curly hair and a long, roundish nose.

“Ms. Buscarsela?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Dr. Wrennch. So what can I do for you today?”

“I want you to have a look at my lungs.”

“Oh, I need a parental signature for that—unless you can prove you’re over twenty-one.”

“Thanks.” He probably says that to all his terminally ill patients.

“Seriously, what’s the problem?”

“Don’t you have Dr. Chu’s report?”

“Sure. I want to hear it from you.”

I tell him more than I’d tell some friends. Five years as a beat cop for the NYPD. Stress, family tragedies, love life disasters, all greased with the abrasive salve of booze and pot in quantities known to cause abnormalities in lab animals, and no solution. Then control, not cold turkey, but managed, like a slow-burning fire. But too late. Not before a corporate murderer I was tracking tried to sear my insides out with a barrel of cyanide vapor.

“Is there any history of cancer in your family?” he asks.

“I don’t know. Records are pretty spotty.”

“What did your mother die of?”

“Witchcraft.” That raises an eyebrow. “I was just a kid. All the villagers said she was bewitched by my father’s mistress.”

“Oh. Uh, and what about your father?”

“I don’t know if he’s dead or alive.”

“Oh …”

“Not your typical patient, huh?”

“No, none of mine are typical. It says you had an X-ray done two weeks ago at Bronx Community Hospital.”

“Yes.”

“We’ve tried to contact them, with no results. Now, we can either wait, or we can take another one, which I wouldn’t recom—”

“Take another one. Please. I want a completely separate opinion.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, let me see how soon we can have the room.”

He leaves me alone in the pit of my fears for a few naked minutes. He comes back and says we can go in a couple of minutes. Then he takes out a light purple stethoscope and starts warming it in his hands.

I say, “I thought all stethoscopes had to be regulation black.”