The Glass Factory (9 page)

I come downstairs ready to go out. I wasn’t kidding before. There really are shock absorbers on the main altar. Brand new Monroes, absorbing cosmic energy before use. Who am I to doubt?

It takes twenty minutes to drive to the spot where the restaurant is supposed to be, and another twenty minutes to find it. These Long Island commercial stretches are just mile after endless mile of McDonald’s, gas station, Friendly’s, gas station, record store, gas station, Burger King, gas station, Kentucky Fried Chicken, gas station, all indistinguishable from each other. I pass a law firm, a bowling alley and a real estate office three times before I realize that the real estate office is the restaurant.

Jim Stella pushes his second martini away and stops working the sweet young thing two bar stools over when I come in.

“Have trouble finding the place?” he asks. “You should have let me pick you up.”

“I got stuck in the middle of a stampede. You ever seen a herd of bull Cadillacs in rut? It isn’t very pretty.”

“Ha ha ha!” He laughs, forcing it to justify a friendly slap on the shoulder that lets his arm linger around me for a moment. “Let’s take a table. Say, that’s some sexy outfit.” He lets out a kind of snort.

“You just come out of hibernation?”

“It’s just nice to be with a real woman for a change.”

“You’ve been dating transsexuals?”

He laughs again. Must be I’ve got something
he
wants.

“No, no, but most of these babes, you know, show them a good car stereo and their eyes pop out.”

“Yeah—what else pops out?”

Snicker.

“Sounds like you’ve been dating teenagers,” I observe.

“Some.”

“And you prefer a good challenge.” And he’s in for one.

He smiles a satyric smile, half sits, checks himself and comes around to pull out my chair for me. “There, you see? Not too many women appreciate gestures like that.”

“Let me derail this runaway trolley car of a conversation before it hurts somebody, okay?” I say.

“Okay, so what direction do you want it to go in?”

“Tell me about yourself.”

That takes up most of dinner. I stick to my absolute limit of one glass of wine. Jim Stella does not appear to have a limit. I learn more about the features on his car than I thought I’d ever know and I have to remind him that I’m a bit more mature than most of the women he has evidently been dating, and that I’m not impressed with the fact that he has a car with a fifth gear. So he switches to the
other
topic his mildly inebriated cerebellum can handle.

It seems that most guys have a “standard size” prick, but he claims to have a “legal size” prick that thrills and delights all the women he screws. I think he says “women” to show how liberated he is. Does this really work on these local gals? Somehow I doubt it, but his confident manner implies it’s been working
just fine.
What do I know? Maybe I’m getting too old for this shit. I’m beginning to feel strangely like this whole evening is a fiasco. The cutie he was working at the bar when I came in is bouncing on the bar stool, talking to some guy and looking for a piece of paper, which she can’t find, so she gives the guy her phone number on a dollar bill. This is all falling apart. Get me out of here.

“Why’d you become a cop?” he asks. That’s a bolt out of the blue.

I don’t bother asking where he got it from. He probably knows some more things about me, too, given a lawyer’s resources and hyperactive testosterone.

“Because they wouldn’t let me become a priest,” I answer.

“Who wouldn’t?”

“Who? My parents, my aunts, my uncles, my cousins, my confessors, my school teachers, my Popes, my presidents, my saints, movie stars, millionaires, men, women, beggars—other than that everybody else supported me.”

“Somehow I just can’t picture you carrying handcuffs and a nightstick.”

“You and a million others.” He probably can’t picture me blowing Morse’s brains out, either.

“Tell me about it,” he says.

I stare at him for a second.

“I mean about how tough it was to get pimps and perverts to take you seriously as a cop.”

Oh.

Don’t lose it, girl. I think for a minute, have a sip of wine, and chase it with some Long Island water. “One time this big, burly truck driver was gassing the whole block—there’s a city ordinance against idling, and the EPA says that prolonged exposure to diesel emissions increases the risk of lung cancer by about forty percent. So I told him to shut off his rig. ‘Make me,’ he says. I repeat my statement. He repeats his. I write a ticket. He tears it up. Now, he’s a huge guy, enjoying it, looking for a fight. I should really call for backup—the rule book says so—but the guy’s whole point is that I can’t take him. I tell him, ‘You make me take you and you’re going to get hurt.’ ‘Yeah?’ Now, the rules back me both ways here, and I generally prefer not to hurt people. But this guy urgently needs to get hurt. I tell him to get out of the truck. He blows a kiss at me. I say, ‘What’sa matter? Afraid of me?’ I give him plenty of room. I want this to be fair. Then—
slam!
I only hit his elbow, but it’s right on the funny bone, and in about three seconds I’ve got him cuffed, knees on the asphalt, face against the truck. I tell him: ‘You should have shut it off when I told you.’ Bastard was nonunion anyway.”

“Wow!” he says, nodding vigorously. “You know, the guy could’ve reported you.”

“Yeah: A truck driver’s gonna go public saying a 5’6”
latina
beat him up.” I finish my wine in one swig. Damn cop reflex. I’ve got to watch that.

“I just love virile women.”

And how about viral women? No, let me change that: “And what do you love about them?”

“I’d love to discover about twenty-five of your thirty erogenous zones. Single-handedly, and in great detail.”

He’s kind of a charmer, I guess. So why do I keep composing put-downs in my head?

“What’s the matter with the other five?”

“Haven’t you heard? The Decade of Greed is over.”

“I need to get a job first,” I say. “I hate economic inequality.”

“Want me to put a good word in for you at Morse?”

“No! I mean, that’d be too obvious.”

“So what do you want?”

“Well, I was figuring if I could find out some more about the people who already work there, maybe I’d have a better chance.”

He nods. “Well, I’ve got some personnel files at my office—”

“Great. Can I come by and look at them?”

“Nah, it wouldn’t help you.”

“Why not?”

“All I’ve got at the office is the list of sickos.”

“What do you mean, ‘the sickos’?”

“The Disabilities. The Worker’s Comps. Making friends with
them
isn’t gonna get you anywhere.”

“Well, I’d still like to see what you’ve got.”

“You would, would you?” He leans closer.

“Yes.”

“How about tomorrow, around lunchtime?”

“Sure.”

I let him follow me home. He comes in for a few minutes. Billy’s on the couch watching
El Show de Porcel
at ear-splitting volume. How ’bout those G-strings, huh? Jim’s only comment is “This place would be nice if you decorated it.” I walk him back to his car. I let him kiss me, but that’s it. He starts his car up, then lowers the power window:

“See you tomorrow.”

“See you.”

“I can hardly wait,” he says. Then: “Oh, you know, you could try the business liaison office at the State University. Morse is using about half their incubator space. It’s all public documents over there, so they
gotta
let you see ’em.”

Hmm. “Thanks.” Then it’s off to bed. I’ve got to hunt for a sick, angry worker, find a helpmate at the State University, get a second interview at Morse’s plant, call the EPA to initiate an investigation into the local toxicity, raise my child, save the environment, and not die of lung cancer. That’s a lot to do.

I think I’d better let it wait ’til tomorrow.

CHAPTER FOUR

Vivie:
And are you really and truly not one
wee bit doubtful—or—or ashamed?
Mrs. Warren:
Well, of course, dearie, it’s only
good manners to be ashamed of it: it’s expected
from a woman. Women have to pretend to
feel a great deal that they don’t feel.
      —Bernard Shaw,
Mrs. Warren’s Profession

WEDNESDAY MORNING
I phone Gina Lucchese at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Gina is one of the three Feds in the world you can trust. (Or is it four? I keep forgetting.) Because she
could
be making a ton of money doing the same work for the other side. Turns out she’s in Puerto Rico for the week busting heads over some toxic leachate in the water supply. They had to throw in Puerto Rico because she got stuck with cleaning up all the toxic waste in New York and New Jersey, which is a bit like having to clean up the tiger cages at the Bronx Zoo—with the tigers still in them.

They think I’m just another hysterical mother whose drinking water tastes like brake fluid but they promise to put me on “the list.” I ask to speak with the supervisor, who listens patiently for details, then announces, “Drinking water is local jurisdiction, call your County Board of Health.”

Okay, so I call up the County Board of Health. Sixteen minutes on hold listening to the bulldozers rearrange the jagged metal landscape outside my window before some guy gets on and says, “Yeah?”

“I’m a homeowner right across the street from the Kim Tungsten Steel and Glass factory on Pleasant Valley Road. There’s this terrible smell coming from the plant.”

“You just move in?”

“Well, yeah.”

“I figured. Newcomers’re always callin’ up the first week. But you’ll notice it don’t bother none of the regular people. See, the diesel-powered generators give off some carbon monoxide exhaust, but it’s no worse than you just runnin’ your car, ma’am.”

“Thanks. Carbon monoxide fumes can kill you.”

“Huh?”

“Even from just running your car. Anyway, the tap water’s so volatile you could use it for jet fuel.”

I can almost hear him shaking his head. “Now listen, miss—”

“No, you listen: This is a complaint about the water across from the Tungsten plant. It’s your job to investigate that complaint, right?”

Pause.

“What’s your name and exact location?”

I use Colomba’s name, then take down his name and title. He promises to get right on it sometime before the next ice age.

Elvis moved out today, and I took his room. Colomba was pissed, but Elvis has wanted his own place for a while and I just gave him the excuse. With the warm weather coming, he’s been getting a lot of work doing landscaping and lawn maintenance for independent contractors, but I don’t know how he’s going to get through the winter.

I figure I can safely take Antonia onto the State University campus. Besides, I’ll need her afterwards to protect me from Jim Stella. I put on some serious business clothes and head out to the car.

I give the die a spin for luck. I’m getting used to the drive up now—except for when we almost get run off the road by a shirtless suntanned teen with a crew cut driving a jeep with a cruise computer that’s better educated than he is. Parking on campus turns out to be almost as difficult as finding a spot in midtown Manhattan on St. Patrick’s Day, and when I get out and look around, half-expecting to see a college green surrounded by ivy-covered Victorian brownstones, I notice that half the buildings look like they were designed by the same guy who built Hitler’s stadium in Nuremberg. I take Antonia up to the first big building I see that doesn’t look like it was primarily designed to withstand an air raid. It’s the Vaughan Carter Memorial Library. I ask at the reference desk for the Business Liaison Office, and they tell me to turn around, go straight back out the door, past the Benjamin Carter Social and Behavioral Sciences Building and the brand-new Lillian Carter wing of the Indoor Sports Complex to the Administration Building.