The Glass Factory (17 page)

What a dodo I’ve been: “Let me get this straight: You’re suing Morse
on behalf of Kim Tungsten?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“The company that’s polluted East Carthage’s drinking water?”

“Hey: Morse has
at least
half the responsibility for that. Maybe more.” I think I’m about to explode. He looks at me for a second, goes back to driving. “Morse isn’t the worst offender, you know. The Fairhaven National Lab leaked radioactive tritium into the water supply, for Christ’s sake. We’ve even found traces of plutonium.”

“In East Carthage?”

“Yeah.”

“Where I live?”

“Oh—uh—”

“Stop the car. I’m getting out.”

“What the fuck? Oh, come on! If this is more of your fucking bullshit—”

I bring my foot down hard, shoving it between his feet and jamming on the brake, then throw on the parking brake just a bit too soon, sending us both forward with a severe lurch. The engine coughs out of gear and dies.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he tries to stop me from unbuckling my seat belt.

Damn these new automatic shoulder straps! I kick the door open and the thing retracts. I yank my wrist loose from his grasp, snap the belt, and step out.

“Okay, okay,” he says. “Now get back in.”

“No. Goodbye.”

“Oh, stop this fuckin’ bullshit! Why the fuck are you doing this? Why? You know, plenty of women are just waiting to take a ride with me.”

“Then go pick one up.”

“Okay, okay. It’s okay. Go: I’ve left my mark on you.”

“Oh, fuck you.”

“No. Fuck you.”

An accelerated roar. The exhaust comes billowing out, mixing with my nausea from dinner and putting it over the top. After a few contorted minutes a good Samaritan stops, headlights blinding the poor woman bent over the guardrail retching her guts out.

She takes me a couple of miles out of her way to a train station where I can get a cab home that uses up nearly one-third of all the cash I’ve got left in the world. Principles are painful.

The next chemotherapy session leaves me rolling around in brain-dizzying agony on a hospital cot for an hour-and-a-half. This is a foretaste of death, being sucked down by the dark, plutonian forces beneath this poor little island that was once as lush as the jungle.

I wipe some of the sweaty clumps of cold sick from my face with a clammy towel and I ask to speak to the doctor. They tell me he’s out to lunch. Good for him. One of the more painful hours of my life goes by—and that’s saying something—then Dr. Wrennch comes in and says, “What seems to be the trouble, Ms. Buscarsela?”

“The trouble is I’m seasick on dry land twenty-four hours a day.”

“I can prescribe THC for the nausea.”

“That’s one of the things that did this to me,” I explain.

“No, no, this would be in pill form.”

“You know,” I say, trying to smile but it hurts too much, clenched teeth holding back vomit, “five years ago I would have leapt at the chance. Okay,
two
years ago. But not now.” Another wave engulfs me, and I fall back and let it wash over me. It’s a bit easier when you don’t resist it. He’s trying to tell me something and I’m not listening. When I can swallow again without gagging, I interrupt whatever the hell it is he’s saying: “I want to stop the chemotherapy.”

“Stop? You just started two days ago.”

“I said I want to stop.”

“Why?”

What is it with men always asking me why?

“It’s slowing me down.”

“You need it to live.”

“Just three more weeks.”

“Why on earth should we postpone your treatment three weeks?”

“Okay, two weeks.”

“I mean, I suppose we can, but what would that possibly accomplish?”

I look at him. I’m thinking,
You idiot,
but all I say is, “Justice.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Now still another generation is being erased by a civil war and Rome’s own power is bringing her to ruin, she who was never destroyed by her enemies … we shall destroy her, an ungodly generation, a curse in our blood, and once more animals alone shall dwell here.
—Horace,
Epode XVI

“YOU’RE OUT OF YOUR MIND!”
he says.

“Yes. I am.”

“Why?”

“Why am I out of my mind? I don’t know,
you’re
the doctor.”

“I mean why postpone treatment?”

“Because I’ve
got
to do this. I’ve just got to.”

“Do
what?
Ruin your health? What could possibly be worth that?”

“I told you: Seeing justice done.”

“That’s what we’ve got cops for, and courts, and—”

“Listen, I’ve had enough of you interpreting the world for me. This happens to be something I know a little more about, okay? I told you the facts, not the feelings.”

“And what are the feelings?”

“I’m doing this for others, not just for me.”

“Will you stop being cryptic and just tell your doctor what’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong? Good question. What
is
‘wrong’? I seem to be having trouble with that one lately.”

“Miss Buscarsela—”

“Listen, Doc: I ran away from an abusive home when I was fourteen. I would have joined the church but they were way too old-fashioned back then, always happy to be giving bread to the poor but never attacking the root of the problem. So I joined a group. Well—kind of a gang.” I’ve got his attention now. “Militant activists. They gave me a home. And I rode with them. We were revolutionaries, with noble ideals of fighting the rich and helping the poor. Some were real heroes to me … But a lot of them turned out to be gun-crazy bullies who blew our chances of connecting with the peasants, so when I came here I joined the cops because—well, because I thought being a cop would be the next best way to help people in this country, but it wasn’t, because the cops turned out to be just
another
gang of gun-crazy bullies. ‘We’ve got cops and courts.’ Jesus! I’m a crime solver, okay? And this one’s pretty close to home.”

I do get talky around him, don’t I?

“And what is this wrong you’re risking your health to right?”

“Tell me: Do you think it’s ethical to kill a sonofabitch who is responsible for dozens, maybe hundreds of deaths?”

“No. Absolutely not.”

“Okay, how many does it take? A thousand? Two thousand? Ten thousand? How many relatives you got left in Poland, Dr. Wrennchowski?”

“None.”

“Used to be a big family, right?”

“Like all families—”

“Do you think Israel was justified in kidnapping Eichmann?”

“Yes.”

“So there’s some point where it’s
not
okay to let a murderer walk, even if the ‘cops and courts’ won’t touch him. And where is that point? Five deaths or fifty? Does it have to be five hundred thousand before you’ll consider him a murderer?”

“Eichmann was brought
to trial—”

“Okay, so I’ll bring him to trial.”

“Why?”

“In order for my life to have meaning.”

“All life has meaning.”

“Then in order for my
death
to have meaning!”

“It’s not worth sacrificing your life just to take another stab at him.”

“Then what is my life worth?”

No answer.

I go on: “What if I stop being your patient for two weeks? But I still want to see you.”

“I don’t understand—”

“So I can come see you not as a patient but as a friend.”

“Um, yeah. Sure. But what are you trying to prove?”

“We’re not doctor and patient now, we’re friends. You’re Stan and I’m Filomena.”

“Okay, Filomena.”

“Okay, Stan: I think one of the most important things you can do in life is raise a kid to be a skeptical, independent thinker, who’s ready to fight to make the world a better place.”

“Then do
that
instead—”

“Don’t you see? That
is
what I’m doing. But it has to be
by example.
Not just words. Just two more weeks.”

“I don’t know …”

“Okay: Ten days.” Our eyes meet. Feels like the first time, though it’s not. I smile at him. He concedes.

“Okay. Ten days …”

I hope I’ve got that long.

I call the county again. Twenty minutes later the guy comes on and tells me the Tungsten site’s got a clean bill of health.

“What?” That’s me talking. “You could develop photos in the drinking water!”

“Must be residual leachate, ma’am, the site’s clean as a whistle.”

Well,
that’s
bullshit. It’s time to call the EPA again.

Gina’s back. Hoorah. “Gina? Fil. Call out your dogs. There’s two places: One’s called Kim Tungsten Steel and Glass in East Carthage, the other’s Morse Techtonics in plain old Carthage. Did I mention I’m on Long Island?”

“You might have said it faster than the speed of sound, ’cause I didn’t hear it. Slow down, girl. What’s going on?”

“Two companies out here are poisoning the air, the groundwater—”

“And what makes these companies different from all others?”

“Because both sites were run by a selfish bastard who’d kill your mother if he thought it’d make him some extra pocket money.”

“My
mom? She’d gut him and stuff him like a cannoli. Get real, Fil. You got a site for me? How do you know they’re Superfund?”

“I don’t.”

“Then there’s nothing I can do. You have to call the county first—”

“I called the county, Gina. They’re getting a bigger dividend than the stockholders.”

“That’s quite a charge. Can you make it stick?”

“No. That’s why I need you.”

“Well—” I can hear her flipping through pages. Must be her map of Region 1, Long Island Section. Yep: “East Carthage—oh, the old Prosystems site?”

“You know about that?”

“Hey: We’re the government. We know everything.”

I cough excessively.

“You’re also right near Fairhaven National Lab. That’s been Superfund since 1989.”

“Y—” I stop myself from saying
You know about that?
again.

“That site’s reasonably under control. We’ve had to slap them around a bit for improper handling of asbestos, not fixing broken emissions monitoring units, stuff like that, but that’s an air quality issue. None of their radioactive compounds have turned up in the residential drinking water, although maybe that’s because the County Water Authority switched sixteen hundred homes from private wells to public water at the first sign of trouble. Nothing like nuclear waste in the drinking water to get people hopping.”