The Glass Factory Read Free Page A

him. I even ask him how his wife is, who hated me so much.
    “Fine,” he says. Then: “Jeezus, Fil, I didn’t expect—”
    “I didn’t expect either. Now will you help me?”
    “Help you what? You want to go digging, go ahead. You want me to bail your ass out when you get caught, it’s not my jurisdiction.”
    “Since when?”
    “Didn’t I tell you Morse is on the Island? You know, that ‘hospitable economic climate’ they got out there?”
    “Where?”
    “He’s got two big plants out in Carthage. What are you thinking of doing?”
    “Nothing. Yet.”
    “I like the first part. Keep it that way, will ya?”
    “Sure.”
    “And Fil—Shit, I don’t know what to say to you. If there’s anything I can do …”
    “Yeah. Thanks.”
    I think about that bastard Morse. What he did to me and what he’s doing to others. Hundreds, probably thousands of workers dying a slow death from carcinogenic chemicals, insufficient workplace safety and his squash-anything-that-gets-in-my-way personality. It got him controlling interest in nine companies worth between $55 million and $2.3 billion each. But this all happened so long ago that if it weren’t for the scarred lung tissue, it would have long since faded into memory. Then last year he had the balls to threaten my kid. Sometimes, I really wish I hadn’t dropped my gun down that hole in the ice all those years ago …
    Antonia wants to play but my mind’s too bent out of shape to stay at it for more than fifteen minutes. So I turn on the TV and hug her to me. I bury my nose in her hair. They’ve got a rerun of Spartacus on channel 9. Now there’s a guy with problems. And I get a kick out of seeing how he deals with them, too. No “It’ll take years to bring charges” for him. And you know, even in ghosting black and white, that scene where the trainer paints Kirk Douglas’s bare, glistening torso just makes me melt. I’m not really happy about Antonia watching this, but she won’t go to bed and I really want to see what happens. Try explaining Imperial Rome and slavery to a three-and-a-half-year-old sometime! Finally the first rebellion comes; guards get knifed, throttled—I’ll never eat tomato soup again—and when they fall into a pool, Tonia says to me, “They’re going to get wet.”
    I laugh. Such innocence. I almost wish she’d never lose it. But of course she will—she must—to survive. Oh, Lord …Why?
    Why?
    I read her to sleep, then pick up the phone to call—who? Jen? Beto? Betty’s on vacation. I even think of calling Mr. Wang, for Christ’s sake! I’ve got to try to sort this out. This isn’t happening … Okay, Antonia’s got to come first. So I think of Rowena and George: She teaches Africana Studies at Bronx Community College, he’s a jet-black cricketeer from Trinidad who plays hardball gloveless. We’ve cared for each other’s kids through the babysitting co-op—and that’s about as close a relationship as I’ve got in the ’hood and, yes, I really do have their phone number on the inside of a matchbook.
    And of course it’s too late at night to call someone with kids.
    I get about as much sleep as any infantrywoman gets the night before battle, so I’m fresh as a sun-dried Dumpster daisy when I get George on the phone and arrange to meet at the playground. I try to put Antonia in a T-shirt and jeans since she always wants to design cities in the sandbox, but she insists on a dress. Where does she get this urge for femininity from? Must be TV. Not from me.
    It’s one of those spring days that’s sunny enough to fool you until a cloud passes and the temperature drops twenty degrees. Antonia runs free to join the kids on the jungle gym. George is cleaning up some trash from last night’s adult playground users.
    “Hey, Trini-dude-man, what’s up?”
    “They say people are drinking less hard alcohol,” he says, dropping an armful of cans and bottles into the recycling pail. “Obviously not around here.”
    We