The Glass Factory (20 page)

“So how do you deal with traditional anti-intellectualism? Your parents don’t approve of your career choice, right?”

“They don’t even think of it as a career, Filomena. Reading books? What kind of a career is that?”

“Uh-huh …”

“And whenever I take on some of the tough guys, like Althusser, Foucault, Lyotard, you know—”

“Oh yeah, sure—”

“All these male professors act like, ‘Isn’t that cute? She’s trying to read the hard stuff.’ Like, excuse me, but I don’t happen to believe that my vagina interferes with my reading comprehension.”

“Although it does sometimes get the pages all bloody.”

She laughs, taking a curve she’s grown up with because I didn’t even see it coming.

“They really told you that?” I ask. “That a woman can’t think complex thoughts like a man?”

“Not directly, in those words, but yes. Yes, all the tenured former sixties ‘radicals’ have turned into macho shit professors who I’d like to sue for motherfucking sexual harassment.”

“Why don’t you leave them to me? Ecuadorian women have a very special way of dealing with troublesome men.”

“So I’ve heard:
snip snip.
My parents still regret not sending me to a Christian college.”

“Really? Why?”

“Because I was a good little girl before I went off to the evil State University, learned all that horrid ‘logical’ reasoning that fed my intellectual pride, and lost my faith completely.”

“My God, Kelly, you’re the embodiment of the last thousand years of European history in one person!”

“You see? That’s a hell of a burden to have to carry around with you. It’s tough being a WASP, even when you don’t have to struggle to define it.”

And we laugh about it until she makes a sharp right onto a private road with no streetlights to guide her.

“How do you read the signs?” I ask.

“There are no signs.”

Right. I forgot.

This “house” could pass for a plantation. A half dozen Doric columns spaced every twenty feet or so support the overhanging roof and the second-floor balcony above a porch you could play rugby on and still have room for a modest shuffleboard game. All at the central axis of a six-acre entrance-way and perfectly symmetrical garden. The only thing that’s missing are a few dozen slaves. Maybe it’s their day off. There’s even valet parking, but he’s white. Times have changed. The guy has just finished parking a solid white fifties-era Bentley that puts all the sleek-but-indistinguishable modern luxury cars to
shame.
I wonder whose car that is.

“Good evening, Miss Hughes,” he croons.

“Ms. Hughes, Mickey.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Oh yeah, there’s a victory for feminism,” I tell her on our way up the stairs.

“Leave your preconceptions at the door, Detective Buscarsela, it’s showtime.”

“Don’t call me that in front of—”

The front door opens and Kelly explodes with delight, “How have you been, Mrs. Crane?” She and the hostess kiss each other on the cheek, rapid, passionless, perfunctory kisses, and she slides effortlessly into the role of good, traditional daughter of the WASP community.

Mrs. Crane eventually gets around to asking after me, and Kelly says, “And this is Filomena.”

“Well, I hope I can live up to
that
introduction.”

We all share a titter, and I scan the horizon for cocktails. Having spotted them I make my way over, avoiding all obstacles ’til I’m cradling a drink in my hand and don’t look quite so much like I don’t belong there. And I’m thinking, Aristophanes wrote a play,
Wasps,
but I haven’t read that one. Going to have to look it up in the university library when I get a chance.

Right. In my spare time.

After I learn ancient Greek.

Safely camouflaged behind a glass of thirty-year-old sherry that was probably harvested by one of my distant cousins, and
damn
good, I begin surveying the room. Hidden stereo speakers gush soft, spineless music that would send any serious composer screaming into the night. Kelly finishes her opening scene, comes over and drags me over to a loose circle of younger people near the blackened fireplace. Some of Kelly’s friends. Anne’s an unemployed MBA currently staying at home while her husband works, Brett’s a corporate lawyer, and Jordan’s a successful physician. I do
not
want to think about doctors tonight, but the Lord won’t let me forget. No, He wants me to stay reminded. I notice Brett the corporate lawyer is also drinking sherry, so with nothing else to say I ask him how he likes it.

“I’ve had better,” he says.

“I haven’t.”

“Well, you must come by then and I’ll show you how to get wonderfully smashed comparing vintage sherries.”

“Maybe in a couple of weeks.”

“Shall we make an appointment? Where can I call you?”

“You can’t.” He looks at me. “I’ll call you.” He smiles hesitantly.

After a few minutes of this, Kelly introduces me to an older bunch of people, among them Donald Seaver, who turns out to be
the
Seaver of the “Seaver’s” national hardware store chain. It’s hard to believe there are still families behind some of these names, that they haven’t all been swallowed up by The Very Big Corporation of America, Inc. During this conversation I learn that America was made great by the great rewards held out to the great men who founded and run the great corporations. Isn’t that great?

Seaver, in addition, “appreciates fine literature,” and he half-kids, half-patronizes Kelly, asking her opinion on various canonized nineteenth-century male writers, and dismissing her opinion when she gives it, then he asks me, “And what do you do?”

“Resource conservation and recovery for an independent arbitrageur.”

“Really? Sounds fascinating.”

“It means I sift through other people’s garbage.”

“Oh.”

That stops the conversation for a moment, then everyone laughs, and I explain that I’m a consultant working for companies that are trying to increase profits in these lean, mean times by cutting back on waste and reusing old materials, while Kelly slides back into her role.

“Would you like another gin and tonic, Mr. Seaver?”

“Thank you, Kelly,” he says, handing her his glass. She skips off and leaves me alone. He watches her skirt swish as she goes, then turns to me. Second billing to another woman’s butt. I’m honored.

I find out his idea of “appreciating fine literature” is collecting rare first editions. He invites me to come have a look at his collection.

“First editions?” I ask. “Of what?”

“Oh, Melville, Hawthorne, Dickens. The masters. The Melville is particularly valuable because his works were out of print for so many years.”

“He must have had a lot of financial problems.”

“I beg your pardon? Oh, I suppose.”

“Those books should be in a museum,” I say.

“But they are.”

“A
public
museum. Or the rare books room of the university library.”

He harrumphs a few times. I think it’s a chuckle, but I’m not sure. I excuse myself and ask one of the women which way to the bathroom. The bathroom is not as opulent as the Loire valley original, but the Duc de Guise would still find a place to hang his doublet and hose. I finish sullying the pristine place with my Third World bacteria, wash up, then drink a glass full of water.
Mmm.
At least the water in Old Town is still drinkable.

Fortified with a fresh glass of fabulous sherry, I feel free to wander about the room without attracting attention. Nice try. With my equatorial coloring and jet-black hair I stick out like a scarred cane-cutter’s machete in a polished silver service for twelve. Finally I get the high-sign from Kelly. She says she’s located the trustees for me. They’re out back, second-floor balcony, overlooking the dark, moonlit waters of Long Island Sound.

“Well, what do you think?” she asks me, leading me upstairs.

“I could do without that music. Don’t you have any Anthrax?”

“I’m not sure. Wasn’t there a ‘Rebecca Anthrax’ on the Mayflower?”

I walk right into a conversation about how it’s much easier to get your employees to work overtime these days without complaint, because in today’s economy, the market will bear it. Oh, there’s also a nice view.

Kelly goes up to a group of men, among them Mike Vitelli and—the guy I saw talking to Morse. Turns out he’s a town councilman. Fortunately he doesn’t recognize me, because he’s obviously emptying Morse’s drool buckets for him: the cuffs of his pants are dripping with it.

Kelly says hello to all of them, saying their names for my benefit. They are, left to right, Mike Vitelli, head of the Fairhaven Town Zoning Board, Vince DiMaggio, town councilman, Art King and Derek Gordon, successful businessmen and members of the SUNY at Running River Foundation Board of Trustees. They both act like they’ve known Kelly since she was a little girl, which apparently they have. Art King turns to me: “And you are—?”

Kelly begins to say “F—”

“Carmelina,” I say. Sorry. That’s just how it comes out. Kelly plays along, bless her little WASP heart. Call it crazy, but I’ve begun to sense that Morse has a fix on my
every
move. He’s probably got my name flagged on sixteen different databases, so I’d better start playing it cooler.

“What a lovely name,” says Mr. Vitelli.

“It’s short for María del Carmen.” We talk about names, then about how jurors’ names used to be pulled from the voting records but now they’re pulled from the Department of Motor Vehicles driving records because more people drive than vote, hmm, and finally I flatter him by mentioning that his championing of the Pine Barrens groundwater protection program is sure making the news a lot. He launches into a premeasured package of platitudes about how the East End constitutes more than half of Long Island’s undeveloped land, and that large-lot zoning is needed for groundwater protection.

“That’s the trouble with these politicians,” jokes Art King. “You hand pick ’em, set ’em up in office, and the next thing you know the job goes to their head and they start
doing it.”

There’s laughs all around with that one.

Kelly says, “It’s the ‘Beckett’ syndrome,” but nobody notices.

“Thomas or Samuel?” I whisper.

“Both.”

“That’s a popular answer with you.”

A caterer’s helper brings up a tray of coffee and cake, and Kelly helps herself to a slice of cake and a big glass of milk.
Milk.
In an eyeblink she’s a fifteen-year-old virgin. I mean, I like the taste of whole milk, too, straight from the udder of an Andean cow when I can get it, warm and foamy, but I haven’t been able to have it by the glassful for years now. Strictly skim for my slowing metabolism.

Since we’re all getting so chummy here, I feel it’s safe to ask about Morse’s offer to develop the Pine Barrens. Now, that’s another subject. All four men begin talking at once, but the general idea is that Morse is a guy who gets what he wants. Gordon tells me that Morse once bought sixty acres of farmland back in 1984 for just over $1 million. Less than one year later he had pushed through town approval for rezoning for a 348-condominium complex, and sold the newly razed land for $14 million. Not a bad markup for an empty lot. And that was just sixty acres. Now we’re talking about ten thousand.

“Of course, that was back in the eighties,” says King.

“Yes, yes,” they all agree, the era of the Big Deal has past for now. I can see the streaks of teary-eyed nostalgia beginning to form behind the wine-and-coffee coated corneas of the four upstanding citizens, so I ask, “Where does that leave the Pine Barrens project?”

“Well, it’s still great for development,” says DiMaggio. Both politicians agree here.

“Oh, we’ll reach some compromise,” says Vitelli, “where some of the Barrens is spared and some goes to development.” Both pols agree again. I’m glad we’re all agreeing so nicely.

Then they both invite me to come visit their offices any time. I ask why, and Vitelli comes up with something about how I’m obviously a concerned citizen who would probably be interested in seeing how public servants serve their constituents. So I grab that ball and run with it and mention that actually I’ve had a problem with a county agency—then I realize this is a big mistake even as I’m saying it. They both ask, What, what? My, my. I wish I had Kelly’s talents. How do you smile and titter your way out of this one? I fall back on the old lie about trying to get some of the university’s low-rent incubator space, and Vitelli explains, “That’s the state, not the county,” which defuses that problem for me, but idiot’s luck only lasts so long. During the ensuing discussion I find out that the incubator space is home to high-pressure physics experiments, biotechnology projects, medical prosthesis, skin grafts and burn treatments, everything but Morse’s section.