Watermind (3 page)

Thinking about Harry gave her a rancorous stomach pain, as if she'd swallowed raw aspirin. She told herself she was overreacting—her family issues were trivial. True, her mother walked out when she was two, but lots of mothers dumped their kids. And Harry kept strict rules: no carbonated drinks, no TV, no boyfriends. But plenty of fathers pushed their daughters to excel. Starting MIT at age fourteen, that was supposed to be a good thing.

When she saw Quimicron's ad, the words “Hazardous Waste” tantalized her. She ripped the ad from the newspaper and fled South again. One year later, she found herself choking on her own vomit beside a pond in Devil's Swamp.

“Don't call anyone!” She knocked the cell phone from Max's hand.

“Girl, we gotta get you to the hospital.”

He cradled her in his arms, but she twisted away. “We smoked pot, remember? One look at my bloodshot eyes, they'll give us urine tests, then they'll fire us.”

Max grasped her shoulders in his large powerful hands. “It's your life, Ceegie. You been
exposed.
”

“I didn't swallow anything,” she lied.

Nausea almost gagged her again, but she fought it down. Her hands were trembling, and an ugly taste dried her mouth. Could this be her oblivion? But she had put Max at risk, too. Quimicron had zero tolerance for drugs, and Max would never find wages like this again. She smashed her fist against her knee.

“Okay,” she said after a moment, “I'll drive myself to the hospital. You go back and pretend nothing happened. Tell Rory I got stomach flu.”

Max crushed her to his chest. “I'm not leavin' you.”

For a while, they argued and kissed, and finally, she resorted to more lies. She told him she was wanted on drug charges in another state. After that, he agreed to go back and cover for her. But as soon as he was out of sight, she vomited a gut-load of water.

Shaky and anxious, she found her Rover and drove out
the rutted dirt access road to Highway 61. But instead of turning South toward the hospital, at the last minute she changed her mind and veered North toward the Roach. There was something about hospitals, the astringent smells, the sense of entrapment. She remembered the night with Harry. No, she wasn't going to any hospital.

Behind the Hardee's drive-thru, a quarter mile north of Devil's Swamp, she swerved into the driveway of the Ascension Motel, fondly called the Roach Motel by the Quimicron crew who lived there. The Roach crouched like a blue cinderblock bunker, with concrete balconies, a despondent cactus garden, and a sign offering rooms by the day, week, or month. Quimicron negotiated a discount for its hazardous waste workers. The high wages drew migrants from all over the region, and Quimicron wanted them housed close to the work site. CJ's room faced the back, overlooking the blacktop parking lot, three Dumpsters, and a wild verdant grove of pin oaks.

Her room felt stifling. She opened the window, but closed the drapes, then shed her dripping clothes. Wiggling out of her underwear, she replayed the morning's events in her mind as pond liquid sluiced down her neck and chilled her.

The motel room held the minimalist contents of her vagabond existence, a few good clothes draped over the backs of chairs, some books, her laptop, her phone charger. She found a clean plastic cup in the bathroom and wrung several clear driblets from her hair. Under the bright fluorescent light, she swirled and sniffed the brew as if judging wine. But it showed no odor or color. No obvious particles.

Liquid sloshed in her hip boots and coverall pockets, so she collected all she could find until the cup held about a hundred cubic centimeters, enough for a lab analysis. She covered the cup tightly with a plastic ashtray and found the yellow pages in the nightstand drawer next to a Bible. Only a few commercial laboratories were listed in Baton Rouge, none available to the public. Some New
Orleans labs had rebuilt after the latest hurricane, but New Orleans was seventy-five miles South, too far to drive before the close of business—and she couldn't wait a whole day. CJ slid her thumb down the page and scowled.

Then she dutifully called and reported her sick time to Elaine Guidry, the Quimicron personnel officer. She told Elaine that she'd contracted
ciguatera
fish poisoning from eating spicy deep-fried red snapper at the Shrimp Hut on Lafayette Street.

“Laws, Carolyn. What next? Leprosy?” Elaine had lost sympathy for CJ's elaborate excuses.

In the shower, CJ poured antibacterial liquid soap over the plastic bristles of her hairbrush and visualized leprosy. Hansen's disease was the kinder name for it. People in Louisiana still contracted that ancient malady. There was even a local colony, a “leprosarium,” in Carville. CJ scrubbed herself from scalp to toenails with the plastic hairbrush till a scum of skin cells and hair clogged her drain. She didn't know the official wash-down procedure for toxic exposure, but she assumed it had to be torturous. The scene at the pond kept rushing back at her. The congealed taste. The obscene fingers. She inhaled shower water and almost choked.

Then she held her eyes open under the punishing spray and forced herself to stand still and take the sting. She let the water scour her ears, nostrils, and the back of her throat. She swallowed and induced herself to vomit again. She leaned over the tub drain and heaved.

The hairbrush left her skin raw and tingly, so after rinsing, she took a quick tub soak with moisturizer gel. As she sank into the sudsy warmth, Max's tune kept echoing in her mind. He sang her the lyrics in Creole, in his sweet sonorous baritone. But when she asked for a translation, the English words didn't sound as cheerful as she'd expected.

Woman, you are my weather.

You mark off my time.

Raise me in spring, love me in summer,

Bury me in the fall.

Come winter's end, will you raise me again?

You blow the rain through my soul.

The tub rim was giving her a neck cramp, so she got out and toweled off. The cup of liquid still waited on the counter, and she'd known all along there was only one lab nearby that stocked the specialized equipment she needed.

“Quimicron,” she said aloud. Then she wrinkled her nose and scrutinized her wardrobe.

Maybe she'd been wrong to ask Max about the lyrics. She'd intended to make an opening, to share some mutual understanding with him. “What does that mean,” she had asked, “to blow rain through the soul?”

Simple man, he only smiled and shrugged. “Music ain't supposed to be translated.”

She jerked a blouse off a hanger.

 

Wednesday, March 9

3:17
PM

 

As CJ wove through a stream of trucks down Highway 61, she lowered her window and tossed out a Ziploc of prickly green marijuana buds—the last of her stash. From now on, she wanted a clear head. She stepped on the accelerator and visualized her destination. The Quimicron lab was on the top floor of Building No. 2. She'd passed it once, on her way to pick up the crew's paychecks. She'd even peeped through the glass door to check out the equipment. The room had been vacant and dark. What she couldn't know was that the staff chemist had just started chemotherapy for lymphoma.

Highway traffic grew thicker, and so much hot dust
spewed through her open window that she closed it and flipped on the AC. Two days ago, she'd scraped frost off her windshield. Louisiana's restive climate exasperated her.

A wave of red lights on the road ahead made her jam her brakes, and the truck behind her skidded. She eased onto the shoulder and craned to see around a big silver Peterbilt. Pipeline construction ahead. Fifty yards down, she could see cars trickling past orange-and-white pylons that clogged the right lane. She veered onto the gravel median, and as she zoomed past the Peterbilt, the driver made a rude gesture. She pressed her accelerator and sprayed gravel. Everyone should drive on the median, she thought. It was the smartest way to clear a traffic jam.

As more drivers honked, she fought a rising irritation. Why did these citizen vigilantes try to enforce stupid traffic rules? She wasn't hurting them. Traffic should flow like the Internet, with every data packet finding its own quickest path. Cars should come equipped with artificial intelligence—to make up for all the brainless drivers. When her right turn came, she had to cut off a red Honda and swerve through a hail of horn blasts.

Quimicron's main plant lay within a private ring levee, a thirty-foot-high earthen fortress designed to hold off the Mississippi floods. Only Building No. 2 protruded above the ring levee. Fronting the canal, its upper windows kept watch over the comings and goings at the Quimicron barge dock. Quimicron's property encircled the blunt northern end of the canal and took in much of the swamp where CJ had been working. A gated entrance, motion sensors, and electrified chain-link fences kept intruders away from the plant, and video cameras monitored every building and parking lot. But CJ carried an employee badge, and she'd made friends with the gatehouse guard, a sweet pimply kid named Johnny Poydras.

At the Quimicron entrance on Highway 61, she pulled to the shoulder, checked her mirror, and wiped a red line
of lipstick off her teeth. She was wearing serious slacks, a linen blazer, and a white button-down blouse. She was trying for an “authorized” look, as in “authorized entrance.”

Johnny Poydras grinned and waved her through the gate with the
Godzilla
comic book he was reading. She drove up over the ring levee, passed through the chain-link fence gate, and dropped into the gritty brown basin of the Quimicron plant. On the front steps of Building No. 2, she adjusted the badge clipped to her lapel and whistled a saucy tune to buck up her confidence—Max's tune again. He was out there in the swamp, shoveling poisoned mud and worrying about her. “Oh Max, I don't deserve you,” she whispered.

The new plastic cooler she'd bought at Wal-Mart resembled the type chemists used to transport field samples. It contained one clear plastic Baggie of liquid, labeled with a set of official-looking made-up numbers in black felt-tip. She gripped the cooler handle, stuck out her chin, and ran up the steps to the front door.

Several people milled in the beige lobby, but no one took notice of CJ and her cooler. The guard in the booth glanced at her badge, then wordlessly buzzed her through the turnstile. Quimicron SA employed several thousand people at its Baton Rouge plant, and many, like her, wore the blue badges of temporary contract workers. She paused at the drinking fountain to calm down, then hurried upstairs to the fifth floor. Sure enough, the lab was empty and dark. But the door was locked.

CJ waved her badge across the card-reader mounted beside the door, but its light-emitting diode stayed red. She should have known her temporary badge wouldn't grant access. Several people passed up and down the hall, so she couldn't stand there shaking the door lever. She picked out an attractive well-dressed man who looked like a manager.

“Excuse me, this lab is locked, and I've got a horrendous deadline. Will your badge open it?”

The man glanced at her, then at the lab door. She must have interrupted him deep in thought, because he seemed a bit unfocused. He was middle-aged, slim, and fit-looking, with a nut-brown tan and fine dark Mediterranean eyes. His chin was a smidge too long, but she liked his full head of blue-black hair, just silvering at the temples. He wore it longish, combed back behind his ears like a poet.

“This door was supposed to be open,” she lied. “There's an EPA guy waiting on the phone for my data. He's threatening to fine us.”

The man read her badge aloud. “Carolyn Joan Reilly.”

She hated that name and had to bite her lip to keep from saying so. It was her mother's name. The personnel office had made a mistake printing the whole revolting thing on her badge. She nodded. “That's me. Staff chemist.”

The man wore casual clothes, expensive but not showy. A Montblanc pen bulged in his shirt pocket, and CJ thought he might be a lawyer. Late forties, she guessed, close to her father's age. His features were gaunt, as if he'd been fasting, and one of his eyebrows arched higher than the other, giving him an aristocratic expression. Yes, this guy definitely qualified as handsome. She could tell he was deciding the same thing about her.

“You're a temp,” he said.

“I'm a consultant,” she bluffed. “I'm trying to bail your company out of a major jam with the EPA, and they're waiting for my analysis. Can you help me or not?”

The man wore his badge clipped to his belt, so she couldn't read his name. “What are you analyzing?” He spoke with a trace of accent, as if he'd learned English as a second language.

“Toxic waste.” She popped her cooler lid. “Wanna see?”

He stepped back and shook his head, then pulled his badge out on its retractable cord and waved it across the reader. The LED changed from red to green.

He said, “Be my guest, Carolyn Reilly.”

Inside the quiet lab, CJ locked the glass door and waited till the man disappeared down the hall. A small surveillance camera dangled from the ceiling, so she drew deep breaths and stood straighter, trying to appear official. She hoped the guy behind that camera was reading a comic book.

But he wasn't. Security officer Gene Becnel monitored his screens with the vigilance of a cotton rat. As soon as he noticed her presence in the lab, he checked his personnel schedule, then slotted a DVD to make a high-resolution recording. Next he took a bite of his Kit Kat bar and poised one finger over the alarm button. His great doughy buttocks inched forward in his chair, and with rapt concentration, he watched her take a Baggie of liquid from a white plastic cooler.

 

Wednesday, March 9

4:01
PM