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  Rudy’s eyes shifted. He watched Waller’s hand go to the back pocket of his ill-fitting gray slacks, watched him pull out a limp envelope curved to the shape of his oversized ass.

  “I got a check for two weeks’ pay here,” Waller went on. He was looking at Rudy now, holding the envelope up so he could see. “We’re giving you two weeks’ notice, but you don’t have to come in. Here’s your check. Severance. You can have it now, but when you finish up today, that’ll be it. It’ll give you a chance to look around. A head start finding something else.”

  Rudy didn’t catch much of what Waller was saying. Instead he studied Waller’s face, noticed that one eye was a completely different shape than the other, that his incisors were the color of corn. Waller held out the envelope. Rudy hesitated. He didn’t want to touch it because it might still be warm from Waller’s body, from being cuddled up to his disgusting butt.

  “Are you saying that this is it?” Rudy whispered. His throat was so dry, it was hard to talk. “Are you saying that this is my last day?”

  Waller pinched his mustache nervously and patted Rudy limply on the shoulder. “I know it’s hard, buddy. This is sudden, I know. I’m really sorry. There’s nothing we can do about it, though.” He held the envelope closer to Rudy’s face, like he was trying to entice a dog with raw meat. “We’re giving you two weeks up front, buddy. So you can get on your feet.”

  As if following an order, Rudy looked down at his feet. His black work shoes were run over on the sides, scuffed at the toe and heel. One lace was loose. Not untied, but almost.

  “You can’t,” Rudy said. “You can’t fire me just like that.”

  Waller nibbled the edge of his mustache.

  “Not fired, Rudy. Laid off. And I’m afraid we can. We just need to give you two weeks’ notice, and that’s what we’re doing. Again, I’m sorry.”

  He held out the envelope once more.

  Rudy stared at it. His veins began to fizz: first the capillaries in his fingers, nose, and ears, then the bigger ones that fed his arms and legs. Finally the artery that passed through the middle of his body swelled and pounded until he felt his neck and chest would burst. His arms went numb from the elbow down.

  “But I got a wife! A wife and daughter!” he sputtered. “They rely on me. They’re my responsibility!”

  Waller nodded like he understood, the schlub. “I know, Rudy. I know. It’s a difficult thing, like I said—”

  “And I’m the supervisor!” Rudy interrupted. “I’ve been here longer than anybody else! What about the others?” He gestured wildly toward the plane. “Some of them just came on. Why me? How can you do that?” A fleck of spit flew from his mouth and landed near Waller’s lower lip.

  “Hang on, hang on,” Waller said, trying to pat Rudy on the shoulder. Rudy tore away from his hand. He panted, his chest heaving, his face turning a deeper shade of red with each moment.

  “That’s just it,” Waller said in a soothing voice. “It’s not you, it’s the position. We have to eliminate some of the management positions, and yours is one of them. We’re consolidating supervision to save money. We’ve examined everything, and this is one of the ways we’ve been able to streamline.”

  “You mean I worked all this time to make supervisor and now that’s what’s getting me fired?” Rudy screamed. “You mean if I was still a cleaner like the others, everything would be hunky-dory? I’d still have my job?”

  “Well, in a nutshell—” Waller began.

  “Are you kidding me?” Rudy bellowed, showering spit. “This is a joke, right?”

  “It’s not a joke, Rudy.”

  “This whole thing is a crock, and you know it,” Rudy said in a low, menacing voice. He was starting to get what was happening. He squinted one eye and pointed his finger at Waller, pistol-style. “The truth is I’m white, isn’t it? You know if you fired anybody else you’d have the ACLU up your ass in two seconds. Discrimination. You’d have a lawsuit on your hands before you could say Martin Luther King. But what about me? Huh? What am I supposed to do? I got no recourse.”

  “Wait a minute, here. Hold on a second. Calm down, now. Calm down.” Waller put the palms of his hands on Rudy’s shoulders as if he were trying to pat him down to normal size. He looked around nervously, whether to see if there was anyone around to help or to scope out an escape route, Rudy couldn’t tell.

  “Listen, there’s a list for rehires. As soon as things take off again, we’ll try to get you back on. When the scare blows over and people start flying again, we’ll see what we can do. Just check in with the front office now and then.”

  “Don’t touch me, Waller!” Rudy spat, knocking away Waller’s hands. “Why don’t you just admit it? Just admit it, Waller! I’m the one who’s being discriminated against! Why don’t you be honest for once in your life?”

  Rudy couldn’t believe this was happening, but in a way he could. His whole life he’d been misunderstood, treated unfairly. Why should anything be different now?

  Waller took a step back and once again smoothed his mustache into shape with his forefinger. “You know what, Rudy?” he said in a quiet voice. “You just crossed the line, buddy. If you really want to know the truth, everything hasn’t been perfect with your work. We’ve had a reasonable number of complaints from the people you work with. We’ve even talked to you about it in the past. So the best thing would be if you just take this check—”

  “Why, because I was trying to do my job?” Rudy screeched. His voice caught; his throat burned. God, don’t let him cry now. “Trying to get people to come in on time and do their work? Is that discrimination? Was I being prejudiced?”

  He was about to grab the check out of Waller’s hand and rip it up when he saw that Latasha was watching him from the entrance to the jetway. Her hands rested on the handle of her cart. Her eyes sparkled with curiosity, as if she were watching a good television show, a sitcom.

  “I was just trying to get by you,” Latasha said when the two men turned to look at her. “I’m finished here. I’ve gotta go do the next one.”

  “It’s okay, Latasha. We’re almost finished,” Waller said, stepping aside so she could pass.

  Rudy’s tongue felt thick and dry, and for a minute he thought it might gag him. He wasn’t imagining it: Latasha smirked as she walked by. She was glad. She’d been waiting for it, hadn’t she? How many people had known that he was going to get the sack, how many had been in on it? He watched Latasha amble down the jetway until she disappeared into the terminal. When he turned back, Waller was holding out the check, still bent like a dead fish.

  “Just take the check, Rudy. Take it and go on home.”

  The blood drained first from Rudy’s head, then from his neck and shoulders, and finally from his arms and hands. He had to get out of there. He had to think. Things around him looked grainy, like a close-up of a photo in the newspaper.

  “This isn’t right,” he said, taking the check because Waller was holding it out to him, because right then he needed something to hold on to, and even a piece of paper was better than nothing. “Someone’s going to pay for this,” he managed to mutter between clenched teeth.

  Waller, the sap, just chewed his mustache and shook his head.

  “It’s not over!” Rudy called back as he stumbled down the jetway. “You’re going to be sorry!”

  Walking through the terminal was like flying through a wind tunnel. Rudy could hardly see, things flowed by so fast. He bumped into people who pulled luggage behind them, who pushed carts loaded with boxes and bags. A janitor was emptying the garbage in the waiting area, another swept debris into a long-handled pan. Women handed out pizza from behind a counter. They poured soda from a machine, made change from the register. With a pint of beer in each hand, the bartender with the pitted face whom Rudy passed every day looked up and nodded. Rudy rushed on. The security guard with bad false teeth, the scrawny old man who drove the electric courtesy cart, the ponytailed woman behind the desk at Gate 12, announcing the
final boarding of a flight. It was just another day for them.

  Rudy didn’t have a plan, didn’t know where he was going. He passed the gift shop with its display of key chains and coffee mugs, of stuffed bears wearing Hawaiian shirts. Racks of magazines; candy; T-shirts silk-screened with palm trees, the Hollywood sign, sunglasses. Beyond the gift shop, the blue-tiled entrance of the men’s room beckoned like a quiet grotto. Rudy headed for it, but the janitor’s yellow plastic sawhorse blocked the doorway. WET FLOOR. NO ENTRANCE.

  Rudy stepped around it.

  The bathroom was empty. The janitor’s cart sat in the middle, stocked with cleaning supplies, rolls of toilet paper, stacks of paper towels. He glanced briefly at himself in the mirror, saw his wispy red hair, his wide hips and narrow shoulders, his small features. His ID tag still hung around his neck. At least they hadn’t taken that away from him. He went into the last stall and locked the door.

  The coolness of the tile and the echoing silence were comforting. He sat down on the toilet and put his head in his lap. His hands opened and closed. Now what? he thought.

  What? What? What? What?

  The floor was still wet, drying in places. Under the door, he could see the swipes the mop had made. He bent to retie his shoelace. He looked at his hands, his short, pointed fingers. His wife, he thought. Vanessa, her daughter. Waller. He smelled the disinfectant. The liquid soap in the containers near the sinks, the deodorant that measured itself into the toilets with each flush.

  Though he couldn’t seem to finish a thought, something was forming in his mind.

  When the toilet got uncomfortable he unlocked the door and stepped outside. He went to the cart and examined the bottles on the second shelf. Unscrewed a lid, took a deep sniff, recoiled when it burned his nostrils and throat. He glanced at himself holding the bottle, then replaced the lid, put the bottle back.

  Finally he took an armful of toilet paper and went to each stall, dropping three rolls into each toilet. When he left, the sound of flushing was like Niagara Falls. Walking through the terminal on his way to the exit, he imagined the choke and spray of water, the dramatic splash as the toilets brimmed and overflowed.

  3

  Jewell Wylie stuck a broomstick into the garbage disposal and thrust sharply as if she were harpooning fish, or churning butter. Tall and big-boned, wearing denim overalls, and with a thick brown braid that hung between her shoulder blades, she could have been a farm girl except for the silver hoops in her right nostril and left eyebrow, and the poker-chip-sized tattoo of a starburst on the back of her neck.

  Breakfast trays rode the conveyer belt through the window in the wall, paraded jerkily in front of her, turned the corner, and piled up on the stainless-steel counter where the belt ended. The gutter was almost overflowing. Jewell cursed and gave one last jab with the broomstick. She held her breath and flipped the switch. The disposal groaned, and for a minute she thought it was going to spin free. When she smelled the motor overheating, she shut it off, leaned against the counter, and watched the water rise higher. Trays crashed into each other, tipping over glasses that rolled across the counter and fell into the gutter. A mess, out of control, just like her life. She set the broomstick down and pushed up her right sleeve.

  What she was going to do was strictly forbidden: a sign near the switch said so. She plunged her hand into the tepid water, through the flotsam of wet napkins and soggy toast, until she felt the blades of the disposal. They were powerful, industrial strength, made to chew through bones and flesh. She’d seen what they could do to a spoon. Wincing, she stretched down as far as she could, until the backed-up water reached her armpit. Something sharp, with three prongs, was wedged against the blades. She pried at whatever it was, thinking that if the disposal went on now, that would be it. She closed her eyes, gave one last wrench, and the thing came free. It was a pork-chop bone from last night’s dinner, soggy from the water, looking as if it had been gnawed by a dog.

  She flipped the switch and the disposal churned, making a sucking sound. Trays came in hot and heavy. Jewell worked frantically, flipping the glasses and cups upside down into wire racks as orange juice, milk, and coffee flew in all directions. Big splashes of disinfectant sloshed out of the bucket as she tossed in handfuls of silverware. She blasted the dishes with the spray from an overhead flex. Scrambled eggs, pieces of pancake, swollen puffs of cereal, and sausage stubs floated down the trough to the disposal, which devoured them with a greedy gurgle. Jewell cursed. The stacks of dishes on the counter grew; the trays came in faster. Just before eleven, the rush came. Students in the dining room started stacking the trays on top of each other so that they came through the window in double-deck piles, sliding and falling, glasses rolling across the counter and exploding on the floor.

  “Assholes!” Jewell yelled. “Jerks!”

  She picked up a bowl and hurled it against the far wall where it shattered in a spray of thick white shards. Her arms were sticky with pancake syrup and orange juice; water ran off her face and apron. The spoiled brats, sitting on their cans while someone else did their dishes. Jewell jerked down the flex and blasted the spray out the window. There was a chorus of screams, some shouted curses.

  “Read the fucking sign! Don’t stack the trays!” Jewell yelled as she unleashed one last torrent to reinforce the message.

  When the rush was over, the dish room was a wreck. Jewell’s overalls were soaked from her neck to her knees; her high-top sneakers squelched when she walked. Still, she hadn’t thought about Celeste for a good twenty minutes. That was something.

  The relief didn’t last long, though. As she got the squeegee mop and pushed the milky water toward the drain in the middle of the floor, the familiar hollow feeling filled her stomach again. She felt seasick. Her joints went cold and loose. She and Celeste had bickered that morning as soon as they woke up. It was the same old thing: Celeste’s ex-girlfriend and the four-year-old girl the two of them were raising together. Jewell clenched her teeth as she bent to sweep the soggy napkins and broken dishes into the metal dustpan. She had never been the jealous type, until she met Celeste. Then it had sneaked up on her and clobbered her over the head. Now it ravaged her like a disease.

  Keep busy, she told herself. She wiped down the counters and loaded the racks of glasses into the dish machine. The clock on the back wall where the plastic aprons hung said 11:15. Fifteen minutes until her shift was over, forty-five until her class. The dish machine belched a cloud of greasy, sugar-laden steam. “This isn’t working,” Celeste had said at the end of their argument, and Jewell knew it was true. The trouble was, the more hopeless the whole thing seemed, the more overpowering was the love she felt for Celeste. How twisted was that? Before her own eyes she’d become a jerk, a psycho. Always listening, watching for clues. On the alert for anything suspicious: the way Celeste chewed her bottom lip when she thought no one was looking, the way she carried the phone into the bedroom when Dana, her ex, called. There were plenty of signs, and they were everywhere.

  Jewell was sorting the silverware into canisters when her phone rang. She fished it out of the front pocket of her overalls and watched the last few trays wobble in on the belt while she listened to Celeste explain that childcare for Rachel had fallen through that afternoon and that she and Dana had a meeting at Rachel’s school that they just couldn’t miss. Was there any chance that Jewell could pick Rachel up and watch her, just for a few hours?

  “I was going to work on my project this afternoon,” Jewell said. “It’s due in less than two weeks and I’m really behind.”

  “I know, baby. I thought maybe you could put her down for a nap and work while she’s there. It’s a real favor, I know. I wouldn’t even ask you except—”

  Jewell tried to ignore the words and just listen to the sound of Celeste’s voice. She pictured Celeste at her desk, calling while the fifth-graders she taught were at recess. They had met at a party where Jewell hadn’t known anyone. She had just wedged herself into an out-of-the-way corner,
when Celeste had come in the door talking and laughing with a group of friends. She had walked straight to where Jewell was sitting, bent down, and said, “You’re in my seat.” She had reminded Jewell of the famous picture of Anne Frank: the same large, dark eyes, the same quizzical expression. They had whispered to each other all evening. Two days later they ran into each other in the toothpaste aisle at Rite Aid. “You again,” Celeste had said. Jewell began to believe in fate.

  “Can’t Dana find anybody else to watch her?” Jewell asked. She hated even to say Dana’s name.

  “No, she wasn’t able to,” Celeste answered with conspicuous restraint.

  Jewell sighed. “I’m at work, you know. I have class in a half hour.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. If it’s too much trouble, it’s okay. I’ll just—”

  “No, it’s okay,” Jewell said before Celeste could finish. “I’ll pick her up on my way home.”

  Out in the serving bay a cook was cleaning the grill and breaking down the steam table. In the kitchen, another cook pulled metal pans of lasagna from huge ovens. Jewell had worked in the cafeteria since she started college four years ago; the lonesome smell of food cooked in too-large quantities was like home. She loaded a plate with sausage, eggs, and French toast and headed for the dining room.

  Jewell’s buddy Eli was eating and reading the paper at a table near the windows. He waved her over to the chair opposite him.

  “How’re you doing?” he asked.

  Jewell shrugged and sat down.

  Eli was probably the only student who put in more hours at the cafeteria than Jewell. He was Samoan, with rippled black hair that he wore in a ponytail. A second, sparser ponytail dangled from his chin. His big head and huge torso made him seem tall until he stood up, then you realized he was short. He always worked the pot room, the assignment all the other students in the cafeteria avoided because it meant leaning over a Jacuzzi-size vat of hot, greasy suds. Eli didn’t mind. He scrubbed away on cookie sheets, baking pans, and mixing bowls while he listened to his Walkman and let sweat pour off his arms and face.