Copyright 2001 by Morris Rosenthal
Connie woke up early Wednesday afternoon, hoping that this would be the last heat wave of the season. Her living hours had been slowly shifting later all summer, to match more closely with Eric's schedule, but she still felt pretty guilty about sleeping past noon. During the last heat wave, she'd dragged a sheet down the hall and slept on the floor in Carol's air-conditioned bedroom. Unfortunately, Carol and her girlfriend were now entering a trial living together stage, so that was out. Connie and Eric had recently arrived at the same place, but his attic apartment was even worse than her own bedroom, so she'd left a note on the refrigerator and gone back to Carol's around three in the morning.
The heat in his apartment didn't bother Eric, his situation being parallel to that of commuting out of a busy city rather then into it. He normally went to sleep around nine in the morning when the attic was at it's coolest, and got up around four in the afternoon when walls were really beginning to re-radiate the day's stored up heat. Some days he slept much less then others, guiltily admitting to Connie that when they made love in the evening, he often napped at work. In the winter, he explained, the situation was reversed again, and the apartment was freezing at night and in the morning, which worked out fine since he had classes during the day and slept in the evening. The thought of the impending school year depressed Connie.
At the beginning of the summer she'd thought it was a great idea to talk Eric into sticking out his last year and getting the degree. Now that they were spending most of their time together, she found herself wondering if she would see him at all. Even if he did all of his studying at work, he'd still be in class during the day, and sleeping in the evening. So far she hadn't been able to get him to take any money for apartment expenses, even though she was earning almost ten times as much as he was for working half the hours. She jerked straight up in bed and looked at the clock. The little white segments of the pre-LED digital clock showed 1:12 P.M. "Shit!", she scrambled out of bed. She was supposed to meet Senator Hardwick in his local office at 2:30.
It was their third scheduled meeting, or rather the third meeting to be scheduled, since the first two had failed to take place. The first meeting had been arranged for them by Al Darcy, but had fallen through at the last moment when the senator was tapped to replace a newly indicted congressman at a Democratic fundraiser featuring Ted Kennedy. Hardwick hated to go, in his book Kennedy was a "rich boy do gooder", and he might have refused if he hadn't known how much it would annoy Ted to be seen sharing a podium with him. The second meeting, last week, fell victim to crime statistics. The senator had driven himself to Boston for a rare August meeting, only to have his Jaguar stolen out of the guarded Commonwealth lot. He notified his aide Susan, who after trying unsuccessfully to reach Connie at her sister's number, met her at the office to apologize for the cancellation. Connie tried pumping her for information on what Hardwick wanted, but she evaded the questions so skillfully that Connie realized she was in a different league.
In the three weeks since she had gone out to meet with her new employers at H Vector, she'd distributed her working hours evenly between studying up on MLT's and between health studies on electromagnetism. Neither field held any new surprises, although there were an awful lot of articles being published about new super-conducting materials. Al had told her that nearly half of H Vectors employees were involved in superconductor research, the company's original focus.
She bought a book on operating a business as a sole proprietorship in Massachusetts, which published by a company which put one out for every state in the country, except Vermont. Whether that was because of Vermont's low population, or because the state's growing reputation for socialism, the publishers weren't saying. When she actually read through the book, it turned out to have a lot of general information about doing business anywhere in the country, and one chapter in the back written specifically on Massachusetts that wasn't even printed on the same type of paper.
She roughed out that after income tax and the extra self employment tax, the fifty thousand dollars for six months would work out to about thirty-four thousand in her pocket, more money than she would have dreamed of. Al explained that with the new accelerated depreciation schedules for some types of office equipment, she could buy herself a good computer setup that would be one hundred percent deductible. It made shopping like going to a forty percent off sale. She bought an AMD Athlon that ran at half the frequency of her microwave oven and a laser printer. Al sent her a camera, an adapter card for the computer and a cable modem modem, for teleconferencing with the Cambridge office. The cable modem proved worthless since the local cable provider, AT&T, was refusing to hook anybody up who did buy their modem from Circuit City. Since Carol didn't have cable, much less a TV, DSL turned out to be cheaper anyway.
Both Eric and Carol had convinced her that it would be foolish to rent an office for six months, so she had set up in the basement at Carol's place. Carol also refused to accept any contributions towards rent, and Connie wondered if it was her way of keeping the situation temporary. On the whole, it seemed that they were getting along very well, but Connie was suspicious that she made Carol's friends uncomfortable. Carol insisted that she was imagining things.
The upshot of all of this was that she expended very little effort fixing up the basement office, saving all of her decorating energy for Eric's apartment. His own improvements to the large, semi-finished attic, after living there for almost three years, had been limited to pinning a map of Northampton to one wall and taping his name to the outside of the door. His landlord, a charming old widower who flirted shamelessly with Connie, characterized Eric's decorating scheme as "Early Nomad."
"I have to go through the apartment occasionally to get to the storage area," he told her, "As the months went by and he was still living out of boxes, I began to worry that the boy was some kind of psycho." He watched her narrowly during this last line. Then he shrugged, "He's never been any trouble though, really nice kid. Of course, if you should get tired of him ..."
Connie moved cautiously at first, bringing in a couple of low maintenance plants and finding a shade for the bare bulb reading lamp. When it became apparent that Eric wasn't at all threatened by having his space taken over, she started picking up pieces of furniture at second hand shops and yard sales. The first piece she got was a large dresser, to replace the cardboard file boxes that Eric had kept his clothes in for the past three years. His only complaint was, "Now I'm going to have to pack next time I move."
She found a nice wood kitchen set to replace the card table and folding chairs, and brought the futon she had saved from New Jersey as a couch. The portable TV tuned found itself sitting on a coffee table instead of on the box it came in and an old leather upholstered hassock ended up in front of the couch. Eric loved the hassock, and he admitted that sitting on one folding chair with his feet on the other used to make his back hurt. She made dozens of smaller purchases that he didn't even notice and probably never would. By the end of July, she was more comfortable in his apartment then at her sister's, except for the heat.
At twenty-five past two in the afternoon she arrived at Hardwick's office building and changed from sneakers to shoes. She was wearing the same outfit she had on when she visited H Vector. Susan greeted her warmly and asked her if she wanted anything while they waited for the senator. They'd had a lunch meeting with the mayor, she explained, and it ran so late that it messed up everyone's schedules. The senator was late picking up his wife who no longer drove and taking her to her weekly bridge game, but he'd be along momentarily.
Connie asked to have whatever would be the least trouble, and ended up with a tea bag and a microwaved cup of water. Susan had the same, and sat down to wait with her, looking a little embarrassed. They made small talk about the heat for a few minutes and then Susan put her cup down with a decisive movement and said, "Can I ask you a personal question?"
"Go ahead," Connie answered, puzzled and pleased at the same time. For a minute she was afraid that the whole thing had been a setup and that Susan had been given the assignment of pumping her for information.
"Do you know Colin Keith?"
"Not really," she answered slowly, "He's a friend of my boyfriend, or a friend of a friend really. He did do me a, uh, favor once," she added tentatively.
Susan let out a sigh of relief. "Your boyfriend, good. I'm the one who actually sent you the link to the bid document. Colin just asked me to send it to Doctor Weinberger, with an e-mail, and it didn't click until after you left last time that it was you." She gave a short laugh. "Then I got kind of angry."
"I'm not sure I follow you," Susan said.
"Colin and I, well, we're not a couple, exactly, but we do have a sort of a relationship, kind of. Anyway, I would have killed him if I found out that he had me doing favors for a girlfriend of his." They both laughed together this time.
"I wondered how he knew about the bid," Connie said, "He seems to be incredibly well informed about a lot of things."
"Oh, he's a great actor." Susan smiled at some fleeting memory. "He'd have you believe that he gets up in the morning and a little bird flies in his window and tells him what's going on. Actually, he spends a lot more time at the library reading newspapers, magazines and government reports, than he does out investigating leads for stories. He counts on me to keep him posted on state and city politics, who is spending money on what. He probably has a whole string of girls working for him," she concluded on a sour note, with a slight flavoring of suspicion.
"I really only met him this one time with Eric's friend Brian, but I know that he's been out to Eric's job a few times to snoop around."
"Where does Eric work?" Susan inquired.
"He's the third shift security guard at Wilkins Valve, an old .."
"I know about Wilkins," Susan cut her off, "I asked Colin to look into it as a favor. This is getting awfully complicated," she mused, shaking her head back and forth.
"Why are you interested in that old dump?" Connie asked. "I spent a couple hours down there with Eric a few weeks ago. It's just a spooky old ruin. I bet it would cost more to knock down and clean up then the land is worth."
"That's pretty much what Colin reported, not surprising since the owners were willing to give it away. The senator has been planning for years to help start a business incubator. One of these places with low rent and lots of flexible space for startup companies," she explained. "Good vote getter. When Wilkins offered to give the place away, I thought that it might make a great match, so the senator and I went down and looked at the place. I though that some of the buildings had potential, but Jason wanted Colin to check it out from the hazardous waste angle, make sure they weren't trying to stick us with a big clean up bill. According to Colin, they were. That's why the lunch ran so long with the mayor today. Even though we're practically on different sides, we wanted to warn them off. I don't think they believed us though."
"Why not?" Connie wanted to know.
"Oh, they probably think that we're being tricky and trying to keep the place for ourselves. They're so used to lying to people that they don't know how to react when someone presents them with the truth." The heavy outer office door opened with a bang, and she leaned close to Connie and whispered, "Nothing to the senator about Colin. They pretend that they don't know about each other." Connie nodded her understanding.
When Jason Hardwick swung open the door and leapt into the inner office after the fashion of an old vaudeville comedian hitting the stage between strip tease artists, Connie finally understood how people could vote for a man as patently crooked as he was. He had something, charm and nerve, the kind of guy you'd feel sorry for if you caught him picking your pocket at a bus stop.
Hardwick started their meeting by saying, "Wait, wait, what am I doing." He stood on his tiptoes, with his arms held out horizontally from his shoulders and the tip of his nose straining upwards.
"Stretching?" Connie guessed.
"Jesus of Nazareth?" Susan hazarded.
"I'm levitating," he informed them, holding the pose. It was so corny that they both cracked up. The senator continued straining for a few more seconds, blessed with the inborn timing to know just how far to stretch a bad joke. Then he stepped towards Connie and offered his hand. "Doctor Weinberger, I presume?"
"Connie, Senator Hardwick, I've been looking forward to meeting you."
"Please, call me Jason. Senator makes me feel like I'm already in jail. I'm really only the front man for Susan anyway," He sighed dramatically, "I'm just an old familiar face for the voters, but she makes all the decisions. One day she'll decide to dispense with me all together and do it herself." Susan blushed deeply and made herself busy going through his briefcase, taking out this, putting in that. For a second or two Connie was ready to believe that he was just a beard. That was before he started wringing her brain out like a wet bathing suit.
"So, you're the SWOMBA sub for the merry crew out at H Vector. Old Hume must have been happy that you live out in this neck of the woods. Out of sight, out of mind. Now Al Darcy, there's a man you can trust. You'll be working directly under him?"
"Yes," Connie answered, before she could even think about.
"Well that's great," the senator hurried on, "Al and I go way back together," he winked, "Or maybe a friendly rivalry would be a better description. So they told you that the works all sewed up and they're just marking time until the real bid comes out, hey?"
Connie found herself nodding the affirmative again before she could catch herself. Damn. Did he know this stuff already, or was he just a clever guesser.
"So Al probably explained to you that I'm like an evil old puppet master, pulling strings all over the state," he said with a nullifying chuckle.
"Actually he used a fingers in the pie analogy," Connie finally got a shot off in return.
"That's Al," the senator practically shouted, slapping his thigh. "Why, when Al was pulling down a government paycheck himself, the word used to be that you couldn't buy him for all the gold in Fort Knox. Now a Boston Cream Pie, that was another story all together."
She had to smile considering the possibility of that scenario, and Hardwick swept right along.
"Plenty of PR men in a Hume operation, and probably a couple of economists too. Hell, they're practically the same creature anyway. Am I right or am I right? I'd guess, three and three? Four and two? Two and four? With a couple of support staff?"
Oh my god, she froze up. I'm nodding every time he's right! I better get a neck brace for next time I have to see this guy, not that I have anything left to tell.
Hardwick sensed the same thing, because his jovial features relaxed. They remained jovial, but he wasn't selling it anymore. Susan also looked more comfortable, and pulled a chair over to join them. She gave Connie a sympathetic smile as if to say there was nothing she could have done, that the senator was a kind of a natural force.
"So," he said, sounding a little worn out himself, "You're a magnet expert."
"I worked with magnetic field containment for the past five years," she replied.
"Well, that makes you an expert then. In our field," he included Susan with a gesture, "Reading two newspaper articles and memorizing a couple acronyms makes you an expert." He paused, then delivered the punch line. "You don't have to know what they stand for, just so long as you can reel them off without choking on all the consonants. Now, you being a real expert, you're probably going to find in a hurry that people won't understand what the hell you're talking about, no matter how simply you put it." He said this last part like friendly advice from a grandfather.
"Well," she said, using the word to see if it was her turn to speak, "Al told me that there were some people out here worrying about the health effects of electromagnetic fields."
"Now why should the good folks out here be worried about the fields where you scientists grow your elctro-whosits. 'Course, we mainly grow tobacco around here, the cigar rolling kind, but we got some of the best damn farmland in the state. Some of the only damn farmland in the state," he corrected himself.
Connie looked at him in amazement. He must be pulling the dumb act intentionally. But he looked so sincerely puzzled. She ventured a nervous laugh, and his face split into a wide smile. "You see what I mean? And I'll bet you were being careful not to use any tough words. Listen up," he rose, and launched into an amazing impersonation of an old lady, complete with a slight touch of palsy about the hands.
"My name is Emma Smith," he warbled, "And I live just two hundred yards from the turnpike. I've been taking the Readers Digest for over thirty years, although I changed to the large print version a few years ago on the account of my eyes. I had them operated on by the wonderful young man at the Baystate Medical Center, and I see much better now. He used a laser knife," Hardwick added, putting a touch of pride in the voice. Connie could have sworn she saw an old lady when he nervously brushed a wrinkle out of his imaginary dress.
"I read an article by a world famous scientist that showed that power transmission lines are responsible for killing half the women between ninety and ninety-five who live within a quarter mile of them with rare brain cancer. I don't want to die so that some young fools can go racing up the highway at three hundred miles an hour. What's their hurry anyway," he looked around myopically, "The bus will get you there too." He concluded the performance with a brief bow at the waist, then acted out an overhead tennis serve, telling Connie that the ball was in her court.
Connie rose to her feet, thinking furiously. "It's wonderful of you to have come Mrs. Smith," she stalled, "And I'll be happy to address your concerns. And may I add that we're pleased to hear that your eye surgery was successful." Hardwick was making a 'get a move on roll' with his right hand, and Susan covered her face with her hands.
"I, uh, happen to have read the exact article you mentioned," Connie invented desperately, "And I'm afraid it might have lost a little in the translation to large print. Doctor Bjorn did claim that half of the fatal brain cancer cases of the rare type he studied occurred in women who lived near power lines, but if you look at his figures, his study only included two women between the ages of ninety and ninety five. That means that he based his entire conclusion on a single case of cancer, which could have turned up anywhere. The data from all the other age groups, which had larger sample numbers, showed no correlation between proximity to power lines and the rare brain cancer."
The senator and Susan both applauded her improvisation, but then Hardwick stood up again to rebut. "Don't you go trying to confuse me with your wacky professor math. How can you prove to me that I won't get cancer from the wicked things," was all he said, then changed to his normal voices and continued sadly, "I can tell you from personal experience, that's how these public meetings inevitably end. You did a fine job," he added hastily, "And I'm sure that you'll be even better with practice, but I wouldn't want you showing up for one of these things thinking that the people who attend come with open minds."
"Thank you," Connie said somberly, "But why are you telling me all this?"
"Al probably told you that I'm looking for an angle to make sure I get a say in the biggest potential public works project to come through Western Mass in its history. And he's right." Hardwick smiled, "And I've got that angle now, thanks to Susan here, who made sure I got an early start. I don't want to see a pretty physicist like you thrown to the wolves just to make a meeting a little more interesting. You tell Al that I'd like to have a sit-down with H Vector, in my official capacity as the representative-at-large of Western Massachusetts Residents Against Magnetic Radiation, pronounce WhamRammer Sounds like a radio station, doesn't it?" he joked.
Connie nodded involuntarily, for the last time she swore to herself, and Jason led her to the door. "You have any questions about anything, you just give old Susan here a call and she'll take care of you. I enjoyed our meeting."
"Bye," Susan called from over his shoulder, and Connie responded in kind. She was halfway to the parking lot before she realized what a smooth job he'd done of dismissing her. She'd only managed to ask one question the whole time she was there, and his answer made her feel like a charity case. I feel a headache coming on, she said to herself, I think I'll go wake up Eric.