Copyright 2001 by Morris Rosenthal
It turned out to be a triple date. Brian and his new girlfriend Gretta, and an freelance investigative reporter, Colin Keith, with his date, a tired looking woman named Nancy, who was a nurse at the municipal hospital. It pretty obvious to all present excepting Nancy herself that Colin was more interested in her job then her other assets. Colin was doing an expose on medical waste, and he kept trying to bring the conversation around to infectious materials and other sundry gruesome leavings from the practice of modern medicine. It made very poor dinner conversation, even in a vegetarian restaurant.
"So," Colin was saying, carefully assembling a forkful of salad, "Once the used syringes are collected, who would be responsible for counting them?"
Nancy gave him an odd look. "We don't count them, we throw them out. I suppose that the storeroom can tell how many are being used by the inventory count."
"And the packing from surgery," he continued, the fork casually halted in mid air. "Sponges, towels, all the blood soaked stuff I see on the Medical Channel on cable. Who tracks those?"
"Do we have hear about this now?" Brian asked. "My pasta dish is taking on a whole new and unintended dimension."
"Second the motion," Connie added, "I'd rather here about what a wonderful place this is to live and where I'm going to find a job."
Colin grimaced, his news-hound persona made it visibly painful for him to set aside a promising line of inquiry, even temporarily. In Colin's case, his personality resembled a seven layer cake. Behind the facade of a hard-boiled voyeur of the underside of life, he encouraged people to think there hid a caring human being. This concealed gentleman was himself a fiction he'd created for hiding a cynical, unemotional, aloof personality. Beneath this was the lonely, sensitive soul holding in an asshole, and so on. He even confused himself at times.
Despite his relative youth, just two years older then Eric and Brian, he was quickly making a name in his field, and his stories were often picked up by the major news organizations. A freelancer by choice, he concentrated on slowly developing stories with a good selling potential. His bread and butter subject was the environment, and he could always count on the Green Valley to buy any story where a juicy smoking gun could be placed in the hand of one of the local icons.
Colin had a network of informants in Western Massachusetts, mainly young women who he had dated exactly once. Despite their anger on finding that his interest in them was directly proportional to their ability to feed him information, they always called when they had some new tidbit that might interest him. Sometimes they did this to show him what a good thing he'd missed, other times because they truly believed in the right of the people to know. Occasionally they were motivated by a baser instinct, usually revenge. Colin didn't care about their motivation as long as they kept calling.
He did have two informants that he went out with on a regular basis, in exchange for a regular flow of information. Barbara Flynn, a secretary in the Hampshire County DA's office, who provided invaluable information on likely targets for investigation, and Susan White, Senator Hardwick's aide, who gave him a window to the desk of one of the best informed men in Massachusetts. Colin prided himself on have the lowdown on everything that happened in the valley, and keeping track of who was hiring for what was an automatic activity with him.
Faced with criticism on two fronts, he curbed his interrogation of Nancy, and began to question Connie.
"So what field are you looking in?" he queried.
"Physics, I guess. I just completed my dissertation this past month."
"Physics, you guess," he repeated, warming to his new task, "Astrophysics? Nuclear Physics? Quantum Physics?"
"Applied Physics, actually," she replied, "I specialized in creating and controlling high power magnetic fields."
Brian winked at Eric, as if to say, "That will shut him up." It didn't.
"Know anything about MLT's?" he casually tossed out.
"Magnetic Levitated Trains? I keep up with the literature, but there isn't much happening in this country."
"There's a bid out for a feasibility study for a Boston/Albany link. I'm pretty sure it had a SWOMBA set-aside. Probably around fifty grand or so. You ought to put in a proposal."
"SWOMBA?"
"Small Woman Owned or Managed Business or Agency, something like that. "How many small woman owned magnetic train businesses can there be around."
"I don't have a business," Connie answered, finding herself on the defensive.
"You won't need one. When the state does one of these bids, they end up waiving all the normal requirements for the set-aside portion. Shows good faith. They wouldn't actually expect you to do anything." He was in his glory now, the man with all the answers.
"I, uh, it sounds interesting." She put a heavy stress on the 'sounds'. "Where would I get the details?"
"I've got contacts with the state, give me your e-mail address and I'll have a copy of the bid sent to you. You better act fast when you get it, though. I hear that this is a real railroad job," he stopped to smirk at his own pun. "They've already started negotiations with the Boston firms who are going to get the second phase."
Colin took license from his triumphant disposal of Connie's attempt to turn the flow of conversation, and turned back to Nancy. "How about the actual organs they remove? What happens to them?"
Brian threw his arms up and started a second conversation on his side of the table. "Not bad for rabbit food," he addressed this comment to Eric, "They took a half page ad in this months issue. Just the name of the place, and a picture of some produce with the caption 'No animals were hurt in bringing you this advertisement.' I though it was kind of classy."
"It's not all organic, though." Gretta spoke out for the first time that evening, "I saw a box from Cudson Farms through the kitchen door when the waitress came out. Everyone knows that Cudson uses commercially purchased manure for their vegetables."
"All manure isn't organic?" Eric felt obligated to ask.
Gretta pounced on the question with the usual gusto of one of Brian's world saving girlfriends. "Oh, but if you only knew," she exclaimed, "The only place you can get pure manure is from an all organic farm. The manure you buy from the feed stores can be contaminated a hundred different ways. They could be giving hormones to the farm animals, or antibiotics, and who knows what's in their feed. Then, if the manure is collected from the fields, oh boy. You get fertilizers and pesticides and all sorts of oils leaked from farm equipment. I could go on and on."
Brian stared at her in amazement throughout this recitation, and Eric decided he'd better stay close to Connie all night. It looked like Brian was getting ready for a new girlfriend. Then again, he was probably safe, since in six years he couldn't remember Brian dating a woman who wasn't a Scandinavian bombshell, as if there was any other kind. The problem was that the only one of two reasons could bring these Arctic sirens to the Northampton area. Either they were lesbians, or they wore worshippers of Mother Earth, the newest oldest religion going.
Having had his field narrowed to the earthy crunchy crowd, Brian was forced to pass himself off as a vegetarian. Whether he posed as an ethical vegetarian or a health vegetarian depended on the current girlfriend. His job at the Green Valley was tremendous cover and had afforded him the opportunity to become an expert in the lingua franca of the One Earth. Despite his growing expertise, his relationships were getting shorter and shorter. With each new relationship, he became more and more convinced that his girlfriend couldn't really be serious about what she was saying. This intuition invariably resulted in a conversation that created a vacancy in his girlfriend position.
The last girlfriend, the third Ingrid in the Swedish series, had confided in him that mankind must abandon his 'cities of stone and steel' before the tortured earth swallows them in her righteous fury. She even had a date for the blessed event, but it was expressed in planetary alignments so he wasn't sure if it was the next millennia, or the next Tuesday. When he was finally positive that she had to be pulling his leg, he'd said, "You really had me going there, I guess we're both frauds. What do you say we go to Packard's for a burger." Exit Ingrid the third.
Connie finished writing her e-mail address on a napkin and gave it to Brian, who stuck it under the clear plastic cover of the small notebook he always carried. He interrupted his interrogation of poor Nancy long enough to wink at Connie and say, "One good turn deserves another, hey. That's how the information business operates."
She nodded cautiously, and turned her attention to the great manure debate. When Gretta ran out of breath, she jumped in with, "I don't know anything about manure, but this shit tastes pretty good to me."
Gretta reddened up to the roots of her platinum blonde hair, and pointedly turned to Brian for moral support. Nancy, in the mean time, had finally realized that she was being subjected to a new form of date rape, and clamed up, refusing to answer any more questions. There was an uncomfortable silence, and then Brian and Colin had the same idea simultaneously, pushing back their chairs and faking incoming calls on their vibrating beepers.
Colin recovered first. "Mine's a null," he said, returning the beeper to his belt, "Must have been a surge or something."
"Same here," Brian played along.
They settled uncomfortably back into their places. Nancy and Gretta exchanged significant glances. Connie was making barely audible snorting noises, and digging her nails into Eric's thigh in an attempt to avoid laughing. At least she's having a good time, Eric thought. He had been more embarrassed by the other men's obvious escape ploy than they appeared to be themselves. The vegetarian meal was quickly demolished in the ensuing silence.
"Well," Brian patted his stomach, "I won't be hungry for at least another hour. Are we all ready for the movie?"
"I hate to be a party pooper," Nancy said, "But I'm suddenly feeling really tired. Probably from lugging all those barrels full of organs out to the dumpster," she added, with a flash of anger.
"Me too," Gretta chipped in, "The sun was really strong in the fields today, and I'm pretty wiped out."
"Well that's that then," Brian sounded relieved, and he and Gretta rose to go. "We'll have to do this again sometime."
"Sure thing," Colin agreed, "You can expect that bid first thing in the A.M.," he added, in the direction of Connie.
"Thank you," she replied, "I think we'll stay for another cup of tea," she continued, "It was really nice meeting you all."
After another round of pleasantries, Eric and Connie were left alone at the table. "That was different," she laughed, "I'm not sure that I'm in any great hurry to do it again, though."
"Don't worry," Eric replied, "I don't think that's very likely to happen. Did you really want more tea, or were you just trying to speed things up."
"You caught me, although it's a nice night to have a cup on the patio. Carol will be in Amherst until late," she added suggestively. Eric felt his heart give a little leap. "Why don't we skip the movie and have a nice walk back to the house."
They left the restaurant, and strolled up past Eric's car towards the old neighborhood of large Victorians and brick Federals. Connie bumped into Eric twice, as if by accident, then gave up on the subtle approach and halted him with a finger inserted through a belt loop of his jeans. She stepped up next to him, hip to hip, pulling his right arm behind her and around her waist, while placing her left around his.
"Come on Eric, work with me on this, will you?"
His throat had grown too restricted to respond, and they started out slowly, Connie still holding his right wrist in place against her side.
"We must look like we're practicing for a line dance," Connie said brightly. "I don't mind leading, but I'm not a mind reader, so you tell me if I start to make a fool of myself."
He vigorously nodded in the affirmative.
"Can I let go of your arm now?"
He bobbed his head again.
She let her arm drop to her side, and his hand stayed where she had placed it. They moved slowly along the quiet streets up to the gate with the little bronze plaque. She had to remove his hand to negotiate the narrow gate, but she kept a grip on it, even while fishing in her purse for the key to the door. He followed along mutely, fearful that by speaking he might break the mood.
Inside, she drew him past the office to the main stairway. On the landing she halted and kissed him, and this time his arms went around her of their own accord. They worked their way clumsily up the remaining stairs clinched together, Eric half dragging half carrying her upwards. She took control again at the top, guiding him to her bedroom at the end of the hall.
"Any last words?" she asked, her own breath coming quickly now.
His head moved side to side, and she drew him, closing the door.