Love You to Death

by Grant Michaels

Once inside, I was struck by the honest industrialness of the factory. It was a place where things were made, work was done—a contrast to the candy store, where money and merchandise and lies were exchanged. The air inside was cool and carried a bitter, though not unpleasant smell. I’d expected something sweeter, but I’d later learn that I’d been anticipating the smell of sugar cooking rather than the pungent aroma of chocolate being tempered.

  I stood near the door with Tobias for a few minutes, trying to get my bearings. I felt a little lost, and I’m sure it was obvious that we didn’t belong there. A small electric-powered forklift, its chipped yellow paint streaked and speckled with chocolate, beeped at us and swerved too close as it buzzed by. I jumped back, pulling Tobias with me, and I saw the young driver smile self-contentedly at the success of his show-off scare tactics. Perhaps that was how he enlivened his dull life, pretending the forklift was a sports car, or a skateboard.

  While we waited for the woman named Mary who was supposed to take us on a tour of the plant, I looked around, trying to guess what was going on. From where we stood I could see through a large window five women of varied ethnic origins (none Caucasian, however) packing chocolates into boxes. They stood while they worked, and I was mesmerized by the blurred motion of their hands, guided by the same fantasmic force that inspires the best haircutters in their swift but deliberate work. A conveyor belt moved an interminable line of empty boxes unhaltingly past each woman while she urgently added her portion of candy to each box. It was the exact opposite of the famous skit where Lucille Ball picks chocolates off a conveyor belt in a growing frenzy. In real life it’s the boxes that move on the packing line, not the chocolates. I guessed that the last woman in line had the most difficult job, fitting those final pieces into whatever space was left and doing it exactly within the allotted time. Perhaps she had some dubious title to reflect her talents, like Senior Last Packer.

  When our guide finally appeared, I recognized her instantly. It was Mary Phinney, who’d been at the reception last night. Small and wiry, trotting like a nervous animal, she approached us warily, as though we were intruders on a top-secret project.

  “Are you the ones here for the tour?” she demanded.

  I nodded and noticed her laminated name tag, which had her photo—obviously taken years ago, before the crepey skin and wattled neck had appeared—along with a number, a low number, a kind of status symbol that implied a long term of dedicated service to the company. Mary Phinney wore her employee badge proudly.

  “Who are you with?” she asked with a high, raspy bark.

  I felt compelled to correct her grammar but restrained myself. She stood facing me, hands on her hips, defiant.

  “It’s just we two,” I answered.

  “You’re supposed to be with a group.”

  “We are the group,” I said.

  She gave Tobias a disapproving glance and said, “Is he yours?”

  Tobias interjected proudly, “That’s my Uncle Stan.”

  Mary Phinney’s eyes bugged out momentarily. “Why you people ever want to mix together, I’ll never understand.”

  “I’m his godfather.”

  Mary Phinney said nothing. Maybe it was the god word that shut her up. I could see it was going to be a challenge to keep my temper with this woman, but I reminded myself that I wanted to find out who had made the truffles for the party the other night. In particular, I wanted to know who’d made the three specially decorated ones. I could already tell I wasn’t going to get too far with her. My first impressions had been wrong: Mary Phinney was no feisty terrier, she was a pugnacious pit bull.

  Already five yards ahead of us, she motioned for Tobias and me to follow her. “Come on,” she yelled back at us. And tell your boy to keep his hands in his pockets. These aren’t free samples.”

  I waved the small bag of chocolate we’d extorted from the outlet store earlier. “We came in with this,” I said, holding up the bag, “so don’t accuse us of pilfering.”

  “Hmph!” went Mary Phinney as she led us through a set of airtight doors into the factory. The air in there was cool, around fifty degrees Fahrenheit, but still relatively warm for us, since we’d come in from outside. We walked by racks of plastic jugs that looked exactly like gallon-sized containers of automobile antifreeze. The labels said things like “natural rum flavor” and “raspberry concentrate” but the lists of chemicals that followed looked like antifreeze too.

  We continued walking toward a large open area. On the way we passed by long rows of tall metal racks on wheels. All the shelves were empty, and I asked our grumpy guide why.

  “That was all Valentine’s stock, went out months ago. We’re finishing with Easter now.”

  It sounded like the fashion industry, where everything behind the scenes is many months ahead of what the public buys. And in the big work area ahead of us, I found out exactly what “behind the scenes” meant in the chocolate trade. The first noticeable change was that it was a few degrees warmer in there, though still not warm. Perhaps the change in temperature was caused by all the machinery and motion in that area, which resembled a scaled-down amusement park with belts and wheels and turntables and platforms all twisting, turning, tilting, and whirling thousands of chocolatey objects.

  One extra-nasty machine caught Tobias’s attention. It resembled the revolving drum of a monstrous music box, but in place of delicate pins plucking dulcet tones from a metal harp, the drum housed a collection of plastic molds—bunnies and ducks and chicks—impaled helplessly all around its surface. The rotation and revolution and vibration inflicted upon the poor chocolate creatures reminded me of the laboratory torture that astronauts must endure to overcome their sense of gravity.

  “What’s that one for?” I asked Mary Phinney.

  “Spinners,” she barked back. “Keeps the chocolate even in the mold. They’re all automatic. Each one puts out two hundred pieces an hour.”

  It sounded impressive. Then we came upon a conveyor belt carrying ranks and files of bleached white coconut creams on their fateful way into a mysterious machine. Just before entering the dark chamber, each row of creams was transferred to another conveyor belt of coarse screening. As I peeked inside to watch, I felt Tobias tugging at my pants leg.

  “I wanna see.”

  I lifted him up and we looked inside the machine together. First, the conveyor belt dipped down into a shallow trough of melted chocolate, which coated the bottom portion of each row of coconut candy. Then, the quarry was dragged directly through a curtain of melted chocolate, which completely enrobed each piece. All excess chocolate ran off through the porous conveyor belt, just as the chocolate-covered creams were transferred to another belt to be carried into a cooling tunnel. I caught hold of Tobias’s little arm just as it was snaking its way into the dark chamber, eager to snare a freshly-coated coconut egg.

  Mary Phinney saw him and snapped, “I told you, keep his hands in his pockets.”

  The next pieces we saw were specialty items for a local Roman Catholic girl’s school, part of next springtime’s fundraising drive, according to the message on the wrappings. The items were solid milk chocolate crosses with a white chocolate Jesus attached. I asked Mary Phinney, “Does this come with a white cross and a dark Jesus?”

  She didn’t answer me.

  Against one wall I noticed a row of large metal drums, like the ones crude oil comes in, with big block-stenciled letters on each one spelling out PURE CANDELA.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  Mary Phinney answered. “Wax.”

  “For the floor?”

  “For the chocolate.”

  “You put wax in the chocolate?”

  “You have to,” she said, shaking her head in annoyance. It was obvious that she didn’t enjoy conducting tours, and I wondered why she did it at all. She explained about the wax. “You know how hard it is to make a good product? One or two degrees off, and it gets dull and grainy, no sheen, no smoothness. You’d need a laboratory to
do it right. You know how much that would cost? But with a little wax, you don’t have to worry, and you still get good product.”

  “But you end up eating wax.”

  “Don’t even taste it.”

  “I’ll bet it’s a lot cheaper than cocoa butter too.”

  Mary Phinney was about to agree, but caught herself. Meanwhile, I wondered how much wax you’d need to make champagne truffles over a campfire. I was quickly learning that chocolate-making could be just another heavy industry, one that occasionally produced an edible product.

  “Excuse me, Ms. Phinney, but I was wondering—”

  “It’s Mrs. Phinney. My husband is dead.”

  “Sorry,” I said, then continued. “I’d like to see where the truffles are made.”

  She set herself stiffly on her little legs and said, “Those aren’t ours.”

  “I thought Le Jardin made their truffles here.”

  “They rent space and equipment, that’s all.”

  “I know the people who own the business,” I said.

  “Then get them to show you around.”

  “I just want to find out who made those truffles for last night’s big party.”

  She aimed her nasty little eyes at me. “Why?”

  “Because one of them was full of poison, and it might have happened here.”

  “I don’t know anything about it,” she said.

  “Don’t you supervise all the work here?”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Laurett Cole.”

  “Then why don’t you ask her about it?” she said with a snarl. “She’s the one who made them.”

  “No, she just arranged them. I want to know who made them.”

  Mary Phinney suddenly turned and faced me. “What are you doing here? If you’re trying to help her, it’s too late. She got all the special treatment she’ll get from this place.”

  “Who put the poison in that truffle?”

  The woman flinched. “I told you, it was Laurett Cole. Her kind don’t know any other way to fix the problems they get into. It figures she’d get caught, stupid woman.”

  “That’s my ma,” exclaimed Tobias, and in a second he was at her, punching and kicking with all his little strength.

  Mary Phinney screamed loudly for help, then yelled at me, “Get that little bastard off me!”

  I didn’t think good Irish Catholic women said things like that, but then, I’ve lived a cloistered life. I pulled Tobias away from her, but I didn’t use much strength. I wanted him to get in a few more good punches and kicks before I stopped him. Meanwhile, some of the factory workers had gathered around us, curious about the sudden outbreak of violence. I noticed that none of them offered to help Mary Phinney either. They just stood by and watched as I disentangled Tobias from the older woman.

  Just then a man emerged from a glass-enclosed office that overlooked the entire production floor. I recognized him as John Lough, whom I’d also seen at the reception last night. Again I sensed bearlike strength, not sluggish fat, under his economy-grade business suit. He approached the place where we were standing, the arena where the hag had been mauled by the wild young boy.

  “John!” gasped Mary Phinney. “Call the police! That boy attacked me!”

  The man said nothing for a moment, but quietly surveyed the situation with keen eyes. “There’s no need for that, Mary, he said with the disinterest of a judge. He rested his gaze on Tobias for a while, then he turned to me. “What seems to be the problem?” he asked calmly.

  His badge said Senior Vice-President of Operations, and I wondered who he was when he wasn’t wearing the badge.

  “I’m Stan Kraychik,” I said. “This is Tobias Cole, my, er, nephew. We were on a tour of the plant when this woman insulted Tobias’s mother. She provoked him, and he reacted.”

  “Liar!” exclaimed Mary Phinney. “He attacked me.”

  John Lough addressed the crowd of workers who’d gathered around us. “Everything’s under control now. Go back to your stations and resume your work.” He gave orders comfortably, more easily than Branco did, without the brittle edge. Maybe John Lough was naturally better suited for supervising people. Or maybe being a cop required a constant level of repressed anger, something Branco had in abundance.

  John looked at the three of us—-Mary Phinney, Tobias, and me—then he gently but firmly guided Tobias and me away to his glass-walled office. “Please wait here,” he said, and left us alone inside the crystal cube.

  He went back out to talk with Mary Phinney. Through the glass walls of his office I watched them exchange words and gestures, but I couldn’t hear a word. Mary Phinney’s mouth wouldn’t stop moving, and sometimes her jaw flapped so hard that her whole head jumped and shook about in reaction. John Lough stood quietly while she railed at him. Then he said something to her that stopped her mid-sentence. Just like that. She pressed her lips tightly together, then she turned and walked away from him. I wondered what magic phrase he’d used on her, which psycho-button he’d pressed to turn her off so easily.

  He headed back toward his office, where Tobias and I were waiting. When he entered, he flashed one brief, insincere smile at us. “Everything’s been settled. Now, in way of apology to both of you, I’d like to show you something that few people get to experience.”

  He led us out of his office and away from the production floor to another part of the building, through doorways, up elevators, down crooked corridors, far removed from the chocolate-making machinery we’d just seen. We passed through a set of heavy doors and I heard a strange, raucous crackling noise from somewhere within. When we pushed our way through a second set of heavy doors, we were at once immersed in the source of the sound, inside a long, narrow cavern that resembled a steamship’s boiler room. But was sound the word for what was happening to our ears in there? Lined up along two sides of the dark chamber were twenty huge machines that looked like front-loading clothes washers, but Paul-Bunyan-size. All twenty copper drums were rotating slowly, and they rattled as though they were full of pebbles, tons of them. The racket was horrible and actually painful. John Lough handed Tobias and me some ear-shielding headsets to dampen the sound. We put them on and felt instant relief. Thus protected, we could walk past the two rows of machines. I lifted Tobias up so that he could look inside them, and what we both saw was … jellybeans. There must have been thousands, no, millions of them. Each giant machine was coating and glazing a single color of jellybean. One copper drum contained red, another pink, then yellow, white, orange, green, purple—twenty colors in all, like a big set of crayons. Gosh, I thought, more wax.

  We departed from the other end of that long room, descended a few long flights of stairs, and eventually came into another cool area where more of the molded Easter items were being wrapped and packaged for storage before shipment. I said to John Lough, “I was hoping to see where the Le Jardin truffles were made.”

  He replied quickly, but politely. “I’m afraid I don’t have any more time today, but I can arrange for some samples to take with you now.”

  Tobias said, “She told us no samples.”

  “I can make exceptions,” said John Lough with authoritative confidence. From the shelves of Easter merchandise he picked a huge chocolate rabbit and a large basket full of smaller items—bunnies, chicks, and eggs. “I’m sure it was all a mistake, he said. “Please accept my apology for the misunderstanding.

  Tobias took the chocolate goods and thanked him, but I added, “We do not waive our right to lodge a formal complaint against that woman. She harassed this boy. Who knows the trauma she may have caused him? I doubt a little chocolate is going to set things straight. It’s not so simple.”

  Tobias poked me and said, “Shut up, Uncle Stan.”

  “Good,” said John Lough. “The boy is sensible. I hope you are too.” Then he escorted us to a nearby exit, and we were suddenly back outside facing the parking lot of the Gladys Gardner Chocolate Company.

  “C’mon, Tobias,
” I said and tugged him over the wet asphalt toward the MTA station, where we’d catch the subway back downtown. He was already tearing into the basket of chocolate novelties. Here it was, not even Valentine’s Day yet and the boy was unwrapping foil-covered chocolate Easter eggs. I took one, bit into it, then spit it out. Shinola came to mind.

  While we waited on the platform for the train to arrive, Tobias asked me, “Is my ma dead too?”

  Nothing like direct examination. “No, Tobias,” I replied. “Why do you think that?”

  “The way they talk about her.”

  “I promise you, she’s all right, Tobias.”

  “Can I see her?”

  “We’ll go there soon.”

  My answers must have satisfied him for the moment, because he stopped talking and focused on his quarry. He peeled off some of the cellophane wrapping from the chocolate bunny and munched contentedly on the ears. As for me, I was becoming mentally distracted by a confusion of questions and recent observations. My mind was beginning to resemble the convoluted candy-making machinery we’d just seen.

  When we got back to my place, I found outside my door a big, flat, plain cardboard box without identification. No words, no labels, no nothing. Nothing except the faint aroma of chocolate from inside. I took it into my apartment. Sugar Baby was waiting to greet me, but then scampered away at the sight of Tobias. Smart girl, she hadn’t forgotten his recent terrorism that morning. I shook the mysterious box, but the heavy contents didn’t move or make a sound. I sniffed at it again. Definitely chocolate and possibly alcohol too. Not a bomb, I thought, unless they’re making them out of food these days. I opened the box and found inside a large velvet-covered heart. It was real velvet, finely napped, possibly even real silk, not like the dusty, fake flocking on the box Tobias had almost destroyed in the discount chocolate store earlier. I lifted the top of the heart and saw nestled inside two dozen large chocolate truffles from Le Jardin. Who’d sent them? Did I finally have a secret admirer? Or was someone perhaps wooing me with poisoned delicacies?

  I called Nicole at Snips and tried to convince her to watch over Tobias while I went to see Lieutenant Branco. I wanted to bring him up-to-date on what I’d found out, and on what had just appeared on my doorstep. But Nicole refused to help me. So before bundling Tobias up again to face the great outdoors with me, I made some tea—cocoa for Tobias—to prepare us for another wintry foray. It was then that I heard strange sounds coming from the living room. I looked in to see Tobias sitting on the sofa, gagging and coughing, with melted chocolate all around his mouth. He began to cry too when his little body went into quick, jumpy spasms. My first panic-stricken thought was that he’d eaten a truffle from the mysterious box that had just arrived. Had he accidentally poisoned himself? Then, just as quickly, I realized that what he’d actually eaten was almost an entire two-pound chocolate bunny on an empty stomach, and now was about to upchuck the near-toxic product. I grabbed him up into my arms and made a run for the toilet with him, trying all the way to keep his mouth covered, trying to keep the warm, melted, waxy brown slime from dribbling onto the recently shampooed Aubusson carpet.