“Our economy is going to shit right now, and you want to raise the price of power? Who is going to pay for that? What will happen to the elderly and poor when the price of fuel skyrockets? What’s your solution?” I ask.
This is directed at Kim and Dan. I know Lucy’s solution: go back to the Stone Age. Lucy lives off the grid using solar panels to generate her tiny kilowatt consumption. She drives a Prius but somehow forgets that the electricity is generated by a combined cycle power plant that uses natural gas. She prefers to think that the electricity her vehicle uses has miraculously arrived via the wind turbines that only make economic sense because they suck huge subsidies from the federal government. Lucy is the type of extremist who lives by principles without any consideration for practicality. This is the very attribute I need to manage lest she blow the whole Bishop investigation with her zealotry.
“Here’s what I think,” Dan begins calmly. “We need to transition from fossil fuels to renewables. Yes, they are more expensive, but what is the true cost of our current system when you factor in the cost of environmental leaks and blowing up innocent people?”
“Well said,” injects Lucy. “True cost is an interesting concept. We tend to look at this entirely the wrong way. We never factor in the cost to our planet and people’s health when we talk about how cheap fossil fuels are. When you consider the cost of global warning and climate change, it becomes much more expensive. People also forget that our federal government invested heavily in the oil and gas infrastructure back in the mid-1900s through tax incentives and other subsidies. Does anyone ever ask what we could have used that tax money for? Better schools, better research?”
“Enough,” I say and get up, heading for the kitchen. I’ve heard Lucy’s rants a million times before. “I’m starving,” I say as I open my refrigerator. “Let me throw something together for dinner. How does a kale omelet sound?” I ask, hoping Dan and Kim will take the hint and go back to their place.
“Let’s walk over to Flemings,” Dan suggests.
“My treat,” Kim adds. “I’m so excited to get to talk with Lucy. This is really a thrill.”
“Flemings?” Lucy questions. “What kind of food is that, Kim?”
Ah yes. I can predict the next set of questions. Is it organic? Grass fed? Sustainable? Ethically killed? Free range? The list will go on and on until restaurant choices are limited to almost nothing. “We can go somewhere else,” Kim suggests.
“Flemings has grass-fed organic lamb on the menu. I was there last week and the waiter pointed it out,” Dan injects.
“Is that okay, Lucy? Or do we need to establish the means of death as well? Did the lamb go peacefully, Dan?” I kid.
“Ha ha, Tanzie,” Lucy glares. “We do have some work to do, though. Are you sure we have time to go out?”
“We won’t make it a long night,” Kim pleads.
Lucy looks at me for help, but suddenly saddling my neighbors with a large dinner tab seems like justice for having my evening interrupted.
“Oh, come on, Lucy,” I say. “Don’t be such a stick in the mud. I skipped lunch and I’m hungry.” Besides, I am starting to wonder how much I should share with Lucy about this morning’s meeting, and I don’t want to have that conversation on an empty stomach.
I am feeling hot again, and catching sight of myself in the mirror, I notice my neck is red. I excuse myself, retreat to my bedroom, and step out onto my balcony to cool down. A front is blowing in, and the night air has a strong bite perfect for my rising temperature. It occurs to me that maybe global warming is caused not by CO2 emissions but by the increase in menopausal women standing outside.
In total disregard of my promise not to smoke while Lucy is visiting, I light up my cigarette and reflect on my behavior in the living room. Why am I taking Bishop’s side on this? I need to calm down and collect myself before I am downright rude, particularly to Lucy, who has traveled so far to help me snoop on the very company I now seem to be defending. I freshen up in the bathroom with a quick gargle and brush of my hair. When I return to the living room, Lucy is collecting the empty wine glasses, alone.
“Where’d they go?” I ask.
“They just went to grab their coats. I don’t know why you feel like going out. We need to go over your files. What did you find out about the meeting?”
“There were some interesting discussions. Did you find anything of interest on the flash drive?” I ask, diverting the conversation away from my work.
“Oh, yes indeed. That’s why I wanted to blow off dinner. But no. You insisted. And Tanzie—if I were you, I would stop defending those creeps you work for and give serious thought to getting out of there.”
“Really? You didn’t say anything to Dan about what we’re doing, did you?”
There is a tap at the door indicating Dan and Kim are ready to go.
“Don’t say anything about this. Okay?” I say, and then I open the door. Lucy grabs her shawl.
“Are you going to be warm enough?” I ask. “I can lend you something.”
“Oh no. This wool has been specifically spun for optimum warmth. It is from my sheep. Do you like it?”
“It’s lovely,” Kim says as she fingers the material, and with that the two textile queens walk ahead, leaving me next to Dan.
We get to the restaurant, and the hostess acts like my neighbors are family. We are seated at a prime table in a quiet, almost private room with floor-to-ceiling wine racks and a lovely fire with an antique rosewood surround. I grab the spot farthest from the fire, knowing that I am cultivating my own warmth this evening. Lucy orders the grass-fed organic lamb from Colorado, naturally, and the rest of us order filets medium rare. My irritation from earlier dissolves; it is fun to go out with people, and I feel my mood shift into friendlier territory. I take a piece of warm bread and slather it with butter. It is actually great to eat with people who are not calculating every calorie in their heads.
“So, I know you can’t talk about Bishop’s involvement in the Houston explosion,” Dan begins, “but how is the climate among the employees?”
“I think it’s every man for himself,” I say. “The employees are more worried about a layoff than about the poor Houstonians who lived above our pipeline. My boss got canned today.”
“Really?” Dan asks, suddenly excited. “Do you think he might be open to being a confidential source for me? Do you think I could contact him?”
Lucy’s eyebrow goes up again, and I wonder if she has already assumed just such a role.
“God, no,” I say. “Are you kidding? Hal is a company guy.”
“Even better,” Dan adds. “Those are the best ones. They give their lives to a company and then are let go. They usually know a lot about what is going on, and they are very well connected. Guys like that and jilted girlfriends make incredible sources.”
“How do you become a confidential source?” I ask. “Can you remain anonymous, like Deep Throat?”
Lucy gives me a wide-eyed look.
“Hypothetically,” I emphasize.
“You can be a confidential source,” Dan says, “where someone like you tells me something in confidence, and I go to jail rather than reveal your identity when put on the stand. Or you can be an anonymous source, which means that I never know who is giving me the information. Anonymous sources can be tricky, because unless someone else can validate the information, newspapers are reluctant to print it. That being said, with Internet news, all the lines have blurred a bit.” Dan’s tone is more engaged than it was during earlier discussions.
“You mean like WikiLeaks?” Lucy asks.
“What if the information is obtained illegally?” I interrupt. “Like through hacking or something?”
“Well, as a reporter, how information was obtained doesn’t really matter to me,” Dan says. “I just need to know that it is factual. Now, let’s get back to your boss, Tanzie. Do you know if he has any useful information, or if he might be mad enough for an interview?”
&n
bsp; “You could call him,” I say, “but I’m betting his severance agreement probably had language prohibiting him from making defamatory remarks about Bishop. That’s pretty standard.”
“Do you think it would be unethical to hack into Bishop and find out if they are hiding anything?” Kim asks.
I glance at Lucy. “Are you asking me if I’d do something like that?” I ask Kim.
“No. Not really,” she says. “I’m just saying that if these guys are so evil, a person might be justified in stealing information. You could go to the EPA, be a whistle-blower.”
“I don’t think you can do that if the information is illegally obtained,” I reply. “You also can’t use information that is subject to attorney-client privilege. My department reports through Legal, so I wouldn’t be able to do anything like that. But that’s an interesting question, Kim. If you were able to hack into the Bishop email and files and find out what was really going on, would you do it?” I ask the group.
Lucy speaks first. “I think it’s your moral responsibility to hack if you can.” Of course you do, Lucy. No surprise there.
“Would anyone find out?” Kim asks, playing along.
“Nope. Not if you were careful about how you did it,” I reply.
“You should be willing to go to jail for it,” Lucy adds. “I would want to go to great lengths to make sure that Bishop isn’t hiding anything. And furthermore, I would proudly go to jail to prove the point about how evil oil and gas companies are.”
Actually, you might be visiting me in jail, I think, and I will not be proud. I will be horrified.
Lucy opens her mouth to continue, but Kim interrupts.
“Okay. I haven’t told any of you this—well, except for Dan, of course,” she says, giving Dan a loving squeeze. “But my grandfather made a fortune in oil and gas, and our foundation provides early education to low-income Tulsa children. Our family is committed to bettering the world.”
Lucy turns to her new friends, eyes narrowed. “Are you willing to give all of what you have to make up for benefiting from your family’s exploitation of the country’s natural resources?” she asks. “Your family may be giving back, but you’re still retaining just enough to ensure your family’s financial independence. You still have blood on your hands.”
Finally, I think, the extremist surfaces. I can see Kim wince, not realizing that her idol could punch her where it hurts. Surprisingly, I feel a little sorry for her.
“All right, Lucy,” I interrupt, “this bullshit that the entire oil and gas industry is inherently evil is crazy. You can’t expect people to go back to the dark ages. My personal wealth is also a direct result of the oil and gas business, and I certainly am not willing to donate it all to the Sierra Club for some guilt that I do not share with you. I see a huge difference in the way companies in the industry operate. There are responsible ones, and there are others who cut every corner possible to inflate their bottom line and put communities and the environment at risk when they do so. I don’t think you can put everyone in the same pot.”
“Of course you don’t think that, Tanzie,” Lucy spouts in the condescending tone that older sisters reserve for their younger siblings.
“Well, I see it as a matter of degrees, too,” Dan chimes in, trying to squelch the hostility. He must be from a small family, I surmise from his desire to become the peacemaker. Big families in general, and big Greek families in particular, tend to argue to the death. It can seem mean to outsiders who grew up in more polite households. But it really just demonstrates how close Lucy and I are: We can yell at each other and neither of us takes it personally. And honestly, the truth is that Lucy and I agree that Bishop has done wrong and should be brought to justice. We just disagree on the methodology, timing, and whether my going to jail should be part of the process.
“Some companies are more responsible than others,” Dan continues. “But Bishop is such a classic fuckup.” Kim gives Dan a look. “Sorry, Kim, but you know what I mean. They give the entire industry a bad name. Bishop has always been the poster child of doing the bare minimum and skirting responsibility. They make the oil and gas industry look far worse than it really is.”
“I think it’s far worse than anyone thinks it is,” Lucy says.
We are becoming too loud and I can see other patrons turning around, so I think it best to change the subject.
“Well, it’s only hypothetical, guys,” I say. “No one’s going to hack into any computers. I have enough trouble forwarding an email.”
“That’s not true, Tanzie. I thought …” I glare at my sister and she stops mid-sentence.
Thankfully, our entrées arrive, and Lucy shifts the conversation to her latest endeavors. To the relief of the other diners, we are now much quieter. Kim seems to have forgotten all about Lucy’s suggestion that she cleanse her inherited guilt by divesting herself of all her oil-and-gas-gotten possessions. She is delightedly listening to Lucy’s latest stories about shooting coyotes with paintball guns and making chickens lay multicolored eggs. This is Lucy’s engaging, charming side, and I enjoy the respite from the Bishop conversation.
“So were you named after Lucille Ball?” Kim asks as our food consumption wanes.
“Actually, yes. I look like a Lucy,” Lucy says laughing.
“Lucy is number seven in the family and I am number eight,” I say. “Our parents let the older kids name the babies when they came home. It was sort of a way to ease jealousy and make it fun.”
“Like a pet?”
“Sort of,” I allow. “Anyway, when Lucy came home in July 1956 and had a head of red hair, the only one in the family, the kids all voted to name her Lucy.”
“Thank goodness I wasn’t a boy!” Lucy laughs. “I’d probably be called Howdy.”
“So where did Tanzie come from?” Dan asks.
“Well, when Tanzie came home,” Lucy begins, “we were watching You Bet Your Life—you know, that game show with Groucho Marx? He had two sisters on, Tanzie and Dorcas, who won all the money. When we voted, Tanzie beat out Dorcas by my single vote.”
“Yes, barely a toddler and she got the swing vote determining my future,” I say.
“I might have had some help.” Lucy laughs.
“Wow, I’ve never heard of anything like that before.” Kim looks at Dan.
“We have a fairly unique family,” I say.
“Oh yes.” Lucy laughs. “That we do.”
We spend the rest of the evening retelling classic O’Leary family stories, from the litany of unusual houseguests to the menagerie of pets that also took advantage of our open-door policy. “In those days no one had leashes or anything. You fed the dog. The dog stayed around, so it was your dog,” Lucy says.
“Alexander was this huge standard poodle mix with a mass of gray curls. We’d had him all of a week when he bit the mailman three times, so animal control showed up at the door and took Alexander away and issued my father a ticket. He was furious. ‘I feed a stray dog and now it’s my problem? I need to go to court? Ridiculous!’” Lucy has the brogue down perfectly.
“So we all go to court and my father tells the judge, ‘Everyone else is eating off the government, why shouldn’t my dog?’”
Kim and Dan howl with laughter. “Your father sounds like a real character,” Kim says.
“Both our parents were,” Lucy responds. “They’ve been gone for quite a while, though.”
“So, did you ever get another dog?” Dan asks.
“We never saw poor Alexander again,” I answer. “But we had another stray take up residence by the weekend. We never turned anyone away.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Against my suggestion, we decide to forgo dessert and instead walk back to the condos, saying our good-byes in the hall.
“So what was that at dinner, Lucy?” I ask as I take my coat off. “Did you talk to Dan about what we’re doing?”
“No. I told you I didn’t,” Lucy says defensively.
“You never answered m
y question before,” I correct. “You sure hinted around that you did.”
“I was just playing with you, Tanzie. Lighten up.”
I see no useful purpose in continuing along these lines and elect to change the subject.
“So what did you find today?” I ask as I watch Lucy divide what remains of the zinfandel between our glasses.
“Quite a bit, actually. These guys are real bastards. They have all kinds of environmental issues. They pay the fines when they are caught, but they do nothing to take preventive action. They have a gas plant near Longview, Texas, that is spewing CO, NOX, VOCs, formaldehydes, and H2S, way over regulatory limits. From the files, it looks like they fudge on their reporting. I don’t know why the TCEQ hasn’t shut them down; I would think they would be fairly visible.”
“You’ve lost me, Lucy.”
“In layman’s terms, there are limits on what can be released into the air. The company is supposed to measure emissions and report them to the regulatory agency, in this case the Texas Council for Environmental Quality, or TCEQ. Those poor people who live out there are breathing really bad air and don’t know it. The plant dates back to the ’60s, and I can’t figure out why the TCEQ hasn’t been on their doorstep doing their own independent testing.
“There is a reference to an entity called BQR Environmental Services, but I don’t know what Bishop uses them for. There are a couple of memos indicating that they rely on this service to mitigate the damages. I don’t see how, though. The internal plant measurements show very high levels that are completely different on the regulatory reports they send in. I think we have enough to at least call the enforcement division and file a complaint.”
“BQR Environmental Services,” I repeat. “Let me do some research on it first, okay, Lucy?”
“Why?” she asks, suddenly upset. “Why do you always take their side?”
“I’m not taking sides, Lucy. I’m just being prudent. It’s a good thing. I don’t jump to conclusions. I don’t alert the media. I don’t shout from the rooftops!”
Revenge of the Cube Dweller Page 16
