by Alex White
He slammed the door behind him, and Nora heard him storming off down the catwalks. For years, the hot shots around here had been collecting girlfriends, and now it was suddenly against the rules? When she spun to face Jack, his face had turned red.
“Nora, I know you’re mad.”
“Too right, I am! What the fuck was that?”
“That was... regrettable.”
“Regrettable? Tripping into a mud puddle is ‘regrettable.’ Fucking you was a goddamned tragedy!”
“Look, I’m not happy about what happened, either.”
“Is that a fact?” she shouted. “Well ain’t that something, because you still work here!”
“Would you calm down? I said I’d help you!”
Nora swallowed her next twenty retorts. She knew they wouldn’t do her any good, even though they bubbled around inside her, ready to spill forth at any second. He’d asked her not to make a scene, and now she needed help more than ever. Her arms and legs wanted to lash out on their own, so she plopped down in her chair and crossed them, for fear of punching everything around her.
Jack took a sip of coffee with trembling hands and set his mug down. “Duke called me this morning – me, personally.”
“I’m glad to hear you boys are getting on so well.”
“Just shut up, Nora. You need to hear what I have to say.”
She gave him the floor to speak.
“Duke is a fairly...” Jack searched for the right word, “eccentric individual. He didn’t have you fired because he’s mad at you. He had you fired because he’s mad at me.” He paused, in case she wanted to shout at him some more. “He’s sympathetic to your situation, and he wants to meet with you. Called just to say that.”
“Is he going to give me a job?”
“I don’t know. That’s certainly a possibility, if you play your cards right. He wants to meet you this afternoon at three, in Gilman Park on the fourth ring.”
Nora clucked her tongue. “So until then, I’m just twisting in the wind? Your big promise of help was delivering a message that the big boss man ordered you to pass along?”
“No. I’ve got some advice for you that’ll change the outcome.”
“Out with it.”
“I’ve heard about these kinds of meetings with Duke. Go home and get your Bible. Read it.”
She sat up a little straighter. “Is that a threat?”
“No. I... Nora, I’d rather not go into too much detail, because if Duke finds out I did, I’ll lose my job and you won’t get a bit of sympathy from him. Can you please listen to me?”
She mulled it over. Bring a Bible? That’s it? That was the life-changing advice she’d been promised? Herb and Jack, she’d spared these two idiots a bit of righteous rage so she could hear, “Go home and read the Bible.” Nora climbed to her feet, brushed off her pants, and smiled.
“Fuck you, Jack. I’m ready to go get my stuff, now.”
She waited for him to fire back, but he pulled on his jacket, walked to the door and ushered her through. She followed him without saying anything else.
On the factory floor, all eyes turned to the pair as he led her toward the locker room. She was a criminal on her way to the gallows. Bettie blushed, turning back to her machine. Why wouldn’t she make eye contact? What did she know? Suddenly, it all made sense.
“It was you, wasn’t it?” Nora blurted out, not a moment’s pause between her mind and her lips.
She feigned tightening her bonnet. “What?”
“Answer me, bitch. You made that crack about Jack closing the blinds. It was you... You told them about me and Jack.”
“Nora, I –”
“Ladies, let’s be civil,” said Jack, stepping between them. “We don’t want to say anything unwise, do we?”
“Butt out, company man,” said Nora. “This don’t concern you.” Then, to Bettie, “Ain’t that right?”
Bettie drew up to her full height. “You best listen to your boyfriend, Miss Vickers.”
“That’s right,” said Jack, putting a hand on her shoulder. “We’re just going to head for the gate without another word.”
“Yeah,” said Bettie. “Walk away.”
Anger flared in Nora’s stomach, and she body-checked her former boss as hard as she could, sending him stumbling into a trio of waste bins. She took a long step forward and brought her palm across Bettie’s face, turning the woman’s head with the force of her slap. Nora reached out and grabbed a handful Bettie’s hair through her bonnet and yanked as hard as she could. She had a dim awareness of Jack’s voice, but she shut it out, smashing her fist into Bettie’s nose over and over again. She saw a thin spray of red, and it stayed her hand for just a moment – long enough for Bettie to clock her and take off running across the factory floor. Nora shook the lights out of her eyes in time for Jack to wrap her in a bear hug from behind.
“You better run, you fucking cunt!” she screeched after Bettie.
“Nora!” he shouted into her ear, hoisting her from behind. He’d never shown that much energy in bed.
“Fuck you!”
“Get ahold of yourself! It wasn’t Bettie, damn it!”
Nora loosed a stream of secrets about Jack she never would have told anyone. She kicked and bucked for a minute or so until the raging flames dwindled within her. She’d drawn a crowd: the fifteen other ladies from kitting, among others. She shrieked as loudly as she could, and eventually, two men from security showed up brandishing truncheons and confused expressions. When she finally fell still, she spun to find a ghost-white Jack.
“What? You said you wanted a wild girl, Mister Grady. Wild enough for you?”
He shook his head. “I am so sorry I ever got involved with you.”
She chuckled. “Yeah, I’m sorry I let you touch me, too. Want to try again?”
He brushed himself off and pointed Nora out to the guards. “Get her out of here. Break her nose if she resists.”
They exchanged confused glances, but inched closer, anyway. Nora showed her palms, even as she lowered her head. “No need, boys. Just show me the door.”
Moments later, Nora found herself standing at the gate, unburdened by a job or a man.
The Green Thumb
NORA SHUFFLED THROUGH the streets, her feet heavier by a few hundred pounds. She tried not to think about the fact that she had recently drained her savings to pay for a bit of dental work, or that she held her last forty dollars in her pocket. If she didn’t have a job before money ran out, there were only a few options for women. She’d always been so careful never to be this broke.
She didn’t have to go into hooking. She could try for the steelworks or the mines, though she’d heard of bad things happening to girls in those tunnels. That all assumed anyone would hire a skinny thing like her, anyway. Maybe she could head up to the mission on the fourth ring, but that place would be full already. If you weren’t in line when they opened their doors, you didn’t get food. She’d tried once, when things were tight but not this bad, and starving folk crowded her out without fail. Food would have to wait until tomorrow.
As she wandered up the ramps to the eighth, and then the seventh ring, no plan of action materialized. Rent was due in a week. She’d been thrown out of the factory without a paycheck, and if she went back, they might arrest her.
She wiped her nose and sniffled. Folks were staring. She kept her eyes on the street and put one foot in front of the other. Soon, she found herself walking toward Vulcan’s Bazaar. Loxley would be there. The quiet girl didn’t understand Nora, or at least she didn’t seem to, but she was a sweetheart. A sweetheart would be just the thing.
Nora arrived at the tin-roofed street after a half-hour, the hustle and bustle of the market in full swing. She understood why Loxley hated the place, full of clanging, banging misanthropes, hawking everything from scarves to guns. She crossed under the shade, and the neon of the place seemed to flare up, assaulting her eyes. It would be a strange person who willingly stayed in a
place like this, she thought. Then again, a job was a job. Who was she to judge?
She wound down through the bazaar to the side street where Loxley set up her shop. A person could see the impromptu garden spread from the main thoroughfare, but only if they were really paying attention. Loxley sat cross-legged on her blanket, engrossed in the same book she always read, her eyes darting across the page as she mouthed the words contained therein.
Nora took a deep breath and straightened up. She didn’t want Loxley to see her like this. The poor, touched girl wouldn’t understand. She blinked and rubbed away her tears, then smoothed out her shirt. She tried on a smile, and though it fit poorly, she managed to wear it. She strode over to Loxley’s blanket, her false confidence boiling over. Loxley didn’t look up, or even notice her. She probably could have grabbed the woman’s cash box if she’d wanted.
Nora leaned over her, doing her best to block out the sun. “What’s at the top of page thirty-three?”
“Don’t know,” said Loxley, turning to page thirty-three. “Oh. The end of a paragraph about rotations: ‘... through dissimilarity between seasons, recouping lost soil nitrogen reserves.’”
“Ain’t exactly poetry.”
“Not supposed to be. It’s not a book of poetry.” She said, not taking her eyes from the page. “Why’d you need to know what was at the top of the page?”
Nora chuckled. Sometimes Loxley could be frightening, making her wonder how she ever got home by herself or navigated traffic or lit a stove without dying. Other times, she could be kind of cute. Burying her head in a book was an endearing trait. “You going to say hi to me, Loxley?”
Her eyes finally lifted from the page and a big grin spread across her face. “Hi!”
“Give us a hug, girl,” said Nora, getting a warm, strong embrace. “Now some sugar,” she said, and received a wet kiss on the cheek that sent a little shiver down her neck. “There’s my little green thumb. Business good?”
Loxley took her seat and put down her book. “I almost didn’t make it here today. There was a ghost.”
Nora frowned. She’d heard this kind of talk before. She worried constantly about her friend’s sanity, but another side of Nora feared the woman wasn’t crazy. Nora believed in ghosts; The Hole was a dark, wicked place where they might do well. She’d once told Loxley that she might see spirits on account of her condition, but Loxley disagreed, saying it came from her blood, not her brain. Whatever the truth, Loxley spoke about ghosts as matter-of-factly as one might speak about spiders and snakes. Nora had gotten the sweet Loxley when she said hello, now she got the scary one.
“He was in the way. I couldn’t get past.”
“What? Like over there?”
“You don’t believe me, do you?”
She preferred not to. The whole idea gave her the creeps. “We’ve all got to see the world somehow or another. If it’s real enough for you, that’s what’s important,” she said with a smile, but then worried she might have sounded patronizing.
“It’s true, whether you think I’m honest or not. They like me more than anyone else. Used to be the same with my mother.”
At least Loxley always spoke her mind. Nora crossed the blanket, wrapped her arm around her friend and kissed her head. Her friend’s hair smelled like dirt, like the grassy patch near the house where Nora grew up.
“Of course they like you. You’re such a sweetheart.”
Loxley rested her head against Nora’s neck, and a wisp of her hair tickled bare skin. Butterflies kicked up inside her stomach, but she forced them back down. Loxley was a good friend, but even so, Nora savored her warmth, snuggling closer.
Nora squeezed her shoulder – soft skin for such a hard woman. “I’d like you if I was a ghost.”
“Why’d you come home in the middle of the night last night? I thought your shift was over at eight.”
The butterflies fluttered away. Had she seen Jack? “You saw me coming home?”
“I had to pee, and I looked out and saw you coming home. It was two thirty-five,” said Loxley, looking her in the eye. Nora wasn’t sure what she was thinking, but it sounded a bit like an indictment.
Nora didn’t want to tell her all of the awful things that had happened between her and her boss. She wouldn’t understand. The tall woman had spoken a few times before with Loxley about sex, but it had mostly been as a warning about men. Now, she couldn’t wrap her head around how to talk about Jack.
“I was having a drink with the foreman.”
“Must be a slow drinker.”
Slow other places, too, she thought. “He did take his time, yes. He likes to talk.”
“Did he talk about plastic?”
If the conversation continued, she was going to end up talking about losing her job, and that was the last thing she wanted. Nora hated to cry, especially in front of others. Her heart raced, and her cheeks flushed. “It wasn’t interesting. Work stuff, darling.” She pulled out her wallet. “I’m going to need a bag of weed.”
Nora changed the topic to Loxley’s day, and they talked for another hour as Loxley recounted the tale of Birdie. Soon after, she started going on about her greenhouse as though it was part of the story. Nora loved that about Loxley: her ability to ramble from one topic to the next without so much as a hint of segue or division. Most people thought in a straight line, journeying from one topic to the next, but Loxley was a massive web of thoughts, each one interconnected to all others. She wasn’t stupid or crazy; she was incredible.
Nora tightened her embrace, pulling Loxley closer. She rested her cheek against her friend’s, listening to the sound of her breath as it became her mousy voice. She’d always admired the shape of Loxley’s neck, hidden though it was behind a wall of strange behaviors and hangups. The tall woman closed her eyes, feeling the rise and fall of respiration. What if she kissed her?
Nora had never felt that way about a woman before, but she’d never met someone like Loxley, either. It was like the quiet woman had come from somewhere else, somewhere beyond the Hole, where people were sweet and strange. When they’d first met, Nora didn’t like her; she seemed crude and unpredictable, and perhaps dangerous. Over the past few years, Nora had learned a little more about what lay inside her friend, and how to predict problems and work with her.
Nora opened her eyes. She’d been touched by many men, but never once had she felt any real love. Did she love Loxley? She imagined the feeling of her lips brushing Loxley’s soft skin, and it didn’t disgust her. It didn’t even frighten her. She leaned in a little closer to Loxley’s throat and bathed in her earthy scent.
But what if this was all just a reaction to Jack? Certainly, Nora had used other lovers in the past to satisfy her needs, be they sex or companionship. At the time, it usually seemed like the right idea, but as the relationship progressed, something always went haywire. What if she was doing it again – just using Loxley for some kind of immediate need? She couldn’t do that to her friend.
Loneliness and outrage over the new twists in her life stoked the fires in Nora’s heart, and her resolve began to melt. She ached to try for a more intimate touch, and as Loxley spoke, Nora inclined her head, moving in for a kiss. She just needed to feel something.
Loxley shot to her feet as though electrified, knocking Nora over as she did.
Oh, God, what have I done?
“What’s wrong?” The tall woman stood, her pulse clattering in her veins. She took Loxley’s hand, but her friend jerked her fingers away with surprising force. Loxley’s eyes flickered about, looking anywhere but at Nora. I’ve fucked up the last important thing in my life. Please don’t hate me, baby. I shouldn’t have tried. I’m so sorry.
Loxley bent down and reached for her cash box. Nora stepped forward to help, but her friend screamed and scrambled back, clutching her wrist where Nora had grabbed her before. The box smashed against the ground, springing open. Come on, Lox. Just look at me and see that I’m sorry. It’s okay, baby. Calm down.
Nora dropped down to grab the cash before it could blow away, and by the time she looked up, Loxley had gone sprinting off into the Bazaar – a place she should never be. Nora called after her, doing everything she could to gather up the loose bills, but by the time she’d sorted Loxley’s affairs, the woman was long gone.
What a fool. She knew Loxley was special, but she tried to take advantage of her anyway. And for what – a moment of comfort? Her nose burned, and her eyes watered. She stuffed the bills back into the box and slammed the lid.
“God damn it all, Nora!” she shouted.
A few heads turned her way, but no one lingered. Vulcan’s Bazaar contained many stranger things than an irate woman. Nora looked over the spread of the cart, the blanket and produce. It would take an hour to clean it up, and she’d probably do it all wrong, anyway. Loxley was far too meticulous for Nora to understand her system.
Nora turned and saw Burt Crutchfield headed her direction. They’d met a few times before, and she knew him to be a friend of Loxley’s – the cop who let her set up outside the market. She waved him down.
“Miss Vickers,” he said. “Watching the store?”
“Not exactly, Officer,” she said, picking up the cucumbers and placing them into baskets. “Loxley had an episode and high-tailed it. I think I might’ve caused the problem.”
“I’m sure you didn’t mean to. Can I call you Nora?”
“Sure. You still want to be called ‘Officer’?”
“Burt.” He patted her on the shoulder with a rough hand. He had the build of an old factory man, his muscles covered with a blanket of fat. Underneath it all, there might have been a terrifying creature, but it lay buried beneath whiskers, kindly crow’s feet and a liver-spotted head. “Now, Nora, the most important thing we can do for Loxley right now is find her. Do you know where she’s going?”
“Probably to her next job. Third ring.”
“All right. Thing is, I’m on patrol. If the captain found out I left...”
“I get it. I’ll head up there, but I’m still not sure she’s going to want to see me.”
