The way she drove, Matt thought, it was a wonder they weren’t late in more ways than one. He followed her to the loading dock at a trot, and then through the maze of shelving to the time clock. Shelly swiped her badge.
“Made it!” she said. “Hot damn, that was close. I’m already on probation for clocking in late too many times. One more this year and I’ll get a three-day suspension.”
“Maybe you could use a little vacation,” Matt said.
“A little vacation,” she repeated.
“You know, get away from here for a couple of days,” Matt said. “Remind yourself what the rest of the world looks like.”
“You going to come with me?”
“Let’s do it,” he said.
For a moment, her eyes took on that empty, dreamy look and the hint of a smile appeared on her face. Then a horn blew from somewhere inside the plant and she snapped back to attention.
“That’s three days without pay. Can’t afford it.”
Can’t rhymed with paint. Matt liked Shelly’s southern accent. He thought it was sexy. But as he got to know Shelly better, he was beginning to hear what lay behind that honey accent. She came across as laid-back and easygoing, but there was a sadness underneath. And why not? He could tell she must have been a knockout as a teenager. She’d probably thought she’d own the world. Now she had a no-future job in a chemical hell and the only good thing in her life was a guy who’d announced he wasn’t going to stick around more than a couple of days.
They walked into the break room and put their lunch sacks in the refrigerator.
“I’m going to head on over to the foreman’s office,” Matt said. “See what he has in store for me today.”
“All right, sweetie. See you at lunch.”
Shelly headed toward Shipping and Receiving, and Matt toward the area of the plant called Waterbase. It was already at least ninety-five degrees inside the building. By noon it would be a hundred and ten.
Sweat trickled down Matt’s back as he made his way to the foreman’s office, a portable enclosure the size of a large closet with windows in front that overlooked the production area. From the office you could see the twin fifty-five-hundred-gallon stainless-steel mixing tanks where Fire and Ice were blended, Fire in the left tank and Ice in the right, and a press the size of a ’57 Cadillac where they were filtered. You could see the forklift charging stations and the scaffolds and hoses and the pneumatic pumps. Matt knocked on the door, and a voice from within said, “Enter.” Matt entered. The air-conditioned space felt like an oasis after a long trek in the desert.
Mr. Hubbs sat at his desk sipping a cup of coffee and reading a memo. Hubbs was middle management, just a tiny notch above the laborers he commanded. He wore jeans and steel-toed shoes and occasionally ventured out to the production area to help the blenders dump bags of chemicals into the tanks. Unlike a lot of the supervisors Matt had worked for, he wasn’t afraid to jump into the fray with his subordinates.
Hubbs looked up from his memo. “Good morning, Cahill.”
“Good morning, Mr. Hubbs. Just wondering what you wanted me to do today.”
“Have a seat. There’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about.”
Matt sat in the steel and vinyl chair beside the desk. “What is it, sir?”
“You’re a good worker, Cahill. I pulled some strings with the guys upstairs, and I’d like to offer you full-time employment right here in Waterbase. The starting pay isn’t the greatest, but you’ll get a raise after your three- month probation period and another one after six months. You’ll get health and dental, and all the other benefits Nitko has to offer.”
Matt thought about it. He had been making three times as much money at the lumber mill back in Washington, and it didn’t involve working in an oven full of noxious fumes. The only future at Nitko was a bleak one. If he worked real hard and kissed plenty of ass, someday he might be able to afford a single-wide trailer and a ten- year-old vehicle from the buy-here/pay-here lot. If, that is, the heat and the chemicals didn’t kill him first. No, thanks. He had no intentions of working at Nitko forever, but he did need some time to investigate whatever it was that had brought Mr. Dark there. And signing on full-time would allow him to stay in Copperhead Springs a while longer and get to know Shelly better, maybe get to the bottom of her focal episodes.
“What other benefits?” Matt said.
“Are you accepting my offer for full-time employment?”
“Yes.”
Matt didn’t plan on staying, but he wasn’t out to dupe anybody, either. He would give Nitko an honest day’s work for the duration and then would give them proper notice when the time came to leave.
“Great!” Hubbs said. “Welcome aboard. I want you to go over to Human Resources, and they’ll explain the pay and benefits package in detail.”
“Thank you for the opportunity, sir. I’m looking forward to working with you.”
Hubbs rose and smiled and shook Matt’s hand. Matt left the Waterbase office and headed for Human Resources.
7:58 a.m
Shelly wrestled a fifty-five-gallon drum full of Fire onto an oak pallet. The guys in production usually palletized the drums, but this one was a stray that had come from the end of a batch, and it had come up a little light on the scales. It would have to be sent back and either topped off to the proper weight or repackaged into smaller containers. She climbed onto her forklift and guided the forks under the load. She had backed up and started to turn around when a voice behind her said, “Hey!”
It was Drew Long, the Shipping and Receiving supervisor. “Meeting in my office in two minutes.”
“Okay,” Shelly said. “You want me to take this drum back over to-”
“Just leave it there. You can get it after the meeting.”
Shelly eased the pallet to the concrete floor, switched off the electric forklift, and walked to the water fountain. She slurped and swallowed and slurped and swallowed and thought about Matt and the great time they’d had in bed last night. Matt was kind and gentle and attentive to her needs, and he didn’t gripe that she insisted on total darkness. Why couldn’t she have met someone like him fifteen years ago? Instead she pissed her youth away with a string of bad boys whose sole good feature was that they pissed off her mother. That seemed fun at the time, less so now that life kept insisting on teaching her that Mom had been right all along.
“What are you, part camel or something?” Drew said. “We have a meeting, remember?”
She wiped her mouth with her hand and followed him to the office. She was wet from sweat, and the sudden drop in temperature gave her a chill. She hoped the meeting wouldn’t last long. Drew held them only once a month, but he tended to talk a lot. That’s where he got his nickname. Drew Long-winded. People called him that to his face sometimes. It was good-natured teasing, and he didn’t seem to mind. Drew was a nice guy. He was the kind of guy who would say things like don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, or one in the hand is worth two in the bush, or a hundred other corny cliches. Even so, Shelly liked him a lot.
If you counted Drew, there were four full-time employees who worked the first shift in Shipping and Receiving. On very busy days, HR would sometimes send them a temp, but today was not one of those days. Shelly, Hal Miller, and Fred Philips sat on steel folding chairs as Drew wrote topic points on his dry-erase board. There were six topics to be covered. Looked like it was going to be a long one.
She thought again about what Matt had said. A vacation. She hadn’t taken a vacation in so long. When she’d just started at the plant, she and a couple of girlfriends used to take long weekends every couple of months and trek off to find some beach where there was nothing but white sand, warm water, and cold margaritas. When she came back, she’d feel fresh and happy and relaxed for weeks.
But her girlfriends got married and then they got pregnant and they couldn’t get away anymore. Then Shelly bought the double-wide and then the bastards who ran the plant slashed her pay when the market tanked, and now she couldn’t even pay her bills on what she made. Staying here was killing her slowly, but taking even a day off would kill her quickly. Someday that might seem like the better option, but that day wasn’t here yet.
