Fred Astaire is my hero. He used to report to his movies six weeks before filming started and practice his dance routines, wearing out a couple of pairs of tap shoes (and Hermes Pan, who claimed he could only dance backwards the rest of his life), all so he could stand there and look like he had just made it up. In the words of almost everyone who ever saw him dance, “He makes it look easy.”
That’s what I want to do, even though it looks like I’m going to wear out dozens of pairs of shoes before I even come close: make it look easy.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Mowen Chemical today announced implementation of an innovative waste emissions installation at its experimental facility in Chugwater, Wyoming. According to project directors Bradley McMee and Lynn Saunders, nonutilizable hydrocarbonaceous substances will be propulsively transferred to stratospheric altitudinal locations, where photochemical decomposition will result in triatomic allotropism and formation of benign bicarbonaceous precipitates. Preliminary predictive databasing indicates positive ozonation yields without statistically significant shifts in lateral ecosystem equilibria.
“Do you suppose Walter Hunt would have invented the safety pin if he had known that punk rockers would stick them through their cheeks?” Mr. Mowen said. He was looking gloomily out the window at the distant six hundred-foot-high smokestacks.
“I don’t know, Mr. Mowen,” Janice said. She sighed. “Do you want me to tell them to wait again?”
The sigh was supposed to mean, It’s after four o'clock and it’s getting dark, and you’ve already asked Research to wait three times, and when are you going to make up your mind? but Mr. Mowen ignored it.
“On the other hand,” he said, “what about diapers? And all those babies that would have been stuck with straight pins if it hadn’t been for the safety pin?”
“It is supposed to help restore the ozone layer, Mr. Mowen,” Janice said. “And according to Research, there won’t be any harmful side effects.”
“You shoot a bunch of hydrocarbons into the stratosphere, and there won’t be any harmful side effects. According to Research.” Mr. Mowen swiveled his chair around to look at Janice, nearly knocking over the picture of his daughter Sally that sat on his desk. “I stuck Sally once. With a safety pin. She screamed for an hour. How’s that for a harmful side effect? And what about the stuff that’s left over after all this ozone is formed? Bicarbonate of soda, Research says. Perfectly harmless, How do they know that? Have they ever dumped bicarbonate of soda on people before? Call Research—” he started to say, but Janice had already picked up the phone and tapped the number. She didn’t even sigh. “Call Research and ask them to figure out what effect a bicarbonate of soda rain would have.”
“Yes, Mr. Mowen,” Janice said. She put the phone up to her ear and listened for a moment. “Mr. Mowen…” she said hesitantly.
“I suppose Research says it’ll neutralize the sulfuric acid that’s killing the statues and sweeten and deodorize at the same time.”
“No, sir,” Janice said. “Research says they’ve already started the temperature-differential kilns, and you should be seeing something in a few minutes. They say they couldn’t wait any longer.”
Mr. Mowen whipped back around in his chair to look out the window. The picture of Sally teetered again, and Mr. Mowen wondered if she were home from college yet. Nothing was coming out of the smokestacks. He couldn’t see the candlestick-base kilns through the maze of fast-food places and trailer parks. A McDonald’s sign directly in front of the smokestacks blinked on suddenly, and Mr. Mowen jumped. The smokestacks themselves remained silent and still except for their blinding strobe aircraft lights. He could see sagebrush-covered hills in the space between the stacks, and the whole scene, except for the McDonald’s sign, looked unbelievably serene and harmless.
“Research says the kilns are fired to full capacity,” Janice said, holding the phone against her chest.
Mr. Mowen braced himself for the coming explosion. There was a low rumbling like distant fire, then a puff of whitish smoke, and finally a deep, whooshing sound like one of Janice’s sighs, and two columns of blue shot straight up into the darkening sky.
“Why is it blue?” Mr. Mowen said.
“I already asked,” Janice said. “Research says visible spectrum diffraction is occurring because of the point eight micron radii of the hydrocarbons being propelled—”
“That sounds like that damned press release,” Mr. Mowen said. “Tell them to speak English.”
After a minute of talking into the phone, she said, “It’s the same effect that causes the sunsets after a volcanic eruption. Scattering. Research wants to know what staff members you’d like to have at the press conference tomorrow.”
“The directors of the project,” Mr. Mowen said grumpily, “and anyone over at Research who can speak English.”
Janice looked at the press release. “Bradley McAfee and Lynn Saunders are the directors,” she said.
“Why does the name McAfee sound familiar?”
“He’s Ulric Henry’s roommate. The company linguist you hired to—”
“I know why I hired him. Invite Henry, too. And tell Sally as soon as she gets home that I expect her there. Tell her to dress up.” He looked at his watch. “Well,” he said. “It’s been going five minutes, and there haven’t been any harmful side effects yet.”
The phone rang. Mr. Mowen jumped. “I knew it was too good to last,” he said. “Who is it? The EPA?”
“No,” Janice said, and sighed. “It’s your ex-wife.”
“I’m shut of that,” Brad said when Ulric came in the door. He was sitting in the dark, the green glow of the monitor lighting his face. He tapped at the terminal keys for a minute more and then turned around. “All done. Slicker'n goose grease.”
Ulric turned on the light. “The waste emissions project?” he said.
“Nope. We turned that on this afternoon. Works prettier than a spotted pony. No, I been spending the last hour erasing my fiancee Lynn’s name from the project records.”
“Won’t Lynn object to that?” Ulric said, fairly calmly, mostly because he did not have a very clear idea of which one Lynn was. He never could tell Brad’s fiancees apart. They all sounded exactly the same.
“She won’t hear tell of it till it’s too late,” Brad said. “She’s on her way to Cheyenne to catch a plane back east. Her mother’s all het up about getting a divorce. Caught her husband Adam en’ Evein'.”
If there was anything harder to put up with than Brad’s rottenness, it was his incredibly good luck. While Ulric was sure Brad was low enough to engineer a sudden family crisis to get Lynn out of Chugwater, he was just as sure that he had had no need to. It was a lucky coincidence that Lynn’s mother was getting a divorce just now, and lucky coincidences were Brad’s specialty. How else could he have kept three fiancees from ever meeting each other in the small confines of Chugwater and Mowen Chemical?
“Lynn?” Ulric said. “Which one is that? The redhead in programming?”
“Nope, that’s Sue. Lynn’s little and yellow-haired and smart as a whip about chemical engineering. Kind of a dodunk about everythin’ else.”
“Dodunk,” Ulric said to himself. He should make a note to look that up. It probably meant “one so foolish as to associate with Brad McAfee.” That definitely included him. He had agreed to room with Brad because he was so surprised at being hired that it had not occurred to him to ask for an apartment of his own.
He had graduated with an English degree that everyone had told him was worse than useless in Wyoming, and which he very soon found out was. In desperation, he had applied for a factory job at Mowen Chemical and been hired on as company linguist at an amazing salary for reasons that had not yet become clear, though he had been at Mowen for over three months. What had become clear was that Brad McAfee was, to use his own colorful language, a thimblerigger, a pigeon plucker, a homswoggler. He was steadily working his way toward the boss’s daughter and the ownership of Mowen Chemical, leaving a trail of young women behind him who all apparently believed that a man who pronounced fiancee “fee-an-see” couldn’t possibly have more than one. It was an
