against a personal call to Bird’s last job site, a chat with the supervisor . . .
If I could just explain to Magyar what the job meant to me. Tell her about Paolo, how good I felt to be teaching him. How much easier life would be for me, for all of us, if we just let down our guards a little and talked, helped each other. Maybe I should try trusting her the way Paolo was trusting me.
I waited for her outside. Fog condensed on the streetlights and dripped onto the pavement. Even here in the city, the night smelled of autumn: damp leaves mulching, wood smoke, wool coats slightly musty from six months in the closet. Ten minutes became twenty, then half an hour.
Then suddenly she was through the gates and five paces away, fog billowing around her.
“Magyar.”
She whirled, pulling her hands out of her pockets. “Bird! What are you doing here?” We stood ten feet apart. The fog made everything feel enclosed, quieted, unreal. She put her hands back in her pockets.
“I want to talk to you.” My voice was steady. How odd.
“It’s too cold to stand around. You can talk while we walk.” She set off, obviously not caring whether I walked with her or not. She walked fast, with big strides. Her shoes were soled with some soft, absorbent material; I felt as though I were watching a film with the sound turned off.
Try it, I told myself. Just try. “You seemed angry. Earlier.”
“I was.”
“I just thought we could clear the air between us.” It sounded lame. She seemed to think so, anyway. She snorted. This was a mistake. “It’s just . . . Look, you were angry—”
“I still am, Bird.”
But the anger did not seem to be directed at me. “Is something wrong at the plant?”
She stopped abruptly, swung to face me. “Now why should I want to tell you?”
I felt a bit bolder. “Because it might affect me and everyone else who works on the night shift. I don’t like surprises.”
“You don’t like surprises? What a shame. I don’t much like being lied to, by you or anyone else. You want to know what’s wrong with the plant? Then go to your bosses and get them to tell you what’s going on.”
“I can’t. I’m not who you think I am.” And I was stupid for thinking I could have achieved anything, risking myself like this.
“I know you’re not Sal Bird.”
“I’m the only Sal Bird there is.”
She waited, hands clenching and unclenching in her pockets, but when it became obvious I wasn’t going to tell her any more, she walked away.
The woman on the screen had dark brown hair cut in a sharp, shoulder-length line. “Spanner? Ellen. Sorry we missed your birthday. Thought you might like—”
A woman who knew when Spanner’s birthday was. With brown hair. Lore hesitated, then sat before the video pickup and touched a button. The woman on the screen frowned. “Who are you?”
“Lore.” She remembered to make the word slippery, in her new accent. They stared at each other a minute. Dyed brown hair, dyed red hair.
“No wonder we haven’t heard from her for a while.” Ellen smiled. It was an open smile, genuine, and Lore im mediately liked her. “I was calling to invite Spanner for a drink. A belated celebration. You’ll both come?”
They looked at each other some more. Lore wondered what Ellen saw. She almost asked her. Instead, she nodded.
“The Polar Bear, then.”
“Who is it?” Spanner came through from the shower, drinking coffee, no towel.
“One moment,” Lore said to Ellen, and turned off the video pickup. “It’s Ellen,” she told Spanner.
Spanner motioned Lore aside, slid into the chair. Lore was not surprised when she turned the video back on. “Hey. Did I hear something about a drink?”
“You did.” Ellen grinned, looked Spanner up and down. “You seem in the pink.”
They both laughed, and Lore felt like a child left out of a grown-up joke.
“Ten tomorrow?”
“Fine.”
“We’ll expect both of you,” Ellen said, and the screen went gray.
“Who’s ‘we’?” Lore asked.
“Ellen and Ruth.”
“The PIDA picker?”
“The same. Maybe some others.”
“I feel like I’ll be presented for inspection.”
Spanner shrugged. “You know how it is. People always want to check out who you’re with.”
People, not friends. “Business?”
“Dilettantes. Ex-dilettantes at that.”
Later, in the Polar Bear, as she sat at a table with Ellen and Ruth, and Billy and Ann, Lore thought she must have imagined the edge of disdain in Spanner’s words.
Spanner was in high gear, drinking hard and dragging the others along