to Kinnis and Cel and Meisener and all the others, that she would have a walkout on her hands if she didn’t come, but I didn’t need to.
“That’s it, Bird. You tell Cruz not to budge. I’ll be right there.”
Paolo was still standing near the trough, muttering. He did not seem to hear me when I called his name. I didn’t know what to do. I hesitated, then picked up some shears. At least I could keep an eye on him until Magyar got here. And I had my own work to do.
“Bird!” Magyar was talking and striding past me at the same time. “Come with me. Cruz, you stay right there.” I don’t think he even heard her.
I had to scramble out of the trough; she was not slowing down for anybody.
We found Hepple in the floor office, a clear-paned box twenty feet up with a view of the whole primary sector. He was sitting down, making notes on a slate. Magyar slammed the door open and was talking before Hepple had the time to sit up straight. “You have no right to fire one of my workers. Misconduct, if any, should have been reported to me, and I would have made the correct decision. You had no right to go over my head.” I stood slightly behind Magyar, surrounded by reflections in the glass walls.
Hepple and his reflection laid the slate aside, carefully, as though his conversation with Magyar would take only a minute and he did not want to lose his place. “He was insolent. We would have had to let him go anyway when we downsized the workforce.”
Magyar was momentarily thrown. “Downsizing? When was that decided?”
“This morning, I believe. So you see, it would have happened sooner or later.”
“Wait. Just wait a minute. I thought you had grand designs to expand this plant, increase the throughput.”
“I do, I do. But I persuaded the board that we don’t need as many people to achieve that goal.”
Magyar shook her head like a dog worrying a rabbit and I watched her reflection’s hair shimmer back and forth. “This was the wrong way to do it. You tormented that boy. If nothing else, common decency should . . .”
Common decency. The phrase rippled back and forth like the reflection of Magyar’s hair in the glass. She and Hepple were still talking, but I wasn’t listening anymore. Common decency . . . I finally remembered, finally realized what it was about Paolo and the way he moved that bothered me.
All my fault . . .
Guilt, mine, my family’s, stopped the breath in my lungs and pulled the muscles along my arms and legs rigid. But then fear—of him, for him, what he might do, all that bitterness—snapped me out of it.
“Sorry,” I said jerkily to the air, and reached blindly for the door.
FOURTEEN
Lore is fifteen. It is early March, and she is preparing to fly to Gdansk, where for the first time she will be assistant deputy project manager. An admin position, Katerine tells her, but a responsible one, nevertheless. Katerine will be taking charge personally.
Lore is up late the night before they fly, running over last-minute plans—so that she knows what is going on, so she won’t embarrass herself in front of Katerine, or Katerine in front of others—when the phone rings.
She accepts the call. “Tok!” He looks different, but at first Lore can’t pinpoint the change. Then she has it: his face has lost all trace of puppy fat. “How are you? It’s—”
“I’ve been talking to Stella,” he interrupts. “It’s true. All of it.”
“What—”
But he talks right over her. “Watch yourself. You might be next.”
Lore is glad to see him, glad to hear from him, but she remembers how he had fooled her for so many years. How he had never talked to her. How she felt betrayed when he left. And now he is being cryptic.
“I haven’t had any idea where you’ve been the last year or so, and now you. . .” She remembers she is fifteen; grown enough to take her first official job for the company. “It’s late,” she says, then—unable to help herself—bursts out, “Do you have any idea how badly you’ve hurt Mother?”
Tok looks momentarily blank; then, incredibly, he laughs. “How much I’ve hurt her? Lore, look,” he shakes his head, “you don’t—”
But the laugh and head shake are enough. She is grown now, no longer a child to be patronized, deceived. She cuts him off midsentence. She is tired, she tells herself.