“Attention, everyone, please! The asset is off the loading dock. Repeat: The asset is off the loading dock and is on the approach. Respectfully, I need the construction crew to stop where you are and exit the lab via the door to your right—”
David Fleming’s white shirt and neutral slacks had camouflaged him against the computer. Elisa sees him now, his arm forked in a gesture toward the very door in front of which she and Zelda stand like scolded children. Every head in the room turns their way. All these men, staring at them, these infringing females. Elisa’s cheeks burn, and she feels every ugly inch of her trash-spattered Occam grays.
“I apologize, everyone, our lady visitors are not supposed to be here.” Fleming lowers his voice to that of a chiding husband. “Zelda. Elisa. How many times do you have to be told? When there are men working inside—”
Zelda shrinks like one accustomed to absorbing blows, and Elisa sidesteps in front of her, an instinctive shielding that puts her, to her shock, directly in the path of a man hurrying straight at her. Elisa snatches a breath, squares her shoulders. Corporal punishment was habitual during her youth, and though that was fifteen years ago, hands have been laid upon her before at Occam. Fleming manhandling her from an unsteady office chair from atop which she cleared cobwebs; a biologist slapping her hand from a paper cup that contained not old coffee but some kind of sample; a security guard giving her a hard spank on her way to the elevator.
“Don’t leave.” He is the man with the accent. The hem of his white lab coat is soaked gray from the pool and his half-laced wingtips make dog-tongue splashes. His dripping hand is held palm-up in appeal, and he turns to Fleming. “These girls are cleared, yes?”
“They’re janitorial. They’re cleared, yes, for janitorial services.”
“If they are cleared, should they not hear?”
“With all due respect, doctor. You’re new. Occam has protocols.”
“But will they not clean this laboratory from time to time?”
“Yes, but only at my direct request.”
Fleming’s eyes snap from the scientist to Elisa, and she witnesses his recognition that he’d prematurely added F-1 to the QCC. Elisa jerks her head down at her cart, all those safe, crusty bottles and jugs, but it’s too late to retract the stinger: Fleming’s dignity is stung, and extra work for her and Zelda will be the punishment. The accented scientist sees none of this; he’s still smiling, convinced of his benevolence. Like most of the well-intentioned privileged Elisa has met, he has no grasp of the priorities of the servile, how all they want is to get through a shift without trouble.
“Very good,” the scientist says. “Everyone should understand the importance of the asset so that there are no mistakes.”
Fleming mashes his lips and waits for the construction crew to exit. Elisa and Zelda shrink from the burly men’s appraising looks. The scientist, blind to Elisa’s discomfort, holds out his hand to shake. Elisa gapes in horror at the man’s neatly clipped nails, clean palm, and starched shirt cuff. What will Fleming make of this etiquette breach? Worse than to take the hand is to ignore it, so she offers hers as listlessly as possible. The man’s palm is damp, but his grip is genuine.
“Dr. Bob Hoffstetler.” He smiles. “How do you work in those shoes?”
Elisa shuffles backward several inches so that her cart separates her shoes from Fleming’s line of sight. Fleming can’t be allowed to notice her shoes for the second time. She couldn’t bear it if he robbed her of that revolt. Hoffstetler misses nothing; he observes her small retreat and angles his head curiously. He appears to be waiting on a reply, so Elisa pushes a smile onto her blushing face and taps her name tag. Hoffstetler’s eyebrows settle in sympathetic understanding.
“The most intelligent of creatures,” he offers softly, “often make the fewest sounds.”
He smiles again and steps to the right to make similar introductions to Zelda, and though Elisa is mortified by the attention and curls her shoulders inward to make herself smaller, she notes with a somber sting that, in all her years at Occam, Dr. Hoffstetler’s smile is the warmest she’s ever received.
5
IT’S A FINE iron, no doubt about it. Forget fiddly demineralizer kits; it takes tap water straight, and it’s so agreeable to have all the settings on one dial. And it comes with a wall mount; that’ll be handy once her ironing board has a permanent place. For now, she’s set up in the living room in front of the TV. This is how her army-wife friends in Orlando did their housework. Lainie had always resisted. Once during Richard’s Amazon mission, she’d tried listening to Young Doctor Malone and Perry Mason on the radio while ironing and the distraction had been too potent. She got through a whole laundry basket without memory of having done so, and it bothered her. That’s how unchallenging your daily tasks are, Lainie. That’s how repetitive.
But last night in bed, insomnia had hatched an obvious but invigorating thought. The channel dial: She can change it. She doesn’t have to watch I Love Lucy, Guiding Light, and Password like the other wives; she can watch Today, NBC News, and ABC Early Afternoon Report. It’s a fresh idea, and it inspires her. So far, everything about Baltimore inspires her.
Getting dressed this morning—why, it’d felt like she’d been dressing for a cocktail party of intellectuals! She’d set her beehive before unfolding the ironing board, and by the tight ache at her temples, she knows it’s holding. What unravels, however, is her attention, ten minutes into the first newscast. Khrushchev is visiting the Berlin Wall. Just the word Khrushchev makes her blush; she mispronounced it three years ago at a function packed with Washington bigwigs, and Richard’s jaw had throbbed in embarrassment. And the Berlin Wall. Why does she know the name of every single character on Captain Kangaroo but not a thing about the Berlin Wall?
Lainie toggles the iron’s selector, unable to decide which setting will best eradicate wrinkles. Is it possible Westinghouse has given her, and every other woman in America, too many choices? She examines the face of the iron, counts seventeen vents, one for every month Richard spent in the Amazon. She blasts the steam, dips her face into the draft, and imagines that it’s the jungle’s heat.
This must be how the world felt to Richard when he’d called her from Brazil. It had been like hearing a ghost. One second, she’d been cutting crusts off peanut-butter sandwiches and reaching for the ringing phone. The next, she’d dropped the knife and let loose a shriek. She’d wept, insisting to him that it was a miracle. She’d had to force the tears, though, hadn’t she? Well, who could blame her? She’d been in shock. Richard had replied that he’d missed her, too, but his deadness of voice persisted; he sounded slow and mealy, as if he’d forgotten English. There was a crunching sound, too, like he was chewing something. Why would he be eating while talking to his wife for the first time in seventeen months?
It was easy to excuse. Maybe he’d been starving out in that jungle. He’d told her that they’d be moving to Baltimore, and before she could ask questions, he gave her his flight number to Orlando and gotten off the phone, still crunching. Lainie sat down, gazed at the home that, for a year and a half, had seemed so comforting and functional. Now it looked like a bachelor’s disaster. Nothing shone from spray or scrub. The iron that had died eight months ago she hadn’t even replaced. Oh, how she’d cleaned for the next two days, her scrubbing fists bursting through dishwashing gloves, her mopping hands weeping with blisters, her grouting knuckles trailing blood. A phone call from Washington rescued her, if not her marriage: Richard was being rerouted by sea to Baltimore. He’d meet her there in two weeks at a house of government choosing.