Unable to calm herself, Sula got up and began to pace. She thought about taking a Xanex, then changed her mind. She tried to save the mild tranquilizers for when she had serious anxiety episodes in public situations.
Sula pulled on a denim work shirt and headed out to the garage for her own brand of therapy. The unfinished room was almost empty except for her metal-working tools. The one she used the most was her cutting torch, which she was still making payments on. In the center of the limited space was her work in progress: a six-foot tall metal sculpture of a twisted form, part human and part alien. Just seeing it made her feel better.
The frame, which had once been part of a plow, didn’t look feminine yet, but she would round it out later with some motorcycle fenders she’d picked up at a yard sale. The next step was to use the mig welder to attach a piece of metal tubing that fanned out at the end like a hand. First she clamped the tubing in place at the body’s shoulder, then set her mig welder next to the sculpture. Next she attached the ground clamp-which looked like the end of a jumper cable-to the base of the sculpture. She studied the seam for a minute to get a feel for its flow and depth.
Sula took a few long slow breaths to make sure her hands were steady. When she was in the zone, she buttoned her shirt up to the neck, pulled on her welding helmet, and donned a pair of heavy work gloves. She flipped the welder on and a spark jumped from the end of the welding wand. She held the end near the seam and watched as liquid metal oozed from the wand. With a steady hand she added a bead of molten metal to the two pieces. She loved to see the steel come together. Two seemingly unbendable and unaesthetic objects fused into one superior form.
She’d learned to weld at the Center for Appropriate Transportation, a co-op that designed, repaired, and sold bicycles, as well as tried to teach life skills to teenagers who didn’t fit into traditional high school. The center also made metal bike racks for local businesses. Sula had welded dozens of the huge racks in her year at CAT and had loved every fiery seam.
She’d also been encouraged to write a few news stories for its monthly cycling publication and that had sparked her interest in journalism. It had not been a traditional high school experience, but in many ways it had been better. The co-op owners were sweet passionate people, and its few students were misfits, which meant they were more interesting than most kids their age.
The weld took forty minutes and didn’t turn out as well as she wanted. She could grind it down to make it look okay but that wasn’t good enough. Two sculptures she’d created in classes at the university had won awards at local art shows and she hoped to enter this one in a statewide show in Portland this fall.
She would cut the piece off tomorrow after it had cooled and start over. Sula put away her tools, read a few chapters in a book about freelance reporting, then headed for bed. Tired as she felt, her brain kept leaping from one wild thought to another. The talk of suicides that morning had triggered childhood memories that had plagued her all day. She had managed to shut most of them down as they surfaced. But now the scene in which her father played Russian Roulette at the kitchen table with a loaded pistol could not be repressed.
His sweaty forehead, the pink flush of skin, the blank stare. For a moment this afternoon, Rudker had reminded Sula of her dad, sitting at the yellow Formica table on that summer evening two days before her tenth birthday. Fate had intervened in the form of a barking dog and her father had survived-to play variations of the suicide game again and again, until one day he lost.
Chapter 4
Tuesday, April 13, 7:42 a.m.
Robbie picked six white pill bottles off the conveyor belt, wrapped clear tape around them to create a bundle, then slid them into a box and taped it closed. Then he did it again. And again. For eight hours a day, unless the plant was on overtime. Some days he got so bored in the afternoons he nearly walked out. But so far, he’d resisted the urge. He could not afford to be unemployed again. Before he’d started taking medication, he’d lost a few jobs because he was occasionally too despondent to get up in the morning.
He forced himself to look at the bright side. Clean, easy work for $8.50 an hour was considered a great job these days, and most of the people at Prolabs were quite nice. Keeping that in mind, the morning passed quickly. When the lunch buzzer rang in his ears, relief washed over him. He set down the six-pack and joined the moving wall of people in the corridor. From the back, they all looked the same. White lab-style coats, white booties, and white hair caps. He’d felt silly the first few times he suited up, but even the big bosses in suits and ties put on sanitation gear before entering the factory.
Sometimes the white walls and stainless steel machinery made him a little snow blind, but it was still better than the stinking, wet mess of a dishwashing job he’d had before. This job didn’t make his father proud but it was a step in the right direction. Plus, working at a pharmaceutical factory gave him good material for his occasional stint at a local standup comedy club. Writing and performing comedy gave him a way to turn his gloom and doom personality into a positive, if fleeting, experience.
The group moved silently until they entered the changing room. As booties and hair caps came off, their voices burst forth.
“Want to run over to Taco Time?”
“Did you see Rudker’s new wheels? The SOB is driving a Commander.”
“No shit. What do they cost? Forty grand?”
Robbie ignored them, changing as quickly as he could. He wanted to get to the lunchroom in time to snag a seat next to Julie the receptionist. Lunch hour was the only time he was able to see her. He shoved his booties and hair cap into the wall slot for disposables and hung the white coat in his locker. He grabbed his lunch sack, hurried out into the exterior walkway, then broke into a jog.
“Hey, Robbie, what’s the hurry?” Mark, the mixing room operator, was going the other direction and mockingly jumped out of his way.
“I heard Santana was playing in the lunch room and I wanted to get a good seat.”
Mark was kind enough to laugh.
Robbie pushed through the double doors only to discover he was too late. Julie’s table was full. Melissa and Monica, both secretaries, sat on either side, and three guys from the tablet press room sat across from her. Damn. He wanted to ask her out, but he felt like he had to give her a chance to get to know him. Otherwise, she would probably turn him down. She was pretty and popular and he was just okay. Okay looking, okay body, taller than most girls, and smarter than most guys. So far he’d only managed to sit with Julie twice in two months.
Robbie looked away so she wouldn’t see him staring. Disappointment made his legs heavy and he plopped down at the nearest table. Knowing how quickly he could slide into despair, he focused on his food: two slices of leftover pizza, a banana, and a twin pack of Twinkies. Not bad. It was better than Cup-O-Noodle, which he often ended up with because he’d hit the snooze button one too many times and had to run out the door.
“Hey Robbie, need some company?” Matt, a thin young man about his age who worked the other end of the packaging line, sat down across the table. He laid his hands out flat, the small triangular tattoos showing. It was obvious he had no lunch.
“What’s new?” Robbie tried to be friendly.
“I had to get a new battery for my piece of shit car and now I’m broke.”
“Cars are like black holes. You put your money in and it never comes back out.” Robbie put a slice of pizza on a napkin and pushed it across the table to Matt. “Here, I’m not that hungry.”