Waterfalls and Glass #4
Track 2, Sector 2:
Susan surveyed the wreckage of the kitchen.
“Sure, honey. I'll have a side of hash browns with my pie. Let's go. Tell me all about the big splash on the way.”
As they walked, Susan began to ramble:
“Well it all stays in the glass so there isn't really a splash but anyway they all worked. It all worked. They were all there. It was boring but we had one of the nice terms from the music department. The cabinets looked like they were asleep and Dean Allen looked happier than I'd ever seen him around a computer and Chuck did all right but Oliver got us . . . ”
”Oliver is what a person would be like if Denbridge could ever be bothered to make something as unprofitable as a person. He's slippery, toxic, you're stuck with him forever. Just like that paper you love he’s totally unsuitable for children.”
Monica pulled herself together and made up the couple of steps she had fallen behind Susan on the sidewalk.
”No. We are not talking about Oliver. We are walking to pie and you're going to tell me about your union meeting last night.”
”Ok, Monnie. I'll tell you what, I feel like I'm working two jobs and I can’t tell which one is the real one. I can tell you what they both have in common ... I don't think there's anyone else who wants either of them. I was there until 11 last night just trying to get that basket of badgers to some kind of agreement before we have a draft contract instead of after.”
”What's to agree on?”
”Well, payroll tax rate is going up again, like every year. It's always a small amount but it's a reason that Lapointe wants to move some costs around to pay less. We have members who get caught up in that game and who would probably take all their pay in non-taxable tongue depressors from the health center right up until they figured out you couldn't eat them or build a house out of them.”
”Didn't one of the three pigs try that?”
”Monnie, we had all of the piggies at that hall last night and I feel like I'm trying to sell a brick house to a group of fools who have never known wind or rain or cold. There are wolves out there Monnie and they are not all playing drawing room mind games like Oliver and your crowd. Monnie, how long have you worked here?”
”Since '53”
”So you would normally be vested in the pension, but none of those years you were a PhD student count for vesting, so you are still not vested in the pension.”
”I know that, but I'm not planning to go anywhere and I'm not even sure the machine will be finished by the time I vest and it's already time to start thinking about the next one.”
”Honey, what happens if a room full of old boys wants to take their pay in pension contributions rather than their envelope because somebody told them to be afraid of . . . I don't even know. Afraid of paying for roads or whatever is so bad about paying taxes.”
”Their effective tax rate would certainly go down, but it's hard to say what the effect would be in the long term. Oliver told me once that the pension fund was so conservative that I would be better off buying bags of souvenir flour at the mill store downtown for my old age. I told him that flour goes rancid and you can't keep it that long. I don't know. I would have to work out which was the better deal because anyway they turn the pension into an annuity and you have to figure that…"
”Well, for once he and I almost agree on something. If they fire you for getting pregnant before you vest then you get less today and nothing tomorrow. But that‘s not even the biggest problem.”
Monica was a hard quiet, not a soft and contemplative quiet from which a companion might return reinvigorated.
”What's the biggest problem, Susan, you say. I bet that problem is just like some little problem we solved last week and they're probably the same. Well, honey, the problem is that you are too damn good at your job. What do you think would happen to the Dodge dealer if your Dart could drive all the way to the moon for Mr. Kennedy without needing fixed. And they you say something about about what cards Dodge could play if this was a game and then I say what damn difference does it make about the pension if we someday get computers that could run for a month, or even a year someday, without needing a tuneup. I heard they are taking a computer to the moon, Monnie. You told me that. To the moon. How many union technicians do you think they are taking? Then you say I hadn't really thought about it like that Susan.”
Monica drew in a deep breath and let go through flapping lips with a sound something like a little pony neighing aboard a motorboat. She did it in just exactly the way her mother had forbade and went on and on for about 15 seconds. They arrived at the shiny steel door of the diner just as she was running out of steam. They walked in together like two passengers jostling in a railway vestibule. Monica said ”Hi, Panos” to the man standing behind the counter in a way that sounded much more like Monica than a motorboat and he motioned them on towards the row of empty booths.