Chapter 15 #2
“I’m asking why the hell you’re even here, Elisha. Let’s cut the bullshit for ten seconds. This isn’t a normal one-on-one. I didn’t ask you to coffee under ambiguous
pretenses. You’re here because you believe something at work needs to change. So, what is it?”
“What do you want me to say? That working at NSX isn’t anything like I thought it’d be? That I dread going to work every morning
and spend my shift counting down until it’s time to clock out?”
“That’s a start.”
“It’s irrelevant.”
“Why?”
“Because it doesn’t matter. So what if my dream summer job ended up being a shitty one?
Everyone has a minimum-wage sob story; it’s a rite of passage, the prologue to every American Dream.
And that’s fine. Because prologues, rites of passage, and shitty summer jobs all end. They’re a means to an end.”
“So, what? It doesn’t matter how the sausage gets made?”
“Not if that’s the only food on the table. Maybe you buy Impossible sausage patties, but the rest of us—” I bite my tongue. “Most of us can’t. People buy fast food because it’s
cheap, and that’s what this is about, right? We’re all just working to survive.”
“You’re seventeen.”
“I’m well aware.”
“You live with your parents in a three-bedroom house in Northern California. Your parents own a small business. Nine months
a year, your job is getting straight As. You, Elisha Goldstein, are not working to survive.”
“And you are? You know exactly why I’m at NSX.” I swallow the acidic twang of anger—and the lie—in my throat. “Why are you even here, Efraín?”
“You know why. I’m trying to improve working conditi—”
“No, not here, at this meeting, but—” I gesture around us. “Why are you working at NSX? You don’t like the show, and you don’t need a shitty summer job.”
“What makes you think I don’t need a job?”
“Because . . .” That has to be a rhetorical question. “Have you seen your house?”
“Pretty sure I live in my house ten months of the year.”
“Ten?”
“What’s your point, Elisha?”
“You’re a bourgeois hypocrite.”
“Because of the winery? Sobremesa Cellars has been in my mom’s family for three generations, yeah, but it’s not like I have
a trust fund. If I did, I’d donate to every mutual aid fund and—”
“The fact that you can even imagine having a trust fund proves my point.”
Efraín tenses, jaw set, uncharacteristically still. It’s a dangerous thing, silent self-restraint that forecasts a storm.
“Okay. Yeah. I won’t deny my economic privilege there. The winery does well. You’ve seen my house. I have a college fund.
But don’t pretend you really know anything about my life, Elisha.” He pauses, but I’m still processing, and he processes every
silence as an invitation. “And imagining a trust fund? C’mon. You’ve never imagined what you’d do with a lump sum of cash?”
The ensuing tightness in my chest is apropos, because, yes, I know exactly what I’d do with a lump sum of cash, starting with tightening my chest, so to speak.
“You’re the one who brought up the American Dream,” he adds, “and the idea that we’re just supposed to accept shitty summer
jobs as a necessary part of coming of age, like getting your license or going to prom—it’s a mass delusion.”
“The opiate of the masses, right?” I cut in, the allusion sour in my mouth. “Because capitalism is the American religion. I think I’ve heard this one before.”
Efraín scoffs. “You’re asleep, and you don’t even know it.”
I laugh. I can’t help it. It’s either laugh or cry, and I won’t let Efraín see me cry now.
“You know what, Efraín?” I push my chair back to put some space between us. “You were right. This isn’t a normal one-on-one.
I can wrap it up myself. We already covered agitate.
This whole meeting has been a hands-on exercise to educate ourselves.
You did the inoculate talk before, right?
The National Labor Relations Act says we can’t be fired for organizing.
That brings us to ‘U’ for union. I’m here, aren’t I?
So there you have it; A-E-I-O-U in action.
” I stand up. I force a smile and turn to Lola and Naomi.
“End scene.”
Lola raises a thoroughly unimpressed eyebrow. “Well, kids. That was a great example of what not to do.”
“Why are you still here?”
When I slink out of the diner twenty minutes later, my eyes red-rimmed from not-quite crying, I find Efraín fiddling with
his bike.
It’s a picture-perfect midsummer night, the sky still dwindling in civil twilight; none of it explains why Efraín is standing
in front of me.
He mulls over my simple question, like he hasn’t decided yet if he’s standing on the street corner with purpose or just misdemeanor loitering. “Waiting for you.”
Nothing good can come from that pronouncement. “Dare I guess why?”
“Wanted to ask you something.”
“You’ve already asked me a whole lot of things.”
When I survey the square again, it’s for escape routes. There are plenty, but I’m on foot. Efraín has his bike. “Okay,” I
concede, “we can talk.”
En route to the gazebo, Efraín’s thoroughly lost in his own thoughts. I’d offer him a road map, but I’m still traversing my
own mindscape with celestial navigation.
Efraín starts pacing as soon as he’s up the gazebo stairs. “Why did you really show up for the meeting?”
“Because I said I would.”
“No, you said you’d be there last night, and you bailed.”
“I wasn’t feeling well,” I say. “I came tonight because I wanted to be here. Is that really so hard to believe?”
With every passing moment, the sun dips farther below the horizon. The gazebo’s dangling lantern casts long shadows over Efraín’s
frame.
“You say you need this job,” he intones like he’s reciting a crime. “You run a cost-benefit analysis before you decide whether
to step into a fight.” Done pulling his punches, he goes for the knockout. “You fought me on starting a union every step of
the way. So forgive me if I have questions when you show up in the group chat in the middle of the night telling everyone to bring a damn social map.”
I gulp down an incredulous laugh. “You’re suspicious? Of me? Are you worried I’m a sleeper cell spy? A Manchurian union member?
I think I missed that Nuclear Seasons episode.”
Efraín shakes his head hard enough to give me motion sickness. “This isn’t a joke. I was ready to tell you to fuck off after yesterday, but Lola asked me to give you another
chance. Except I’m trying to do something real here, and all you care about is your stupid TV show.”
“Right, the opiate of the masses. I bet you call your television ‘the idiot box.’ Anything with a screen—”
“This.” Efraín wags an accusatory finger. “This is what I’m talking about. Sometimes, you hit the leftist lingo bingo card, but
you explain it like it’s academic, always so fucking pedantic. There’s no blood in it. When push comes to shove? You don’t show up, or you’re a day late and a dollar short, which is fucking ironic for
someone who’s more afraid of being late than complicit.
“All this time, I couldn’t figure you out, but it’s not that deep. Say what you want about me, but all you care about is the
idiot box.”
This shouldn’t knock the air from my lungs. I know what Efraín thinks of me. What did I expect? That showing up well-researched
to one meeting would make up for every battle I’ve sat out?
Efraín’s given me the benefit of the doubt, time and time again, because he’s a genuinely good person. He doesn’t just play one on public-access TV—doesn’t just play one when talking about a TV show.
One second I’m leaning against the railing, and the next I’m sitting on the creaky wooden bench. I hold on to my knees and
focus on my breathing. My heart is making a ruckus. The world is very loud, and Efraín is watching me, and I don’t know what
to say to him.
That’s the whole problem. I’ve never been able to say the right thing around him, so I stopped trying. I didn’t want to hear
his lectures, so I skipped the track. But if I’d kept trying—if I’d kept saying something instead of shutting down—then Efraín
would know where I stand.
I look up and meet his familiar, judgmental gaze. “You’re right, okay? I didn’t have the purest intentions when I dyed my
hair; I was just so angry at Dagny and Anya. Then, even when I said I’d come to the meeting, I still wanted to believe there
was a way for me to work within the system. But then I met with Billy yesterday—”
“Who?”
“Billy from HR.”
“You met with human fucking resources?” His eyes smolder with accusation. “What the hell did you tell them?”
“Nothing,” I insist. “It was literally the opposite of concerted activity, okay? It was me, alone, trying to convince a corporate shill that wearing a button didn’t threaten—” I break off.
“It didn’t go well. That’s why I felt so sick after work.
But it made me realize just how wrong I’ve been, since the beginning.
I couldn’t fully commit to the union because I was ready to give this job my whole heart, and—”
I can’t say it.
“And?”
I don’t want to say it.
“And the job didn’t want me. It just wanted any warm body it could dress in a pink polo shirt. I could’ve been okay with anonymity. I still wanted
to be there, and I’ve never stopped needing money. But I realized it wasn’t enough to be a faceless, nameless, interchangeable
part.”
Tears are clawing at my eyes again, but I don’t want to cry. Not about this. “I wasn’t earning a paycheck selling tickets
and T-shirts but by erasing myself for the sake of the brand. I’m not allowed to be a person on the clock. And, yes, I do love Nuclear Seasons, and I did love NSX, but—”
I don’t know how to say it.
“But what?”
Maybe I’ve known how to say it all along but couldn’t admit it.
“But ‘institutional messaging’ shouldn’t be more important than the people who make the institution.” My voice crackles, warbles, and breaks at the end. I’m breathing hard, my heart palpitating. “That includes Naomi’s hair. Stanley’s water flask. Everything else on our hypothetical grievance list—”