13. Beckett
BECKETT
I went back the next night at ten.
The parking lot was empty except for one truck I didn't recognize and a sedan that had seen better years.
I walked to the same side door I'd used the night before. The one that led to the offices.
This time I kept going.
Down the hall. Through the door that opened onto the floor.
The smell hit me first. Wool and machine oil and something else I couldn't name. Not unpleasant. Just old.
The same smell my grandfather's shop used to have.
A woman was standing at the cutting table near the back. Older, maybe sixty, with gray hair pulled into a bun and reading glasses on a chain.
She looked up when I came in.
I stopped.
She set down the clipboard she'd been holding and crossed the floor toward me.
Not in a hurry. Just steady.
When she got close enough I could see her face properly. The lines around her mouth. The way she was looking at me.
Like she'd already made up her mind about something.
"Ben Krawiec," I said.
She didn't blink.
"I know who you are."
The words were flat. No anger in them. No sympathy either.
Just a statement of fact.
I stood there and felt something settle in my chest. Not relief exactly. But not panic either.
"Hazel Dunning," she said.
"Ben Krawiec."
"I know."
She folded her arms.
"Two conditions," she said. "You never tell Nell. And if she hears it from you, you're gone that hour."
I nodded.
"Do you understand what I'm saying?"
"Yes."
"Say it back to me."
"I don't tell Nell I'm here," I said. "And if she finds out from me, I'm gone."
"That's right."
"You do what you're told," she said. "No opinions. No suggestions. No reorganizing anything."
"All right."
"I mean it," she said. "You're here to work. Not to fix things."
"I understand."
She looked at me for another second.
Like she was weighing something.
Then she turned and walked back toward the cutting table.
"Come on," she said.
Her name was Hazel Dunning.
She'd been plant manager for as long as Nell had owned the building, and before that she'd worked the floor beside Nell's mother for nineteen years.
She told me that while we walked.
"Rosalie Ivester," she said. "Nell's mother. We worked side by side for nineteen years before she passed."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be sorry," she said. "Just don't waste my time."
She stopped at a machine I didn't recognize and put her hand on it.
"You ever work a floor before?" she asked.
"A long time ago."
"How long?"
"Twenty years."
She nodded.
"What kind of floor?"
"Tailoring shop," I said. "Small operation."
"How small?"
"Just me."
"So you ran the machines yourself?"
"Yes."
"Cut the patterns?"
"Yes."
"Did the finishing?"
"Yes."
She looked at the machine under her hand.
"Then you don't remember how to work for somebody else," she said. "So forget what you think you know."
"All right."
"I'm serious," she said. "You're not running anything here. You're not deciding anything. You do what you're told and you don't argue."
"I understand."
"Do you?"
"Yes."
"Kiana," she called.
A girl came out from behind one of the machines near the back. Young. Nineteen, maybe twenty. Wearing a hoodie under a canvas work jacket.
"Yeah?"
"This is Ben," Hazel said. "He's starting tonight. Show him what needs doing."
The girl looked at me.
She had the kind of face that didn't give anything away. No curiosity. No suspicion. Just looking.
Then she looked back at Hazel.
"Seriously?"
"Seriously."
Kiana shrugged.
"All right," she said. "Come on."
Hazel walked away without another word.
Kiana looked at me again.
"You know how to lift a box?" she asked.
"Yes."
"You know how to follow instructions?"
"Yes."
"You sure about that?"
"Yes."
"Good," she said. "Because that's all you need to know for tonight. Lifting boxes and following instructions."
"Understood."
The first thing she had me do was haul boxes.
Finished blankets, packed and labeled, stacked near the loading bay at the back of the building. They needed to be moved to the front near the shipping door.
Forty-three of them.
"Grab one end," she said.
I did.
The cardboard was rough under my palms. Industrial. The kind of box that had been used and reused until the corners were soft.
We carried the first one across the floor together.
It wasn't particularly heavy. Maybe thirty pounds. But it was awkward. Wide and unwieldy.
By the time we set it down my hands were already starting to ache.
The same ache I'd had for weeks now. The one I'd been ignoring.
"You good?" Kiana asked.
"Fine."
She gave me a look that said she didn't believe me.
But she didn't argue.
We went back for the next one.
"So how'd you hear about this place?" she asked.
"I didn't," I said. "I just asked."
"Asked who?"
"The woman at the front."
"Hazel?"
"Yes."
Kiana nodded.
"She doesn't usually hire people off the street," she said.
"I got lucky."
She laughed.
It wasn't a kind sound.
"You call this lucky?"
"I needed a job," I said. "She gave me one."
"There's easier work out there."
"I didn't want easier."
"Why not?"
"Because easier wouldn't be what I needed."
She looked at me like I'd said something crazy.
"Most people want easier," she said.
"I'm not most people."
"Yeah," she said. "I'm starting to get that."
We set the box down.
"You ever done this kind of work before?" she asked as we walked back.
"A long time ago," I said. "Different kind of shop."
"What kind?"
"Tailoring."
"Like suits?"
"Yes."
"Fancy."
"Not really."
She picked up her end of the third box.
"Fancier than this," she said.
By the third box my hands were worse.
By the fifth I could feel the skin starting to split at the base of my fingers.
Not badly. Just enough that I noticed.
I didn't say anything.
Kiana saw me flex my hand.
"You good?" she asked.
"Fine."
"You sure?"
"Yes."
We kept moving boxes.
"You got kids?" she asked on the eighth box.
"No."
"Married?"
I hesitated.
"Yes," I said.
"She know you're working nights in a sewing mill?"
"No."
"She know you're in Ardis?"
"No."
"Where's she think you are?"
"I don't know."
Kiana was quiet for a second.
"That's messed up," she said.
"Yes."
"You planning on telling her?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because she told me not to."
She looked at me.
"She told you not to tell her where you are?"
"She told me not to contact her," I said. "At all."
"Why?"
"Because I screwed up."
"How bad?"
I didn't answer that.
"Bad enough she doesn't want to hear from you," Kiana said. "That's pretty bad."
"Yes."
"So what are you doing here?"
"Trying to fix it."
"By working in a sewing mill?"
"Yes."
She shook her head.
"I don't get it."
"Neither do I," I said. "Not really. But it's what I've got."
Kiana didn't say anything to that.
We set the box down and went back for the next one.
By the fifteenth box the ache in my hands had turned into something sharper.
By the twentieth I could see blood.
Just a little. At the base of my right index finger where the skin had cracked.
I kept going.
Kiana saw it on the twenty-third box.
"You're bleeding," she said.
"I know."
"You want to stop?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"I said I'd move the boxes."
"There's like twenty more."
"I know."
She looked at me for a second.
"You're stubborn," she said.
"Yes."
"That's going to get old fast around here."
"I'll work on it."
She almost smiled.
Then she picked up her end of the next box.
"Your call," she said.
After the boxes came sweeping.
"Lint builds up under the machines," Kiana said. "Gets in the gears if you don't stay on top of it."
She handed me a broom and pointed to the row of sewing machines along the far wall.
"Start there," she said. "Work your way back."
I took the broom.
The handle was worn smooth. Somebody's hands had been on this thing for years.
I swept.
The lint came out in clumps. White and gray, fine as dust, gathering in the corners where the machine met the floor.
It was mindless work.
Repetitive.
The kind of thing I hadn't done since I was twenty-four and running my grandfather's shop by myself.
Back then I'd hated it. The tedium of it. The waste of time.
Now I found it almost calming.
I didn't have to think. I didn't have to decide anything.
I just moved the broom and the lint moved with it.
Kiana worked at the machine above me. Feeding cloth through. Her hands moving in a rhythm I didn't recognize.
Fast. Efficient.
She made it look easy.
I kept sweeping.
"You do this every night?" I asked.
"Every night," she said. "Twice if it's busy."
"How long have you been here?"
"Six months."
"You like it?"
She laughed.
"It's a job," she said. "I don't have to like it."
"But do you?"
"Do I what?"
"Like it."
She was quiet for a second.
"It's honest work," she said. "Pays the bills. Hazel's fair. That's more than a lot of people get."
"That's true."
"What about you?" she asked. "You think you're going to like it?"
"I don't know yet."
"Well," she said. "You made it through one night. That's something."
Fair enough.
I moved to the next machine.
The lint here was thicker. Packed in tight against the base.
I crouched down and swept it out with short strokes.
My hands were throbbing now.
I ignored it.
"You from around here?" Kiana asked.
"No."
"Where you from?"
"New York."
She looked down at me.
"Seriously?"
"Yes."
"What the hell are you doing in Ardis?"
I didn't answer that.
"Come on," she said. "Nobody moves from New York to Ardis to sweep floors in a sewing mill."
"I did."
"Why?"
"I needed a change."
"A change," she repeated.
"Yes."
"From what?"
"From what I was doing before."
She fed another piece of cloth through the machine.
"Which was what?"
"Making things nobody needed," I said.
She laughed.
"You said that already."
"It's still true."
She shook her head.
"You're weird," she said.
"Probably."
I finished sweeping and stood up.
An hour in, I saw a problem.
The way they were moving the cut pieces from the cutting table to the sewing line.
A woman I didn't recognize was walking them over one at a time. Setting them down on the machine table. Walking back. Picking up the next one.
Over and over.
It was inefficient.
If they stacked them on a cart they could move six at once. Maybe eight. Cut the walking time by eighty percent.