Like a Boss (3 page)

“We can find chemists.”

“And they are welcome to monkey around with their own formulas in their own labs. But not here.” In the back of my head, The Fear uncoiled itself, its frozen breath sending shivers down my spine.
Maybe you should tell him
why
?

Marolo actually took a step back. I cleared my throat. “Look, I appreciate you looking out for this place. I know it all seems weird–”

“– because it
is
–”

“– but it’s only been eighteen months since I’ve taken over. Madame Tonggow had thirty years of experience running the distillery, and that was after another thirty years of playing with MacDonald Heavy’s chemistry sets.” I laughed. “All my time at the plant didn’t set me up for the intricacies of her operation. That’s why I hired
you
.”

He made a face. “I thought it was because the previous foreman had quit on you.”

“So we had some personal friction.” I put an arm around his shoulder and guided him up to the press house. “That always happens when an outfit changes hands. And, hey, hasn’t this gig been better than schlepping cane out of the kampong?”

He nodded. “It’s certainly weirder.”

“No arguments there.”

Marolo stopped at the door to the press house and opened it for me. There was no need for a lock because there was nothing inside worth stealing. Everything was third-hand and held together with baling wire and foul language. The giant rollers on the cane press were scarred and scratched and completely worthless even for scrap. The still itself, a conglomeration of funnels, coils, pots and pans, all made from copper or coral steel or, in the case of the second condenser, palm fronds, wouldn’t have gotten more than a couple of yuan because there would have been no way to take it out the door except in tiny pieces.

I took a whiff of the air inside: machine oil, damp metal, and the bright green scent of crushed cane juice. Bits of bagasse littered the floor, and the giant rollers glinted in the afternoon light. “These still need a wiping,” I said, walking up to the rollers as The Fear hissed about how good it would feel to stick my head between them and see how quickly they’d crush me. The Fear, in addition to being a bully, was also stupid as hell, seeing how it would go along with my brain. Yet another thing to bring up to a shrink.

“I know, but that’s somebody else’s job.”

I turned around and gave him a look. “Spoken like a Union diehard.”

He chuckled without mirth. “You take that back.”

“I will if you tell me why the rollers aren’t clean.”

Marolo grimaced. “I had someone who was doing that, but then she up and left.”

“Who?”

He cleared his throat.

“I don’t get it,” I said. “Ly Huang’s been here almost as long as you have, and I thought she liked it. Hell, she’s one of the few people who doesn’t wince when I sing with whatever bollypop comes over the wireless. If anything, she sings louder than me.”

“You haven’t been here in a while,” he said, grabbing a couple of towels from a work bench and tossing me one. “Two weeks ago, she showed up long enough to clear out her locker and tell me to take my job and shove it.”

“What?”

He nodded. “Caught me off guard, too. She told me off, then she walked away.”

“Except I saw her
today
, in Brushhead, driving a lorry.”

He gave me a look. “You sure it was her?”

“She took off as soon as she saw I saw her. It was her.”

I got to work wiping down the rollers with Marolo. While some distilleries contracted out their pressings, Tonggow had insisted on keeping the whole process in-house. She even owned the land where the cane was grown, saying the terroir was vital. The fact that the faces of the rollers were scratched and dented were also vital. Everything, as far as I was concerned, was vital, because continued to work for me. I tested every new batch, which was an odd experience. For years, I’d hoarded bottles of Old Windswept, never cracking a new one until I’d drained the previous. Now I got to dip into the supply whenever I wanted. The Fear hated that. I loved it.

But leaving cane juice on the press, that was a no-no. The rollers’ beat-up surface meant that all kinds of lovely bacteria would grow if left alone. Every day, the press had to be wiped down, then sanitized with vinegar (not bleach, because, again,
Tonggow
) to make sure nothing contaminated the freshly squeezed cane juice. Marolo and I knocked it out within fifteen minutes. “Did Ly Huang say anything before she left?”

Marolo grunted. “Other than that I was a sellout, giving up my natural born rights to keep a rotten system going.”

“Since when was she into labor theory?”

He shook his head. “You know how these kids are. One day, they’re plugging away, happy as clams. The next, they’re railing about worker exploitation.”

“Yeah, I’m sure it happens all the time.”

The rollers cleaned, we wheeled over an ancient hydraulic jack to the press’s left side. I coiled chain around the axle, and we took turns loosening the seven-centimeter bolts that kept the rotor housing in place. We always did the left side first because it was what Tonggow did. Also, it always stuck more, so doing the right side would feel easy.

I finished the last bolt and handed it to Marolo. He handed me a packet of new ball bearings, and I slipped them into place. “So, we’re only going to get a hundred hours out of these?”

“If we’re lucky,” he said. “I’m no engineer, but even I can tell inferior materials when I see them. All this equipment that Tonggow insisted on using, it’s all crap.”

I made sure the bearings were set, then refit the housing. I had to give it an extra tap with the butt of the wrench. “But it’s
cheap
crap.”

“Which you will not be able to afford in a few years.”

I gave him a sideways glare. “Worrying about the books is
my
problem.”

“Well, it’s everyone’s when we depend on the paycheck.” He had rinsed and dried the bolts, making sure to wipe some palm oil on the threads. “You know, I talked with the old-timers, the ones who’ve stayed on. They said that Tonggow was rich as hell, that she blew all kinds of cash.”

“That she did.” The bolts were numbered, so I put number one into place and started cranking. “But her fortune is still tied up in probate, and it wasn’t connected to the distillery. I don’t have that kind of money, and I don’t think I ever will.”

“Maybe if you found that missing case of Ten-Year.”

“Oh, God. I’ve told you: there’s no such thing. We don’t age our rum that long anymore.”

“But we should,” said Marolo. “I’ve always got people telling me they’d pay top yuan for a shot.”

“Then they can buy a barrel of our Classic and let it sit for a decade. They want Tonggow’s mystique, and we don’t have that any more. We’ve just got the old standby, and that brings in enough money to keep us all happy.”

“But what will you do if that runs out?”

“Work, just like I always have.” I put in bolt number two and took a breath before tightening it. This one always threatened to go out of alignment and strip its threads.

Marolo cleared his throat. “And, um, what about us?”

Ah. I gave number two a crank and rested the wrench against my leg. “I told you when you came on board there were no guarantees. The chances are still really good that I’ll bring this whole distillery down in flames. I might even do it literally, since Old Windswept is one hundred and fifty proof.”

“Please don’t joke about that,” said Marolo, handing me bolt number three. “I did enough slash-and-burn drills when I was a kid.” He snorted. “Dig, cover, hold, my ass.”

“I don’t think we have to worry about that, seeing how Tonggow made everything out of metal and pourform.” I cranked in the bolt and reached for number four. “Are you really that worried, Marolo? Am I mismanaging this place?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But you’ve sure implied it.”

He quirked his mouth and held up bolt number five. “I know you are incredibly busy back in Brushhead. I just want to make sure you’re aware of everything that’s going on here.”

“Like the fact that you and I are the only ones here on a Thursday afternoon?”

“Ah. So you
are
aware.”

I cranked in the last two bolts. “Ly Huang’s not the only one who’s left, is she?”

“Well, she’s the only one I can’t get a hold of.”

“Where is everyone else, then?”

Marolo looked away as we lowered the roller back in place. “I think everyone else has quit without quitting.”

I stopped the jack in mid-crank. “I’ve heard of a lot of passive-aggressive labor moves in my time, but this sounds new.”

“Nobody wants to come in because they’re convinced you’re going to lay them off.”

“Well, people do tend to lose their jobs when they don’t perform them.”

Marolo took a breath, then caught himself before he could speak. Two years I’d worked with him, and he was never one to beat around the bush. It was one of his better qualities, and certainly one I wanted in the person in charge of maintaining production of the one thing that kept me sane. Whatever he had to say, it was going to be big, and probably a bit weird.

“This is a hard thing for all of us,” he said. “You know how rare it is for us Freeborn to leave the kampong and work in the city. It just doesn’t feel right, the way all you Union people stare off into space when you’re typing with your eyes.”

“You know, there are Freeborn in the Union,” I said. “The Prez, for instance.”

“But she’s rare,” said Marolo. “Besides, she actually likes being a manager.”

“And you don’t?”

“I run a small distillery,” he said. “She’s gotta run a government. That means more people, more money, more headaches.” He made a face. “Not that I wouldn’t mind us getting our act together. I don’t know how you Union people do it.”

“Probably because we don’t resort to blowing stuff up.”

“Hey, it was never proven that the Freeborn Organizing Committee had
anything
to do with those bombings.”

I held up my hands in surrender. “I know. I know. Besides, that was all before my time. I was still an Indenture when all that went down.”

Marolo gave a
harumph
. “That sounds like a lot of other people I know. It was either before their time or beneath their interest.”

“You think I don’t care about working conditions for Freeborn people?”

“I think you may not know the whole story.”

I leaned on the jack. “I have plenty of time, apparently.”

He waved a hand. “No, forget it. It
is
history now. And it’s just as well the FOC burned out. That would have meant turning this place into more of a city.”

I resisted the temptation to tell him that Tanque, the Ward we were in, barely qualified as “city.” We were kilometers away from the edges of Santee City, more in the kampong, really. The only things that kept us connected were the single-lane road made of crushed palm crab shells and the line of ramshackle network towers that ran alongside said road. But, when you’ve spent your entire life surrounded by sugarcane and people without computers in their eyeballs, your perspective would be different, too.

“I hope you guys don’t all think I’m some lunatic who’s going to destroy your lives,” I said. “I’ve never made anyone sign long-term contracts or anything that ties them to working here. And what about Martha? I got her that gig over at Bill Beaulieu’s when she wanted to be closer to her dad.”

“This is all true,” said Marolo. “But the city’s not the kampong, Padma. It moves faster, it’s not dependent on rainfall or cane rats or fungus.”

“So, it’s different from what you know.”

“Exactly!” he said, beaming.

I climbed down from the ladder and put a hand on his shoulder. “And it is different for everyone else who comes here. It’s a shock for someone who Breaches, no matter where they lived before. Hell, I’ve been here fourteen years, and I get thrown every now and then.”

“What, you?”

“Yes, me,” I said. “There are little things, like using tiffin-boxes instead of food wrappers or shortages of staples like coffee or curried ketchup. The big things, too. I was born in a hospital that looked like a greenhouse. My pediatrician was a palm tree.”

He rolled his eyes. “See, that’s not fair, trying to make me feel like a hick.”

“I’m serious!” I said. “My pediatrician was terrified of getting germs from his patients, so he used an animatronic palm tree to talk with us. He’d operate it by remote control from a bunker. Sweet guy, always gentle with the exams. That would never happen here. It wouldn’t be a thought for anyone.” I squeezed his shoulder. “I know this sounds cliché, but all of us, Union and Freeborn, we’re all trying to live our lives and not get too screwed by the Big Three.”

He nodded. “That’s a great line.”

“Isn’t it? And so’s this: are you to do this zen quitting on me, too? Or are you going to help me figure out how to get everyone back here?”

“That’s easy,” he said. “Everyone just needs to see you here more often.”

I took a step back. “Really? That’s it? Everyone went home because they think I’m some absentee employer? The city’s only a forty-minute ride away!”

“But it’s still the city. They want to know you’ll work out here, with them.”

I sighed. “Okay. What the hell. I don’t have that much of a life, I might as well spend the little I’ve got out here.”

Marolo smiled. “Also, everyone would like you to talk with that guy from the Co-Op.”

I froze. “
What
guy from the Co-Op?”

Marolo waved his hand over his chin. “You know. The one with the funky beard. The kind that looks like he’s got a crab hanging from his lower lip.”

I didn’t have to blink through my buffer to know who he meant. “Vikram Ramaddy? What’s he been doing here?”

“Trying to get the Co-Op to buy you out.”

The wrench slipped out of my grip and clattered on the pourform floor. “He... what?”

Marolo’s face crumpled. “Oh. You mean, you haven’t talked with him?”

I took a deep breath to keep myself from screaming. “No,” I said, my voice level as the ocean on a windless day. “I don’t believe I have. Though I’m sure as hell about to. Probably with a cricket bat.” I let out that breath, drew in a longer, deeper one. “Did he make an offer to you?”