Burn: A Novel (7 page)

As she entered the plant, a supervisor approached. “Jenner, I need to have a talk with you before you clock in.”

“I’ll be late,” she protested, glancing at the clock.

“Never mind that. Let’s go in the office.”

A cold, sick feeling coalesced in her stomach as she followed the supervisor, Don Gorski, into his small, shabby office, constructed of white-washed concrete blocks, with an unpainted concrete floor, and occupied by a beat-up metal desk, some metal filing cabinets, and two chairs.

He dropped heavily into the chair behind the beat-up desk, but didn’t ask her to be seated. Instead he rubbed his jaw, looking everywhere but at her, and heaved a sigh almost as heavy as his ass was.

“You’re a good worker,” he finally said, “but you’ve been causing a lot of disruption around here in the past couple of weeks. People—”

“I’m not causing the disruption,” Jenner said, heat edging into her voice. “I’m doing my job the way I always do.”

“Then let me put it another way: You’re the
cause
of the disruption. Reporters calling, showing up at the gate, people complaining. I don’t know why you’re still here. You don’t need the job, and there are plenty of people who do. So why don’t you do everyone a favor and quit?”

The unfairness of it made her want to beat her head against the wall. Instead she straightened her shoulders and set her jaw. “Because I need to eat and pay my rent and utility bills, just like everyone else,” she replied, her tone just short of a snarl. “Believe me, as soon as I get some money to live on, I’m outta here. Until then, what am I supposed to do? Live on the street?”

He sighed again. “Look, I’m just doing my job, too. The guys up front want you to go.”

Frustrated, infuriated, she threw her hands up. “Fine. Then fire me, so I can collect unemployment until the money comes through.”

“They don’t want—”

“I don’t care what ‘they’ want. I care about being able to live.” She leaned forward and planted her hands on the desk, anger evident in every line of her body. “I’ve paid unemployment taxes since I was sixteen, and never collected a dime. If you want me gone—without a lawsuit being filed, and believe me when I say that very shortly I’ll be able to afford a lawyer good enough to keep this company tied up in court for years, and will cost way more than a few weeks of unemployment benefits—then that’s the deal. Fire me, okay the unemployment, and I’m out of here. Mess with me in any way, and the legal fees will bankrupt this company. Are we clear on this? Take the deal to the guys up front, and get back to me.”

She stalked out of the office, changed into the ugly coveralls and hair cap, and clocked in. She was late for the shift, but so what? She didn’t give a damn. In fact, with fury still running through her veins, she felt pretty good. Okay, so she didn’t have any money yet, but what she did have were options, and she’d just exercised one.

None of the people around her spoke or made contact, not even Margo. Jenner ignored them as studiously as they ignored her. Several of them had gone to management to complain about her, she figured, exaggerating how much of a distraction her presence had been, blowing up the case for asking her to leave. Maybe she should have brought boxes of doughnuts every day, treated everyone, but, damn it, she didn’t have the money! What was so hard about that to understand?

Because that wasn’t how they wanted things to be, she realized. In their fantasy of making it big—maybe by winning the lottery—a win brought instant wealth, an end to all problems and money worries. They’d have been happier if she’d bought a new car, regaled
them with tales of big new condos and houses she was thinking of buying, letting them live vicariously through her. Instead she had remained the same: broke. She’d let them down, discredited their fantasies, and now they didn’t want her around.

Within an hour, though, Don Gorski approached her. “I have papers for you to sign,” he said, and she followed him, not to his office, but to a larger office up front, one occupied by two men she’d seen around but whose names she didn’t know.

“We agree to your offer,” one of the men said, putting his finger on a single sheet of paper and pushing it across the desk toward her.

Jenner picked up the sheet and carefully read every word. In exchange for her promise not to file any lawsuits against Harvest Meat Packing or them personally, her unemployment compensation would be approved. There was a place for her signature.

“Two things,” she said. “Actually, three. There’s only one copy, which I assume you’ll want to keep. I’ll need a copy, too. Also, there’s no date specified for where you’d approve the unemployment, so you could hold out a few weeks, figuring I’d get the lottery money before the claim went through, and then it would be denied. The third thing is, there’s no place for your signatures. I’m not going to be the only one signing this.”

Al had drummed it into her head that she didn’t sign anything without reading it, and especially not unless she understood every word. She’d told Jenner some things to look out for, but Jenner’s own street smarts, plus a lifetime of dealing with Jerry, who took advantage of every loophole he could find or invent, made it tough to put anything over on her. She’d picked up some of Al’s jargon, too, so she could speak these guys’ language. She saw in their eyes that she’d sprung all their little traps.

She handed the paper back to the man who’d pushed it toward her. “I’ll have those changes made,” he said without a hint of argument, and stepped out of the office.

They stood in silence, waiting for his return. Almost fifteen minutes lapsed. When he did come back, there were two sheets of
paper in his hand. Jenner took them, carefully read them and saw that places for their signatures had been added—in fact, one signature, that of the the owner and president of Harvest Meat Packing, was already present—and that her unemployment claim was to be approved effective that very day. She took that to mean they wanted her to clock out and leave. Fine.

Silently she scrawled her name on both sheets, watched as they signed in the appointed places, then she took one of the sheets and carefully folded it.

Gorski escorted her back to her locker, where she stripped out of the coveralls and plastic cap, handed them to him, gathered her stuff—there wasn’t much—and walked out the door for the last time.

The sun was still shining. She checked her watch; less than an hour had passed since she’d clocked in. Even though she’d left her window rolled down a little, when she opened the Goose’s door, heat rolled out and punched her in the face, so she stood there a minute and fished out her cell phone while she waited. First she called Al. “I’ve been fired. Looks like I’ll be borrowing some money after all. I’ve never done this before, so tell me how I go about it.”

After Al finished explaining the process and what she should do, Jenner climbed into the Goose and cranked it. As she rumbled out of the parking lot, she called Michelle.

“Hey, want to go on vacation?”

S
HE WAS LATE
. S
HE WAS SUPPOSED TO MEET
M
ICHELLE
at seven and it was already eight thirty. Still, though walking the distance to Bird’s would make her even later, Jenner parked her new car a block away from the bar—she didn’t want any dings marring it. So what if it wasn’t a luxury car? It was a Camry—loaded, but still a Camry—because she couldn’t get her mind around paying two years’ worth of her former salary for a car. She’d had the Camry only a couple of weeks, and she was proud of it. She still inhaled deeply every time she got in it, drinking in the delicious new-car smell.

She was tired. She sat in the quiet car for a few minutes, her eyes closed. If she hadn’t promised Michelle she’d meet her tonight, she’d have gone home, which was still the duplex because finding a new place to live was taking much longer than picking out a new car, and crashed. Who knew that managing a shitload of money would turn out to be damn near a full-time job?

Al was great—and was in the process of moving into a better office already—but Jenner insisted on being involved, which meant she spent a lot of time at Payne Echols. She wanted to understand what was going on, why Al was doing what she was doing, and what
all the headache-inducing terms meant. She trusted Al, but Al might not always be around, and Jenner didn’t want to be forced to rely on someone else. Her instinct was to get educated, and get control. For too much of the time since she’d picked that winning ticket, she hadn’t had any control over events. Now she did, and the relief was almost staggering.

The money was hers, now. She’d gone through an excruciating ceremony where cameras flashed in her eyes while she smiled until her facial muscles screamed, and her hand cramped from holding one end of a huge cardboard check—which the lottery people had been careful to tell her wasn’t real and couldn’t be cashed, as if she were the village idiot and couldn’t have figured that out on her own—but at last it had been over and the paperwork finished, and she’d begun stepping back into anonymity … she hoped. The media had gone away, of course. Now, if she could just get settled in a new place and get on with life, she’d be a lot happier.

Parts of it had been fun. She and Michelle had gone on a great shopping binge, and she’d not only replaced her own wardrobe, but Michelle’s, too. Purses, shoes, good jewelry, silk blouses, sharp and sexy dresses … it had been great. But one of the most disconcerting things she’d learned was that, after a few days, she got bored with shopping. She would never in a million years have thought that would have happened, but there it was. Being able to spend money was great. After the initial glee and spree, though, she hadn’t seen anything else she’d wanted, and boredom had set in. That still felt like some kind of betrayal by the universe.

Her life had definitely changed. Most of her old friends had fallen by the wayside already, while she’d become very friendly with her lawyer, William Lourdes. He was a shark, but he was
her
shark. He’d smiled when he’d read the suit Dylan had filed against her. In short order, after Lourdes had filed a countersuit, with prejudice, against Dylan that would have taken everything he owned, Dylan had dropped his suit and dropped out of her orbit. Bill, as Lourdes insisted she call him, had then set about setting up
her estate to protect it from all the human vultures who would try to get a piece of it should something happen to her.

Sitting there in the dark car, Jenner felt a tiny smile move her lips at the very idea that she, Jenner Redwine, had an
estate
. Wow.

She also had both a savings account and a checking account at a bank—a bank where the tellers and managers called her by name, and where she was always treated with both kindness and courtesy. A mere two months ago, having even a small checking account hadn’t been on her radar. Now she seemed to spend a lot of time at the bank, moving things in and out of her safe-deposit box, because she couldn’t leave any type of paperwork at the house, not with Jerry still hanging around.

He hadn’t given up, but then she hadn’t really thought he would. She’d bought him some clothes, even given him a hundred here and there, but without any real hope that he’d leave. She knew her dad. He would play it straight for a while, try to ease her suspicions, then he’d come up with a good reason why he needed a new car, or try to talk her into buying him a condo, or something like that. A few hundred dollars wouldn’t even make a dent in Jerry’s ambition.

Finally she gathered her energy and climbed out of the Camry She didn’t have to shove her shoulder against the door to force it open, the way she had with the Goose. She hadn’t firebombed the Goose, though she’d thought about it. The poor thing looked like crap, but the motor was dependable, so she’d donated it to a charity. There’d been a time when she’d needed that ugly car; someone else needed it now. Thank God that someone wasn’t her.

Her energy level picked up as she slung her new, expensive purse over her shoulder and walked toward Bird’s. An evening of laughing and dancing was just what she needed; she’d feel better after a beer. Michelle would already be a drink or two into the evening, and a dance or two—or three—ahead of Jenner, but that was okay, because Jenner didn’t think she’d be able to keep up with her tonight.

The bar was packed and incredibly noisy—it was a Friday night,
after all—so she had to look around the milling bodies for a while before she spotted Michelle, sitting at a table with three other regulars. From the number of glasses and bottles on the table, Michelle and the others had more than a two-drink jump on the evening.

Jenner was almost at the table before Michelle spotted her. “Woohoo!” she yelled. “Love the hair!”

Jenner resisted the urge to touch her hair, which was now black, with spiky little strands on top. She had gotten it done just that morning. The new style was elegant and sexy and edgy, but most of all, it made her look so different that few people recognized her. After the last couple of months, she figured that was a good thing.

She pulled up a chair and sat, looking around for a waitress. “I’m wearing the shoes,” Michelle announced, turning so she could lift her foot high enough for Jenner to see. The shoes had been outrageously expensive, over five hundred bucks, but seeing the undiluted delight on Michelle’s face as she’d tried them on had made Jenner think they were well worth it. But then Michelle had been oddly terrified to wear them, afraid they’d get scuffed or she’d break a heel, or something. She had often tried them on at home, then put them safely away. This was the shoes’ first outing, and Jenner clapped her hands.

“About time,” she said.

“Are they hot, or what?” Michelle asked, turning her foot this way and that as she admired the rhinestones on the delicate straps. She lifted her foot even higher, so the two men and woman who also sat at the table could see. Across from the table, a man whistled as Michelle’s lifted foot maybe gave him more to admire than just a shoe. She laughed, stuck her tongue out at him, but put her foot back on the floor.

“Next time,” she said to the other three, “I’m going to get the matching purse. It was
amazing
. The leather felt like butter, it was so soft.”