“I’m sorry.”
The office was small and undecorated, its window open to the parking lot off Mill Street. Humid summer air coming through the window oppressed the room rather than cooling it.
“I’ll lose the house,” said Joe softly.
“You’ll get Social Security.” The lawyer was trying to be helpful, Joe knew that. The youngster’s tie was still snug at his throat, even if he’d rolled his cuffs back in the heat. He studied the computer screen for a moment. “And it looks like you’ve been at the same address for nearly four decades. Surely the mortgage is paid off by now?”
“We bought in 1972. Right after I got out of the service, with a VA loan. Marjo loved that house.”
“And property taxes are certainly low around here.”
“I had to take another mortgage.” Joe looked away from the lawyer’s disappointed sigh. “When Marjo got the cancer.”
“Oh.” The lawyer’s sigh turned into a cough. “Insurance?”
“It wasn’t enough.” Joe shook his head. “I’m not complaining. She needed the nurse at home all those months. And the hospice. That’s okay.”
“I don’t see anything in the file.”
“She …” Joe felt his voice trail away. “Three weeks ago.”
“I’m sorry,” the lawyer said again. The fourth time since Joe had sat down.
“At least she didn’t have to see me laid off. That would have killed her —” Joe stopped abruptly. “Never mind.”
“Do your children … ?”
“We never had any.” Another old wound.
“Oh.” The lawyer fussed a moment, then changed the subject. “The company’s new owners are rehiring, I’m told.”
“New owners?” For the first time, Joe couldn’t keep his anger stopped up. “New owners? It’s the same bastards, far as I can tell. They bought the company cheap, busted every single contract, sold off the inventory — and now they’re starting up again. Yeah, they’re rehiring. That’s right. You know what they’re paying? Six-fifty-three an hour. That’s only one dollar more than I started at in 1974!”
“It’s not quite that simple —”
“And you know what? I might have to take it, if I don’t get the pension. I might have to take that fucking slop-hauler’s wage, even though it’s one-fourth what I was making a month ago, because I need to eat. I’m going to lose the house, probably get a boarding room over in Railton, listen to the bikers gunning their engines all night. But I need to fucking eat.”
“I understand how you feel.”
“No, you don’t.” But Joe’s anger drained away. “That’s okay.”
“At least you can get unemployment during the layoff, if you’re not applying for early SSA.”
“They owe me the pension.”
“Not anymore.”
“And it’s not even — you know how much I’m due? Thirty-seven years, paying in every single week? All I’m supposed to get is eighteen thousand dollars a year. Barely fifteen hundred a month. These new owners” — Joe heard his voice coarsen —“eighteen grand, they probably lose that at the cleaners. Loose change in their pants.”
“Everything they did was completely legal.”
“Legal.” Joe slumped back in his chair.
“Believe me, if there was any possibility for a claim, I’d have filed already. Class action, in every jurisdiction Valiant has so much as driven his Lamborghini through.” The lawyer seemed to have some anger of his own stored away. “But they’ve got two-thousand-dollar-an-hour attorneys out of Washington negotiating these deals and writing the agreements. It’s bulletproof like plate armor. We can’t touch them.”
“Okay, it’s legal.” Joe looked out the window, at the late-afternoon sun and, far in the distance, a low line of clouds. “But it’s not right.”
TWO WEEKS LATER, midmorning. Dim inside the community room with the lights off, but dog-day heat shimmered outside the windows. An air conditioner rattled and dripped, not doing much.
A dozen men and two women sat on metal folding chairs, filling a third of the room. The Rotary was coming in later, and their dusty flag stood in one corner. No one could hear the projected video very well, not over the air conditioner, and the facilitator had closed her eyes, fanning her face with the same copy of “Writing a Killer Résumé!” that was on everyone’s lap.
“I still don’t understand how they did it,” Stokey said in a low voice to Joe. They’d taken seats in the rear. Long-forgotten memories: grade-school desks, ducking the teacher’s eye, daydreaming.