Pink Slips

An alarm clock sounds and my eyes open. The first light of day leaks through the blinds. Too early. I sit up and swing my legs over the edge of the bed. I press my fingers into my eyes, and try to massage the sleep away. There wasn’t much to massage away, I had only been able to cobble together a couple hours.

The room is quiet, stagnant. There’s a windowsill overlooking an alley, shedding white latex paint. A couple of curling Tomb Raider and Soul Caliber posters overlook the bed, while soda bottles and notebooks and t-shirts cover the floor. There are water stains on the popcorn ceiling. They peek out behind the cracked blade of a ceiling fan that’s off despite the heat.

There’s a desk on the far wall, with three pink slips of paper glaring at me. The rings around my wrists give a throb, still a little weepy and raw. My eyes lock on the pink slips. The noise of sirens, walkie-talkie chirps, angry shouts push into my mind. Dad is going to kill me. I might not eat for the rest of the month. He is going to rock my shit, what do I do? Outside a car door slams and I shake my head, refocus my eyes. I stand up and scrounge around the clutter for my uniform, shuck it on, and leave the bedroom.

I softly pad down the stairs and slip into the bathroom to wash my face. I catch my newly shaved head in the mirror. Still weird. The last few weeks were hot, and the machine shop doesn’t have A/C. In the afternoon it gets up to almost 120 degrees in that building. A few days ago I underestimated the triple digits and was sent home after being found in a puddle of sweat and vomit. That night, sitting in my third cold shower, Dad shaved my head to introduce some more air-cooling. Locks of my hair circled and then clogged the soap-scummy drain while he lectured me about the cost of Draino.

I stare at the void where my hair used to be and my vision fogs over. I’m in the back seat of a police cruiser, watching the officers turn our car inside out. A friend’s mother is pounding on my window, inches from my face. She’s screaming, cursing, blaming me through the glass so violently that a cop has to escort her away. This wasn’t my fault, I had no idea. I was in the backseat, how could I have known? A second head shake brings me back, and I go into the kitchen.

I start the coffee maker, but don’t make any breakfast. I’m hungry, but I don’t deserve food right now. I lean against the cracked linoleum countertop. I want someone to talk to, to let me know that it’s going to be alright. Instead, I stare at the broken door handle on the fridge. My brain keeps going back to flashlights in my face and looking down impossibly deep gun barrels. The light in the kitchen starts to fade. What if they take back my acceptance letter? What if I lose my scholarship? I can’t find another place to go in 2 months. God, I’m so fucked.

The coffee machine gurgles and I come up for air. I pour myself a cup, add two ice cubes from the freezer and slug it back. I grab my house keys and head out.

I pull up to the machine shop on my bike. The corrugated metal siding reflects the newly risen sun. As I lock my bike I scan the parking lot, and I’m relieved to see the boss’ Escalade isn’t there. I walk through the entrance and onto the oil stained factory floor. I make my way into the break room with my head down, throw my bag into my locker and then hit the urinal. The bathroom is especially foul today, and it’s not great to begin with. Cracked porcelain, rusted pipes, grime that refuses eviction no matter how hard you scrub. I would know. I’m glad the boss isn’t around or this would be my morning. You don’t want that job in the afternoon heat. Again, I would know. The first-shift buzzer sounds. I finish up, then punch in on the computer next to the break room door.

My job today is in the back, so I start walking. I approach the first row of machines. Each one in the row is the size of a minivan, dense with the latest and greatest tech straight from Germany, and followed by a hopper that holds metal rods 20 feet long and as thick as my wrist. It can machine 6 of those rods at any one time, and turn raw metal into parts measured in millimeters, as fine as watch gears. And they do it by the thousands. Badass.

I pause to enviously watch the front-of-house engineers sidle up to their machines. They push buttons, flick switches, pull knobs on control panels the size of bay windows. They take command with swagger, like fighter pilots getting ready to launch. This is my favorite part, when you can hear the gears and motors start to whine and whizz, calibrating for the day.

Sometimes, if I’m lucky, I help guide the forklift that drops the rods into the hoppers. On those days I’ll steal a whiff of high-grade machine oil or a loving touch of a powder-coated door. Just two years of classes and a little luck. The only thing I would change is the color. I don’t know who chose pastel mint green, but I hope it was worth the discount.

I resume my trek. The further back you go, the older the machines get, and the lower in the pecking order you are. They throw me in a separate room to keep me from even breathing the same air as them. I make my way past rows of machines, then under a rolled-up factory door and into the next room. They keep the lights off on weekends so I’m in the dark, sliced open by the light of the doorway behind me. Milky windows line one wall, but they are far enough away, and the sun isn’t high enough, that they don’t provide much light.

I walk over to my machine. Pitiful. Barely the size of a go-kart, with a disappointing dozen or so buttons. The machine is a cube with the top half cut off, sitting on a waist-high pedestal. On the top half are two threaded cylinders, lying on their side, pointed towards me. The rollers are connected by a hydraulic arm and raised 3 inches above a pool of oil. The machine was forest green at some point, but it’s from God knows when, definitely before they had plexiglass shields and OSHA. With this machine, safety glasses are scripture, not suggestion.

I snap on the lamp to illuminate the work station, flick a couple switches, and swing a leg over my humble steed. I turn a knob and the rollers start to spin. Another switch and a stream of oil bathes each cylinder. I welcome that heavy, muggy, synthetic smell of oil as the machine gets to temperature.

I grab the first box of blanks I’ll be working on today: thousands of smooth cylinders, precisely 8.89 centimeters long and 1.27 centimeters thick, with a divot cut exactly 95 millimeters before one end. By the time I’m done they’ll each be sporting a crisp M3 thread and ready to be screwed into some diesel engine or aircraft wing. My work will be somewhere out there, helping make the world go. I reach into my pocket, but it’s empty. Oh, right. Last night. God, I’m so fucked.

I rip the box open with my fingers then do a test cycle. I press a few buttons and the cylinders squeeze together with a hydraulic hiss, interlocking their threads. After a few seconds they separate with another hiss. Show time. I take the first blank in my right hand and slide it between the opened rollers. They close around the blank with a squeeze and purr as they dig their threaded claws in. While it’s machining I grab another blank with my right hand. The rollers open and the finished part falls into my left hand, smooth metal now replaced with fine threads glistening in the lamplight. I simultaneously insert the new blank with my right hand and the rollers squeeze shut again. It takes 3 seconds to machine a part, and I have 1.5 seconds to swap. My fingers work with practiced accuracy, never dropping a finished part, always ready with a new blank.

Soon my hands are filthy with oil, which covers blisters and calluses and more than a couple scars. Reminders and lessons from not respecting the machines, from doing it fast, not right. This thread-rolling job hits your right thumb and index finger, where you hold the blank as you feed it into the machine. When the roller catches, the blank spins for a moment in your fingers. Not a big deal the first time, or the second, but after a couple hundred times, the fine metal grit in the oil starts to dig into your skin. The end product is weeping blisters, unable to close because of the constant film of lubricant and the need to feed the machine. Today this is flagellation, my penance. I hold on to the blank a little longer than I need to, inviting the grit to tear away my sins.

My stomach growls and tightens a knot, but I ignore it. I settle in and my mind wanders. I think about last night. I had just wanted to blow off some steam, get out of the house. Dennis had a new car he wanted to show us. We knew not to ask how he could afford it, but teenage curiosity won over self-preservation. A tale as old as time. The car skated up the block, engine snarling from a bright green body slammed to the asphalt, with windows tinted so dark they were opaque. It was rolling probable cause, I was an idiot to get in that car.

The cop who pulled us over saw the corner of the bag under Dennis’ seat. After that it was calls for backup and HANDS! HANDS! HANDS! I stepped out of the backseat, staring down handguns and flashlights, while trying to figure out whose instructions to follow before I was yanked to the pavement and cuffed. Fucking five squad cars and a K-9 unit for an ounce of weed.

Dennis took the brunt; it was his car and the bag was under his seat. But I had my leatherman in my pocket, one of those combination pliers and pocket knives for cutting up boxes and twisting open wires at work. The pliers gave me possession of burglary tools, the knife gave me possession of a deadly weapon, and by the time they finished with us it was past midnight, so they threw in a curfew violation. Added up it was a four figure fine, but they assured me I got off easy. I don’t know about that. Back-of-the-napkin calculations based on my hourly rate meant I wasn’t doing much else but work the rest of the summer, even then I'd probably have to ask Dad to help cover the rest.

A sharp squeal from the rollers rips me back to the present. In my daze I had inserted a blank wrong, the rollers were now gripping and squeezing it sideways. The fouled blank is vibrating and shrieking. I flick the rollers off and fish the reject out. I check my watch. Already a few hours in, break was coming up. I’m starving, but I still don’t deserve food. I'll just work through the break, another ablution to help cleanse me of last night.

I think about Dad, about what he’s going to say when he finds out. This is just the shit I need, son. How the fuck are we going to afford this? Did you think about that? Jesus, you’re an idiot. I hope they don’t take away your acceptance letter because I need you the fuck out. My head would be bowed, not looking up from the kitchen table, focused on the scratches and chips to avoid looking at him.

I think about Ethan. I wish I could talk to him, he’d know what to do. He would sit on the counter of our grubby kitchen, probably chewing gum he swiped from the bodega while I told Dad about last night. Ethan would laugh and put on his smile, lob a few jokes about how much of an idiot I am. He always knew how to smooth Dad’s ruffled feathers. Knowing Ethan, he would probably know the D.A.’s kid or something and could help me cut a deal. He would lend me a little bit of his magic, and then we would all be eating foil-wrapped gyros in front of the TV, laughing at Dad’s impression of the insane customers he had to deal with that day.

I think about Ethan’s mom. I picture her crying over that pinewood box, rising up out of a thicket of flowers so dense you can’t see the floor. We were all standing at attention, blaming ourselves. Everyone there was doing the same thing: replaying every interaction, scrutinizing every conversation for that missed signal, that coded distress call. We ran through fantasies of how we could have helped: sweeping gestures, hours of deep conversations, grand interventions that would have kept him here. The school brought in a shrink to talk to me. It’s not your fault. It’s easy to blame yourself but you couldn’t have done anything. You know that, right?

Bullshit. If there was anyone who could have done something it’s me. That guy didn’t know. He wasn’t there at our christenings and birthdays and goof-offs. How could I explain the summer camps, rooftop cigarettes, Halo 2 marathons, sleepless sleepovers? He was two doors down my entire life. I felt what he felt, saw what he saw, from first grade to graduation he was just there. Now he’s just not.

It feels like losing a limb. I have this nub that I don’t know what to do with, a reminder of what I used to be able to do, but no longer can. I just nodded and looked at this guy in a cardigan giving me “concerned eyes” he probably got from a textbook through the smudged lenses of horned-rim glasses. Sure, not my fault. Can I go now?

I replay conversations, dive down deep dark rabbit holes I know lead nowhere good. Normally I stop myself at some point, even my substantial appetite for self-abuse cries uncle eventually. But today I deserve it. The rabbit holes get deeper, darker, but I don’t fight back.

Why are you such a fuck-up? They are going to take back their acceptance letter, their scholarship. You might even go to jail, who knows?

You are going to be in the back of this shop your entire life, turning blanks into parts in the dark until you die, alone.

You deserve it.

You did this to yourself.

Your life is over.

Is this how Ethan felt?

I hear footsteps behind me. I turn around and a stocky man walks into the ring of light projected by the lamp. He walks oddly, paradoxically, as if he has nowhere to be in a hurry. He has thinning blond hair and a ruddy face. As he approaches he extends a leathery hand, familiarly blistered and calloused. I put out my hand and he drops something into my open palm.

Our eyes meet. His are steel gray and filled with wordless affection. He looks into me. Not at me or through me or over me, into me. He sees me. At this moment I am fully visible.

I look down at my hand. In it is a McDonald’s sausage biscuit, perfectly wrapped in thin paper, still warm. I look up and he’s gone. I don’t even know his name, I’ve seen him around the shop, but we’ve never really talked. He must have seen me in the locker room, hours ago, and gotten me this during break.

In 15 seconds he did what we all couldn’t. Without words, without fanfare, and for $1.99. I’m no longer hungry, but I unwrap the paper and take a bite.