Read The Glass Factory for Free Online Page B

staring at me. He is not holding a wineglass.
    “What did you say?”
    He kind of clownishly backs off like he’s fending off an imaginary Popeye blitzed on three cans of spinach. “No, no, no: He’s hit, he’s going, he’s down,” and he doubles over and falls to his knees in front of me.
    Well. That was different.
    “What’s your name?” I ask him.
    “Hey, that’s my line.”
    “All right: Fuck off.”
    “I like my line better.”
    “Words are not your exclusive property, Mr.—?”
    He smiles. “Okay. Stella. James Stella. But you can call me—”
    “Jim.”
    “Right. Or Jim-bo.”
    “I’ll stick with ‘Mr. Stella’ for a few minutes, okay?”
    “Okay,” he says, dusting off his knees and sitting down next to me. “’Til when?”
    “’Til you tell me what you do, Mr. Stella. Don’t give me that look. I saw you looking at my résumé. You know everything about me and I know nothing about you. Now is that fair?”
    “I’d hardly call your résumé ‘everything’ about you, Ms. Filomena Buscarsela of six-one-seven West Two Hundred and Fifteenth Street, New York City.”
    “It’s everything you’re gonna get for now, Mr. James Stella of Meyers, Craig, North, Robinson & White, Attorneys-at-Law.”
    He looks at me. I go on: “An upside down business card at twelve paces. Not bad, huh? It’s that Andean air. I’ve got eyes like a condor’s.”
    “Hmmm. What else did you get from this condor?”
    Oh yeah: His interest is piqued. I tell him: “Oh, strength, perseverance—and I can smell a skunk two miles off.”
    He’s not fazed. “What do you smell now?”
    I give him a long, languid look. “I don’t know. And I’d like to find out.”
    Funny thing is, it’s the goddamned truth.

    I have the interview, which is for a data entry clerk in the billing department, oh boy, and they tell me they’ll let me know in about a week. James Stella is waiting for me. He asks me to lunch. I accept. I throw on this huge pair of sunglasses as we step into the hallway. Ten feet from the exit the security guard jumps to open the door and I get a sudden heart flutter, and half-grab Mr. Stella by one shoulder so I can stare at his chest:
    “Is that your school tie?” I ask, just as Mr. Samuel Morse himself walks right past us on his way to the elevators. But he’s in the middle of bullying some bootlicker into submission and doesn’t notice me.
    “Look Vinnie,” I hear Morse say, “The Kim expansion’s gonna open up thirteen hundred local jobs, so you better make sure the committee knows that—”
    “But the unions are saying it’s only going to be three or four hundred full-time jobs, and the Pine Barrens people are all over the press. They’ve got a lot of community support this time. This ain’t the right way of doin’ it—”
    “Don’t tell me how to do business—”
    “No, no, no, Mr. Morse, but the timing—” And the elevator closes. Goddamn …
    Back to my other reality, James Stella has already said, “Uh, no, I got this off the rack at Macy’s. Twenty-eight dollars, marked down from forty. Real silk.”
    “Oh. It’s nice.”
    “Thanks.”
    He’s not sure what to make of me, but that’s currently working in my favor. We get into his European luxury sedan and he drives us to a place that’s about six times fancier than I expected. Business is good.
    “Don’t tell me you eat here every day,” I say.
    “Only with very special clients.” This guy’s about as smooth as a loan shark on payday.
    He does the whole bit. Orders a full bottle of wine even though I tell him it’s too early in the day for me; he sweeps that aside as if I were a child insisting on a carrot when he’s offering banana splits. I tell him my mother warned me about accepting candy from men like him.
    “I bet your mother’d approve of a lawyer bringing in six figures.”
    “Is that including decimals?” He smiles at me. “Nah, Ma’d probably have gotten down the shotgun.”
    “Shotgun