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pointed out a spiral galaxy, its arms flung out as if trying to grasp the whole universe.
    “Everything spins,” she said. “Doesn’t that seem to be true? Galaxies, planets, people’s lives?”
    “That must be why the record industry is so big,” he said.
    That was months ago, early in their relationship. But now she was angry with him for taking her out to Fort Wolf that sunny day in February. He never meant to deceive her; he would never take her anywhere dangerous. But he was afraid she was making excuses. He was afraid they were worlds apart.
    Reed needed a break to chill. He loved the luxurious moment when he emerged from the cell and burst out of his suit like a butterfly. He was dripping wet. He always told people he took saunas because he felt as if he had just stepped into a Nordic climate. Leaving his yellows inside the contamination zone, he went to an air line to blow off until he was dry.
    He grabbed the handholds on the man lift, a little platform on a continuously moving belt. It shot him down through the hole in the floor, and he deftly stepped off at just the right instant on the floor below. It was like knowing when to go in and out of the window of a turning jump rope, he had told his daughter when she was a child. He could do it with his eyes closed, he boasted.
    Reed’s uncle Ed, his father’s brother, who had retired from the plant a few years before and moved to a Florida condo, had often told him that the chemicals they handled were safe. His loyalty to the plant was absolute. Although his uncle’s slow, old-timer manner made him impatient, Reed decided to telephone him about the developments at work.
    “I’ve heard some of the news, but I don’t know what to make of it,” Uncle Ed said.
    “They’ve stopped work on the centrifuge building till this gets straightened out,” Reed said. “Most guys at the plant are more worried about their jobs than what’s out in the woods.”
    “I would be too. I heard that new plant’s going to cost two billion.”
    “Ed, listen. I was wondering if you ever knew anything about beryllium being there.”
    “I heard about that berry stuff they found. What did you say it was?”
    “Beryllium.”
    “They said it on CNN, but I still can’t repeat it. What is it?”
    “It’s something that’s been here all along, but it just didn’t come up before as a topic of conversation.”
    “I don’t remember any such thing.”
    “It’s used in nuclear reactors to make bombs,” Reed said. “So how did it get here?”
    “Beats me. What are they telling you?”
    “They don’t know how it got there. They just say don’t worry.” He explained about beryllium disease. “They’re probably nervous about whether anybody’s going to file a claim.”
    Ed cleared his throat. “I don’t really believe all they’re saying on the news. Everybody was real careful, and management took care of us. I wouldn’t worry about it, Reed.”
    Uncle Ed had started work at the plant in 1960, when it still processed uranium hexafluoride on-site, mixing black uranium dioxide and hydrofluoric acid to make greensalt and then burning that with fluorine. Ed scooped piles of greensalt into hoppers—sometimes with his bare hands. He breathed black dust and even got it in his mouth. He always said it tasted terrible.
    “Uncle Ed, remember when you used to come home from work all covered with greensalt?”
    Ed laughed. “Hell, we were all green back then.”
    “I’ve been wondering, Ed, what did your first wife think about that?”
    “Do you remember her? Lucy?”
    “Just barely.” Blond? Wore hats?
    “Sometimes I can’t remember her either. She moved off to Akron, Ohio, after we divorced. She was a good woman!” Ed spoke in a sentimental voice. “When I used to come home from work green—and the next morning the sheets were green—that scared her.”
    “I was wondering if she was afraid of the stuff.”
    “She’d say, ‘I can’t sleep with you if you’re