“What’s your real business here, Cream?” Miss Ruby asked softly.
I continued to look ahead, speaking as she did, out of the side of my mouth. “I want to see Robert Baladine destroyed. If I can learn what happened to Nicola, I may find a way to make him . . . well, sorry he ever crossed my path.”
“If revenge is what you want to eat for dinner, you’re going to get yourself a bad case of indigestion. It never pays, believe me, Cream. I tried that meal for a lot of years, before Jesus showed me a better way.”
She paused, as if waiting for me to say amen, sister, or ask for her conversion story, but even for her help I couldn’t pretend to a faith I don’t own.
Disappointed at my lack of interest, she finally said, “No one wants the jobs in the clothes shop; the stories on how they treat the girls over there are too unpleasant. So I never heard of anyone bribing her way in before—usually they’re crying to get out. And most of them sleep and eat together, too. So if you want to get in, well, Lieutenant Dockery, she’s in charge of the work details, and no one ever gave her a bribe in their life: she’s strict but fair. But Erik Wenzel—he’s in charge of the shop—he’s another kettle of fish. And he’s not a CO, he’s some manager they hired, like they do for my reservations work—someone who knows how the job is supposed to be done. Give me a day or two. I’ll see what I can find out.”
She tapped my arm with a manicured finger. “You don’t know how to behave here, Cream. Maybe you’re the toughest bitch on your block in Chicago, but that makes you a challenge to the CO’s: they want to break you. There are no secrets in Coolis. And the CO’s know them, too. There’s always some girl willing to tattle to them in exchange for some favor, a better work assignment, or real makeup—you notice how most of the girls here are black, but the makeup in the commissary is made for whites? Which, by the way, you can wear with your skin, but most of us can’t. So if you can come up with some carmine nail polish and lipstick for me, it would make me move faster on your strange request.
“Anyway, what I’m trying to tell you, Cream, Troy Polsen is a bad man, but don’t go beating him up. The satisfaction you’d get wouldn’t be worth it. You’d land in segregation, and you’d never get out of it, so you’d go to your trial in prison clothes, and you know how that will look. Watch yourself, Cream.”
Polsen yelled to Jorjette and me that we were due in the kitchen. “You’re not on vacation here; move those lazy buns.”
“Exquisite manners,” I murmured. “It’s either that or the cuisine that keeps me coming back. I appreciate the warning and the offer of help, Miss Ruby. I don’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth, but . . .” I let my voice trail away suggestively.
“Why am I helping you? You don’t need to know everything about my life.” She smiled suddenly. “This I’ll tell you for nothing: I have a big bone of curiosity. My mama always said it would be the death of me, but I want to know what goes on in that shop myself. I have to spend another eight years in this building. I hate there being stuff about it I don’t know.”
Polsen came over and yanked me roughly to my feet. “Come on, Princess Di, they want you at Buckingham Palace.”
As he shoved me toward the corridor I couldn’t help wondering if my own bone of curiosity would be the death of me.
40 Sewing Circle
“Mannaccia!” I swore. “Puttana machina!”
My fingers had once more slipped on the stretchy fabric so that the armholes puckered up. While I used the little clippers to pull the threads out, I flexed my shoulders, trying to ease out the knots in my neck as well. None of the women around me stopped or looked up. They were tied to the whirring machines, working on jackets and leggings, their fingers moving so fast the movement of arms, fabric, and needle was a blur of motion.
“Hey, you, Victoria!” Erik Wenzel suddenly stood in front of me. “I thought you said you knew how to run this machine. Sabes usar esta máquina.“
When they spoke Spanish, the men always used the familiar form of you. I said in Italian how insufferable Wenzel’s manners were, then added in Spanish, “Sí, sí, se usarla.”
“Then act like you can fabricar.“ He snatched the shirt from my fingers, ripping it in two, and slapped my head. “You’ve destroyed this shirt so it can’t be used. La arruinaste! It comes out of your pay. No te pago por esta!“