one loyal group

Posted on December 27, 2013 by Cynthia G.

OIL IN WATER

Pam Lazos

Chapter Seventy-Six

Hart sat on the bed in his hotel room reading the newspaper behind closed eyelids. Two sharp raps on the door startled him awake.

“Hold on,” Hart called. He rubbed his entire face with one hand before rising to look through the peephole.

“What the — ?” Hart said, throwing the door open.

Bicky held up a hand to silence him. “May I come in?”

Hart stepped aside to allow Bicky ingress. Bicky headed straight to the window.

“I’ve been calling you all day,” Hart said. “What the hell are you doing here?” Hart grabbed two beers out of the mini-fridge, popped the tops and set one down on the window sill next to Bicky. “And what happened to your hand?”

Bicky appraised the appendage as if it were an alien species, but said nothing so Hart switched topics.

“I’ve secured financing. But it means I have to sell out. Completely sell out. Every last stock certificate.” Hart gave this information some time to sink in, but Bicky didn’t answer, just stared out the window, his face glued to the view. “Look, I know what that could do to you…to the company. And I’m not trying to undermine you, Bicky, so if you can get the money together….”

“I spent the whole day with the kids.” Bicky stood as still as Billy Penn atop City Hall Tower, staring out over the Delaware, watching the ships come in. “She came back nicely, didn’t she?” he said, nodding toward the river. “Not even a trace of the spill is visible to the naked eye. And it’s only been what? Two months? He picked up his beer and raised the neck to tap Hart’s own. “To the healing power of nature.” Bicky took a seat on the window sill and turned to Hart, his entire body engaged.

It was the atypical nature of the gesture that made Hart uneasy. “I’m guessing you didn’t come here to talk about nature.”

Bicky shook his head. “I was wrong. Too many times over these years I’ve treated you with less than the respect you deserved.” Bicky picked up the beer, but did not drink. “You’re a fine engineer, and a fine son-in-law. Probably the best I’ve ever seen in both categories.” He set his beer down and stood up. “I just wanted to tell you that.”

Hart stared at Bicky, mouth agape. In the ten years he’d known his father-in-law, Hart had received more than his share of the booty for a job well done: new cars, six-figure bonuses, vacations in exotic settings, even a boat once, but this one small comment, mixed with confession, was the most profound and heartfelt gesture Bicky had ever made. Perplexed and more out of sorts than when Bicky first walked in, Hart stood up, too.

“Thanks,” he said. He looked at Bicky queerly for a moment until Bicky’s words sunk in. “The kids? I guess you’re talking about my kids?”

“Very fascinating family. I’ve been thinking about this all day and I’m prepared to make a deal that benefits everyone. Truly benefits everyone.”

“I’m listening.”

“Tomorrow. Let’s meet at the Tirabis’ in the morning. Say ten?”

“You want to give me a glimpse into the future?”

“The thought struck me that you could benefit from an existing facility, not just for refining purposes, but for transport. We have pipelines all over the country bringing raw crude into our refineries. What if we reversed the process? Instead of pumping to us, we send the finished product, the stuff you distill from trash, away from us to be either sold or further refined around the country. We can run this without the additional capital and I predict….”

Hart’s smile was so wide, Bicky stopped in mid-sentence.

“What?” Bicky asked.

“Had you given me the chance on the phone that night…”

“Oh. You already thought of that, is it?” Bicky smiled, his trademark half-smile. “Thanks for humoring an old man.” Bicky patted Hart on the back and walked to the door. “Tomorrow.”

“The Tirabi kids know we’re coming?”

“Yes.” Bicky stood face-to-face with his son-in-law, his hand on the doorknob. “They are one loyal group. They wouldn’t deal with me at all until you were at the table. You should be proud of that. The ability to engender loyalty is a lost art.”

Hart smiled, but couldn’t formulate a response because of the large boulder in his throat. Bicky squeezed Hart’s shoulder and shook his hand at the same time.

“See you tomorrow, son.”

to be continued. . . .

this is what happened before

assault the page

Posted on December 24, 2013 by Cynthia G.

Journal THAT

Cynthia Gregory

Here is a writing challenge that is completely over the top: write with your non-dominant hand for one page. No more. More than one page is just torture.

The reasoning behind this exercise is similar to the logic behind writing by hand and not relying on the computer keyboard for one hundred percent of your writing output. Writing with your dominant hand allows your thoughts to flow unimpeded from your dazzling brain, down your graceful arm and onto the page in a liquid script. You learned to do this type of writing so long ago that the muscular memory is well established and you no longer need to think about how to grip the pencil, focus like a mountain lion, rear back, and assault the page. This type of writing is automatic, never requiring a second thought to secure a type of fluency, and elegance of process. You pick up the pen, you write.

When you write with a computer, you access both parts of your brain and manage a fairly linear process of calculating thought, interpreting electronic impulses, dashing off messages with lightning speed. You are capable of producing great amounts of written material quickly; if you are an accomplished enough typist, your fingers can almost keep pace with your thoughts. Likely however, you are able to dash off great tracts of prose produced at a formidable rate, interspersed with small interludes of calm while the thinking apparatus generates more material, whereupon the typing commences at high speed.

Alternately, writing by hand slows you down by a least half. The statelier pace of recording thoughts on the page also slows your mind down, and everything relaxes. Your brain has time to linger over thoughts, to meander down lanes of memory and drowse in the dapple shade of summer trees. You can write quickly, but you are still operating at about half-throttle, and there is a more reflective quality to your thoughts and ideas. You can immerse yourself into an idea, you may actually visualize it, take it in with your senses, spend some time with it, date it, get to know it’s quirks, understand the sweetness of it, savor each nuance of meaning before moving on to the next idea. Writing by hand is a tactile and timely experience. You feel the gravity of each word, pushing your pen around the paper. You smell memories; you taste nouns. The idea in your mind merges with your heart and produces lines on a page that more or less mean something. Writing by hand actually means writing by body. It’s not as if your hand is a separate unit from your shoulder, elbow, neck, or heart. You write with it all; because it’s all connected.

If writing by hand is a physical experience, writing with your non-dominant hand is meta-physical. It requires a concurrent focus just to grasp the pen, to align yourself with the paper, figure out at what slant to approach a line of dictation, how firmly or lightly to squeeze the pen. Suddenly, words with billboard-sized letters loom in your mind, waiting, while you work out the downward loop in your cursive f and move on. What an accomplishment!

Don’t try to be perfect –you’ll frustrate yourself– unless you were born a leftie and a well-intended but completely disconnected nun forced you to be normal by learning how to write and color and cut paper chains with your right hand. If this is the case, allow me to apologize on behalf of teachers everywhere. You were perfect the way you were, and no one had the slightest right to alter your natural impulses.

Write with your weaker hand –and as you do, you will notice that you have to loosen up. At first you’ll be all stiff and stilted, which will be of no discernible help at all. Struggle less, write more. It’s almost as if with less effort your writing becomes more legible, and the mess of spaghetti on the page begins to resemble actual letters connected to convey meaning. Start by practicing writing your name, then the names of the ones you love. Then gradually, work your way up to words and sentences. A paragraph becomes a grand achievement. Once you master the paragraph, work your way up to a page. Don’t worry about speed, it takes as long as it takes, and it isn’t a competition.

As you write with your weaker hand, you may begin to notice simplicity of thought emerging in your writing. As your neural pathways struggle to fire and connect, you may find your writing taking an intuitive leap, a creative catapult toward new meaning. While writing with your non-dominant hand is awkward, difficult, unseemly, unruly, undignified, it is also as unimaginably liberating as a good walk in the summer rain, as a slice of pizza for breakfast.

We all walk around with a virtual circus playing in our heads and hearts. We carry a lifetime of memories, and a universe of potential. We are at once a young child, and a wise mentor. We are co-workers, and doting grandparents. We are friends and dog-trainers. Vegetarians and comparison shoppers. We are none of us completely and one hundred percent just one thing or even the face we show the world. This is maybe just one of the things that make us such interesting and complex individuals. When we write with our dominant hand, our worlds remain intact, there is no color outside of the lines; all personalities more or less behave as expected. When you write with your non-dominant hand, buried thoughts may rise up to the conscious level, may veer outside the lines in splashes of magenta and vermilion. It becomes messy and a trifle chaotic, but it becomes something beautiful, too.

Writing with your non-dominant hand is a bit of a magic trick; now you see it, now you don’t. While you focus on your inelegant claw struggling to grasp a pen, hidden thoughts may trickle in; tiny hairline fractures may appear in the wall you’ve built around the creative juices; the wall itself may start to crumble just a little, and ideas you’d forgotten you had may just trickle in. Et voila! A dove materializes from a handkerchief.

I believe in magic. I believe in illusion. I believe that coloring outside the box is not just fun; it’s an innate responsibility of the creative heart. So get out there and write with your less popular, ugly step-sister, non-dominant hand. You won’t like it at first. In the beginning it will be as difficult and awkward as a poodle in a tutu. But once you relax and flow with the process, you’ll learn to know yourself in a whole new way, chances are pretty good you’ll like the other, less dominant you.

sister lives

Posted on December 22, 2013 by Cynthia G.

and there we were: sisters, sisters, all around.

celebrate winter solstice with a story of the magic of sisters

shutting down

Posted on December 21, 2013 by Cynthia G.

OIL IN WATER

Pam Lazos

Chapter Seventy-Five

“All this,” Jack said, placing his hand on Kori’s heart, “is highly combustible. When things heat up like this, it always gets a little dicey.” Jack removed his hand from Kori’s heart and pulled her to him. “It’s all about chemical reactions, Kori,” Jack said. “The most dangerous part of the process is starting up and shutting down. That’s when things are the most precarious.” He squeezed her hand and smiled. “But you already knew that.” She smiled back despite herself.

“Are we starting up or shutting down?” Kori asked. She hoped her voice didn’t belie the need in her.

“That depends on if you can stand the temperatures?” Jack asked.

“Well, how hot’s it gonna get?” Kori asked.

“As much as thirteen hundred degrees Fahrenheit for some of these processes,” Jack said.

“What processes?” Kori asked.

“Refining processes,” Bicky said.

“What are you talking about?” Kori asked. She took a deep breath and rose back to the surface of consciousness opening first one eye and then the other. When she realized where she was, she groaned and squeezed both eyes shut.

“Boiling points, my dear,” Bicky said. “The beauty of crude oil is that it’s not just a single chemical compound but a mixture of hundreds of them. They’re hydrocarbon chains and they each have different boiling points. Refining is simply heating the crude to higher and higher boiling points and pulling off the vapor through the process of fractional distillation. Then you condense the vapor through cooling in the distillation column.” Bicky glanced in the rear view mirror. Kori’s scowled at him, but Bicky continued. “Each different hydrocarbon chain is useful for something. With a chemical process called conversion you can convert the longer chains to shorter chains depending on demand. You can also combine fractions to give you yet more usable products. Of course, much of it needs to be treated, but that’s a small price to pay. There’s a reason why crude oil’s called liquid gold. It’s one of the most versatile compounds known to man. Actually it’s a shame that so much of what we do with it is make gasoline.”

“Now who’s showing off?” Gil asked.

Bicky smiled. “Don’t blink now, ladies and gentlemen or you’ll miss it. To the right is the crude oil distillation unit and to the left is the delayed coking unit. Beautiful aren’t they?” Bicky asked.

“What a geek?” Kori mumbled under her breath. Max’s tail brushed her nose and the combination of smelly dog and too much expensive perfume from the pedantic idiot up front was making her head hurt. She sneezed and turned back to the window.

“Hey, Sleeping Beauty,” Avery said. “Have a nice nap?” Kori stared at Avery long enough to convey her distaste before returning her gaze to the storage tanks that looked like hundreds of giant white gum drops floating by her window. “You were snoring,” Avery said.

“And drooling,” Gil added.

“Shut up,” Kori said. Avery held his hand up for a high-five and Gil whacked it.

“I just want to go back to sleep,” Kori said, desperate to see how her dream would end.

“That’s the tank farm on the left, if you’re interested, Kori,” Bicky said.

Kori couldn’t be less interested. She yawned, rubbed her head and smacked Max’s twitching tail away from her face.

“Knock it off, Kori,” Gil yelled.

“I told you to keep his tail out of my face, you little brat.”

Gil scowled at Kori and pulled Max closer to him. “You better watch it or I’ll set him loose on you.”

“Yeah, right,” Kori snarled.

“No blood, please,” Bicky said. “It’s a rental.” Both Kori and Gil stared out their respective windows.

“So. As I was saying, there’s many different processes that occur in a refinery. There’s separation and conversion, and treating and blending. Crude oil gives us lubricating oil, tar, asphalt, petrochemicals which are used to manufacture things like plastics. And , it’s a model for recycling since many of the end products are used as feedstock to create new products.” Bicky craned his neck to look out the window. “See over there? That’s the catalytic reforming unit. And over there’s the catalytic cracker,” Bicky said.

Kori insulted Bicky under her breath and looked over at Gil to gauge whether he’d heard her, but Gil was listening with rapt attention to every word that came out of Bicky’s mouth.

“So far the TDU only makes oil and gas and there’s some mineral byproducts. But maybe we could make other stuff,” Avery said.

Gil nodded.

“Are we going home anytime soon?” Kori whined.

“That’s the hydrofluoric acid alkylation unit,” Bicky said. “And over there is the sulfuric acid alkylation unit. And that, I believe, is the light ends distillation unit.”

“Do you know how all these units work?” asked Gil.

“Years ago, when I first started out, I devoured chemistry and I knew the ins and outs of all these machines,” Bicky said. “It’s been awhile, though. I think I may have forgotten.”

“You don’t ever forget, really,” Gil said. Bicky looked at him in the rear view mirror and when their eyes met, Gil smiled.

➣➣➣

At Gil’s insistence, they had stopped at Wendy’s for dinner, because Gil wanted a frosty. Although Bicky detested fast food, he acquiesced after Gil reported he was prone to car sickness brought on by a lack of snack food. Bicky smiled inwardly. The kid was clever. Bicky smiled and watched him in the rear view mirror, Gil’s countenance serene in sleep.

Recognition shot a bolt of adrenaline through his solar plexus as memory upon memory of a ten-year old Mason came flooding back to him. Although Gil looked nothing like Bicky’s brother who’d died around Gil’s age, Gil’s canny mind, crooked smile and clever dialogue lent him a whole six degrees of separation aura that Bicky couldn’t shake. A shiver ran through Bicky’s body, as if Mason himself had reached out beyond death to whisper in his brother’s ear. Bicky squeezed his eyes shut to quell the flood of memories, then opened them and focused on the lines in the road.

It was after 10:00 p.m. when Bicky pulled into the Tirabis’ driveway.

“Sorry about the time,” Bicky said. “I didn’t realize it was so late. You’ll be tired in school tomorrow.”

Avery shrugged and looked at Bicky with kind eyes. Any malice he felt for the man had evaporated like distilling crude oil. “Thanks for showing us the refinery…how everything worked.”

Bicky dismissed the thank you with a wave of his hand. “You’re most welcome.”

“Kori could probably have done with something less than a marathon tour,” Avery said, but she’ll get over it.”

They turned to glance at Kori who, along with Gil and Max, was fast asleep in the backseat.

“He’s got a huge appetite,” Bicky said, watching Gil.

“Oh, yeah. Thanks for dinner.”

“Stop thanking me already. That’s actually not what I was talking about. It’s his voracious appetite for knowledge.” Bicky turned back to Avery. “You all have it.”

Kori snored, a small, inconsequential noise, but a snore all the same. Avery raised his eyebrows and looked at Bicky for confirmation.

“Yes. Even Kori,” Bicky said.

Kori issued another strange, guttural sound, waking herself up.

“We’re home?” she asked.

“You spent most of your day sleeping,” Avery said.

“I dreamt we were little. Before Gil was born. The three of us were asleep in the backseat. Gil wasn’t even born yet. Dad said he and Mom should carry us all in at once so no one would be left alone. Mom said she’d wait with two while he brought one in, but Dad said that still left someone alone, but on the inside. He hated to see anyone be alone.” She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and yawned wide, opening a fissure as deep as the Grand Canyon. “Mom had Robbie and Dad already had you Avery, and was leaning in, trying like hell to pick me up one handed. I peeked and he saw me, so I shut my eyes real quick, waiting for him to say I should walk inside since I was awake. But he didn’t say it – just carried me in, pretending I was still asleep.” Kori’s gaze grew wistful and her head lolled back against the seat. “Weird. The stuff you remember.” She got out and offered Bicky her hand. “Thanks for dinner. Sorry about how I acted before.”

“My pleasure,” Bicky replied his gaze falling once again on Gil. “How about I carry him?” He looked at Avery and then back at Kori and smiled. “You, on the other hand, will have to walk.”

to be continued. . .

read what led up to this state of affairs

sister::sister

Posted on December 19, 2013 by Cynthia G.

sometimes you love your sister. sometimes you don’t.

sometimes love and denial get all mixed up together.

support the arts::buy the book

orange you glad

Posted on December 18, 2013 by Cynthia G.

Journal THAT

a guide to writing

Cynthia Gregory

The beauty of the journaling process is that it can be simple or it can be complex in a way that reveals itself as a personal, daily, moment-by-moment choice. What enriches the journaling experience (if you’re willing), is variety, is texture.

Imagine eating the same salad every day of your life. You can argue that rich, leafy greens provide minerals and nutrients essential to optimum health. You can also argue that periodically a bowl of thick, smooth, mocha fudge ripple ice cream has the capacity to transport you to your happy place, to a time when summer afternoons sprawled under the shade of a leafy maple counting squirrels in the branches above was the most important assignment of the day. Variety. Texture. Sometimes the best you can do is bolt down a protein bar on the run. Other times, you want to immerse yourself in the sensual, primitive pleasure of a feast of market fresh produce, a plate of pasta cooked perfectly al dente and smothered in an aromatic sauce of eggplant and basil and roasted peppers.

Sometimes your journal is where you lock in and unload your thoughts of the day, the dramas of your life, your hopes for your lover, your future, your Self. Sometimes your journal is a train and each entry is a station. Sometimes the station is the destination, sometimes it’s the jumping off place, the place where adventure begins. Neither place is superior to the other, it is enough that they are what they are. However, this journaling assignment is about the jumping off place, about getting to the end of everything you know, standing poised on the edge with your toes hanging over, a yawning expanse of never been-there-but-open-to-the-possibility. This is the station where you disembark the train and immediately jump into a waiting cab and vanish into the landscape.

This drill can be accomplished using any number of ordinary household items, a hammer, a clothes pin, a plum, or in this case; an orange. Choose any orange you like; choose a sweet as candy Clementine, sometime that rests in the palm of your hand like a tiny jeweled box. Or select a bouncy navel with its nubby button and thick peel. A secretive blood orange, interior cloaked in a plain wrapper. Don’t agonize over the choice; one is as good as the other. Remember, this isn’t about the orange. The orange is only the station platform, the way in.

Remember before, when I suggested that you enter a room and stay there until you’ve achieved the mission of full emotional disclosure? Of going to that place where you blink into the darkness, open your ears to the music of the silence, of letting the air move over the surface of your skin and registering the sensation with words on a page? This is more of that. It is probably easier to make this a timed writing, because the level of difficulty might otherwise persuade you to pitch in the towel long before you get to the juicy bits, the place where you discover something new. With a timed writing, you are not focused so much on the content of the writing, as in the endurance of the time.

A funny thing happens with the timed writing exercise. Generally, you take off with great alacrity, writing everything you know about a subject. Interestingly however, if the time is of a challenging length, the writer finds that she runs out of known material in a relatively short period of time. She finds she has a surplus of minutes, and a surfeit of words. How does this happen? It is a trick of the mind. No matter, this is where it gets interesting.

Find a quiet place to write, free of distraction. Set a timer and begin. First, pick up your orange, close your eyes and inhale its tart-sweet fragrance. Really smell it. Roll it over the skin of your throat, across your chest. Toss it from one hand to the other, examine the surface of the peel, each dimple, every blemish. Experience the orange with your senses as fully as possible, then set it down nearby and begin to write. You may begin with a literal description, and you may actually get a paragraph or two from the physical presence of the fruit, the weight of it. Then what? Then we meet the cousins of “reality” namely imagination, and memory, we are about to move beyond what is and approach what if.

Here are possible ways to go from here. Write about:

Your first memory of citrus fruit
The girl you knew who smelled like orange blossoms
The texture of the creamy white pith beneath your fingernails when you peel it
the camping trip you took where after three hours of steady hiking you stopped by a creek and tore the flesh of a tangerine and drank the pulpy juice with absolute gratitude for the miracle of orange-ness the way the skin split, revealing the color of a ripe sunset on a honeymoon cruise and dancing under a full moon and the feel of sin on skin, of succulent, sweet juice dripping down your chin at dawn

You see -it’s not really about the orange. At least, not necessarily so. The orange is a trigger; it is the beginning place that has the power to transport you to another time and place for the duration of whatever time you establish at the beginning of the writing.

It’s important in a timed writing to stick with the intended time. If you establish a fifteen or twenty minute limit, stick with it. If you find you run out of preconceived ideas of what you think you should be writing about, stick with it. Let go of the idea that you choose the words to commit to the page. Let the words choose you. Let the idea pick you up and shake you loose of everything you thought it should be. When you come to the place where your treasure chest of “good” ideas is empty, be patient. Be calm. Wait. Let the ideas float into your mind and don’t judge them, don’t try to shape them. Write them down. Let the ideas flow and allow the gentle waves of the stream of consciousness lap gently at the shores of your mind. This is the place where new ideas are birthed. This is the place where imagination and memory merge, form something new, and your job is to write it down. It sounds simple; it is. It sounds difficult; it is not. All you have to do is be willing to let your subject: the orange, the plum, the paper clip -reveal a story to you, and then your job is to introduce it to your journal.

count on love

Posted on December 15, 2013 by Cynthia G.

we are exceedingly proud of our newest release.

support the arts::buy the book

little Einstein

Posted on December 5, 2013 by Cynthia G.

OIL IN WATER

Pam Lazos

Chapter Seventy-Four

Gil, Max and Kori sat in the back seat of Bicky’s Lexis so Avery could sit up front and “talk business.” Bicky set the cruise control and the car glided north on I-95 at seventy-two miles per hour.

“Why seventy-two if the speed limit is sixty-five?” Avery asked.

“The police don’t stop you for a five-mile transgression,” Bicky said. “I like to push it the extra mile or two.”

“Guess you get a lot of tickets.”

“I haven’t had a ticket since I was twenty-five.”

“Guess you’re lucky, then.”

Bicky raised an eyebrow and smiled wryly.

“So. Have you figured out the parameters of the deal you’re offering or are you waiting to see how sophisticated we are? The ‘Louisiana Purchase’ comes to mind.”

“I’m not trying to bilk you with a handful of beads, I assure you. My money’s as good as the next guy’s. I just have more of it.”

Avery checked off a note made on a small legal pad. “If we made a deal, we wouldn’t be interested in a lump sum payment. We’d want royalties. And if the stock goes public, we’d want dividends. We’d also want to retain a large portion of the interest. The controlling interest.”

“I’m confident I can meet all your needs,” Bicky’s eyes didn’t leave the road.

“Max, knock it off,” Kori snipped from the back seat. Max flipped his giant fluff of a tail in Kori’s face, his hair snaking its way into her mouth and nose. She pushed his tail aside and rubbed the itch from her nose.

“What about the requirement that Hart still be involved?” Avery asked.

“I told you, Hart works for me. He’s my Chief Engineer right now. Perhaps I could move him up to Chief of Operations for this project. Let him work solely on this.”

“You ever going to give this dog a bath?” Kori asked Gil.

“Let’s see how it sounds to Hart before we make any decisions,” Avery said.

“Because he stinks,” Kori said.

“He doesn’t stink,” Gil said. “He just needs a biscuit for his breath. He had garlic last night.”

Kori shoved Max’s tail out of her face again. “Get that dog’s tail out of my face, before I cut it off,” she snapped. As if in response, Max wacked her in the face again. She sneezed. “Gil, I swear to God…”

“Your sister sounds annoyed,” Bicky said.

“She broke up with her boyfriend this morning,” Avery said.

Bicky nodded slowly as if all had been revealed. “I know a little about that.”

“Come here, Max,” Gil said, pulling Max down to him with one hand. The other hand gripped an open package of Pop Tarts which Gil bit into two at a time. He broke off a piece and handed it to Max who inhaled it, swallowing without even chewing. Gil then stuffed Max’s tail underneath his body. Thus, both chastised and sated, Max put his head on Gil’s lap and went to sleep. Gil took another pass at the twin pop tarts. “I’m thirsty,” he said with a mouth full of wild berry.

“You should have brought a bottle of water with you,” Avery said.

“But I didn’t.”

“We’re on I-95,” Kori said. “Not a Wa-Wa for miles. Guess you’re just going to have to suffer.” Kori flashed a smug smile and turned to the window to watch the industrialized landscape glide serenely by. Gil flashed his food-laden tongue at her, but she didn’t see it.

“I can’t wait, Avery,” Gil said. Avery turned around and gave Gil a sympathetic shrug. Bicky watched Gil in the rear view mirror, clutching his pop tarts and looking retched. He grabbed his own bottle of Perrier, sitting in between the console, and handed it back to Gil.

“Thanks,” Gil said with a full mouth. He took a swig and handed it back to Bicky. Bicky took one look at the minute traces of Pop Tart, swirling around in the bottle, suspended in crystal plastic and shook his head.

“You keep it,” Bicky said.

Gil nodded and smiled. When he finished the last bite, he said to Bicky, “Do you know that bottled water is responsible for an increase in tooth decay?”

“Well it’s a good thing you didn’t bring any more with you. We wouldn’t want your teeth rotting on the way,” Bicky said.

Avery chortled. Even Kori smiled at Bicky’s quick retort.

“Did you know that in 1990, a little over two billion gallons of bottled water were sold in the U.S and that it’s going to hit over seven billion gallons by the end of 2005?” Gil asked. “And that retailers sell more bottled water than coffee or milk or even soda?”

“That’s a lot of water,” Bicky said.

“Yeah, and you know where it comes from?”

“From natural springs?”

“Yep. From natural springs fed by groundwater that belongs to everybody,” Gil said. “Did you know you were paying for water that already belongs to you?”

“How’s that make you feel?” Avery asked.

“Cheated,” Bicky replied.

“That ground water that used to be going somewhere else, like to somebody’s well, or to feed a wetland is now being diverted to a little plastic bottle that sells for $1.19 in WaWa.” Gil held up the bottle by way of demonstration. Pieces of pop tart floated in silence.

“Who ever came up with that name anyway? WaWa?” Bicky asked.

“I think it’s the name of a type of Canadian Goose,” Avery said.

“Still, what’s that have to do with a convenience store?” Bicky said.

“Don’t you even care that you’re paying $1.19 for somebody else’s groundwater, and that that somebody isn’t even getting the money?” Gil asked. “Instead some multinational corporation is.”

Bicky turned to Avery. “Is he always like this?”

“He’s just getting warmed up,” Avery said.

“Fascinating,” Bicky said. “Maybe there’s a way we can bottle him.”

“What kind of water do you prefer, Mr. Bicky?” Gil asked. “This?” Gil held up the Perrier bottle.

“It’s true. I confess. I’m a Perrier man.”

“Did you know that Perrier has been sued by citizens of several different states? People are mad because they say Perrier’s using up all their groundwater. Perrier says that doesn’t make good business sense – to use up all of the resource that they’re selling – isn’t that what the oil people do?” Gil mused. “They sell fifteen different brands of water, you know, and pump it from like seventy-five different spring-fed locations. They sell more bottled water than anyone else in the country which means they pump more water, in some cases as much as five hundred gallons per minute from their sources – taxpayer owned sources.”

“Do you know who owns Perrier?” Avery asked.

Bicky shook his head.

“Nestle. The largest food company in the world. A multinational megacompany.”

Bicky looked at Avery as if he’d just thrown up a hair ball. “What is wrong with you people? You’re children for Godsakes. Children don’t behave like this. They talk about things like baseball and the latest creature feature at the cineplex.”

“You don’t have to dry up the entire aquifer in order to dry up your neighbor’s well,” Avery added.

“Did you know that after a certain point an aquifer loses the ability to recharge itself?” Gil said. “Do you think it’s possible Nestle knows what that point is?”

Bicky glanced in the mirror to find Gil looking at him with large owl eyes, unblinking and full of certainty, the way Bicky envisioned owl’s must look before they’re about to pounce on a tasty bit of prey. For the first time in years, Bicky thought, he might be out of his league.

“The thing is, if you watch a water commercial, they’re selling health. Health, health, health,” Avery said. “Pure, crystal-clear, uncorrupted health.”

“Did you know one company pulled water from a well in a parking lot adjacent to an industrial facility that had traces of hazardous chemicals in it?” Gil asked.

“Oh, come on. Now, you’re making this up,” Bicky said.

“Am not,” Gil replied.

“I’m sure there are water quality standards,” Bicky said.

“Huh! You wish,” Avery said. “The EPA regulates tap water which, except for a very few places, is really safe. But it doesn’t regulate bottled water. The companies regulate themselves. “Get it?” Gil said.

Bicky saw Gil wink at him in the rearview mirror, an action so exaggerated it looked like his whole face was winking.

“The FDA’s supposed to regulate bottled water, but they don’t interpret the regs the same way and even worse, they don’t even have a full-time staffer dedicated to overseeing the whole bottled water craze,” Avery said. “EPA employs hundreds of people whose job it is to regulate tap water. Do you see a dichotomy there?” Avery pointed a finger at Bicky. “On any given day a water authority has to give you a list of what’s in the tap water you’re tied into. It’s required by law. Not so for the bottlers. They don’t even have to answer your letters. And tap water isn’t allowed to contain even traces of e. coli, where bottled water has a limit.”

“Oh, this is ridiculous. You’re telling me that bottled water contains e. coli,” Bicky said.

“I’m telling you it may contain traces, and it wouldn’t be prohibited by law,” Avery said. “The National Resources Defense Counsel, that’s the NRDC, they tested a hundred and four brands of bottled water over a four-year period and found about a third of them contained things like arsenic and other carcinogenic compounds. Odds are, tap water is safer than bottled, but people don’t find it as appealing.”

“It’s because the water authorities don’t advertise,” Kori said.

“Another country heard from,” Bicky replied, glancing in the rearview mirror at Kori who didn’t take her eyes from the window.

“She’s sort of in advertising,” Avery said. Bicky shook his head and huffed.

“They say that if bottled water sits on your shelf for more than a year, it might go bad. Whoever heard of water going bad?” Avery asked. “I think it’s the plastic leaching.”

“Do you know the worst part?” Gil asked.

“No, but somehow I think you’re going to tell me,” Bicky answered.

“The worse part is that thirty million bottles a day go to landfill. Only one out of ten bottles is recycled. Did you know that it takes a thousand years for plastic to break down?”

“Enough. I get it. You’ve managed to depress me sufficiently to last for the rest of the millennium. So can we talk about something else?”

“Sure,” Gil said. Name a topic.”

➣➣➣

By the time they arrived at the Akanabi refinery, Bicky was more thoroughly drained than a kitchen sink after a visit from the Roto-Rooter man. The car ride with an adolescent, a teenager, and, from what he could tell, a scorned and scornful young woman had left him jittery and out of sorts. Hart was right. These weren’t normal kids. Perhaps he’d need to turn to contingency plan B before the sister – the putative leader of the group got bored and called the whole thing off. Bicky felt his blood quicken as he stepped out of the car. His mouth was dry, his tongue felt thick and spongy, and he wished for about the third time in the last half hour that he hadn’t given his bottle of Perrier away even if the little Einstein was right and the bottle, because of its very existence, would smother the earth’s surface. Who the hell cared? We may be unearthing and chopping down our collective resources at unprecedented rates, but he’d be dead by the time we managed to pave over the entirety of the Eden we called the United States.

Bicky parked and checked the rearview mirror. Kori was asleep, her head resting against the window, her eyebrows furrowed in concentration. On the opposite side, Gil stared wide-eyed at the tank farm directly across from the parking lot. Bicky cut the engine, but made no move to get out, just continued watching the sleeping Kori and insatiable Gil.

“We ready?” Avery asked.

Bicky turned to the third of the triumvirate. “You know what? Since your sister’s asleep, let’s drive the tour route. You can stop me whenever you see something you might want to investigate further.”

“Okay,” Avery said. “Vamanos.”

to be continued

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