“None taken.”
“Make my career at the Greenborough 7-Eleven? Cross our fingers the suit finally goes to trial and we win and the award is big enough for everyone and they don’t appeal and the judge upholds the award and we live long enough to see it paid?”
“Yes.” She’s desperate.
And he steps all the way up to the bar and reaches across and takes both her hands in both of his. “We can’t anymore, Nora. We’ve tried. We’ve tried for so long. We talked about it.” He waves around at everyone staring guiltily into their beers. “The whole town’s talking about it. The only reason anyone’s come up with to turn down these jobs is to not make you angry.” He meets her eyes again, takes in her face. “More angry.”
That’s a good reason, I think. That, and we might finally be making some progress on the lawsuit. We have River getting us access to information we’ve never had before. We have proof that Duke and Nathan are up to something, even if we don’t know what yet. We have a sister pact and the resolve that comes with it. It’s not much, but it’s not nothing, and it makes everyone’s mass and sudden loss of faith that much more tragic. Nora doesn’t know any of that, but it doesn’t matter. For her, it’s tragic enough already.
“They’re. Evil.” Nora’s own eyes look witchy, black and bottomless.
“Maybe.” Zach steps back, away from her. “Maybe not. Maybe they’ve changed. Maybe Nathan is different from his father. Maybe mistakes were made, and it’s time to forgive and move on. What’s the worst that can happen?”
She flings her arms wide to enter into evidence all of them, all of us, all of it—Bourne-that-was versus Bourne-that-is and our whole world.
“Right,” says Tom. “The worst already happened. It can’t happen again.”
“Of course it can!” She didn’t mean to be so loud. I can see it in her face. “You think they’re chastened? You think they’re sorry? They’re triumphant. They learned they can fuck us over with not a single repercussion. They learned they can fuck us over, and not only won’t anyone out there notice”—she waves around at the rest of the world—“no one here will notice either. Or if we notice, we’ll move on soon enough. They should fuck us over because they make a shitpile of money doing it, and when they’re done, we bend over and beg them to go again.”
“They’re the answer to our prayers,” Hobart says, emboldened now because she’s yelling.
“You prayed for death, poison, and destitution?” Nora spits.
“We need jobs, Nora. We need money. We need something to do all day besides sit in here and drink. We can’t leave. We’re stuck here. Our property ain’t worth shit. Our houses. Our land. That ridiculous excuse for a school. What are my kids gonna do? Huh? Belsum is our last best shot. We have to give them another chance because they’re giving us another chance. If they come in and make good this time, it’ll be like they promised before. Growth. Opportunities. Our property values go up. Our town becomes less of a dead end. Our kids have a chance.”
“But at what cost?” Nora is shaking. Or maybe it’s me. Probably it’s both of us. “What about the principle here?”
“Well, now those are different questions.” Zach is making his voice sound reasonable. “We don’t know at what cost. Last time didn’t work out for them either. Must have cost ’em a fortune in lost revenue when they shut down. You figure they’d really rather not poison us if they could.” Weak smile. “They’ve worked out some kinks maybe. They’re less willing to take that kind of risk. They can’t afford to do it again. So probably no cost.”
“You can’t know that,” she interrupts.
But he keeps talking. “And we can’t afford to stand on principle, Nora. We literally can’t afford it. Only rich people get to stand on principle.”
“And besides,” Tom begins, then stops.
“Go ahead.” She knows what’s coming.
“You’re right.” He shrugs. “We’re already ruined. They can’t ruin us again. They’ve taken our livelihoods, our dreams, our confidence, our prospects. What the hell else is there? There’s nothing. We might as well let them come back and try. We’ve got nothing left to lose.”
She pauses, shakes her head, crosses her arms over her chest. “They’re not going to hire you.”
“They are, Nora.”
“They aren’t because you’re too fucking stupid. How are you going to work at a chemical plant when you’re this goddamn dumb? Frank wouldn’t hire you to mop the floors in this bar because you don’t have the brains for it. He wouldn’t hire you to carry rocks because the rocks are smarter than you are.”
“Frank,” Tom appeals to a higher authority. They’re cowed in her presence, and they’re sorry, but they’d still like not to be abused by their bartender.
“Don’t cry to Frank,” Nora says. “Frank’s the only one of you who’s not an idiot. Frank’s got sense and faith and isn’t about to let himself get fucked again by these assholes. Every goddamn one of you”—she’s calling out to the whole bar now—“dropped off the suit except me and Frank.”
“Nora.” Frank clears his throat. Everyone stops and looks at him, and he clears his throat again and then again. He’s been quiet, listening to all this. He owns the place after all, so it doesn’t seem so weird he’s observing but not saying anything.
She turns toward him, eyebrows raised, face open, completely unprepared.
“Nora, I took my name off too.”
“No you didn’t.” This is so impossible she doesn’t believe him.
“I had to.”
“What are you talking about? Why?”
His hands rise then fall back against his sides. “I couldn’t stand in their way.” He waves at his customers, the guys at the bar, the couples whispering at tables and trying to ignore us, takes them in, me too maybe. It’s my future more than anyone else’s here, after all.
“What about my way?” she hisses.
“You have a job. Two actually. I have a job. I can’t stand in the way of someone else having one too. I get it. These folks need the money, the bennies, the whole thing really.”
“And you get rich too,” she adds darkly.
“Not rich.” He laughs, mirthless, forced. “But yeah, Norma’s needs Belsum’s goodwill and patronage to stay afloat.”
“It hasn’t so far.”
“’Cause these guys never get off their stools.” That mirthless laugh again. “When they go back to work, think of the hit. And think of the business from execs just out of their last meeting, managers at the end of a long week, new wives in town, new families. I can’t just tell them they’re not welcome here.”
“They’re not,” says Nora.
“They’re not,” Frank agrees, “unless they’re coming anyway.”
“Russell said there were two names left on the suit. And one of them’s me.”
“I’m sorry,” Frank says.