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ELI SPRAWLED ON THE bed Bo’s sister Anna had loaned out for the cause, stretching his limbs as far as his stitches allowed. It had been only three days since the accident but he was hurting all over. The cullet blew up at him on Monday. He got out of the ICU on Tuesday, out of the hospital on Wednesday night. Now was Thursday, and the home-care nurse who had replaced his bandages just left.
He wondered how his healing was coming along. The wounds were weeping a clear yellow fluid with an occasional spotting of red, but the nurse had said there was no sign of infection and instructed him to keep it all covered up. She told him to try move less for a few more days, which sucked.
Not being able to fully stretch out was killing him within. As he’d become reacquainted with dance, Eli could tell when a muscle group had been lazy for too long, or needed a more thorough stretching.
Perhaps he could stretch just the right side... he thought hard. If he grabbed his foot with his hand, he could stretch his good leg and his good shoulder – as long as he didn’t roll over onto his bad leg.
Maybe later. Upon further examination, he’d probably fall off the bed and land himself back in the hospital.
He looked around instead. The impromptu guest room had once been a genuine library with built-in shelves so old, the wood was dark with the patina of pipe and fireplace smoke as well stain and varnish. The top of the structure was joined to the tin tile ceiling with carved trim that sloped into the room. He knew it had a name, but he’d have to look it up. The fancy woodwork caught light from the five-paned bay window, where, when Eli crooked his head to see better, sat a simple wooden bar stool and a tall music stand.
The music room. Now he remembered Bo calling it that. That would certainly explain the black instrument cases stuffed onto some of the bookshelves, as well as sheaves of paper folders stacked on top of one another, probably resembling an impromptu filing system.
Saltpeter Fluxx played cover music, but come to think about it now, Eli recalled dancing to a piece or two he didn’t recognize. How likely was it for Bo and his band to actually write their own? And if they did, who did the writing?
Very slowly, Eli rolled on his stomach, which required him holding his hurt leg using his only slightly less hurt arm. From a new vantage point, though, he relished discovering more musical evidence. That long, black thing on a stand, covered by a piece of fabric – that was probably a keyboard. The boxes on the floor? Maybe they held amps. Or mikes. Or –
His phone rang. The sound of its piano crescendo resonated within the walls of the old library – a clue as to why this was Bo’s music room.
“Hi, Mom.”
“We’re at your apartment, dear, and the super needs to know we’re allowed upstairs.”
Eli talked to the super, who wished him a speedy recovery, and he instructed his mother on what to pack. “Really, Mom, just a few simple things. Underwear, sweats, socks and shoes. I won’t be staying here forever.” As soon as the words left his mouth, he wondered whether he just made himself a liar. If he and Bo worked out...
“No, Mom, seriously. Make yourselves at home. The sheets are clean, the clean towels are in the milk crate under the sink.”
The rest of the conversation was a series of “Uh-huh” and “No, really, don’t worry,” until his father took the phone.
“When’s your friend coming home? We could come over and bring dinner.”
Eli hadn’t even thought as far as dinner when getting to the bathroom was an over-planned project. “I don’t know if Bo’s got anything planned, Dad.”
“So call him.”
“He doesn’t keep the phone on him at work, Dad.”
“Whyever not?”
Eli drew a deep breath. How did one explain a round furnace that housed sixteen pots, with four or five work crews clustered around it? Was it even possible to describe the noise of clanking molds, breaking glass, and men shouting the occasional request? The cooling fans alone were a good reason for wearing hearing protection. “It’s dangerous, Dad. He won’t hear it. And if he feels it vibrate in his pants, and he’s handling molten glass, the distraction could make him spook and get hurt.”
A long silence from his father’s end of the phone should’ve been a relief, except it wasn’t. By the time his father spoke again, Eli was as tense as a guitar string.
“What does Bo do, again?”
“He’s a gatherer.”
“And what does that mean, son?”
Eli shrugged, forgetting his father couldn’t see him. “He stands by the furnace with a punty. That’s a long steel rod with a steel ball at the end. He touches the punty to the top of the glass and spins it, until a gob gathers up. When it’s the right size, he pulls it out and brings it over the mold, where they make it into something useful.”
“Oh.” More silence. “And he does that all day long?”
“Pretty much. There’s more to it than that, Dad. He knows a lot about each glass and the way it behaves. If there’s a problem, he’s usually the first to notice.”
“That sounds dangerous, dear.” His mother broke in, alerting Eli to the fact that they were on speaker phone.
“Don’t worry. Accidents are rare.” And he was charmed, no doubt, by drawing the accident card and moving his figure back to the hospital corner of the Monopoly of Glass Life board. “So... Bo will be home by four. You can come anytime, but he always takes a shower after work, so if you’re here, give him some alone time, okay?”
“We’ll come after. We still have to pack your things. And you need to tell us what you boys eat.”
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THE NEXT CALL WAS FROM Joe, his boss in QC, asking how he was doing. The third call was from Paul in the lab.
“Hey, man, Eli. I hear you’re hurt so bad, Millie from HR even sent you funeral flowers!”
Eli was sprawled on his back again, which made it easy to guffaw in laughter. “Fuck you, asshole!” He sobered somewhat. “It was nice of her.”
“Did you keep them?”
“Not saying.” He didn’t. He gave them to the nurses, who were going to pass them on to a lonely patient down the hall. “So what do you need?”
“Uh...” Paul coughed. “Shit man, you nailed me. I need you to tell me about the stones in Pot 16.”
Eli rolled his eyes. “Ask Bo,” he said with all the seriousness he could muster. “He’s been keeping an eye on it. It’s got a new batch with twenty percent clean cullet. It should be fine.”
“Should, but isn’t, grasshopper. The refractive index is good, the thermal expansion is good, the color’s as clear as it should be, but it’s got stones again.”
A new thought crossed Eli’s mind. Normally, had he been at work, it would’ve never occurred to him to take a stack of paperwork home. Now, though, he was bored, and even the upcoming visit from his parents didn’t distract him from the restless sense of limbo, where all he could do was float around in his own head. Or read, once his parents got him his Kindle.
“Hey, Paul. Remember those old production records you showed me down below?” Eli thought back hard. The staircase behind the foreman’s office corkscrewed its way down, making a shortcut to the same place that he’d heard he could reach if he followed wheeled trolley carts, which were used to transport new pots, rings, and fire bricks to the hot floor upstairs. The whole ceramics section lived downstairs, where the big ceramics kiln was fed from the same source as the double burner that lit up the space beneath the furnace. The tall, vaulted ceiling and the orange and blue glow of the three-foot high gas-fed flames had him think of Saruman’s underground workshops, and the hiss of the alternating flames and the distant clanging of steel and stone only added to the eerie effect.
“Yeah, the archives. What of it?”
“I’ve got time on my hands here. Can you send me all the records on this glass? Not just in Pot 16, but from before, too. From when it was in a different pot.”
“Hmm.” Paul hesitated. “I’m pretty sure taking documents out of the plant isn’t allowed.”
“I could be getting work done, solving our little mystery, y’know. And if you bring all the lab records on those batches, and all the QC records, I can correlate the shit out of that data and see if there’re any patterns.” Eli had kept his tone light, trying to disguise his eagerness. No sense spooking Paul off. “Could be, you could just ask for the QC records downstairs. Tell Joe I’m working on it and I asked for them, and he’ll release it no problem.”
Eli wasn’t sure Joe would, indeed, release years of QC data that comprised hundreds of batches of a glass whose proprietary formula made it possible to fuse the glass to a metal rim. Nothing ventured, nothing gained was Eli’s motto.
Ten minutes after he hung up with Paul, Joe called, asking for an explanation. “So you want to do all that from home? Nobody at Zimm Glass has ever done that before. The formulas aren’t even patented, Eli. The Old Man doesn’t trust the system. You patent it, someone else will make a knock-off. You know how it goes.”
“I know.” Eli put on his most earnest expression, hoping it would carry in his voice. “But Joe, I have nothing to do. And I’m staying at Bo’s house, since I don’t have any family in town. It’s perfect, see? I can finally corner him and ask him some specific questions as I correlate the QC and the lab data, see if there are any patterns over the years. I don’t even need the formula.” He didn’t say he’d spent so much time on this glass, he knew the formula by heart.
Joe harrumphed, and Eli heard his old office chair creak under him. When Joe leaned back like that, he was generally thinking things through. There was hope.
“Okay. It will be quite a box, though. I’d have the office copy it, but as long as you’re careful... just don’t lose anything, okay? Bo doesn’t have a dog, does he?”
“No, why?”
“I have a dog and she eats paper. Just checking.”
Eli laughed. “No, no dogs here. I’ll let you know as soon as I find something.”
“You won’t find anything,” Joe sighed. “It’s a wild goose chase. But if you’re bored, you might as well give it a try.”
Once Eli hung up, he scrunched up his face in guilt. He never did tell his boss about the big box of production data heading his way.
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BO SWUNG OUT OF THE truck and reached in for the first of the three file boxes. It was weird, bringing glass work home, but Eli worked a different part of the process. Part of him was curious to see what would happen next and how Eli would approach the problem. It was obvious Eli had been dying to ask Bo questions, but Bo didn’t know what to tell him. His knowledge was embedded in the tips of his fingers, in the way the glass felt, whether it worked long or short, how eagerly it flowed, how smoothly or roughly it melted. Was it foamy? Did the foam need to be skimmed more than twice? He didn’t see how something this trivial would be of any use to Eli, or to anyone else. Besides, Eli has been at Zimm Glass for just two months. He probably didn’t know the right questions to ask.
He carried the boxes to the porch one by one, and then inside. “I’m home!”
Eli called his hello from the music room, which meant he was in bed like he was supposed to be.
Bo gave an exhale of relief. He hadn’t even realized he’d been holding his breath, but now he realized he’d fully expected Eli to be doing something patently stupid, pulling his stitches out and necessitating another hospital trip.
He kicked off his boots and sauntered to the half-shut sliding doors, knocked, and peeked in. “I’ll take a quick shower and come catch up with you.” The muscle under his right shoulder blade needed some work, and a hot shower was a good start. He was rehearsing with the band after dinner and music would help him loosen up. It always did. They’d have to move into the living room because the music room had been turned into a field hospital. It wouldn’t be too bad for space if they moved the furniture to the walls and made room for Allison’s drum set.
Bo trudged upstairs, shed his dusty, smelly clothes, and disappeared into the shower. The hot water drummed on his back and shoulders like a benediction, and when streams trickled from his hair down his face, he tasted the salt of his long-dried sweat on his tongue. The taste of salt reminded him of the taste of Eli.
Eli, who was currently off limits, too. Apparently Bo’s cock didn’t get the memo as it stirred to life at the memory.
Eli was waiting downstairs. If Bo jerked off now, Eli would never know. Bo would fall asleep, though, and not wake up till the band pounded on his door. And rubbing one out right before making music always turned his music to shit. Besides, Bo had dinner to make. There was no way he’d let Eli make dinner while balancing on one foot, and they both needed real food. There was just so much pizza a body could take in the course of one week.
Timing was everything. Even pursuing Eli had its own schedule, and making sure Eli was all healed up and not feeling indebted took priority over a quick encounter they would both regret later.
Still, though. If all was fair in love and war, perhaps he could extend the rule to the art of long-term seduction. He rinsed his armpits with water, taking care not to mask his natural body odor with his scented body wash. Not pursuing Eli didn’t mean he had to make it easy for him.