One Financial Center, part 2

Jean is in the third floor boardroom, stuffing ribbons of shredded paper into extra large garbage bags. Piles of the stuff cover the long table and spill on to the floor, softly mounded up on the chairs and around the standing lamps like fresh snow. He half-smiles and tosses Zosia a roll of garbage bags, and they cram paper into the bags, pressing out the air and cramming more, then tossing them into wheeled garbage bins. After an hour or so they take the bins down in the freight elevators, dump them and start over again.

"Did you know this is the last day of work?" Jean asks. "That the owner of the building has gone bankrupt?" He is the darkest man she has seen. When she started the job she imagined everybody in a row, Jean at one end and Zosia at the other. La Polacka gonna disappear in the snow, Filomena says. We're all like this back home, Zosia tells her.

"Do you know what they did, the geniuses in this building?" Jean says. Zosia shakes her head.

"Imagine that you buy a little house," he says. "You borrow money from the bank, and then I go to the bank and say look, this young lady is not such a fine credit risk for you after all. Let me sell you insurance so if she can not pay, I will. I have no house, I have nothing, only my suit and my briefcase and my talk. You understand me OK?"

"Jean, I don't know," Zosia says, smiling so he'll keep on. When he's like this she can't follow half what he says but it's nice to hear the even voice while she works.

"Do you know what they did? Do you know what all of this paper is, the people in this building and all these other office buildings, over and over and over again? How can the credit insurance be more than the credit, even more than the all stock markets in the entire world? These are the people that told us they knew how the whole world should work, and that we should adjust our countries the way they said. All of our economic and fiscal policy the way they said, in Poland too, in Colombia and El Salvador too, and all the time they were burning their own house down. My goodness," he says, "I am an economist, I am supposed to know about these things, and I could not tell you what fifty trillion dollars means."

"Do you know what they said to us in my country, when people from my office went to the World Bank? They said it is time for you children to grow up, and to put away all of your toys. Put away your silly price supports, and unions, and municipal water systems, and capital market controls, and unemployment insurance, put away your silly agricultural economists. Now your country has to stop being a baby and become a man, and it is time to put away these childish things. You have to be realistic like us, like our banks that are powerful and strong."

Zosia puts on an apologetic smirk because doesn't know what to say, but Jean isn't looking. He walks around the walls, grabbing handfuls of paper and stuffing them in a bag, bending and stuffing, his voice calm and steady. "I met Mister Summers in Washington, do you know what he said to me? He said, 'I know it will hurt for a while, little baby, to take your medicine, but you need it to be big and strong like us.'"

He blows air slowly like someone breathing out cigarette smoke. "And you know, I saw his face in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, and he is saying that still."

They toss the last of the garbage bags in the loading dock and start wiping down the tables and the wall molding, then Zosia mops the bathroom floor while Jean goes down to the big closet for the vacuum. When the carpet is done it's nine-thirty, time to start packing up. Filomena sticks her head in the doorway. "The union marching here tomorrow on six," she said. "We all going, for our jobs. For our jobs. OK, please you come."

It's not a question but Jean sighs. "Sorry, I will not go. Me voy a mi país, OK?" He glances at Zosia. "It is time for me to go home soon." Filomena sighs, her shoulders sagging down a little. Her lips looked chapped and under her eyes it's dark. "I go, Filomena," Zosia says.

"OK gorda, we will see you." Filomena turns back to Jean, and lays a hand on his cheek. "Prenez soin de vous-même, mi negro."

"Et tois, Fila," Jean says. When she goes they stuff the last of the bags into the rolling bin.

At the swipe clock, Sue Ellen clutches Zosia's hand with damp fingers. "Go on down to the personnel office honey, they need to put you on the list. I'll tell them you're a good little worker, not like the rest of these. Here in America that will always see you through."

"Goodbye, tępa cipa." Sue Ellen's hug stinks. "Oh honey, I don't know what that means but I'm sure it's something sweet like you."

"OK," Zosia says.

Back in her room in Eastie, she doesn't try tonight to think about the forest, about the movies she likes where cars race the wrong way on freeways jumping bridges with boys shooting the heads off boys on the fly, about the fairy tale where Zosia is some kind of angel on a cool journey, a clever pirate: she just shuts off the light and cries. A cold draft blows across her feet. On the seventh floor of a crappy council flat in Warsaw, water is dripping on to the metal siding. Her mother's teeth are floating in a cleaned-out jam jar, her sisters are laying their school uniforms over the tops of chairs, and Zosia's cat is looking for the warmest place he can find, sneaking across the bed covers to nestle on somebody's head until they shove him away.

After crying she can sleep. It's a cloudy night and the planes are roaring low over the house, to the runway a quarter mile away. Zosia wraps up and feels herself a small, pretty shell, polished to a dull shine: a button on a coat.

3

It never seems like two years: sometimes half a year, sometimes almost her whole life. The plan was a a year, maybe. At the last minute, before getting on the plane she even thought in a panic about the army, but the idea of Afghanistan, where her classmate ended up-ended- or someplace worse, and they hardly even pay anyway. Mama says it'll be better, with the European Union, everything costs more but you can work in London, Munich, anywhere. And come home to visit all the time.

Zosia's neighborhood in Warsaw was not like the ladies talked about at work, like Ana told her one night about some of the Colombians' towns: the army then the narcos, shooting everybody, raping everybody. Burning the gardens and the houses. The Dominicans and the Haitians too, Ana said, and in the DR the money all of a sudden was worth like half, so you could stay and give tourists blowjobs or you could get some money from your cousin and get on a plane.

Her building, at least, wasn't like that. The neighbors were nice but Zosia and her sisters heard guns, and cops: blood puddled on the ground. Mostly it just kind of fell apart: people moved out of flats and nobody came in, the cement broke and crumbled, glass dropped out of the window and hit the deaf child. And the water pipes all started leaking, and after a while nobody came to fix any of it any more. That's how it went.

She's finally figured out the buses and trains. After her day job she watches the warm rain patter on the window, sipping a paper cup of sweet coffee that steams up her nose. Someone has left a newspaper on the seat and she slowly reads the headlines, thinking of what Jean said the day when he was doing floors in her area, spreading wax with a wet mop. The way he went on sometimes reminds her of the boy, who talked about being a tycoon, coming over to American where you can start a business without the whole goddamn world on your case.

I'll come right away, he said, I don't care about my mother and them's crap, every single year she's on her last days, she has only a little while left on the earth. In an old-lady voice, All I have left are my memories. His pale rib cage and concave belly floating up and down, talking talking talking until she finally said, you got another condom?

The headlines are all about banks unwinding, and Zosia imagines a giant sweater over the city, the threads loosening and the arms and back melting away. At the laundry the old white women and Vietnamese men say good morning, and she works by the radio, and at noon the lunch truck comes. All day she sent text messages to Ana: R U still going? In the day, on the bus or the subway, Zosia likes it here, where she doesn't hear all the time from Mama and the other unemployed ladies all day long, her sisters needing braces, the crappy toilets, the politicians, everybody's aches and pains.

At night it's different, she knows.

She feels the drums from the march in her stomach when she walks up out of the subway, shouting and air horns getting louder as she walks the two blocks toward the corner where they're meeting. Already a big crowd in front of their building, spilling in to the street where the cops' motorcycle lights twinkle in the dusk, setting up a barricade, and there's Filomena and Ana with their little flags and hats. Filomena is talking to two other women from their crew, making a story with her hands in the air. Filomena and Ana put their arms through hers and they walk up the street toward the crowd. Zosia was always in the middle, her sisters on either side, trying to stray off at the bakery or chase after their little friends so she clutched their arms and pulled them in and mama said that's a big girl, looking after everyone. She wrenches her arm away and drags it across her eyes.

"Don't worry, girl," Ana says, and then Gustavo's leaning against the building, blinking his red eyes at her.

"No te preocupes llorona." He grins. "Your man here to you."

"Cállate, dupek," Filomena says. "No talking now, marching."

One Financial Center, part 1

The boss is nervous, Zosia can see that. Strands of yellow hair cling to her neck, and when Gustavo knocks over the vacuum Sue Ellen jerks her head toward him, like a squirrel in the park twitching in fear but sticking to its hoard. It's a good sign. You're in trouble when she shows up smiling in her aqua business suit, tapping a shiny nail job on her clipboard: so everyone waits for an hours cut, or else a bummer new assignment, like when we sealed the floor in the fitness center with a new chemical that burned our eyes, and everybody started throwing up, and the Brazilian passed out and that was the last we saw him around.

Zosia's early in the food court like usual. Her laundry job was busy all day: she puts her feet up on a chair, listening to the talk around her dip and twitter like birds' songs. After two months she can mostly tell the Dominicans and the Salvadorans from the Colombians, but hardly gets a word. While they fiddle with their carts and wait for the pre-shift meeting to start she spaces out, staring off at the bright plastic signs of the restaurants closed for the day, Hong Kong, Bombay Spice, Dunkin Donuts, Happy's, Island Breeze.

All shit she guesses, of course nothing Polish. Why would they. Zosia brought a baloney sandwich, and stuffs it into a corner of her cart because they don't have a refrigerator in the office since the area manager found that beer a few months ago. Sue Ellen blamed the African girl, putting on a big show of waving the plastic six-pack rings like some bloody evidence on a TV police show, and they all sat glumly as the girl was bundled out the door by the security man even though everybody knows Sue Ellen is drunk half the time. By the end of that night's shift we can smell her sweet sharp breath when she fumbled with the keys.

The tears had jumped to Zosia's eyes when the guard jerked that girl's arm while she tried to put her coat on, her eyes first angry and then blank. And my sisters, Zosia thought, where are they anyway and who's watching out for them? She was about to say something but Filomena put a hand on her arm and whispered: "No talk now, not helping anyway." The first words any of us said to her.

The atrium above the food court is four stories high with glass at the top. When Zosia started the job in the summer, the tables were still lit up at six o'clock, and people in business suits stood at the railings overlooking the food court talking on cell phones, or clicked along on the shiny floors. By now the sun's going down at five, a pinkish-orange light creeping up the windows above them and nobody's up there at all. The light slants in like the Cathedral at her confirmation, when organ music swirled up in the arches with curlicues of dust, and the bishops gliding in tall hats like sails, and mama in her gloves and her sisters slouched down, secretly chewing gum. How long ago, Jesus?

Now Sue Ellen hops up again and stalks to the office, grasping the piece of paper she keeps folding and unfolding, her pumps thudding on the rubberized floor, and the birdsong voices get louder. The rubber surface is a bitch to clean: Zosia hopes to get an assignment upstairs on the office floors, where you just dry and wet mop, easy.

"Una carta del amante," says Filomena to the others at the table, "Mírala pinche erre sudando."

"She says that Sue Ellen is sweaty because she has a love letter," whispers the girl next to Zosia.

"La erre ya empezó tomando," Filomena adds, pursing her lips toward the office. "Already drunk," she adds to Zosia.

"What do they always call her?" Zosia whispers to the girl, who shakes her head, a giggle creasing her round face. "What, Ana?"

"Miss Fila calls her la erre, it stands for..." Ana looks at the other ladies, "¿Como dices R-C-C-N en ingles?"

"¿Porqué la preguntas?" calls out a woman at the next table. "What they teaching you in college profesora?"

"Oh my god," Ana sighs. "It just means she's stuck up, I mean. Rubia con cuca negra means, you know, blonde hair up here, but dark hair..." she brushes her hand over her lap. The shrieks of laughter bring Sue Ellen out of the office, clutching her clipboard and the bag of keys. She looks suspiciously at the fifteen women and Gustavo ranged around the food court tables, and Jean the tall Haitian leans on his broom gazing into space.

"I guess you think it's all a fun game, you smarties," Sue Ellen shouts, "Well tonight is a serious time for all of us. It is a wake-up call, maybe some of you are familiar with that expression." She takes a deep breath, swaying perceptibly. Another wave of giggles sweeps around the tables.

"Today will be our last day together," says Sue Ellen. "The owners of this building, for reasons I will not go into here, are closing down their business and so the contract is cancelled. Everyone is laid off."

Jean the Haitian murmurs something in his deep baritone and laughs softly, a surprisingly high light sounds that travels up the atrium.

She looks around wildly. "What's the problem?"

"Nothing," Jean rumbles. "Excuse the interruption."

Gustavo puts up his hand. "Miss Sue Ellen, necesito otro vacuum, el mio no funciona," he says, and Ana addresses Sue Ellen: "His vacuum is broken."

"Same assignments except Zosia and Jean, third floor," Sue Ellen says, "there's a lot of trash to pull on the third floor, a lot." She tosses the key bag on the table, spins around and totters off, while Gustavo shakes his head.

"Hace dos semanas el vacu' no sirve y la puta no hace nada."

"Ni modo, mojado," Filomena says, "Somos despedidos." Zosia loves to watch Filomena tell jokes, the dark folds of her face elongated and stretched, her mouth and eyes contorted to match the different voices, but she's frowning now, with a quiet little knot of women standing around her. The three Dominican girls stand together by the entrance, looking from the office to the other workers, posing like movie stars, with the sparkling earrings and dark sad eyes. They make her feel clumsy, pale and solid, though back home people sometimes called her pretty. She was, said the boy she stopped writing back to, a flower. When Zosia opens her eyes the girls are gone.

Ana bends down to Zosia: "Did you understand, what laid off means?" Zosia nods, she is going to the third floor, to pull trash with Jean who's rolling his cart toward the elevator. Something else's up, it's fuzzy, a few more months and then she'll get everything. She was always surprising people at school, bright with math, bright with language, so when the plants started closing she told mama, I'm going to talk to that agency. Zosia hurries to catch up with Jean.

2

Not a bad job really, six to ten and they pretty much leave you alone in this building. One time when they had the refrigerator Celia claimed that Zosia stole her lunch and some of the Salvadorans hissed at her and gave her little pushes for a couple of days, so Zosia came to work the following night with a plan to grab Celia's hair and pound her face. But Filomena pulled them both aside and stared from one to the other, until they shook hands.

"Pa'lante hermanas, no seamos perras," Filomena had said. "We all together here. No more shit."

Sue Ellen screams at someone each week and leaves the rest be, sitting at her desk watching the little TV. It's better than Zosia's supervisor at the other building, Osvaldo who always offered overtime, detail work, smiling at her in his office. These people are so uneducated, you will see, he said, not like us. We all came here on different ships but we're in the same boat now. And then his hand on her arm, guiding her to the elevator, and then his hand on her ass. There's no problem like that here, of course Gustavo tried like he does with everybody: "Hello, my darling, I can make love you," but only touching the tip of her shoulder lightly with his rough farmer hand.

She thought he was a drunk but then Ana said his eyes are red cause he doesn't sleep much, he has another part-time plus a full-time. "Don't worry about Gustavo," Ana said, "he talks like a horn dog but he's OK."

"No echame flores, muchacha," Gustavo told Ana, "Puedo amarte también."

"Cállate, huevon," Filomena interrupted, and Gustavo stalked off muttering.

"She says him to shut up?" Zosia asked Ana.

"Oye, look at you girl. Ella habla español, she speaks Spanish. You know what's huevon? Like big stupid guy or big lazy guy. What do you call that in Polish?"

Zosia shrugged. "Cienias, I guess, or dupek. Dupek." Filomena shouted with laughter: "I learning Polacka now."

The Albania Party

    Eating cold pizza when Jacob calls to say, You have to come to my going away party, it’s an Albanian theme. You going to have food? I ask.
    Yeah yeah, he says. Well, Greek food, their food is basically Greek as I understand it.
    How do you get all these fucking contracts? I ask. You're an expert about Albania?
     It’s the only officially atheist country.
    What about China?
    Just bring some beer, dude, he says.
    I should say that I went to graduate school with Jacob, an Israeli-Californian who stayed around the Harvard world, doing some kind of consulting. Whenever I go to his place I meet more consultants, who generally eat and drink really well and are fun to listen to; they always seem to know a lot about new music and new economic paradigms, or whatever. Damned if I know what any of them does for money.
    He says three women from the team will be at the party, the team sent by a think tank to save Albania. I’m always surprised how young consultants are, early 30s maybe, smart and confident, speaking quickly and decisively with crisp gestures, enforcing each concept with a clear example. A blonde American whose handshake stings, whispers with Jacob; the English statistician, pale, sits alone with her hands in her lap. The other, a cheerful Pakistani who waves her hands gracefully in the air. I'm sluggish, eyeing by the cocktails and concepts and bric-a-brac from around the world.
    Right now the major source of revenue is foreign remittances, and beyond that ninety percent of the economy is gray, the Pakistani woman is saying. The mayor of Tirana painted and repaired just the buildings downtown, he thought that would attract foreign direct investment. Well that didn’t work, of course. She’s startlingly beautiful, a sparkly thing on the side of her nose catching the overhead light and I'm mostly looking at her. 
    It’s corrupt she says, very corrupt. Bribery is just the normal way of doing business. You know, the police at every traffic stop. The Aegean beaches though, as you might imagine, are amazing, a totally underutilized resource. I lean forward nodding seriously, looking concerned, I hope, sympathetic yet intelligent, trying to look down her shirt without being too obvious. 
    How’s the food? I’m desperate at this point to keep her talking to me.
    It’s basically Greek.
    Do you speak any, Albanian is it?
    Doesn’t matter, she says, one of our team, Eddy works for the mayor of Tirana, who holds the key relationship, and a certain gentleman—
    He’s anonymous, the blonde American snaps, swinging her light blue eyes into our conversation like a baseball bat. Look. Their economy’s a basket case, no FDI, no tax revenues, all the macroeconomic structures are distorted. No planning or forecasting, no clue, end of story.
    The beautiful consultant’s eyes go completely blank. In a second she's telling stories about Ivy League dining halls with a theology graduate student from Yale. Everyone drinks a lot more. I learn from Jacob that the certain gentleman is a kindly currency speculator, who wants to bring Albania its new economic plan. The country has three and a half million people. The occasion for the party is that, for all its fucked up macroeconomics, the government finally scraped up the matching funds. A lot, probably; Harvard people are always talking about flying off to one of these missions which sound heavily resourced. At one of Jacob's parties a guy waiting in line for the bathroom bought an airplane on his cell phone.

    The American consultant spreads glasses, limes and an ice bag on the kitchen counter and is cracking ice cubs with a kitchen spoon, sending water and lime halves scooting across our shoes. A mojito's the easiest drink in the world to make she's shouting, that's the beauty of it! When a glass shatters on the floor Jacob edges her aside, talking in a low voice.
    The house like I imagine a movie set, jammed with props, chandeliers, oil paintings, little glass figures, photos of men in suits clapping hands on each other's backs in front of ivy and bricks. An old guy in a tweed jacket is sitting with a water glass of what smells like brandy and somehow we start talking about the next football season. Fundamentals, he stresses, jabbing his finger on to the gleaming wood tabletop, the modern player lacks fundamentals. Jacob grabs my arm as I'm wandering off: What was he telling you? Don't you know who that guy is?

    Everyone's crowded in the kitchen and someone is frying hamburgers. The theologian smokes a cigar. The American consultant turns sloppy and childlike. But what should we do? she says. Eventually I give her a ride home, and she quizzes me about Jacob: He’s so cute. I can’t believe I thought he was gay but you can't really tell, I knew this guy… He calls everybody brother, I said, that's about all I really know.
    And they are there now, I imagine, in an office drinking imported beer, the fates in the tree, the navy-suited blond leader, the beauty, Eddy, the pale number cruncher and my friend Jacob.

    They are sort of like us, you know, the ones who make the plans I mean, who call the tune.