He listened for a minute and hung up. "There's an outage in the Silver
Lake Area. The brakes on a bus failed and took out an overhead
section."
Eddie sat back. "No sense in you going. With work traffic on the
surface streets until the freeway gets fixed, they won't get the truck
there until 6:30 or so."
"Right." Ray drank coffee reflectively. "You going looking?"
"I'm an old-timer. I got a lot of seniority. How about you?"
"I got bills. It's going to cost me near a hundred a month--that's a
steep bite."
"I still think they'll back off."
"They'll have to," Ray said. "If not right now, when the pressure gets
on. You ask me, we've got them by the short hair." He settled into the
chair. "I see it as an organic phenomenon. When society gets as
complex as ours, it has to grow more and more engineers. But there's a
feedback circuit in effect. The more engineers we grow, the more
complex society becomes. Each new one creates the need for two more.
I get a sort of feeling of--I don't know--vitality, I guess, when I
walk into, say, an automated factory. All that machinery and all that
electronic gear is like a single cell in a living organism--an
organism that's growing every day, multiplying like bacteria. And it's
always sick, and we're the doctors. That's job security. We're riding
the wave of the future. I don't think they'll make a salary cut
stick."
"I hope you're right," Eddie said.
* * * * *
Eddie checked out at 7:15, when the night supervisor finally arrived.
As he left the building, he noted that a burglar alarm down the street
had gone off; probably because of a short circuit. The clanking set
his nerves on edge. Apprehensively he felt a rising wind against his
cheeks.
At home, he was greeted with a perfunctory kiss at the door.
"Honey," Lois told him, "you took the check book, and I didn't have
any money."
"Something come up? I'm sorry."
"We're all out of milk. The milk man didn't come today. Their
homogenizing machinery broke down. I phoned the dairy about nine; and
then, of course, the phone has been on the blink since about eleven or
a little before, so I couldn't ask you to bring some home."
"I kept trying to get you."
"I figured you had to work late again, when you weren't here at six,
and I knew you'd be here when you got here."
Eddie sat down and she sat on the chair arm beside him. "How did it go
today?"
He started to tell her about the wage cut and Ramon Lopez; but then he
didn't want to talk about it. "So-so," he said. "There was an outage
over in the Silver Lake Area just before I left."
"Fixed yet?"
"I doubt it," he said. "Probably a couple of more hours."
"Gee," she said, "when I think of all that meat in the deep
freezer...."
"I wouldn't stock so much," he said. "I really wouldn't."
She twisted away from him. "Honey. I'm jittery. Something's ... I
don't know. In the air, I guess."
The wind rattled the windows.
* * * * *
While Lois was warming dinner, his son came in.
"Hi, Eddie."
"Hi, Larry."
"Eddie, when we gonna get the TV fixed?"
Eddie put down the newspaper. "We just don't have a hundred dollars or
so right now." He searched for matches on the table by the chair.
"Lois, oh, Lois, where're the matches?"
She came in. "They were all out Friday at the store, and I keep
forgetting to lay in a supply. Use my lighter over there."
"About the TV--"
Lois was wiping her hands on the paper towel she had brought with her.
"Replacement parts are hard to find for the older sets," she said.
"Anyway. I read today Channel Three finally went off the air. That
leaves only Two and Seven. And the programs aren't any good, now, are
they? All those commercials and all?"
"They do use a lot of old stuff I've already seen," the son admitted,
"but every once in a while there's something new."
"Let's talk about it some other time, Larry, O.K.?" Eddie said. "How's
that? It's almost your bed-time. Studies done?"
"All but the Library report."
"Well, finish it, and--"
"I got to read the book down there. Two classes assigned it and they
don't have the copies to let us check out. And I want to ask you about
something, Eddie."
"Daddy's tired. His dinner's on. Come on, Eddie. I'll set it right
now. And Larry, you've already eaten...."
* * * * *
After dinner, Eddie got back to the paper, the evening _Times_. It was
down to eight pages, mostly advertising. There was a front-page
editorial reluctantly announcing a price increase.
"They raise the price once more, and we'll just quit taking it," Lois
said. "You read about the airplane crash in Florida? Wasn't that
terrible? What do you think caused it?"
"Metal fatigue, probably," Eddie said. "It was a twenty-year-old jet."
"The company said it wasn't that at all."
"They always do," Eddie said.
"I don't guess the payroll check came today or you'd have mentioned
it."
"Payroll's still all balled up. Somebody pressed a wrong button on the
new machine and some fifty thousand uncoded cards got scattered all
over the office."
"Oh, no! What do the poor people, who don't have bank accounts, do?"
"Just wait, like we wait."
"You had a bad day," Lois said. "I can tell."
"No...." Eddie said. "Not really, I guess."
"Still working on Saturday?"
"I guess so. Nothing was said. Maybe it'll get easier after the end of
the month."
"You said it was all that new construction work in the Valley that's
making you so shorthanded."
"That's part of it."
"They're not scheduled to finish until ... when, sometime next year,
isn't it?"
"The end of '81 right now."
"Eddie! Listen to me! I hardly ever see you any more. You're not going
to have to put in all this overtime for the next two years!"
"Of course not," Eddie said. "Maybe after this month, that's all, and
the work load will level off."
* * * * *