374
PARTISAN REVIEW
It
was hard for him to believe that he'd been there for almost six
years now - he was still considered new, one of the younger men.
He
was
new. Last time they laid him off with no clear promise of
when he'd be called back Marian said, Honey just quit, tell them to
go to hell, but he knew she didn't mean it, she'd worked before Paulie
was born, waitressing mainly, sales clerking, she wasn't exactly eager
to go back and now there was going to be another baby. Steel isn't
the kind of job you walk away from, Harvey said . The pay scale was
high. Also the benefits , the pension, all that, shit he'd have to be crazy
to quit , he'd only wind up on unemployment and what then.. .
?
Much of the time he wore ear guards on the job, especially when
he was welding, they had the strange effect of eliminating the little
noises you never notice and emphasizing the big ones, the vibrations,
that is , the feel of the noises . It was really weird: he actually found
himself listening, trying to figure out what he heard. For a while he
monkeyed around with his walkman to fix it so that he could listen to
good loud rock music from the Surf City station, the ear phones under
the ear guards , but it didn't work out, all the sounds came scrambled
in together. After an hour his head buzzed and his jaws ached from
clenching, he could get high, he thought, from wearing the ear guards
themselves , then he'd go smoke ajoint in the lavatory and everything
would go floating, so weird there was no way to describe it.
Even at home he got into the habit of going around coiled tight,
almost in a crouch, as if he was waiting for something to happen,
some loud noise or surprise. His skin was hot and flushed, it was the
blood beating inside, an artery throbbing in his forehead which was
almost identical to an artery in his father's forehead he'd always hated
since he was a young kid. His hair was a dark red clayey color bleach–
ing out fair in the summer months, wavy, worn a little long, side–
burns he kept trimmed. His shoulders and arms were muscular but
there was a roll of fat around his waist Marian teased him about. He
didn't know what his weight was, exactly, but he knew he couldn't be
overweight, he wasn't the type.
He was good looking as he'd ever been, Marian said,
e~cept
for
that habit of his , working his mouth like he was talking to himself or
arguing with someone. Curling his lip at people when he really meant
to smile. "You're getting to be some kind of asshole, sometimes,"
Marian said, pouting as if she'd been insulted . "Your mind's always
off somewhere. "
He'd take it light, wouldn't lose his temper, maybe make ajoke
