June 09, 2022
The 13th Element
by Taylor Miles
Nadia looked out at the scrap metal mountains in the yard. The two silver reflective stripes along the back of her neon orange jacket glowed in the sunset.
She opened her mouth and bit down on a chip. Crunch, crunch. Tangy salt and vinegar sting, slight numbness of the tongue.
Shit, she thought. We should have sold so much more of the aluminum by now given this week’s visit from regional.
She moved her fingers around the bag, accounting for the remaining fried potatoes, before popping another into her mouth. After licking the salt off her long, glittery nails, she scrolled through her phone’s to-do list app. All the day’s tasks now listed in a faded font with a strike-through to designate their completion, except for one.
The building door swung open and smacked the side of her platform tennis shoe.
“Hey, careful with that door. You almost whacked me in the face.” She bent down to rub off the black smudge.
“Sorry, boss,” Tom laughed the kind that triggered his smoker’s cough, echoing deep into his lungs. “Let me make it up to you.” He flipped open the red and white paper box in his hand with his thumb and started to hand her a cigarette.
She crunched the chips harder, faster.
“Dude, she quit, you idiot. Put that shit away.” Ralph grabbed the cigarette from Tom’s fingertips, stuck the orange end between his lips, and flicked open his light – all in one movement.
“Hey, I wasn’t offering you one, you little shit.” Tom shoved Ralph up against the trash can. Ralph composed his balance while inhaling the cigarette.
Nadia sighed loudly and pushed her freshly dyed, dark red hair out of her eyes. “Aren’t you two supposed to be home with your wives by now?”
“Oh, trust me, they’re happier when we’re here.” They laughed in unison like hyenas. “Anyway, it’s great to be standing here with you, too, boss.”
Ralph and Tom took turns exhaling toward the towering pile of stainless-steel sinks, but it made no difference with the wind. She tasted salty smoke. Sigh. Crunch.
“Sorry. Regional’s visit on Thursday has me a bit on edge.”
“Regional? Those fools?” Tom inhaled, furrowing his brows.
She laughed with her mouth full. Tom’s nonchalant reference to regional as fools immediately made her feel lighter, like someone had temporarily lifted a metal jacket off her shoulders.
“They’ll be fine,” Ralph exhaled. “Just steer them away from the aluminum.”
“Hey, why don’t you take your mind off regional and come have a drink with us?”
“I can’t. I’ve got shit to do. And it’s never just one round with you guys.”
“Alright, boss. You better not just go home and drink alone, thinking about how to get rid of that aluminum.”
“And you better not stumble into work a minute past nine tomorrow.” She wiped her lips with the back of her hand, folded over the bag to savor the few remaining bites for later, and walked towards her car.
After she shut the door of her golden yellow, vintage convertible, she caught her reflection in the mirror. This new shade of maroon popped, but her roots were greasy after a full day’s work, and she carried her overtime hours in the dark bags under her eyes.
A few blocks out of the parking lot, a train horn blared and flashing red lights stopped her at the tracks. Her tongue felt especially numb after this bag and she slid it around the roof of her mouth, trying to bring back full feeling. She turned up a vaguely recognizable techno anthem on the radio. She thought about how Tom had accurately summed up her evening plans, shook her head, chuckled, and rolled her eyes.
She fumbled around the chip bag in the cup holder until she could get her fingers on one. Crunch. Why couldn’t she do the same thing to all her problems?
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Outside the second-level window of the shipping container office, a washing machine swerved across the skyline, held tight in the rusty claws of a crane.
“Hey, boss, you missed out last night. Come join us for a...”
Ralph socked him in the upper arm. “Jesus Christ, Tom, she quit!”
Nadia said nothing and continued staring out the window, watching a washing machine tumble a few feet down the mound before catching on a rod, leaving its circular door tilting upward toward the pale blue winter sky. Once so useful, whirling the clothes around and around in soapy suds, now nothing but crunch: She shattered a corn nut between her molars.
“Should I interpret your silence as aluminum stress?” Tom asked.
“Maybe you should interpret it as a request to get out of her office because you keep offering her cigarettes.” Ralph yanked him out the door by the collar of his reflective orange jacket.
Nadia wanted to pounce on Tom and rip that pack of Marlboros out of his dry, worn hands. The corn nuts were not cutting it today. She crunched her way through hours of phone calls and emails to all their regular customers, despite knowing sales had already tried each of them. No one was buying in this market.
Regional was not going to be happy. They loved her when all was well and dandy, putting her face all over the newsletter: their young, pretty branch manager.
But the moment a standard, minor setback arose, they called everything about her into question. They gave her elementary advice, stared too long at her nails, and commented on her hair color, as though the way she expressed her femininity affected her ability to sell off some scrap. Please. The market had temporarily rendered those floppy bits worthless. Did they want her to just make the pieces magically disappear?
She looked back out the window. The 20-foot pile of aluminum scrap stood untouched. The remnants of lawn chairs, soda cans, bike frames, they ate at her.
Ping. Frank Murphy: Looking forward to our meeting Thursday! I’m sure our lead woman is crushing it as usual.
She threw her phone to the other side of the desk, knocking over her cup of pens.
Call me “lead woman” one more goddamn time. She reached for the bag of corn nuts: empty. She tapped her nails on the desk, over and over, the acrylic taps getting louder and harder until her hand started pulsing in pain. She picked the pens back up from the floor and started chomping through each black, plastic cap, while scrolling back through her contacts. She bit one cap so hard at the wrong angle, her gum started to bleed. She licked the blood off her teeth and walked out of her office: “No one interrupt me unless it’s to tell me you’ve sold some aluminum.”
She slammed the door before anyone could respond.
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The next day, the yard rumbled in a steady hum, occasionally broken by an avalanche of tumbling parts. With regional coming tomorrow, everyone knew better than to open Nadia’s door. She bit off the heads of gummy bears before popping their bodies into her mouth, as she proofed the profit and loss statements of each metal.
She logged into the company’s internal server to compare her branch’s numbers to those Colorado wide. Their profits for this quarter were higher than all other branches in the state – other than for that one foiled scrap. She sunk her canine teeth into a red gummy bear just as someone knocked on her door.
“Yes?” She replied in a tone passive aggressive enough to make the person think twice about entering.
Tom opened the door. “It’s lunchtime, boss!” He raised his eyebrows and wiggled his fingers up near his face as he spoke. “Jenny brought leftovers from a catered gig she went to last night. You’ve got to try this mac and cheese.”
Tom’s enthusiasm was always slightly too high for what the situation merited and in turn never failed to make her smile. “Oh, thanks, but I’m just going to work on through lunch today. I brought something,” she lied.
He clicked his tongue three times in disappointment, giving her an exaggerated wink and thumbs up with the final click. “Missing out.” He shut the door.
Three hours passed and not a gummy bear left alive. God, I need a cigarette. She bit the eraser off her pencil. Not much flavor, but chewy enough. She gnawed on it. Lost in thought, she soon swallowed it, then grabbed another pencil from her cup, and bit off the next one.
She eyed the paper clips in their little glass jar. They had become so useless with the invention of the stapler. Talk about an upgrade. Just like the upgrade she had almost convinced regional of last visit: a shredder with higher horsepower. This visit was her chance. Did the pile of aluminum just wink at her?
Tom knocked twice on her door. “Bye, boss. Don’t work too late, alright?”
As obnoxious as Tom and Ralph could be, they were her hardest working employees. Besides her, they were always the last to leave. She watched them pull out of the parking lot in their pickup trucks one after the other.
The sun now set over the sandy waters of the South Platte River and the yard rested in rare silence: the bulldozers parked; the cranes locked. Finally, she could think clearly.
She wiped her arm across the desk, sending the scraps from her own workday – eraser-less pencils, empty snack bags, warped plastic pen caps – into the trash can. She forced her computer off by holding down the power button, grabbed her bag, and switched off the lights. The keys jingled as she locked the door.
She walked through the yard past the pile of brass, then rebar, then copper, until there it was, aglow in the golden hour: the aluminum. As she approached the pile, she stepped on long, thin, silver pieces sending them wailing like warped baking sheets.
She tilted her head back to look at the mound it its entirety, eyeing the various parts: The 13th element of the periodic table would consume her no more. She picked up a chip-sized aluminum triangle. Her heart started to pulse in her ears. Her face flushed despite the cold wind. She turned the triangle over in her fingers. It shimmered between her glittery nails.
A truck rumbled by out on the street behind the office. She held the piece up close enough to her face to see her blurred reflection of maroon hair. She touched the triangle to her lips, the coolness like kissing a mirror. She opened her mouth and bit down. Crunch.