Death Instinct - Jed Rubenfeld [170]
True, she didn’t hate Mr. Brighton. He might even be a little endearing in his forgetfulness, his childlike enthusiasms. And he was obviously generous. But she would be dreadfully unhappy if she married him. She would die from such unhappiness. No, she wouldn’t die. And what did her happiness count against the lives that would be saved, the scientific progress that could be achieved, if she said yes? What right did she have to say no, to live for herself, when millions of young men had given more than their happiness—had given their lives—in the war?
“Don’t, Miss,” said one of the girls close by her.
“I’m sorry?” said Colette.
“Don’t lean on that,” said the girl. “It’s the lights for the whole factory. Some of us got work to finish. You want us all to be in the dark?”
Colette looked behind her. In the middle of the wall was a metal bar with a red wooden handle—a master light switch, apparently, which she had been on the verge of accidentally shutting off. When she turned round again, Colette became conscious that all the girls were staring at her, and not welcomingly. Several were chewing gum. One or two wiped hair from their eyes with smudged wrists, the better to see Colette’s slender arms and her pretty neck effulgent with diamonds. The girl who had spoken seemed the least interested in her. She returned to her work, snipping a stray hair from her paintbrush with the curving blades of a pair of scissors. Then the girl dabbed the brush into a dish of green paint, placed its tip between her lips, and drew it out again, nicely pointed.
“Stop!” cried Colette.
“Who—me?” answered the girl.
“Don’t put that in your mouth,” said Colette.
“That’s how they teach us, honey,” said the girl. “You point the brush with your mouth. Sorry if it ain’t refined.”
The girls, Colette now saw, were all pointing their brushes the same way—with their lips. “Where are your gloves?” she asked. “Don’t they give you protective gloves?”
“Only one of us in this room got gloves,” said the girl.
A loud bell rang. The girls jumped from their chairs. Amid an eruption of female talk and laughter, they cleared their desks, putting away paints and brushes and unfinished watch dials. As the girls hurried to the coatrack and made for the door, one of them stopped next to Colette. She glanced furtively about and said, “Some of us are afraid, ma’am. A couple of girls took ill. The company doctors say it’s because they got the big pox, but they weren’t the types. They weren’t the types at all.”
“What?” said Colette, not understanding the girl’s idiomatic English. But the girl hurried away. Colette tried to pull off her leather gloves; they fit her too tightly. She tried to undo the diamond choker, but couldn’t find its clasp. She gave up in frustration, and as the working girls emptied out of the factory she ran to Brighton’s office, calling out his name.
“Yes, Miss Rousseau?” replied Brighton eagerly as she neared him. “Are you going to make me the happiest man on earth?”
“The girls are putting the brushes in their mouths,” said Colette.
“Of course they are. That’s the secret to our technique.”
“They’re swallowing the paint.”
“How wasteful,” replied Brighton. “Do you remember which ones? Samuels will make a note of it.”
“No—it will poison them,” said Colette.
“You mean the paint?” cried Brighton. “Not at all. Don’t be silly. How could I sell a product to the public if it were too dangerous for my girls to work with?”
“Do you monitor the radiation levels here—as you do at your paint factory?”
“There’s no need, my dear.”
“But you can’t let them put it in their mouths. It will get into their jaws. It will get into their teeth. It could—” She broke off in mid-sentence, her breath stopping cold as a series of images cascaded through her mind: a tooth wrapped in cotton, eaten away from within; a girl with a tumor on her jaw; another girl in New Haven, with a greenish aura emanating from her neck. A darkness crossed over Colette’s eyes, which she tried to keep out of her voice: “Oh, I suppose