Into the Inferno - Earl Emerson [74]
DuPont was being as intractable as any large corporation could be. So far I had yet to talk to a single person in authority there. At lunchtime Jane’s had promised to send a couple of people up in three hours, but as of that night they still hadn’t arrived. I’d called Jane’s five or six times since then, but neither of the two parties I’d spoken to earlier were in and nobody else seemed to have heard of me or a junket to North Bend. Pacific Northwest Paint Contractors had been shipping, among other items, toluene, which Stephanie looked up yesterday. The pathophysiology included effects to the CNS, euphoria, dizziness, confusion, CNS depression, headache, vertigo, hallucinations, seizures, ataxia, tinnitus, stupor, and coma. It was very close to the list of symptoms from exposure to organophosphates.
The list wasn’t exactly in line with what I was going through, but it was close enough. It occurred to me that the reason Joel had fallen off the roof and Jackie had crashed her car might have had to do with some of those symptoms in combination with one another. Hallucinations and dizziness. Euphoria and stupor. It was scary thinking about it. Pacific Northwest Paint had promised to check to see whether their shipment had been damaged and whether any of their containers had been opened.
In addition, Stephanie made a half-dozen discreet calls to physicians and personnel at Tacoma General. We discussed and analyzed Charlie Drago and the situation in Chattanooga, agreeing it would be good to get a second perspective from Tennessee.
Allyson and I had prepared dinner together while Stephanie and Britney played Candy Land, and then, at Allyson’s insistence, we set up candles on the table for dinner. The girls continued to treat Stephanie like visiting royalty. After dinner Stephanie and I were dragooned into a game of Monopoly, which we abandoned before it officially ended, when Allyson got so far ahead of the rest of us that Britney started to cry.
It was almost eleven when we unfolded the futon in the family room, insisting, all of us, that Stephanie forgo the motel and stay here. When the girls begged to watch a late-night movie with her, The Whole Town’s Talking, with Edward G. Robinson and Jean Arthur, I objected, knowing Stephanie had been up late the night before, but Stephanie said a girl party would be fun, that I should go to bed and get my beauty sleep. Britney cackled, never having heard the phrase beauty sleep before.
As I stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the family room watching them, I felt so much love for my girls it almost hurt. Characteristically separated by half a body width, Britney slept by herself, while the other two were snuggled up together. It was ironic because during the day Britney was the clingy one and Allyson the slightly more standoffish of my daughters. When sick or asleep, they reversed roles, Allyson clutching, Britney off to one side. Britney had a whisper of perspiration on her brow, both feet sticking out from the blankets.
Mixed with Allyson’s darker, heavier-looking mop, Stephanie Riggs’s hair was so silky and lustrous, it seemed from another world.
Too bad Stephanie hated me. Had circumstances been different, I would have been thinking about the curve of her thigh under the sheet, the gentle jut of her jawline,