Graham Closed The Meeting Door Before I Could Take My Seat

The chair where I had sat for eleven years held a box of paper cups.

I moved it to the floor.

Graham Toller put one hand on the chair back.

"We're keeping this group small, Saba. You can get back to your mirrors."

Beyond him, a screen showed a price of $18.4 million. That was what Lantern Ridge Instruments planned to pay for the operating assets of Juniper Mesa Optics, where I ran the telescope coating shop.

My coating shop appeared on the screen as LEGACY LABOR.

I was a small, dark-skinned woman with silver coils cut close to my head and a pale burn mark across my left wrist.

At sixty-three, I had spent more than half my life putting thin metal skins on glass so people could see farther into the dark. I was Ethiopian American. I had grown up with two languages at our kitchen table, but glass had taught me a third.

Graham spoke none of it.

Graham was a broad, pink-faced white man with sandy hair combed flat and a silver watch that slid over his shirt cuff.

He was forty-seven. Since becoming president, he had called me "our shop mother" twice in front of visitors.

"The buyer asked about the observatory schedule," I said.

"They have our revenue sheet."

"A revenue sheet doesn't tell them when a mirror comes off its mount."

He smiled toward the people at the table.

"That's why we'll write down your craft before you retire. Nobody should depend on one aging employee."

Nobody looked at me. One buyer's aide studied her pen.

I picked up my notebook.

"Was a retirement date put on that sheet too?"

"Don't make this personal."

He closed the door gently behind me. That small care made it worse.

Outside the loading bay, wind pushed red dust along the curb. The Sangre de Cristo peaks held thin white streaks of snow. Inside, our vacuum pumps kept their steady, low growl.

My assistant, June Bell, stood beside a covered transport crate.

"Did they ask about the pump seal?"

"They asked me to leave."

She pulled her clean hood off. "Then they didn't ask anything useful."

We were preparing a secondary mirror from Arroyo Crown Observatory, three white domes on a dry ridge beyond Magdalena. The crew there watched faint stars. Dust watched them back.

I took a small polished inspection disk from its padded sleeve. I held my fingertip above it and watched the shape beneath it.

A straight fingertip should stay straight in the reflection. A ripple or a pulled edge made me stop and look closer. It was an old habit, a quick warning. The test meters made the final call.

June watched me turn the disk.

"Straight?"

"Straight. Let's see what the meter says."

On the desk lay Graham's new employment packet. He wanted it signed by Friday. There was a retirement option, a $15,000 completion bonus, and a promise to provide "all client relationships" to the buyer.

My regular salary was $128,000. He had circled that figure as if I might have forgotten what fed me.

Under the packet, I had left a blue folder with a bent brass corner. Graham had never asked why the observatory's checks went to Clear Aperture Services LLC before Juniper received its facility fee.

He saw our work on his sales sheet. That seemed to be enough for him.

At lunch I called Esteban Cordova at Arroyo Crown.

"Are you still coming Thursday?" I asked.

"At ten. Should I bring the revised transport form?"

"Please bring the signed service agreement too."

There was a small pause.

Esteban was fifty-five, Mexican American, and the procurement director who could thank a driver for wiping his boots while spotting a missing insurance page across a room.

"Which copy?" he asked.

"The original. With the schedules."

"Of course, Ms. Mekonnen."

He always used my last name when something needed careful handling.

That evening I drove home past walls the color of dried peaches. Someone nearby was roasting green chile. Its sharp smell reached me through the open car window.

I set the blue folder on my kitchen table.

The agreement covered three years at $920,000 a year. It named my company as the service provider. Juniper supplied a building, shared equipment, and shop support under a separate $310,000 yearly facility agreement.

I had kept that structure when Juniper hired me. My old customers were not a signing gift.

On page nineteen, Section Fourteen carried two initials beside a change made in blue ink. Mine and the observatory director's.

I read the words once, though I knew them.

No assignment without the prior written consent of Clear Aperture Services LLC.

My phone lit up beside the folder.

Graham had sent a calendar notice for Thursday at ten.

It said CLIENT TRANSFER SIGNING. My name was not on the guest list.