Free Lucky Stars by Jane Heller Page A

instruments that looked like carrot peelers in their fast-moving hands. They stood shoulder to shoulder—as close together as sardines in a can (sorry, but I’ve got smelly fish on the brain)—at a conveyor belt that ran the length of the room.
    “Look how hard they work,” my mother marveled as we passed by the women, who were chattering amongst themselves in Spanish. As I had studied the language in both high school and college and become even more proficient in it after moving to Latino-populated L.A., I understood what they were saying. (“My back is sore.” “My car needs new tires.” “My husband sings in the shower, like he thinks he’s Ricky Martin.” Nothing of consequence, in other words.)
    “They do work hard,” said Corbin. “They’re the core of our operation, the heart and soul. They skin and bone the fish—by hand, hour after hour, day after day—and place the cleaned product onto the conveyor, which carries the fish down to the canning area. Then the fish is put into the cans, either with our vegetable broth or in oil, and steam heated in an oven to kill any possible bacteria.”
    “Very responsible,” my mother mused. “About killing the bacteria, I mean.” She leaned over and spoke to one of the women, who was, at that moment, cutting the bones out of a tuna. “How do you know you’ve gotten them all?”
    “Excuse?” said the woman.
    “I’m talking about the bones, ” yelled my mother, as if the woman were hard of hearing, not foreign in extraction. “How do you know if you’ve taken them all out?”
    “Ah, bones,” said the woman. “I know because I do for thirty years. When you do for long time, you know how.”
    “I suppose that’s very true,” said my mother, thinking, no doubt, of how she had been nagging me for thirty years and that, therefore, she knew how. She and the fish-bone cutter-outer were kindred spirits, that’s what they were, and who could have predicted it. “But occasionally, you make mistakes, right? Not on purpose, of course, but a bone can slip through, isn’t that so?”
    “Could get hit by bus, too,” said the woman in an utterance of wisdom that provoked a vigorous nod from my mother.
    “After the canned fish is steamed, it’s cooled,” said Corbin, hurrying us along on the tour. “Then the cans are lidded, labeled, and shipped. And that, ladies, is that. End of story.”
    “Very impressive, I must say,” my mother declared. “I don’t know what I expected, but it looks as though Fin’s has its act together.”
    Corbin seemed greatly relieved. Perhaps he’d taken my mother’s Dateline threat seriously.
    “What would completely restore my confidence in Fin’s, however,” she went on, “would be to get a sense of the chief executive here, the man or woman in charge of the company, the person who sets the tone when it comes to quality control. I’d like to meet with him or her while I’m here, Mr. Beasley. Just for a few minutes . ”
    “I’m sorry, but he’s with our advertising agency this morning,” he said. “He’s in the same meeting that I should be getting back to. So I’m afraid—”
    “But you were able to take time out from the meeting,” she interrupted. “I’m only asking for a moment or two with the president of Fin’s, to ask him a few questions. My daughter and I did nearly die, Mr. Beasley. And it was your company that would certainly have been liable.”
    God, she was a battle-ax. Why wasn’t I even more screwed up than I was, I wondered, growing up with a mother who demanded audiences with presidents of tuna fish companies?
    Corbin sighed. “Let me see what I can do.” He left us back in the lobby with the receptionist while he went off to either find the president or pretend to. We waited.
    “Why don’t we just go?” I suggested at one point. “They were nice enough to show us around. Isn’t that enough?”
    “Stacey, there’s something you don’t understand, dear.”
    There was a lot I