Sterling Silver Cockroaches (standard:adventure, 6040 words)
Author: GXD	Added: Jul 28 2007	Views/Reads: 3449/2725	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A romantic adventure full of ambitions, intrigue, jewelry and silver in exotic Bucaramanga.

STERLING SILVER COCKROACHES 

I was all boxed up, sweltering in a windowless office.  Fluorescent
lamps radiated a fluttery blue flame onto my accounting figures.  Sweat 
prints stained my design drawings. Even my pencil lead drooped.  As I 
baked, it became clear that this was the end of the line. Unless 
something changed, I would have to close this plant in a month. 

Last year, the investors asked me to build a foundry right here.  On the
edge of a humid rain forest that ended abruptly in a featureless 
desert. Six miles from the equator without air conditioning. In a flood 
plain dubbed Tres Rios.  What a name!  The three rivers had been 
bone-dry for a thousand years. Guayaquil squatted toasting four hours 
to the west, while Quito sat high in the cool mountains, a day's drive 
north. I was a Gringo. They expected miracles. 

The foundry was supposed to cast pipe couplings and fittings for oil
drilling rigs.  But after nine months of fruitless effort, every part 
turned out was defective: 100% scrap.  We spent energy day after day 
but never seemed to accomplish anything. 

Once a week the truck brought a hundred sacks of zircon flour from
Guayaquil.  We hauled it off and dumped it into vats.  Our Indian 
chemist simmered up a brew of colloidal silica and seasoned it with 
defoamers and detergents and wetting agents.  With the aid of a little 
black magic, his mixer churned out a ceramic cream that frothed and 
swirled endlessly, hour after hour.  Eventually, the smooth white 
liquid hardened into brittle ceramic molds for casting steel. 

If this place wasn't already a madhouse, we might have enjoyed double
the production.  Barefoot young girls sat on their high wooden stools 
at the wax assembly bench, tacking patterns onto a central column.  
They chattered merrily in Spanish all day.  A barrel-chested Peruvian 
highlander dipped the wax pattern clusters into a drumful of ceramic 
batter, drew them out and spattered the dripping mass with chunks of 
ceramic stucco.  After five or six repeats, this built up a synthetic 
mold shell.  Another girl stacked the molds on shelves in the burn-out 
oven standing hot and sooty in the center of the casting bay, with its 
crane and ladle. 

Did you ever see an oven sweat metal?  This one did.  Silvery beads of
molten steel oozed from its hearth-bricks, dribbled under the furnace 
door and formed incandescent puddles on the floor.  The grinding  room 
was even hotter, under a tin roof, one wall open to the desert. Hot 
metal, hot shells, hot dust, hot wind, hot grinds from the abrasive 
wheels tearing off the gates and vents; hot blasts of grit from the air 
gun.  I minced over the hot tiles to switch off the air compressor.  
Everyone put down his or her tools, shut down their machines and began 
to clean up. Time to go home!  A few sang happy songs as they drifted 
out the door in groups of two's and three's.  Soon, only the night 
watchman was left. 

Outside, my little green Volkswagen was locked up.  Heat was beating a
tattoo on its black seats.  I jiggled the key, finally got the door 
open and rolled down the windows.  I threw a ragged towel over the 
seat, sat down and tried to start the engine. It cranked and cranked. 
On the hot cushion, my buttocks began puckering like worms over an open 
fire pit.  Heat seared my shorts, burned up my hairy thighs.  
Perspiration cascaded from my head, dripped off my eyebrows and drained 
off my chin onto the steering wheel as I punched the ignition.  Again 
and again.  Finally, the engine caught. 

Ecuador's afternoon sun glared vengefully into my eyes as the car
lurched over a rutted dust-road into Tres Rios.  Late siesta and the 
streets were empty.  I lived up at the other end of town, far from the 
church and the central market square.  A herd of cattle blocked the 
main street.  They ignored my horn.  To get home, I had to coax the 
Volks around backyards and up over sidewalks. 

Out here, far from the city, money couldn't buy much. The houses were
sun-dried brick.  Some were four hundred years old, but even ones built 
three or four years ago were in terrible shape.  Inside my crumbling 
hovel, it was hot as Hades.  I closed the rotting blinds that sagged on 
bamboo hinges, then went around back to start the electric generator.  
When it took six pulls, even with the choke out, I knew the carburetor 


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