Bitter Business

operation. Specialty chemicals are just a sideline.”
    I followed him into a large area that reminded me of the work bays in an auto garage. There was the same rock music playing too loud on an unseen transistor radio, the same concrete floor stained with motor oil. In one comer a first-aid kit was bolted to the wall between a fire extinguisher and a greasy, dog-eared safety poster. Wooden pallets loaded with cardboard boxes ringed the walls. Men in dark blue coveralls were slitting open the boxes, pulling out what looked like car wheels. Catching sight of Eugene, the workers sharpened up perceptibly— casual conversation evaporated and everything moved a half step faster.
    “You see how dull the finish is on those?” asked Eugene, pointing to the wheels that, once out of their boxes, were being loaded onto a conveyor belt. “They’re made of aluminum. We polish them and plate them so that they’re shiny like you see on cars in the street. That belt takes them into the polishing room.”
    I followed him into another area separated by a large, overhead garage door. In it, workers muffled to the eyes bent over powerful polishing lathes. The noise was deafening. Sparks flew. Despite the fact that the machinery gave off a lot of heat, the men all wore heavy hooded sweatshirts under their coveralls, which they topped with baseball caps, protective goggles, and bandannas tied around the lower half of their faces. On their hands they wore thick work gloves. In the entire room there was not one inch of exposed skin. The walls, the ceiling, the floor, even the men were all covered with a gray metallic dust.
    “That’s aluminum dust,” bellowed Eugene, looking down at my shoes, which, along with my stockings, were completely covered with gray film. “They’re removing all the irregularities from the metal surface. The plated finish is only as good as the polish job.”
    I picked my way carefully across the work floor and followed Eugene through a doorway hung with long strips of clear plastic that kept the aluminum dust from escaping the polishing area. We walked down a short hall in which someone had dumped the bench seat from an old truck. It was obviously used as a couch by workers on break. Above it hung a hand-lettered sign: THIS CORNER IS NOT A GARBAGE DUMP. PICK UP YOUR TRAHS OR GET SHOT!
    Eugene pulled open a heavy sliding door at the other end. The smell was like a slap in the face, pungent and corrosive. In the uneven light from hanging strips of neon tubing and whatever feeble sunlight made its way through the grimy skylights were a series of rectangular tanks each about six feet wide, eight feet deep, and twenty feet long. They looked old. The outsides were scaled with corroded metal and the green traces of acid. Around the perimeter ran a rickety wooden platform under which fluid, an unhealthy shade of green, stood in brackish pools.
    “This is one of our four chrome plating lines. The unfinished goods are put on racks, which are moved from tank to tank by a hoist-and-crane system,” said Eugene, pointing toward the ceiling. “It’s basically a four-step process with a rinse in between each step. The first tank is a heavy-duty industrial cleaner that’s heated to one hundred and sixty degrees. Whatever is being plated goes from the polishing room into there first so that we can be sure that it’s free from any grease or dust that’ll interfere with the process. From there it goes into the second tank that’s filled with water and then into the etching tank— that’s this one here, which contains caustic soda that’s also heated. The idea is to take away the first layer of aluminum or steel—again, to make sure you have a very clean, smooth surface to plate. Once it’s been etched, it’s rinsed again and then it goes into that fifth tank over there, which is the tri-acid oxidizer. That’s the desmutting step. It gets rid of any smut or trace elements that are still on the metal surface. Then it’s rinsed again and goes into the chrome bath. Come up here and take a look.”
    I followed him up the pitted wooden steps onto the walkway, weakened over time by dripping acid, that ran along the side of the tanks. Overhead, rusted metal fans spat and clanked while the heat from the chemical tanks pushed up past my face like a fetid desert wind. Eugene stopped in front of the last tank and rested both hands casually on the edge. One of his sleeves was pushed back, exposing a tattoo of a snake. It