air in the paragraph line #11

Air in the Paragraph Line

Air in the Paragraph LineIssue 11

Air in the Paragraph Line

Issue 11

All Rights Reserved. Copyright © 2006-2007 Jon Konrath

All copyrights return to their respective holders upon publication.

ISBN 978-1-4303-0628-3

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying,

recording, taping or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher.

Cover Photo by Lewis Hine (1930), from the US National Archives, Records of the Work Projects Administration. (69-RP-4K-1)

For more information, visit ParagraphLine.com

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ContentsIntroductionBy Jon Konrath...................................................................................................... 3

2000 Years Later and We’re Still All Fucked UpBy Robert W. Howington................................................................................... 5

What Does A Stripper Look Like?By Sarah Katherine Lewis................................................................................. 11

Company ManBy John L. Sheppard........................................................................................... 23

The Indefinite AssignmentBy Julie Wiskirchen............................................................................................ 43

Lack of WorkBy Lisbeth Pedersen........................................................................................... 51

Roman CandleBy Kurt Eisenlohr............................................................................................... 55

Junkyard LoveBy Dege Legg ...................................................................................................... 61

Dog Pound Death RowBy Todd Taylor................................................................................................... 69

Milk Carton Girl Turns 40By John L. Sheppard........................................................................................... 91

I, DishwasherBy Jon Konrath.................................................................................................... 99

Customer Service Socrates By Dirty Howie .................................................................................................119

The Poet and the PizzaBy Nile577 ..........................................................................................................123

WorkBy Stephen Huffman ........................................................................................129

Three Days Ago, WednesdayBy Joshua Citrak ...............................................................................................135

BlemishedBy Sergeant Zeno..............................................................................................145

Thank You for Calling ZapCommBy Julie Wiskirchen..........................................................................................163

M T W Th FBy Mike Daily....................................................................................................175

Massive ReorganizationBy Tony Byrer...................................................................................................181

The Last StrawBy mj klein..........................................................................................................191

Nothing But A CowardBy Josh Hamilton..............................................................................................199

The Office PartyBy M. David Hornbuckle ................................................................................207

You Need Job?By Vijay Prozak.................................................................................................211

Contributors...................................................................................................... 231

IntroductionBY JON KONRATH

Hello and welcome to Air in the Paragraph Line #11!

I’ve wanted to put together a themed issue of the zine for quite a while.Way back when I lived in Seattle and did this as a photocopied zine, Ialmost managed to assemble an entire issue about dreams, but as theissue came together, the theme didn’t happen. When I started planning#11, I thought about putting out a holiday issue, just in time forChristmas. Everyone would write depressing stories about being drunkand alone over the holidays, some of my self-loathing Jewish friendswould write about how Hanukkah is a rip-off, and contributors couldsend copies of the zine to friends and family instead of buying actualpresents. But I figured it would be impossible to get people to writeholiday-themed stories (it’s hard enough getting people to send in non-themed stories) so I continued to scour my brain for a better idea.

That’s when I thought of work. If someone can write a good story orbook about their employment, especially if it’s a job that I’ve never givenmuch thought, I’m hooked. I decided to make this issue about work, orlack thereof. I wanted to hear about weird occupations, shit jobs,workplace horror stories, trying to hack it under unfavorable laborconditions, and living under the stress of little or no work. And I didn’tjust want nonfiction either: I asked for short stories, biographical fiction,journalism, or anything else that fit the formula. Of course I still wantedto keep AITPL readable, enjoyable, and not full of the usual, predictablethings that most people thing you’re required to put in zines.

As always, it looked like I was going to be short this issue, and I bitchedand moaned to everyone asking for more stuff, only to have a deluge ofreally good material hit at the last second. Many of the writers areregulars that appeared in previous issues, but I also searched for somenew talent, either because I knew they had some odd work experience, orI liked their writing and thought they’d make a good addition.

3

INTRODUCTION

Aside from the theme, I’m also happy to publish the second issue in thenew non-photocopied format; it shows that #10 wasn’t a freak, one-timeaccident. (It also means that I didn’t have to spend weeks of my lifefolding, stapling, and inhaling toner dust, which is good.) I think thegeneral plan is to continue putting out more issues like this, with enoughspace between issues for me to forget that I lost money and ended upsending out more free copies than I legitimately sold.

Once again, I ask you to please check out the contributors’ web sites,blogs, or books. Everyone here is doing interesting stuff, and one of thereasons I do this is so people will find new writers to enjoy. And please, ifyou enjoyed any part of this, tell your friends! It’s always tough trying topromote this kind of anthology, and every blog mention or referral to afriend is a godsend. And if you’re a writer or know one that might fit intothe mix here, submissions are always welcome.

And as always, if you want to get in touch, or read any of the old issueson the web, check out rumored.com/aitpl. But in keeping with the spiritof this issue, you’ll probably want to read them while you’re on the clockat your day job, or print them out on the work laserprinter with theirpaper.

Thanks for reading,

—Jon

4

2000 Years Later and We’reStill All Fucked Up

BY ROBERT W. HOWINGTON

My shrink told me in our third session that I’m not onlyclinically depressed but that I’m also chemically dependent. I was notshocked by this news. I knew that I was a fucked up individual but Isimply hadn’t had it confirmed yet by science.

“Being both depressed and CD means you’re dual diagnosis,” theshrink said, a look of great concern on his face. “Now this doesn’t meanyou’re crazy. It just means you have two diseases and both are curable.”

He determined my present mental condition by giving me aseries of written tests for depression and drug and alcohol abuse duringmy first two visits. These tests asked me if, when and why I partook invarious assorted legal, and illegal, substances. They also asked me abouthow I felt about certain things going on inside my head and life ingeneral. Did I get along with people (No.)? Did I like my job (No.)? Did Iever think of murder or suicide (Hell, yes.)? I answered them alltruthfully. I didn’t have anything to hide since I wasn’t wanted by thecops — yet. My shrink added up the numerical totals each question wasweighed with and they showed I was a fucked up drug addict.

My shrink said, “I recommend that you go to an outpatientchemical dependence program offered at All Saints Hospital. I don’tthink you can get off drugs without it.”

He gave me the person’s name and phone number who ran theprogram. Though I didn’t tell my shrink this, I never intended on callingJPS because, for one thing, I don’t like people telling me what to do and,for another, I’m not much on group therapy. I once attended a writer’sworkshop — which is really another form of group therapy — and thatended up being a bunch of malarkey. These wannabe authors would readtheir Great American Novel rough drafts and they’d be givenconstructive criticism in return. Whenever I’d read my shit they always

5

2000 YEARS LATER AND WE’RE STILL ALL FUCKED UP

told me my stuff had a lot of story structure problems and that my storyideas weren’t publishable anyway.

I’d look at them and say, “What do you freaks know aboutwriting? Sue, you’re a fucking bored housewife. Jim, you’re a fuckingalcoholic who can’t hold a job. Jane, you’re a fucking waitress at Denny’sfor chrissakes. FUCK YOU AND YOUR GOD DAMN WORTHLESSOPINIONS!”

We continued the session by talking about how my two failedmarriages fucked me up in the head to no end.

“I started smoking more and more pot after my second divorce,”I said. “I drank several screwdrivers everyday after getting home fromwork. I had to numb my heartbroken feelings. Pot and alcohol were theonly things that helped. Then I graduated to snorting cocaine andsmoking crack after my tolerance for the pot and alcohol increased to thepoint that they weren’t helping me anymore. I had to try harder shit toget fucked up enough to blank out the world.”

He told me that self-medication is a very common practice bypeople who’re screwed up by things that go wrong in their life.

“But doing drugs and forgetting your troubles doesn’t solve youremotional problems,” he said. “To solve them you have to confront themand stop using drugs as an escape from what is troubling you.”

As he spoke, I looked at my watch. My 45-minute session was 10minutes away from ending. I could not wait to get out of his office and gohome and roll a joint and drink scotch whiskey. A week later I found thepiece of scratch paper my shrink wrote the outpatient program phonenumber on in my jeans pocket. It was waded up and the number had beensmeared off after having washed them. I took that as a sign from thegods to keep doing drugs.

* * *

The alarm sounded at 5:45 a.m. and I rose up. The cat was on theedge of the bed looking at my sleepy ass. I petted her and said, “I’m wokeup alive again so I must get my ass to work.”

I do not like working.

I wished I could stay home all day long and daydream aboutfucking LonelyGirl16 from YouTube.com. I wished I could stay home

6

ROBERT W. HOWINGTON

and fart out loud and not have to worry about offending someone. Iwished I had an understanding woman taking care of me.

“Do your writing, dear, and I’ll work two jobs.”

Or I wished I had an older, and wiser, brother to pay the rent andbills. Thinking about ‘what ifs’ does me no good. It just makes me thinkof the way things could be. And things are never the way they could be.

Not in my shitty life anyway.

* * *

At work, while processing the usual mound of monotonouspaperwork, I got a phone call from a friend. I stopped what I was doingand talked to Dolores. She works from home as a lingerie model (shedoesn’t fuck’em or suck’em, just takes her clothes off or role plays). Shehas an ad in a local sex mag, the Sundowner. Horny men with strangesexual fantasies call her number all day long. When they ask her whatshe’ll do for them she says, “Body rub, lingerie or total nude. Ninetydollars for a half hour or $130 for one hour.”

She said a guy told her he didn’t want any of that. He wanted togive her $60 to let him stick a butt plug up her ass.

“I told him, ‘I’m not letting anyone stick anything up my ass.My ass ain’t for sale. It ain’t for rent. It ain’t for lease.’ Nothing goes upmy ass with these clients. Now, I’ll shove something up a man’s ass. I hada guy call me up and ask, ‘Are you all natural?’ I said, ‘My hair isn’t ifthat’s what you mean.’ He goes, ‘No, I wanted a girl who’s had surgery.’So I told him, ‘Go to Wal-Mart and buy a Barbie if you want a perfectfucking woman. She’s on sale for $9.99’ It’s amazing the stupid shit theseguys want. Getting requests like this is an everyday deal for me. I’malways in a bad mood because of all this bullshit. I’m tired of it. Now doyou see why I’m so fucked up? I have done one call today. A nice guy whojust wanted his nipples pulled really hard.”

Dolores went on to tell me about her troubles with her two wild,uncontrollable school age kids, her physical and mental health problems,her love/man troubles, her constant lack of money.

“I’d get a real job but I can’t handle being at the same place, andaround the same people, for eight hours a day, everyday of the week.Besides, how can anyone support their family on minimum wage?”

AIR IN THE PARAGRAPH LINE #11 7


She said she’s mad at the world and is fed up with all the bullshitthat comes with being alive.

“Once you see reality for what it is you can’t help but go crazy.The world we live in is a terrible place because man has created it. I feelvery disappointed by life in general. I hope death is better than this.”

I said I felt the same way.

“I know I’m not the first to say this but life consists of oneproblem after another. And it’s never ending because the suffering neverend. Right when you think things are looking up a rock comes flying outof nowhere and knocks you down again. Our survival instinct is alwaysbeing tested. Today the car breaks down. Tomorrow the refrigeratorstops working. I really believe death is heaven, that the only relief fromlife is death.”

We’ve told each other many times that we’re going to killourselves. But we never do. We go on like morons. We keep breathing. Inand out.

Ad infinitum.

* * *

As I drove my car home from a downtown daily grind job thathas slowly and methodically coerced me into accepting its soulless,murdering nature for the lousy dollar it brings, I saw an old thin blackman walking down Rosedale Street who had taken his dick out of his dirtstained pants. With each step he took an explosive fountain of urinesplattered onto the pavement.

SPLURP. SPLURP. SPLURP.

With a grin on his face, he looked up into the bright sky andsaid, “A nice day... if it don’t rain.”

A couple of blocks down an overweight black woman walkingdown the street with groceries in her arms suddenly stopped andgrabbed her stomach. An expression of pain came over her face. Shedropped the bags and raced behind a stairwell next to an abandonedoffice building and pulled down her pants and squatted. A waterfall ofshit came streaming out of her ass.

I thought, “I hope she has toilet paper in one of those grocerysacks.”

8

ROBERT W. HOWINGTON

A group of down-and-outs were gathered under a shade treebehind Bert’s Liquors. They cradled paper sacks carrying 40 ouncebottles of malt liquor. They were smiling and laughing, happy in theircheap intoxication and chronic unemployment. To them a dirt floor wasjust as good as a carpeted one, provided they’re registering a 0.15 on thealcoholmeter.

A tattered, sun baked and grossly wrinkled white man, his longbeard and unkempt, stringy hair matted into angry snarls from thegrease and mud he lives in under the freeway overpass, searched througha Dumpster behind a Fiesta grocery store. He placed a few wretcheditems in a shopping cart overfilled with bulging plastic garbage bags andfalse hopes for a better tomorrow.

I pulled up to a red light and watched a man in camouflageclothing come out of a 7-Eleven and use a quarter to play a scratch offgame he bought with his last two dollars. He doesn’t believe in God,America or anything else but he believes in the lottery. A loser again, hetossed the card down in disgust and walked back into the store andshoved a gun into the cashier’s face and demanded money. A policeofficer eating a donut and drinking coffee in the back of the store drewhis firearm out of its holster faster than Doc Holliday ever did and shothim dead.

The loser lost for the last time.

* * *

Meanwhile, I speed home to my empty, one bedroom apartment.Once there, I smoke crack for its momentary euphoria. The wonderfulcrack I abuse eases the tight grip severe depression has on my mind. Potand alcohol and cocaine do too but crack is the greatest, most intensehigh ever invented by man. So much so that if you let yourself becomeaddicted to it you will be at its mercy and crack shows no mercy for it isa killer. It will murder your mind and then it will murder your body.

It’s definitely the Devil’s Smoke. Why? Because once smokedcrack gives you a feeling of total ease with yourself and yoursurroundings, an absolute happiness envelopes your entire being. Itmakes you feel like you’re floating on a soft white cloud above seas ofendless sugar. Since I’ve never before experienced this kind of intensefeeling of joy, crack literally forces you to do another bowl because youdon’t want that joyful feeling to leave you.



Crack’s grip on your soul is strong because it’s a great brainfuck. So when it’s high dissipates you immediately do another bowl. Andanother. And another.

Eventually, you run out of crack.

So you buy more cocaine and cook it because you want that crackhigh to never go away. For someone like me who’s never experiencedcomplete happiness crack is a godsend, the gold at the end of the fuckingrainbow, the sweet snatch of a Playboy Playmate, the Stanley Cupwinning goal, the Super Bowl winning touchdown, the World Serieswinning home run and the love of your life all wrapped into one. And tothink all it takes to attain this experience is $20 worth of cocaine, bakingsoda, a spoon, a few drops of water, a screwdriver and a heat source. Lifeis cheap and so is crack.

But crack’s only drawback, unfortunately, is you can’t get a hard-on while fucked up on it. Try it. You’ll see. You become a dead man downthere where it counts. Even if you’re horny as shit you cannot get anerection while high on crack.

If you want to fuck a bitch like crazy it won’t happen if you’resmoking da rock, bro.

Just wait, however. Let the crack wear off. Give it an hour. Thenyou can fuck her brains out. But you won’t be high. So it won’t be thesame as being on crack while fucking her.

So then you probably won’t want to fuck her anyway.

* * *

As usual, I lay on my bed and do what I did in the previousmillennium: abuse drugs, drink alcohol and watch unreal t.v. shows so Ican forget the reality of the great dull zero that is life.

Mankind has not advanced much in how it treats itself — one-third of the world’s nation’s are at war, eight million motherfuckers arelocked up in jail cells worldwide, tens of millions are enslaved andmillions more are starving to death — but it has reached nirvana in howit gets off.

Amen for that.

10

What Does A Stripper Look Like?BY SARAH KATHERINE LEWIS

What does a stripper look like?

In Hollywood, strippers mostly look like fashion models—they’re longand lean, with Nordic bone structure and perfect, unblemished skin.When they dance, they move to the music sensually, slowly removingarticles of clothing. Tantalized, rapt men crowd each other at the base ofthe stage, tremblingly offering up bills as tribute. The dancer isimpervious. Her routine is perfectly choreographed. She may lick thepole, or she may ascend it like a monkey, shimmying up and comingdown triumphantly, upside down or spinning.

Whether she goes topless (PG-13) or even, briefly, bottomless (NC-17),her hair is always long, and either impeccably blown-out, or ringletedinto perfect spirals. Her entire body has been waxed. Her makeup isbeautiful—glamorous, and at the same time, classy. She doesn’t sweat.She doesn’t have tattoos. Her whole body looks cast from one perfectmold. You almost expect to see “Mattel” stamped on her tanned, tonedass.

Whether she’s a sunny blonde, a fiery redhead, or an exotic brunette, aHollywood stripper is three things: young. Thin. And ravishingbeautiful.

Right?

When I tell women who have never worked in the sex industry that Isupported myself stripping for nearly a decade, I tend to hear responseslike this: Oh, I wish I could do that, but I’m not pretty enough, orI’m not skinny enough, or Men wouldn’t like me—I’m too flat-chested.

And no matter what I say, they don’t want to believe otherwise.

I’m here to bust that fallacy wide open. The thing is, young, thin, prettystrippers do make money. But so do not-so-young, not-so-thin, and not-

11

WHAT DOES A STRIPPER LOOK LIKE?

so-pretty strippers. In fact, I’ve known a few old, fat strippers, who mademore money in one night than I used to make in a week.

Strangely enough, it turns out that in an industry based on eroticfantasy, looks are the least important attribute a stripper can have. Ifyou’re a perfect 10, goody for you. But watch out for the plain girl withthe fucked-up teeth and the Grateful Dead teddy-bear tattoo on her tit,because odds are she’s burying you, financially. She’s stealthy, and if she’ssmart, she’s keeping her mouth shut about it.

Why?

Well, let’s take a look at the girl I just mentioned, the plain one with thebleary hippie tattoo and the great big British smile. We’ll call her Raven,because every club has had at least a couple of those—it’s about asgeneric a stripper name as you can get. I’ve even worked in clubs thatfeatured Raven I, and Raven II, when two girls working during the sameperiod couldn’t agree on who had to pick a different name. Raven,Diamond, Fire, Star—and now Tiffany, Cassidy, Shaughnessy, Cody—I’ve worked with scores of them all. But Raven’s stayed a popular choice,and it kind of seems to go with the Grateful Dead tattoo, too.

So what’s she got going for her, this Raven? Number one, she’s makingeye contact with every single customer, and number one and a half, she’sgrinning like a pumpkin at every single one of them, no matter howrepulsive they may be. That’s right: she’s opening right up and flashingthose mangled choppers, smiling like a beauty pageant winner, lookingevery man straight in the face like he’s her long-lost ninth-gradeboyfriend. Is she freaking out because her teeth look like the grill of abuck-shot Cadillac? No sir, no ma’am; she is not. You look at how thisgirl is acting, and she’s moving through the room like she owns it, andevery single customer there was just waiting for her to arrive.

Let’s look at her body. She’s chunky through the waist. She’s got a gut.Her legs are thick. And she’s got that corny-ass teddy-bear on her boob.A deal-breaker, you say? She needs to do Pilates and eat nothing but rawveggies and fresh spring water for three months, and then maybe shecan try again? She needs to get that bear lasered off ? She needs titimplants?

In fact, you may even be starting to get pissed off. I mean, what thefuck? How can a girl who’s maybe a 4, at best, be making so much moremoney than her exfoliated, shaved, and moisturized co-workers? She’s

12

SARAH KATHERINE LEWIS

clearing out wallets left and right, while the 8s, 9s, and 10s of the clubare sitting on their barstools, glumly watching her do all their business.

At this point I ask you to look at Raven. No, I mean, really look at her.Watch her as she goes grinning around the room, making eye contactlike the world’s most dentally-challenged insurance salesman. And givesome of your media-taught preconceptions about what men supposedlylike a rest for a minute. Really check her out.

What’s she wearing? Did you even notice?

First off, she’s wearing stiletto heels. Not the chunky heels that are socomfortable, when you go out club-dancing with your girlfriends. Notfunky platforms. Not those witchy, oh-so-Goth ankle boots. Stilettos.The thinnest, highest, least-comfortable shoe possible. With a sexy littleankle strap. Frankly, the shoes are man-nip. If they could, most menwould roll around in a field of stiletto shoes, snorting and licking andnestling into them like infants, sucking on the heels like little plasticnipples. It’s a completely irrational attraction, that of men to stiletto-heeled shoes. But it’s also as real as gravity. Raven—smart girl—knowsthis. The shoes alone are probably responsible for fifty bucks of herincome this shift.

And yeah, stiletto shoes are hard to wear. So practice at home. I’ll let youin on a little secret: Raven wears hers around the house, while she cleans.She also took a pocket knife and scratched little tic-tac-toe patterns inthe soles, to give her traction on the slippery floor of the strip club, soshe doesn’t wipe out. (But you know if she did wipe out, she’d probablyjust flash that crunked-up grin of hers and laugh it off, like she somehowmeant to do it, and the customers would line up to get private dancesfrom her because she was a good sport and didn’t whine about it, the waythey imagine their wives or girlfriends would. Men love what theyperceive as pluck (which, you may note, is usually what women like usactually experience as desperation to pay the rent).

But I digress. Not to go on and on about Raven’s shoes, but if you were tolook inside the stilettos—like if we had some kind of special shoe x-rayvision—you’d see she’s got those old-lady inserts, Dr. Scholl’s, the super-soft ones made out of foam. She’s cut them down to fit her shoes, thatclever little minx. Not only do they make the shoes feel a tiny bit morecomfortable, but they make them fit a little more snugly. You wantstilettos to fit balloon-tight, because any slipping or sliding could easilymean a broken ankle. Do not fuck around with stilettos—they are not



your friends. They will give you calluses that even industrial sandingmachines won’t be able to remove. They will make your big toe and yourlittle toe point towards each other, instead of straight ahead, horrifyingyour podiatrist. Remember, when you’re not at work, wear comfortableshoes and get regular massages. Get pedicures, and tip the pedicure girlexorbitantly, because dancer feet are legendarily malformed and smelly.Some girls soak their feet in ice water after every shift. (Others just drinkto kill the pain—it’s really up to you.)

Okay, so we’ve got footwear put to bed, right? Stiletto heels, check. Butyou say you still don’t get it?

So look at Raven’s legs. They’re thick, right? She kind of has cankles, yousay? Yeah, maybe, but those stilettos make her legs look long and strong,and even though she’s got some ankle-girth there, the shoes are sofreakin’ high it’s like an optical illusion: her legs look curvy, not blocky.

Go up to her thighs. I know they’re chunky, but that’s not my point.What’s she wearing around her waist? A garter belt. And that’s right, Isaid around her waist, not around her hips. Learn to wear a garter beltcorrectly: the belt part goes around tight around your waist (but nottight enough to cut into your skin and give you a chub-roll—check in themirror, breathing in and out). The two front straps go down straight tothe stockings, while the two back ones curve around and attach to thestockings on each side—not in the back. Look at old pin-up pictures ifyou think I’m all hopped up on goofballs: you’ll see garter belts wornhigh, and garter clips holding the stockings up in front and on each side.Think about it: do you think any of those hot pin-up babes liked sittingon lumpy garter clips? The answer is no—and that’s why most garterbelts are designed not to have any clips worn in back. The back strapsshould kind of curve around your ass, framing it like a pretty picture.They should not go straight down, cutting each globe in half, becausethat will make you look like you have four ass-cheeks. Do not have fourass-cheeks. Even ass-fetish customers only want two per girl.

You can wear your stockings high on your thighs, if you’re nice and thicklike our girl Raven. If you’ve got some dimples on the backs of yourthighs—and what I call dimples, you may call cellulite, but let’s notquibble), stockings will cover them up and make your skin look perfectlysmooth.

You can wear your stockings halfway down your thighs if the onlydimples you have are above the neck, or if the lighting in your club is dim

14


or tinted red. (Red light covers cellulite, stretch marks, bruises, andblotches, and all the really dive-y clubs have it, for obvious reasons.)Most Victoria’s Secret models are shown wearing their stockings likethis—it’s a nice, classic look, but you need to have long legs and verylittle cellulite to pull it off. Kind of like, you know, a Victoria’s Secretmodel.

You can even wear your stockings right above your knees like a flapper,you crazy kid, you. Every stripper eventually gets in a pinch and is forcedto buy cheap stockings sold as one size fits all, and we’ve all discoveredthat one size fits all is only true if you’re a Little Person. If you’re stuckwith stockings that are knee-sock length, you just have to lengthen yourgarter clips for the night and try to play it off like you’re being “kooky.”Sometimes you’re gonna be stuck with dwarf-size stockings It happensto everyone. How you handle it is you wear them anyway, and you try toremember to maintain a stash of good stockings in your locker for thefuture so you never have to buy crappy 99-cent store mini-stockings everagain.

But however you wear them, wear stockings, and a garter belt.Stockings and a garter belt are like stiletto heels: if you wear them, theywill do about fifty percent of your work for you. Men love stockings andgarter belts. They have to. It’s hard-wired in their little reptilian brains,like falling asleep after sex and cracking up when someone farts. Mostnon-strippers won’t wear them, because they’re awkward anduncomfortable, for the most part. And there’s no reason a women shouldwear this kind of frilly gift-wrap when she can wear comfy full-coveragepantyhose instead (or better yet, snuggly cotton tights or pants)—except for when her income depends on being appealing to men, andcoaxing money out of their tight little wallets. You’re here to do a job,right? You gotta wear the right uniform for the job, just like umpires andfirefighters and police officers and sanitation engineers. You think theyalways like what they have to wear?

Listen: men don’t come to strip clubs to see women feeling comfortableand at ease. They come to see us prance around like show ponies,wearing the kind of outlandish Happy Hooker gear their wives andgirlfriends aren’t getting paid to wear. Remember, these men spendhundreds of dollars at Victoria’s Secret to purchase “gifts” for theirwives, frilly items that are worn once (generally for under five minutes)and then buried under a snowdrift of Jockey For Her French-cut cotton



panties and mismatched old-lady bras. You may as well cut out themiddle-man and keep those hundreds of dollars for yourself.

They’re not comfortable, you say?

Well, neither are stiletto heels. If you want a comfortable uniform, trythe poly-blend smocks at McDonald’s, chiquita. The registers don’teven have words any more—they just have pictures of the items, littlepictures of Big Macs and Chicken McNuggets and fries and shakes ofvarious sizes, as well as other things that customers may want, like littlegraphics of extra lettuce and pickle slices and even a tiny picture of“extra ketchup,” with extra graphically represented by the existence oftwo little ketchup packets, instead of just one. Is that what you want?Pictures of fast food on a register covered in plastic, so it wipes clean? Acomfy smock? Be my guest.

But Raven—Raven I, Raven II, Cheyenne, Ashleigh, and every other girlwho’d rather take her chances stripping onstage than being told what todo by a functionally-retarded fast food manager in a paper hat, will bemaking five times what you make. They’ll be laughing all the way totheir podiatrists.

Okay, so she’s smiling, she’s making eye contact, she’s wearing Nazitorture-device shoes and scratchy nylon lace pork chop frills on her legs.Our girl Raven has got it going on. So tell me, how important are looks,anyway? Smart strippers know that looks are beside the point, and caneven be problematic: men tend to be terrified of truly beautiful women. Ifyou’re only okay in the looks department—but if you’re working yourcostume and persona like a pro—you’ll do great and make enoughmoney to support yourself easily.

Basically, being a successful stripper boils down to this: wear the thingsmen like, smile, and make eye contact. Voi-fucking-la.

Wait, you still don’t believe me?

You say, Little Miss Raven probably does really nasty private shows, sothat’s why all the customers like her?

You say, she just has a lot of regulars, and they all happened to come intonight, in one massive coincidence?

You say, looks matter! They have to! Because that’s what Hollywood says,that strippers have to look like fashion models!

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And Hollywood never lies, right? The entertainment industry only hasour best interests at heart, right? There’s no chance the mainstreammedia shows us only very, very skinny; very, very beautiful women—instead of average-sized, average-looking women—because that’s justwhat they do and have always done, because they think that if they showus women who look like us, we won’t buy as much stuff ? And we’ll lookat those “perfect” women and feel bad about ourselves the way we are,and we’ll buy lots and lots of diet foods and weight-loss pills and makeupand plastic surgery, and pretty much everyone will get rich off of ourdissatisfaction with ourselves—except us. We’ll be working hard incrappy little minimum-wage jobs, wiping tables and making change, andnobody will have ever told us the truth—that real women can makegood money in all kinds of ways, including the sex industry, if we’resmart and observant. Raven figured this out a long time ago, and hasn’tworn a hairnet or a plastic nametag since.

By the way, I’ll have extra ketchup. That’s the key with the picture oftwo ketchup packets, not the one with the single packet.

So okay, I can see you want to believe me. Let’s look at our girl a little bitmore.

She’s in her Rocky Horror man-candy lingerie, and her skyscraper heels.As a matter of fact, those seven-inch heels are pointed straight up,because girlfriend’s on stage, lying flat on her back, doing her set. Themusic’s pounding, a deep sexy grind. Colored lights are flashing andplaying over her body. She’s got the whole stage to herself. Let’s watchher for a minute. What’s she doing?

The answer is, she’s not doing much.

She’s not Flashdancing. She’s not doing burlesque shimmies or strolls.She’s not flying around the pole. She’s not even dancing, really. Whatkind of strip-show is this?

She’s arching her back, she’s kind of rolling around, and now she’sgetting up. But she’s still not dancing—not the way Hollywood strippersdo, anyway, with their high-energy, high-kicking aerobic routines. She’sstanding, and she’s posing—jutting a hip out, and running her handalong her stocking. Now she’s leaning back again the pole, and slidingdown to a squat—moving so slow, she’s so slow, and that’s not what theyshow in the movies at all! She’s barely doing anything—



—but what she is doing, is making eye contact with her audience. Whenshe catches a customer’s eye, she lights up in a big smile, or poutselaborately, or even sticks her tongue out. And the way she’s moving, it’snot like she’s selling dancing—the act or even the idea of dancing. It’slike dancing would be a waste of her talent; it would distract her viewersfrom the real point of her set, which is to invite their gaze and directtheir attention to her best features. Hence the attention to her long,stockinged leg. Nobody’s looking at her little gut, or at her corny tattoo.Nobody’s noticing anything but what she wants them to see. All she hasto do is show them. And she’s moving like she has all the time in theworld.

She’s selling the appearance of her body, her costume, her charisma. She’sgot so much to vend, she’s lighting up the stage like a freakin’ ChristmasTree. By taking a few steps, turning, and laughing out at the audience,she’s selling the idea that she’s having the best time she’s ever had in herlife, just being there on that dirty stage, being stared at by a bunch ofstrangers with their hands balled up in their pockets, trying to decidewhether to give her a few crumpled greasy dollars or not.

Now her hands are under her breasts—not on them, because in lots ofstates strippers aren’t allowed to touch certain areas of their ownbodies—but under, and she’s lifting them up, as if estimating theirweight. She’s tossing her hair like a pony, and granted, it’s a little greasyand lank, but when she tosses it back like that she looks beautiful, justbeautiful, in a way that makes it seem like the only way to be sexy in thisworld is to have thick legs and a tiny little gut and a great big alligatorgrin full of busted choppers—like she’s setting that standard, right thereon that stage, through the sheer force of her own confidence andpersonality.

Does she look like a model? No.

Is she beautiful? Well, yes. In her way.

Which is not my way, or your way, or Raven II’s way, or Fire’s way. Butwhat you gotta understand about stripping is that it isn’t about wholooks the most like they stepped out this year’s Sports Illustrated swimsuitissue. The strippers who make money wear the uniform, sure. But that’swhere their resemblance ends.

I knew a stripper who had been in a car crash. Her face had been sewnback together crooked. One eye was a full inch below the other one. Shelooked like a Picasso painting. But she was tall, and curvy. When she

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took the stage, she shook her hair over her face and did a lot of poseswith her back to the audience. She’d bring a leather paddle onstage, bendover the dancer chair, and spank herself until her ass-cheeks glowedbeautifully pink. She made money.

I knew a stripper who had acne. Really, really bad acne. It was so bad itwas like her face couldn’t hold all the pimples she was supposed to have,so the extra ones found space on her shoulders and back and bottom. Shewas skinny, and kind of gangly. But she acted like her skin was smoothand perfect, and as if her spare body was womanly and sexy. She simplyignored her acne. She walked right up to customers and asked them ifthey wanted private dances, and they usually said yes. She had pluck. Shemade money.

I knew a stripper who was flat-chested. She was also short—not evenfive feet tall, standing on her tip-toes. She was a small, neat wren of agirl, with short sensible brown hair and no makeup at all. She was avegan chef in real life, moonlighting twice a week as a dancer to save upfor summer travel. She had a hard time making money until she went toValue Village and scored a real, live, actual Girl Scout uniform, whichshe wore with white ankle socks and tiny little Powderpuff Girlssneakers. When it was her turn to take the stage, she danced to theJackson Five. When she unbuttoned her Girl Scout blouse and revealedher white cotton Cross-Your-Heart training bra, it was so dirty, theother dancers would applaud. She made money.

I knew a stripper who was fat. Fat’s the only word for it. She was in herfifties, and had had children. Her belly hung like bread dough over herpanties. This stripper wore a beautiful red satin corset at work, whichshe laced tightly, funneling her weight up into an astonishinglybounteous cleavage. She wore a long, lovely wig over her own short salt-and-pepper hair. In her costume she looked like Jessica Rabbit,hourglass-shaped, with a smooth swoop of soft hair spilling down overher shoulders. You better believe she made money.

I knew a stripper who was covered in tattoos. Her arms were covered inink—mostly skulls and big splashy traditional American images. Shewas big—tall, and also heavy-set. She had matted dreadlocks, which shetucked under a long red wig. Her costumes always included long sleeves,to cover up the tattoos she’d spent so much money and time getting. Shelearned to move slowly, posing and using her hands to show her audiencethe secret lovely parts of her body—her big, round rump, her boobs; the



surprising, intimate curve of her waist. She towered over most of hercustomers in her six- and seven-inch heels, and they loved her for it. Shewas bigger than life, like a superhero or a Frank Frazetta painting.

That stripper was me. And I made money—a decade’s worth.

Sure, some customers didn’t like me. I didn’t make money from everysingle man who walked through the door of every single establishmentwhere I plied my trade. And maybe most men would walk right past me,if they saw me out in public, wearing my boy-pants and my stretched-outband t-shirts, with my dreadlocks tied back with twine. I was nothingspecial when I wasn’t at work; just another chubby Seattle hipster inarmy-navy store clothes, with nothing on my face but sunblock.

But in my costume, and in my wig, I became something entirelydifferent. I became a girl who wasn’t me, though we shared certainsimilarities. Mostly, I became someone who doesn’t exist in real life: aheterosexual, mainstream male fantasy. I laughed at my customers’ jokes,looked them straight in the face, smiled at them, flirted with them. Noneof them were dismissed as too ugly, too poor, too boring, or too smelly.To me, every single schlub was fascinating, handsome, and sexy. As longas he kept paying for it, he could be James Bond and George Clooney andBrad Pitt all rolled up into one guy, spoiled by my attention. In a stripclub, every man’s a king—as long as that king has plenty of cash.

And maybe most customers didn’t come into the places I worked lookingfor big-boned woman eight inches taller and twenty pounds heavier thanthemselves, wearing a wig and long sleeves and body glitter. Maybe theyarrived looking for a petite, tanned blonde, or a sweet dark-haired Asiangirl, or most likely, they came in not knowing what they wanted, butknowing they wanted something. My job—and I learned to do it verywell—was to make them believe that they wanted me, to give an eroticcharge to my big thighs and long limbs and pale skin through the sheerforce of my own belief. It’s the Jedi mind trick all successful strippers do,regardless of their appearance: they make the customers desperatelydesire the fantasy they represent, whatever it is.

So maybe most customers didn’t come in looking for my type, exactly—but that didn’t matter. I sold the tall, big-boned, Valkyrie girl fantasy,because that’s what I had to sell—the same way Raven sells her owncankle-legged, muckle-mouthed fantasy, and the same way you can sellyour own fantasy, whatever it is. All you have to do is act like a brazen,beautiful, sexy, girl. And to most lonely, horny men, that’s enough. The

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seductive charge you place on your own body becomes what they came tothe strip club to find.

Sexy is something you do, something that happens; it’s almost neverwhat you simply are. Like live theatre, an art form which takes place byagreement between actors and their audience, sexy lives between thecustomer and the dancer. Sexy isn’t something a dancer carries aroundwith her all the time, the same way theatre isn’t something that an actortakes with him after the play concludes and his audience returns home.Sexy, and theatre, exist as dynamic happenings between the providers(the dancer, the actor) and the consumers (the customer, the audience).

Just in case that isn’t enough of a mind-fuck, how about the fact thatusually, the aspects of your body that you have the most trouble lovingare the very qualities that will bring you the bulk of your income. Menwho consume porn, and live adult services, are collectors—that’s whyjust one picture of one nude girl, or just one lap dance from one dancer,just won’t do. There are a gazillion different pussies out there, and porn-loving men want to see (or better yet, sniff) every single one of them.One woman’s body—no matter how beautiful—can’t stand in for everywoman’s body: that’s why porn users tend to hoard such alarminglymassive collections of material, and that’s why men who visit strip clubstend to visit them habitually, spending thousands of dollars seeing thesame old familiar body parts in the same old familiar costumes, over andover.

But in order to collect, they must satisfy themselves that each specimenis slightly different from every other one they’ve amassed. That eachwoman is singular. It’s almost like they’re checking items off on a list,and that list is endless. So yes, they’re looking for sexy—but usually, tothem, sexy just means that they haven’t “had you” already. They mayhave enjoyed a lap-dance from someone similar to you, or from someonewho looks almost exactly like you but who isn’t you—but your specific“imperfections” confirm that you are in fact new to them. You’re sexy,sure—but more importantly, you’re a blank square box on their list,waiting for their big fat irresistible checkmark.

So don’t try to tell me you have to be young, thin, or magazine-pretty tomake money as a stripper. Any woman can do it, if you want to invest inthe costumes, footwear, and accessories you need in order to be identifiedas an adult entertainer by the men who will be purchasing your services.You don’t have to be athletic, you don’t have to have breast implants, you



don’t have to look like Uma Thurman or Halle Berry. You don’t have tobe skinny. You don’t even have to dance.

You just have to be you. To a collector—a strip club customer—yourindividuality is the sexiest thing about you.

Well, that, and the stiletto-heeled shoes.

22

Company ManBY JOHN L. SHEPPARD

John wakes up in a Holiday Inn in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

He drove the whole day and night before to get there. He is stilltired. A crick had formed in his neck motoring along somewhere outsideAtlanta, and hasn’t yet gone away. A sickly blackbird outside his windowsquawks his name, he thinks. He calls room service and asks for a bowl ofCheerios and a glass of Tang. They have no Tang, so John settles for aglass of juice from concentrate.

The clean sheets, the juice from concentrate, the antiseptic airblowing from the McQuay beneath the sealed-shut window, and thebraying laughter from the television set, all sends him back to hischildhood and reruns of Gilligan’s Island.

Gilligan’s Island! John wonders if it is on right now. He reachsfor the remote control atop the end table next to his Vibromajic, coin-operated bed. The remote control is bolted down.

Gilligan’s Island is on! Thank God for Ted Turner, John thinks.It is the episode in which Gilligan and friends put on a musical version ofHamlet for Sergeant Bilko. If Sergeant Bilko liked it, went the castaways’reasoning, he would take them off the island with him.

The last time John had seen this episode he was ten or elevenyears old. He had watched it sprawled across the beige wall-to-wallcarpeting in front of the family television set, a 25-inch Quasar in a fauxoak cabinet, then later had a bowl of Cap’n Crunch that his spinsterishmother had fixed for him in their kitchen. All the appliances in thatkitchen were avocado-colored. A few years later, his mother would buyall-new appliances in harvest gold. But on this day, the appliances wereall avocado-colored. A drawing by John was attached to the refrigeratordoor with a magnet shaped like a tiny banana. He’d drawn a picture of hishappy two-person family with a bright yellow sun smiling down uponthem as they stood next to the festive house that they were living in,filled with avocado appliances.

23

COMPANY MAN

His mother, John remembers, patted him on the head and toldhim he was a good boy. “I’m a good boy,” John remembers telling himself.

“Perhaps you should go fishing,” his mother suggested to him.

Nearby in his neighborhood an artificial pond had been created.The dirt was excavated from it by backhoes and used to build up pads fornice suburban houses to sit atop. A pump was employed to fill the pondwith water, and later small flat fish were seeded in the pond. The fishwere too easy to catch, so John always tossed them back. Sometimes hedidn’t even bait his hook; he just sat there beside the pond pretending tofish, watching the neighbor ladies walking their miniature purebred dogsand scooping up the dogs’ tiny turds in Ziplock storage bags.

But John didn’t go fishing that day. Instead, he went over to aneighbor’s house and watched her polish the furniture. She was apleasant, childless lady with an absent husband. She often was verylonely. Sometimes John watched her stoically weep while she sprayedPledge and buffed until the coffeetable took on a mirrorlike sheen. Thenshe would fill John with delicious homemade fudge. John liked her fudgevery much. She seemed to enjoy watching him eat it. “I can’t eat itmyself,” she told him on this day when he was supposed to be fishing. “Itgoes straight to my hips.” Instead, she ate Ayds candy, which wassupposed to reduce her hips. She slipped quietly over to John while hestuffed fudge in his mouth and wrapped her arms around him, graspinghis head and pressing it against her fragrant and ample bosom. Theembrace made John feel things that he felt he should not yet be feeling,so he took his leave abruptly, making a lame excuse in the process.

The phone next to John’s bed rings, bringing him out of hismoony remembrance. Gilligan is singing Hamlet’s soliloquy. It is Bob onthe phone, John’s area supervisor. John likes Bob a lot. Bob asks John ifhe is ready to have the best Mid-South Industrial Carpeting SalesConference ever.

“I sure am!” John replies, and he means it. He smiles now, talkingto Bob.

“Say, is that the episode of Gilligan’s Island where they turnedHamlet into a musical?” Bob asks. He can hear it over the phone.

“Yes, it is,” John replies.

“That sure takes me back,” Bob says.

24

JOHN L. SHEPPARD

“It does me, too,” John says.

“That Phil Silvers is something else,” Bob says.

“He sure is,” John says, now remembering that that was SergeantBilko’s real name.

“I’ll meet you downstairs in about an hour. Is that enough time?”

“Yes,” John says.

They say their goodbyes and hang up. John finishes watchingGilligan and laughs many times. He feels sorry for the castaways,though, at the end of every episode. They are always stuck on that island,and don’t seem to like it very much.

John finishes his orange juice and sees something very peculiarat the bottom of the glass. It is part of a seed. This isn’t from concentrateat all, John realizes. It is real orange juice! He taps the seed from thebottom of the glass down into his hand and takes it into the bathroomwith him. He washes it off in the sink then places it in his briefcase in ababy food jar filled with other curios he has come across on his tripsaround the Mid-South as a traveling salesman. All of the curios seemcommonplace to other people, but John finds magic in them.

After he showers and shaves and puts on his JC Penney’s suitand ties his tie, the sickly black bird lights on the windowsill outside hisroom once more. It peers in through the crack in the drapes at him, anddoesn’t look at all like a mean or unkind bird. Early morning sunlightcomes pouring through the crack in the drapes, past the bird. “Caw!” saysthe bird, and flaps off. John affixes his company-issued nametag to hislapel. He steps outside his room and into a humid, yet glorious, day.

John drives a 1972 Dodge Dart Swinger that his grandfatherwilled to him ten years before. He thinks that the Dart somehow has theessence of his dead grandfather in it. That’s probably due to the stinkycigars his grandfather smoked all his life. The car has no air conditioningand the slant-six engine, though bulletproof, is not what it once was. Ona hill outside Edwinsboro, Georgia, the engine passes out from heat andexhaustion after finishing a climb up a hill. John wrestles with thesteering wheel. The car pulls silently to the dirt edge of the road.

John is wearing a tie with orange and blue stripes. It is his schooltie. The armpits of his glowing white shirt are saturated with sweat. He


COMPANY MAN

rolls up his sleeves and loosens his tie. He steps outside his vehicle ontothe crunch of gravel rimming the road.

He uses his cellphone all the time, but still it confounds him.Most modern technology does. He wants to know why it workssometimes and why it does not work sometimes. He thinks aboutpeople’s voices flying into outerspace and bouncing off satellites and intohis phone. The cellphone can purchase no signal. John is out of bounds,standing atop a red clay hill. Beyond the hill, he can see what may befarms. There are little farmhouses, but no vegetation save wild grass andsickly trees.

He removes a handkerchief from his pocket and uses it to wipesweat from his face. He smells cedar in a drippy breeze. He thinks that hemay never fall in love. He wishes that he had a dog, but it would be cruelto have a dog when you’re on the road all the time.

John barks. “Arf ! Arf !” The sound of his voice is absorbed intothe vast, empty, weedchoked landscape. Orange dust swirls across theshimmering two-lane blacktop.

John steps away from his car and into the gooey road and standson the double yellow line bisecting it. He tries the cellphone again. Thecellphone is helpless. He places it into the holster on his belt.“Edwinsboro is that way,” he says, pointing forward. He decides to walk.His car steams. Green fluid bubbles onto the dirt underneath the front ofhis car. The green fluid looks delicious.

Two hundred yards from the car, strolling atop the doubleyellow line, downhill from the car, John takes a wistful look back. Thefronts of cars all have faces. The expression on his car’s face lookspeeved, yet eager to please, from his angle below it. A glint of sunshineoff the chrome bumper beams a dot into his vision. Closing his eyesmakes the dot dance across a burnt-orange background. “One banana,two banana, three banana, four!” John sings aloud. His holds his arms outfrom his sides and walks one of the double lines like it is a high wire. Hetakes off his tie and knots it across his forehead like a bandana. He rollshis sleeves up until they are tight across his skinny biceps.

He swears that he sees water in the heat shimmer melting theroad far in front of him. He likes the clacking sound of his brown oxfordson the pavement.

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JOHN L. SHEPPARD

He doesn’t know how long he’s been walking when he sees thetown up ahead. He jogs a little bit, then puts a skip in his step every thirdstride, then slows down. A car honks behind him and he trots to the sideof the road.

“Hey mister,” a young lady says. She is sitting in the passengerseat. A man about her age, wearing a feed hat, steers the car, peering outpast his traveling companion at John.

“You need a ride?” the man asks.

“Is there an auto repair shop in this town?” John asks.

“Yes, sir,” the man says. “Just past the diner on the right. Youcan’t miss it.”

“Thank you,” John says.

The car, a muscle car the same age as John’s car, burbles andcoughs beside him as he walks. “Do you want a ride there?”

“Is it far?”

“No, but we figure you must have had a good walk already, if thatwas your car back yonder,” the young lady says. She smiles good-naturedly at him. It is an open smile, the kind that John does not seeenough of.

“I thank you for the offer,” John says, wiping the sweat from hiseyes as he takes off his makeshift bandana, “but I think I’ll just walk therest of the way. I don’t get nearly enough exercise, and it is a beautifulday.”

“Suit yourself,” the man says, and guns the engine. The car lopesinto town ahead of John.

Sitting across the kitchen table from his mother, John noticesthat she has aged considerably since the last time he saw her. She is nolonger herself, he decides. When was the last time he saw her? It hasbeen too long. Tampa is no longer in his sales district. He has beenentrusted with one of the most important districts in the Southeast. Heis a good salesman, and his contacts like and trust him, he hopes.

“Have another muffin,” his mother says. Her chin is resting onthe heel of her hand. Her elbow points in his general direction on thetabletop in front of her. Her fingernails brush her lower lip.


COMPANY MAN

“I couldn’t,” John says. “I’m stuffed. I’m not used to eating somuch.” Bacon and eggs and hash browns expand his stomach outward.His old bathrobe is scratchy on him. His old pajama bottoms are worn inthe seat. In the pocket of his pocket t-shirt is a hard knot of launderedkleenex.

“You work too hard,” his mother concludes.

“Maybe, but that’s how you get ahead,” John says. He tears amuffin in half and places one half on the tiny plate in front of him. Theother half goes back onto the platter between the mother and son. Colddregs of coffee swirl in the bottom of his cup. His mother gets up andbrings over the coffee decanter and refills his cup up to the brim.

“When do you have to go back?” she asks him after she sits backdown.

“Tomorrow,” he says, blowing on the coffee.

“What was the name of that girl from the office?” his motherasks suddenly. “The one you had the crush on?”

“Darlene,” John says. “She’s engaged to Bob.”

“Bob?” his mother asks. “Which one’s Bob?”

“You met him,” John says.

“I don’t recall a Bob,” his mother says. She’s wearing a housecoatthat may be older than John. He remembers it from his childhood, fromChristmas days and Easters. It was once a festive garment, but it is nowworn and frayed and faded.

“Anyway,” John says.

A palm tree in the backyard that used to be small now seemshuge. Trees and elephants outlive people. Maybe whales, too. Whatother living creatures outlive people? John wonders to himself.

“Where were you just now?” his mother asks him.

“In the backyard, with an elephant, a whale and the palm tree,”he says, smiling at her. This is a game that they’ve played too long. He isan only child. His mother’s uterus was tipped. His birth, she always tellshim, was a miracle.

“My poor, sweet boy,” she says.

28

JOHN L. SHEPPARD

His father has been dead a long, long time. He was his mother’sonly companionship. Every moment away from her has felt like abetrayal.

“I’m not so poor,” he says, looking at her hands splayed out onthe table between them. They are liverspotted and etched with age.There is half a muffin between them, too, not counting the half on hisplate. He is no longer hungry.

The National Association of Industrial Furnishings Expo is abust John decides sitting at the bar in the KC Hotel in Kansas City,Missouri. The bar is dark. Glasses clink somewhere out of sight. Thebartender is wearing a gold bowtie and matching vest. John eats nuts outof the bowl in front of him. Some of the nuts are cashews, his favorite. Hetries not to eat only cashews. A woman sits beside him and orders a ginand tonic. She is a prostitute. John knows her from before.

She smiles and nods at him.

He shrugs.

“Not such a good convention, eh?” she says. She’s fromMinnesota, or at least that’s her line. She sells herself. John envies herthat. She is her own merchandise. She balances an impossible blonde wigatop her head. Her neck muscles must be something.

“It was a bust,” John admits. He hasn’t loosened his tie yet. It is ahopeful non-gesture, one that reeks of not giving up. His hair is stillcombed. His drink is watered down, as requested. He nurses it, hopingthat a few contacts may wander in. Maybe he can get a few businesscards. Something.

“Well, what do you think?” she asks him. Her hand slips into thenuts, extracts a filbert. She pops it into her mouth. Her eyes areridiculously overpainted. Her eyelashes form tiny black scimitars.

He shrugs again, peers around the dark bar. No one is there butthe three people. The ambient clinking noise is gone. The bartenderleans on the cash register. He nods his approval of the transaction,scratches his ensleeved forearm absently. “Yeah,” John says. “Same-sameas last time?”

“Sure,” she says.


COMPANY MAN

They ride the elevator up toward his room on the fifth floor. It isnot a long ride at all. There is a brass rail waist high. The rug hasamoebic patterns dyed into it. She takes off her wig, pops off a hairnet,and lets her natural dirt brown hair loose, shaking her head. “You don’tmind, do you? You weren’t fooled by the wig?”

“You took it off last time, too,” John says. He loosens his tie just abit. “And the time before that.”

“I can take your clothes off for you if you like,” she says. “It won’tcost extra.” Her lipstick looks untouched. She holds the wig like acherished pet.

“Shit,” John says. “Do you have any condoms?”

“Sure, sure,” she says. “I’d be stupid not to. Don’t worry. Thefirst time—” she says, and abruptly stops. She catches herself becomingalmost too familiar with him.

“The first time, yes,” John says. He chuckles a bit. There hadbeen miscommunication between them. There had been minordifficulties as a result, but everything was fine in the end. Moneychanged hands. Hurt feelings were smoothed over. More transactionswere made possible.

The elevator pings. The elevator doors open.

“I think it’s this way,” John says, his chin and nose gesturing. Hestudies his roomkey.

John realizes, after a few minutes, that he needs new wiperblades.The wipers slap back and forth and do not-much good. The PrairieHome Companion guy talks to him from the tapedeck bolted underneathhis dash. John wishes that he’d learned how to smoke. It would come inhandy, he thinks, during tense, boring times like this.

The traffic jam has been going on for a while. It seems that hehas been in Texas for hours, and maybe he has. John imagines that LakeWobegon is a real place, and that they need industrial carpeting. He canimagine driving into town—past bachelor farmers, past the pretty goodgrocery store, past Lutherans. John doesn’t even know what Lutheransbelieve in. All that he knows about them comes from his CCD classesfrom when he was tiny. Father Gerard, an angry, black-haired, Irishpriest, said that they were formed by Martin Luther—not to be confused

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JOHN L. SHEPPARD

with Dr. Martin Luther King—and Martin Luther was a dangerousheretic who tried to destroy the Catholic Church. And failed.

Inching forward now, one half carlength—now a full carlength.It’s slow going.

The tape ends and pops out of the tapeplayer and fliesunderneath the seat. It is a peculiarity of this tapeplayer. It was made inChina. So now it is nearly silent in the enclosure of his Dodge. The rainis beginning to let up. It ticks and slaps against the roof and washesacross the windshield where it is pushed aside poorly by the wornwiperblades. There is a Whattaburger ahead, two miles, according to aroadside banner.

There are lights flashing, blue and red. John cranes his neck tosee. There is nothing to see so far.

He feels underneath the seat for the errant tape. “C’mon, c’mon,”he urges himself on. “Where are you?” he asks the tape. Instead he findsa marble. He brings the marble up to his face and is looking into an eye.It is his grandfather’s glass eye, he’d recognize it anywhere. Someonehonks behind him, flashes his lights. John moves forward two carlengthsand stops.

Now he’s free to study the eye again. His grandfather lost hisreal eye working in shipbuilding in Tampa. He was helping to create aNavy frigate. One spark from a welder’s torch: Eye gone. John flicks onthe maplight below the dash by flipping a toggle switch. He holds the eyenear the yellow bulb and turns it slowly like a gem.

He pops the eye into his mouth. It is large-ish for his mouth. Itmakes him feel as if he is gagging, almost.

He moves forward three carlengths. The blue and reds areblindingly close now, but the pickup truck in front of him obscures hisview. The accident must be horrible. He sees shattered safety glass in themiddle of the road. He sees a large piece of a red turnsignal lens. Thewrecks have been dragged from the middle to the side, leaving oil andcar chunks in their wake. An officer wearing a Smokey the Bear hatwrapped in a shower cap directs cars forward with a flashlight thatfeatures a translucent orange cone on the end. The cone glows all orangesherbet. A badge is affixed to the outside of the reflective vest theofficer’s wearing. Water runs sole-deep past his feet. The rain is lettingup.


COMPANY MAN

The pickup moves forward, then away quickly, revealing thetraffic jam’s cause. Two cars are joined messily together. A man’s hand isall that John can see. It is on the dash of one of the cars. It does notappear to be attached. John sees a garish ring on the finger.

Muffled, “Move along!”

John steps on the gas and the old Dodge lurches forward, slidingacross grease and rain and crunching car bits, then the tires catch andgrip the road. “Mmph!” John goes, spitting the dead old man’s eyeballout onto the dash.

John wakes up at 1 a.m. on a Sunday morning in his apartment inGainesville and weeps.

He’s lived in the same small studio apartment in the studentghetto for 13 years, since his sophomore year in college. He was abusiness major. The hideous day-glo green carpeting has worn out. Hecould recarpet the tiny room for free, have a couple of guys come overfrom work and help him out, but he doesn’t want to. Some things have tostay the same.

The tiny window unit blasts cold air out at him. It shuts itself offperiodically, then starts up again with a loud clunk. It probably needs tobe replaced.

The refrigerator is another appliance that could use somereplacing. It is not doing its job well at all. Some items are frozen, andsome feel almost warm. The freezer compartment is a crusty tundra.John’ll have to unplug it one of these days and let the ice melt. Theremay be ice cream buried in the back.

John’s corner apartment is lit frostily by a mercury vaporsecurity lamp hanging from a telephone pole outside his window. Helives on the second floor. An angry couple lives in the apartment above.They throw things at each other sometimes. They have a child who cries.John wonders how all three of them can live in such a tiny space. A guywho likes old timey music lives in the apartment below. John can hearhim singing along with the Carter Family every now and then. The guyin the apartment next door wears expensive jogging suits. John and heused to nod to each other in the hallway. They talked once or twice. Hewas making too much noise one evening when John was trying to getsome sleep, so John knocked on his door and asked him to please quiet

32

JOHN L. SHEPPARD

down, and the guy in the expensive jogging suit threatened him with abaseball bat. He had a diamond stud in his earlobe. John called the police.Now the guy next door doesn’t talk to him anymore.

John received his ten-year pin from work in the mail yesterday.It’s a handsome pin. He picked it up along with the rest of his mail at thepost office, where his mail is on perpetual hold. He hardly spends anytime at all in Gainesville.

The football game was out of town this week. Perhaps that’s whythe student ghetto is strangely silent. It’s fall, and Saturday night, andJohn hasn’t heard one loud “Woo!” since he’s been home. That’s what allthe students shout these days. It is their expression of youthful joy.

John rolls out of his futon and takes the four steps over to hisrefrigerator. One, two, three, four. He pulls out the pitcher of filteredwater and pours some into a plastic cup emblazoned with a grinninggator. The gator is giving the old thumbs-up. John stands in the darknext to the sink drinking his water. It is not so cool. The air conditionerclunks back on. John pours the rest of the water into the sink and leavesthe gator cup there. He pulls a paper towel off the rack and wipes his faceand blows his nose.

Outside Memphis, maybe forty miles south, John finds a tinyhotel off the beaten path that he thinks he would like to stay in. “FreeHBO!” the sign promises. John parks in the tiny dirt lot. The swimmingpool’s covered over with a dirty, ripped tarp that is sunbeaten blue. Themanager signs him in. She’s sweaty and fat and sports a bleachedmustache. She points at the diner across the street, Big Lil’s, andsuggests that it is just about time for supper. John agrees. He presentsthe woman with his company-issued credit card and she swipes itthrough a machine. The machine dials in loudly and verifies the cardwith a horrid beep. A window-mounted air conditioner blasts the womanand pushes her sweat-scent at John. He smiles at her, even though herodor is appalling. She hands him his roomkey.

All of the units are in a single long building. John’s is at deadcenter. He unlocks the door and feels an oven breeze escaping past him.He tosses his suitcase on the bed and cranks up the a/c.

He urinates with the bathroom door open. The bathroomfeatures one of those gigantic mirrors that take up the half of the wall


COMPANY MAN

above the sink and toilet, so John is subjected to watching himself piss.He notices a five-o’clock shadow on his chin.

On his way across the two-lane highway, hunger pulling himover the width of the road, John is hit by a station wagon piloted by aharried mother who is late for a church social. Her car skids on the meltyblacktop, fishtails slightly, before clipping John and sending him to thegravel at the side of the road. He lands on his feet and stands for onemiraculous moment before crumpling onto his back. There is not a cloudin the sky, he notices, save for a thin vapor stream attached to a jet high,high above.

The car backs up. Its windows are down. The woman drivingstares at him. Her children crowd to the window nearest him in thebackseat. A girl child with stringy blonde hair says, “Mama, you kilt anigger.”

“What have I told you about that word?” Mama asks her, beforeputting the car back into drive and continuing on her way.

“Me?” John thinks. “Me, a nigger?” He is awake and feeling nopain, so far. He is not inclined to get up yet, though. He’s not sure if hecan.

John thinks he can hear that jet airplane far off rumbling. Itlooks like a tiny piece of white chalk scraping a pale blue board. Birdschirp in sickly roadside trees.

The fat lady from the hotel blocks his view of the glorious sky,her head looming over him. A drop of her sweat plunks into his right eye.“I called an ambulance,” she says.

He tries to lift his right hand to wipe away the sweat that’sclosed his eye, but his arm won’t respond. “Thank you,” he says.

“I know that old gal,” the fat lady says. “She didn’t do that onpurpose or nothing.”

“I didn’t think she did,” John says. He blinks the sweat out of hiseye.

“What’re you doing out this way, anyway?” she asks him. Itsounds like an accusation. She crouches down heavily, then sits in thegravel.

34

JOHN L. SHEPPARD

“I sell carpeting,” John says. He can’t turn his head to look at her.He can feel the heat coming off her body near his head. “I’m a travelingsalesman. I go where I’m needed.”

“Traveling carpet salesman?” she asks incredulously. “I neverheard of such a thing.”

“Industrial carpeting. For hotels, corporate headquarters, bingohalls, VFW’s and such,” John says. “I go where I’m needed.”

The palm of her hand rests on his forehead, a warm pillow.“Don’t get yourself riled,” she says.

“I go where I’m needed,” John says, realizing that he is repeatinghimself.

“Keep your eyes open,” she says. “Don’t go into shock.” The voiceis attached to the hand.

“I’m fine,” John says. “I’m just fine. I need a moment to rest, thenI’ll be up and at ‘em. No time flat.”

“You ain’t gonna get her into trouble, are you?” the hotel ladyasks. She’s stroking his hair now.

“Who?”

The hotel lady laughs. “That’s the spirit!”

A shudder goes through John, an arctic wind. He hyperventilatesfor a moment. “Estoy frio,” he says.

“Stay with me,” the hotel lady says, panicky voiced. “Don’t gonowhere.”

“Mama,” John says. “Mamacita.”

Before he awakes, he knows he is in a hospital. It’s the scent.John has sold a lot of carpeting to hospitals. Hospitals make him nervous.

“Como estas, Juanito?” his uncle Carlos asks when he awakes. Anunlit stub of cigar is jammed between his teeth.

“My name is John,” John says.


COMPANY MAN

“Is that any way to talk to your uncle?” Uncle Carlos asks him.“Your uncle all the way up from Florida?”

John shrinks back from his uncle’s embarrassing accent. Y’s areJ’s in his mouth. Floor-eee-da. He doesn’t want to be associated with it.It reminds him of the cartoony accent of Al Pacino in Scarface. Hewonders how many people here have heard it already and have attachedit to him. “I’m sorry,” John says.

“The gordita, she tells me you spoke Spanish to her,” UncleCarlos says. He seems pretty pleased.

John flushes with embarrassment.

“At least she thought it was Spanish,” Uncle Carlos says. Helaughs and slaps his knee. He’s dressed like a Cuban. He doesn’t realizewhat country he’s in. He thinks that once Castro dies, he can go back andreturn to his father’s land and be a farmer. Uncle Carlos flies low overCuba every two weeks in a Cessna dropping Bibles on people so that hecan have Papa’s land back.

John is an American. He was born here in this country and hehas no desire to go to Cuba. Would he be able to make the living he doesin Cuba? Of course not. People like his uncle are crazy. They live in adreamworld.

“So what brings you to Mississippi?” John asks him. He canmove his head. He tries out his hand and it moves. He wiggles his toesand can see them through the sheet moving. His whole body feels heavy.His head is light. An IV drips something clear into his arm.

Uncle Carlos laughs again. He has John’s dark eyes and oliveskin. “So why do you drive my father’s car around if you have no desire tobe Cuban?”

“Papa was an American, like me,” John says defiantly. “He knewwhat country he was in. He built American ships for America.”

“Sí, and that redneck who ran you over knew what country shewas in, too. Yes?” Uncle Carlos says.

“There are good and bad people everywhere,” John says. “Youthink Cuba before Castro was some bed of roses?”

“Your father, God rest him, he thought Cuba was worth fightingfor,” Uncle Carlos says. “Por qué no me hablará español?”

36

JOHN L. SHEPPARD

“Es estúpido. Ahora estamos en América. Hable Americano.”

“Eres Cubano. No blanco. Sea un hombre.”

“Enough,” John says.

My father, John thinks, loved Cuba more than he did me. Whatbusiness does a man with a wife and kid have running off to fight in acommunist country, playing some sort of stupid game? His fatherdisappeared in—what? 1970? Back to Cuba. Back to fight his own Bay ofPigs when nobody cared anymore what happened in Cuba.

And Alpha 66. What right did they have to make demands onanyone living in a free country?

Cuba Libre. What’s that?

Trees without branches, like telephone poles, zipping past. Thewindows down in the Dodge, Uncle Carlos driving, sticky wind rushingthrough. John with his head resting on a sweat-soaked pillow, reclininguneasily across the backseat. His uncle’s hairy arm draped across the topof the frontseat. His hairy knuckles. A gold chain around his thick wrist.Gold signet ring, family crest. Buffed up manicure.

And the music coming out of the tapeplayer! They will getarrested for sure!

Officially, John has a month’s time to recuperate, to get back intohis game. His body is merely bruised. There was internal bleeding, andan operation, so he can’t move quickly. The doctor thought that hiskneecap was busted, but it is only a deep bruise and some tendon strain.Crutches are involved.

Everything is covered by your insurance, Mr. Garcia. Please signhere. Um, how do you folks say it? Por favor?

Couldn’t his uncle turn down the musica just a little? Un poco?

John imagines the inevitable redneck cop on the side of the roadwaiting for this opportunity. You can’t make yourself obvious like this.

His uncle is smoking a cigar. His arm rises from the seattop andremoves the cigar from his mouth. He steers with the cigar hand now,and drapes his other arm out the window. He’s slapping the door alongwith the music. He’s begging for trouble. They’re in southernMississippi now, hurrying toward the Gulf Coast.


COMPANY MAN

John grits his teeth. Why doesn’t Uncle Carlos wrap himself in aCuban flag and be done with it? A straw, shortbrimmed hat atop hisbrillcremed head, his tiny mustache, the tacky jewelry. You’re not inMiami, Uncle Carlos, mi tío. You’re in the deep South. Pride is what getsyou killed.

My name is John. I’m from Tampa. You betcha. By golly. Goshdarn it. How are you? I’m just super.

John drifts into a sweaty sleep.

“Deseas comer los mariscos?”

“Please speak English. For God’s sake,” John says.

“Los mejillones son buenos aquí.”

“You’re doing this on purpose,” John says.

“Necesito ir al cuarto de baño.”

“No, don’t leave me alone,” John pleads, panicking at the thoughtof being alone amongst all these strangers after his uncle has exposedthe two of them for what they are.

But his uncle gets up, smiling like a bastard, and walks off to thebathroom.

The waitress comes to the table with a basket of bread. “Um. Doyou speak English?” she asks him.

“Yes,” John says, perhaps too hotly.

She says, ever-so-slowly, “Do you want to order, or wait for yourdaddy to get back?”

“I hear the mussels are good here,” John says, adding a slightSouthern lilt to his voice. “Is that true?”

She relaxes a bit and speaks almost normally to him. “Oh, sure,honey. They’re very good. We’re famous for them.” Outside the windowthe Gulf of Mexico is sparkling near the end of a long summer day. Johnsees a sailboat out there. A floating casino is attached to the dock. Itlooks like an old-fashioned paddlewheel steamer.

“I’d like some mussels then, please. Some hushpuppies on theside, too. And sweet tea,” John says. “My uncle will order when he getsback from the bathroom.”

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JOHN L. SHEPPARD

“Okay, sweetheart,” the girl says. She’s fat. Lots of southernersare. It’s all the lard they eat. “If you don’t mind my asking, were you in anaccident or something?”

“I got hit by a car,” John says. “I’m okay. My uncle is driving meback to Florida. That’s where we’re from.”

She seems relieved that they are from Florida. Her face relaxesas the word passes from his lips. It’s like: Oh. That explains why you twoobvious Hispanics are here. Florida is full of your type.

His uncle gets back to the table and sits down. “Ella es gorda, yfea.”

“He can speak English, ma’am. Really,” John says.

“I will have the lobster,” Uncle Carlos says in as thick an accentas he can muster.

“Why don’t you get the surf and turf ?” John asks him, syrupingup his Southern accent. “It’s real good, probably.”

“Filete y mariscos? I don’t think so,” Uncle Carlos says.

“I’d just stick with the lobster,” the girl says. “You want anythingto drink? A beer maybe?”

“Yes, bring a beer,” he says, dismissing her with a wave.

After she’s gone, John leans over and whispers, “You know, youdon’t have to be so aggressive all the time. It’s unseemly.”

“Unseemly? Like your fake Southern accent? I’ll tell you what’sunseemly...” Uncle Carlos says. Then he doesn’t. He sits back in his chairand looks out at the vast blue waters of the gulf. Seabirds hovering overthe casino attack a couple of burly gamblers, who run inside as the gullssnap at their heads. Uncle Carlos laughs. “Do you think they allowsmoking in here?”

“I doubt it,” John says. He tears a piece of white bread in half.

His mother is in his apartment when they get back. Uncle Carloshalf-carries him up the stairs to his second-floor apartment. His motheris holding the door open for them. “Honestly,” she says, “I don’tunderstand why you felt the need to come back to this awful littleapartment.” She’s lived in Carrolwood Estates for 30 years, and now


COMPANY MAN

sounds like a whitebread matron. She’s on the tennis team for seniorsthere.

“It’s my home,” John says, staggering over to a hardbacked chair.His mother has set up a cot for herself near the kitchenette. John fearsthat she’s discovered his cache of Playboy magazines.

“Doesn’t anybody in this family speak Spanish anymore?” UncleCarlos asks. He sits down on the futon.

“When in America,” John’s mother says. She gave up speakingSpanish after John’s father died. She spent a lot of time in front of the TVset perfecting her diction, her cadence and accent. John’s father diedwealthy. She never had to work in her life. Where the money came fromis as much a mystery as what happened to his father thirty years ago.“Are you going to be staying long?” she asks. “Carlos?”

“No,” Uncle Carlos says. “I still have my work. I have a planeticket back for today.”

“Yes,” says Mrs. Garcia darkly. “Your work.” Her arms cross overher chest. She practically looks like a nun in her severe get-up. Her jet-black hair is twisted into a stiff bun. Her lips purse. “Que bueno,” she sayssneering in her affected snob American accent. It’s an old argument.None of them feel like going through it again. They hear clompingnoises above them in the apartment upstairs. “I have no idea how you canstand living in this place. I swear those upstairs neighbors of yours areriding horses around.”

“How long have you been here?” John asks her.

“I got in yesterday. Your uncle hasn’t been filling your head withideas, has he?” she asks.

Clomp, clomp, clomp. Their heads tilt toward the ceiling andwatch the sounds. The ceiling fixture shakes a bit.

“You can’t put ideas into a stone,” Uncle Carlos says.

“Goddamn you!” a muffled female voice shouts.

“I’ve had it! You’re on your own!” a male voice shouts. Theywatch the footsteps thud quickly toward the apartment front. A doorslams. They hear footfalls thumping down the outdoor stairs. A carstarts up. Loud rock music blares. Tires bark. The loud rock music andcar engine rumble recedes.

40

JOHN L. SHEPPARD

A child wails grief up above.

“It’s not without its charms,” John’s mother says.

Uncle Carlos laughs. The two older people share a look thatJohn doesn’t like. Uncle Carlos never married, except to la causa.

“Don’t look in the freezer,” John warns them. “You may not likewhat you see in there.” It’s his way of making his mother look in thefreezer and maybe clean it out for him. It will keep her busy chippingaway for a day or two, then it will be time for her to leave.

His mother doesn’t nip at the bait. She’s still looking at UncleCarlos, a sly smile across taut lips. Uncle Carlos’ eyes glow warmly. Johndoesn’t like it at all.

“I have to be going now,” Uncle Carlos says. “I’ll need a ride tothe airport to catch my flight back to Miami.”

“Can’t afford a cab?” his mother asks.

“I can afford a cab,” Uncle Carlos says.

“Maybe I’ll give you a ride anyway. You did drive my boy all theway down here,” she says. She walks over to Uncle Carlos, touches himon the arm. He stands up and smiles at her. He towers over her.

“We need to leave right now,” he says, “if we’re going to make theflight.”

“Will you be able to manage?” she asks John.

“I guess so,” he replies. He can’t believe what’s going on. Herefuses to believe it.

“I’ll drive you in my car,” she says. She owns a three-year-oldSaturn.

Uncle Carlos pulls John’s keys out. “My things are in the trunkof the Dodge.” The two of them leave. They clomp down the stairs. Cardoors and trunks slam.

Uncle Carlos returns to the room. John has already turned onthe television. A documentary about sea lions living on the wharf in SanFrancisco is on. Uncle Carlos tosses him the keys. John fumbles themonto the floor. When he looks up, Uncle Carlos winks at him.


COMPANY MAN

42

The Indefinite AssignmentBY JULIE WISKIRCHEN

Bunni calls to offer me an “indefinite” assignment at the JohnnyRed Stripe Paint Company. She tells me it will be general office duties fora week, maybe more. Whenever they say “maybe more,” you’re introuble. You’re going to be in limbo. They’re so clueless about theassignment that they won’t even try to lie.

I know it’s going to be a timesuck, but I take the job anyway.Yesterday, Dad repeated his spiel about making me pay rent if he catchesme watching another Real World marathon on a work day and his voicegot really high pitched. Also, if I stay home much longer I’ll end uphaving to pack boxes for the move. And that would be labor without pay.Who knows—maybe this indefinite assignment could turn into a longterm assignment that turns into a regular job. At this point, I can’t bepicky.

Day one. I drive to the beige one-story office building with theconnecting warehouse off Warson Road near Page Avenue and its glut offast food establishments. I enter the Johnny Red Stripe Paint Company,admit to the high school dropout receptionist that I’m a temp, and sit in aburnt orange chair in the lobby for twenty minutes. Sheila, the officemanager, fetches me.

“We’re so glad you’re here. Debbie has been out for three daysnow and we didn’t know how we were going to get by. Did the agencytell you how long you’d be here?” Sheila asks. I stare at her hair,strawberry blonde and thick, feathered into two huge waves, parteddown the middle as if by Moses.

“They said a week, maybe more.”

“It looks like maybe more, and I hope that’s okay with you. We’renot sure what’s going on with Debbie.” Sheila projects a concernedexpression, but it’s not the expression of a friend who is really worriedabout Debbie’s health or mental state or whatever the Debbie story is.She looks perturbed and disappointed, as if she just drove away from

43

THE INDEFINITE ASSIGNMENT

Taco Bell and discovered that her Mexi-melt was cold. Debbie threw hera curve, and now she has to break in a temp.

Sheila tells me that eighty people work in the office and fiftypeople work in the warehouse. She tells me that this is the companyheadquarters and that they have ten paint stores in the St. Louis area anda mail order business. She shows me the bathroom and the lunchroom,but she doesn’t introduce me to a soul. Our tour ends at Debbie’s cubicle.Sheila turns on the computer for me and leaves me an orange post-itnote with her extension written on it. And then I’m alone and I’ve noidea who my neighbors are and I’m sure I won’t be able to find my wayback to the bathroom. I play minesweeper and listen to the voices aroundme. The guy in the next cube must be a sales guy. He leans back in hischair until it seems like it might tip over and talks on a headset. He tellspeople he’s letting them in on a secret. He calls his friends and stage-whispers stories about blondes he met on the Landing. He wears a shinysuit and tie with the Tasmanian devil on it. He never introduces himselfto me yet I hear his name over and over.

Hey, guy, it’s Dave. It’s Dave. Dave Ferguson, Johnny Red Stripe, howthe hell are ya? This is Dave. Hey there. Hey. What’s up? Dave Ferguson,Johnny Red Stripe Paint Company, we met at that seminar in St. Joe. Hey, longtime no hear. Hello Bob? It’s Dave, how’s tricks?

Behind me, I hear the faint sounds of the easy listening stationand typing, and I surmise it’s an accounting or a data entry clerk.According to the sign on her cube, her name is Lenore McDuff.

What does Debbie do? I don’t see any work on the desk, exceptfor a few stacks of dusty papers. No boss emerges. I call Sheila andsomeone tells me she’s in a meeting. I go to lunch, putt-putting throughthe Steak N’ Shake drive-thru during the noon rush, ordering a steakburger and an orange freeze and eating in the car on the way back to theoffice, scrambling to make it back in a half hour. Nobody even noticed I’dleft. Still no work. People walk by, glance in my cube, look away as ifthey’ve been flipping channels and come across a close-up of open-heartsurgery. I call Sheila again.

“What exactly does Debbie do? Is there somebody who can giveme some directions?”

“Um, I’m actually not sure what Debbie does exactly but let mefind out. She’s just one of those people who’s always worked here, youknow, and always done her job, and I’m just not real sure,” Sheila says.

44

JULIE WISKIRCHEN

I sit there for the rest of the afternoon, ignoring the phone thatrings a few times, unsure of what I’d say.

Day Two. I get coffee and nobody makes eye contact with me inthe lunchroom. I’m at a stage where I just don’t want to make an effortanymore. Sheila walks by my cube and seems surprised to see that I’vereturned. She introduces me to Frank, who thinks he’s Debbie’s boss, atleast one of her bosses.

“Let me show you where the printer is,” Frank says, walking medown the hall to a dusty cube that contains a Xerox machine and anarchaic dot matrix printer.

“You see the big stack of orders that’s piling up behind theprinter there,” Frank says, gesturing to an accordion-folded stack.“Debbie tears them orders off the printer and collates them for me bystore number and then she delivers them to the appropriate people twicea day.” This is the one task he’s sure Debbie does faithfully. He shows mehow to find the store numbers on the orders and who to deliver them to,although he doesn’t bother to introduce me.

“That’s four days worth of orders there, so it’s probably going totake you a while to sort through ‘em, but the sooner the better becausewe’re behind on account of Debbie being out,” Frank says. Debbie isimportant. Debbie doesn’t show up and paint doesn’t make it to thestores. Store managers get yelled at by customers who have to return totheir homes and stare at the primer on their walls and wait. It takes meabout an hour to sort the orders and deliver them. I ask Frank if he hasanything else for me to do and he expresses surprise that I finished sosoon. He’s got nothing else but if he thinks of anything, he’ll find me.

On Monday of my second week, Marge from the next rowapproaches me with another of Debbie’s responsibilities.

“You’re the temp who’s filling in for Debbie?” she asks, timidlyapproaching my cube. She’s in her fifties and wears a red wig and thoseindoor-outdoor glasses that always look dark.

“Yeah, my name is Astrid.”

“I’m Marge.”

“Hi Marge, nice to make your acquaintance.” Normally, Icouldn’t give a shit if her name was Marge or Pocohantas, but she is the



first person who’s voluntarily told me her name and it makes me want tocry. Or is it P. M. S?

“The coffee tin is getting kind of low and I don’t know if youknow it or not but Debbie is the one who takes up the collection forcoffee and she buys it from the Sam’s Club.”

“Johnny Red Stripe doesn’t provide coffee?” I am not going to gocube to cube and introduce myself to these people and rattle an emptyFolger’s can for coins. I will not stand by the door and ring a bell forspare change.

“You don’t have to go around and ask people,” Marge says, as ifreading my mind. “There’s an empty can under the sink. Just put it outwith a sign and then take the money to the store. You can borrow thecompany card from Sheila if you don’t have a Sam’s Club card.”

“Okay, I guess I can handle that.” I don’t know why Marge didn’tjust put out the can herself. It would have been easier than explaining allthis bullshit to me.

“Marge, are you a friend of Debbie’s?”

“No, not particularly.”

“Where is Debbie? Is she coming back?”

“I really don’t know,” Marge shifts her weight from leg to legand stares down the aisle. This is the longest conversation I’ve had inthis office. “We like Folger’s. You should buy some decaf too.” Shescurries down the aisle and disappears around the corner. She’s aboutfive feet tall so all I can see is the top of her red hair bobbing down thenext aisle as she returns to her cube.

Sheila hasn’t heard from Debbie but is sure she’s going to comeback. She recruits me to sort the mail after the mailroom kid leaves to goback to college. That’s no big deal. With the mail and the order collating,I have about three hours of work in an eight-hour day. I start to bringbooks. Dave the sales guy teases me about reading, asks if I’m studyingto be a librarian, tells me he likes that John Grisham.

“Dave,” I say, speaking directly to the carpeted wall thatseparates our cubes. I have to catch him between phone calls, and it’s noteasy.

“Yo,” he replies.

46

JULIE WISKIRCHEN

“Where’s Debbie?”

“You’re Debbie.”

“No, I’m not. Is she coming back?”

“How should I know? She’s not in my department.”

“Yeah, but you sit right next to her.”

“Sorry, but I have no idea. I’m in the phone zone when I’m here.The building could be on fire and I wouldn’t know about it and Iwouldn’t give a shit as long as I’m making a deal.”

“Dave the Dealmaker!” Someone yells from the cube on the otherside of Dave.

“My man!” Dave yells back, “Did you see the Cards’ game lastnight? Was that not incredible?”

I’m starting to think I should call in Mike Wallace. PerhapsDebbie fell into a vat of paint in the warehouse and they’re all covering itup. I stare at her pictures. Debbie is attractive, probably early 30’s. Shehas two kids and a clean-cut husband. There is a picture of Debbie andher kids in one of the old cars at Six Flags. There is a picture of Debbieand her husband on a beach. Her hair is in corn-rows and he’s got zincon his nose. There is an 8x10 Glamour Shot of Debbie, looking olderthan the beach picture but maybe it’s all the makeup. Her blonde hair iscemented in place and her chin is tilted ever so slightly. What kind ofwoman goes to Glamour Shots and then puts the picture in her cube?Looking through Debbie’s drawers clarifies nothing. I find hand lotion, abox of Nutrigrain bars, tampons, a few issues of Glamour.

A month passes and I can’t believe they’ve kept me this long. Inow bring a Norton Anthology with me to the office and read all the stuffI was supposed to read in college but didn’t, in preparation for my gradschool entrance exam. I re-read “The Wasteland.” I still don’t get it.Prufrock, I get. I am measuring my life out in coffee spoons. The onlything that gives me job satisfaction is a full can of coffee donations. Iguess my note about providing caffeine for those less fortunate works. Ihave no idea if they think it’s funny or not.

Day 35. People are whispering and they shut up when Iapproach, and they do this more conspicuously than usual. One of thepeople whispering is Lenore, the data entry clerk who sits behind me andwho doesn’t talk. Once a day her husband calls and she says one or two



sentences such as “I thawed the roast” or “They said the car needsstruts.” Today, some woman walks by my cube, then peeks in on Lenoreand says, “Did you hear about Debbie?” Lenore whispers something thatI can’t hear. “Just awful, isn’t it?” the woman says, and she shuffles away.

I wait until after lunch, and then I close in for the kill. I walk intoLenore’s cube instead of stopping at the space where a door should be.

“What’s the story about Debbie?”

“I don’t know,” she says, looking uncomfortable and turning toher computer.

“Yes, you do. I need to know.”

“I’m sorry, Astrid, but I’m on a deadline.”

“Just tell me. Don’t you think I have a right to know? I’m inlimbo here and nobody will talk to me or even give me any work to doand I just need to know how much longer it’s going to be. Just tell methat much.”

“I don’t know if Debbie will ever come back. You can probablyhave that job permanently.” Lenore sucks and chews on her lower lip.Her lips are always chapped.

“Why not?”

“Debbie was on the news last night. She’s not well.”

“You want to know what happened to Debbie? I’ll tell you,” Davesays, springing up behind me, wearing his headset with the detachedcord swinging in the air.

“Dave—” Lenore says.

“It was the health spotlight last night on Channel 5. It wasDebbie, only they had a dark light on her face and they changed her voiceso she sounded like Bea Arthur. She had these breast implants, you see.She got them last year. Birthday present for her husband. She told me allabout it. She was a real nice looking girl but, not to be offensive, shedidn’t have enough up top to fill up a champagne glass. Anyway, she gotthe breast implants and it wasn’t long after that, she started feeling bad.She missed a lot of work. Then her husband got laid off at Chrysler andthey had to rely on her job and our shitty HMO. She found a doctor whotold her that there might be a rupture and silicone might be leaking intoher body and that might be making her sick but he said her insurance

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JULIE WISKIRCHEN

wouldn’t cover taking them out and it was going to be a lot moreexpensive than putting ‘em in. She didn’t know what to do. Her husbandsaid she had to go to work. She couldn’t afford to get fired. She wouldcome to work and cry. The pain was so bad and she was doped up onwhatever medicines this doc gave her and one day when her husband waswatching a soap opera downstairs and the kids were at school, she justtook a razor and cut her chest up. She said she just wanted to drain thestuff out of her body. She fainted when she saw the blood and herhusband heard her fall and found her.”

Dave pauses for my reaction. He squints at me and I don’t wantto believe it, but it looks like he’s almost smirking. Lenore goes back toher typing.

“God,” I say, “Is she okay?” If this is true, how can she possibly beokay? Dumb question.

“She’s recovering but I don’t think she’ll come back. Do you,Lenore?” I wonder if Dave will take bets for an office pool on the topic.

“I don’t know. I just say a prayer for her. She’s really a beautifulgirl.”

Dave’s phone rings and he sprints back to his desk and launchesinto an animated conversation about Seinfeld.

I stare at the Glamour Shot. Later, Sheila comes over and tellsme that they won’t be needing my services anymore. I ask if it’s becauseDebbie is coming back. Maybe Dave was just bullshitting me. She justreiterates that they won’t need my services anymore. I take my NortonAnthology and go home.



50

Lack of WorkBY LISBETH PEDERSEN

I was a student of the Humanities [more specifically a student of EnglishLanguage & Literature]. I mean, I still am and I guess I always will be astudent of the Humanities. But officially I was no longer a student of theHumanities on August 7, 2005. That’s when I finished my MAdissertation. I put my heart into that dissertation. I put a tremendousamount of time and energy into that dissertation; all 110 [o-n-e-h-u-n-d-r-e-d a-n-d t-e-n] pages. That’s a lot of pages. I even met RaymondFederman whose books my dissertation is about twice – T-W-I-C-Eexclamation mark. Can you believe that?! Federman showed a sincereinterest in my work on his work, which naturally only increased mymotivation. The university even decided to publish the damn thing[ISBN 87-89170-99-7, © Lisbeth Rieshøj Pedersen]. Bloody amazing.My field of specialisation was [are you ready?]: American PostmodernRadical Metafiction. I’ve spent a great deal of time studying thisparticular type of writing, yet for some reason I always find it hard toexplain to other people exactly what those 4 [f-o-u-r] words in thatparticular order mean. I normally mutter something along the lines of,“contemporary literature that seriously challenges more traditionalliterature and also the world-view that’s normally associated with suchtraditional writing”, which of course is nowhere near anything that canbe considered a s-a-t-i-s-f-a-c-t-o-r-y reply. It’s therefore hardlysurprising that my answer never fails to generate yet another question:so what exactly is it that you can do now that you have specialised in thaterrrr…that stuff you mentioned before? I always have a hard timeanswering this question TOO – despite the many times I’ve heard it.What the hell is it that I can do now that I have a Humanities degree andam specialised in [are you ready? Here it comes again]: AmericanPostmodern Radical Metafiction? What qualities [remember thisword: Q-a-u-l-i-t-i-e-s. It’s important. I am not kidding. I shall get backto this. Unless, of course, I forget to get back to it. Then we have aproblem. But we’ll just have to see how it goes] have I gained throughmy studies of this phenomenon? It’s a damn good question and, I may

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LACK OF WORK

add, an important one too. Important not only because I would like tosupply a s-a-t-i-s-f-a-c-t-o-r-y answer to those who ask me about mydegree. Important also because I am presently unemployed – yes, un-em-plo-y-ed – and that bugs the shit out of me if I may speak straightfrom the heart. I’ve been unemployed since the day I graduated with topgrades. Fucking frustrating. I remember one of my friends proudlyproclaiming, “Wow — Lisbeth! Congratulations — this means you canliterally walk into any job you want!” I didn’t want to come across asungrateful or pessimistic at a moment when my good results hadtriggered off such genuinely excited and happy outburst from a goodfriend. Yet inside I knew the score: this friend of mine was wrong. Verywrong. I have in fact not been able to walk into ANY job at all since I gotmy Humanities degree. And I have tried, oh believe me, I have tried. It’sfunny now when I look back because when I was working on my MAdissertation, I was never short of work. Man, I had numerous differentjobs while I was also trying my hardest to be a full-time student. I didn’thave the time to be a full-time student back then – before I got mydegree – so I had to quit some of all my jobs. Imagine that? Quit some ofmy jobs exclamation mark. I am not making this up. I was cleaning, Iworked at the local bakery [god, I hated those 5 am starts on Sundaymornings. Fucking hell. And the customers were always pissed off atthat time of the day. Really pissed off], I taught private English lessonsto a high school student [she wanted to study Shakespeare, so we readHamlet], and I did freelance translation work for no less then 3 [t-h-r-e-e] different companies. I sure wasn’t short of work back then. BACKTHEN. But today – oh here in the present. A completely different story.Now that I have my degree in the Humanities, I have no work. And I amtelling you this: I am actually bordering on being fucking depressed. NOwork. I am sick of rejections. Seriously. And I’ve not even beenparticularly picky when I’ve applied for work. When I’ve been in a super-ambitious mood [yes, it happens; albeit rarely] I’ve applied for jobs likeSENIOR RESEACHER IN LITERARY STUDIES, on other lessambitious days I’ve applied for work as HIGH SCHOOL TEACHER INENGLISH, or PROJECT MANAGER for some advertising agency, oras LINE MANAGER at the local university library [AUB – that’s whatit’s called. That’s short for Aalborg Universitetsbibliotek]. I have alsoapplied for a job as COURSE COORDINATOR. On days when I justreally wanted to get a fucking job because I was absolutely sick of beingon the dole, I’ve applied for a number of other positions. For instance:SALES ASSISTANT and OFFICE CLERK and CLEANER and

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LISBETH PEDERSEN

PHONER – and then I’ve been told again and again that I wasoverqualified [that’s a long word. With lots of vowels. I like words withlots of vowels – like queue for instance]. Overqualified my arseexclamation mark. After a while, you get used to it because certainemployers like to use the word overqualified a lot. They think it’s aninoffensive way of telling someone that they didn’t get the job when infact it’s a very offensive way of telling someone that they didn’t get thejob. I think so anyway. I mean, come on! Look at the word: overqualified– it’s an adjective and this is what it means [are you ready?] toohighly qualified for a job: with more academic or vocationalqualifications or experience than is necessary or desirable for a job. Howthe hell can you be too good for a job? Isn’t everybody talking aboutimprovement these days? Yes, improvement – it’s a biggie nowadays, forsure. So is flexible. That’s an adjective too and this is what it means [areyou ready?] able to adapt to a new situation: able to change or bechanged according to circumstances. If you change according tocircumstances, aren’t you in some way improving? Archk, never mind.Just be careful not to improve so much that you end up becomingoverqualified. That’s not desirable if you want a job; believe me, I knowwhat I am on about. Anyway, I’ve been quite flexible in my search foremployment. I’ve not been picky. I’ve been flexible. I just want a fuckingjob. Alan is worried about his situation too – he’s still got his MAdissertation to complete but he just cannot find any motivation or drive.Look at me, top grades, I speak English [fairly ok] and Danish [fluent]and I cannot get work. I said to Alan, we move to America – I know anice professor at the University of Washington Bothell. But I guessthat’s no guarantee for a job. Alan thinks they’re too wacky over inAmerica. Maybe he’s right [no offence, dude]. I am giving a re-locationsome serious thought. Copenhagen maybe. Shit. Sorry to take this out onyou. I’ve just been bottling it up for months now, the frustrationincreasing in size every single day. I’ve also sent off applications andnever heard anything back. I decided to interpret the lack of response tomy applications as a ‘no’. One of them, I recall, was a job as aRECEPTIONIST. Recently, I applied for a job as a SERVICECONSULTANT at a local call centre. Now, I’ve already spent [or:wasted] 2 [t-w-o] years of my adult life as a CORPORATE CALLCENTRE SLAVE [CCCS]. This was during a two-year leave fromuniversity when I settled down temporarily in bonnie Scotland and wassomewhat DESPERATE for a job. When I eventually quit my job as aCCCS and moved back to Denmark, I promised myself: never again.


LACK OF WORK

Don’t get me wrong. I mean, I have great respect for people who work asCCCSs – and I do mean great respect. These people are likesuperheroes in my view. They’ve got to be. S*u*p*e*r — but notoverqualified. There is a huge difference exclamation mark. After amonth or so, the job as a CCCS had nearly driven me insane. It drove meUP and DOWN the walls “Good morning/afternoon/evening[delete as applicable] you’re through to Lisbeth at Motorola how may Ihelp you today?” Try that 80 [e-i-g-h-t-y] times a day. 5 days a week. Iam not making this shit up. But at least it’s a JOB! Argh! I am sick ofbeing on the dole. I want a job. I want to teach other people the beauty ofliterature and those other wonderful creative things that humankind isable to produce. THAT is the kind of job I would really like. But hey, nowI’m being picky. Not good. Flexible is the way forward. It’s a biggienowadays. For sure. Still, just imagine: a job teaching literature. Oh!Literature and other cultural things; they are much more important thanmoney and marketing and capitalism and consumerism and quantity.Yes, those cultural things and gifts are quality. Not quantity. [See, I didremember to get back to it - QUALITY!] I think the world nowadaysfocuses too much on quantity. Perhaps that’s why I feel like I am on thewrong planet. Fuck. Right. As you’ve probably gathered by now, I am ina right foul mood. I am going to the café now to buy a cappuccino. Nowait. I cannot afford that. Make that a coffee – half the price.

P*O*S*T*S*C*R*I*P*TOh – I have some news to share with you. I am now officially going to bea [are you ready?] CCCS. Remember what that stands for?CORPORATE CALL CENTRE SLAVE. Oh, you did remember. Sorryabout that. I got the call yesterday at 19:39. The place offered me aposition as a SERVICE CONSULTANT. The one I mentioned above.They offered me the job after I’d completed [are you ready? I’m going tomention s-e-v-e-r-a-l things now]: an online IT-skills test, an onlinetyping test, an online personality test [rather comprehensive if you askme. I got extremely bored towards the end…at question 38 orthereabouts], a call on the phone which was a simulation of a possiblecustomer situation, a personal interview discussing the outcome of theonline personality test, then another personal interview where thecompany ‘got to know me’, I then had to supply them with 2 [t-w-o]references and a criminal record. When they called, I accepted the offerto work for them. I need the money. I cannot afford to be picky. I must beflexible. It’s the way forward. I start on November 1.

54

Roman CandleBY KURT EISENLOHR

“How you doing, bro?” Burt Lack, a work buddy of mine, was sitting onthe roof of my apartment building with me. We’d eaten a few grams toomany mushrooms about thirty minutes prior to climbing the tree thatallowed us to get onto the roof.

“I feel sort of weird,” I told him.

“You’ll be feeling even weirder soon.”

“No, I feel weird about being up here. I feel too visible.”

“No one’s looking up here.”

“It feels fucked up to me.”

“Relax, dude. Check out those stars.”

I looked at the stars. Orion was up there, the Big Dipper, theLittle Dipper. There were certainly more, but Orion and the Dipperswere the only constellations I had ever been able to identify. The moonwas low on the horizon, red and swollen. Burt was wearing a trucker hatwith the word POLICE printed above the bill.

“I’m worried about how I’m going to pay my rent this month,” Itold him.

“You’ll make it.”

“I don’t know...”

“Did you see that shooting star?”

“What shooting star?”

“You didn’t see that shooting star?”

“No, I didn’t see it.”

“It was cool. I can’t believe you missed that.”

“I think I’m going to end up homeless one day.”

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ROMAN CANDLE

“Oh, come on, man!”

“Homeless and alone; it’s inevitable.”

“Dude, you’re tripping. It’s all part and parcel to the whole.”

“Which hole?”

“What?”

“I don’t know what you’re saying.”

“You’re tripping, dude.”

I walked to the edge of the roof and peered over. We were twoand a half stories up. I looked at the moon. There seemed to besomething fundamentally wrong with it. I walked back to where Burtwas sitting.

“I have to get off this building,” I told him.

“We just got here.”

“I’m going down!”

“Chill, man. It’s nice up here.”

“Where the hell is that tree we climbed?”

He made a vague motion with his hand.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It over there somewhere.” He pointed at a dark corner of theroof.

I took baby steps toward the top of the tree. I stood there forawhile, staring at it. It seemed to be swaying, changing color, glowing. Igrabbed a branch. I stood there some more. Then I swung on in.

“OH JESUS GOD!”

Ninety minutes later, I was on solid ground again.

I went back to my apartment. Everything looked crazy in there. Eventhe cats looked crazy. I picked up the phone and dialed 911.

“Hello?”

I didn’t say anything.

“Hello? This is 911.”

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KURT EISENLOHR

I was paralyzed.

“Is this an emergency? Hello?”

I hung up. I moved toward the stereo, put some music on, andpaced around the livingroom in circles for awhile. A voice came out ofthe speakers.

“The strangest thing happened to me on the way to outer spacetoday.”

I walked over to one of the speakers and stared at it.

“Just let me love you,” the voice sang.

I stood there staring until the music stopped. I felt very peaceful,very benevolent.

My cats were staring at me. “Come on babies, it’s time to go tosleep.”

We crawled into bed and situated ourselves.

Suddenly, there was a tremendous pounding at the door. I leaptup and sent the cats flying.

“Who is it?”

“It’s Burt, open up!”

I opened the door and Burt walked in. He had his hat off. He wasgoing bald and his forehead appeared freakishly large. I found itdisturbing.

“You should put your hat back on,” I told him.

“I THINK I SAW GOD UP THERE!” he screamed.

“Up where?”

“ON THE ROOF! I’M TELLING YOU, I SAW GOD UPTHERE!”

“Keep your voice down. I have neighbors.” It was true. Mystoner landlord lived in the apartment directly above me, and there wasthis chick one door down named Annie something or another, an agingex-stripper who routinely clawed at the other side of my bedroom walllate at night while weeping.

Burt walked over to the telephone and began dialing.

“IS THIS AN EMERGENCY?” I asked.


ROMAN CANDLE

My cats were staring at him.

He put the phone down. He looked at Kook, he looked at Bug. Helooked at me.

“I have to get out of here,” he said.

“Time is a perfect zero,” I told him, “something to push yourfinger through.”

He bolted for the door, leaving it wide open in his wake.

Kook made a break for it, but I caught him before he couldescape.

“You don’t want to go out there,” I told him.

Trespass. Satellite. Flying eye.

HELLO.

It came roaring out of my speakers like a freight train.

It was seven-thirty a.m. That’s what the clock said.

I got out of bed, walked into the livingroom and turned mystereo off. The sun was up, casting garish shadows. The world and myplace in it always looked shittier in the full light of day. But I feltrelatively okay for a change. I hadn’t had that much to drink the nightbefore. Xanax and ‘shrooms; maybe it was the safer path. Ben and Jerryor black leather? Tough call.

There were urban hipsters and there were Hawthorne hippiesand boy you didn’t want to be caught on the wrong side of that line.

I fed the cats and put on a pot of coffee. I put some bread in thetoaster. I had some cream cheese in the fridge. I sat on the couch anddrank my coffee and smoked a cigarette and thought about the toast andthe cream cheese and my stance on the urban hipster vs. Hawthornehippy situation. I didn’t have the energy to think about it for more thansixty seconds, so I turned the tv on and jammed some toast and creamcheese into my mouth.

I only got two channels and they were fuzzy at best, but I waswatching one of them and they were showing footage of a very tall,impressive looking building stabbing at the sky and spewing flame like aRoman candle.

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I took a closer look.

New York.

What the fuck?

As I was watching the newsman talk, I saw a plane flying into asecond building, which could be seen just over the guy’s right shoulder.He wheeled around and saw it himself. He was as suprized as anyone. Heseemed a bit uneasy, working without a script—no net. I listened forawhile, but I can’t remember what he talked about. I got up and walkedinto my kitchen and looked out the window. It was a full-on gloriousSeptember morning, the sun blasting down its gold. I could see MountHood, and the Willamette River, and the fucking SUVs forming a longsnake up and down the highway, people on their way to work, everythingrolling along to schedule. But today would be different. Today peoplewould go into work thinking they really had something to talk about.Something that mattered.

I got dressed and took my time searching for change for the bus.I figured they’d cut me a few minutes slack that morning. I usuallyworked the night shift.

“You’re five minutes late,” my manager told me. On thetelevision over her shoulder, the World Trade Center was collapsing.

“Write me up,” I told her.

She was a good little corporate whore; she wrote me up. I lookedat her troll-like face and her bitter, pinched, dimly evil eyes and thought:Bring it on, blow it all up, there’s nothing worth saving here. But I knewthat wouldn’t happen, somehow. We would rain hellfire upon whoeverwe thought was behind this and then feel safe enough to continue on ourspiritually blighted path to extinction. Nothing felt very real in the 21stcentury. Not even reality. In fact, reality felt like the least real thing ofall.

I went about my business of opening the bar. The rest of thecrew stood there looking at the television. It was the same wheneverthere was a football game on; I was the only motherfucker workingbecause I was the only one who wasn’t interested in the game or whowon or lost the goddamn game.

Five minutes late?


ROMAN CANDLE

I set up the bar while my co-workers stared at the strictlysymbolic collapse of Western Civilization. Then I went into the walk-in,cracked a beer, and sat there shivering in the cold, drinking it.

60

Junkyard LoveBY DEGE LEGG

5am. MondayMorningBlues sang out of the alarm clock. Elronwoke, rolled over, grabbed a magazine, then jerked his beef, and left seedin the women’s lingerie section. Page 69. Straight Love, no chaser. Hehopped out of bed. Dressed. Fried some skillet chips and shaved in thesink as the bacon crackled like a round of applause.

The morning inched over the horizon. Birdchirp was in thetrees. He downed two pill-powders of Gains to cure the “hognuts-hanging-off-the-forehead-hangover” he had in his skull. Pain. But itwasn’t no thing. He’d gone to work with worse hangovers. Cripplinghangovers...that would’ve sent the average man scrambling to the doctor,thinking he had a tumor stuck in his head. But not Elron.

He threw all his beanos in his pockets. Grabbed the keys.Cranked the truck. Blew down the mountain. Carving each turn.Twisting the radio knob, here and there. Listening for a good song. Butthere weren’t none. Just a bunch of FM Romeo’s talking a bunch of shitand jazzing on how clever & entertaining they thought they were. Elroncringed at the godawful staying power of the status quo, then spat to thewind. It was a war that could never be won. Too much free plastiqueavailable to the Averageman, who would never learn, because he’d beenborn dead and plied with bullshit from dayone. Bullshit that he’d beenprogrammed to enjoy and respond to, because he was a deadrobot withinstincts not unlike those of a brain-damaged monkey.

First order of the day was to pick up all the flunkies that strippedcars at the junkyard and get them into work on time. That was Elron’sresponsibility. There wasn’t a junkyard stripper alive that wasn’t a card-carrying burnout. NON-BURNOUTS NEED NOT APPLY, read theclassified ad. Cause stripping junked cars was backbreaking work. Sun toSun. 7 to 7. You got ugly in the rotgut heat as the rest of the world spunhalfway around in a climate-controlled environment. It wasn’t easy. It

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was a job only for those types of men who’d exhausted all of their luckand family graces. Hardcore losers. Ex-drug fiends. Tenured alcoholics.Snaggle-toothed morons with jackhammer arms. Failed thieves andboosters. Paroled ex-cons. And Longshot losers who’d blow their lastcent on a Texas flyswatter in Waco. They were the only men desperateenough to stick it out at the yard longer than a week. Or a day.

Oldman Valentine paid Elron an extra $100/wk to round up allthe deadbeats and bring them in. On time. Every morning. M-F. He’ddrag them out of bed. Chase them down at the whorehouse. Pull themout of the bush they’d passed out in, drunk, the night before. Whatever ittook. It was job. And a few extra beanos. And Elron wasn’t above doingit. Cause a dollar is dollar when you ain’t kissing no ass.

First flunky on the roster was Buzby. He lived a little down themountain from the Zatan house. He was big oldboy. 6’5”. 279lbs.Watermelon for a head. He was so dumb and dangerous, he made peoplenervous. But not Elron. “Git in the truck, boy! Time to go to work!”Buzby straggled out of his house lugging a sacklunch as Elron skiddedinto his yard, riding the horn. Buzby took a seat in the back of the truck.His shoulders to the tailgate. Arms spread wide.

Next stop. The twins. Yerkie and Yuzzle. Born boneheads.Skinny speedfreaks raised on the Mountain. Never went to school. Theywere a little smarter than Buzby, but not much. They were sneaky. Stoleanything, regardless of how useless it was. They fashioned themselves asHillbilly Greasers and wore bowling shoes. 13’s on the heel. Theysported cheap leather jackets, year round...even in the summertime.

Elron wrenched blood from the horn. Yerkie and Yuzzle slothedout of the card-shack/tinflap shed they called a house. Even though itwas early, and they were still half-asleep, there was rhythm in each oftheir steps. They were strutting for no one. In a land called Nowhere.Heading straight for the void. But acting cool was the only way theyknew how to reconcile themselves to their fate.

They hopped in the back with Buzby.

Next up was Marion the Black Albino. They called him, “WhiteLightnin’.” Built like a brickhouse. Lean & mean at 35. He was neitherstupid, nor a flunky. He’d just had trouble getting jobs over the years on

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account of the way he looked. It scared people. Though he was hexed. Sohe took up stripping. He was the hardest workingman Elron had everseen. He could strip a dead-car in an hour. Solo. Jerk a transmission likeit was nothing. Marion was waiting outside when the truck pulled up tohis house. He sat up front with Elron.

Last on the list was Q’Ball. He was a Sunday paper full ofbadnews. Since the day he was born, he was nothing but trouble. Ex-dopefiend. Ex-con. Ex-biker. He’d joined up with The HalloweenLucifers at 15. Finished his apprenticeship with them a few years later.Then he graduated to DopeDealer and did a few tours of duty in theDrug Wars of the late 80’s. Eating sheets. Trucking coke. And flyingweed. That period ended on a high note, when he crashed-landed acropduster (full of ragweed) into Capital Lake. Pigs put him in the StatePen for a stretch, where he lived on Zoo-Zoo’s and Pruno for six years.Ducking knives, smoking pills, and breaking dirty needles off in his armwere the his “in-house” past-times. Later he made parole, and movedback home to Sluzkill Mountain. Now Q’Ball was a workingman.Holding down shitjobs for one month stretches at a time. Then eitherquitting or getting fired. It didn’t matter to him. There’d was always beanother shitjob waiting round the corner. Because Not-Giving-a-Fuckwas his religion. And he never lost faith. Not once in his 29 years.

Elron pulled up to Q’Ball’s daddy’s house, rode the horn for afew minutes, then went inside and jerked Q’ball out of bed

“Rise and shine, BeautyQueen! It’s time to Lock & Load!” yelledElron.

Q’Ball was hurting. Hungover from the weekend binge. Mondaywas looking like something out of a horror movie to him. But that wasok. It wasn’t nothing new. In fact, it was par for the course when you ledthe Crash&Burn Lifestyle, like Q’Ball did. Monday was always rough.And if it wasn’t, you weren’t doing something right.....wrong enough.

Elron helped Q’Ball get dressed. Then walked him out to thetruck. Elron gave him a slap on the back and laughed.

“Ride’em, cowboy!”

Q’ball sat up front with Marion and Elron.


JUNKYARD LOVE

7:02am. They pulled into the Yard. VALENTINE’S SCRAP &AUTO SALVAGE (est.1942). Oldman Valentine was pacing the yard,waiting for them and looking at his watch. There was a big line ofdeadcars from the weekend sitting in the lot. They’d been sent there todie. In Valentine’s Yard. Cause that’s what deadcars do. When they ain’tgot nothing left to offer anyone.

Everybody groaned, cause it was going to be a long day. Full ofmind-crushing pain that would have a Pencil pusher sniveling in hisshirtsleeve and crushing his peanuts like a circus freak. This was wherethe weak man folded over like cheese. And the strong man got mean.And ugly. In the pounding sun. Sweating bugspray. With his dickhunched up in the guts of a dead machine, as he wrenched its innards tillhis ass hung out and he could hear his Mind crack like a crab shell.Gnashing his teeth, crossing his eyes, and torquing greased razors offthe Devil’s spine. Just jerking for mercy and trying quick to find thereligion he’d lost back down the road, cause at Ground Zero, it was allmeat on meat hooks swinging in the Slaughterhouse of theMileWideSun.

Elron parked in his spot. The strippers piled out and went towork, grumbling. Elron had already done his time stripping, waybackjust after he got home from the Nam. So now it was just straightcrushing and scrap assessment. Bring him the gutted husk, and let himdo his job.

Elron clocked his card. Got a coffee. Then went to the officetrailer and looked over the day’s paperwork. Deadcar titles andregistrations. Salvage invoices. After he’d finished filling out all thebullshit, he took a seat in the TV room to kill a little time till noon or so,when the first of the deadcars would be ready for crushing.

The “Price Is Right” was playing on the screen. Elron grabbed amagazine and went take a shit...on the clock. Read an article on thesecrecy behind Perpetual Motion Machines and their inventors. Whycouldn’t they get patents? Elron spat to the wall in disgust at thegovernment and the redtape, then wiped and went back in the TV room.He listened to the radio for a little while. Jammed out. Made a call to thestation. Requested some 13th Floor Elevators. Smoked a few smokes.Just killing time.

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Around noon, Elron stepped out the trailer with arms his bowedand his work gloves on. He paced the yard a little, throwing jabs &warming up. Catcalling the strippers. He loved crushing cars. He was anatural with the machinery. It came to him easy. And he treasured thesound of crumpled steel and shattered glass. It was symphonic andrelaxing for his shot nerves. Elron would crushing anything. Put a tankin the compacting bay, and he’d find a way to crush it into a 4x4 cube.Because crushing wasn’t just a job. It was a passion and a way of life forhim.

The boys had a few cars waiting for Elron. He got a excited.Buzby and Marion the Albino were ripping apart a Buick Skylark. Q’ballwas laid out beneath a Pinto station wagon. Yerkie and Yuzzle werepulling up the rear, tag-teaming on a Gremlin.

Elron was getting in a good mood. He went over to Yerkie &Yuzzle’s work area.

“Alright, boys! Ya’ll got to bring it on, I’m ready to Rock&Rollon some steel! Ya’ll need to ditch them clownsuits and hurry up, causeI’m itching to crush something! And ya’lls ass Ain’t nothing but jailbaitto me, baby!” screamed Elron.

He loved ribbing the twins. Just for fun. Just like he used to ribtheir daddy, Ginko “The Original Hillbilly Greaser” Watson, back in theday when they were young hicks getting bussed into town for schoolingwith the rich whitefolks. It was integration time, then. Elron and theother mixed-breed mountain kids were forced into going to school withthe Slouchville snobs. It was a rough time. But Elron, Ginko, and ahandful of others pulled through it together, like warriors in aStrangeLand...with holes in their shoes and evil in their eyes.

The sun was stomping down. It was a waterfall of fire. Elronchecked the fluids on the Crusher. Then flipped the warm-up switches onthe diesel engine and took a pressure reading. He marked&dated it in thelog. Signed his name. Then studied the temperament of his handwritingfor the day. It looked pretty good. Not perfect, but it was alright. He gota nice “Z” in there, at least.


JUNKYARD LOVE

Johnny “The Craneman” Hanks loaded the first deadcar into thecrushing bay and gave Elron the signal when he was done. Elroncranked the crusher and strapped in. Then revved it some. It was loud.Just the way he liked it. Stovepipe yakking blacksoot. Gauges shaking.Earth trembling.

The deadcar was ready. Elron yanked on a few rods, then gearedthe mainfeed, and double-clutched the shifter...as the walls of thecompacting bay crunched in on the deadcar. It was the Art of Crushing.And Elron was a Master. Smooth. He could do it with his eyes shut. Butthat wouldn’t be no fun. Cause you’d miss all the action.

Elron got a strange grin on his face as the steel buckled and the glasssnapped in a shower of cracked rain. He gnashed his teeth and bobbed hishead to the beat. Then he disengaged the mainfeed when the pressuregauge maxed and brought the walls back to standby position. Elron lit asmoke and unmewed the hydrovalve as the Crusher let out a hotfizz ofhiss. Then he geared the East/West compacting walls and brought themin on what was left of the deadcar. The last of the glass cried and thesteel whined as the deadcar wilted to a cube. Once again, he disengagedthe feed. Clutched reverse. Then geared the bay walls back to Auxiliary/Standby.

And that was it. Deadcar#1. Done.

“Deadcar!” he screamed into the bluesky.

Elron unstrapped, then hit the kill switch. And jumped out asCraneman Johnny was hoisting the cube to the Outbound Lot. Elronwalked over to the lot and waited for the cube. When Johnny set it down,Elron pulled out his dick and took a cool piss on the hot steel of the cube.It fizzled yellowsteam and bubbles.

The ritual was complete. And it was a routine that Elronrepeated every time he crushed a car. As he finished off, he let his Mindwander. Dreaming of a YellowPlanet with deformed life forms runningthrough wheat fields with flowers growing out of their eyes and strangemen chasing them, while hollering a bastardized version of Vietnamese.

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Elron shook off and caught Johnny looking at him out of thecorner of his eye.

“You want some of this, boy?!” yelled Elron.

Then Elron spied Yerkie and Yuzzle taking five off to the side.They were smoking Sherm and sitting on a deadcar. Their greasypompadours had collapsed in the summer heat.

“If you think you boys are gonna smoke drugs while you’re onthe clock, and not give old Elron some, then you’re dead wrong!”hollered Elron.

Yerkie shuffled over and passed the roacher to Elron, thenapologized.

“No offence,” said Yerkie.

“None taken. Just hold me a seat in the rotation next time.”

The next deadcar was being loaded into the compacting bay.Elron turned toward his Crusher.

“Deadcar!” he screamed to no one in particular.

He walked back to the machine. Strapped in. Took it off Standby.Then repeated the entire ritual. Again. Over and over. All day long. Withlittle variation. Till the day was done. And the last of the deadcars, to becrushed, were cubes...with dried piss on them.

“Deadcar!”

* * *

Round 7pm Elron shut it down. Swept out the compacting bay.Bagged up the glass. Then signed out on the Crushing Log. He went tohis locker. Stashed his gloves. Changed his boots out for flipflops.Washed his face. Then he went back to the Yard and climbed a highstackof deadcars of the flattened variety.

Elron sat down and watched the sun set on the sewage pondacross the way. It was tranquil and beautiful. Mountains of cloudsfoamed like cotton candy along the western sky, as the sun slipped awayand the crows cackled a sad song from the highwires. The quiet rumble


JUNKYARD LOVE

of a refinery, muttered in the distance...beneath its forked stacks that spatblack ash.

Elron took it all in. The greying sky. The tired cities. Theindustrial whine. It wasn’t a perfect world. Not by a longshot. But youhad to make the best of it. You had to search out the meaning. Cause allthe good stuff was jammed back in the corners....... cowering beneath apounding shower of facts...like a child upon first hearing thunder.

* * *

Buzby, Yerkie, Yuzzle, Marion, and Q’Ball all loaded themselvesinto the truck. They were exhausted and traumatized by the day’s labor.Each of them was caked with grime and grease. Their limbs spilt at oddangles and intertwined. Their eyes drooped, half-lidded. Their mindssagged, half-dead...but still alive enough to know that they were on theirway home. To a safer place.

Elron let them all know that they’d done “a hell of a job.” Theyhad made it across the iron desert of the day. And that was enough toearn his respect. They’d won a small battle in the War of Survival. Heknew they were good men, not just losers and degenerates like they’dbeen told they were in the past. They were Ironmen of the Steelcloth...who slept like babies as he labored his old truck up the long road that ranlike a ribbon down the side of Sluzkill Mountain.

68

Dog Pound Death RowBY TODD TAYLOR

“I’m a boy and I’m a man. I’m eighteen and I like it.”

— Alice Cooper

“Who would care to contribute anything to a culture thatcannot be satisfied no matter how much it devours.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

1

Once we were settled in at Norma’s I had to keep my stuff in a hall closetand sleep on a foldout bed in the crusty dish littered living room. Thestench from the overflowing, 10-gallon trashcan put me to sleep eachnight. My mom got Norma’s daughter’s room and her daughter sleptwith Norma. I was without a car by this time because the engine hadlocked up during a winter freeze. Like a dumbass I hadn’t bothered tocheck to see if there was enough antifreeze in it. My step-dad gave mehell for that one.

As it turned out my mom was dating Ray, a mortgage broker she metappraising real estate. I met him a week or so after we moved in atNorma’s. Since I was carless I immediately started walking around to allthe nearby places trying to find a job. Norma lived in a residentialneighborhood in south Arlington, which was a medium-sized citybetween Fort Worth and Dallas. There were many businesses within afew blocks of the house. I filled out applications for Minyard’s, Dino’sSubmarine Shop, Ace Hardware, McDonald’s, Pizza Inn, Taco Bell, BillyBob’s Steakhouse and The Town & Country Car Wash. The first one tocall back was Taco Bell so I took that one.

I started out on the prep line making various food orders. Thesupervisor was a clean-cut 25-year-old preppy guy with a college degree

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in business management named Charles (not Chuck or Charlie butALWAYS Charles). He smiled a lot and was rarely in a bad mood. Theassistant manager, on the other hand, was a fat, burned out white bitchpushing 40 named Cheryl. She ran the night shift and Charles ran theday shift. She was a perfectionist.

As a result of Cheryl I was moved around a lot. She didn’t think I wasvery good on the food prep line. She said I put too many beans on theburritos. She moved me strictly to doing the drinks. This was in 1985,before they made you get your own. Then she didn’t like the way I didthat because I would forget to press in the plastic tab that said whatdrink it was: Dr. Pepper, Sprite, Coke, tea or water. She finally put me oncooking the beans in back and getting tortillas, shells and sauces as theywere needed up front. She said I didn’t water the beans down enough.

She finally had it with me and I was transferred to the day shift withCharles. I worked from 8 a.m. to 4 or 5 p.m. everyday. The first morningI arrived Charles showed me how to fry up all the various shells neededfor the restaurant in the deep grease fryer. These consisted of large tacoshells, regular taco shells, tostado shells, nachos and Mexican pizzashells. He also showed me how to clean the fryer and load it up with newgrease, which was to be done everyday at the end of the shift. Thisbecame my job for the next four months and I developed grease burns allover my hands and arms. There were rubber gloves to wear but that justtrapped the heat inside and made the burns worse.

Charles told me I was the best shell fryer they ever had.

So, for four straight months, I got up every morning, put on my brownpolyester uniform, walked to work, did my job and came home. EverydayI was exhausted when I got home and it felt good. I had spent most ofthe summer sitting around watching t.v., drinking beer and smoking pot.It felt good just to have SOMETHING to do. Even if it was frying tacoshells. My mom, step-dad and I did go on vacation that summer toColorado but they were fighting and I was depressed. Nobody had a verygood time. I was suppose to get a 30 minute lunch break everyday butrarely took it because it was too busy most of the time. In fact, on manyFriday nights I didn’t get off until 7 or 8 p.m., working 12-hour days. Ihad Saturdays and Sundays off. Usually on these days I would sit aroundand watch t.v., listen to music on Norma’s son’s stereo and findsomebody to buy me beer. I was 18 at the time and the drinking age was19. Usually somebody would do it coming into the 7-Eleven for two or

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three dollars, plus the cost of the brew. I smoked pot occasionally withNorma’s son who had a friend whose parents were bikers. Norma’s sonand his friends were both 14 at the time. They envied me because I was18 and legally an adult.

I wanted to be 19 so I could buy beer.

When I turned 19 I got my first brand new car. It was a 1986 ToyotaTercel that my mom got me for my birthday. My mom made a big downpayment on it out of the money I gave her to save for me. When youdon’t do anything it’s easy to save money. I managed to have so muchmoney because upon moving to Arlington all I did was work, sleep,watch t.v., occasionally buy some records or clothes and hang out withNorma’s son and friends on occasion. I didn’t hang with them too often,though, because they were so much younger than I. I needed friendscloser to my own age but didn’t have any at the time. Also, I had falleninto a bout of depression and just didn’t put the effort into making newfriends or maintaining contact with D’Angleo or any of the old crewfrom Carrollton. I was depressed about my mom and step-dad’s breakupalthough I hated my step-dad.

Also when I turned 19 I went out and bought my first legal 6-pack. Itried to buy it on the day of my birthday but the clerk was an asshole so Ihad to buy the beer the next day. From that day on I bought a 6-packeveryday or went to Aja’s, a dance club/bar in Arlington. I went therebecause they had dollar beer pints during happy hour. By the end ofmonth I was drinking a 12-pack a day and ended up in a severedepression. I had quit going to therapy after we moved in with Norma. Itwas so bad I ended up quitting Taco Bell and sleeping 15 or more hoursa day. Also, walking across the room and going to the bathroom becamea major effort for me. My mom sent me back to the shrink, the same oneI went to in Southlake, and ended up on Stelazine, an anti-schizophrenicdrug.

After a month or so of not drinking and taking the Stelazine I becamemore mobile. I also started sleeping less and talking more. By this timewe had moved to North Richland Hills, a small town just northwest ofFort Worth, and into a duplex with Ray. Ray had his real estatebrokerage office on one side and we lived on the other. For a while I randocuments over to banks and various clients of Ray’s. Then I got a jobsacking groceries at Kroger but quit after two weeks and started sackingvittles at Winn Dixie. I made $3.35/hr (the minimum wage then) and


DOG POUND DEATH ROW

worked with two other guys on the day shift. I worked from 9 a.m. until3:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. It was a very boring job because not alot of people shop during the day but you always had to look like youwere busy. The busy work consisted of putting back stuff on the shelvesthat people didn’t buy for some reason, sweeping, mopping andgathering up the grocery carts on the lot and putting them back in thestore. I started smoking just to kill the time at work. We took turnssneaking off into the breakroom or bathroom to catch a smoke. Lots oftimes all three of us would end up together and would shoot the shit fora few minutes. It was a gravy job but hard to stretch a few hours of worka day into six or seven hours. The smoking helped a lot.

Taking home a 12-pack every night helped even more.

2

I also started going to titty bars. The first one I ever went to was BabyDoll’s in Fort Worth and I instantly fell in love with the place. It wasfilled with mostly gorgeous young girls dancing topless in g-strings onfive different stages smelling of cigarette smoke and cheap perfume. I gotan instant hard-on when I walked into the place. It had country girlswith huge natural breasts. It had rock n roll chicks with silicone breasts.It had petite sexy girls with small but perky breasts. It had Asianbeauties, black beauties and Latina babes. I spent the better part of sixmonths, three or four times a week in this place, and other titty bars Ilater discovered.

After six months at Winn Dixie I quit and got a job at Wendy’s OldFashion Hamburgers. This job was strange to me because it was the firstone where the word “interview” was ever used. After I filled out myapplication the assistant manger, a hot brown-haired woman in her early20s, said I would have to come back the next day at 2 p.m. for an“interview” with the manager. When I showed up the next day Iencountered a slightly overweight man in his mid-30s. He was themanager.

When I arrived for my “interview” he greeted me with a handshake andsmile and asked me to sit with him at one of the tables in the dining area.I returned the handshake, gave a half-smile and sat down. He looked overmy application and verified the info on it.

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“Your name Bobby Maxwell?”

“Yes.”

“You live at 1212 Oak Lane, North Richland Hills?”

“Yes.”

“You’re 19 years old?”

“Yes.”

All of a sudden he stopped talking for a minute, laid my application downand looked me straight in the eyes.

“Why do you want to work at Wendy’s, Mr. Maxwell?”

“I need a job and it seems like it might be a fun place to work.”

“Is there any other reason, Mr. Maxwell? Is there anything you’d like toknow about Wendy’s?”

I couldn’t believe this guy was asking me so many questions! You wouldhave thought I was applying for the CEO slot at General Motors orsomething. I finally thought of a question to ask.

“How much is the pay?”

“$3.65 an hour, Mr. Maxwell. We pay more that minimum wage here atWendy’s because we expect all our employees to give a 100%. Do youunderstand?”

“Yeah,” I quietly replied, getting a sinking feeling.

“You don’t sound too enthusiastic, Mr. Maxwell?”

“Oh, I am. I AM!” I enthusiastically replied, all the while lying likeClinton.

“Good, you’ll start tomorrow at 10 a.m. Julie, the assistant manager, willbe here to show you the ropes. Good luck, Mr. Maxwell.”

He smiled, stood and extended me his hand. I did the same and got in mycar and left. I had stayed awake most of the night before drinking andwas very tired. By this time I was driving my mom’s ‘81 Toyota and shewas driving the ‘86 Toyota she got me for my birthday. While I wasworking for Ray I made a right at a corner and was sideswipped. Thewreck destroyed the rear of the ‘86 Toyota and the front of the car thathit me. After the car was repaired my mom took it back and gave me the‘81 Toyota. By this time, I was drinking a 12-pack a day.


DOG POUND DEATH ROW

I reported the next morning for work. I walked up to the front counterand asked for the assistant manager. A cute girl with bleach blonde hairtold me to go to the office in back. I did as she said and found Julie, theassistant manager, rubbing her head and doing paper work.

“John told me to report for work today.”

“Yeah, just a minute.”

I leaned up against the stainless steel sinks and waited. I saw she had acigarette going in the ashtray in her office so I lit one of mine.

“Hey,” she shouted at me. “You can’t smoke there. Go to the break area inthe back.”

I did as she said, finding a table with an ashtray. Twenty minutes later,and after my third smoke, she came around to get me.

“All right. I need you back here washing dishes.”

She took me to the stainless steel sinks and turned on the water, fillingone sink with soap and the other one with hot water mixed with asanitizer. She said to always remember to put the sanitizer in the hotwater. “Place the washed dishes in the one and only remaining emptysink.” Some of the water had splashed on her uniform and I watched hererect, wet nipple leave with the rest of her for the front of the restaurant.I spent the next four hours washing the dishes that were brought backfor me. When I ran out of room in the empty sink I was told to pile thedishes on the shelves above the sink and to the rear of me. All the“dishes” were really the different steel and plastic containers that theykept the food in before serving it to the customers. The spatulas theyused to flipped the meat were also dishes.

When I left at 2 p.m. I stopped off and got me some more smokes and a12-pack and congratulated myself on finding a gravy job. Little did Iknow. For the next three days all I did was wash dishes and was verycontent while everyone else hustled about in panic trying to fill foodorders. On my fourth day at Wendy’s Julie yelled at me.

“Get the chicken out of the Heny Peny!!”

“What’s that?”

Frustrated, she ran back to a steel stove looking thing, released thepressure with the turn of a valve that shot out a stream of steam, put onsome plastic gloves, opened the thing’s door and pulled out 10 friedchicken fillets on a baking sheet.

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“Here, help me put this in here,” she said while grabbing some of thewashed steel containers.

I did as she asked. So much for the gravy job. Within a week I waswashing dishes, loading and unloading “The Heny Peny”, cleaning it,frying the french fries, prepping the baked potatoes (also done in “theheny peny”) and working the grill from time to time. I knew, soon orlater, I would have to take orders from customers and I was dreading it.Julie explained that everyone at Wendy’s did ALL the jobs. After twoweeks, I was finally put on the Drive-Thru Window. It was in the middleof a busy lunch rush. I took three orders, screwed them all up and wasimmediately switched to sandwiches. Sandwiches consisted of readingwhich condiments someone wanted on their burgers and putting themon after you got your meat from the grill person. I got five out of sevenorders right on that one. Two of the people came back and complained Iput too many pickles on one order and not enough on another. Once thelunch rush was over Julie pulled me back to her office. She was pissed.

“Listen, you got to pay attention to what you’re doing! You can’t bescrewing up orders like that! We’ll lose our customers!”

I just smiled (trying hard not to laugh) and alternated my gaze from herface to her tight fitting shirt that showed off her enormous, beautifulnipples. She was sweating and you could see the outline of her nipples.Her nipples always got hard when she got mad.

“I’m sorry. It’s my first day doing orders and everything was so busy. Ijust got overwhelmed.”

“You got to learn things fast here, Bobby. We don’t have time to holdyour hand and shit. I’m gonna talk to John and have you put on the nightshift.”

“All right. Hey, you wanna go out sometime?”

She just looked at me with a scowl and told me to clock out for the day. Idid and went home.

3

Once I was on the night shift I became the grill man. John didn’t seem tomind people just doing one job. The grill and the dishes were the only


DOG POUND DEATH ROW

two jobs I did well. After I was there a month, Kenny came to work onthe night shift. He progressed faster than me, moving from the dishes toall the other jobs within a week. He even took the grill when I was onbreak. After his first day there he asked me for a ride home. He lived insome apartments just up the road from the Wendy’s. When I got in thecar I found a hot Budweiser under my seat and downed it before startingthe car.

“Damn! You like to drink don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I prefer weed myself.”

“You got any?”

“Yes. I’ll smoke some with you when we get to my place. It’s some goodAfghan shit.”

We made it to his apartment and I followed him inside. It was totallybare except for some dishes laying around, a t.v. and a stereo. He had nofurniture. Let’s face it. $3.65 an hour only goes so far. I couldn’t evenafford my own place. I sat on the floor and waited for him to get his weedfrom the refrigerator. He rolled a joint with expert precision and webegan to smoke.

“So are you from around here?”

“No. I came down here from Akron, Ohio. In Akron I made assistantmanager at the Whataburger in two months. I’ve been assistant managerat three other restaurants.”

“Really?” I said. “I hope you get to be assistant manager here.”

“If I do I won’t be smoking weed with you. I guarantee it. That’s why Igot fired from Whataburger, for smoking weed with the employees. Iain’t gonna make that mistake again. Dude, if I get to be manager I’llchange everything. I’ll have that place running like a well oiled machine.You’ll be working your ass off !”

He rolled another joint. I got maybe three hits off the first one. Like a lotof stoners he had a lot to say. For the next half hour he told how hewould train people better, run a much tighter ship than John andgenerally have a cleaner and more efficient store. He said he would makemanager in six months. I nodded every once in awhile and got a hit of thejoint when I could.

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“How come you ain’t thinking about management?”

“I’m going to college. Wendy’s is just a job to me.”

“Be glad John’s the manager cuz I wouldn’t have hired you if I weremanager. That’s the problem with food service today. Too many highschool and college kids that don’t care about the business. I would onlyhire people who want a career not just a job.”

“How old are you?”

“21.”

“Ah, old enough to buy. They just changed the law here about a monthago raising the drinking age from 19 to 21. I’m 19. So I’m screwed.”

“They did that in Ohio a few years ago. It use to be 18. Boy, I’d get reallyfucked up on Wild Turkey. Me and my friends would party for days. I’vegiven up drinking, though. I’m gonna be the manager of Wendy’s inNorth Richand Hills in six months.”

He laughed. I politely smiled. We had gotten off at midnight, and it wasnow 1:30 a.m.

“I gotta go. I got an 8 a.m. English class.”

“Okay, dude.”

I drove home, crashed out and got up and went to my English class thenext morning. I found another hot Budweiser under the seat on the waythere and drank it down. The guy I sat next to said I smelled like adistillery. At 10 a.m., after American Government, I had 2¾ hours untilmy next class. Normally, I would go to the convenience store across thestreet, get a 6-pack and drink it at home then go back to school.However, they got a new daytime clerk at the store and he wouldn’t sellto me because I was 19. It was so shitty that I could drink legally for ninemonths then all the sudden I was cut off and had to hunt around forplaces to sell to me or get someone to buy. Since I had been cut off acrossthe street I asked a long-haired dude in my American Government classif he was 21 and would buy for me. He agreed and, to make the most of it,I had him take me to the liquor store in Fort Worth. I got a fifth ofKentucky Deluxe and took a big swig. He said I was an alcoholic. Ilaughed.

This guy also turned out to be a big pothead like Kenny. The bigdifference was that this guy sold. In exchange for buying weed from himhe would also buy me booze. My booze problem was solved for the


DOG POUND DEATH ROW

moment. After two months at Wendy’s I came in one night afterdrinking half a bottle of tequila and three tallboys. John smelled thebooze on my breath and I was immediately fired. I went home and drankand smoked dope until 2 a.m. I did this everyday and got up at 7 a.m. andwent to college. I rarely ate, having a sandwich or a bowl of chile onceevery couple of days. I started to get real skinny.

4

My next job was at the Uptown Car Wash. The guy who ran the placewas a real skinny, whiskey alkie named Bob. Bob was in his early 40s. Healways had a pint of whiskey in his truck and would take hits off it onbreaks. The other guys who worked there were long-haired, metal musicfreaks with the exception of four. Two of the people working there weregirls. One was a dyke chick who worked on detail and the other was ablonde bombshell cashier. The other two people were black dudes.

I started off by drying the windows after the cars came out of the wash.Bob said he didn’t think I did that well enough so he switched me todetail, which is toweling the car off and polishing it after the wash. Ididn’t do that fast enough for the old drunk so he moved me to thevacuum line. I stayed on the vacuum line the rest of my two monthsthere.

About a month or so after being at the car wash one of the black dudesasked me for a ride home. I gave it to him. He introduced me to crank andcoke over at his apartment. At first it burned the shit out of my nose thena few seconds later euphoria set in. Ten minutes later I got jittery, shakyand wired. Luckily, I had bought a 12-pack before taking him home so Igot a few beers from the car to take the edge off. He said he would sellme some stuff if I wanted it. I told him I was low on funds. Maybeanother time.

Winter set in and I only worked half days at the carwash most of thetime. The rest of the time I spent drinking, smoking pot and doinghomework for college. I never bought any dope from the black dudebecause he ended up moving. No one knew where he went. After twomonths I went home from the car wash and didn’t show up for myscheduled time for the next day. I quit over the phone. I picked up my lastpaycheck a week later.

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5

I spent the next month or so unemployed, but looking for work. Duringthis time I went out drinking with Gary, one of the guys I had sackedgroceries with at Winn Dixie. We started out over at his place drinking acase of Budweiser. He invited a couple of his friends over who turned outto be 15 and 16. They got real silly and started shaking up the beer andspraying it on everyone. Eventually, we all ended up swimming in hispool. After a couple of hours, the guys decided they wanted to go see afriend of there’s a few miles away. I drove.

On the way over there I was so buzzed and caught up in drunken bullshitstories with the guys that I actually drove into somebody’s side yard. Iquickly backed out onto the street and kept driving before anybody couldcome out bitching and call the cops. We eventually made it to the friend’shouse and went in. His named was Steve and he was a metal music freak.We sat at his place for a while listening to Iron Maiden while he got abottle of Jack Daniels out of his dad’s liquor cabinet. He took a long slugand then passed it around. I wasn’t used to drinking hard liquor straightup so I barely held down my shots. I didn’t want to barf in front of theseyounger guys. That would make me look like a real dork. After a whilethe guys got bored and wanted to go up to 7-Eleven and play videogames. I said I was in no condition to drive. The 15-year-old offered, andlike a dumbass, I agreed.

He got into my mom’s Toyota I was borrowing and proceeded to rev theengine, pop the clutch and speed around, doing donuts every so often. Hedrove 80 miles an hour all the way to the store. I told him to slow downonce but he just ignored me. I knew these guys were going to get me introuble. Well, sure enough, just as the 15-year old was pulling into thegas station, slowing down to 45 miles an hour or so, he sideswiped a firehydrant and tore the shit out of the passenger side of the car. We all gotout of the car and I screamed that the party was over. I took them allhome. On the way back to my mom’s house I ran into a ditch. I burnedthe clutch out trying to back out. I got out of the car and walked home. Ipassed out when I got there, having travelled five miles on foot in thedead of night

The next day my mom woke me up and asked me where the car was. Itold her it got stuck in a ditch. She dragged me out of bed. I dressed androde with her to show her where the car was. We went back home and


DOG POUND DEATH ROW

she called a car repair place that towed in cars. The guys at the car repairtold her about the bashed up passenger side and she went ballistic! I toldher what happened with the fire hydrant and she decided not to have thecar repaired and sold it to a junkyard. I was carless for the next sixmonths. My mom was really pissed and didn’t blame her one bit.

6

A young skinny girl with bleach blonde hair stood behind the counter atMarky’s Pizza. I saw the help wanted sign out front and walked up to getan application. She gave it to me, as well as a pen, and I took a seat at oneof the tables and began filling it out. After I filled it out, I gave it back tothe girl behind the counter. She smiled and said the manager would be inshortly. She asked me if I wanted something to drink while I waited. Isaw that they had beer on tap but played it safe and got a Coke instead. Igot the Coke refilled a few times and smoked three or four cigarettesbefore a balding man with a potbelly came in wearing a white shirt anddark slacks. He wore a Marky’s Pizza name tag. The girl in front toldhim I was waiting to see him about a job and he went in back for a fewminutes then came out.

I slid my application over to him. He leaned back, lit a smoke and lookedit over. He sighed a few times and took a few more hits off his smokebefore asking me, “How come you’ve have so many jobs?”

“I’m going to college and have had a lot of scheduling conflicts.”

“So where do you go to college?”

“TCJC.”

“Okay. We need a dishwasher and busboy here on the dayshift. 10 a.m. to3 p.m. Will that work with your schedule?”

“Perfectly.”

“Good. Be here tomorrow at 10 a.m. sharp.”

I shook his hand and left for my walk back home. It was only 4 p.m. and Ispent the rest of the day drinking hot beer I had stashed in my closet.Along with selling the car to the junkyard my mom also told me therewas to be no more drinking. That’s when I started hiding beer in mycloset, along with hard liquor from time to time.

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The next day I showed up at the pizza joint and a hyper 18-year-old guystarted showing me the ropes. I later found out he suffered from bipolardisorder and took Phenobarbital for it. The assistant manger, who was inher late 20s and kept looking at me like she wanted to fuck me, explainedthat employees can get something to eat on every shift for half price andall drinks were bottomless and free. They had yellow plastic cups so youcouldn’t see what was inside them. Within a couple a weeks I wasreplacing my Cokes and iced tea with the tap beer. When I got my beer Idrank it down quickly. I thoroughly washed the cup out afterwards sothey wouldn’t know I was drinking. Unless they smelled my breath, ofcourse.

After I was there a month or so I found out that Marky’s Pizza wasbasically a refuge for fucked up young people. I found out the bleachblonde girl behind the counter was in a relationship with a long-timecrank addict who was in jail. She also admitted to using the stuff alotherself. Also, all the other guys who worked there drank and smoked pot.Every morning one of the waiters and I would smoke a joint in thebathroom. Also, we’d smoke weed when taking out large loads ofgarbage. So far this was the best job I had ever had. I stayed buzzed atwork all the time!

Since these working conditions were too good to be true I was alwayscareful not to screw it up. I showed up at work on time. I came in to workextra shifts. I helped out making pizzas and with other stuff around thestore. I did it because I liked most of the people I worked with and notbecause I was forced to, like at Wendy’s. One night, after coming in towork an extra shift, the assistant manger asked me to give her a ridehome. She said her truck was broken down. I agreed. On the way thereshe asked if I wanted to go to a party. “Sure,” I said. So we went thereinstead of her place. There were a few guys and an overweight woman atthe party. The place was filled with pot smoke. Several bottles of JimBeam were on top of the fridge. The inside was filled with Bud Light.

I asked if I could have a beer and the overweight woman told me to helpmyself. I did, many, many times. We sat around and smoked pot.Everyone, except for the assistant manager, that was. She said pot justput her to sleep. She snorted coke off her driver’s license and everyone inthe room did some but me. I passed because I didn’t want to screw up mybooze/pot buzz. An hour or so later the guys there left and another guyshowed up. He said his name was John. We ended up playing spades andthe assistant manager and overweight woman started talking about how


DOG POUND DEATH ROW

they used to go to clubs and give double blowjobs to guys in thebathroom.

As I got drunker and higher I began to regret not doing the coke.Obviously, these girls had sex on the mind and friends of mine had toldme sex was great on coke. I didn’t know and this was my first time tofind out and I blew it. Of course, John appeared to be pretty drunk, too,so the girls quickly moved off the sex topic. As I got drunker I didn’t givea damn because neither one of these women were all that attractiveanyway. I passed out and slept in the overweight woman’s sparebedroom. I woke up early the next morning and left.

7

The bleach blonde’s boyfriend finally got out of jail. He had been bustedfor possession of methamphetatimes (crank, speed). He had spent twomonths in the Tarrant County jail and he was now out busing tables atMarky’s. His name was Brett. On one of our breaks we sat and talked.

“I’m quitting here in a week,” he said.

“Why, man? This is a cool place. They don’t give you shit about anythinglike most places do.”

“I know, man, but they only pay $3.50 an hour. You can’t do shit on that.I need a job that pays $7.00 an hour or more.”

“Who pays that?”

“I got a job at this asbestos plant that pays $7. I start next week. I hadroofing jobs that paid $7 and $8 an hour too.”

“You’re right about the low pay. Are they still hiring at the asbestosplant?”

“Yes but it’s hardass work, man. You can’t do it if you ain’t used to it.”

“Oh.”

Our break was up and I worked the rest of my shift and went home. Ilooked through the paper and found an ad in the paper for roofers paying$7. A week before I had finally gotten another car at a used car lot. Mymom had gotten tired of driving me around and asked Ray to get me acheap car. He bought a 1977 Buick Regal for $750 and told me I had to

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pay him back $50 a month. This was finally my chance to get a decentpaying job and maybe move away from home. I thought.

I called the number in the newspaper and some burned out guy answeredthe phone. He told me all I had to do was show up whenever I wanted towork at 1414 Don Street in Fort Worth at 6 a.m. Monday throughSaturday. I told him it would be a week before I’d be there since I still hadto give notice at my current job. He said okay and hung up.

I decided that week to quit drinking and doing drugs. I decided I couldhandle the hard work if I were sober. The only problem was I couldn’tsleep. I had been drinking and doing drugs daily for a 1¾ years and mybody just couldn’t sleep well without them. The last week at Marky’sPizza I might have slept eight hours all together. By the time my startday at the roofing place came I was exhausted from lack of rest but waswide awake.

When I got to 1414 Don Street in Fort Worth it turned out to be a hugetin building at the end of a dirt road. I walked in and saw Mr. Burnout inback behind a desk. The front of the shop was filled with various toolsand roofing supplies. The place smelled like tar and sweat. I finally madeit back to Mr. Burnout’s office and stood in front of him. Mr. Burnoutwas in worn jeans and a work shirt and looked like he was in his 30s. Hishair was thin and hung over his ears. He had a three day growth ofbeard.

“So ya wanna work, huh,” he said, managing a smile. “Yes,” I repliedquietly, already feeling like this was a mistake. “You sure? This is hardwork, man.” “I know.”

“Awright,” he said, thrusting an application and pen across the table andpointing to a breakroom off to the side of his office, “fill this out in there.”

I went in there, sat down and started filling out my application. While Iwas in there two dirty guys covered in sweat and tar came in. They bothlooked very old with three-day-old beards and missing teeth.

“Who you workin’ with, son?” one of them asked me.

“Don’t know. This is my first day.”

They laughed, filled up their water buckets in the sink and walked out. Ifinished filling out my application and took it to Mr. Burnout in the nextroom. He was on the phone and motioned me to put it down. I did andstood there. He finished his phone call.


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“Awright,” he said. “You’re working with Lonny today.”

He got up, opened the door and yelled for Lonny. Lonny was a big oldblack man in overalls.

“Lonny, this here’s Bobby. He’s gonna be with you today.”

“All right, boss,” replied the black man.

I followed him to his truck. It was beat up with lots of trash on the insideand roofing equipment in the back. A short Mexican guy who didn’tspeak English also rode with us. He sat in the middle. On the way to thework site we stopped at a convenience store. I didn’t get anything but theblack man came back with a 12-pack of Budweiser. He cracked open abeer and started drinking it as we drove away. It was 7 a.m.

“Boy, you musta be crazy to wanna do this shit,” the black man said,finishing off his beer with a smile.

I didn’t reply. We finally got to the work site. It was at Carswell AirForce Base. They were tearing off the old tar and gravel roof on one ofthe buildings. I followed the black guy and short Mexican up the ladder.The black guy handed me a long stick with a wide metal end on. Hepicked one up himself and thrust it into the tar and gravel roof andbrought a big piece of it up in one fail swoop and threw it to the side. Ifollowed his example but was only able to bring up a small piece.

“You gots to put some backbone inta it, boy,” he said, with a slight grinon his face.

I thrusted it in three or four more times but was still only able to bringup little pieces. It was only approaching 8 a.m. but it felt like it was 100degrees on that roof. I began to sweat and my arms began to tremble.The black guy just shook his head and walked over and started tearingoff another part of the roof. After about half an hour the black guy cameover to me.

“Listen, why don’t ja grab up all this old roofin’ and throw it in tha dozerover there.”

I could hardly see because of the sweat in my eyes but I made out wherehe was talking about. I put down my stick and started grabbing the tornoff roof pieces and throwing them in the bulldozer’s scoop, which wasabout 6 inches above my head. When I got to the fifth piece of roofingmy vision got wavy and my knees collapsed. The next thing I knew theblack guy was waking me up. He told me to go to the truck. I staggered

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TODD TAYLOR

across the roof down the ladder, and got in the truck. The black guyyelled down at one of the white guys on the ground to drive me back tothe shop. The guy did and didn’t say a word the whole time. When I gotthere Mr. Burnout was still sitting there behind his desk.

“I’m quitting.”

“Awright. Some people just ain’t cut out fer this kinda work.”

His phone rang and I immediately hit the water fountain in the main partof the shop. I drank about a gallon of water, then got in my car and left.Working had screwed me again.

8

I woke up early the next day and was recovered from my heat stroke. Iwent to the nearby convenience store that sold to me and bought a coldcase of Budweiser. I went home and drank about six or seven beers andcalled up Derrick. I had met Derrick in my t.v. media class when I wentto TCJC. He had long blonde hair and was a metal music freak. I left amessage. A couple hours later, he called back.

I went over to his house, after finishing off about 10 beers, and found himstanding on the back patio smoking pot. I smoked some with him and wehung out and talked for a few hours. I told him about my roofing job. Hesaid I was crazy for doing that. I agreed with him. I left when John, oneof his friends, showed up to take him over to a party at Nick’s. I asked if Icould come but Derrick said Nick didn’t know me and was paranoidabout strange people coming over. I explained to him I knew John andmost of the other people he hung with. He got real and explained that hewas meeting his girlfriend over there because his parents wouldn’t lether come to their house anymore after she freaked out one day. I said Iunderstood and took off.

In my buzzed state I decided to go over to Brett’s. I had taken him homeonce from Marky’s Pizza. I drove to his rundown apartment complexand knocked on the door. The whole place was dark and littered with allkinds of garbage. Brett looked like he had lost 50 pounds since the lasttime I saw him and that was only about 2 weeks ago.

“Hey, man, what’s up?” he said, walking away from the door and leavingit open for me to come in.


DOG POUND DEATH ROW

I saw that the only piece of furniture he had was an old torn up couch.The place smelled like a hospital. There was a guy lying on the couchstaring into space and not moving a muscle. Against one of the wallswere two very skinny, pale girls giggling and swaying back and forth.When they smiled at me I saw their rotting and missing teeth. Theywere both wearing shorts and halter tops. One of them had a long breasthanging out. It was covered with stretch marks. I looked on the kitchencounter and saw syringes, rubber hoses, bent burnt spoons and a baggyof crank.

This was a house of death.

Brett had walked into the bathroom. He came out with some pills. Thepills were in a big glass jar. He dumped them on the kitchen counter,away from the works, and started sorting through them. He grabbedabout five or six carefully chosen pills and knocked them back with aglass of Kool-Aid that was sitting nearby.

“Want some, man?”

“Sure.”

I walked over and inspected his private pharmacy. He had Valiums,Demerol, Diladid, Darvaset, Phenobarbital and a bunch of other pills Iwasn’t familiar with.

“I’ll take a few of these valiums.” I grabbed a couple of the blue ones andknocked them back with the same Kool-Aid Brett had gulped his pillsdown with. Brett sat down against a dining room wall. I did the sameand felt a head rush come on me from the Valium. My bottom lip feltvery heavy.

“So, what’s up?” I asked.

“Man, I’m making so much money,” began Brett, with glee. “I’m workingtwo shifts at the asbestos plant, 16 hours a day. I’ve already made twogrand this month. In another few months I’ll be able to move out of thisshithole. Maybe get a house or something. Did you see my ride, man?”

“No.”

“That brand new Camaro out there.”

“That’s yours?”

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“Yeah, man. It’s a sweet, sweet ride. I got it yesterday. My Uncle has adealership in Arlington. I got a really good deal on it. Only $200 amonth.”

“Damn.”

I fired up a smoke and found an empty beer can to use for an ashtray.Brett lit up one of his Marlboro Lights. He always smoked MarlboroLights. In fact, everybody I knew in the partying life smoked some kindof Marlboros, including me. I preferred the Reds though. I asked him if Icould take any more of his pills. He said help yourself. I took a few of theDiladid and Brett began to ramble some more. He talked about gettinghis guitar and amp out of hock and starting a band. He talked about hislove of Rush and Def Leppard. He talked about being a roadie for TheStones when they came in ’81. He went on for at least a couple of hours. Ijust nodded or said “yeah” to most of it. Now the whole bottom of myface felt very, very heavy.

“Man, that guy on the couch has not moved since I got here. Are yousure he’s okay?”

Brett slowly turned his head and looked over at the dude on the couch.He staggered across the room and started shaking the guy. The moretimes he shook him, the more panicked he was.

“This guy better not be dead,” Brett said, a tone of dread in his voice.

After shaking him some more the guy finally stirred.

He looked up at Brett and said, “Hey, man, whatdaya doin’ me like thatfor?”

Brett just smiled at his fucked up friend and sat back down on the floornext to me.

“Tom’s fine. He just veggies out sometimes.”

I tried to smile but my face wouldn’t move. I spent the next half hourtrying to force my mouth open so I could speak. I finally broke through.

“Hey, could I do some of that crank on the counter? Snort some?”

“Snortin’ it is a waste, man. If you wanna a real rush you need to shoot.Man, this stuff will make you come.”

One of the girls in the corner smiled at us when he said that. I said I onlywanted to snort. He said okay and I found a razor blade and straw on thekitchen counter. They were both dirty so I washed them off in the sink.


DOG POUND DEATH ROW

Then I made a line on the kitchen counter and snorted. I immediatelygot a head rush and slid back down next to Brett. Just like the time withthe black dude from the car wash the stuff burned the hell out of mynose.

“Damn,” I said, beginning to giggle.

Brett giggled too then got up and snorted a line himself. He got a smallmirror out of one of the kitchen drawers and brought the crank, razor,straw and mirror over to where we were sitting. We did lines andlaughed for the next couple of hours. He repeated everything he had toldme before. All of the sudden in the middle of Brett’s discourse my heartbegan beating very very fast and it felt like it was going to explode out ofmy chest. Then my left arm went numb.

“Man, I don’t feel so good.”

“Ahh, you’re just not use to the good shit!”

“No. I don’t think that’s it.” I barely stammered that line out, feeling soout of breath.

I laid down on the floor. Now my heart stopped beating so fast and mychest began to get tight. My arm was still numb.

“I think I’m dying.”

“My brother did tell me this batch had a lot of strychnine in it.”

“OH, SHIT! NOW YOU TELL ME. GODDAMN! GODDAMN!”

“Relax, dude, you’ll be fine.”

After about half an hour my chest pains and paralysis passed. I felt likesomeone had just beaten the shit out of me. Just as I lit a smoke the guyon the couch went into convulsions. One of the girls jumped up andstarted screaming in panic. Brett got some water and ran over to guy. Ihelped sit him up and Brett started pouring the water down the guy’sthroat. He barfed it up all over the floor and us. Brett and I both grabbedthe guy and put him in my car. As I drove Brett kept shaking the guy andtalking to him. By this time, the guy had stopped convulsing and was inand out of consciousness. Brett was beginning to panic. He told me todrive to Harris Hospital in Bedford, the nearest one. When we got to theER I dropped them at the door. I saw two cops standing by the ER dooras they walked up. One of the cops looked over at me. I freaked and droveout of there.

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TODD TAYLOR

Once I was on the freeway I drove back towards home. My mind wasracing a thousand miles an hour. The thoughts crashed in on me liketidal waves. Here’s what they were: Those cops know we were on drugs.Look how we look. We got long hair. We’re dead, man, dead. I know theygot my license plate number. Shit, shit, shit! I’m going to jail. I just knowit. Shit, shit. Okay, calm down, calm down. There’s no cop cars aroundme now. If they were coming after me they’d be after me by now butthey’re not. But maybe they’re playing with me. Maybe they’ll be waitingfor me at home. Better not go home. On this last thought I passed theexit to my place and kept driving west. I made it to the Marine Creekexit and found a little park up the road. I ran out of my car and sat thereon the picnic table. I sat there for hours staring into space. I don’t knowhow many. Then I drove home. My mom was watching t.v. and asked if Iwas okay. I said yes and went in my room and passed out. I slept for thenext 12 hours.

When I woke up my body was trembling. I felt cold. Then hot. Thencold again. I tried to drink one of my stashed beers but my hands keptshaking so much I spilt it everywhere. I struggled to scrap some left overpot in the bottom of my desk drawer into a pipe. I lit it, took two deephits and the shaking stopped. I proceeded to drink the rest of the beer Ihad in the closet. After the beer was gone I went to the Majestic Liquorstore in Fort Worth and got some old homeless drunk outside of theplace to buy me two fifths of Kentucky Deluxe. I spent about a week orso repeating this routine.

The next week I found myself back over at Brett’s. This time I passed onthe pills and just drank and did the crank. Sometimes Brett had coke,which was easier on the nose. He’d give me the coke for the same price asthe crank if I sucked his dick. The black kids from my childhoodneighborhood were right: you always sucked the dealer’s dick. It wasyour rite of passage into the inner circle of dope fiends. The freebie wasover. I was paying for the crank and coke with my money and my soul.

I sold my guitar and amp to a pawnshop for extra funds. I dug in myparent’s change buckets and got money for coins at the grocery store. Itook money out of step-dad’s money clip and mom’s purse. I took just alittle at a time so they wouldn’t notice. I got a job at Luby’s Cafeteria andworked there less than a week but got the paycheck. There was a whitetrash kid there who had a tattoo of a pot leaf with a syringe in it on hisforearm. I thought he was a narc or something. I had to get ought of


DOG POUND DEATH ROW

there. I was now staying awake for days at a time, drinking all day and allnight. I began to have nosebleeds. My shit was liquid. I threw up blood.

The next month was a blur. I woke up one time in a park over nearDallas lying in the grass next to my car. I don’t know how I got there. Iwas blacking out all the time and was getting more and more paranoidwith each passing day. One day after drinking about 10 beers I foundmyself at Mark’s place. I bought a 12-pack on the way over. I knew Markthrough Derrick. Mark lived with his sister, Denise, and her husband,Collen. His parents had kicked him out about a year before. Mark wasn’tthere so I sat and drank with Denise for about an hour. Then Collenshowed up with a half gallon of Jack Daniels and I began drinking onthat. Eventually, Mark, Max and Derrick showed up with some weed.After hours and hours of getting fucked up the room began to move upand down like a broken horizontal on the t.v.

Everyone was laughing and it echoed off the inside of my skull. Then myhead felt like it had an axe stuck in the middle of it. Then my stomachbegan to churn and twist. Then my eyes began to burn. Then the insideof my head began echoing again. I staggered up and looked Denisestraight in the eyes.

“I HATE YOU BITCH!”

I lunged towards her, trying to put a stranglehold on her. Collen andMax pulled me off, shoved me out the door and stuffed me in Collen’s car.Max drove my car while Collen drove me home. Max parked my car afew houses down from where I lived and Collen dumped me in the yard. Icrawled around, howling like a dog. I ended up inside with my mom. Shesaid I talked to her for an hour about wanting to kill myself. I didn’tremember any of it. I was blacked out. I passed out in my bed with myhead at the foot of it. I had done it this time. I tried to kill someone. Thejig was up. If the cops didn’t get me Collen would.

I was insane...and fucked.

90

Milk Carton Girl Turns 40BY JOHN L. SHEPPARD

Every year my parents pop up on TV on my birthday.

They indulge in the same moaning, over and over, about how I’mgone and how they wish someone would tell them where I am—tellthem where my corpse is, that is. The assumption is that I’m long dead,perhaps buried in a shallow grave off the Interstate after having beendefiled and decapitated by a rapist-murderer.

In real life, I work in a used bookstore in Sarasota, Florida. Ihave ever since I left home at 15. Same job, same room in a boardinghouse. I own very little, and have very little to do with the rest ofhumanity. It’s been 25 years, and still my parents pop up on the tube tocry and beg for the return of my mutilated corpse, so they can weepsome more. That’s life in showbiz, I guess.

The photo filling the screen is from my 8th grade yearbook, allblurry and gray and lifeless. My mother says, “She was such a charmingchild.” I was never charming. And I am not a “was,” though that wouldn’tfit in with the storyline. Brown bones and a faded Catholic schoolgirluniform (finally exposed after a gulley-washer out in a cow pasture nearI-75)—that’s what’s implied by all the teeth gnashing. I watch the annualshow, now gone national thanks to Montel Williams, on the tiny TV set Ikeep next to the register. All these dusty, yellowing books and I turn tothe boob tube for entertainment? That’s almost as sad as the fictionaldead girl on TV—sort of.

My boss Red says, “Why do you watch that junk?” as my parentsbegin to bawl on 3… 2… 1…

“It keeps me grounded,” I say. “There, but for the grace of God,go I.”

“Oh, please,” Red says, and disappears into the backroom, wheredusty books await his pricing pencil. He’s jittery and bearded, our Red, ashaky man who needs nips from the bottle and a cigarette to get him

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MILK CARTON GIRL TURNS 40

through the half-hour. One rheumy eye points to the ceiling, the otherright through you. He’s ten years my senior, but looks like he has 20 or30 years on me.

I remember the first time I saw him. He was almost, but notquite, sexy. I walked in the door, knapsack on shoulder, and asked, “Job?”I’d left home a few hours before. My parents wouldn’t start looking forme for another day and a half. By that time, I’d be settled into the life Icontinue to lead today.

He looked me up and down, smiled wolfishly, and said, “Sure.”

I get paid in cash and all the chewing gum I can steal from theyellowed gumball dispenser next to me on the scratched glasscountertop. Next to the gumball machine, there’s the little TV. Beneaththose two items, and my thin wrists, are locked-up copies of the CharlesBukowski and Jim Thompson books that kids are, for whatever reason,driven to swipe.

I remember Red’s hot breath and his quivering hands when hetook me to the backroom and humped me. Has it been 25 years already?He pulled down my panties and lifted my skirt. I lay face down on anuneven stack of mystery novels, most of them not worth the nickelasking price scribbled inside their covers. My Keds found purchase onthe linoleum, squeakity-squeak. I turned my head and chewed my gum.3… 2… 1… A quick stabbing pain and a slight sensation. Pumpity-pump. And that was it. No big deal. From all the buildup around theschoolyard, I thought losing my virginity would be the rough equivalentof a personalized thermonuclear war.

I cleaned up in the adjacent bathroom, wiping my thighs andinner parts with toilet paper. I gazed into my face in the mirror. No tears,nothing. I was pleased with myself. I slipped my panties back on. I askedRed, as I left the bathroom, “How many times a week would you like todo that?” I thought that, given time, I might begin to enjoy it.

“It’s not required,” Red said, his mouth open crookedly, hispricing pencil already doing its work.

“No, really,” I said. I chewed my gum. Snap, crack.

“Really,” Red said, getting hot, “it’s not a requirement.”

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“Okay,” I said. “I’m not trying to be difficult or anything likethat.” I gave him what I thought might be a winning smile. It probablywasn’t.

He grinned nervously and took a nip out of a metal flask. Heoffered it to me. I took a quick snort and decided that I didn’t like itmuch. I may have had a couple of drinks since then, but I don’t have anyuse for alcohol. Smoking either. And drugs, legal and otherwise, seemlike too much of a bother.

Red asked if I had a place to stay. I shrugged. He gave me theaddress of a couple he knew who had an extra room. After work, Iwalked over there and rented the room with some money I’d stolen frommy father’s bureau drawer. In a few years or so, on one of the annualbroadcasts, my father would forgive me for the theft. Nice guy.

My mother sits next to him on the TV, sobbing like TammyFaye, abundant mascara running in hot, black rivers down her moonyface. “I just want my baby back is all,” she says. I see nothing of myself inthese gushy people.

“You can’t have me,” I say to the TV. A customer gives me thislook. “What?” I say peering up at him, my elbows making elbow printson the glass counter. “I suppose you don’t talk to the TV ever?”

“Heh,” he snorts, a half-laugh and a smirk. He’s looking downmy cleavage. Ever since the neighborhood gentrified a decade or so ago,we’ve been getting these snobby types in here. You know. Haircut andglasses. Manicure. Teeth artificially white and straight. Boating clothes.We were a used bookstore way back when. Now we call ourselvesantiquarians, and we’ve added a few digits to the prices. We also sell oneBay.

I ring up a copy of Revolutionary Road, 2nd edition, wildlyoverpriced. He pays for it and leaves. Jingle-jingle goes the bell above thedoor. I spit my gum into the wastebasket. Montel goes to commercial.

Mrs. Ready says, when I walk in the door, “I saw you on TVagain.” This is a joke, of course. She says this every year, in her jokingway. She thought it was me the first time she saw the 8th grade photo, butI convinced her otherwise. “Look at the nose,” I remember telling her.“And that hair!” “It’s not your nose at all,” she replied.



“Those poor people,” I say. “How long has it been?” Tsk-tsking.

“It seems like forever, dear,” Mrs. Ready says. She’s making breadwith her bread machine, a toy her daughter gave her for Christmas a yearor two ago.

I sit down at the kitchen table and we enjoy a cup of tea together.She pours it out in chipped flowery cups, once prized possessions andnow merely useful. “We’re just a couple of old gals,” Mrs. Ready says.She’s been old forever like some cartoon character that never ages. She’sall crevices and facial powder, her hair done up in an unnatural color thatverges on gunmetal.

“Speak for yourself,” I say, and smile to show that I’m kidding. Ithink I’m one of the only women on earth who doesn’t care that she’saging. What does it mean to me, that I’m getting older? “What kind ofbread you making?” I ask, and sip the tea. The tea is weak. She keepsusing the same bags over and over. The bread will be served with dinner,probably. I’m making conversation.

“Cranberry?” Mrs. Ready says, wincing with attemptedremembrance. “I’ll have to look at the box.” She makes no attempt tostand up. Instead, she takes a tentative sip of her tea. It’s too hot, so sheblows on it.

“Don’t bother,” I say. “It smells delightful.” It doesn’t. It smellslike industrial air freshener.

Hipster Boy, who is renting the room once occupied by thedaughter, comes slamming through the kitchen door. He’s home,presumably, from his art classes at the art school that is named after acircus owner, now dead. Hipster Boy is a peach-fuzz soul-patch andscraggly hair, a colorful tattoo and an anti-corporate tee shirt. Despitemy better judgment, I find him attractive. I notice him leering at mesometimes, especially in the morning after I exit the bathroom semi-bare, all showered up, with the scent of Dial soap steaming from mypores, a moist towel wrapped around my midsection. I like the leerenough that I lock my door and pleasure myself with the ThrobbingThrillhammer. Maybe I will sex him up one of these mornings, when heis getting ready to leave these digs.

“Hey,” the boy says, a tentative smile creeping across his thinlips. He is vulnerable and sweaty. I like that.

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“Hi,” I say, and scratch my bare knee. The ThrobbingThrillhammer is calling my name, but I resist and sit a few more minuteswith Mrs. Ready waiting for Mr. Ready to come home from the shellmines. He does, 15 long minutes later, trailing his strange shell dustbehind him. I say, “Good afternoon, Mr. Ready,” and slip upstairs. I listenat the boy’s door for a moment, my ear against the peeling-painted wood,trying to catch a whiff of him. Then I go to my room and lock the door. Iclick on the Thrillhammer—rumba! rumba!—and muffle my sighs with apillow.

I had a brother, who was faintly annoying, and the emotiveparents. It wasn’t like I had a pressing need to leave. There is no sadmolestation story for you to enjoy.

My father sold cars. My mother sold Junie May cosmetics fromthe back of a pink Ford Ranchero with lipstick red stripes coursing downthe sides. They were Americans, striving out their American existence.Mother and father wanted more and more. I found that the more theywanted, the less I cared. The brother sneered around the house,occasionally gasping out his exasperation. I ignored him.

I was sent to a private school that we couldn’t afford. I woreplaid miniskirts and the boys whistled at my legs. That was the goodpart. The school wasn’t worth going into hock for. The girls swappedsexual gossip, mostly bad-mouthing each other and jockeying forposition for the most desirable boys, who did not seem all that desirableto me.

The teachers peddled the same crap teachers always peddled.They all drove home this point: Fail here, and the rest of your life will beshit.

After failing a few tests at school, probably on purpose, I wenthome and gathered some clothes into a knapsack. I dug through myfather’s bureau and discovered a rich vein of cash, and pocketed it. Iwalked down to the Greyhound station and hopped the next bus. I gotoff 50 miles later, walked two blocks and found the bookstore with itsHelp Wanted sign leaning inside the window. I took a job, lost myvirginity and moved into my own digs, all at once.

They were wrong, those teachers. My life isn’t shit. It’s mostlyokay. Rumba! Rumba!



I am painting my toenails. Toward what end? I don’t know.Probably something to do with Hipster Boy. It is past midnight andMontel is on again. I set the volume low on the TV so that the Mr., Mrs.and Boy won’t be disturbed in their slumber. The Mr. is snoring in aparticularly lusty manner. He sounds like a leaf blower with all that shelldust rasping out of his lungs.

An 800 number flashes on the screen. I pick up the phone andspin the rotary dial. The lady who answers seems a bit officious. “Maybesome people would like to be left alone after 25 years,” I say. “You everthink of that?” I hang up. I finish painting my big toenail. It is a happy,conch-like pink. The phone rings. I pick it up quickly. “There are peoplesleeping here,” I say. “Attempt some consideration.”

There is a vague threat. Something about penalties for calling ahotline with bum information.

“Oh, please,” I say. I hang up and the phone does not ring again.

“Happy birthday to me,” I sing under my breath, and then blowon my toes.

A semi-competent private investigator could find me in half aday. Once I turned 18, I used my social security number to open a bankaccount and get an ID from the state of Florida. I figured that at thatpoint, someone would come by and tell me to go home, then I’d tell himto fuck off and I’d lead a normal life. But no one showed up. My parentskept appearing on TV, and I kept my secret life.

I don’t have much, and I’ve never cared for having much, but thisis something that belongs only to me, this secret.

I’m all dolled up and wearing perfume like this is a special day.I’ve shaved my legs and hot-rolled my hair, even. It’s a day like any other,featuring work and a possible walk to the grocery store afterward. I’mwearing my escape clothes, the same mini-skirt that got me the job somany years ago. The day seems charged, crackling outside my window. Iopen my door and step into the hallway and bump into Hipster Boy.

“Hi,” he says. His hands are up in a weak surrender. We are nosetip to nose tip in the narrow hallway. He is dripping with shower spray.

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“Mmm,” I go. “Listerine.”

His eyes dart. Fight or flight. I reach down and tickle his juttingribs. He leaps back and his towel drops. He’s embarrassed now andmakes a quick gesture to pick up the towel with one hand and cover hisprivates with the other. There’s no hair down there. He’s shaved clean.

He blushes and whips the towel up, avoiding eye contact, andsprints past, almost knocking me down in the narrow hallway. A photo ofthe daughter winks from the wall. He makes this “wuh-wuh-wuh” soundand the door slams shut behind him.

I can feel Red’s current marriage failing. This is number four,and she’s put the screws to him to stop his drinking. I’m up frontwatching the milling customers. I see him through the open door to thebackroom, where he’s stacking and restacking books and books andbooks.

He looks worried.

I’ve helped him out of the first three marriages, just by beingthere for him. We’ve been having sex in the backroom on and off for thepast two and a half decades. Early in his marriages, he tells me we’rethrough, and I pretend to be crushed. I wish him well. Then, about a yearin, he’ll come to work looking worried, and I hold his hand and take himout for a drink, and he pouts about how his wife doesn’t respect orunderstand him. Or both. He gets drunk while I sip on lemonade.“There, there,” I tell him. Then I take him back to the bookstore, leadhim by the hand into the backroom, and let him take me. He cries all overmy back, and slobbers snot on me, and so on. He tells me how I’m theonly one who understands him. And he wonders aloud why we don’t gethitched.

Yeah. It’s a mystery.

I wish I could say, “I need a drink.” I envy him that, the way Redsays it with such conviction, with such need in his voice. I want to needsomething that much. I want to be powerless before such a need. But it isnot in me to want or need. Not even the Throbbing Thrillhammer holdsmuch sway over me.



In five or ten years, my reproductive system will shut down, andI will not have had a kid. And I don’t care. I wish that clock would tick,and loudly, too. But it does not.

The last of the customers clear out and I lock the door behindthem. I spin the sign hanging from the window. Back in five minutes.

I walk back to where Red is sorting the books, pretending thathe didn’t see me shut the place down. I walk up behind him and grasp hisshoulders and coo in his ear. He stands up and turns me around. Heshakes with want, with need. I can feel the want and need in his body ashe pushes me over the stacks of books and tears down my panties andhammers into me and gasps and wheezes all phlegmy in my ear.

In front of my face, as I’m sprawled out over the piles of books, isClive Cussler’s Raise the Titanic. I think, momentarily, about flipping itopen and reading a few pages, but decide against it. I can wait a fewminutes.

98

I, DishwasherBY JON KONRATH

My first “real” job, aside from babysitting, mowing lawns, andoccasional work at the school theater, was a gig at Taco Bell. Yeah, Iknow slinging refried beans while wearing a polyester apron andmatching slacks for $3.35 an hour isn’t “real”, in the sense that savinglives in an ER or being the CTO of a Fortune 500 company is “real”. Butmy parents started this massive “you need to get a god damned job”campaign about five seconds after I turned 15, and when I donned theburgundy smock and reported for duty at The ‘Bell, they shut up, andmoved on to less noble pursuits, like comparison-shopping militaryacademies and searching my room for drugs while I was at work.

As a whole, my job at the PepsiCo-owned eatery was less thandesirable, but there were a few good things. When I mowed lawns orworked at the theater, the most I’d ever have in my pocket was aboutforty bucks. At The ‘Bell, I’d clear about $120 every other week. Thesedays, I rarely get in and out of a grocery store for less than that, and atrip to Amazon.com always pries at least that much from my wallet. Butwhen you’re 16 and it’s 1987 and gas is 88 cents a gallon and the onlyworry on your mind is trying to get every Metallica album, $120 is like afucking lottery payout. Within a month, I had my very first CD player(back when they were totally black magic and nobody had even heard ofone), many black t-shirts emblazoned with logos of obscure thrash metalbands, and I was working my way through the Iron Maiden backcatalogue at a rapid rate.

I did, however, come home every day smelling like fried tacoshells. And even though I did (and occasionally still do) enjoy The ‘Bell’sfake-mex food, it’s not as appetizing after stirring 50 pounds of cold,congealed, refried beans in a giant metal vat on a gas stove at eight in themorning. Also, most of the fast food customers you encounter in Indianamake you think about the possibility of government-run eugenicsprojects, or at least buying a semiautomatic firearm. But the worst aspectof the job was the completely uncertain schedule. The staffing

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assignment was largely a popularity contest with the store manager, thislittle prick of a guy named Doug. If you worked hard and he liked you,you would get hours. Otherwise, you got scheduled for maybe one or twoshort shifts in a two-week period. And the moment you got so pissedabout your hours that you started shitting in a bag to light on fire andleave on Doug’s porch, he’d call and ask you to come to the storeimmediately to fill in for some other loser that ditched out on a lunch-dinner double. If you took the shift, aside from the monetary benefit, youwould move up Doug’s pecking order. However, it involved spendingyour days off sitting by the phone waiting for someone to skip work orcall in sick, which doesn’t compute if you’re on summer vacation withyour first car in the driveway and the hormones of a 16-year-old in yourbloodstream.

The summer of 1987 came and went, and I started my junioryear at El Preppo High School. I bought a new set of folders and pencils,worried about Algebra 3, and coveted the new flock of freshman girls,hoping maybe they hadn’t yet heard from the upperclassmen that I was aloser. I did have a car for the first time, and didn’t have to ride the bus ormy bike to school, but I was still pretty far down the food chain as far aspopularity was concerned.

But bigger problems were afoot: my hours at Taco Bellcompletely vanished. Opener and weekday shifts went to dropouts andflunkies who couldn’t do the math and get a real job in the factories. (99%of the jobs in Elkhart were industrial, and almost every year, the citywould be named the most industrial city in the country in some obscureeconomic study. This meant that any idiot without limbs missing couldget a full-time job making $10 an hour, maybe even with benefits,running a punch press or unloading forklifts. That always made mewonder why the fuck people would work in fast food for $4 an hour,when they could make way more money for easier work that didn’tinvolve going home smelling like food. And this was long before the eraof piss-testing, so it isn’t because they were stoners. This paradigm alsoexplained why I’ve despised everyone in my home town that ever gaveme shit about “book learnin” when I was going to college, and I cherishthe minor recessions that cause 80% of the workforce in Elkhart to getlaid off, making the town about as lively as a Nazi death camp, withpeople sucking dick for food and eating other people’s shit just to live,even though six months before, they were buying new 4x4s and gettingpools installed.)

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Instead of firing the schoolkids, Doug awarded the highlycoveted night and weekend shifts to senior employees with a very definedring of his shit around their mouths, and left the rest of us hanging. Thememories of filling out applications at every fast food joint and grocerystore in town were still fresh in my mind, and I added “job search” to thefront of my things-to-be-depressed-about queue, along with lack of anyaction with girls, acne control issues, the fact that I wanted to put a big-block engine in my Camaro, and the large number of Iron Maidensingles and import albums I did not yet own.

On top of all of this, I went to El Preppo High School, whereevery kid got a 5.0 Mustang GT for their 16th birthday (if not a Benz or‘Vette.) Money seemed to fall from the sky for these Izod- and Wayfarer-wearing, Miami Vice-dressing motherfuckers. This was a school that hada ski club, even though we were in the flattest part of the Midwest. Halfthe people there dressed like it was a country club, and I drove a rusted,primer-black car with no exhaust. I needed a job to, at the very least, buyAnthrax t-shirts and Motörhead albums. My parents weren’t going tosponsor thrash metal purchases; they constantly bitched about giving mea dollar a day for lunch.

One Saturday night, as I was sniffing glue, thinking aboutjerking off, and listening to a Voivod album, I got a call from my friendMatt Wanke. I met Matt back when we carpooled because both of uswere forced to play sixth-grade basketball by overbearing parents. Wealso worked together at the school theater, where everyone called him“Wonko the sane”, from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. (He tried to getpeople to call him “Wonko the insane”, but it never took.) He nowworked at a Italian restaurant and pizza joint, throwing dough andspreading sauce.

“Hey Konrath, what are you doing?”

“Not much, sniffing glue,” I said. (I didn’t mention the jerkingoff, because at that time, it was completely off-limits to mention to anyother human that you masturbated, even as a joke. Twenty years later,it’s an animated movie on a person’s MySpace page. But back then, it wasas fatal an error as telling your Navy commander that it’s raining men.And everyone but three people thought Voivod were douches, so I won’teven go there.)

“What are you up to tonight?” I asked.

“I’m at work,” he said. “Are you still looking for a job?”


I, DISHWASHER

“Yeah, if I can find one that would give me hours,” I said. “Youguys hiring down there?”

“We need a new dishwasher. It’s minimum wage, but you’d gethours. Can you come down and talk to Mario, the owner?”

“Sure, when?”

“Right now. One of our guys quit, we need a replacement fast.”

“Sure, gimme a second to clean up, and I’ll be right over.”

Matt worked at this place that we’ll call Franco’s, to prevent anypossible litigation. Elkhart, Indiana wasn’t exactly the Mecca of Siciliancuisine in the late Eighties. In fact, up until a year or two before then, theonly place you could get pizza, aside from the Kroger’s frozen food aisle,was Pizza Hut, and people generally thought that was really good shit.(The fresh new upstart that threatened to topple The Hut was LittleCaesar’s, which people thought was REALLY good at the time.) ButFranco’s had honest-to-god I-talians running the joint, and they madefood that local Hoosiers thought was the pinnacle of Italian cooking,until the later appearance of The Olive Garden. Franco’s had a semi-formal dining room (about as fancy as your average Denny’s, but Elkhartdidn’t even have those; the most upscale eateries were Kentucky FriedChicken and McDonald’s.) They also ran a takeout pizza operation in theback, with a second set of ovens and a line for the dough slingers.

I parked in the front lot, which was pretty crowded withSaturday dinner traffic, and went in to find Mario, the proprietor. Thehostess up front, a drop-dead gorgeous blonde, went to the back andfetched him for me.

A moment later, he appeared from the back room. “You a lookingfor a job?” he asked. He looked like that Bob Saget guy on that new show,Full House, but more ethnic, and with a phonebook-thick accent. “A Matttella you, we needa dishwasher. You starta Tuesday?”

“Sure, I’ll be here,” I said.

“Good, we seea you at four, si?”

And that was it. I quit Taco Bell, and my dishwashing careerbegan.

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Like I said, Franco’s looked pretty nice from the front, with adecent dining room, low lights, and candles on the tables: typical upscalepizzeria decor. On Tuesday after school, I cruised the Camaro into theback lot and got there a few minutes early, to check out my newworkplace. I’d never been inside the kitchen of a restaurant before, andalways assumed it looked like Julia Child’s setup on those TV shows.When I walked in the service entrance, I saw a room that looked like anAbu Ghraib torture chamber that also coincidentally prepared food. Theconcrete block and exposed stud walls of bare wood were covered inpatches of institutional lime-green paint, plus decades of grease. Aclusterfuck of mismatched industrial kitchen gear and wood tables tookup almost every square inch of floor space. Massive overhead ducts andfans hung from the high ceiling, wrapped in a maze of pipes and wires.Giant blowers on the roof sucked out stagnant air with the sound of a727 in flight. A team of short, Yoda-like Italian women scurried around atable of raw ingredients, measuring handfuls and dumping them in giantboiling vats of sauce. All of the women closely resembled Sophia, theoldest of the four Golden Girls, and none of them spoke any Englishwhatsoever.

My station made up one wall of the kitchen: three stainless-steelsinks, a wire drying rack above them, and a large industrial dishwasheron one side for sterilizing the glass and silverware. More dishes than I’dseen in my life, all dirty from the lunch rush, sat stacked in grey plastictubs, pieces of half-eaten food, gallons of tomato sauce, and cartons ofcigarette butts between each plate. Thick rubber mats lay on the tilefloor in front of the sinks, not to protect the floor, but to keep peoplefrom slipping once the water started flying.

“Hey! You-a the new guy? I’m-a Luigi!”

Mario and Luigi were obviously brothers. Mario was taller,thinner, more handsome, and younger; he was the face of the operation,the good cop of the partnership. He had the charm of the two brothers,and used it to schmooze the valuable customers. He probably also usedthis skill to make bank loan officers, food inspectors, the INS, andpurveyors look over the obvious. (The place couldn’t have passed a foodinspection in at least a decade, and I had no idea how they could, asidefrom leveling the building and starting over.) Luigi was the opposite inevery way: short, stocky, balding, and a bit older. The first ten words hebarked at me, just from his tone and presence, made me think he waspissed off at everyone and everything.


I, DISHWASHER

“You-a gonna start on the pans,” he told me. “And then-a Jeffcome in atta five to help-a you with the rest. Whatta you name?”

“Jon,” I said.

“We a-gotta ‘nother John, he-a work with you later this-a week.”

I should mention that up to this point, I hadn’t completed anapplication, signed a single piece of paper, told anyone my Social Securitynumber, or even told anyone my last name. I wasn’t expecting an FBIbackground check or a 2000-word entrance essay, but I had this sneakingsuspicion that I was somehow working off the books for the Mafia. Itdidn’t help that I heard absolutely no English in my first hour at work.(The closest I’d experienced to total language immersion was aMcDonald’s in Chicago that had Spanish menus.) I expected that at anymoment, two of the Corleone henchmen would explode through thefront door, pull the bullet-riddled body of an enforcer onto the kitchentable, and have one of the Sophias dig out the slugs and sew him shutwhile Luigi ran to the basement and whipped out a Tommy gun and acase of hand grenades.

I filled the right sink with hot water and soap and noticed thatthe three-sink unit hung about four inches too low for my height. I laterfound that after an eight hour shift slumped over the low sink, my spinewould compress and I’d completely torque out my back. Chronic backinjuries are never anything to laugh at, but when they happen at 16, youknow something’s wrong.

I pulled plates from the plastic bus tubs, scraped the big chunksof food into my barrel-sized trashcan, and dumped them in the suds tosoak for a bit. I had almost no dishwashing experience, other thanloading a dishwasher at home, or washing the occasional utensil at The‘Bell. But I tried a simple algorithm: dump mostly-scraped dishes intothe sink of water, scrub each one with a cloth, pile them into the centersink, then rinse and put them on the racks to dry. Rinsing would be easy,because each sink had a hanging hose with a hot water trigger. Each oneresembled a boom microphone in a radio studio, and they mostly sprungback in place when released. Oh, and I wore no gloves. My hands wouldlook zombified by the end of each shift.

From a scientific standpoint, an Italian restaurant is one of theworst-case scenarios for a dishwasher. The back line sent dozens ofaluminum pizza pans an hour, each with a wheel-spoke pattern of meltedcheese that required diligent scrubbing. The small pizza pans fit in an

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empty sink (which I never had), but the large ones were just a bit too bigto submerge and scour in one shot. Plus you needed leverage against thepan to scrub it, which was impossible with a wet metal object, wet hands,and no corners. Aside from owners, staff, and customers, pizza pans wereyour worst enemy as a dishwasher.

The front generated a steady stream of dirty plates, which werecoated with dried and hardened cheese, especially when a lasagna hadtime to set. Some plates, like those from a spaghetti dinner, wiped cleanin a single stroke. They also left dark red sauce in the water,necessitating frequent water changes. Every clear plastic container gotslowly dyed red from the sauce. You’d save a load of plastic, drain thesink, refill it with soap and bleach, wash, then rinse away all of the bleachand refill with soap and water. And the Sophias regularly dumped hugepots and pans in one of the sink when they needed washing. Theircookware unleashed quarts of thick sauce and oil slicks, almost alwaysrequiring yet another water change. The pots also had some seriousweight to them, making it that much harder to sling them around duringa rush.

By the time I got a decent amount of the lunch dishes undercontrol, a guy my age in stone-washed jeans came in and manned the leftsink.

“Eh, I’m Jeff. You start today?” he asked. He had a slight accent,but I couldn’t place it. Maybe he was Italian, but he had blonde hair, lightskin, and didn’t look like the rest of the crew. I later found out his dadwas Milanese, which meant nothing except we didn’t talk much, becausehis English was choppy, and we were too damn busy.

“Yeah, I’m Jon, the new guy,” I said. “I’m here until eight. Howdo we divide this up?”

“Left sink,” he said, gesturing to his side of the kitchen. “That’sme. Silverware, glassware, the nice plates, anything that has to go in thedishwasher is mine. And I bus tables when they get too busy. You geteverything else. I’ll put stuff away until you know where it goes.”

We busted suds and exchanged few words. I found out Jeff wentto Central, the big high school in town, and that’s about it. I wasn’t sureif the management, shyness, or the language issue kept him buried in thework, but I tried to do the same. We almost got caught up before the first


I, DISHWASHER

bus tubs of dinner dishes came from the front. Around the same time,more pans came up from round one on the pizza line, and my almost-empty sink filled with dishes.

Instead of looking at my watch every five minutes and countingthe hours until 8:00, the sheer amount of work ahead completelyhypnotized me. I stopped thinking about what plate was next, andslammed through the pile. Dish after dish passed through my hands, intocenter rinse sink, then to the racks. I got to the point where I forgotwhere I was, or who I was, had this out-of-body experience of justwatching myself slap pan after pan through the suds, withoutexperiencing it. I couldn’t feel the heat of the water or the stench ofuneaten food anymore. It kept me hacking through the dinner rush.

Between the rushes of total heads-down dishwashing, I noticedthe strange, almost militant hierarchy of the restaurant. The place ranlike an army or a body of government. Commanding officer Mario andhis XO Luigi tied together the three theaters of combat. Mario lookedlike he ran the show, and usually stayed out front, smiling and thankingpeople for coming. He tended bar, and escorted to the kitchen theoccasional VIP that wanted to meet the cook, his dear old mama. (Jefftold me the most senior-ranking Sophia was the mother of Mario andLuigi, which made perfect sense.) I never understood wanting to meet acook after you enjoyed a meal, because if I ever ate at a restaurant andthen went back to a kitchen that looked like Franco’s, I wouldimmediately call a doctor, health inspector, and possibly an exorcist. ButMario tied together those two worlds, from the kitchen to the table. AndLuigi ran the kitchen, the supply rooms, and the pizza line with an ironfist. At any given time, he was yelling at someone like a drill sergeantthat just found a soldier with a dirty rifle. Many Italian families will havea painting of Jesus on their living room wall; I was pretty sure Luigi hada photo of Mussolini.

Up front, a beautiful piece of eye candy greeted and seatedcustomers, and the waitresses (no waiters) took orders and brought food.Aside from Mario, the front-of-house staff alternated between a cast ofthree or four women: young, blonde, huge boobs; young, brunette, hugeboobs; young, sandy blonde, huge boobs; and one that was neither youngnor large-breasted, but could work like a motherfucker, handle busy

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weekend shifts without dropping dishes, and deal with Mario and Luigi’sshit. If it was a slow Tuesday, you got the boobs, though.

Behind the front wall was the platoon of Sophias, cooking andplating. They had their own pecking order from head cook on down, butI never could keep track of who did what. It was just a blur of flyingingredients, huge boiling kettles, and yapping Italian. They actuallyhired a non-Italian cook once, some dopey-looking guy from Texas. Heworked one shift, got in a shouting match with a senior Sophia, and thenleft forever.

And at the bottom of the hierarchy, there were dishwashers. Theonly time you were noticed was when someone else fucked up and thefront ran out of saucers or salad bowls during a rush, and you had tohustle to get some clean. We also got summoned to haul bags of trash tothe dumpster, and occasionally pull 50-pound tubs of shreddedmozzarella from the basement when the pizza line ran out and couldn’tget it themselves. The occasional “none of the above” jobs got doled outto us: changing light bulbs, loading saltshakers, removing rat carcassesfrom traps, and unclogging shit-filled toilets. Whatever nobody elsewanted to do, we did.

On the second front were the pizza guys. Three or four of themworked in the back, slamming dough and spreading sauce and toppings,slipping it in and out of the flat ovens. Matt got in as a tosser, and theyhad another high school kid that alternated between slamming pies andmaking deliveries by car. But the rest of the guys there were twice as oldas me, Italian dudes with dark features, thick hair, giant forearms fromlifting and tossing and pulling, and a lot of their own inside jokes that Inever got. Their crew was just as tight as the Sophias, but in a moremasculine way. They were like a group of drinking buddies watchingfootball, except with lots of dusted flour everywhere.

There was an obvious communication issue with the kitchenstaff, as I didn’t speak Italian, and none of them knew English. It wasobvious though that we were far below their level on the food chain, fromthe way they acted when they dumped pans in the sink or pointed anddemanded you grab something from the drying rack (because they wereall 4’7”.) Socializing with the “pretty” staff front of house was like anenlisted man talking to the President. Speak when spoken to, only. Thepizza guys were maybe the closest to us — Wonko did start as adishwasher and jump up the food chain. He’d check in to say hi every


I, DISHWASHER

now and then, but they got slammed as the dinner rush hit, and he had touse up pizza pans as fast as I could wash them.

By 8:00, the dining room, although half-full, only generated atrickle of bussed dishes.

“Hey Jeff, time for me to clock out. You okay holding the fort?” Isaid.

“Yeah, no problem. I’ll see you next time.”

I found Luigi on my way out. He hung out by the pizza line,chatting with the tossers in his thick Italian. He wrote down myschedule for the foreseeable future, and gave me a form to fill out by mynext shift. The form was a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy of ageneric job application, the bare minimum they needed to pay me, andthe only paper I’d ever fill out there.

As I left, Luigi went back to the line, talking to the guys inItalian, pulling empty cheese trays for the tossers, and hefting new onesin. There probably weren’t many soft moments with this bastard, but itlooked like he used to be the one throwing dough years before, and hemissed his kin. Or he liked to micromanage, who knows.

On the drive home, I could tell I smelled, but I couldn’trecognize the odor. My lower shirt and upper pants were drenched.You’d think the odor would be pizza, or spaghetti, or garlic bread, but itwas more like an Italian tossed salad, mixed with industrial soap. It waspretty close to the smell of the garbage can I filled with plate scrapingsover the last four hours.

Back home, I changed, got a quick dinner, and did some readingfor English Lit before giving up and hitting the sack. In bed, I stared atthe ceiling, wondering what the hell I’d gotten myself into. I didn’t evenlike washing dishes at home. That night, when I closed my eyes, all Icould see were dirty beer pitchers and soda cups and spatulas passingthrough my soapy hands.

You can tell an Italian restaurant is authentic if they completelyclose down on Mondays or Tuesdays. When Luigi explained that “yougetta take off on Monday”, he made it sound like he was graciouslysending me on an all-expenses paid vacation to the Bahamas. In reality,he worked the fuck out of everybody on the weekend, and shut down on

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the slow day. He gave me a set schedule of four days a week: closing onTuesday, Friday, and Saturday, and the four-hour starting block onThursdays. Not that I had much of a social life, but this blocked out thetwo prime non-school-night occasions where, if I could even talk to agirl, I’d take her to a movie in hopes of love, or at least a handjob.

That Friday, I started at 6:00, and closed for the first time. Onweekends, they kept both dishwashers until closing, presumably becauseof the insane amount of traffic they would have. I ate a quick dinnerbefore my shift, and expected the worst.

When I got to the sinks, I saw a metalhead-looking guy at theleft tub, scrubbing away at a huge pan.

“Hey, I’m Jon,” I said. “I’ll be your right-sink tonight.”

“Far out,” he said. “I’m John too. I’d shake your hand, but I’melbow-deep in shit.”

“Right,” I said. “On it.” I fired up my hot water and shot a load ofsoap in the sink.

John wore a faded AC/DC shirt, and looked a bit like AngusYoung, albeit with greasier black hair and a pair of glasses. He slammedthrough the motions with precision, as if he’d been doing the same thingfor years. He looked my age, maybe younger, or maybe like a 17-year-old9th grader majoring in metal shop.

“So Jon,” he said, hefting the pot to the drying rack. “What kindof porn are you into?”

“What?”

“Porn. What floats your boat? Chicks on chicks? Chicks withdicks? Ass fucking, ass eating, ass-to-ass? I personally don’t have a VCRin my room, so I have to stick with the paper stuff...”

“Keep your voice down,” I whispered, gesturing to the women inthe kitchen.

“Oh them? They can’t tell what the fuck we’re talking about.Observe: shit, fuck, cock, balls, cunt, cum, horsefuck, shit. They don’tknow what we’re saying.”

“You said ‘shit’ twice,” I said.

“I say shit a lot. Noun, verb, description of this job,” he said.“Why did you take this job anyway? And why are you still here? The


I, DISHWASHER

average lifespan of a Franco’s dishwasher is about four hours. The guybefore you quit after one day.”

“Well, I’m not here for the vacation plan. I needed the work.Having an old car is like supporting a kid.”

“Your parents didn’t buy you a ‘Beamer on your sweet 16?”

“Not exactly. You?”

“My mom got me four cartons of Ho-ho’s for my last birthday. Ithink she only did it because she though I couldn’t return them and usethe money to buy pot.”

“Well, at least you can eat Hostess for a while.”

“Oh no, I traded them to my dealer for a quarter of Panama Red.Good shit, too. Only thing is, after I smoked it, I wished I had the Ho-Ho’s back. Speaking of...”

John spotted something magical, and darted into the kitchen. Heran back with a plate containing two pieces of garlic bread. “Free food!Free food! Our only fringe benefit is when someone makes a mistake orsends back an order. Dig in! Don’t worry, it’s non-taxable income.”

I wiped off my hands, grabbed the piece of cheese-encrustedbread and ate it like a man would drink a glass of water after a week inthe desert.

“Always better when it’s free, right?” John got back to his sinkand washed the crumbs off of his hands. “Now let’s get back to fuckingwork.”

Me and John kept at the sinks like we were the first troopslanding at Normandy. A waitress freaked out because they were down toa dozen clean plates. The pizza line got so busy, they didn’t have time tohaul back their empties, and I had to wash 25 trays on the spot so theycould keep rolling. John proposed a wager to see who could go thelongest without changing their dishwater during the rush. One of theSophias dropped a huge pot into my totally-full sink, and it caused a tidalwave of dishwater to slosh onto the mesh rubber mats on the floor.Hours later, I looked at my watch: 9:17. We still had at least an hour togo, and all three sinks were full.

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“We’re supposed to close at ten,” John said. “At least that’s whatthe sign says.”

“And do we?” I asked.

“Fuck no! On weekends, they try to lock the doors at ten, but thedining room’s almost always wall-to-wall losers, especially if there was afootball or basketball game that night. They take their sweet fuckingtime eating and drinking. Some of the bastards even order more food.”

“Can’t we go out there and slap them around a little? Maybe alittle teargas?” I said.

“I wish. Half the time Mario’s out there schmoozing the frequentfliers, pouring them top-shelf drinks and serving more food. God forbidone of his personal friends came in for a meal at 9:52 — he would givethem the run of the place, and let them order dozens of ‘authentic’ meals,where each one uses 14 fucking plates. It’s a losing battle.”

I quickly learned that the life of a dishwasher is entirely aboutthe pace of that battle. Some might thing it’s the hard-to-wash dishes orthe monotony, but the main problem is keeping up. You always want anempty sink, and unless it’s closing time or a health inspector or a majorfire intervenes, you never will. And it was like fighting a three-front warfor us, with pizza pans coming from the back, bus tubs of dishes from thefront, and heavy pots coming from the rear. If they locked the frontdoors and everyone got the fuck out, you still had a shitload of cuttingequipment and cheese graters from the basement, where Luigi preppedingredients all day. (It’s also worth mentioning that in the basement,filled with raw ingredients for their fine cuisine, was also overrun withrats.)

Just after ten, the cute blonde waitress with large breasts cameback to the sinks. “Hey John?”

“Hi Shelly”, he said. “Doors locked yet?”

“Mario just locked up,” she said. “Hey, some people at a four-topjust left. Do you mind bussing it? I’ve got to grab this order.”

“Sure, no problem,” he said. I knew he only helped her because hehad some grandiose daydream of getting in her pants. It’s hard not tothink of it when your option is to look at the food floating in your sink, or


I, DISHWASHER

think about what horrible thing you did in your past to deserve such afate.

John reappeared a few minutes later with a bus tray of dishes.“I’ll tell you Jon, I know the waitresses get all the tips, but I keep tellingthe customers if they hide them under their leftover food, maybe we canget a little something back here.”

“How’s it look out there?”

“Maybe a dozen mouthbreathers, half of them don’t even havefood yet,” he said.

Shelly walked back and grabbed a giant order to haul up front.John not-so-discretely took a gaze at her posterior as she walked out.“Oh man, I wish my face was her bicycle seat,” he said.

“I was wondering why you were acting so nice,” I said.

“No chance in hell, I know. Dishwasher isn’t the vocation thatspells out ‘keeper’.”

“I think even if I owned this place, I’d still have trouble gettinglaid, at least in this town,” I said.

“At least you have a car. I have to wait for my mom to pick me upafter work.”

John and I kept cranking through everything at the sinks, whileShelly took away dishes from underneath people and got their checks atlightning speed. The Sophias all left at the same time, and the pizzamakers weren’t far behind, but we still had a leaning tower of plates tocontend with. When John got his last load in the washer, he startedpulling everything off the racks, and running around the restaurant toput it away. I gauged everything by the number of water changes we’dneed. After a sink refill, I’d look at the pile and think “this will be the lastone”, and another dish tub of dirty stuff would come back.

Finally, just after eleven, I drained my last sink, and took out the55-gallon barrel of garbage that accumulated over the last six hours.

“That’s it, Luigi,” John said. “See you Sunday.”

We both walked out into the cool September air. It was Fridaynight, past curfew, and I was broke. Even worse, I’d have to be back in adozen hours to do it again.

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I worked with Jeff and John a few times, manning the right sink.Within a week, I got to go solo, working with Jeff a couple of hours andthen closing by myself. This shift got annoying fast. Aside from all of thedishes, pots, and pans, I also got the arduous task of cleaning out everysalt and pepper shaker in the restaurant. This involved dumping eachcondiment into a large, industrial-sized container, then scrubbing out thecaps and glass bodies of the shakers. There was simply no way to do thisat any speed other than glacial, because you couldn’t blast water into thetiny screw-top openings of the glass vessels. I thought maybe this was atrick of Luigi’s to piss me off, but John said he had to do the same thingregularly.

After two weeks, I got my first paycheck. It wasn’t much, but Ibought parts to replace my car’s exhaust, and kept the CDs coming in.Friends of mine worked at grocery stores and lumberyards, makingalmost twice as much as me, with a lot less bullshit or labor. I yearnedand wished for such a gig, something that didn’t involve food or mafioso-like employers. Instead, I faced day after day of the same constant battle,standing at the same sink, hunched over with my back in the wrongangle for hours. It felt like I was driving in a ship in a hurricane, thewater splashing over as I stood on deck. With no variation, no change,no challenge, I simply handed over hours of my life and in return wasgiven the lowest possible amount for them.

The semester scrolled by quickly, and the back-to-school brightblue jeans slowly faded into worn denim. People worried aboutmidterms. I gave up on homework, except for what I could accomplish in55 minutes of study hall. I didn’t think about Steinbeck or vectorprinciples or ranges of functions over domains. I thought about washingdishes. I went into a restaurant and looked at the plates, the numberrequired for a dish, the finish on the pans, the weight of each dinnersetting. I enjoyed McDonald’s not for their food, but because everysingle thing in the place was made out of plastic and styrofoam, and mostof it went into the garbage instead of washed. One time I told my momshe was washing a pan wrong. I started out washing dishes. Somehow,overnight, I became a dishwasher.

The clearest, most absolute memory of that short era took placeafter closing on a Tuesday. A party of eight came in right before ten andkept me there until almost 11:30 at night. My curfew at that time was


I, DISHWASHER

11:00, and I found it slightly humorous that my new vocation kept meout later than my unending pursuit of the opposite sex. It was unusuallycold, maybe 50 degrees, and I stopped at a Marathon station to fill up mycar. Elkhart’s the kind of town that really does roll up the sidewalks at9:00 every night, and absolutely nobody was around. It was so quiet, socalm and peaceful, that it seemed unreal to me that in a few hours, I’d bein English class. Being that alone after spending eight hours in apressure cooker, after spending every day in a classroom — it made mefeel so huge, and so real. I didn’t want to go back. And eventually, Iwouldn’t.

I wish I could say there was a defining moment when I decidedto exit the dishwashing profession, but there wasn’t. I didn’t find a newjob or a new love or have some parental fatwah terminate myemployment at Franco’s. Instead, the burnout slowly crept into mysystem until I seriously considered hitchhiking to the Pacific Northwestand vanishing into the mountains like D.B. Cooper.

The never-changing schedule meant my weekends were alwaysruined. I had no social life anyway, except for maybe hanging out with afew friends and talking about the new Metallica album. And forgetromance; I hadn’t even kissed a girl at this point. But there was thisoverwhelming pressure that I should, and obviously that wouldn’thappen if I smelled like an Italian restaurant’s dumpster.

And ever since preschool, I’d been on this constant track towardcollege, with every academic event building up to the point when I’d beaccepted at a school. My parents sent me to computer camp, futureproblem solvers’, science fairs, gifted programs, AP English class,anything to build up my academic resume. Now, with less than two yearsremaining, I seldom studied, and the stress of what would happen atmidterms seriously bothered me. I was now entering the part of the to-college glide path where I’d start with the standardized tests: the PSAT,SAT, ACT, ISTEP. I knew people memorizing thesauruses to get higherverbal scores. And I was worrying about the fastest way to cleansilverware, for $3.35 an hour. My parents thought I was fucking upbecause I was on pot, and would end up in the worst possible job in thefuture. I didn’t have the heart to tell them no drugs were involved, but Iwas already there as far as the worst job ever part.

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And yes, the job sucked. The worst part was that it was only onejob. At least at Taco Bell, you got the occasional chance to go from frontline or drive-in to back half or kitchen prep. I would have gladlywelcomed the opportunity to make some pizzas or take some orders, butI couldn’t. I’d always be a fucking dishwasher, and even if I had college inmy future and I could give a big fuck you to the whole city of Elkhart,that still left me with two solid years of staring at the greasy water in theright sink, each sinkful further defining me as only a dishwasher.

One Saturday night, I was in a trance, washing and rinsing,watching my hands do the work as my mind detached, went into thismeditation state where I could completely zone out. I could do this if Isat at my sink uninterrupted, and it happened often, during the worstdinner rushes. Many would see this as a positive situation, but it tendedto make me think and worry more than if I had to focus or concentrate. Itreplayed my worst problems and fears in my head, letting them brewuntil I was absolutely filled with self-hatred and doubt. And at about nineo’clock, during the worst of the dinner rush, all of that negative energycame to a head, and gave me the balls to step away from the sink.

“Dude, I’m leaving,” I said to John. “I’m finished.”

“You’re here until close. It’s Saturday, man.”

“No, I mean I’m quitting. I can’t stand this fucking placeanymore.”

“Far out, man. You going apeshit or anything? Any firearms outin the Camaro?”

“No, I’m telling Luigi and that’s it. Sorry for dumping the extrawork on you.”

“Hey, no problem man. I just dropped a couple of black bombers,”he said. “This shit’s great! I could wash every fucking dish in this placein an hour flat.”

“You sure?”

“Don’t worry, dude,” he said. “I’ll see you on the other side.Gimme a call some time.”

“Will do,” I said.

I found Luigi by the pizza line, and decided to use the directapproach.


I, DISHWASHER

“Luigi, I’m leaving. I quit.”

“What? You no gonna finish tonight? Looka all those dishes!”

“Find another dishwasher. I quit.”

I stormed out of the back entrance, got in my car, and left, thesmell of dirty dishwater still on my clothes. It felt so surreal to bedriving away, to know I was capable of ending something so quickly. Myheart beat like I took ten caps of John’s speed. I drove north, instead ofheading home, just to drive and not have to be on my way to school, onmy way to work, on my way home.

In a fit of stupidity, I found an Iron Maiden tape and listened tothe song “Running Free”. Absolutely none of the lyrics had to do with adishwasher who just escaped the prison of a pizza joint’s kitchen, butwith that much adrenaline in my system, it didn’t matter. I felt great.Excellent. If Elkhart had any place to go or any thing to do for a 16-year-old to do, I would have been there in an instant. But there wasn’tanything to do except drive. And when the high faded, I remembered Inow had no job, and the half-tank of gas in my car would have to lastuntil I found one. I turned around and headed home.

When I arrived for my closing shift on Tuesday, I immediatelygot the evil eye from the entire crew. Even though I couldn’t understanda word the Sophias said, I knew they were pissed as hell. It wasn’t anissue of me finding a better job, or exploring other career options thatbothered them. It was the fact that me, a punk-ass 16-year-old, woulddare cross Don Luigi, godfather and king of the Franco empire. It was asif I personally tied the rope around Mussolini’s neck and hitched itaround a lamppost in the town square.

My victory was short-lived. Luigi called me the next afternoon,irate, swearing that he wouldn’t pay me for almost two weeks of workunless I came in and finished out the rest of the pay period. That onlyamounted to closing on Tuesday, but it might as well have been a monthof unpaid labor. Somehow, I thought quitting a shit job would be easy,but I needed the money, and even when Luigi wasn’t yelling andscreaming, just his potential for such audible violence scared me. I toldhim I’d be there Tuesday, and he better have a check for me by the end ofthe shift.

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I started counting the minutes, dish by dish, until closing. All Icould think of was how I needed to get even with this fuck and his wholeillegal alien family. I knew simply telling everyone I knew not to eatthere because of the giant rats in the basement wouldn’t be enough. But Ididn’t have the resources to blow up the place. Instead I cleared out thelunch dishes, worked through the bus tubs, scraped rotting and filthyfood into the garbage. Every time Luigi walked past, his expression, hisstare was like I raped his children and shit in his pizza cheese.

Shortly after I began on the lunch dishes, Mario made anappearance at the sink.

“So you-a leaving us, eh?”

I grunted a yes, while rinsing plates.

“You-a find another job?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Thassa pretty stupid, eh?”

“No, being a fucking dishwasher here is pretty stupid.”

He stared me down, unable to respond. He was good, but hewasn’t Luigi. His older brother could make me shit bullets with an evilgaze, but Mario’s only talents involved kissing customers’ asses. Hehanded me an envelope, then vanished to the front of house. Inside was acheck, for the fruits of my labor: $119.47.

At eight, Jeff showed up. “What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Mario asked me to come in. He didn’t want you to close. Youcan go home.”

“I’ll finish what I’ve got before I bail, okay?”

“Don’t worry, it’s Tuesday,” he said. “I’ll be okay”

I finished my sink, and then Luigi brought in the cheese grinder.“Do-a this beforea you go,” he said.

The cheese grinder was this huge, medieval funnel-lookingthing that bolted onto a power motor. It weighed at least thirty pounds,plus attachments. You dumped cheese into the horn-shaped top, and itgot extruded through a blade piece with a bunch of holes in it, makingperfect pizza topping cheese. It was a cast steel industrial equivalent tothe Play-Dough Fun Factory.


I, DISHWASHER

One of the worst closing tasks was when a pizza line guybrought the thing up for cleaning, after squeezing out a few hundredpounds of cheese. After you took apart the attachment and the internalrotor screw and all of the pieces, you had to clean the sticky dairy junkout of these threaded screw grooves inside the body. There was no easyway to do this; you couldn’t just spray it with the hose or soak it fortwenty minutes. You had to get inside of there with your fingernails andtrace over the threads inside, prying out the cheese.

Jeff was in the front, bussing tables. I wiped off the outside of thegrinder, then hauled it downstairs, hefted it back on its shelf, and left itwith every internal thread and groove completely full of cheese. By thenext morning, all of the cheese would turn into cement, and it wouldtake at least an hour to de-fuck the thing. It was my personal gift toLuigi, and to all of the rats that feasted on the spilled food downstairs.

I ran back up the stairs, out to my car, and left a nice amount oftread pulling out onto US-33 at full speed. The Iron Maiden tape with“Running Free” was cued up and in the player waiting for me. I had acheck for $119.47 and no job prospects whatsoever. Life was good.

118

Customer Service SocratesBY DIRTY HOWIE

“I always resented all the years, the hours, the minutes I gavethem as a working stiff. It actually hurt my head, my insides.It made me dizzy and a bit crazy. I couldn’t understand themurdering of my years.”

— Charles Bukowski

“Can you give me a number where I can talk to a human being?”

“You are talking to a human being.”

“I’ve been calling and calling and when I finally get a person I’mdisconnected. I want a phone number to where I can talk to a humanbeing.”

“You are talking to a human being. I’m a loner living in a shittyroom. I can barely take care of myself. It takes all the strength I have justto get to the next day. I look outside my window, see humans runningaround mad with wants, desires and dreams and I think to myself,“Thank god I’m not any of them.” I drink straight from the bottle. I lightcigarettes and puff them to life. Lady, the only thing living in this worldis the fire turning into ash at the end of my Pall Mall. The smoke curlsup and away, evaporating into nothing, just like life. Henry Miller wrote,“It’s not difficult to be alone if you are poor and a failure.” He hit the naildirectly on head when he said that. I’m living proof.”

“I need to speak to a supervisor. I just want to talk to a humanbeing. I’ve called several times and have been disconnected every time.Why is your phone system like this?”

“I’ll put it this way, ‘Can you hear me now?’”

“I just need a number to call and not get hung up on. I want aphone number where I can talk to a human being.”

“You are talking to a human being. I just told you my life story. Ididn’t even tell you to ask me who I was.”

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“I’ll just call back tomorrow when someone’s there.”

“Yeah, you do that.”

“Maybe a human being will answer the phone.”

“And maybe not.”

* * *

“I’m calling about the bad conditions of the property over here.You need to send somebody out to investigate. We’re not gettinganything fixed. The apartments aren’t being fixed. Nothing is beingfixed. Floors. Light fixtures. Air conditioning. Windows. Painting.Refrigerators.”

“I’ll tell you something you probably already know. Life is like apile of shit. It’s messy. It stinks. And you can never get a firm grip on it.”

“There’s too much drug dealing. The management is trying.When the office is closed the drug dealing is constantly going on.They’re messing with the gates and cars are being broke into. We needsecurity because we have too much drug dealing.”

“Life is a gamble, dude. Flip the fucking coin.”

“We have small kids, the elderly and the handicapped here.”

“Tikes and old folks are dealing drugs? How much are theyasking for a cap of smack and an ounce of weed? I got my tax refund inthe mail last week and I need to reinvest it into the economy.”

“Most won’t talk because they’re scared something mighthappen to them. You need to talk to the people who’re willing to talk. Assoon as possible send someone out to investigate the grounds. The dopedealing needs to be stopped.”

“Well, at least, not until I score.”

“Thank you and have a nice day.”

“I will once you hang up.”

* * *

“I’m shocked. You’re a real human. All I’ve been talking to iscomputers.”

“An earlier caller coulda swore on her Bible I wasn’t human. Butwhat would you expect from a creature of the brainless multitudes?

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These molecules of consumption scurrying around purchasing andsucking down mass quantities of zero, like American Idol, Starbucks’fancy coffee drinks, low carb beer and Disneyland. Meanwhile, as I growmore and more jealous of the norm, I seethe. Caught in a web ofmainstream monotony, I anxiously pace, to and fro. In the death throes ofmy own dying breed, I mourn. But I take comfort in what Bukowskiwrote. ‘All we gotta do is wait to die.’ Remember, withdrawing in disgustis not the same as empathy. Oh, yeah, chewing gum while peeling onionswill keep you from crying. I just read that off the inside of a Snapple icedtea bottle cap. Real Fact #28.”

“Damn, you are a human being. I think I liked talking to thecomputer better.”

* * *

“I don’t like your attitude.”

“Well, I don’t like yours either.”

“What’s your name?”

“I, Claudius.”

“What’s your last name?”

“I don’t give out my last name to anybody because there’s toomany crazies out there. And I don’t need one, such as yourself, huntingme down.”

“I beg your pardon but I’m not crazy.”

“That’s not what your psychiatrist told me.”

“I want the name of your supervisor so I can tell him what kindof employee he has answering the phone.”

“Satan.”

“WHAT?”

“Lucifer. The Dark Angel. Mr. Pitch Fork Up Yo Ass.”

“Well, I never!”

“That sounds about right.”

“Don’t they test you for this kind of job? Gage your attitude?Because yours is piss poor. You shouldn’t be on a phone talking to thepublic.”


CUSTOMER SERVICE SOCRATES

“The only test I’ve taken since high school is the one to stayalive.”

“Are you gonna give me the name of your boss or not?”

“Hell, no. I only exist when I’m in trouble.”

Click.

122

The Poet and the PizzaBY NILE577

“And alien tears will fill for him, pity’s long broken urn. Hismourners will be outcast men, for outcasts always mourn”

A poet’s life is petty. It is sensitive. It is weak. It is spectacularlypretentious. It is every daily point sharpened to a melodrama and held ininky hand. It is useless; like Modern art. It is awareness of existencepressing on the heart. It is a desperate cry. It is self-cannibalism. It isevery fucking thing turned in on itself. It is lonely solitude in company.It is greeted by a concrete cold and unyielding: paralysing commonsense.

A poet leads his life in double: participant and critic. If the latter drawsattention it is branded neurosis. Conversations do not have subjectiveperspective for him; he is both inside and outside at once. You can see itin the eyes. Sure, sure you can. He will break contact and draw attentionby a glance at the floor - where to look, oh where to look? - and as aresponse, for a second, things will catch, words will stick in the throat, agaze will turn questioningly before slumping back to normality; like apatient gaining a moment’s consciousness amidst the anaesthetic. Thevoid seeps in through such cracks.

They undo love.

************************************************

The shop was clean, bright and sterile. It suggested morality. In thecorner next to a pile of empty pizza boxes sat the student, cross-legged,clad in black and pouring over a book with his bloodshot, bagged eyes.Occasionally a page would turn. He valued the focus point. The studentcut a comic figure. He had a body somewhat too large for his strangespherical head. His tiny eyes, somehow accentuated by the obliquegradient of his hulking chest, gazed out from his round face and werethrown into humorous relief by his clown-like shoes. He was thankful for

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THE POET AND THE PIZZA

the camouflage offered by the surrounding walls. The blue lighthummed. It attracted the flies.

Roystone, fifty, spineless and undemanding cast a wiry outline againstthe steely salad bins. He was a grey man. Gaunt. His index fingerhabitually strayed to press his lips from chin to nose. It was framed bypronounced lines on either cheek which had become harsh over the lastfive years. His mirror had told him so. Some mornings it almost worriedhim. Getting up, brushing his teeth. Six-Fifteen. Deep in his brain hestared straight down the corridor to old age. ‘Shhhh’ said his finger.Don’t tell anyone. Death wouldn’t happen to him, not Roystone.

Roy employed drivers to deliver his pizzas. He liked discussing businesswith them. He underpaid of course but there was free food tocompensate. It was a family business and Roy was an undemanding man.He liked phoning the radio show. He was humorous. He was down toEarth. He tapped the vein of the episteme and told it to the locality. Royloved the D.J.’s brainteasers on Classic Gold. Loved them. He won oneonce. How a woman had two identical children half an hour apart butthey were not twins.

He looked across at his night staff. Tonight the student and a two-dayunshaven man in his late forties were on duty. The unshaven man had astomach stretched into a green shirt, protesting at the buttons. Heremained slim in other areas. Alcohol lends a certain kind of obesity.

Glam rock music raged from the stereo. Stomach and Roy talkedincessantly. The student began to feel the terror of radical commonsense. They enforced it. They were its agents.

“Now. Fuck. Me. Sideways,” said Stomach, relishing the words (It takes acertain gusto to swear so brazenly) “would I like to take that home for anight.”

He held up a blur of pink flesh in a tabloid newspaper there was a pile ofthem underneath the calendar of nude women brandishing vaginas.Presumably the picture was ‘that.’ It cut quite a contrast to his quiveringmass of unshaven chins.

“Haha, you pervert,” said Roy.

“Too fuckin’ right,” said Stomach. “Too fuckin’ right mate. Christ wherethe fuck do they keep these women?” Truly, Stomach could imagine nogreater pleasure than taking one home for the night. It was the bestthing in the world. To dip yourself into something so pert. Everyone

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dreamed of it. “Fucking hell it says here this here girl is unsatisfied in herrelationship because he only wants to have sex twice a week. Where thefuck do they hide them? She wants it EVERY NIGHT!”

“I used to get it every night,” said Roystone. “That was back when I wascourting though.”

“I fuckin’ wish mate!” quipped Stomach. “Mine wore out after ten years.Had to dump the cunt and look for another!”

Time passed.

U2 came on the radio. Stomach hummed along. What more in the nameof love? Stomach did not know that’s for sure. He lent support to thevocal line with out of tune, monotone humming tinged vaguely withalcohol and bacteria from the back of his throat. Music of common sensewas made with plastic slogans and plastic drums. Men of common senselove simple cadence and gnarly, dirty guitar sounds like Dire Straits.Puts this new young crap to shame. One man he resists. Stomachbrandished his pizza crust with quixotic aplomb.

The student read of snow falling on Dublin. It fell here too.

“Heavy traffic out there tonight,” said Roy. “Shame none of them see theshop ‘cause we’re so far back from the road.”

“I was fucking caught up in that traffic up Sudbury way for fifty fuckingminutes this morning,” moaned Stomach. He was good at complaining.

“Eeeh! I bet,” said Roy, seemingly incredulous. “I left the depot thismorning ‘quarter to seven; got back ‘quarter to eleven. I was the firstpoor bastard there and the last cunt back.”

Men vented frustration about the location of cars. Strange things. Carsthat is. Pack your ontology into them. Car rage is common sense. It givesmeaning to life to be wronged in a car. It is disambiguous. It is clear-cut.The suppressed rage of middle-age spread and failed marriages ischannelled into exclamation against some hapless peon who delayed ajourney for ten whole precious seconds dressed as eternity. It is bravado.How the world kneels before the driver’s common sense and ability.

When imprisoned, inmates like to rattle the cage.

“Fucking hold ups on the road!” Stomach almost shouted, getting intothe venom of his attack. “I tell you mate some stupid cunt drove a fuckingCorsa into the central barrier on the A14 today.” The student noted howagents of common sense always knew the specific names of car brands. “I



mean, half of them are on fucking drugs these days. We never had thisthirty years ago did we?” Stomach reached his point with a slow relish.“Are people just more fuckin’ stupid today? Common sense has goneright the fuck out of the window.”

“Coh!” said Roy, in some sort of empathic exclamation. In the third inchof his large intestine a small cancer was developing. It nestled next tolast night’s spaghetti, cooked by his wife, just how he liked it. She hadcome to accept that he ate everything with ketchup. He was anundemanding man.

“I tell you mate you just never heard of that kind of thing in my day andage. Oh well I’m off home now in any case. Gonna watch Britney for acouple of hours on VH-1,” grinned Stomach. “Oh did I tell you the cuntscut my phone off. I can still get the fucking incoming calls but outgoing Ican’t fuckin’ make. I told them: ‘I don’t give a fuck.’ I got me mobile aintI? Aint payin those cunts. I think I’m gonna go back on B.T. soonanyway.”

“I don’t blame you,” said Roy. “The price they charge these days.”

“Yeah fuckin’ tell me about it,” said Stomach, collecting his keys. “Well,night Roy. Don’t work too hard,” he joked, swaggering out of the shop.He looked forward to his drink. He would sit, illuminated by thealuminium glow of his can-strew carpet, reaching for the next can withhis hungry face. He no longer saw the empties. Hadn’t for a year or more.His soul kept afloat on the raft of his liver.

“I’ll try”, said Roy.

A minute or two passed.

Roy wiped the counter down. He was thinking. He remembered the firsttime. He had lain in the back of his dad’s Fairlane with a girl calledWendy. It was a time before harsh cheek lines and before Stomach. Hedidn’t think he was all that worse off for it. The leather had smelt sogoddamn sweet you could taste it. She had held him, her eyes looking alittle scared. It crossed his mind that she probably had loved him. He hadfinished. Was that it? Well, it was lost. No, never coming back. Royscraped dried cheese from the end of his finger. Now why was this youngman so quiet all the time? A college type, Roy reckoned. So damn chokedon books. Needed to liven up. Roy tried to imagine the student gettinglaid. He couldn’t. Not like he couldn’t Mark, the fat disabled guy whocame into play cards every day five ‘til ten — with him Roy could almost

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see the lust from behind his glasses as he threw down a queen of hearts.No, this was different. There was something very odd about him.

Roy turned to his companion and began to offer him a pizza. He stoppedhowever, open-mouthed. He was half sure yes, he was certain

The student was silently weeping.



128

WorkBY STEPHEN HUFFMAN

“I’ve always hated work. I’d much rather lie around andsmoke, drink, jack off, watch t.v., read or almost anything butwork. If most people were honest they’d say the same thing.”

–Motel Todd

Work. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with it. But those wise guy’s words abovearen’t really about work, are they? No. They’re talking aboutemployment. There’s a difference. Work is an enjoyable busting of asswith a specific goal in mind. Employment is busting the ass to someoneelse’s will for the paycheck. Work sometimes doesn’t put beans on thetable. Employment usually does. Work has no timetable. Employmentinsists on one. People love work and hate employment.

When I was a kid in Arkansas I loved to draw; I’d try to copy interestingphotographs out of the newspapers and books, try to sketch a face ormotion from memory. I even submitted my versions of Bambi and ThePirate to the ‘You Can Be an Artist Too’ folks I found in the backs ofcomic books.

“Son,” Dad said, “How are you ever going to amount to anything whenall you do is sit around scribbling on paper? They don’t pay people toscribble on paper. They pay them to work. Now quit that and do yourhomework. And clean this pigsty of a room up.”

“I been wonderin’ about that, Dad. Who’s ‘They’?”

“Don’t backtalk me. Wash up for supper.”

Having that kind of stuff drilled into my head regularly didn’t put a stopto my scribbling. But it did put me to thinking Capitalist thoughts. Dadwas right in a way he didn’t have a finger on: The 50 cents a week he wasdoling out for chores wasn’t putting my kind of beans on the table.Supplement. Yeah, supplement. Better art supplies than a #2 pencil and aspiral notebook page that you rip out and leave little flecks of paper lying

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around and get into trouble for. Paper route. Yes. Paper route. All the kidswho don’t sit around scribbling have one of those.

I can still smell the ink and paper flecks in the old brick Malvern DailyRecord press building, still hear the big rollers of the conveyor thatdropped the wet bundles of papers at Mr. Donahue’s feet. Mr. Donahue’sapron was so black with ink that you had to look hard for the denim blue.His fingernails would never be clean.

“Fold it in half. Now fold it in half again. Now twist it like this, so’s it’s atight roll in your fist. That’s right. Good. Now push the middle of it tothe stop on the bailer and let the...”

I fumbled and let go, the arm on the bailer machine whipped around sofast that it kind of scared me. The paper roll spread out in my hand andjammed the string feeder. Mr. Donahue sighed and produced a nasty-looking pair of sheers from somewhere out of the black of his apron.Snip, snip. I had the paper back in my hands and Mr. Donahue had thebailer restrung and ready.

“That’s OK, son. You’re doin’ good. Now roll it up tight again and PUSHit into that stop. It won’t hurt ya.”

I rolled it up tighter than it needed to be and shoved it hard into the stop.The arm of the bailer spun the string around the paper, twisted back, andcut a perfect nub of a knot. The arm swung back and invited another roll.Magic.

“Wow. This is fun,” I said. I started rolling and ratcheting papersthrough like I knew what I was doing.

“Looks like you got it son. Now get your stack rolled up and run yourroute. People are waitin’ for their papers. You know where you’re goin’,dontcha?”

“Yessir.”

WOOHOO!! I broke out into the early autumn air; I had me a doublecanvas satchel full of fresh tied NEWS strapped over the banana seat ofmy stingray bike and people were waiting for me to throw it! I pumpedthe bike up Babcock Hill for starters; flinging papers into ditches andbushes, I peeled left down Young Hill, breathing in the blue sky andpecan leaves and peddling harder as I went, waving at the news-hungrypeople in their yards, outrunning snapping dogs when I could, kickingthem when I couldn’t.

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Work, by God. Pure and Fun. I would have biked around town chunkingpapers for free if they had let me...or maybe in trade for some artsupplies. And then the employment part caught up with me.

“Upstairs says you ain’t been collectin’,” Mr. Donahue said.

Uh-oh. He was right. I hated the thought of spending Saturdays‘collecting’—stopping and knocking at every house on my route with mytwo-ring collection book with its little square tear-off perforated ‘PAID’tickets under account names—there was no fun in stopping. The joy waspeddling and flinging, knowing the people were happily getting theirnews and I was throwing it to them. Besides, Saturdays were more formorning cartoons and afternoon scrawlings or mischief.

I looked up from the bailer. “Yessir. How much do I owe?”

“Says here twenty-seven fifty.”

Twenty-Seven Fifty? I couldn’t fathom the amount. That must be a weekof Saturday’s worth of stopping.

“Yessir. I’ll collect this comin’ Saturday.”

I peddled out to my route. Why would I want to waste my Saturday? If Ihave to stop at every house, why don’t I do it right now? I’m going right by themanyway. Yeah. I stopped at my first delivery—a rickety old frame housewith a tattered yard full of dirt trails and old tires with yellow flowersplanted in them, all in the shade of a huge Gum tree. My ticket book said‘Beulah Williams’. I leaned my bike between the flower tires against thetree and grabbed up a paper out of my saddlebag. The boards of theporch creaked as I walked on them; a delicious smell of baking sweetscame from somewhere near. Small dogs started yipping from insidewhen I knocked on the screen door.

“Hesh, ya’ll! Come heah! Now who in the whole why worl could be...”Mrs. Williams appeared through the screen with a bug-eyed Chihuahua-mix dog under each arm. She peered at me over a pair of horn-rimmedglasses perched on the tip of her nose. She could have been my grandmaexcept she was black.

“Oh. Hello, honey.”

“Mizz Williams?”

“Yayes, hon. What brings you to mah doe? Oh. Gudness, chile, lookatchu.Bringin’ mah paper stray-ut to me.” The dogs under her arms wiggled


WORK

and growled at me, then started barking and snapping and thrashing ateach other over her big breasts like bug-eyed idiots.

“Yes, Ma’am,” I said over the noise of the dogs. “I come to bring yourpaper and collect.” I handed her paper toward the screen door andfumbled with the collection book. Mrs. Williams pulled the dogs apart.

“I done tole ya’ll to hesh! Now hesh!” She knocked their heads togetherthen turned and threw them to the floor behind her. Yep. Just likegrandma. The dogs scampered off somewhere, their toenails clicking onthe floor inside. Mrs. Williams straightened her dress and turned back tome.

“Fools. Now then, chile. Come own in heah and rest a spell.” She swungthe screen door open for me, the spring on it creaked like they all did; astrangely comforting sound. “I just baked some cookies this evenin’.”

“No thank you, Ma’am. I gotta collect and finish my route.”

“Oh, chile, I been wantin’ to meet you anyhow. You been doin’ a fine jobwid mah paper. Won’t hurt to eat a cookie whiles I gits out mah changepus, will it?”

Done. The smell of the cookies sealed it. I must have spent at leasttwenty minutes sitting at her kitchen table—the cookies were wonderful,the milk was chilled just right for a sweaty newspaper warrior—by thetime I got up to leave I had seen pictures of every one of Mrs. William’sgrandkids and knew their names and stories and where they lived. Mrs.Williams paid her bill, took her ‘paid’ tickets and slipped me a silverMercury dime for my time.

“You come back and visit ol’ Mizz Willums, ya heah?”

I peddled on, stopping at every house on the route, Mrs. William’s storypretty much repeating itself. It seemed to me the folks were a little bittoo crazily ecstatic to meet the new paperboy handing over theirafternoon news with a sheepish grin and a ticket book. But how would Iknow the difference? I had never collected before. By the time I got toYoung Hill my zippered “Malvern National Bank” bag was half-full ofchange and my belly was all the way full of brownies and cookies andmilk and Nehi sodas.

It was only when I saw Dad’s car parked at an intersection about halfwaythrough the route that I noticed the sun was way down in the sky behindthe fall trees; the false dark just before night and suppertime. Wow. I’m

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usually home by now. But what’s Dad doing here? I peddled on and saw thatMr. Donahue’s truck was parked in front of Dad’s car. Uh-oh. I nosed mybike in between the vehicles and looked at Dad. He glared at me throughhis windshield. Double uh-oh. Mr. Donahue got out of his truck.

You can imagine the conversation...

Mr. Donahue: “The phone at the office is ringin’ off the damn hook withpeople lookin’ for their papers...”

Dad: “I knew you couldn’t handle responsibility...”

Me: “But..”

Mr. Donahue: “...and I’ve told you three times to collect on Saturday.”

Dad: “...and now I’m gonna have to finish your job for you.”

Me: “But...”

Mr. Donahue: “Put your bike in the bed of my truck.”

So I got fired from my first real job for having too much fun. And here Iam now, decades later, in the place I knew in the back of my soul I hadbeen all along: flailing around in the big bucket with the other lostflotsam social security loser lotto ticket people. We’ve decided we’ll forman arm-linked ring around the edges and drown together to ‘Kumbaya’to make it better.

I still love work.... and hate employment.


WORK

134

Three Days Ago, WednesdayBY JOSHUA CITRAK

First day got a garbage can thrown at me. Can’t say all the training Iwent through sufficiently prepared me to be scared shitless. You get amandatory month’s worth of videos and demonstrations with dummiesas preparation for working on the facility floor. Never even saw theclients, but I’d heard they were some real bastards. The instructor, whois also the head supervisor, taught CPR, self-defense, authoritativeyelling and ‘coping techniques’- things Mr. Willis said were healthyways to deal with all the disturbing degrees of the job, which I’ve sincerealized means looking the other way when another orderly is giving aclient a beating. Let it go, it never was or will be. You can’t rat no matterhow sick it makes you, because you’d only be stringing up yourself. Likehow cops all stick together in those movies, lying for each other whenthere’s no video cameras to say otherwise. Even if you hate the otherstaffers, you ride with them because you’ve got a job to do that takesteamwork. There’re worse things in the world than kicking a retardpedophile in the ribs a few times.

I ducked. Never saw the video for that. Saved the State of New York acouple of bucks, I guess. I was like, I know this one! Whew! Because,really, once you step out onto that slate green facility floor, everything’sinstinct. You’re responsible for four mentally challenged, often violentdudes who are bored and frustrated and it’s your job to keep them fromkilling themselves or each other. If you can stop someone from a rape orthe daily, viscous humiliations, it’s a plus too. That’s where the yellingcomes in, policing a no fly zone of personal space.

It flew over my head and I cursed myself for being such a pansy. I knewalready. I was new and the clients were testing my toughness. It wasn’teven a real garbage can. It was rubber, ribbed and flimsy. I could’ve takenit in the head, but I was wondering why I had even taken the job. Unlessyou want to flip burgers, there’s nothing else around here. Pastgenerations, there was much more opportunity- HP, IBM, Ford. Now, I

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hear there’s a town in China named after us and the good fortunes ourfather’s old jobs have brought them.

Before I even got up off the floor, my co-workers, Terrell, Donnie andLou had tackled Fat Rick and thrown him face first to the ground. All Idid was ask him to put out his cigarette, it’s a law, you know. Welcome tothe New York State Department of Corrections Developmental Center.This isn’t a jail, but they can’t go nowhere. It ain’t a hospital either, so wedon’t have to worry about them getting better. This is like at arestaurant where they put the food to keep it warm if the waiter forgetsto pick it up.

I grabbed a leg and we stuffed Fat Rick into the cool down room, apadded cell clients can wear themselves out in underneath the controlroom, where the shift supervisor sits monitoring us, ready with tasersand metal batons should the shit really hit the fan. The control roomlooks down into the center of the square detention facility, the dayroom,where the tv, couch, and tables are. The ceilings are twenty feet high andthere are no windows. The place is lit with those sodium lamps peopleuse to grow indoor pot. Opening onto the dayroom are the client’srooms, tiny cubes sealed by heavy, outer locking steel doors, with cotsbolted to the ground, a sink the size of a water fountain and one piecemetal toilets we have to keep reminding them to use.

Lou shut the door and locked it. Pounded on it a couple of times.

“Don’t you know that smoking’s bad for you?” he shouted at thePlexiglas peephole.

Now that it was over, I was huffing and puffing, trying to calm down. Ireally wasn’t scared. I used to play football in highschool, I guess I’mkind of out of shape. Got so dizzy I nearly passed out. Terrell, Donnieand Lou were laughing.

“Forget what they told you in training, Cowboy,” that’s what thebrothers started calling me on account of my cowboy boots. I’m not acowboy. I’m from Poughkeepsie, like most of the staff. It’s just that myfather was a farrier. But you never tell someone something like thatunless you like being made fun of.

“Lesson one, teamwork. Can’t go at one of them retards by yourlonesome.”

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I got put permanent on the AM shift with Terrell, Donnie and Lou.They’ve each worked here for like ever. They took me under their wingsand looked out for me, because it’s pretty easy to get hurt keeping theseovergrown children in line. They told me things I would’ve learned thehard way.

“Never let them smell your hair,” they said.

“Or your underarms. It’s the perfume. They get all olfactory and shit.Any stimulus gets them riled up.”

“That’s why we feed them that starchy slop every meal,” Terrell said.“Low protein, less energy production. Lethargy, that’s what we’re goingfor.”

“But, once they do get all hot and bothered, the easiest way to take ‘emdown is to bend back a finger ‘til it almost breaks or knee them in thehamstring, right below their ass cheek,” Donnie said, referring to anIceberg Slim book on keeping a ho in check.

“That’s why we call ‘em clients,” he continued. “Because they owe us,they owe us and society says we have to collect on their debt.”

“That sounds harsh,” I said.

“Look,” Terrell told me. “You can’t reason with them. The only thing theclients understand is violence of a swift and decisive manner, each andevery time they act out.”

“But,” Lou said, wiping his glasses. “Even a dog learns to not shit on therug.”

I’ve seen everything now and I’ve only been here six months. Mostly, it’squiet. You feed them. Stick ‘em in front of the tv. Hang out. Like babysitting your nephew. Every morning at eleven you take them to the workroom where they stuff plastic grass into Easter baskets, or glue cottonballs onto foam Santa’s, depending on the season, and at four take themback to the ward.

I’ve gotten friendly with some of the clients, like Ted Kowalski, who I’veonly heard called ‘Bundy’, for the notorious Ted, obviously, and for the tvfamily of idiots. I feel sorry for all them. It’s a suck ass life. To beforgotten by the whole world, not allowed to see anyone, not even theirparents. I don’t mean like we’re pals or anything, but I do realize they arepeople. I don’t like who they were before they came here, but if they act



up and I get there first, I don’t get too rough and they don’t fight backtoo hard. Mostly, I think, they like me ‘cause of my skin color. We arestill talking about retards here.

Bundy was put away for molesting his sister and some other little kidson the school bus. They sent him to a mental facility where he managedto electrocute himself by pissing on an outlet. Now, he’s here becauseeven compassion can get completely exhausted. He’s a little guy, likefive-four, a buck ten with these dark, fearful eyes. Reminds me of a cagedanimal I would never want to pet.

He’s always yapping, talking smack with his Canadian lisp.

“You better wath me at all times, Cowboy. I’m dangerouth. I’m thifty likeThlim Thady,” he’ll say, just playing.

“I’m watching you,” I say. “What do you think I’m here for? If youweren’t so damned dangerous, I could go home.”

“Ok, Cowboy. I’ll be nithe. I’m justh foolin’.”

“You just be cool and stop your ass grabbing with the other clients.”

“Whath you think of me?”

Inevitably, one of my boys will jump in.

“Why don’t we just knock your front teeth out seeing how you can’t beusing them anyway?” Donnie says.

“Fuck you thpook. You know what I’ll do when I find your thithter. Iheard the’s real pretty.”

“Talk about your own sister. I should do you just for that.”

Bundy will make a face, try and flip us all off, but his fingers don’t alwayswork so well. Then, he’ll start doing a dance that looks like he has C.P.and lost his crutches.

“Thith cage can’t hold me! Hey! You all ith dumb thits. I hate all yourguths, orderlith thuck!”

But we can’t do nothing about that. We can’t just jump on a clientbecause they say something. Stress builds up though, you have to put itsomewhere. Some of the homo’s on the PM get together for yoga.Whatever. I’m not saying take it out on clients, but you get sick ofhearing damn foolish talk all the time. If not from Bundy, then from some

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other client, maybe it isn’t even directed at you or another staffer, butjust to hear it, like twenty, thirty, fifty times a day drives you nuts.

Mr. Willis says,

“A job is a job, be thankful you have one in this economy no matter howterrible the pay is. So, think first. Don’t lose it with violent behaviortoward a client because he’s doing what comes natural to him, actingretarded.”

But we know that if we want, we can get away with some stuff. In acontest of he-said’s, the supervisors are always going to believe staffersover the clients.

“Our motto is, the customer is always wrong,” Lou once told me.

Hell, I can keep my cool, I don’t need yoga. I’m never going to lose thisjob. I just meditate on the green. I mean, I don’t know what Mr. Willis isspending his money on, but this is the best paying job I’ve ever had andI’m thirty-three. Twenty-eight thousand dollars is a lot of money forPoughkeepsie. I could find a house with a broken porch and a leaky rooffor twice that. I’ve been thinking about doing that, too. My baby sisterand her husband got a nice two bedroom up in Binghamton. I’m a littlejealous. I should be them. I’ve been moving in and out with dad since I’vebeen through with the South.

After highschool, I was trained in carpentry and apprenticed as a masondown in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Knowing a trade seemed like a solidcareer move. Boy, was I wrong. You get hired on to build a shoppingmall, or some tract houses and laid off once the job is finished. And thewages? Take ‘em. And working in the South? That place is the biggestwaste of space. Every day, on the job I’d hear one good ol’ hick say toanother,

“Hey Bubba, you know the diff ’rence ‘tween a Yankee an’ a damnYankee?”

To which the other would say,

“A damn Yankee don’ jus’ know when ta go home.”

I took the hint. Moved back here. Unemployed. With Dad. I am aYankee, sure. And we’ll kick their butts again if they ever decide to stepout of line.



Terrell is my buddy. He’s one cool dude, the best to work with. Nevergets bent like the other staffers, never freaks out and goes off on a client.He lives in the same apartment building I do on State Street across fromMcDonald’s. Top floor, in a sparsely furnished one bedroom by himself. Iguess he has a kid somewhere, but it’s some big secret. I’ve never seenhim with it.

“That’s the way it is,” he says, whenever the subject comes up.

He has its picture on top of his tv set in a plastic frame. It’s just a baby,looks kinda white. I can’t tell whether it’s a boy or girl.

After his shift at the facility, Terrell works a second job to pay the kid’smomma. He’s a bouncer at a strip club. Terrell is so private, especiallyabout his kid, that I think he gets mad because I go there on occasion.What can I say? The Pink Poodle is close to my apartment and onTuesdays, my day off, they sell dollar Bud’s.

He made me swear not to tell anyone.

“I don’t want Donnie or Lou coming down here trying to get in gratis,you know what I mean, Cowboy?”

“Are you sure that’s it?” I asked him.

“What do you mean?”

I wasn’t sure, but I thought he knew. Everybody’s somebody’s dad.That’s just the way it is.

When they’re on stage, I wonder which girl it is that he knocked up. Ihope it isn’t Sparkles Jones. She’s drop dead and knowing that I’mstuffing milk money down her crotch just won’t do it for me.

I never ask him. Every man knows the cup size of his fate, that’s for sure.Some guys think they’re just too good to have to pay for it. Or there’reguys like Terrell, who wish they could return it without being chargedthe restocking fee.

“It’s messing with my money,” he’ll say to me when I step outside for asmoke. “Most days I gotta eat the State slop we feed the clients. How amI supposed to function on that?”

“Don’t worry,” I say, waving my dollar bills around. “I’m looking out foryou.”

“That’s all you better do is look,” he says.

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Of course, like maybe he should’ve taken his own advice.

“What you need is a savings plan,” I say. “Like me. First thing you need isa goal, a purpose for socking some away.”

“Oh, I got that,” he says, waving his hand at the nicotine stained sky. “I’mgoing to get out of here someday, Cowboy.”

“Where’s there to go?” I ask. “Why does everyone need to getsomewhere? Been there, done that. Now look at me, settled, better off.I’ve got money in my pocket, a little in the bank, soon I’ll have a fixer-upper. Hell. I’m happy right where I am.”

“Exactly what I’m saying. This place rots your mind. Look at you.Satisfied.”

“Right,” I say, pumping fists with him. “Exactly what you’re saying.”

Because I’m not looking for anything else. Especially out of work. I’m aprofessional babysitter. I go to that place, hell, everything is the samecolor, the walls, the floors, the people. How boring can you get? If I waslooking for some sort of accomplishment or satisfaction beyond apaycheck, I suppose I’d feel pretty cheated. But I know the rules. I playmy cards and count my chickens.

Three days ago, Wednesday, we were working a state mandated doubleshift. I like them, makes for a fat paycheck. It was a little after seven, wefed them already and were just killing time before we could put them tobed. Lou and I were sitting at the table playing crazy eights with a newclient, James, and Bundy. Lou was cheating like crazy, slipping cardsfrom his hand underneath his leg and claiming wild rules like a deuce ofspades, or whatever he happened to have in his hand, was a wild andallowed him to play any card he wanted.

“I’m not losing to no retard who can’t tell the difference, Cowboy,” hesaid when I confronted him about it, so I dropped it.

Most of the other clients were sitting on the couch, or on the floorwatching the baseball game on tv, being monitored by Terrell andDonnie.

I dealt another round and Lou began his usual tricks.

“Why ith he alwath winning, Cowboy?” Bundy asked. “Ith you cheating,Lou?”



Lou shot me a dirty look.

“He’s not doing anything,” I said. “Just play your stupid hand.”

“I’m not thupid.”

“Just play.”

Lou won the next three hands, celebrating like he had just won theWorld Series or something.

“Whoop! There it is!” he’d say, slapping down his last card, riding thebull around the table.

“There what is?” James asked. “A seven?”

Bundy turned red, threw his cards down.

“I can’t take any more of thith thit.” he said, stood, knocked his chair tothe floor and stomped away.

“Pick that damn chair up!” Lou yelled at Bundy.

Lou then turned to me and said, “I told you not to say anything.”

“I didn’t,” I replied. “You’re just such a terrible cheater that even a retardcan tell. I mean, god, you gotta let the other guys win sometimes.”

“Lose to a client? You gotta be kidding.”

“Not lose, just let them win.”

“You still have a lot to learn, Cowboy.”

Lou again yelled at Bundy to come and pick up his chair, but Bundy wasover by the tv now and pretended to not hear him.

I played fifty-two pick up with myself and put all the cards into a raisinbox we use, because someone ate the original one. Bundy, still mumblingfuriously, was standing in front of everyone blocking their view of thegame. Terrell reached his long arms over the couch, grabbed Bundy byhis collar and yanked him to the side.

“The man is talking to you,” he said, cool as a cucumber.

He pointed Bundy in Lou’s direction and gave him a gentle push.

Suddenly Bundy, like a basketball center grabbing a rebound in traffic,threw a vicious elbow right at Terrell’s nose. It connected on the followthrough, stunning him enough to let go of the collar. Bundy gave him ahard shove to the floor and ran for his room.

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Whenever some shit goes down, the other clients usually get out of theway and make as little trouble as possible. I guess while it’s happening isthe only time that they remember that we will do whatever’s necessaryto cool them off. But someone, the farthest staffer from the incident, hasto stay off the pile in order to keep an eye on the other clients. Thatperson was me.

Bundy got to his room, slammed his door and threw all his weightagainst it, but like I said, he was small and Terrell, Donnie and Lourammed through the door like nothing. But then the door closed, whichis never supposed to happen. You’re not supposed to be in the clientsroom with the door closed. I felt my face flush and got nauseous.Donnie’s shoulders and head were blocking the one small window in thedoor.

Policy says I can’t do anything but watch the others and wait for thesupervisor. So I didn’t and I did. The supervisor took fifteen minutes toget on the floor. By that time Terrell, Donnie and Lou were out ofBundy’s room.

“He fell,” they said.

“Hit his head on the bed.”

They could’ve said a purple ape came out of the ceiling and stomped thecrap out of Bundy and the supervisor would still believe them over theclient.

“Right, Cowboy?”

The supervisor looked at me, waiting for an answer.

There was an investigation. Terrell, Lou and Donnie got put onadministrative leave. Sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me. They don’thave to work, they still get paid. Wow. It’s been great for me too. I’mpulling more overtime. Oh yeah, look at me with all this extra money.Did a little mental math and figured I could be making as much asthirty-five thousand this year. I get all tingly just thinking about it.

After work, maybe tomorrow, I’ll go down to the bank and see about aloan for that fixer-upper. I know I’ve got some abused credit, but hey, I’lljust wave my pay stub in the loan officer’s face. I got the cash. It’ll beflowing for a long time. I can almost see myself moving into my owndilapidated piece of the American dream — it’s so beautiful.



As I’m dreaming about the sagging porch I’m going to redo with somereally nice stone work, I get called into Mr. Willis’ office. He has theincident report on his desk.

“Nobody’s accusing you of anything, William,” he says to me. “We can behonest here. Strictly off the record. I have to write what you sayhappened, but no one else has to know.”

All of the sudden, I see Bundy’s bloodied face. How he held his arms tohis ribs while crawling from out under his bed. He cried for his momma.Shit. He can’t ever see his momma again. He should know that by now.

I look out the window, it’s sunny, buggy. Cold beer weather. God, I feel sogood. This evening, maybe I might get into my truck, drive out to thePink Poodle, toss a little milk money Sparkle’s way.

“I know that they’re your friends,” Mr. Willis says, tapping his fingers onthe incident report. “All I want to know is what happened.”

I think back through it all to the first day. I’m calm now, no passing out.Teamwork makes this look easy. Friends? That’s beside the point. This isthe best job I’ve ever had. You can’t rat. No matter how sick it makes you.There’re worse things in the world than kicking a retard pedophile inthe ribs a few times.

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BlemishedBY SERGEANT ZENO

If Pershing’s tank was a black horse then Freeh’s computerwas a Commodore 64 — and that statement is raising the barfor the bureau. They had seen only one significant upgrade intheir technology in three decades. The Army’s tanks hadupgraded every ten years and sported new modular high-techequipment bolted into place biannually. The name of today’sbattlefield is Space Invaders versus the Black Horse.

A silver Toyota Aurion screeched to a halt at a curb in PentagonRow. A hydraulic passenger door hissed open, releasing the heavy technopulse sound of “Mao Tse Tung Said” by A3. The car glimmered withfresh dew in the autumn sunrise.

Patrick Cofield sat at the wheel of the car. He was spinningknobs, punching buttons, and flipping switches on his five-grand stereo.A bobble-headed burrow owl was affixed to the dashboard next to theTrajax field shifter. I flicked its head as I dropped into the passenger seatand began to open the morning newspaper.

“Intel wires are abuzz with gossip, internal feuds, and humint,”my partner told me as I closed the door and we accelerated down thestreet. “The Pentagon is bristling with big guns – all pointing outward.Inside, the DIA has turned Benedict Arnold on the SecDef and joinedforces with Army troops to overtake the CIA. Their offices and corridorsare filled with barricades and deadly laser booby traps. It’s almost likethe Big One, boss. All the intel folks have joined Kaiser Wilhelm – theiroperatives are slinging mustard gas in the trenches. The Army is theAlliance and wondering what they are going to do to win favor of thislaughable President of ours.”

“I always knew it would be bad news if the Green Party ever wona Presidential Election.”

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An explosion rocked the ground, and chunks of turf explodedinto the air in front of the Jefferson Building. A blue mailbox sailed overthe hood of the car as Patrick swerved skillfully to avoid collision. The>BOOM< from the explosion shattered the driver’s side view mirrorand sent Patrick into a paroxysm of shock at the damage to his preciousvehicle.

I saw men in blue jeans filming a rugged heterosexual fashioncommercial in front of Bed Bath & Beyond. In the madness of thesituation, I noticed that the ruggedly fierce-looking man in the red fleecejacket was building a model wooden ship in a bottle when a piece of bluemetal ricocheted off the pavement and shattered his work of art. A sliverof glass pierced his thumb, and he seemed perplexed.

“How about we make like a horse turd and hit the trail?” Patrickoffered.

I nodded.

The sure-grip tires didn’t leave a single bit of black tread on thepavement as uncounted horses under the hood robbed us of the rest ofthe bleeding shipbuilder’s story.

“Pardon me, Agent Cofield, but I don’t think this car wouldnormally have this sort of horsepower.”

The burrow owl bobbled its head at me.

“You like that?” Patrick said with a smirk. “I removed the ToyotaV6 engine – as wonderful as it was – and had Finger replace it with ascaled down version of the power plant you would find in an M1Abrams.”

I pretended to ignore him. His ego was big enough as it was.The newspaper blared a headline of ELECTIONS US WORLD FEARPANIC, so I flipped the pages until I was in the Food section. An articleat the bottom left corner of the page caught my attention: “Quick andEasy Three-Ingredient Recipes for the Family” by Una Persson.

My heart skipped a beat. I dropped the newspaper. The CIA wasup to some very unusual shenanigans. In anticipation of the day’s comingadrenalin rush, I fingered the trigger well of my Glock 49C.

“What smells like old cheese here?”

The Aurion sailed around the corner onto Army-Navy Drive.Above, I could see snipers moving on rooftops and rappellers dropping

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through windows into apartments. I could only imagine what washappening at the Pentagon only a few hundred meters away. I checkedmy Corona imager.

Horses and tanks formed a defensive circle around the Pentagon.Tourists approaching the building were arrested and held by the U.S.Armed Forces. CNN had no coverage, but Fox News was broadcastingfreely. RTA Communications had an exclusive with the battalioncommander of 577th Armor. The 513th MI battalion was found outthrough an OPSEC violation. Black horses and beige tanks encircled theheadquarters of the Department of Defense. Inside the walls was abloody stalemate that whispered silent echoes of treason through thecorridors of the concrete fortress.

In my fist I held a classified order from General Anderson:Bring back the file on operative Bloody Dragon so we could extract himfrom deep cover in the Ogaden. His knowledge of operations in Brusselsmakes his presence critical to a new program called Operation Viessence.

“Hey, Patrick. Do you know where I can find Prosa?”

* * *

I crept under the I-395 overpass. The scene before me wassurreal. Israeli-made cyborg pigeons flew overhead. Row upon row ofstomping stallions filled the gaps between the huge armored tanksdefending the five-sided puzzle palace. Chobham was not a familiarword, but each four-legged creature on the reservation knew the smell ofthe syndie ceramic tank armor.

Already on the hills above the Pentagon I could see guns movingon the hills in an offensive maneuver against the defenders. Everyprojectile aimed towards the Pentagon could kill a tank, but never kill allthe horses. And every spy creeping through the perimeter could get pasta tank, but not past the horses.

All I needed to do was get past the horses and contact theBloody Dragon. Beige tanks and black horses stared at me. Blackhelicopters would soon be flying overhead. I walked up to the ColumbiaPike knoll and overlooked the scene of martial law before me. My optionswere few, but I knew I could penetrate this mess somehow and make it tomy objective in the Pentagon somehow.

A clever distraction was in order.


BLEMISHED

* * *

Back in Patrick’s Toyota, he was on a new machine of his owndesign. It had dual black-banded quantum processors with diamondoptics on a carbon motherboard with convenient zilicane hinges. It wassleek. It was small. And there wasn’t even the audible whir of a fan.

“What’s the news, partner?” I asked.

Patrick mumbled through a few things: “Robin thanked Mel forhis DUI. E. coli is back in Safeway. North Korea wants to test anothernuke, but might settle for fresh fruit instead. General Anderson has avideo copy of Kim Jong Il taking a shower and may use it for blackmaillater. Anna was assassinated because of Chechnya. A study analyzed theCEOs of large companies who were spanked as kids but found noconclusive evidence other than that anyone will read something withspanking in the headline.”

I yawned. Patrick changed his tone as he found something ofinterest.

“It seems there are three high-paid rogue agents in charge ofsome of this military activity going on at the Pentagon reservation.Ballenger, Barth, and Hoeffer are three assassins of differingbackgrounds, and they base their operations out of a company calledChase Oil in a small South Carolina town. Barth the Boogeyman isrunning internal security and controls the DIA wienies in the buildingwhile Ballenger is commanding the tanks. Hoeffer, who was a championof the chess defense called Drewrys Bluff, is leading the cavalry.”

“Meanwhile the Director of the CIA is using his connectionswith Congressman Eric Cantor to call up a few brigades of VANGinfantry and artillery. They are moving to hold the large hill overlookingthe Pentagon. It looks as if there is also a flotilla of PT boats with aformer dam security unit waiting for action on the Potomac.”

“This is going to be more fun than making old ladies fill theirdiapers in the park,” I said. “It’s time to put some of your complicatedcommunication gear into use and find out how the VANG are talking totheir bosses. See if you can break their encryption. I’m going to thegrocery store.”

I took a moment to walk into the Harris Teeter to purchase aHalloween card for my mother while Patrick whittled down the airwaves

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sifting through the traffic. After I returned and began addressing theenvelope, Patrick was still shaking his head.

“Perhaps they have something more sophisticated than all yourgadgets,” I suggested.

He glared at me. That was an insult he could have gone withouthearing, but it motivated him to change some of the settings on hiscomputer.

I opened the card and jotted a quick note to Mom: “Hope theboogeyman doesn’t pay you a visit this Halloween!” I sealed the cardwithout bothering to sign my name.

“You have a postage stamp, Patrick?”

“I got it.”

“Good. I just need a thirty-nine center. That’s how much it isthese days, right?”

“I think it’s 49 exahertz.”

“That cannot be correct, Patrick.”

Cryptostatic came out of the speakers with a slight wobble.Patrick jabbed at his keyboard a few times and watched meter levelsjump up and down. His machine was successfully decrypting thetransmission.

“You know,” I said, “Some day the NSA will figure out whoborrowed the only copy of Crack-Knockers and will want it back.”

The cryptofuzz soon faded into a familiar modem squeal.

“They’re chatting via high-speed cellphones using Dollface tosend simple text messages. Simple keywords would keep it discreet.”

The bright blue HUD suddenly powered up on the passengerside of the windscreen.

Indy: We have the orange bonbons in the can.Art411: I see your can. Our licorice is full of vanilla andstrawberry.Indy: No one can have our bonbons.ƒ3$©a: Powerball is here. All fireworks half price.


BLEMISHED

“Those are the bastards, all right,” I said. “This is an easy code. Iremember it from my days in the Fulda Gap. Log me in as Russell Stoverand give me that keyboard.”

RussellStover: The candy order has changed. There will be nogirlscout cookies.Indy: Greetings sodajerk. I am the candyman.Art411: Licorice is packaged and for sale.ƒ3$©a: I am a snazzy starbelly sneech!RussellStover: The new order is as follows:RussellStover: Distribute vanilla licorice to the first twentyinfants then mix in some strawberry. After they are full oflicorice, give them all the bonbons. As the bonbons are depleted,give ‘em some real juicy candy. You have your orders, candymen.Indy: Roger out afk!Art411: brbƒ3$©a: I like corn on the cob!I logged off and took a breath as I thought about the serious

madness that was about to start. Following my instructions, Patrickdrove me to a storage unit on Old Jefferson Davis Highway. “Meet me atLady Bird Park in one hour, Patrick.”

He gave me a funny look. Echoes of battle began bouncing offthe buildings on Pentagon Row.

“Rendezvous in one hour after I contact Prosa,” I shouted overthe sounds of tank and artillery fire erupting from a nearby hill. I used aZamboni proximity card to access storage unit number 532 and slippedinto a long-unused tunnel.

In the dim light of a small LED torch, I discovered that portionsof the old tunnel had lost some structural integrity over the years. Thegoing was a little rough in the narrow route. Piles of plaster and brickscovered unknown hazards, and cobwebs disguised the lairs of theirinhabitants in the darkness.

Booming artillery strikes shook the walls, and more pieces of theceiling fell. Perhaps my plan was a bit bold as well as flawed. Who knew?

The tunnel revealed side passages and alcoves full of desks andfiling cabinets and old telephones. Stacks of files in the old workspacesprobably reflected a hundred years of failed coups and assassinationsworldwide. Oswald had been but a rube.

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A thundering blast left me momentarily disconcerted, and Icrouched under a desk to wait for more ceiling to collapse. A brown filefolder sat under my knees. I read the operational name on the lip: RASS,S. (STARSHINE). It had a familiar ring to it – something about U.S.secret police. I knew I had heard of it before, and my curiosity grewsticky like okra. Another blast caused a large hunk of plaster to hit me inthe back of the head.

More parts of the tunnel were collapsing. I dodged down fiftymore meters of darkened corridor, and pushed through a revolving bit ofwall into the mezzanine level of the Pentagon. I glanced at my watch.The VANG infantry should have already launched a fruitless attack onthe armor and cavalry. The tanks would make short work of them. Istepped down the hallway under the River Terrace where helicopterswere landing just above. I had reached my objective: the darker bowelsof the Pentagon.

A body stepped out into the B-ring ahead of me.

“So! You think you have reached your objective, do you?”

He stepped closer to me and into the light. It was Barth, and hissudden appearance couldn’t have startled me more if the real boogeymanhad showed up. My mind automatically went through an inventory of mypersonal tools and weapons. My eyes scanned the area for hidden threats,advantageous positions, and avenues of escape.

“Your diversion upstairs seems to be creating a bit of chaos onthe Pentagon Reservation,” he spoke dryly. His voice was a bit morecracked than I remembered from the Túpac Amaru Brief in ‘90 when hewas supposed to take out a guy named Campos in a bombing situationand later failed. Perhaps he had taken up smoking again. Maybe his mindhad merely cracked.

“You probably think you are clever, and the Virginia NationalGuard may be incompetent, but no one ever says real juicy candy online,Solo. Right now the regular Army tanks are crushing the infantry. Ha!”

I got a better look at the Boogeyman, whose mother had namedhim Bartholomew Winston Hawkins on February 22, 1943. He appearedto be taller than the 5’10” on official record. It was either the shadows, orit was the fact that I was crouching a bit and ready to spring into the bestposition available for my survival. Barth’s attire was black and military.He had a sidearm and pouch that either carried ammunition or a


BLEMISHED

personal hygiene kit. The latter would have been a great advantage withhis deplorable social skills.

A tiny blue light flashed intermittently in his ear. Someone wascommunicating with him via wireless. I did a re-sweep of the area withmy eyes. I had a sudden desire to grab some Hennessy and sit down witha 007 film.

Barth continued speaking, “You will, of course, die now.”

He smoothly pulled the automatic pistol from its sheath. It washis favorite weapon, a Terra Automatic .45 Misou with a ten-round clip.This was a fantastic weapon made for up-close and personal killing.Standard ammunition resembled the Black Talon. Barth was known togo a step further by using a massive 350-grain bullet, adding a drop ofnitroglycerin, and topping it with a dollop of wax.

It made good common sense not to be hit by one of theseexplosive projectiles.

The first bullet crashed in to the wall in front of where I hadbeen standing only a second before. It failed to shatter my breastbonebecause I had already darted into the back door of an office where an SEShad once worked.

The former occupant of the office was still here, face down at hisdesk, bleeding onto a sheaf of important looking documents. The nameon the plate said DR. SILKBROTH BALDI. A gleaming SES cup glowedin the dim light. Snotty bastard.

“Get back here!” Barth shouted from the hallway.

I walked through the side door of Dr. Baldi’s office into hisconfidential assistant’s screening area. She wasn’t at her desk, but herpurse was still there. I grabbed the purse and replaced it with a titaniumpineapple. The timer set to 10 seconds, I walked through another exitinto the C-Ring.

I stood precisely where I expected to be standing after walkingout of Room MC991. It was the very spot where I had once askedSecurity fifteen years ago to add my name to the swipe access for therestroom. However, at this spot I now found that I had walked out into asquad of civilian personnel setting up some sort of defensive perimeter atthe backdoor of the DeLorenzo Medical Clinic.

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“George,” one of the defenders called me, “Grab another steeldoor off… hey, you aren’t George.”

As the defenders paused in confusion, the pineapple behind meexploded with an awesome >THUMP< followed by residual crashing. Itsort of took my breath away as it detonated, giving me a small rush ofadrenalin and a smirk.

Part of the C-Ring wall behind the defenders had buckled outthen slowly collapsed into the hallway. I saw that some of Barth’s innardswere stuck to the gypsum board.

“Looks like you have a new avenue of escape,” I told the malenurses.

The defender looked perplexed and then understood, “Golly…thanks!”

Their team prepared to un-ass themselves from their precariousundefendable position, and I walked the wrong way through theirdefenses towards the enemy, whoever that might have been. I knew thatthey couldn’t be too close, as any DIA/CIA infiltrator worth his saltcould have dispatched a motley band of male nurses with a weapon asmighty as the spork.

Catalina Ramirez, who had been an illegal nanny serving anintel op head before resorting to the freelance black ops business, wassituated at a corner with her back to me, an SMG in her hand and aheadset over her eyes. Last I had seen her was in Kosovo, running gunsfor the Clinton Administration, crusading with a band of non-Muslimand anti-Milosevic peacekeeping vigilantes. She had always been a RobinHood and always would be.

Catalina squeezed off a couple 3-round bursts, and in thedistance down the dark hall two human forms fell. The scent of freshlyburnt gunpowder wafted over to me, and I inhaled with a smile. Thefeminine gunner turned to me and lifted her goggles. She barely gave methe once over before replacing a magazine.

“It’s a good way to get yourself shot, Solo, sneaking up on anoperative like that.”

“I like to take my chances,” I replied. “You know, a couple flashgrenades would render those goggles useless, and then a WP3 wouldrender your body useless in these tight hallways.”


BLEMISHED

“Yeah, but Dilbert back there don’t know that, él no sabe?” Shejerked her thumb back over her shoulder at the dead guys. A lock of herblack hair fell down over one eye. With the black fatigues and combatgear in this place and time, she was fantastically irresistible.

“You are something else, Catalina,” I winked at her. “I wish Icould stay for small talk, but have got to run.”

She gave me a knowing smile. “Stop by for drinks some time,won’t you?”

“Said the spider to the fly,” was my reply and I was gone.

I briefly inspected the two Dilberts that lay dead on the ground.They were definitely DIA, and they were recently fighting alongside theCIA. Their allegiance was of no concern to me, but their hostile presencein my path was a problem. I grabbed a flashing earpiece from theskinnier dead guy. The receivers I knew to be molded specifically to eachindividual’s ear, so the fat guy with the cavernous ears probably had ahugely uncomfortable piece.

The second I inserted the earpiece, I heard panicked traffic.Agents everywhere in the Pentagon were not only experiencing serioustrouble with Barth’s troops, but were also unable to trust each other andhad begun a dramatic domestic squabble over the airwaves. There wasnone senior enough to command them all, and spies trust no one.

I headed around the corner and down a flight of stairs beforeCatalina’s curious eyes decided I was a more interesting target than anaccidental ally. The large fire door at the bottom of the stairwell hadbeen propped as a sort of barricade to anything coming out of thebasement. It looked like Swiss cheese.

“Move your forces out under the River Terrace!” commanded avoice over the earpiece. Now that I was situated near BC910, I could geta read on Prosa’s new address. The Pentagon Renovation team hadconveniently moved 23,000 personnel to new locations and had been inthe process of moving them all back. No one knew where anyone sat anymore. The door to BC910 was jammed. I smashed through it with aheavy coffee table. The place was deserted.

“Roger! Wilco!”

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That wasn’t exactly what I wanted to hear, as the River was mybest avenue of escape from the building. I would have to make someslight adjustments after I was finished here.

I noticed that I still had the secretary’s purse slung femininelyover my shoulder. No wonder Catalina barely noticed me – just anothercross dresser. She never liked that type.

I pulled a CAC card from the wallet inside and popped it into aterminal in the workspace – Marianne Blemish apparently. Access wasnow mine. I quickly tracked down Prosa’s division using the GAL. Hername and position were hidden, but I found the room numbers of herflunkies as well as email addresses and phone numbers. What theheck…I would try giving them a call.

>Ring Ring<

“BPRD, this is Roland speaking. May I help you?”

“Hey, are you guys still located in 3E654?” I asked.

“Naw, we moved two months ago. We’re in SBD783,” Rolandexplained, “Oh yeah, we’ve got a drop box in ESD if you want to senddistro. Mike always makes regular runs up there even though there is alot of shootin’ now.”

“Thanks for the info, Roland. See ya soon!”

“Hey,” he said, “Make sure you stand in front of the camera whenyou ring the buzzer, or we won’t let you in. The boss is kinda perticularabout that.”

“Thanks, Roland.” I hung up and dialed Patrick.

He answered immediately, “What’s up, boss?”

“I need a pickup at the old Water Works building on the Mall.”

“Roger out.”

I beat feet down another set of stairs.

* * *

Today’s Pentagon was rather unpredictable with barricades,spraying sprinklers, and the occasional echo of gunfire. The sub-basement was another story. Wildly tilting flooring in the C-Ringpresented a bizarre vision. A broken water main somewhere was sendinga small river down into the security offices where dangling, sparking


BLEMISHED

powered wires were setting flammable trappings aflame. As the firesspread, the flood extinguished them briefly, only to restart momentslater. It was a self-licking ice cream cone.

I took a jaunt around the corner and into the middle of a streamof rats stampeding towards an exit. The electricity and fire, they did noappreciate. They didn’t seem to mind the flood so much.

“D-Troop is under the terrace, taking fire from unknowns!”Again a report over my new earpiece. “Take up defensive position. Set upperimeter. Send for B-Team support!”

A flash of light – a reflection at the end of the hall – caught myeye, and I froze. The rats kept running.

It was an angled mirror. I heard a click. I crouched. Somethingpinged. A hard metal grapefruit bounded down the dark hall towardsme. I sprinted in the opposite direction as fast as I could and back intothe stairwell.

The explosion of the grenade was deafening. Whoever had slungit had certainly never fought indoors before. They probably had sufferedtemporary hearing loss from their folly.

I ran right back towards the enemy from whom I had justretreated. He was a Dilbert, and he was shaking his head trying to clearhis ears. I put a fist on the tip of his nose rather roughly, and out went thelights. I yanked the earpiece from his ear, smashed it, and proceededdown the corridor.

The ceiling down here was shorter than eight feet, with hallsnarrower than the rest of the building. This gave the air a feel as if eitherwe were going to be crushed in an underground trash compactor, or anarmy of Willy Wonka’s little green-haired orange-skinned soldierswould suddenly leap into the corridors with assault rifles, ammo belts,and grenades.

A gaping hole in the floor greeted me as I trotted around thenext corner. I skidded to a stop. Perhaps the bowels of Hell were openinghere. I wanted to gaze down into the darkness, but a geyser of waterexploded from below. A decapitated fire hydrant wouldn’t have sprayedsuch a forceful and constant water pressure into the ceiling. I decided inmy mind that this was an obstacle I should avoid. In the Pentagon, therewere always at least two detours for every dead end.

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The radio squawked again: “B-Team has joined D-Troop underthe River Terrace. Barth is AWOL. Request operational support fromColonel Ballenger.”

After detouring several hundred yards, I finally found myselfstanding in front of SBD783, the headquarters for BPRD where Rolandanswered the phones and hopefully Prosa also sat in her office withseventy kilos of Neto in a generic sack next to her desk.

I held the common access card of Marianne Blemish in my handand held it up to the small camera mounted in the doorframe. The ringerlet out a cheery “Ding Dong” when I pressed the button. A voice camefrom the speaker, “Uh…Ms. Blemish?”

I replaced the photo ID with my own Cheshire grin, “Agent Solohere requesting access to BPRD so I can get some information fromProsa.”

There was silence for a moment. I glared at the camera. It movedup and down by remote control, slowly surveying my body. Roland wasbehind the thick SCIF door was trying to figure out who I was andwhether or not he should tell his boss that I was here.

“I recommend you get Prosa,” I told him.

Now silence and no motion from the camera.

I waited until I knew someone would be behind the controlsagain. “General Anderson sent me. Barth had the Dilberts kill Dr. Balch,but I killed the Boogeyman, and I have tapped into the DIA wirelesscomms.”

That did the trick. With a buzz and a click, the door strikereleased. Behind the heavy reinforced door was a small reception andAiphone where Roland stood behind a desk staring at me. I entered andlet the door slam shut behind me. Another heavy door behind Rolandwas open, and there stood Prosa with a surprise at her side: MarianneBlemish.

“Is this your new hairstylist, Prosa?” I asked, indicating Ms.Blemish. I looked down at the CAC in my hand and said, “Oh wait, thislooks like it might be Marianne Blemish.” I tossed the purse to Dr.Balch’s assistant. She clumsily caught it.

“You have some explaining to do,” Prosa glared back at me.“Who are you and what are you doing here?”


BLEMISHED

“Indeed, I stepped right past introductions. I already told yourassistant Roland who I am, and I am sure that he has told you.” Myelbow rested on Glock where it rested in its holster on my hip. “Perhapswe should step into your office.”

She took several seconds to decide, but her mind was alreadymade up. The sound of gunfire in the corridor behind me helped hurryher to invite me into the SCIF. Security logs hung on the back of thedoor. No one had updated anything in two days. The place smelled ofburnt coffee and a nervous hideout. Considering the building had beeninvaded by several hundred mercenaries with assassins in charge ofthem, I could understand the nervous paranoid attitude of BPRD.

We stepped into Prosa’s office. Ms. Blemish entered behind me. Istopped and glanced from Prosa to the dead doctor’s assistant and backto Prosa.

“She stays, or we don’t talk,” Prosa stood firm.

“You’re not in much of a position to bargain with me, Prosa, butI will allow her to stay simply because it will make this quicker andeasier.” My response was met with a hateful glare.

I decided that I wanted my coffee black, and stepped over to theservice. I made small talk: “You know, someone wise once told me thatthe monkeys at the Pentagon are gonna cook our goose.” Helping myselfto a cup of dark liquid that could never be confused with Starbuck’s, Iquickly surveyed the room. Near the coffee service were five shelves builtinto the wall on which a hundred dark books gathered dust. I looked atone of the spines: Memoirs Found in a Bathtub by Stanislaw Lem. A recentphotograph hung on the wall showing a frame in time when Prosa stoodin front of the Ronald Reagan Building, hugging President Ford. AnOPSEC poster was tacked onto the wall next to the photograph.

Prosa continued to glare at me from where she stood behind herdesk. I wandered my eyes about the room.

A small conference table took up the rest of the room oppositewhere I stood next to the coffee. Codeword documents were scatteredacross the varnished wood with some held firmly down by a notebookcomputer. A hand computer was plugged into the notebook.

I sighed and took a seat in a small wooden chair in front ofProsa’s desk and said, “I need the operations file on Mister Ducks.”

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SERGEANT ZENO

Prosa set her jaw immediately to tell me no. Ms. Blemish blinkedtwice and a third time. My demand was sobering. It was not exactly myjob to know who Mister Ducks was, nor did I care much. My currentboss, however, had a great need to know about him. I wanted to get fileinto his hands so I wouldn’t miss the free breakfast bar at theDoubleTree Hotel.

“I can’t give you that file.”

“This is when I light up a cigarette,” I told her, and I lit up CamelLight that I produced from my combat gear.

I then drummed my fingers on the arm of the chair as if I werethinking of what I was going to tell this senior analyst. Honestly, I knewexactly what I was going to tell her. I indeed I already knew that shewould hand carry the file out of the building for me.

“I have some options here, Prosa. The first is to kill you and takethe file for myself.” I pulled the Glock from my holster, but did not pointthe weapon at her. Her reaction was reserved. I continued.

“My second option is to leave and wait out the Dilberts. Theywill eventually overrun everyone in the building – dead or alive. Whenthey are done, all the files will be mine.

“Or three. You give me the file, and I get your people out of herebefore Colonel Ballenger sweeps through here with the cavalry and someflame throwers.”

The black coffee was hot and bitter as I sipped it. It tasted worsethan it smelled. I peered into the cup to see if an asteroid belt of groundswere floating around. The coffee was just too murky. Low visibility. Theclock on the wall clicked loudly.

I glanced up finally. Ms. Blemish had her nose in her purselooking for a compact or something. Prosa was staring at the top of herdesk running her finger back and forth between a pen and a paperweight.It wasn’t obvious if she was thinking about the situation or merely whatshe was going to tell me. I honestly already knew exactly what she wasgoing to tell me.

“Agent Solo,” she grinned as the words came out – or was it agrimace – with a secret bit of affection. Despite the analysts’ low opinionof operational agents, there is sometimes a bit of awe. “I admit that yourarrival today is a bit of a boon to us. Roland and I are most thankful that


BLEMISHED

you arrived. Ms. Blemish is also obviously pleased that you returnedwith her purse.”

Ms. Blemish then emerged from her purse with the compact shehad been seeking.

“Two things, Agent Solo, or whatever your name is: Michael,Robert, Spiro. I have the file, and I need to escape this place. I realize thatthe file is merely a package to you. So I will help you under the conditionthat I carry the file with you to its destination.”

I nodded and replied: “I knew you would see it my way.”

We stood and joined Roland in the reception area.

* * *

Roland opened the heavy door into the hallway and stepped out.Gunfire erupted from two directions in the Pentagon hallway, and asingle round pierced his temple. His body dropped immediately to thefloor. Prosa stared in shock.

I leapt through the door to an alcove opposite Prosa’s office, butthe corridor was now silent. Kneeling, I peered around the lip of thealcove and looked in both directions. We were sitting at a veryinconvenient place of crossfire between two armed groups. I heard afamiliar voice over my earpiece: “Are you in there, Solo?”

I could almost hear Ramirez grinning on the other end.

“Yes, Ma’am. Do you have an out for me?”

“Sure do. Take cover.”

I warned Prosa and Ms. Blemish, and buried myself in thealcove.

Two wall-shuddering bombs thudded through the hallway asthey exploded.

“Let’s go!”

We headed down the corridors towards the Air ForceOperations Center and the purple water fountain outside it.

“Time for magic,” I declared, adjusting a nozzle as I pushed asidethe fountain into the concealed entrance that led into the PotomacTunnel.

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SERGEANT ZENO

Twenty minutes later we emerged in the sunlight at the cornerof 17th and Constitution in Washington, D.C. I thumbed the button mybelt radio to let Patrick know my location. Too bad I wasn’t ready for thenext surprise when the shadow of the obelisk darted away from us andthe sun was in my eyes.

Ms. Blemish drew a small pistol from here purse and placed thebarrel upon Prosa’s temple.

“This really messes up my plan to stop by Taco Bell later,” Istated.

Ms. Blemish spoke three words: “The file please.”

That was a slap in the face of Prosa. Trading files for bulletswasn’t in her nature. It was also damned impolite. I felt that someoneshould look at the job description of Ms. Blemish.

Prosa looked at me with anxiety and for help. I shrugged andlooked away at the Washington Monument in the distance. The stonepillar on the hill was simple yet elegant.

“Sure is a nice day,” I said.

“I must ask you to be quiet,” Ms. Blemish said to me.

Ms. Blemish stared down Prosa, who did not surrender the filein her hand. Two birds chirped from a nearby tree, and I reached myhand to my nose to scratch it. Patiently, I waited.

As Prosa resigned her file to its fate, a screech of tires caught herattention.

A silver Toyota Aurion came to a halt at a curb nearby with itswindow rolled down. Ms. Blemish didn’t even blink as a single shot fromPatrick’s .177 pierced her temple. She dropped to the ground lifeless.

“Let’s go,” I said to Prosa, “We have a delivery to make toGeneral Anderson.”

I grabbed her arm and we piled into the car.

“One more stop,” I said. “We need Taco Bell.”

#Solo


BLEMISHED

162

Thank You for Calling ZapCommBY JULIE WISKIRCHEN

To escape helping Mom get ready for the garage sale, I accept aone-day assignment covering phones at a company called ZapComm. Ifeel lucky to be offered another assignment just two days after being letgo from Johnny Red Stripe. I must have entered Bunni’s preferred pool oftemps.

I arrive at ZapComm ten minutes early and sit in the car, keepingthe radio on so I can hear the end of “Doll Parts” by Hole. I stare at thegiant office building/plant and the Star Trek-esque ZapComm logo,wondering what the people look like behind the black glass, wondering ifthey are watching me. I guess I better go find out.

Inside, I stand in front of the imposing marble reception desk asthe receptionist fields call after call. She looks up at me once and raises afinger to indicate that it’ll be a minute. I watch her pushing buttons andtransferring calls without hesitation.

“Can I help you?” the receptionist says, finally looking up fromthe switchboard. She looks to be in her mid-sixties and has a cigarette-damaged voice that makes her sound like Froggy from The Little Rascals.

“I’m Astrid Lutz. I’m from Kelly. I’m supposed to be answeringphones today.”

“Oh, hi Astrid. I’m Alma. Come on back around here and have aseat next to me. Thank you for calling ZapComm. How may I direct yourcall?” Once again, Bunni lied to me. This is a switchboard job and I’m aswitchboard virgin. Alma wears one of those headsets like Judy the TimeLife operator wore on the commercials. I actually find myself gettingexcited about the prospect of wearing the headset, then I pause to reflecton how pathetic my life must have become, if a headset is a thrill.

I find a chair and roll over next to Alma. Calls keep coming inand she puts them on hold. At one point, she has four lines blinking atonce. I can see that Bunni misrepresented the volume of calls, in addition

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THANK YOU FOR CALLING ZAPCOMM

to not telling me it was a switchboard job. Bunni said there were a coupleof incoming lines, but there are at least four that I can see. Red lightsblink all over the board.

“We’ve got five incoming lines,” Alma says, and she points themout to me, “You’ve worked a switchboard before, right?”

“No.”

“No? The agency told us they were sending someone withexperience,” Alma says, narrowing her eyes at me.

“Well, they told me it was just a couple of lines, no big deal, so Iguess they lied to both of us.”

“Lying is a strong word. I prefer to think of it asmiscommunication. Well, there’s nothing to do about it now anyway. Youlook like an intelligent girl. I’m sure you can handle it. We’ve got abouttwenty minutes before I have to leave for the meeting, so why don’t youwatch me for a bit and just ask questions as they arise.”

“Thank you for calling ZapComm, how may I direct your call?Alma says over and over, never changing inflection or altering thestatement.” Sometimes she says “thank you” before transferring the call,sometimes not. Sometimes two calls come in at once and she says,“Thank you for calling ZapComm, please hold” to one and answers theother. She flips through a laminated directory to find the numbers thatshe doesn’t know by heart.

“You ready to try?” she asks.

“Umm, can I watch you a little longer.” It looks easy enoughwhen she does it.

“Thank you for calling ZapComm, how may I direct your call?Thank you. Well, I have to leave pretty soon, so you better try it in aminute. The only way to get it is to do it. Don’t be nervous.” I’m notnervous. Geez. People think their jobs are so complicated and thatthey’re the only ones who can handle them. Several groups of suits walkby and out the door, heading to the meeting.

“Alma, you need a ride?” one woman asks. She looks even olderthan Alma. Don’t they let people retire here?

“No, Pat, I’m going to drive myself. I’ve got to train the tempbefore I can go.”

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Pat nods and goes out the door, without so much as a look in mydirection. I’ve grown used to being invisible. Invisible until I fuck up,that is. Alma hands me a copy of the directory and gives me two minutesto familiarize myself with it.

“Okay. You take the next few calls. I’ll sit here with you,” Almasays, handing me her headset. A long droning beep signifies an incomingcall and I push the button.

“ZapComm. How may I direct you call?”

“Bob Reynolds please.”

“2545,” Alma says, not giving me time to look it up. She’slistening on the receiver as I take the call on the headset. I find thebuttons to transfer and release the call and field three other calls withoutincident.

“You’re doing real good, but you need to say, ‘Thank you forcalling ZapComm. How may I direct your call?’ That’s company policy. Ityped it up in the front of the directory if you just want to read it a fewtimes until you get it in your head,” Alma says, pointing to a pageentitled “Phone Etiquette.”

“For a while they wanted me to say ‘Thank you for callingZapComm, the worldwide force in fiber optic communication technology.How may I direct your call?’ but I told them I’d lose five calls in the timeit took me to say all that.”

“Yeah, it’s not like the customer wants to hear all that anyway.They just want to get connected,” I say.

"Well, we are proud of the services and products our companyprovides, so I can understand the thinking behind that directive.” Alma'sprofound respect for ZapComm and blind faith in the wisdom of hercorporate leaders makes me think of all those people who drank Kool-Aid in response to a directive from Jim Jones. I answer a few more callsand even manage to put a call on hold and pick up a second line.

“You seem to have the hang of it. I don't think there will be toomany calls today since we're all at the meeting. Most of the clients knowabout it. Do you have any questions?”

“Is there going to be anyone else here?”

“Nope. Just you and Frank, the security guard. He'll be makinghis rounds. The cleaning crew will come in around 4 p. m. probably.”



“Is there a pager number or something I should have in case ofemergencies?”

“We can't be interrupted in this meeting--it's the annual townhall meeting where we learn about the new products and companyperformance last year and set new goals for the upcoming fiscal year.You'll just have to tell people that someone will get back to themtomorrow. Put ‘em in voice mail or take down the messages if they insist.A lot of people hate voice mail. I understand it because I don't liketalking to machines myself, that's why I try to project friendliness andcaring on behalf of ZapComm to everyone who calls here, no matter howrude they are. You should strive to do the same.”

I just look at her and nod weakly. She's such a tool.

“What do I do when I need to go to the bathroom?”

“Put the phone on voice mail and run. You brought your lunch,right?”

“Yeah.”

“You want to get yourself a cup of coffee before I leave you?”

“Yeah, I better get one.” She points me in the direction of thecoffee and I fill a paper cup. The place is so quiet. I peek into a room ofcubicles and note that they're all empty. It's a corporate ghost town.

“Astrid, I got to run. Thank you for calling ZapComm, how mayI direct your call?”

I go behind the marble fortress and take the headset from Alma.She grabs her denim purse and keeps talking to me, but I'm answeringthe calls and I can't listen to two people at once. There's no chance topause and I guess she thinks I'm hearing everything because she smilesat me and walks out the door, leaving me utterly alone.

All five incoming lines start ringing. The drone is the same forone or five lines, but I can see five blinking lights which, as Alma taughtme, indicate active calls.

“Thank you for calling ZapComm, please hold.”




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“Thank you for calling ZapComm, how may I direct your call?”

“Ryan Michaels please.”

“One moment please.” I flip through the directory and findMichaels. 3486. I transfer the call.

“Thank you for holding. How may I direct your call?”

“Sales department please.”

“Umm. One second please.” I flip through the directory and findthat it’s organized by last name, not by department. I notice that oneperson I'd put on hold has hung up but just as I notice that the phonerings and someone new jumps on that line.

“Thank you for calling ZapComm, please hold.” Now three linesare blinking and I can't remember where I parked the person whowanted the Sales department.

“ZapComm.”

“Yeah, connect me to Shaun.”

“Shaun who?

“Davidson.”

“Thank you.” One down, two to go, plus incoming. I think linethree was the guy who wanted the Sales dept.

“Thank you for holding, ZapComm.”

“Actually I wasn't holding, but you're welcome. Grant Anderson,please.” Damn. I can feel my neck getting red.

“ZapComm.”

“About time. I'm holding for the Sales dept. You people open forbusiness today or what?”

“Sir, was there a particular salesperson you wanted to speak to?”Out of the corner of my eye, I see two new calls come in. My coffee isgetting cold.

“I don't know any particular salesperson. I'm interested inbecoming a customer of ZapComm. I have a small manufacturingbusiness and I've been referred by one of your customers over atContinental Can.” I debate telling the guy I'm a temp and the phone



directory was designed for a receptionist in the know, but I scan thedirectory once more and find a name that says Sales after it.

“Sir, I'm going to transfer you to Janet Rathmussen in the Salesdept.”

“Thank you so very much.” I could do without the sarcasm,asshole.


“Could you tell me the name of your CEO?” Is this a test? I flipthrough the directory but there’s no hierarchy flow chart.

“I’m not sure.”

“You don’t know the name of your CEO?”

“I’m sorry, but I’m a temporary filling in for the receptionisttoday and I’m new here.” I hate giving that excuse, but sometimes it’sthe only recourse. All the lines are blinking again. I’m sweating,although this place is climate-controlled.

“Well, maybe you can transfer me to someone who can answermy question? Any real employee will do.”

“Well, I could, except all the regular employees are out of theoffice at a company-wide meeting. I’m the only person here. I guess thething to do would be to call back tomorrow.” He hangs up on me.

There are many things I hate about temping, but being made tofeel incompetent is high up on the list. This assignment is beyond bad.Ten minutes of training and I’m left to be the sole representative ofZapComm. And there’s nobody here to answer my stupid questions. I’mtempted to switch the phones to voice mail and walk out. I take a swig ofcoffee, thick and cooled.


“Yeah, you transferred me to somebody in Sales but they didn’tpick up. I hate voice mail. I want to speak to a live person.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but everyone in the company is off-site at ameeting today. If you leave a message I’m sure they’ll return your calltomorrow.”

“What kind of bullshit way to run a company is that? I needsome service today not tomorrow.” Like I’m making it up.

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“I’m sorry, sir, but I’m telling you the truth.”

“Well, you can just tell your boss that he lost a customer today.Fred Stollmeyer doesn’t talk to voice mail and he doesn’t like getting therunaround. I been running my own business for twenty-two years nowand I know a thing or two about how to treat the customer and--”

If I don’t cut him off, he’ll never shut up. And there are othercalls to be answered.

“—the first rule is the customer always comes first and yourcompany obviously isn’t familiar with these rules and it’s just no way todo business.”

“I’m writing that down sir. I’ll let my boss know.” Boss? I haveno boss except Bunni.

“You do that.”

“Thank you for calling ZapComm and have a technologicallyadvanced day,” I say, reciting one of the approved “closings” from Alma’smanual. He hangs up.

“Thank you for holding.”

“Speak to Barb.”

“Barb who, please?”

“McElroy.”

“Thank you.”


“ZapComm, please hold.”

“ZapComm.”

“Is this the temp?”

“Alma?” Please God let it be her. Alma, come back!

“Yeah, I’m sorry I forgot your name, honey.”

“It’s Astrid.”

“Astrid, is everything going okay? The phone rang eight timesbefore you picked up. You didn’t deliver the approved greeting either.Are you overloaded or something?”



“Alma, I really can’t handle this. I can’t juggle all these lines. Thedirectory isn’t clear and these people are really nasty. Wait, I’m going tohave to put you on hold.”

“ZapComm.”

“Yeah, gimme Bob from Sales.”

“Do you know his last name.”

“No, I don’t know his last name. Bob. Sales. The big guy.”

“Big as in the boss, or big as in physically big.” Not that I wouldknow a Bob who matched either description.

“The one with the gut. Looks like Jackie Gleason. That big guy.You know who I mean? He came to see us last week over here atEverrest and I need to follow up on a few things.”

“Please hold.”

“Thank you for holding.”

“Yeah, connect me to Jennifer Simpkins.” As I look for thenumber I glance at the blinking lights just as one is extinguished.Somebody hung up and I hope its not Alma.

“Alma?”

“No, this is Dave at Everrest. I’m holding for Bob.” SHIT. Almamust have hung up. How could she do that to me? She must be rushingback here. That’s the only explanation.

“Dave, I’m sorry but I’m just filling in for the receptionist todayand the directory isn’t organized by departments, so I’m not sure whichBob you want.”

“Well, connect me to somebody who knows.”

“Well, I would but nobody else is here.”

“What do you mean? Do you work for ZapComm? This isnuts.”

“I’m a temp.” He pauses for a second, laughs, and hangs up. I dialthe agency, ignoring the drone of another incoming call.

“Kelly Services. Susie speaking. How may I help you?”

“Susie, it’s Astrid. I need to talk to Bunni.”

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JULIE WISKIRCHEN

“Bunni’s on the other line at the moment, can you hold, Astrid?”Holding isn’t really an option with three lines blinking. But what elsecan I do?

“Yeah, but I’m working switchboard so let her know that if shegets on and I’m not on the line I’ll be right back.”

“ZapComm, thanks for holding.”

“Can I get a copy of your annual report?” Go to the fuckinglibrary.

“Sure. Can you hold and I’ll come back and take your name andaddress?” I’m not sure if that’s the procedure but it should providetemporary satisfaction.

“Bunni?” There’s nobody there but the anonymous Kellyrecording, talking about paid vacation, something I could have if I’dworked 36 continuous forty hour weeks.

“Thank you for calling ZapComm.”

“Betty Michaels please.”

“Thank you.” I’m honestly thankful for people who call andknow exactly who they’re seeking. The hotel where they’re holding themeeting is only five minutes away, so Alma should be here by now if she’scoming. Maybe she’s not coming. Maybe I didn’t sound desperateenough.

“Bunni? Are you there?”

“No, there’s no Bunni here, although I wouldn’t mind if therewas one, darling. This is Mr. Volz. I was holding so that you could takemy address.” Ew. Can I file for sexual harassment?

“Sorry about that. I can take it now.”

“Where’s your corporate headquarters located anyway?”

“Umm.” Another easy question that I can’t answer.

“Hold please.”

“Bunni

“Yeah, Astrid, what’s going on?” I’ve never been so happy tohear her chirp.



“Bunni, I can’t do this job. I’m awful at it. You didn’t tell me itwas switchboard and I told you I never worked switchboard.”

“Well, Astrid, I thought you’d be able to handle it. You’re cool.”

“Yeah, well, there’s nobody here. The phones are relentless. Iseriously cannot handle it and I need you to send someone who knowshow to do this job.”

“Astrid, it’s after 11:00 A.M. I can’t find a replacement this late inthe day.”

“You’re going to have to because I’m not kidding. I’m breakingout in hives.” I haven’t been to the bathroom to confirm this, and I needto pee very badly, but I’m looking down my shirt at the rash-like hivesspreading over my chest and I know they’re on my neck too. I can feelthe heat of them.

“Astrid, you’re too much. Hives,” Bunni says, laughing. All fivelines are illuminated.

“I’m not kidding around here, Bunni. You have to help me out.”

“Just do your best, Astrid. That’s all we ask. I’ve got another call,so I’m going to have to let you go.” She hangs up without waiting for myresponse.

I stare at the blinking lights, three new calls, and one manholding for an annual report. The hideous drone intensifies as line fivestarts blinking--the fourth new call. At least, it seems to intensify, but it’sprobably just that I’m going insane. I feel like the nutcase in the Poestory who ripped up the floor and admitted he’d killed the rheumy-eyedold man because he was tortured by the unceasing heartbeat.

Ignoring the phone, I dial into the voice mail system and recorda new greeting.

“Thank you for calling ZapComm. Our office is closed today,Friday, September 14th, due to a nuclear meltdown in the plant. No oneis available to take your call because we’re all going through thosechemical showers. Feel free to try your call again tomorrow and someonewill pick up the phone if it’s not glowing. Have a nice, technologicallyadvanced sort of day.”

“Push the pound key to save your greeting, or the number five torecord again,” the voice mail recording dictates. I save the greeting as the

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JULIE WISKIRCHEN

outgoing message for the switchboard, forward the phones to voice mail,and walk out on the job.



174

M T W Th FBY MIKE DAILY

Monday morning. No, Tuesday. It must be Tuesday. I’m in the lobby ofthe pen factory already. I have a job. The receptionist is writing somethingon a wall-calendar behind her desk. “Nice pen,” I say. [NICE ASS]

She keeps writing. I know she heard me. I wait.She turns finally. Ooh...

“Yes?”I introduce myself and ask to please see Chet.“May I ask what this is regarding?”“I have an appointment.”I hand her the card. She looks at it. She hands it back, sits down, picks upthe phone, presses a button. “Chet? There’s a guy here to see you. Excuseme?”She hangs up.“Fill out this form. He’ll be right with you.” She hands me a clipboard andpen. I sit down. I press a button on the side of the pen. Must be for refills.I press another. Here we go.I fill it out.I return the clipboard and pen to her desk. She doesn’t say anything. Aman appears in the doorway.“I’m Chet,” he says.We shake hands.“Mick O’Grady.”Chet is wearing a silver tie that looks like the pocket clip for a pen. Thatwas unusual. He grins for a moment. We’re still shaking hands. He has apager on his belt. It’s going off.

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M T W TH F

“Mick O’Grady,” he says. “Do you hear something beeping, MickO’Grady?”I don’t know what to say.We stop shaking hands.“Follow me.”He leads me through the warehouse. There is mariachi music comingfrom the back. Workers are working at an assembly line.Pens. Mounds of pens.Multi-function pens. [NICE]

“Do you understand Spanish, Mick?”“Not much. I took Spanish classes in high school and some in college butthat was quite some time ago.”“You never spoke it,” he says. “You will learn some Spanish here, Mick.”He laughs. “Here’s your place in the line. You’ll pick it up. There’s notmuch to say. Watch the others. You’ll get it. You get a ten-minute break atnine, 30 minutes for lunch at eleven, another break at one-thirty andyou’re off at three-thirty. Any questions?”I think about it.“No,” I say.“Bueno. You’re already punched in. You may begin.”Chet walks away. I watch him walk away.I look at the others.I look at the clock on the wall. The hour hand is a pen, the minute hand isa pen, the seconds hand is the inside of a pen. I think I am seeing things.I begin.

Time has elapsed. It’s my new thing. It’s about a day and a half. It wasNew Wet Kojak, I believe, who said do the math. Or Scott McCloud,rather. Scott McCloud. The singer. He used to be in Girls Against Boys.Do the math. It’s Wednesday afternoon in the pen factory. I’m chapped.Plumas. Las plumas. Todas las plumas. The others laugh. They speakSpanish to each other. Someone says something. They laugh. I can’t

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MIKE DAILY

understand them. But I’m picking it up. I’m trying to pick it up. Chetstops behind my place in the line.“Do you understand what they’re saying?” he says.“No.”“Neither do I! And they talk so fast.”

What day is today? Thursday? [ODELAY]

My new thing is not knowing what time it is. But I don’t want to knowwhat time it is because it makes it go slower. It seems to make the time goslower. I can’t get any lower.Someone claps me on the shoulder. I drop a pen. I pick it up. It’s Chet. Ican tell by the laugh. [THE LAUGH THAT LAUGHS AT THE LAUGH?]

“Have they taught you any Spanish yet?”“Not yet.”He walks away.“Not yet, Chet.” [NOT YET]

Three-thirty. Friday. My last scheduled day. But it doesn’t matteranyway. It’s pay day. Pay day for everybody. Even Chet. It’s on a week-to-week basis that they pay. That was pretty choppy. Hold on. I reach thefront desk and pick up my check. The receptionist is making photocopies.

[NICE ASS]

“Your last day?” one of the workers says.“Si,” I say.“You got another job?” she says.“Si.”“How lucky!” she says. “More money?”“Si. Un poco.”She turns and leaves. Lucy. Her name is Lucy.


M T W TH F

I leave. [THAT WAS QUICK]

Follow Your Heart. I’m not making this up. I got a job at a family-owned natural foods restaurant and grocery store called Follow YourHeart.I like that: Follow Your Heart. [YOU’RE LOSING IT]

Follow Your Heart, Mick O’Grady.Mick O’Grady, Follow Your Heart.Mick O’Grady, seven dollars an hour. Seven dollars an hour, MickO’Grady. Not including tips, Mick O’Grady.

[ENOUGH WITH THE O’GRADY ALREADY]

Mick O’Grady never worked in a restaurant or grocery store, MickO’Grady. Now he (the narrator) is picking it up as he goes along, MickO’Grady. And it’s the end of his shift.Where was I?

[SOMETHING ABOUT PICKING IT UP, MICK O’GRADY]The head waitress is having a phone conversation with her boyfriend.Stay awake, she says.Go get some Up Time.Take my dad’s truck.Just stay awake.She cups the receiver. She hangs up.I take out the garbage.The next bus boy has arrived. I say hi to him in passing. [HI] “Guess how many tacos I ate at Jack in the Box yesterday?” he says.“Five.”“Eight. And...”I go out back and toss the bags.I walk back in and notice a new notice on the bulletin board. I back up. Iread it.

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MIKE DAILY

Follow Your Heart would like to wish Happy Birthdays to its Novemberemployees: Robert Smythe on the 5th, Frank Garrido, Jr., on the 8th, CatMeadows on the 16th and Mick O’Grady on the 18th!Health, Happiness and Many Smiles!Cat Meadows. Scorpio Cat Meadows. I take off my apron. I clock out.


M T W TH F

180

Massive ReorganizationBY TONY BYRER

Jimmy Bee sat at his desk trying to hide his enormous erection. He’dbeen reminiscing on the first downsizing he’d ever experienced. It hadbeen five years ago, and it seemed so much longer. They say life is short,Jimmy mused, but when it’s filled with dry tedium, it can be long andlong and long.

Steve Borland, the department manager at the time, had called Jimmy tohis office. Jimmy knew he was about to be sacked. The offices had beenhemmorhaging people all week long.

When he stepped into Steve’s office, Steve was standing with his back tothe door contemplating a mural of Picasso’s “Guernica” hanging on thewall. Jimmy rolled his eyes. The pompous prick did enjoy his affectations.

“What do you think, Jimmy?” Steve asked, sweeping his arm at themural. He was still standing with his back to the door.

“Looks busy,” Jimmy said.

Steve snorted. “Looks busy,” he said. “Do you even know what the muralrepresents?”

Jimmy rolled his eyes and kept silent.

Steve sighed. “You don’t know what a burden it is,” he said, “to workamong such ignorant rustics. Do you even know what happened atGuernica in 1937?”

Jimmy shrugged. He knew what happened there, but he wasn’t going tolet Steve control the conversation. “Some people died?”

Steve snorted. “Some people died.” He shook his head. “I’ll just get to thepoint. As you know, sales have been down for the last quarter and we’vehad to outsource a lot of jobs.” He reached into his jacket and fumbledwith something underneath his arm. Jimmy heard a metallic click.

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Jimmy reached into his waistband and pulled out a hunting knife. Hestepped quietly to within two paces of Steve’s back. His penis, sensingimminent violence, surged to full erection.

Steve turned to face Jimmy. His eyes widened when he saw him standingjust in front of him. “Now, Jimmy,” he said. He didn’t get a chance tofinish. Jimmy plunged the knife into his chest and twisted it as hard as hecould.

Steve fell to the floor. Blood bubbled through his expensive white shirt.Jimmy knelt beside him and ripped his shirt open. His chest bore agaping red hole just below and to the left of his left breast. Blood bubbledin and out, in and out, popping and bubbling and throwing up little redsplatters. The hole looked like a vagina, a hot, wet, receptive vagina.

Jimmy unzipped his fly. His prick sprung out, swollen and aching,homing in on the rent in Steve’s chest. He plunged it in. Steve’s eyesbulged out. With every thrust, bloody froth erupted from Steve’s mouthand nose.

“Jimmy...” Steve gasped. “Jimmy—” Jimmy felt Steve’s voice vibrating inhis chest against his plunging dick.

“Oh God, yes,” Jimmy moaned. “Gimme a hummer.”

Steve coughed and Jimmy spasmed, thrusting as fast as he could. Hisclimax arrived with a bang. It gathered deep in his loins and explodedout of him like a shotgun blast. He withdrew and fell on his haunchesgasping for breath.

Steve coughed weakly. Threads of semen splattered on his chin. Bloodbubbled out of his nose. And then he died.

“Downsize me, you prick,” Jimmy said. He stood and considered the“Guernica” mural. What a pompous prick. He spat on the mural, tuckedhis bloody penis inside his pants and walked out of the office.

Dotty, the administrative assistant, was at her desk. Her eyes widenedwhen she saw Jimmy. “I didn’t expect to see you again,” she said.

Jimmy hiked his thumb at the door to Steve’s office. “There’s a mess toclean up in there,” he said.

“Well, yeah,” Dotty said. “I knew there would be. I just didn’t expect it tobe Steve. Damn good show.” She smiled. “He was a pompous prick,wasn’t he?”

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TONY BYRER

Five years later Jimmy was still chipping away at the same dulldocuments, sitting in on the same boring meetings, listening to asuccession of identical managers cheerlead a variety of management fadsusing all the unimaginative buzzwords they read about in the Wall StreetJournal. He had survived other reorganizations, but none of them wereas violent as that first one. He supposed corporations had to go throughthese shuddering periods of changes. Just like during the old Communistpurges, it kept management fresh and guaranteed strict obedience fromthe workers. “As long as I keep my nose to the grindstone and mind myown business, I’ll be unaffected,” he thought.

He glanced up from the spreadsheet he was updating to see MaryScheinhardt approaching his desk. She sat and made herself comfortable.Jimmy shifted position so his erection wouldn’t be so noticeable. Itbumped uncomfortably on the bottom of his desktop. He folded his handsacross his stomach. Mary would make his erection go away. It wasdifficult to have an erection in the same room as Mary. Not impossible, asshe had three grown children, but very difficult. Her sour dispositionwas a guaranteed boner killer.

“Well,” she said, “it’s started.”

“What’s started?” Jimmy asked.

“The downsizing,” Mary said. “Haven’t you heard?”

“I don’t ever hear anything over here,” Jimmy said. “Everything’s a bigsecret.”

“They got Tom Bechtel yesterday,” Mary said. “It went down like this.”

Tom Bechtel, the supervisor over the west line, was the first to fall. Hewas sitting at his desk actually working when they knocked. Usually hewould have been wary and demanded to know what they wanted, buttoday he was reviewing forecasts when the knock came.

“What is it?” he called.

“Hey, Tom,” someone hissed through the door. “We have the data youasked for.”

Tom hadn’t asked for any data that day, but he’d forgotten that fact. He’dbeen busy all day, and besides, he often asked for data of one sort oranother, so the statement wasn’t at all out of the ordinary.



He opened the door, still holding the folder full of forecasts in his hand.They pushed through the door, knocking him into his artificial rubbertree. He recovered well for such a large man. He pushed himself off thewall and leaped behind his desk where he kept a cudgel for just suchemergencies. Alas for him, they were too quick. He abandoned hiscudgel, flung himself across his desk, and charged out the door.

They pounded across the production floor and into the large employeebreak room where Tom intended to escape out the service entrance. Toobad for him the entrance was blocked by a large stack of folding tables.He turned to flee past human resources, but the way was blocked.

“Shouldn’t you be singing your death song?” someone taunted.

Tom snarled and flung himself at the smartass. He intended to rip histhroat out, but the smartass ducked and Tom was able only to snatch outone of the bastard’s eyes. The smartass howled and fell to his knees.Several of the pursuers in their excitement fell on the one-eyed prick,ripping him apart with their bare hands.

Tom sprinted toward human resources and he would have made it, too, ifnot for the wet floor. He knew the floor was wet and so he didn’t slide onthe tile, but he did sprawl across the wet floor sign. He rolled to his rightand fetched himself up between the Coke and candy machines. There hedied, snarling and snapping at his pursuers.

They pole axed him between the eyes, splitting his skull from crown tojaw and spilling his brain out across the wet floor. It looked like a graymacaroni salad and it was quite slippery. Several of the mob lost theirfooting and fell into the mess. They had to spend the rest of the daycovered in Tom’s brain. By quitting time, some of them were reekingvery badly.

Mary shook her head. Her lips curled. “I’d like to see these bastards getwhat’s coming to them,” she said. “Tom was a decent guy. He didn’tdeserve to go like that.”

“No one does,” Jimmy said. His eyes widened when he saw the sheercontempt crawl across Mary’s face. “Except, of course, managers,” headded.

Mary smiled. The smile didn’t touch her cold, flat eyes. “Glad to hear yousay that,” she said. “For a moment, I thought you might be one of them.”She stood. “I’ve got to get back to work.” She patted underneath her leftbreast and winked at Jimmy. “In case they come for me,” she said. Jimmy

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smiled. He knew she packed a heavy pistol in a shoulder holster. Hedidn’t know what kind it was, but she let him hold it once. Its bore lookedlike it was half an inch across. “It’ll cut you in half,” Mary had said,patting the pistol fondly. Jimmy nodded and Mary walked away, her longskirt swishing cattily.

She nodded to Jeff Wheeler, an IT nerd, as he passed. Jeff saw Jimmy athis desk and waved as he changed direction. “Aw, shit,” he breathed. Itwas too late to sneak out the door to avoid him.

“Hey, Jimmy,” Jeff said. “Did you hear? Tom Bechtel bought it yesterday.”He laughed. “Man, I heard he screamed like a little bitch.”

“Is that so?” Jimmy said. “Imagine that.”

Jeff laughed. “Oh, please, please!” he mimicked. “Oh, let me keep mypathetic little job! Oh boo hoo! Oh, please!” He slapped his thigh. Theridiculous bastard actually slapped his thigh. “I tell you what,” he said.“These pitiful fools don’t know how good they have it. If it were up tome, I’d make it last a little longer. Why, I’d—” His breath choked offwhen Jimmy’s hand clamped down on his throat. His eyes widened andthe blood drained from his face.

Jimmy leaned in close to Jeff ’s face. “You haven’t been here all that long,Jeff,” he said. “You haven’t been through any layoffs until now. I’ve beenthrough one.”

Jeff fell to his knees and Jimmy let go. “I’m sorry, Jimmy,” Jeff said. “Ididn’t mean anything by it.”

“I’m sure you didn’t,” Jimmy said, suddenly weary. All he wanted to dowas go home and get drunk.

“I didn’t mean anything,” Jeff whined.

“Okay,” Jimmy said. “Forget it. Get out of here.”

“Okay,” Jeff said. “I’m sorry, man. I didn’t mean anything.”

“Okay!” Jimmy said. “Forget it! Just don’t go around making fun ofpeople who just got the ax.”

The next day saw the reorganization begin in earnest. When Jimmyarrived that morning, he saw a stream of blood running down thegutters next to the parking lot. He shook his head. It was bound to be arough day. When he swiped his card through the reader, he noticed he’d



left bloody footprints behind him. Somehow he’d stepped in a bloodpuddle without realizing. A headache was already building at his templesand behind his eyes. He sighed and pushed through the door.

The engineering department was a mess. The sticky carpet pulled at hisshoes. He glanced down and grimaced. He was walking through blood.An outstretched hand grasped at nothing from the yawning mouth of adark cubicle. He stepped carefully over the hand, averting his eyes fromthe cubicle, but he still saw Gary Fritch lying dead, his throat a rippedand torn bloody hole. It looked like someone had attacked him with theirteeth. Jimmy rolled his eyes. Some members of management wereoffensive in their enthusiasm.

And here lay the nude body of Laura McCormick, the cute youngdocument control specialist. She was on her back, her arms and legssplayed wide open. A single bullet hole between her eyes marred herpleasant face. It looked like she’d been gang banged. Jimmy couldn’t tellif it had happened before or after her death. It likely didn’t matter. “If youcan’t have her,” Jimmy whispered, “then downsize her. It doesn’t matter.”He was unaware he was talking to himself.

A tapping noise intruded on his reverie. He swiveled his head, trying totrack the noise to its source. A light spilled from the corner cubicle. Hecrept to the corner and peeked around the divider. Jim Seitzman sat athis desk, furiously typing a document in Microsoft Word and weeping. Atwo-foot pile of documents sat at his right hand. Another large pile ofdocuments was shoved into the corner.

Jimmy cleared his throat and Jim jumped. “No, don’t, oh God!” Jimgasped.

“Easy,” Jimmy said. “What happened here?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Jim demanded. “We’ve been reorganized!”

“No,” Jimmy said. “I mean, what are you doing?”

Jim shook his head. Bitter tears dripped down his face. “They axed thewhole department!” he wailed. “I’m the only one left! How am I supposedto keep up with everything? They expect me to update all theengineering documents, and prepare all the quotes, and follow up on allthe corrective actions! There used to be six people doing all that, andnow there’s only me! What am I going to do?”

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Jimmy patted him on the shoulder. “I hear Telematrix is hiring,” he said.“I’ve always heard that’s a good place to work.”

“Yeah, sure,” Jim said. “Good luck with that.” His face twisted on itself.“They’ve been outsourcing to China!”

“Oh, God,” Jimmy said. “I didn’t know that.”

“I gotta get back to work,” Jim said. “I hope they clean this mess up soon.It’s starting to stink.”

“Don’t count on it,” Jimmy said. “Housekeeping has been outsourced. Acrew of six Honduran women comes in now for three hours a day twice aweek. That mess is liable to lie there until Monday.”

Jim groaned. “I hope they remove the carpeting. There’s a nice tile floorunder there. I do like the smell of floor polish.”

“Well now, that’s something to look forward to,” Jimmy said. He pattedJim on the shoulder again. “I gotta get going. Have a good day.”

“Yeah,” Jim said. “You, too. Keep your back to the wall.”

When Jimmy stepped into the hallway, he saw Brenda Neumayer, thedepartment administrative assistant, scurrying back toward her cornerby the boss’s office.

“Brenda!” he called.

Brenda shrank against the wall. “What?” she said, her eyes large andround and magnified behind her thick spectacles.

“Nothing,” Jimmy said. “I just wondered if you’ve heard any more aboutwhat’s going on here.”

She shrugged. “Big reorg,” she said.

“Yeah,” Jimmy said. “I gathered that. Do you know who? How many aresupposed to get it?”

She leaned in closer to him. “It’s a big one,” she whispered. “Most of theengineers got it early this morning. They’re going after half of quality.And they’re going to cut half of production.”

“Production?” Jimmy said. “How can they cut production so much?Who’s going to build the product?”

Her eyes grew even bigger. “Outsourcing,” she said. “China.”

“No!” Jimmy exclaimed. “They can’t do that!”



“Sure they can,” Brenda said. “Who’s going to stop them?”

“Well, yeah,” Jimmy said. “There is that.”

“I tell you what,” Brenda said. “I have a friend who runs a home cleaningservice. You know, you go out every day and clean other people’s houses.I’m thinking of going to work for her. She said she’d make me a crewsupervisor. It would sure beat this crap, coming in every day andwondering if it’s your last.”

Jimmy shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “It all seems so pointless.”

Sounds of scuffling echoed down the hall. Brenda gasped, “They’recoming!” and scurried down the hall to hide behind her desk next to theboss’s office. Jimmy turned and jogged toward his own desk. He didn’trun, that was too undignified, but he did step sharply.

A production worker cowered in a corner behind a fake potted palmmewling softly to herself. Tears streaked her mascara. She held herhands up to Jimmy. “I have two kids,” she said. Her breasts hitchedbeneath her blouse. “What am I going to do?” Jimmy passed her by. Hedidn’t know.

A thick pool of blood was drying on the tile in front of the door to themen’s restroom. Bloody drag marks led away from the pool toward theentrance to the production area. Jimmy thought the profusion of bloodyhand prints on the wall looked like a strange floral pattern. He pushedthe door to production, but something blocked the way. He was able toget the door partly open. He could see a pair of legs lying on the floor. Heshut the door and turned away.

A manager dashed down the hallway. When he saw Jimmy, he skidded toa crouching halt. Gore streaked his face and he had used it to slick hishair back. His eyes rolled. He gave Jimmy a double thumbs up andshrieked something that sounded like, “Hala la hala.” He sprinted away,whooping loudly. Jimmy shook his head. He knew adjustments had to bemade, but they didn’t have to be so damned enthusiastic about it.

As he passed the small break room next to accounting, he saw theaccounting manager and the production manager sitting naked at a table.The whites of their eyes and their teeth gleamed cleanly through thethick layers of blood and filth caking their bodies. A dead employee laybetween them. His naked ribs seemed to beseech the ceiling for relieffrom this indignity. The accounting manager reached into the open chestcavity and plucked out a morsel. He chewed daintily, grunting softly.

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“Jimmy!” cried the production manager. “Want some tartare?” Bothmanagers shrieked hysterical laughter. Jimmy’s stomach rolled. Hewrapped his arms around himself and hurried away.

He passed a group of four managers standing around a pile of deadbodies. They were all rubbing their tented crotches. “Can we fuck them?”one of the managers asked.

“Fuck, no,” answered another. “They’re all men. And besides, they’re alldead. They don’t squirm when they’re dead.”

“So what are we going to do to them?” asked the first manager, clutchinghis erection through his Dockers.

“I don’t know,” a third manager said. “Burn them?”

“Yeah!” said the second manager. “If we can’t fuck ‘em, then let’s burn‘em!

The group scattered. Jimmy supposed they were off to find somegasoline. He hurried on. He didn’t want to be around when theyreturned. Because after all, he was still able to squirm.

When he entered his own department, all was quiet. No one was there.He looked around carefully. Everything was in order, no bloodstains, nosplintered office furniture, no charred cubicles. He supposed everyonemust have barricaded themselves in a conference room. They haddiscussed it yesterday when rumors of the impending carnage wereflying like spreadsheets before a storm. He considered knocking on thedoor, but decided against it. He didn’t want to catch a harpoon betweenthe eyes.

When he rounded the final corner before his own cubicle, he nearlywalked into his boss, Della Buehler. He scurried backwards until hebumped into a partition and fumbled in his pocket for the derringer hecarried. “Don’t bother,” Della said. She held her left arm to him, pointinglike an Old Testament prophet, or like a modern pop star warbling aboutfinding true love at the mall.

Jimmy saw she had a fixture strapped to her forearm, some kind ofspring-loaded dart launcher. Della smiled. “Duarine,” she said. “Importedfrom a South American arms dealer. It’s the genuine stuff. It paralyzesyour voluntary nervous system. It can take hours for you to drown inyour own secretions. It’s very unpleasant. So don’t move. I havesomething to tell you.”



Jimmy locked eyes with her. “How can I trust you not to shoot me withthat?” he asked. “I’d rather take my chances if I think I can take you outwith me.”

Della lowered her arm. “I’m not here to take you out,” she said. “I’m hereto offer you an opportunity.”

“How wonderful,” Jimmy said. He wanted to roll his eyes, but the lasttime he rolled his eyes at something Della said, she broke his jaw with aroundhouse kick to the head.

Della laughed. “Practice that sarcasm, boy. You’re gonna need it. I’moutsourcing you. Off to China you go.”

“Oh, fuck!” Jimmy cried. “You can’t do this!”

“Au contraire,” Della said, still laughing. “It’s already been done. Thetrucks are already out back, the boats are at the docks, and off you go. It’sbeen nice working with you.” She giggled and pranced away.

Jimmy watched her go, his eyes narrowed. He reached into his pocket forhis derringer, intending to put a round through the back of her skull.Something jerked him backwards by the throat and he fell on his back,the derringer skittering off underneath a desk. Jimmy tried to lookbehind him to see who or what had nearly taken his head off, but he washauled by the neck toward the exit. He clawed at the constriction aroundhis neck, scrabbling his feet across the carpet for purchase.

Just as his vision was fading to black and he thought he’d truly beenreorganized, he was tossed onto a plank floor. The constriction aroundhis neck eased and he was able to breathe again. As his vision cleared, hesaw around him a number of pathetic individuals. All were chained to araw plank wall by a band around their necks. He reached to his throatand, yes, he was similarly bound.

The room was long, forty feet or more, but narrow. Jimmy estimated itswidth at no more than eight feet. As Jimmy was trying to clear his throatto speak, the entire room jerked and then he understood. He was in acattle car with perhaps forty other people. They had been outsourced.They were on their way to China.

Jimmy bowed his head. So this was it, then. Off to the slave camps ofChina.

“God damn,” he moaned. “I hate Chinese food.”

190

The Last StrawBY MJ KLEIN

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a teacher. And I thought thesame thing when I was in college, though I also had the idea that I wasgoing to be a book editor at a New York publishing house. But my friendtold me that it doesn’t pay well and it was really a place where trust-fundtypes ended up, and I certainly wasn’t one of those. So the teaching thingstuck with me, and while I was still an undergrad, I ended up becoming ateaching assistant at another university, which only made me want to doit more.

The professor we were working for (we weren’t paid but weregiven credit for it, sort of like an internship) had set up a system wherewe were responsible for grading papers, and once a week we met withour students in small discussion groups. It was a casual atmosphere thatfostered community, and now that I look back on it, I realize that he wasable to set up such a class (including letting undergrads be “readers,” ashe called them) because he was tenured—how could he be fired for beingcreative? Instead of becoming lazy and just doing the minimum to gethis comfy paycheck, he thought about teaching and cared about people.And he worked up to the day he died—which was during my last year ofcollege.

Because of that positive experience, I wanted to find otherteaching gigs, but I didn’t want to be in charge of my own classroom.Plus, I wanted to travel—I wasn’t able to go abroad during my junioryear (which most people did), so I found a program in Japan where Icould be a teaching assistant. It was a perfect combination: I could teach,but wasn’t the primary teacher, and I could do that in another country.

Soon after I arrived, I taught a group of incredibly cute,respectful kids, so teaching for me was just getting better. Even thoughliving in Japan was far from easy, teaching was enjoyable—most of thetime I was assisting other teachers, but I eventually ended up teachingadults by myself, which was fun. Sometimes I screwed up because I was

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impatient, but I was dealing with living in a place where foreignersweren’t common and foreign women were seen as sluts or tea-pourers.So I was immature and stressed, and if I could do it again with what Iknow now, I would do a much better job. But even though I wasn’t thebest teacher on the planet, I still thought of that as my destiny.

Because my teaching experience thus far had been positive, Iwondered how teachers could complain. My friend from Australia hadtaught there for a while before going to Japan, and would complain abouthow hard it was to teach students who weren’t motivated. I thoughtthere was a way to “reach them,” but that’s because I wasn’t realistic andI was naive. She ended up teaching in Portugal and then went back toAustralia, where she quit teaching forever. I remember when she told meshe’d quit—I asked her how she could give it up, and didn’t really believeit was possible to totally walk away from such an “important” profession.But she’s never gone back, and now I understand why.

Teaching is degrading. I’m not saying that the profession isbad—it’s a noble profession, and I respect those who can stick with it.Maybe it’s an American thing, but there’s an inherent disrespect ofanything other than Oprah or some other rich celebrity. Students herecould care less about teachers, and even in richer areas where they’remore motivated, the parents see the teachers as highly paid servants, sowhile the students may be more respectful, the parents resent theteachers as money-sucking parasites that better get their kids intoHarvard.

When I got back to the U.S., I had just spent a year traveling inAsia, and was ready to work a lot. Many people want to retire and sitaround and travel, which really means taking occasional one-weekvacations in four-star hotels in developing countries that are dying fortheir money. But that year of traveling made me want to work even more,and do whatever seemed interesting, even if it meant never getting themindless retirement that so many people desire.

I was thinking of living in New York and went there for a weekto see what it was like, but after some failed attempts to get some workthere and the thought of trying to eek out a living in a very expensiveplace, I figured I should just settle back in Chicago because I wanted tobe near my family and I’d already spent eight years living elsewhere—college in Massachusetts and four years in Asia.

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So I decided to freelance, since the economy was no longersupportive of good, full-time, benefits-rich jobs, and worked hourly at adysfunctional company for a year, while hearing the call of “teach, teach”in my head and “heart” every day. I was “meant” to be a teacher—whywas I working in a company, sitting in front of a computer all day? Ishould be helping the world, doing something “meaningful.” So I left thecompany, traveled to Eastern Europe for a couple of months, and cameback to tutor at a university and write and edit documents at anothercompany.

At the new company, I was still sitting at a computer all day, butit was the best place I had worked—my coworkers were great, therewere different kinds of people, and after a while, my boss was cool. But Iwas too arrogant to appreciate it, and the teaching “voice” was stillwithin me, so while I was there, I applied to a graduate program to getcertified to be an elementary ESL (English as a Second Language)teacher. I chose elementary ESL because my experience in Japan withthose types of kids was positive, and the job market in that area wasgood. But during my first semester in the program, while I was stillworking at the great company, I thought to myself, “This isn’t for me.”But I stupidly proceeded to endure three years of propaganda, dumbclassmates, and a frustrating student teaching experience to get certified.

Actually, it wasn’t all bad—I worked for a professor, so I got atuition break, and I ended up teaching at the university, so I could takelanguage classes for free. It was hard to go from the language classesback to my propaganda classes, but it was a lot better than sitting alonein front of a computer in a cubicle. I did meet some cool people, but fromthat point on, the desire to teach was becoming corroded. By that time,the company I was working for had gone public: they had offered me aboring full time job, because the interesting stuff I had worked on wascompleted, and I was so caught up in the teaching thing that I told themno, thinking I was moving on to something “better.” But in hindsight,quitting that company was one of the biggest mistakes I’ve made. Untilthis year, I have often regretted leaving that company. I didn’t know thatit’s very hard to find a place to work with good coworkers. I should havestayed there part time while I pursued other stuff. It’s a big mistake thatI have finally gotten over, not because I learned to deal with it, butbecause I enjoy where I’m working now, which has cancelled out thatregret.


THE LAST STRAW

While I was at the university going through the educationgraduate program, at first I was thrilled to teach the students there. Iwas paid pretty well and could finally help people—which seemed to be alot more “important” than cubicle work. But as time passed, I noticedthat the classes would either be good or bad, depending on the mix ofstudents. A lot of teachers talk about this: they’ll say that “this year’sclass is good,” but I would alter that statement to mean “this year’s classis on my side.”

I used to think that skill level was important until I got a highlevel class that was snobby and resistant. I thought that I wouldeventually convince them that the class was there to help them, not blockthem, but there was only one student who appreciated what I was doing.And unlike other teachers, I didn’t feel that “at least reaching onestudent” was worth it. If I want to reach one person, I can tutor or turnin a project to one person. Why suffer standing in front of a classroomwith several students, just to reach one person?

Another semester, I had a class that was full of low-levelstudents who were jerks, and they ended up giving me bad evaluations.However, during that same semester, I was teaching another relativelylow-level class that really appreciated what I was doing, and most ofthem improved. And most of them weren’t from the U.S., which helps toexplain why their attitude was better.

Why does what students think of me matter? Because there hasto be a relationship, and if I want to feel alone in my work, I might aswell sit alone at a computer rather than stand in front of a room full ofstudents who despise me because I’m not the newest slutty hip hop star.

I still had to do my student teaching: I didn’t want to give up,even though I was becoming less enamored with the whole teachingthing. I had taken a lot of courses to be certified, and student teachingwas the last step in getting my master’s degree. So I put the universityteaching on hold while I made the trek from my place in the city to anaffluent suburb to work in an elementary school with a teacher whodidn’t like me even before I met her—why my resume would betroubling to her is still a mystery.

She was a great teacher but never liked me, and I really don’tcare why. Such petty attitudes were common at that school, andeventually I was able to connect with a class full of troubled kids whowere ignored because their parents were too busy making money. I got

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to work with ESL kids once a day, which was enjoyable, probably becausethey weren’t from the U.S. and hadn’t yet been ruined. But amazingly, Iwas one of two student teachers who got bad grades that semester andwasn’t willing to prove myself otherwise, because I knew by the end ofthat semester that I did not want to be a full-time public school teacher. Istill took the state test, and I still got my teaching certificate, so if there’sanything to be proud of, it’s that I didn’t quit.

But after working with those small-minded elementary schoolteachers and resentful university students, I still wanted to teach, so Idecided to teach classes at the university where I’d taught before and hadgotten my master’s degree. Again, the crap shoot was still in effect as Ikept getting classes that were either full of students who were on myside or weren’t, and I could no longer endure such a degrading feeling,so I decided to limit my teaching there to a summer program for “at risk”students.

I put it in quotes because I discovered that the summer programcould care less about “at risk” students than about advancing theirpolitical agenda by ignoring the true definition of “at risk” to just focuson students that fit their skin-color profile. It was a combination of anaffirmative action program, where severely academically deficientstudents were required to pass summer classes in order to join theregular program during the year, and students who were really ready forcollege but were sought out because they were the color that theprogram’s administrators were looking for. The general rule for theprogram was “first generation college students,” which meant that theywere the first ones in their families to go to college. But that explainedmost of the university, so the program’s bias was obvious. And theadministrators wanted to hold on to their jobs too much to want toactually teach the students how to be productive—they just wanted topass them through and receive funding for the following year, so thatthey could continue to remain among the under-achieving, over-paidChicago government working class.

Whatever their motives or agenda was, I didn’t let it bother mebecause I had a great time the first two summers. The students werestraightforward and fun, even though some of them didn’t pass. Theadministration wasn’t happy about me not passing everyone becausethey had to retain their numbers to get more funding the following year.But I was told to do my job and to treat the students just like I treated


THE LAST STRAW

any other student at that school, and I did what they said. Whicheventually backfired.

I was never mean to the students, I just asked them to do theirwork, and that final summer, I had students who weren’t used to doingany work, even though they were told that if they didn’t pass, theywouldn’t be able to enter or survive the school. There were a couple ofimmigrants kids who were different, of course, probably because theirparents told them that such a program was there to help them, nothinder them, so I had no problems with them. But some of the otherstudents just couldn’t get it through their skill-less skulls that they hadto do work in order to improve. One smarter student who’d managed tosurvive so far from her charm rather producing work even asked hergrandfather to intervene, telling the administrators to make me changethe rules to conform to her irresponsibility. Another student told theadministrators that it was all my fault—her inability to turn in theassignments was because of me—I was a racist to requiring such things.

A lot of people like to compare severe questioning to theInquisition, and though the questioning that I went through was hardlythat harsh, it still put me in a difficult position because I was beingaccused for racism, when all I was asking was for the student to simplydo her work. Later I found out that the administration still managed topush the student through, but she ended up getting pregnant anddropping out. I wonder who she blamed for that.

So after that summer, I decided to not teach again. It was the laststraw, clearly showing me that teaching is so degrading, I’d be better offdoing cubicle work, and I started working on projects that required littlehuman contact. Eventually I worked in tourism because I needed morepeople contact, and though my coworkers exemplified what people thinkof Chicago government workers, I never felt as degraded as when Itaught. Even when I temped at a company to fill in for a receptionist, Ileft each day with more dignity than I ever had each time I left aclassroom.

Though I’ve officially quitting teaching, I’ve re-entered thatworld to occasionally teach ESL to adults in small groups orindividually, and it’s been mostly a respecting endeavor. But now thatI’ve almost successfully managed to turn the huge teaching ship aroundby pursuing other stuff, I really don’t want to teach, though,unbelievably, I still have a desire to teach. But since I’ve had that feeling

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before and what it mostly brought was degradation, I’m hesitant topursue it. Maybe one day I will teach a class again, and if I do, I’m goingto make sure to remember that I’m a smart, talented human being, andnothing that any manipulative administration or students do can makeme forget that.


THE LAST STRAW

198

Nothing But A CowardBY JOSH HAMILTON

It was Saturday morning, and my father told me to find a job. Can’t carryyou forever, he announced. You have to start thinking about the future. I sat upin bed and rubbed my eyes. The clock said 7.30. There’s a plate of pancakesin the kitchen, he said. Get dressed and start looking. No use fighting it. Theold man was right.

With full belly and combed hair, I took the family van and drove to theclosest strip mall. Pizza Palace was not hiring, nor was Ranger Bros.hardware, H.L. Mill’s grocery, or the post office. I was laughed out of thelatter. The room smelled of wet cardboard and bad cologne. I waited in aline of mostly elderly men. Their bellies hung over slackened belts, andthe butts of their pants were flat and sagging. The sound of changejingling in pockets filled the air. When I reached the counter, I asked amiddle-aged blonde woman with too much eye shadow if I could have anapplication. How old are you? she smiled. The lines in her eyes werecracked with makeup. 16, ma’am, I said. I’m sorry, hon, but you have to be anadult to work at the post office. She gave me a wink. I thanked her, and as Iturned to walk away I caught her exchanging looks with a coworker andsnickering. On the way out I noticed the old men staring at the blonde.They still had their hands in pockets jingling change. I had a lot to lookforward to on the Saturdays of my retirement.

Back in the van I gazed in the rearview mirror. A plague of red dots haderupted across my already tragic teenage face. Damn, damn, damn, I saidaloud. I opened a container of Noxzema and pulled out a medicated cloththat looked eerily similar to the hemorrhoid pads my mother used. Themedicine went on cool then burned straight through the skin as itattacked the stress leaking from the pores on my face.

Damn, damn, damn, I said again, feeling good about cursing and being onmy own. I turned on the radio and cranked up something by the StoneTemple Pilots. It wouldn’t be long before I was out of my parents’ houseand going solo. I had plans to walk the streets of Paris with the ghost of

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Henry Miller, open for Helmet in an as yet unformed band, and get apublishing deal on Henry Rollins’ label, 2.13.61. No chance in hell was Igoing to waste my life.

I drove up and down the main street of my hometown. The sun was out,and a cool breeze caressed my tender face. I pulled into a few parkinglots and peered into more windows, but I’d lost nerve after the postoffice. Too young, I thought, but not for long. A couple months away from17, then one more year, and I could go to war, buy porn, and purchasecigarettes. Maybe I’d even vote.

It was too early to go home. My father would be working in the yardmaking an immaculate presentation in time for Sunday. Not that we wereexpecting guests. Sunday was the Lord’s Day, and our family, like manyothers in the community, had to keep up with the Jesus Christ Joneses, soto speak.

I decided to kill some time at the lake. Water calmed me, and I needed torelax. I ended up watching a couple bloated rednecks sit in lawn chairsand curse at each other over fishing poles. Hey, buddy, one of them calledto me after a while. My eyebrows jumped up, and I quickly pointed tomyself. No, that fuckin’ tree behind you. I laughed and edged my way closerto the van. Are you some kind of faggot? the other one yelled. No, no sir, myvoice cracked, I’m just looking at the water. They looked at each other, thenone of them stood up and mocked, Just lookin’ at the . . . you are a faggot,aren’t you? He moved toward me, and I ran so fast the soles of my shoescame close to kicking my own ass. I started the van and pulled out intime for the guy to slap his palm onto the hood. In a shower of gravel Ifloored it and watched him jump back then grab his bare legs as tinyrocks pelted him. There were a few middle fingers and epithets I couldnot hear, but I didn’t care – I’d escaped.

The road flew by as threadbare tires and a pinging engine put distancebetween a broken nose and myself. Faggot. I hated the word. They didn’tknow me. I had a girlfriend. Well, I had had a girlfriend, and there wasmore where that came from. As soon as my face cleared up I was going toput the moves on a hottie named Sharon McDonald. She was acheerleader, and she said I played guitar well. And what a piece of tail –she even farted in front of me. A janitor at church said that when theyfarted in front of you, it meant they were ready for marriage. I bet youdidn’t know that, you redneck swine. I could marry her or not. Up to me.

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Fishing at a lake and drinking cheep beer from a cooler – now who wasthe faggot?

After a few miles and a quick touch up with a zit pad, I pulled into UncleBubba’s parking lot. The Saturday afternoon crowd was in full swing,and I watched obese whales in blue jeans walking in and out the frontdoor. Then Jay Maxwell, a senior in high school and an engineenthusiast, pulled up in his orange Nova. A hulk of a kid, 6’4’’, 210 lbs, hewore his blonde hair short and always sported a pair of aviatorsunglasses – even in church. The girls gave it up, or so he said, and Iplayed hooky many a Sunday morning in a field behind the churchlistening to his stories of conquest.

I jumped from my seat and ran up to him as he headed toward the frontdoor.

Hey, what are you doing here? I asked.

Looking for a job, man, he smiled.

Me too.

Well, let’s get this party started, bitch, he laughed.

Classic Maxwell. He was either happy or sad, no in between. Life wasgood to him until it wasn’t, and then he let anything within earshotknow. I once saw him back down Mr. Boggs, a Sunday school teacher forhigh school boys at First Baptist. We were to gather in a circle and talkabout Jesus feeding the 5,000. Maxwell wanted nothing to do with it andinsisted on sitting in the back of the room. Boggs was a big man, a closematch to Maxwell, but no threat could move him into the fold. After astandoff that lasted ten minutes, Boggs’ threw his Bible against the walland shouted, You’re a disrespectful punk, and when I tell your father, I promiseyou boy, you’ll be asking forgiveness on your knees. Maxwell jumped from hisseat and crossed the room so fast, all of us, even Boggs, were stunned.Maxwell grabbed Boggs by the shirt and shoved him against the wall.That’s gotta be the lamest threat I’ve ever heard, he shouted. Boggs’ eyeswere wide open. If you wanna throw down, brotha, let’s throw down, but don’ttry guiltin’ me into something that makes me uncomfortable. Maxwell let himgo and walked to the door. If you or any one of you wants to test the will ofGod, I’ll be waiting in the parking lot. He was out the door, and the nextweek Boggs’ was working in the nursery.

Maxwell and I went inside Uncle Bubba’s and asked a hostess if we couldsee a manager. I had seen her at football games. She was a senior, big



breasted, and as Maxwell said, easy. It was busy, and she looked put out,but he gave her a wink and a nod, and she left blushing. Five minuteslater a fat man wearing a blue shirt and tie was before us. Yes, what can Ido for you gentlemen?

We’re looking for a job, said Maxwell.

Both of you?

Yes, sir, we said.

As a matter of fact, we’re looking for a couple bussers – but you have tobe flexible, and you probably won’t work together much.

Whatever you need, Maxwell said.

Follow me to my office, and I’ll get a couple applications.

And that’s how I came to spend 30-50 hours a week for the next yearwashing dishes and bussing tables at Uncle Bubba’s. My first paycheckwas $75. I couldn’t believe my eyes. My father was pleased. It’s a start, hesaid. A start? I laughed. A man could almost retire after a few years. Myfather smiled and nodded his head. He seemed to be harboring a secret –some of that mysterious adult wisdom to which I was never privy.

Life as a busboy left me fatigued. In an eight-hour shift, I was on my feetall but a 20 minute break. During the 12-14 hour shifts – never mindchild labor laws – I took 30 minutes. There were nights I came home andsat in the shower crying. My lower back bore the brunt of it, andsometimes my father stood on my spine while I held back tears. I wore aVelcro brace around my waist, but I could never get it tight enough. Atthe end of my employment I had gone through three of them.

The dish room had two stations. In the first, the busboy took tubs from atriple-tiered rack and removed napkins, food, receipts, diapers, you nameit, and tossed it into a garbage can. A preliminary rinse was sprayed on,and glasses, plates, and silverware were pushed down to station numbertwo. Here, the next busboy used steel wool and a hose with an intensespray to clear off baked on anything. Eggs were tenacious. I scrubbeduntil my knuckles bled, but sometimes the crud never came off.Everything was placed into racks and pushed through a hyper-intensivedishwasher that ran on a conveyor belt. From here the busboy at stationone would grab the rack and take it to any number of locations in thekitchen.

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At first I had difficulty learning the ropes. There were four headdishwashers, and each had a different idea of what it meant to be anoptimum busboy. By the end of a shift I would make it into his goodgraces only to be browbeaten the next by another hothead. The worstwas Allan Cromwell. He was 28 and had it out for me from thebeginning. I followed his instructions, worked hard, laughed at all hisjokes, but it was never good enough. He kept me busy at the first station,and I worked the flesh right off my fingers. I never complained, but thatonly exacerbated his hatred for me.

Allan liked Maxwell, and at first I liked Maxwell with us. They discussedcars and girls. I didn’t give a damn about cars, but I joined in on thelatter. Boy, I had some stories. I inundated them with endless tales ofanatomy and vulgarity. I described scenes from pornos as if I had beenthere myself. Maxwell thought it was funny until he noticed that Allanshot it down, and soon I lost ground with both.

Outside of work, I spent my time figuring out how to get closer toSharon McDonald. We talked on the phone every night, but when wehung up, she took calls from other suitors, and I tore my hair out writingmad poetry. She cheered on Friday nights, but I was usually across townclosing the dish room, sick with anxiety. Even though I missed the game,I worked double time trying to get out early enough to give her a callbefore midnight, her phone curfew. It was a shot in the foot. The bossestook notice of my speed, and soon I was scheduled to close nearly everyweekend.

Sometimes I made it to the game and watched Sharon from the stands.Her long blonde ponytail, her rosy cheeks and cute bubble ass, herscreams of encouragement to gangly wide receivers running madly tothe end zone – everything about her was pushing me closer to manhood,and afterward I often took the stirring in my loins with me into theshower. After those few games we talked breathlessly under the stands,and she would hold my hand and kiss my cheek. It was our little secret –it had to be. She was a popular kid and had to keep in good standing withothers. Surely I could understand a thing like that. I did, and I believedthat someday we would be together officially, just like she said. Just a littlelonger, she’d say, just until cheerleading season is over, or maybe right aftergraduation, but I love you, and we’ll be together soon, I promise. As I watchedher go to star running back Bobby Cromwell and his waiting Mustang,she’d say, Call me at 11.55, and blow me a kiss. Bobby would laugh andgive me a wave, and I’d wave back. Soon they were gone, and I’d feel sick,



but there was hope, because she loved me, and in a few hours she’d be onthe phone with me, not Bobby.

* * *

Two months as a busboy, and Allan had made my life a living hell. Hethrew buss tubs before me at lightning speed, piled plates dangerouslyhigh, and squirted me with searing hot water. One day he reversed thelocks on the employee restroom, locked me in from the outside, and I wasleft to bang until a manager let me out. He berated me any chance he got,and I felt a slow and steady rage welling within. This was new to me. Ididn’t know if I was going through a rite of passage or working up to abrawl in the parking lot. All too soon my worst fear presented itself.

After work one night Allan was beside my van. He sat on the hood of arusty Z-28 smoking a cigarette and waving me over. I wanted to run, butchecked myself. There was a gas station across the street, and I knew myfeet could move faster than his. I decided to approach.

We need to talk, he said coldly.

All right, I heard myself say.

My little brother Bobby says there’s a guy working here who wants tobang his cheerleader girlfriend, and he says I ought to kick his faggotass.

Bobby. Bobby Cromwell? I laughed. Think quick, numbskull, you’reabout to get a beating. Be cool. Let it out slowly: I didn’t know he wasyour brother.

You know my brother? Allan said while rotating his shoulder.

I know him from church, I said. He’s a good guy.

Don’t you go to the high school?

Home-schooled, I said.

Well, I’ll be, Allan laughed. He rubbed his chin deep in thought and said,I’ve thought all along it was Maxwell. He’s the type. You’re too good – achurch kid. Bobby goes, but it won’t last. He’s like his older brother; hedon’t need a crutch.

Maxwell probably doesn’t know that this, uh, cheerleader chick is goingout with Bobby.

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Either way, I owe you an apology, he said. He proffered his hand, and Ishook it greedily, desperately. I’ll see you on Tuesday, he said.

Yeah, see you, I laughed.

I climbed into my van, left the parking lot, and headed home. A wave ofemotion overcame me. I screamed at the top of my lunges and punchedthe steering wheel. I was safe, sure, but how could I give a damn now? Ihad sold out my friend, I was a coward, and if what Allan said was true,I’d lost my girl. I pounded away until my pruned knuckles splatteredblood on the dashboard. I was satisfied with my blood. It should havebeen coming from my straight nose or where my teeth still remained,but at least it was proof that I could bleed. And if you can bleed, you’renot truly a coward, I reassured myself.

I pulled into my driveway and cut the engine. Thoughts flowed quickly,and I rested my head in my arms. The only way out was to come clean. Icouldn’t face Allan with the truth, but I could tell Maxwell. He mighteven get a kick out of it. What a story, I could hear him say. I bet youwere sweating bullets. Hell, I would have said the same thing. Then Ibegan to rationalize. What if I kept quiet? If worse came to worst,Maxwell could take Allan. He was bigger and always ready to throwdown when the time came. My money would be on Maxwell. 30 secondfight. A shot to the chin, and Allan would be out cold. 25, no, 50 bucks inthe pot. One shot to the chin, ha, ha. That’s all it would take, andeverything would be all right.

But it wasn’t all right. In the weeks to follow, Allan turned on Maxwell.Maxwell couldn’t figure it out, but he never defended himself. He took itlike I took it, and it made me sick. I was mad. Allan waited for him afterwork, but Maxwell hopped into his orange Nova every time and peeledout of the parking lot. Nothing but a coward, Allan said.

It came to a head one night when the three of us were closing. Allanshoved Maxwell in the dish room, and Maxwell threw a buss tub filledwith glasses into the kitchen. Servers and cooks scrambled out of theway, and Maxwell screamed, Goddamn it, you prick, what did I do toyou? Allan smiled and said nothing. A manager was upon us instantly,and Maxwell shouted, this motherfucker won’t stop picking on me, and Ididn’t do anything to him. Allan looked at the manager and said, he can’ttake the heat. The manager pointed to Maxwell and said, in the office,now! but Maxwell took off his apron and back brace, threw it into the



manager’s chest, and walked out. That was the last time he worked atUncle Bubba’s.

I was ashamed. Ashamed of myself for being a coward and putting mytroubles on Maxwell, ashamed of Allan for standing by his brotherBobby and forcing Maxwell and me to deal with that allegiance, ashamedof Maxwell for being a coward like me and not standing up to Allan andbusting his face wide open. None of it would have happened if I hadn’tfallen for a girl who had no intention of being with me in the first place. Iturned my head away and fought the urge to cry. The dish room wasfilled with shame.

Next Sunday Sharon and Bobby were official, and I was put on “bestfriends forever” status. That meant I still received phone calls, but Bobbywas in her pants, and it made me writhe on the floor of my bedroom.Lost love, bad luck, or God working out his wicked justice. I couldn’t goto church with my parents. Damn, damn, damn, I shouted to an emptyhouse. I should have taken a beating.

Not long after Maxwell quit, Allan and I became work buddies. For somereason he took me under his wing and looked out for me even when Ididn’t need it. Maxwell secured a job at the hardware store, and after afew weeks we were hanging out again. He’d pick me up in his orangeNova, and we’d drive around country roads at high speeds. I never toldhim who set him up for Allan’s vengeance; a dark secret I kept to myselfuntil he joined the army and disappeared. I worked a year in that dishroom before realizing I was stuck in a black hole. Allan gave me a smallbottle of bourbon when I quit. I took a job answering the phone for a dietcompany soon after, but that was ok by me. There was still time for Paris,a band, a publishing deal, and courage.

206

The Office PartyBY M. DAVID HORNBUCKLE

- - - -

(1)

Ivan Wurkinonda Reilrode

Ivan is alone, the first to arrive. He turns on the lights and walks over tothe punch bowl. Empty. Green and yellow streamers hang like cobwebsfrom the ceiling. Tbhe garbage cans are overstuffed with paper platesand broken styrofoam cups. He bends down to feel the dark stains on thecarpet - still wet. Moving closer to the floor, sniffing like a hound, hestretches his tongue out for a sample of the offending liquid. “Piss,” hesays to himself. He springs to his feet yelling, “Piss! Piss!” He loosens histie and takes off his shirt. “Piss!” The tiny gray hairs on his chest standon end from the sudden chill. He growls. He takes off his shoes andthrows them the left one at the punch bowl and the right one at the faxmachine. The machine falls with a clank to the floor, and a note flies fromit like the last feather of a gunned-down bird.

He puts his shirt back on and walks into the kitchen. Someone is there,waiting in the dark.

- - - -

(2)

Alda Livelong Day

“No one is bringing any sweets,” Alda laments as she scans the volunteerlist. “Everybody is bringing salties. What’s a Christmas party withoutsweets?” She gazes around in wonderment, ignored. She turns to Kent atthe next desk. “Excuse me, Kent.”

He turns around. “Yes?”

“I hate to bother you, but do you think you could bring something sweetto the party instead of this?” She points on the list to an item, Dill WeedOyster Crackers, next to Kent’s name. “I know your wife makes

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wonderful chocolate cake and rum balls — you brought them last year. Iwondered if you could bring something like that instead, ‘causeeverybody’s bringing salty things, and nobody’s bringing sweets.”

Kent shrugs. “Well, I’d have to call her and ask, but I hate to do that sinceshe’s moved out of the house and all.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I’ll ask somebody else — don’t you worryabout it.”

“Oh, no. Wait. I’ll ask her. Really.”

“I couldn’t ask you to do that, Kent. Just don’t worry about it. I need toask other people anyway. Dinah, are you off the phone? Good. Now tellme, just what the heck are Creamy Weenies?”

- - - -

(3)

Ivan Wurkinonda Reilrode

Everything he hates. Why he condemned himself to this purgatory, hecan’t remember. First time he’s been around average joes since he was inhigh school — never had to deal with people like this in college.Forgotten how warped their values were - how susceptible to televisionculture they were. Disgusted, he quietly leaves the party. He can’t evenbear to look at them.

As he turns the corner, he passes a newsstand where three men in suitsare talking on cellular phones. “Stand firm,” one of the men says into hisreceiver. “Don’t let them talk you into doing anything you don’t want todo.” Ivan enters a coffee shop on the left side of the road. His head beginsto itch.

Something he was supposed to do. People on park benches. A slip ofpaper in his pocket, which he now decides to read. “Shit,” he says, and heturns back toward the office. For a few seconds he runs, then he walks.

- - - -

(4)

Jusda Pasda Timaway

“Every Friday we have mahi-mahi. Grilled mahi-mahi, baked mahi-mahi,barbequed mahi-mahi, blackened mahi-mahi, broiled mahi-mahi withlemon pepper sauce. Mmmmm.”

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M. DAVID HORNBUCKLE

- - - -

(5)

Kent Yahir DeWisselbloen

“Rhiza, this is my roommate, Ben DaCapenschouten.” Rhiza is so butch.She’s my idol. Lord, it’s warm in here.

“Good to meet you, Ben. My, you both have such unusual last names.How funny that you would end up as roommates.” Here it comes — thehow-did-you-two-meet story. I guess if I wasn’t prepared to answer Iwouldn’t take him out ever, but then what kind of friend would I be, forGod’s sake? “What do you do?”

“I’m in the food distribution business, in management,” Ben tells her,smiling. He points to his necktie, motifed with the Taco Heaven emblem.

“That must be interesting,” Rhiza says wryly.

- - - -

(6)

Rhiza Nupp

“I can’t stay too much longer. One of the girls on my soccer team ishaving a period party tonight.”

Alda says, “Is that similar to a costume party?”

“No.”

- - - -

(7)

Earl E. N. de Mourne

Earl finds a slip of paper that has drifted onto his desk. He looks aroundto see who had left him the leaflet, but he can not determine thedistributor. Shyly, he reads it.

Earl folds the memo and places it in the breast pocket of his corduroyjacket.

- - - -

(8)

Kent Yahir DaCapenschouten

“Earl, do you have a minute?”


THE OFFICE PARTY

“Sure, Kent. What’s up?”

“Well, I need to have my name changed in the computer system. SinceBen and I got, you know, married, I had my last name legally changed tohis.”

“Sure, Kent. Just fill out this form, and I’ll take care of it.”

- - - -

(9)

Dinah Bloyer-Horne

“What are these called again?”

“Creamy Weenies,” Dinah says with a sigh.

“Gee, they’re good,” says Alda. “Before you leave, I’ll have to get therecipe from you.”

“Sure, Alda. No problem. They’re really easy.” Dinah walks toward thekitchen and waits.

210

You Need Job?BY VIJAY PROZAK

I knew the job thing was going to turn out bad from the start. MarkHalloway and I were blasting a few sticks of bracingly potent Thai budbehind the facade of the big evangelical church they built in the failedmall behind the donut shop.

He bellowed a scirocco of resinous smoke into the air conditioning intakeand grinned. From below we could hear the rising harmonies of “HeLeads Me to Labor,” made almost bearable by the muffling layers ofmetal and concrete that blended the off-key multitudes into a single thickvibrato like a Black Sabbath riff. “Got work on Monday,” he said. “Saythere’s a drug test.”

I shrugged and accepted the joint. “Bring a fifty and bribe the urinetaker,” I suggested. We swapped tips for general society evasion afterthat. Both of us had been raised long enough into the decline of Westerncivilization to believe in nothing but our immediate comfort, includinghaving some place like this roof where the rest of them couldn’t find usand press us into some moronic labor.

Mark started out promisingly. The tow-headed kid knew the name ofevery capital city and could identify each verse at Sunday school. Hisambition: lawyer and if that wasn’t profitable enough, doctor. He wasdoing fine until his dad, a lawyer, came home drunk and bemoaned thelegal profession. “Don’t bother,” he said. “Every goddamn graduate isdoing that nowadays, and it’s like sheep rushing an escarpment, there’sno room to be excellent.”

The storm that had gathered momentum like a toilet flush burst afterthat, although it was the trigger not the cause. Away went the youngRepublican lifestyle and in marched Disillusioned Teenager Worldview.DTW proscribed studying, going to church, and believing in thecreativity of anything. DTW replaced innocent maps of a world toexplore with Filter and Nirvana posters. Dreams of pinstripes somedayturned to black, as did the clothing, and eventually, the walls.

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Mark became a psychedelic traveler and shocked his parents intosubmission with the rapidity of his landmarking: caught with pot amonth later, caught with a girl a month after that, caught on LSD twoweeks later, caught with a boy a month after that. His mother fainted andhis father joined the National Front. In contrast, I had no one to shock:I’ve been an advancing wastrel since my youth, and since every task I’veencountered succumbs to basic reasoning, I’ve never worried.

So it was that Mark became a tad maudlin on the rooftop, and that I didmerrily break out the bottle of cognac I had lifted from my part-time jobat DeMastico’s, a suave Italian restaurant where almost anything couldhappen later in shift after the staff ground themselves into pleasantinsensibility sampling the “dregs” of the wine. We finished it and Markalmost fell off the ladder down.

I slurred and stumbled my way home, but outside the door, straightenedand imaginary tie and forced myself into the appearance of sobriety,something I learned at the military school where they sent me at sixteenfor PhotoShopping a photo sequence of our principal with a stripper, amoose, and finally, a head of cabbage. Things had so far rotted in theAmerican Empire that the last was the real controversy, offendingVegans as far away as London and Tel Aviv. Inside the house it was areliquary of peace and stability, which always made me giggle aftershutting the door on the screaming cars, screaming advertisements,yelling people and howling sirens of the outside world.

But even for the house, it was unusually quiet. I padded through roomssilently, hoping that if they all had been murdered by an axe-wieldingpsychopath, I had time to get out so an indictment wouldn’t threaten myability to clean up on the insurance money. What happened was farweirder. My mother and father were sitting in easy chairs, lookingtogether at a newspaper open to a page already weathered by fingers.Even my mother was silent.

When I think of my parents, it is always in the language of magazinesthat tries to show you the unique and random perspectives on a situationso you only pass judgment at the end, when they tell you what to think.They are unpredictable, imaginative, and adventurous. They see theworld from a different light. They shun the shackles of convention toforge a new path to a future vision vivid in their minds. Back in the samesense of reality that you have in combat or surviving a night in the forest,they’re batshit crazy.

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My mother cleared her throat and fixed me with a fishy eyeset. Somewould call her a stern woman, but when I am confronted with thelinguistic dilemma of describing her, I think back to one of our pranks ineighth grade. This was before schools adopted the policy of puttingmildly retarded kids in different locations, since no one cared if youtormented a few short bussers since they wouldn’t inflate the GNPanyway. Our party trick was to put a few select lozenges of fresh dog shiton a bun, cover the mess with ketchup, and walk into the classroom withas little smugness as we could muster.

Mark, my friend since pre-school, would go over and start talking toSteve Christ, our resident tard. Steve was classified as mildly learningdisabled, before they made that phrase “learning challenged,” as if toconfirm that it was so horrible as to need a euphemism. Steve couldhandle basic function, but he was easy to dupe, and so appeared moreretarded than he was, bursting into the national anthem too early whengoaded by one or another of us, running down the hall to arrive early at aclass he’d been told was starting without him, and returning clumsyreplies to faked love notes from the prettiest girls in the class. (If he’s stillalive, he’s probably a favorite of local politicos — Steve would votedDemocratic for a popsicle or Republican for a candy vine.) If the worldwas measured in buckets of waste, Steve was the cruelty bucket.

My job (while Mark approached Steve) was to veer in front of the teacherand ask him some question so banal and unrelated to Steve that he tookhis eyes off Steve for a moment, which was unusual since Steve had to bekept religiously from well-intentioned but moronic actions. For somereason my usually glib self failed me, and all I could blurt out was aquestion about free will. Puzzled, the teacher told me it was a factor ofexperience and intelligence. “Well, does Steve have free will? I mean, he’sretarded and all,” I asked. The teacher fixed me with (another) fishystare: “Steve isn’t retarded. He’s just differently abled,” and on that cue Istepped back so we could both see unobstructed Steve, just about to biteinto a sandwich bulging with dog crap.

“Noyouidiot,” rasped the teacher but it was too late, and Steve chomped,chewed and barfed profusely, triggering ten kids in the first row to havesympathetic emesis. The second row had eight, and it might have died bythe third row except for the abundance of barf in the classroom, whichmakes your stomach worried enough that it figures it might as wellheave, too. Cue splatter, exit Mark and I through opportune ground-floor window.


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If Steve’s not retarded, my mother’s not a bitch. She’s just “cordialitychallenged” or some other phrase from the culture of the 1990s, which asfar as I could tell was a hybrid of the Communism of deformed New Yorksocial columnists and the tendency of advertising to make even offalpalatably inoffensive of big-suited fat-bellied Capitalists.

This was one of the many reasons my generation lost ideology:everything ran into the same dogma of don’t rock the boat, don’t offend,be nice to everyone, and if we just give the savages the canned hams andmachine guns they want, it’ll all turn out OK. I don’t think generation Z,as we’re called, are historians but we know enough of common sense tosee how this one’s gonna end and so we’re not going to waste any timeupholding it. My mother hated this in me and her hatred radiated subtlybut detectably now.

“Dennis,” she said (what kind of an idiot names their kid Dennis). Butthat was it, the two syllables clotheslined across the room of silence inher distinctive soft-throated half-whisper.

“Yes, mum,” I said quietly. “A bit of quiet in here. Everything on thegood-to-go?”

My father sat back and for the first time I could see the article.Apparently, in Russia, the plebes had finally figured out their newgovernment was a profit-driven version of the old, and just as they gotsick of seeing Russian girls sold to Americans as sex fodder, someinvestigative reporter peeked into the budget and discovered the vestigesof the KGB’s overseas deep-cover monitoring program (ASDFGHJKL,acronym in Russian). The next day red-faced politicians explained it hadbeen unnoticed but now, for the good of the people, they would remove itfrom the budget. The investigative reporter was found face down in a vatof pus drained from wounds at Moscow Central Hospital, and it waswidely assumed that he was so drunk he sneaked past three levels ofsecurity to pass out there, drowning instantly, we hope.

So what am I, Dennis Hamilton, thinking of this comedic debacle in 2006with a life of society evasion ahead of me until this whole mess blows up,probably when I’m hitting my eighties if I’m sorry enough to live thatlong? The relevance, Watson. What’s the relevance. If we find that, ofcourse, we have the key to the whole mystery. I probed: “Always caringfor others. Relax, this’ll never affect us.” My mother sighed, but with thatuneasy trill under an otherwise constant sound.

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The phone rang and my father picked it up. He listened while a voicerasped and cackled on the other end. Finally, after a pause like a sigh, hesaid simply, “Da,” and hung up the phone.

What was that nonsense syllable doing there? He didn’t look like a manso exhausted he forgot how to form words. And even a trampleech likemyself knows the word for “yes” in Russian. Da?

“Dennis,” said my mother. “We’ve got some difficult things to tell you.”Oh, glorious parental obliquity — how little that summarized thetectonic changes to my life, even my personality, to come in those fewminutes!

Backstory: Apparently in the 1980s the Soviets (and who’s heard of thatfallen empire?) became concerned because the decadent West had soadvanced its communications technology as to be able to loft upsattelites that, with the predicted advances in computing technologyforeshadowed by vastly superior video game consoles, would be able totrap full-spectrum communications and monitor them. With therelentlessness that replaced efficiency in the KGB, they set up a networkof spies throughout the West who lived in “deep cover” and barely evenremembered themselves that they were agents.

Apparently, also, my parents were members of this network.

“We’re Russians?” I said in a burst of intoxicated credulity. “My name isHamilton, I’ve grown up eating hot dogs and watching TV. I can’tbelieve it.” To those who know only the decadent pleasures of the West,the thought of originating in that austere, freezing and militant placewas less intelligible than a supposed origin on the planet Mars.

They nodded. And then dropped the bomb on me: my father’s job at theplant was a KGB hook, and it was gone in the snip of budget cuts as well.Having no skills except spying and filing paperwork, he was moving hiswife to an apartment and looking for new work that would not pay asmuch by far. Seeing how I was 18 and college unlikely because I didn’teven attend enough high school to have grades, it looked like Dennis theyounger needed to go find full-time labor.

It was the first time I’ve actually been scared out of intoxication. Andnow I needed to go down the intestinal tunnel of half-lit hallway to mytiny square room to pack and plan.

Monday dawned bright and early. Thanks to the magic of the Internet, Ihad a few job survival guides and a handbook to (the) Russian Language,


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but the restless ferment in my gut remained. Unlike in the Soviet Union,I ruminated over a bowl of gruel, I had several choices.

I could be part of the urban poor, who work minimum wage and live inbullet-riddle tenements. I could join the working class, sometimes calledthe lower middle class, who get paid more than the poor but not enoughto have much of a life. Or I could join the middle class as we normallythink of it, namely, those who did make it to law school or doctor schoolor became veterinarians or another profession — some call them the“professional” class, although in the internet age professions are a newbig roundabout soup of job descriptions like network engineer and diskmanagement supervisor. If I got really lucky, I could make that billion-dollar strike and join the elite of attractive superrich like RupertMurdoch and Paris Hilton. Christ.

I aimed for any of the last three categories. To achieve that, I needed ajob, and not the random food service or administrative assistant stuffthat Mark and I used to caper by, extracting six month’s pay here andthere or part-time gigs with flexible (read:abusable) schedules. Thisrequired a resume. Since high school had been a meltdown, and college— what? — wasn’t on the horizon, I was probably screwed. But I’velearned a few tricks.

First step was to use Dad’s card to buy an online diploma. I searcheduntil I found an online diploma mill that offered classes, and crankedthrough six months of MBA question and answer sessions with the helpof the dry remnants of that Thai bud. The ones that test give the bestresults, because the true diploma mills are quickly known for pumpingout incompetents with overstated degrees of mental fitness. When yougraduate college, you get a high school degree as well. Tidy.

Next I booted up the home computer, an insect machine that gruntedand growled through the arduous task of loading its operating system.They designed this thing before Arabic numerals, but I trusted thatWindows VC and Microsoft Word MMII would load and they did.Download quick all-purpose resume form. OK. Modify. Plenty of blanksin here. I called up Mark. “Any chance I can get your Dad to say I workedat the law firm?”

“No,” Matt giggled, and I could hear the smoke even over the blast ofNas in the background. “What, are you looking for a job or something?”

“Yeah,” I said. “No bucks, no bag. I need a reference.”

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“Well,” said Matt, “He wouldn’t do it, but he also leaves his password out.Lemme check something.” Nas fades to background progressively, thendisappears entirely. He’s walking down the hall of that big house.Computer noises, keys, and a eureka exclamation of breath.

“Personnel database,” said Matt. “I’m putting you down as making thirtygrand a year and am crediting your payments to a null account, so theywon’t find this for a few months. What did you do?”

What did I do... what’s the laziest, most useless, inclined to roust upbums and give them titles profession? “Writer,” I croaked out. “I guess.”

“Law firms don’t hire writers. Wait, maybe they do. Writer, technical.You good with computers?”

Good enough, since it was one of the few things I did play with that hadany practical merit. So it was that my resume, spell-checked andformatted with a little elbow grease from myself and my experienceforging legal documents, slid out of the printer. Now the boring part.

You don’t apply directly to any place for a job these days. You send yourstuff in to a resume bank or recruiting firm, and they hire you out oncontract. It’s impossible to fire anyone these days, because God forbidyou didn’t know they were gay, or half-minority, and are going to claimdiscrimination and take you down. On contract, all they have to do is hita checkbox and smile you out the door.

Recruiters are by nature coffee-addicts who talk fast and try to place youwherever you’re least likely to screw up. They get twenty percent ofwhat would have been your salary, was the West not decadent and sodistrustful that kids count their allowances in front of their parents.(“Sorry about the missing four bucks, kid. It was late and I needed someblow. If you’re lucky, I won’t get hooked and you’ll still have a collegefund, sort of.”)

The first guy I talked to wanted to send me to an oil rig, but that’s theend of all parties, since you spend three weeks on and two weeks off, butwhen you’re on, you don’t communicate with the world at all exceptthrough the internet. “Show me your tits” gets old when there’s nochance of touching, fondling, licking or even seeing in the free air suchmammaries which inevitably are prominent over a sucked-in and sizablestomach. “I’m looking for an office job,” I lied with all of my might and atouch of what I suspected might be a Russian accent.


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“We’ve got a rush,” he said. “Big company needs some guy to documenttheir work process.”

“Great,” I said. “Details?”

It was the biggest of big companies. Omnitech happily sells car batteriesto the working class, air conditioning pollution filters to the middleclass, and its own stock to the superrich. It has fingers in defense, energy,information technology and even entertainment. You can go through aday without touching an Omnitech product, if you live in Siberia.

The interview was at 8:00 AM sharp. I got up and put on the suit and tieI had in the back of my closet for parole hearings. Luckily, I was not aconvicted felon. My conviction was deferred until ending parole, so I putanother note in my steno book: call parole officer. At the sudden thoughtthat it might be seen in an interview, I added curlicues and bars to adornit, ending up with something that looked Cyrillic. Nyet, I thought.

To get into this place you take a freeway to a big road and there’s aprivate exit, along which you drive to an electric gate, and then you gothrough a colonnade of barriers against car bombs. At the security shedthis guy meets me.

“Here to see a Mister Arugula about a job,” I said, wondering if I had thename right.

“You’re on the list,” he said. “Pop the trunk so I can check it,” he insisted.No choice but to flip the lid. His face frowned, widened and grinned atthe bong, magnum size condoms, inflatable sheep, two syringes and 3-Danimated Kama Sutra. “No bombs,” he concluded. “And you needn’tworry, because all I do is say approved or not approve. They’re not goingto ask me about your apparently active sex life.”

Herein this man taught me the most important principle of largecorporations: one hand doesn’t talk to the other. They send each othermemoranda so rigidly structured that anything out of band gets filteredbefore it hits the paper. Well, I thought. This has possibilities.

I parked, got a badge, and went up to the desk. I was thinking: this is themost conservative of all businesses on earth. Expect guys who look likethe sheriffs in old movies. Instead, Mr. Arugula turned out to be a smallman with a foreign accent and this odd olive-grey skin and broad butsharpened features. I knew it was probably verboten to ask where he wasfrom, so I kept it professional.

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Not surprisingly, so did he. Technical questions. What had I done at theoffice? I recited things found with keywords on Google. How long had Ibeen there? I recited what Matt and I had agreed upon. Previous workexperience? I guess I claimed I was manager of two restaurants where Iworked, but both had gone out of business. What did I hope for in a job?Gosh, what’s the safest answer — “I’d like a challenge,” I said.

Right. Without a smile he kicked me upstairs to interview with theirpersonnel — sorry, Human Resources — people. These questions were acombination between a psychiatric test and drunken midnightconversation. What did the word “relentless” mean to me? Assertive, ofcourse. Look on the bright side. Did I like my current job? Yes, no andmaybe, in one brilliant sentence. Where did I want to be in five years?Here I almost blew it.

“I know this thirteen-year old girl...” I began, but there was no smile onthe leaden face of someone who could be Mr. Arugula II but spoke withan American accent, probably New York. Red-faced, I continued, “...andshe’s going to need some positive adult figures who can show her what areal corporate job is like.”

The grey face beamed. I knew I had the job from the moment I left,waved to the security guard, drove to a Taco Bell and pitched all theincriminating shit in a dumpster. I got home, which was now half-bare asmy father and mother hauled pieces of furniture to the dump andGoodwill in preparation for their move to a tiny, awful apartment.Apparently, they’d both secured jobs as night cashiers at the 7-11 whereMatt and I always bought rolling papers. Mental note: warn Matt.

Deep breath, and call recruiter. “They loved you,” he said. “And they needsomeone right now. Can you start tomorrow?” No problem.

When I drove in the gate and they gave me a badge (works in electronicslots around the company), I felt like a million bucks crossed with aprison sentence. From now on, every day was going to be the same, or atleast in the same place. I tried to summon every funny sitcom I’d knownabout jobs, but none really emphasized the positive side. So I tucked intothe work.

Now you must know that why I avoided real jobs before had nothing todo with work. Hauling fat out to the grease dump, washing plates,serving people and prepping food (endless chopping) is no festival ofease. But it is less offensive. Not much is asked of you and if you’re polite,you can get away with anything. The deep fryer is broken; would you like


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baked chips instead? y/n. You go to work and spend time that’s more likehelping some buddies with their cooking project than doing somethingwhich involves responsibility and consistent attention to detail.

Omnitech was another story. It wasn’t what I anticipated. It was mucheasier. Somewhere between being a fry cook and being a brain surgeon. Ihad responsibility, but the demands and checkpoints were repeated atnumerous locations and times by many people. I had detail, but for themost part it was trivial: building on what already exists. One guy inventsthe gasoline engine based on steam engines, another guy invents the carbased on horse carriages, some other guy puts ‘em together and makesall the money. Nothing I did at Omnitech involved anything more thancombining two parts and putting the company logo on them.

I started writing documents instructing people in the use ofOmnisoftware. This wasn’t any more difficult than book reports inschool, although the documents were longer. Find out the type of thingyou’re working on, find an example on the net, and adapt it to yourspecifics. Done. They give you four weeks, tell them you need eight anddo it in six and you get two weeks of in-house vacation. Not easy and nothard.

Most of the people I met there were smart but not really smart. Theywere like machines. They looked for opportunity, found it, and then putthe best thing previously invented into that place and made it slightlybetter. Then they went home to their apartments and houses, workingwives if they had them, and watched TV until it was time to sleep or goto work again. I met one guy on the fifth floor who didn’t sleep all weeklong; he said there was too much he’d miss on the late channels. He sleptthrough the weekend, though, because the movies on cable were allfamily movies (heroic dogs, trite romances, power of faith) and hecouldn’t stand that.

I learned several lessons I call Job Logic and reproduce here, becausethey’re a surefire way to get rich and fat in a dying society. Lesson onecame on my first day.

“Never assume responsibility for anything unless it is successful or noone else can do it,” said Jack Roberts, the only fellow slacker I had metthere. We would have smoked dope together but you couldn’t get awaywith it in the parking lot, and I didn’t like him enough to meet himoutside work. This was the nature of most people I met there.

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“See Arugula?” he said. “That guy makes a fortune here because heunderstands this principle. He tells people he’s working on a project onlywhen it has already become successful according to his boss. Watch.”

Jack walked over to Arugula’s desk, looked down, and then said, “I’ve gota conference call going and they want to know how the Guildensternproject is going. Can you give me a status?”

Arugula shook his heavy head. “Howard and Jong are working on that,”he said.

“OK,” said Jack. “Mind if I use your phone?” Arugula got up and walkedaway, but he took with him the folder that had been in his hands whenJack approached. I saw written on its face the word Guildenstern. Jacklooked back at me with a smug nod.

So work went on. Attitude is such that you get into the office, you checkyour email, you return phone calls, and then it’s break the first. Comeback, do something for most of an hour, then talk to other workers at thecooler and it’s break the second. Wait another forty minutes and it’slunch. That afternoon, having exhausted my share of lunches and smokebreaks and trips to “find that document,” I was at my desk actuallyworking when I saw the ebullient Mr. Arugula, now my boss, again.

The leaden face remained still while the violet lips moved: “Are youdoing the Rosencrantz project?”

I knew I would be doing it, that I was to start on it in two weeks, andthat I was responsible for taking notes on its future, but he asked in thepresent tense, so I said, “No, I think that’s Edward or Sanjay.” Off hewent, and I slid the Rosencrantz folder under another. Can’t say I didn’tlearn from the best. Arugula went on to become lead project manager,then got hired by the Navy to make their submarines watertight. Hedelegated the entire project, borrowed against his salary and bought ashit-stinking pig farm just outside LA, then contracted a security firm inthe ghetto and made his fortune selling “gentrified estates” where oncepigs had defecated so decadently. “That guy’s a genius,” said Jack, later.“I’ll never have that skill.”

The gold standard of it all however was the busy drill. “If I have thetime” and “I didn’t have the time” were common refrains. At first thesemade no sense to me, as these people were the same ones taking hour anda half lunches and long breaks. Then it fit: these breaks were part of theirjob, not something else, since they were forced to take the job in the first


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place and without it wouldn’t need the breaks. Brilliance! Soon, I, too,was often busy.

While the whole experience wasn’t as bad as I thought, I did find somedrawbacks. First, you’re out of time. Get into work at eight — well,you’ve been up since seven most likely, and possibly longer if you live faraway. Get out of work at five and it takes you an hour to get home. Thenthere’s invariably something you have to do. I had gotten an apartmentat this time, and was staggered by the amount of time required tomicrowave a dinner, clean up, pay the phone bill and do laundry. There’salways something to do.

The other shocker was that function always comes first. When you’re atrue slacker, you can go to sleep whenever and however convenientwithout thinking too hard about it. At a job, you’re constantly thinkingahead. Do I need money, or some random object for tomorrow? Buy ittoday, even if it’s a weekend. Can I eat this greasy, delicious jalapenopizza? There’s a committee meeting at 11:00 — do you want to be theguy who shits Conference Five? I’d never been so diligent in my lifetoward the details of my survival. Luckily, the job was lax on costume,but I came to like formal shirts and suits. They’re expensive, but the drycleaners handle everything for just a few bucks. Less detail, less worry.

Job lesson the second was no shocker to anyone who’s ever talked a girlinto the sack: appearance is more important than reality. Arugula camein one afternoon and said, “Are you working on the Guildensternproject?”

“No,” I said. “I thought that was months off.”

“We have a project update committee meeting today,” he said. “Take outthe folder and begin to work on it.”

“But,” I protested. “I don’t even know what the final prototype lookslike!”

“Make it up,” he said. “We will not use this work anyway.”

I thought he was plum crazy but I’d be crazier to disobey, so I took outthe folder, spread the pages of random theory all over my desk, andstarted a document that was half Arthur C. Clarke and half plagiarizedfrom the crap in front of me. Sure enough, at exactly 4:30 people in suitswith rigid faces came in the front door and marched up to me, since mydesk was first in line.

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“May I help you,” I said, using the exact same diction as when makingsandwiches — friendly and loose.

“Yes,” said a stern young woman. “Who is working the Guildensternproject?”

“Mr. Arugula and I have been doubletime on this one,” I said. “It’s a hardpath when we’re this slammed, but it’s very important, so he and I havebeen the active team.”

The woman turned to the man with the legal pad beside her. “Fire therest,” she said. “Obviously they’re useless.” Knowing my place, I hadturned back to my document and resumed typing, so I didn’t notice himalso write down the name on my deskplate.

The next week I got promoted.

“You’re really advancing,” said Jack. “I can’t believe it. I’ve been here fouryears and never gotten this far.”

“It’s because I have a greater degree of something,” I said.

“What?” said Jack. “Intelligence?” He eyed me suspiciously, as if a geniusmight lurk under this skin and mean evil to the rest of them.

“No,” I said. “Insincerity. What do I have to know going upstairs?”

He told me here a rule that is so golden I’d type it a few thousand times ifI could, and it is Job Lesson the third: Justify everything you do in termsof its impact on a third party. You’ll get shot down saying “I thought itwould be a good idea to send Accounting to the moon,” but if you say,“Upper management thought Accounting was better suited to themoon’s low gravity,” heads nod and when you leave the room they say“he’s rising fast.”

I applied this diligently, and as is the nature of success, applied a singlemodification: instead of our clients, I talked about “our client’scustomers.” It was pure genius. When someone asked why I was slicingaway personnel, simplifying the project, and outsourcing itsmaintenance, the answer was that our client’s customers wanted it thatway. My projects returned more income than anyone else’s that year. Itwasn’t that I stopped us from doing the same sloppy old job — hell, no— I found a way to do that sloppy job with fewer people and fewerresponsibilities. The legal team especially thought I was brilliant.

When I think about my generation, what stands out most commonly isthat we are afraid collectively and singly of undertaking any action


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involving more than two steps. We think it will make us adults, and thusprone to that calcification of existential thinking that marks the wearyoffice dwellers of our world. We remember our parents, tired andarguing, going off to buy some moronic object or another, and thenbeing “too busy” to do anything fun on weekends. We could hear theirteeth grinding at night.

So we ran from it, but there’s nowhere to run, since now you need moneyjust to survive, and a lot of it if you don’t want to end up in the ghetto.And as I frequently remind my constituents, the great thing aboutAmerica is that you can rise if you want to and if not you’ll end up in theghetto just like anyone else. There’s no privilege here. Sink, swim orfester. I thought I knew the ghetto from Nas records, but when I took awrong turn going to a conference center, what I saw was less excitingthan I expected. The dope dealers were in hiding. The bag ladies, winos,people with deformities and rapists were not. Rotting tenements leanedover a dark asphalt-stinking street lined with trash cans. I turned aroundthat car and spent the meeting, at which my presence was appearance tojustify a proposal for a third party, thinking: how to get out of this?

The answer is surprisingly simple. Either you become one of thosebeaten souls who settles into academia or forest service as a means ofhaving a job you halfway like and accept the fact you’ll be living inrelative poverty far from anything fun, or you try to earn enough moneythat you can buy yourself out before you get too old to even enjoy aquality bowel movement. To get this kind of money, you either enter theprofessional level or go into government. I mulled over these options.

Probably the most important thing I learned about jobs (and dyingempires) however was the simplest. Aggression is rewarded. Push aheadlike your concern is the only important one in the world. Push people todo things for you, chide them if they don’t, and praise them when theydo. They’re your slaves if you can convince them to act like slaves. If youdon’t push ahead like a criminal, others will, and you’ll get buried. Youronly job is to care about yourself. While some would say this issociopathic, um, I don’t have an answer for that, but it works.

I’m living proof. Five years at Omnitech and I was a senior manager. Ihad a stroke of genius one day which was that if I waited until a projectwas successful and invested, I was breaking the law, but if I investedbefore the project was assigned, I could take home uncountable millions.Our stock was at a grand low when I started hanging out near the

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network printer, on which I could see anything anyone printed, andfound an article about our new oil extractor and its possibilities. I soldeverything I could carry and borrowed money like a fiend and threw itinto our stock. Six months later I walked out of the stock office with abank account balance I had to read twice to make sure the zeroes were inthe right places.

My parents were living at the time in a coldwater apartment about tenfeet from the train tracks. “We’re so glad you could visit,” said mymother, her hands folded like melted bronze on each other.

“I’m doing pretty good,” I said. “What’s my father doing?”

“He’s got a day shift now,” my mother said. “Working in the 7-11.” Shewaited after that like she expected me to volunteer money, but as I toldher, I needed it to reinvest.

“That’s good,” I said. “You’ll do fine.”

“There’s nothing you could spare for your old parents?”

“No,” I said, getting my coat. “The best rise, and the rest will do alrightfor themselves. It was good to see you.” I couldn’t get out of thatneighborhood, which looked like it had been boiled too long in one of thefast-order kitchens of my past, soon enough.

The rest is a matter of public record. I kept investing but this time incompanies I knew belonged to competent acquaintances from otherfirms. No one person in this industry works a job. The job fundsspeculation on the stock market or having one’s own company. If you finda person who actually works, and their idea is not outright crazy, buy it.One in three will return enough for twenty failures.

After rising to Vice President at Omnitech within a decade, and beinguniversally hailed as a genius, my life went through changes. I found thedaughter of an old Southern judge who was recovering from a twenty-year drinking binge and, on impulse and with a huge pre-nup, marriedher. Her old man slapped me on the shoulder, welcomed me to the family,and asked what my politics were. Christ, I don’t know.

“Well, I’m all for the common man,” I said.

“You mean you’re a Communist?” he frowned.

“No, I mean I think we all need a chance to get a great job and getahead,” I said.


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“Excellent,” he said. “Welcome to the Republican party.”

I was old enough to run at this point, and feeling a little creaky, thoughtit might be fun to be a conservative politician. I put my job principles towork during my first interview.

“Do you endorse any of the plans before the Senate for ending poverty?”she asked.

Not about to take responsibility for anything, I said, “I’m studyingthem.” She seemed to want more so I added: “I believe the best plan willtake into account the needs of both employers and the working people.”State the obvious, it’s safe.

I got more nervous with her next question as I thought she was on tome. “And no plan has stuck out as more likely to achieve this than theothers?” (Is she kidding?)

“I have not yet had time to prepare a final conclusion,” I said, “but I’ll tellyou this: we will make the American worker feel greater justice andsatisfaction in his or her jobs, and we’re going to do it through lessgovernment and more personal responsibility.”

At that point, a bug crawled up my nose.

Those of you who don’t live in Texas probably think this odd, but thefact is that Texas has over six million species of crawling, flying,creeping things and they get in the front doors, past the security guard,into the elevators and even up into sound studios. My right eye began totear. I can’t admit there’s a bug up my nose on national television.

“When I think of all the people out there,” I said, cracking my voice foremphasis, “Just tryin’ to make ends meet, tryin’ to pull it together, myheart goes out to them.” A single tear ran down my nose. “These are my— not mai, but muh — my people, and I know we have to do somethingfor them. I just know it” (lesson two). Surprisingly, even the silly womaninterviewing me seemed to be ready to turn on the waterworks.

And lesson three, you ask? That came at a press conference on the stepsof Congress a day later. “Senators tell me that my plan won’t work,” Isaid, “But I think they’ve forgotten some one: the third party to whomwe defer. This third party is not goverment, nor the clients of thegovernment both foreign and domestic, but the people. The people wantmy plan and their vote will show it.”

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Not long after that I was a US Senator. Applying my Job Logic, I quicklydominated that silly profession. First step was to take a nice, even middlepath. My Republicanism became more Democratic at the same time myDemocratism became more Republican. Voters loved it as I split theticket with every vote. “He actually cares about the issues,” they wouldsay reverently. The issues? Hell, I cared about the polls because I knewthat whatever people saw on TV they’d adopt as their own opinion,proud as pie for having thought of it themselves. Most important voice inany vote is the client, and in this case the client is whoever pulls thatlever, so I’d watch the polls like a hawk and find a way to fit in.

Some of my greatest hits:

“Senator Hamilton, what do you plan to do about illegal immigration?”

The polls show the public is against it, but the business owners who paymy advertising costs are for it. A genius would break down confrontedwith this choice, but not me. “While I am against immigration,” I said tonumerous cheers, “I’m also against this great nation of ours shutting outopportunity to anyone. That’s Communist, and I won’t stand for it.”

“Senator Hamilton, is the national debt out of control?”

Easy one. Watch this: “It’s most certainly out of control. The problemhowever is that those who want to cut the national debt will do so at theexpense of social services, things that reg’lar people like you and me aregonna need. I’ve cut my salary by fifty percent and have encouraged thestaff to recycle paperclips. We’re gonna beat this one somehow.”

“Senator Hamilton, is the attack on Aruguland opening another front inthe war on terrorism?”

That one’s 100% political dynamite. Watch out, watch out... walkcarefully. “Well, you know I’ve never been fond of war,” I said carefully.“But on the other hand, we can’t let these people walk all over us. True,we’ve already got seven wars going, and three more in the pipe, but wecan whip any of these nations blindfolded, so why should we worry?”

My gosh golly, it was ripe. I’d even become a Southern politician, withfull drawl and hat, even thought I was born in New York to Soviet spies.God, I love this country. It didn’t take long for the usual problems offailing empires to make me President: the speaker of the house died, thecurrent administration went down in the muzzle flashes of scandal, andwith the parties split, it was time for a charismatic candidate to takecharge. I made some handshake deals, signed a piece of paper and called


YOU NEED JOB?

up my media machine from the cell phone in the limousine. Yeah, Iupgraded my transport, but we were still stuck in traffic. Man of thepeople.

The election was brief and almost a walk-in since my opponent hadforgotten about some compromising pictures — that he downloaded,featuring an intern in states of undress becoming intimate with one ofthose GM cucumbers. After a whirlwind speaking tour, at which I saidnothing, and an election which boiled up and down to hit a plateau like arock when counting happened, I was in.

I didn’t do it any harm, I’ll swear. I did exactly as I did at Omnitech,which is make inefficient agencies be just as inefficient but cheaper, andwalked right into the presidency on the ensuing wave of popularity. VoteHamilton stickers and signs and television commercials seeded the landfor my victory, thanks to a population that thought I was great andbusiness sponsors who believed I was pliant. Well, whatever works.

To make a long story short, nothing was going to save the West as Iknew from day one. This place has had its run and now it’s just the longwalk downhill. Shoot, we don’t even agree on what’s good and badanymore, and to make people vote for something, you have to make itreally simple and use guilt, fear, humor and sympathy to get them to votefor it. Orphans, terrorists, nuclear war, civil rights, pedophiles anddictators work best. Yes to saving orphans and civil rights, for ourfeminine side, and total war against pedophiles and dictators so ourmasculine side can feel good as well. I tell you, I’m the master ofdemocracy.

Things didn’t go so good for the USA. While Europe was busy fightingthe Falun Gong extremists who now made up 15% of its population, wewere battling over Arugulan immigration. I held the line and let it go onand as a result counted on Arugulan support for the second election. Itwas my last term and I tell you, I wouldn’t want to run after that. I nolonger had normal constituents. Every single one of them had a specialissue. Feminists, rabid right-wing Christians, gay rights, civil rights,people for legalizing dope (now, I was divided on this issue), people forthe right of the retarded, the fat person’s lobby, Falun Gong... the listwent on and on. There was no hope of consensus.

So what to do? Back to Job logic lesson the first: never assumeresponsibility for something unless it’s going to be successful. I bowedout with an emotional speech about how I could no longer serve my

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people through politics. Wrote a book on ten thousand sheets of paper,detailing each case where I was right and they were wrong (easy inhindsight) that my sighing editor cut down to 800 pages of mostlycoherent narrative. We The People bought it in droves.

Unfortunately, it didn’t do them much good. For all that I’ve pledged toWe The People, I’ve got to admit they have their shortcomings, andinability to have a plan and stick with it is one of them. Our elevenforeign wars culminated at the same time, and our army which could’vewhipped each one of those bad guys easily couldn’t knock out all eleven.Our debt ballooned and then our currency crashed. Smart people starvedwhile smiling idiots worked as fry cooks. I retreated with trophy wifeand token 1.8 kids to a gated community, then to South America.

History hasn’t heard much from the United States lately. After elevenlost wars, two revolutions, and jobs that bred the worst of us whilekeeping the best down, the place pretty much fell apart. News stationsdropped off the air as they lost money or political protection. Mafias andprivate armies ran the country. By the time the Chinese invaded, it was aghost of itself, turned on itself in ten million different ways. The Chineseuse it like we used to use them, as a kind of colony-cum-mine from whichthey get stuff to ship back. I hear dissatisfaction with jobs is nowwracking Chinese youth, and I wish the best to them.

I’m somewhat sad about the demise of my foster country, but I’m stilltaking care of job one, which is me. We’re in the jungle now a fewhundred miles from the capital city of a country that might as well haveno laws. I don’t read the news anymore, and I don’t worry, because I’vegot fifty armed guards and I know they have allegiance to me. Why?Because I pay them. They needed jobs and I gave them jobs in a time ofneed. Whatever you say about me, you cannot say I don’t know how tomotivate people.

Editor’s note: Here the manuscript ends. This was found in the Merideanjungle of Costaguana in a ruined villa draped with vines, where it wasstored apparently hastily in a desk safe. Records indicate that theAmerican republic, which disappeared from international politics twocenturies ago, elected Dennis Hamilton during the last cycle before itscollapse. Today, the North American continent is an unbrokenwilderness scattered with concrete ruins and peopled by illiteratesavages.


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ContributorsTony Byrer grew up with a burning desire to be a quality engineertechnician for a bloodsucking, soul-killing American corporation. Heachieved his dream in Nov. 2000, and has spent thousands of ecstatichours preparing spreadsheets, assembling reports, and occasionallymasturbating into the coffee maker. The high point of his career waswhen the hot young doc control specialist smacked her lips after sippingher coffee and said, “I don’t know what this flavor is, but I’ve had it in mymouth before.” You can read more at http://ygrii-blop.livejournal.com/.

Joshua Citrak says: I edit and publish slouch magazine atwww.slouchmag.com. I am an associate editor at Oyster Boy Review. Iam a frequent contributor to Small Spiral Notebook and i write theirbook blog. I never comb my hair and hardly ever have anythinginteresting to say.

Mike Daily is a freestyle fictionist, novelist and blogmaster whofrequently performs his work in Portland, Oregon. He is currentlyvocalist for the indie / freestyle / experimental rock band, O’Grady. Hissecond novel/first full-length CD, ALARM, will be released in 2007(Archivalism). Mike Daily apparently uses Mick O’Grady to write abouthimself in the third person. And first. He can be found atmickogrady.blogspot.com.

Kurt Eisenlohr is a writer and a painter. His first novel, “Meat Won’t PayMy Light Bill,” was published by Future Tense Press in 2000. He iscurrently writing a new one. “Roman Candle” is an excerpt from that asyet untitled work. Kurt has a blog called EASY TO USE(kurteisenlohr.blogspot.com) where he posts his art and writings. Helives in Portland, Oregon.

Michael Gilbert (Nile577) may be found in Suffolk, England or DaneCounty, Wisconsin. He works as a professional editor and pseuds as apost-graduate student. He is an aspiring playwright and librettist. Heenjoys circulating leashed quadrupeds in feral environments and ismercifully blessed with no practical ability whatsoever. When askedabout such things, he identifies himself as a Nietzscho-Heideggerian-transcendental-Vedic-pantheist, before blushing, looking down at the

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table and reflecting on his lack of college social life. You may reach himat [email protected]

Josh Hamilton is a self-loathing coward who drowns his sorrows inbottles of Tennessee moonshine. In between issues of AITPL he standson his porch screaming madly at passersby. He now washes dishes for hiswife and three finicky cats.

M. David Hornbuckle is a writer and musician originally fromBirmingham, AL. He now lives in New York City and leads theacoustipunk band the M-Word, as well as the M. David HornbuckleDixieland Space Orchestra. His ukulele performances have garnered hima modest amount of fame on YouTube in the past few months.Hornbuckle is in the process of writing a novel called Lyonness and acollection of short stories about sex, religion and weather.

Robert Howington (aka Dirty Howie) said: If you want to read the realshit, watch real digital films, see great photography, then head yourbrowser (Firefox is preferred) over to anti-heroart.com, a website Istarted in 1998. It houses works by my fellow white trash redneckfriends, including Motel Todd, Hippy Steve, Scary Gary, Chainsaw,William Bryan Massey III and Ben La Rosa. We’re uncensored,unapologetic and, therefore, unnoticed. Oh, by the way, have a nicefuckin’ day.

Stephen Huffman is a beer swiller who mostly hides at ‘The Ranch’ inAledo, TX. Between beers he dabbles in photography, music, scribblingwords and showing up for work in nearby Fort Worth. He’s a frequentcontributor to Anti-HeroArt.com, and is currently working up the nerveto finish writing a semi-fic novel about his experiences on a NuclearSubmarine in the 70’s. You can cuss him out at [email protected].

mj klein is the creator of Metrofiction.com and Metrolingua.com Readthe awesome blog at blog.metrolingua.com

Jon Konrath has been a stagehand, Taco Bell drive-through cashier,dishwasher, paint mixer, receiving clerk, cafeteria worker, telemarketer,plastic pipe fitting packer, punch press operator, computer lab babysitter,contract C programmer for the USGS, computer science tutor, computertraining assistant, print facility consultant, UPS temp, factory labor

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temp, second-tier phone support consultant, listserv moderator for theWINE linux package and a for pornography site, glowstick vendor,credit card solicitor, zine editor, freelance editor and writer, and technicalwriter. He has written five or so books and can be found online atrumored.com.

Dege Legg (Pronounced: “deej”) is a writer/musician, born & raised inthe swamplands of Louisiana. He has spent the last 20 years exploring &documenting weirdness in the Deep South. Author of 2 books and 5records as well as founder of the bands, Santeria & Black BayouConstruktion.

Sarah Katherine Lewis is the author of “Indecent: How I Make It andFake It as a Girl For Hire” (Seal Press, Oct. 2006). She lives in Seattle,Washington and spends her time writing, cooking, and shakin’ her assfor The Man.

Vijay Prozak lives in a dumpster buried underneath the I-10 freewaywhich spans the states of the American South. He has since age 8 been adissident who believes modern society leads only to the slowest form ofdoom, and has dedicated his life to resurrecting romantic heroism in theslumbering brain of his species. Viewed by many as a kind of NietzscheanHindu Unabomber, Prozak believes the best defense is thoroughoffensiveness and wants all of you to know your cocks are in reality quitetiny.

Lisbeth Rieshøj Pedersen is a great Dane who suffers from a severe caseof verbal diarrhea and is extremely addicted to coffee. She completed herM.A. in English Language & Literature in 2005 and has since then faceda cruel world of unemployment. Lisbeth wastes her time at the following[virtual] addresses www.myspace.com/lillyslounge andlillyslounge.blogspot.com.

John Sheppard’s novel Small Town Punk will be coming out January2007 with Ig Publishing. Visit www.smalltownpunk.com for moreinformation.

Motel Todd was born on January 3, 1967 in Texarkana, TX - a stone’sthrow from Arkansas. Though his parents were Arkansas teenagers,they are not related. At that time Arkansas’ state slogan was THE


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LAND OF OPPORTUNITY, so he got his and moved to Dallas in 1971.He has lived all over the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex from 1971 to thepresent playing in various obscure garage bands and writing mostlyabout his white trash life. An interesting medical fact about him: he hastwo spleens. He was spared the lazy eye and club foot. He is circumcized.

Julie Wiskirchen resides in Los Angeles, works at Google, and is the co-editor of Ape Culture (apeculture.com), a pop culture humor webzine.She writes about baseball on her Cardinal Girl blog (cardinalgirl.com).She co-authored St. Lou Haiku, published by Timberline Press in 2004(stlouhaiku.com). The story in this zine comes from her as-yet-unpublished novel Earth City, a black comedy about temping and tributebands. Let the bidding war start now!

Sergeant Zeno is a writer and publisher in Washington DC. He publishesRaped Ape Magazine and runs Sotry House Publications. No longer paidto smuggle weapons and kill non-white foreigners, you will find himlurking in the darker bowers of the internet compilingcounterintelligence on the subhumanity that skulks in the vestige ofcivilization. Write him at [email protected].

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