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Issues
» 2005
Issue About
GR
Georgetown
Review
G&R Publishing |
Spring
2005
from On the Tendencies of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type Whitney Woodard ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Some of them know you’re hungry, so they ask you over for dinner. There is no getting out of that. You spend your last few dollars on a baguette, because you can’t show up empty-handed. Invariably there is another person there, a stranger, eyebrows cocked, who asks you what you do. “Development,” you say. “Mainly my cerebral cortex.” “At the moment I’m investigating learned behavior and culture as a hominid adaptive strategy.” Something has to be done. Going to the library is less traumatic. You can’t circle the ads in ink, after all. You can’t detach the paper from its wooden spine. That would be stealing, and you are not a thief, yet.
There are three or four little squares that are possibilities. One of them
looks interesting. Within its smudgy frame, something magical is waiting.
The one that makes your phone ring is one you can’t remember. “Downtown. $35,000 a year. Stock options.” You are very polite to the caller, pretending that you are, indeed, the interested applicant. You answer all of the questions smartly, and ask some pertinent ones yourself, like: “Would I be expected to come in every day?” When you hang up, you have a series of numbers, a sequence that will get you somewhere, at a specific time. You feel virtuous and indignant, clean. You go outside to enjoy the sunshine. The day has the quality of something not meant to last. You try not to think about it, nothing is for certain. Still, you can’t help telling a few people. “Wow,” your friends say. “You? Interesting.” “Don’t
screw it up,” your mother warns. “This may be your last chance.”
Several times you have attempted to be late, but it has always failed. As late as you were, you were still earlier than everybody else. And so you sit in the waiting room, thinking about stealing the magazines, because you have forgotten how colorful they can be. This one has a pretty picture of a flower you could cut out and send to your mother, and that one has a way to make guacamole that you had not considered, powdered with curry, and garnished with orange slices. Some day, if things work out, you may be able to afford avocados again. The third magazine, even though it’s three weeks old, explains a little bit about what’s going on in the world. You are surprised that it is so simple to figure out, the words are so big and clear. You feel fortified with current events, but also a little bit panicky, because it is too easy to read, and now you understand too much. The secretary winks at you, a sign of complicity. As a receptionist, she only has to pretend to be nice. There it is again, a blink and eye roll, deliciously delinquent. You grin wildly and send one back. Just then the Boss’s face, pale and sweaty, stern, comes into view. He has a high skull vault and large-looking cranial capacity, a thickly set mandible. “Hello,” he says. He shakes your hand, detached and practiced, as if staring at himself in the mirror, greeting someone he could never trust. “Hold all my calls,” he tells the secretary. This is not the same tone he uses with you, but that could change at any moment. He leads you down the hallway, half a body ahead. You try to keep up, but he knows the corridors too well; they stretch and twist like taffy. On the walls are large colorful prints—cartoons, actually—that indicate this is a “fun” place to work, even for adults. “Oh dear,” you ask. “Should we drop bread crumbs?” His expression says nothing. |
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