To Live and Love In L.A.

by Ben Peller

  Wonderfully unaware of these straw legs that held my stacked resume together the ladies at this temporary employment agency, all of whom seemed to be in their mid-to-late twenties and ideal candidates for a remake of Melrose Place, loved me. Especially Quinnifer, a fellow Chicagoan refugee who squealed with shared exuberance when I confessed to not miss the changing of seasons at all.

  “Doesn’t sunbathing in mid-January seem devilish in a way?” she asked, and her long tanned legs suggested that she was not averse to spending considerable time basking in unnaturally hot places.

  “Only in a good one,” I winked.

  Right from the start there was no romantic intention as far as Quinnifer was concerned. She’d been living happily with her female companion, Maria, for three years, and they were considering adopting a child. But it was cool that we took a liking to each other, because right away I landed some work for a decent wage. Well, maybe not so decent. My first gig paid nine dollars an hour, and placed me in the role of an administrative assistant on the campus of a University of California campus. The specific school I was assigned to was and still may be respected for its predictions that California was going to financially fall into the sea for the next forty years or so.

  The first day I wore a long-sleeved shirt and slacks, in order to make a good impression and show how seriously I took the job of being an administrative assistant, even though I had no idea what one was.

  The bike ride to the College took longer than I’d anticipated and I frantically tucked my shirt into my trousers as I navigated through the campus and hurried up the steps into the building of stone that was going to serve as my workplace for the next two weeks. Inside, I was unable to find the office I was scheduled to report to, and practically tackled another guy in the hallway who looked much less confused than me.

  “Can you please tell me where to find G-232?” I pleaded. I was already five minutes late.

  “Oh, take two rights down that hallway,” he pointed. “So you’re the new one?”

  “Umm… yeah,” I said, his amused smirk rendering me both unknowing as how to answer while at the same time not wanting to fully understand the question.

  Two rights later, I pushed through a door and came upon a mass of cubicles, that dreaded maze nobody ever thinks they’ll have to enter. As a child I’d seen those public service ads that feature a haggard looking man snatching a woman’s purse and then running away in a frenzy before the screen freezes and the voiceover intones: “No one ever dreams of becoming a drug addict.”

  No one ever dreams of becoming a drone in a walled off place of ringing phones, shuffling papers, and idle chatter about what went on in last night’s whatever the hell reality show, either. But here I was. I didn’t belong here, I wanted to cry out to the Universe. I belonged on a beach somewhere, lathered with suntan lotion and sipping a cocktail, while immortal poetry poured from me right onto a green-tinted page knit with hemp by a tropical beauty, with whom I was going to enjoy vibrant copulation with at our leisure-

  “Are you the temp they sent us?” a woman hurled the question at me. She was wearing a tightly knit dress that, while green, looked more like it had come off the racks of some discount chain store than a tropical island.

  Then again, I myself only shopped at discount stores. Happy to know a fellow bargain hunter when I saw one, I smiled, ready to bond. “Yes, I am,” I replied smoothly. “My name is—“

  “You’re late!” she announced. She was Latina, with eyelashes that flared. Her sinewy arms were no match for her thighs, which looked like tree trunks.

  “I’m sorry. It’s my first day.” I said, as her eyes scanned me as if I were an invader of some kind. “I’m the temp,” I added, for both our benefits. This is temporary, I assured myself, as though I were undergoing severe dental surgery. This too shall pass.

  “I’m Jinny,” she said. “Jinny Luni. You’ll be reporting to me. Come, I’ll show you where you’ll be working.”

  Where I was working was one of those small cubicles that make one want to tap the walls just to see if anyone responds. When nobody does, you tap your own head just to see if it hurts. The problem with this is, day after day, like any drug, you have to keep tapping harder and harder. Pretty soon, you’re pounding the shit out of yourself just to prove you still exist.

  This was how far I’d fallen on just my third day on the job. I still wasn’t sure exactly what duties I was expected to perform, outside of answer a phone and in a gentle voice assure whoever was calling that so-and-so (Elena, Georgia, Karl, or Jinny) would return their call as soon as possible. Also, there were the students who would come in, requesting guidance as to how they could change their majors or possibly get an extension on a certain paper. These were the ones I felt truly sorry for. At least as a Radio Television Film major I’d had teachers who were as crazy as I was, who’d been willing to spend two hours discussing how Akira Kurosawa used “the wipe” in his movies and cut in the midst of an action in order to fragment his characters for a greater emotional response.

  As nerdy as these conversations sound in retrospect, at least my teachers had cared. From what I could tell, the teachers and advisors who worked in this world renowned business school couldn’t have cared less if their students leapt from the fourth floor of their dorms after their imaginary portfolio crashed and burned.

  Jinny’s presence did make things interesting. She had a habit of passing my cubicle at awkward times, like when I was busy perusing urban legend websites on the Internet. “What are you up to, Slippery?” she would ask, and then chuckle away.

  Slippery? A bit strange for a nickname, but better than, say, “doorknob.” Plus, she was the only person in the office who seemed to take an interest in my existence, and her full lips pronounced my nickname with distinct sensuality. She was married, I knew, by the ring on her finger and the picture I’d glimpsed on her desk while delivering a memo to her regarding employee parking. The picture featured her and a man with a clenched smile that looked as though he were trying to ward off death. It was tucked into a corner of her desk, an island amongst an ocean of papers boasting little more than a few brief sentences, Jinny’s loopy signature, and the University’s very official looking logo.

  “Thank you, slippery,” she said, taking the memo from me and casting it in the general direction of the picture of her and her husband. It landed face down, and I retreated back to my cubicle, ready to track down if drinking Coca Cola along with ingesting Pop Rocks candy could really make your stomach explode.

  “Who needs mail?”

  This request came from a person in some cubicle on the other end of the office, every afternoon specifically at two o’clock.

  “I could use one,” Jinny would always reply. And then came the predictable laughter. It was as bad as a comedian using a tired joke that everyone felt the need to laugh at, the most likely reason being because it reminded them of the day twenty years ago when it had been an original joke and they’d been twenty years younger.

  Out of sheer boredom along with an idle curiosity of what a reply might bring, my first Friday afternoon on the job I couldn’t help but heckle, “I’ve got a male for you right here.”

  Smart move, I thought, sighing at my seemingly immortal habit of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. At least I’d be fired and be back on my bike in time to beat the buildup of traffic that always choked off the bicycle lane alongside the 405 Freeway onramp.

  There came a bidding silence. Then a chuckle. The chuckle kept growing closer, and within seconds there was Jinny standing in the narrow opening of my cubicle.

  “That was pretty funny,” she said.

  “Thanks,” I managed.

  “You’re not like the others,” Jinny said.

  The others? My imagination took flight and I began to fantasize that OrangeGrove Temporary Agency was somehow working in cahoots with a subspecies of Vampires, ones who only lived during daytime, rather than night. When the sun went down they retired bene
ath their desks, and waited until the moon and night had safely retired before emerging again for another workday.6

  “You need to pick up the mail in the mailroom,” Jinny said, dangling a key before me and breaking up my fantasy that I wasn’t really living a life but was in fact just an actor in some critically acclaimed show. “Better get going.”

  Relieved to finally be given a definitive task of some sort, I took the key from her, stood, and hurried from my cubicle, slipping around Jinny as gingerly as possible.

  I hurried down the hall to the mailroom. It was a cramped area just a hair larger than the space I’d been supposedly working in the past four days. Here I was confronted with rows of gold colored mail slots. Finally I found 232. The key was in. I opened it.

  Empty.

  “We never get any mail.”

  I turned. There was Jinny. She approached while rubbing a finger alongside her cheek. “But you’ve got to admit, this room is pretty private.”

  I swallowed and looked determinably around. White walls, gold boxes, and a shelf, which Jinny chose to hop onto.

  “Come here, slippery,” she beckoned me with three fingers.

  “Why do you call me that?” I asked. “Does my hair look greasy or something?” I’d recently taken to rubbing butter in my hair in order to ward off dandruff, an urban legend that a website had labeled Possible.

  “No, silly,” she grabbed me and pulled me close, then whispered, “Because you make me wet.”

  Just how wet I found out in about ten seconds. First she guided my hand down to her vagina, and then there were a few seconds of frantic fumbling. My pants were down around my ankles and my erect penis was moving toward her when I managed to croak, “But… you’re married.”

  “That sonofabitch hasn’t fucked me good for three years,” she whispered in my ear.

  I’d made it a rule in my life to never have sex with a married woman. But then I’d also made it a rule to never have a dead-end job in a cubicle. All bets, it seemed, were off. As I penetrated Jinny she moaned my name over and over again. I reciprocated.

  After a few strokes I became alarmingly aware of two things: that “Jinny” was one of the most stupid names to murmur during sex, and that this woman stank. I couldn’t even tell where the odor was coming from, but it had a sour permanence of floor detergent mixed with burnt pot roast.

  I sped up as I repeated her name, hoping to come quick as I told myself that keeping my dead-end job depended on this.

  As potential paternity suits and a screaming baby ran through my head, I pulled out and came all over her legs.

  She regarded me with a stony look as I leaned back, lost in a post orgasm haze. “You came on my dress,” she said, wiping the offending fluid off and flicking it back at me.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Look, Jinny…”

  “Ms. Luni,” she growled, then shoved me back with such force I stumbled backward, slacks still hugging my ankles, and fell against the mail boxes. The key to Box 232 was still in its slot, and I cried out as it stabbed me in the butt.

  Jinny slid off the shelf and hissed, “And I think you’ve got some mail to pick up.”

  “But there isn’t any.” I winced.

  “Then I suggest you find some!”

  She hopped down off the shelf, then turned her back on me while straightening her dress. She muttered something as she strode out of the mail room. I couldn’t quite make it out, but it sounded something like, “one-minute boy.”

  I checked my rear end. There was a throbbing impression of a key’s handle imprinted on the flesh of my right butt cheek. It would definitely leave a mark.

  I waited a few minutes before limping back down the hall toward G-232. On the way I stopped in at a neighboring office with the intention of filching a bit of mail that might be lying about.

  I recognized the person at the front desk by his smirk. The guy who’d shown me the way my first day on the job. “Got mailed yet?” he asked.

  I shrugged. Then said, “Postage due.”

  He laughed and threw me a catalogue. “Here,” his smirk dissolving into a smile. “Take care.”

  I caught the magazine and walked gingerly out of his office and toward mine. The document he’d given me was from the college’s Medical Center and featured the headline: “IN UTERO: HOW A WOMAN MUST MONITOR HER MOST PRECIOUS SELF.”

  When I got back I noticed Jinny had left for the day. I left the magazine on her desk and completed my afternoon by scanning for updates on just how real the possibility of vampires living among us was.

  That early evening I returned home and found a message on my machine from Quinnifer at OrangeGrove. She regretted to inform me that my services at my latest assignment were no longer needed.

  I’d expected as much. Maybe if I’d only managed to last a bit longer… I thought. Then I thought to hell with it and went to sleep knowing that I’d at least put in a solid week’s work and was entitled to a solid week’s paycheck.

  That Monday, after a weekend’s worth of shenanigans that need not be gone into here, I staggered into OrangeGrove and received my paycheck.

  “Well, you certainly look a sight!” Quinnifer explained, as she handed me an envelope.

  I suppose I did. I’m sure I still had purple lipstick smeared on my right cheek, the left elbow of my leather jacket was still strewn with a dried and viscous substance, and my breath must’ve ranked somewhere from recovering alcoholic on a bender to full-fledged alcoholic on a bender.

  “Sorry…” I explained. Then added: “Sorry I didn’t last so long.” The same explanation I should’ve given Jinny had I wanted to keep that job.

  “No worries!” Quinnifer shot back happily. “Actually Ms. Luni said you performed admirably.”

  Blearily I nodded. After a few minutes of meaningless pleasantries that we each have a good week I departed.

  Back at home I finally got around to opening the envelope. When I did I blinked hard. My hourly rate had been set for nine dollars an hour. Instead, the check’s total calculated out to twenty dollars an hour.

  Twenty dollars an hour for jacking around on the Internet, answering the phone and covering for incompetents, and then shagging one of them? If this was the way temp gigs worked, it made me grateful I hadn’t run up a couple hundred grand in student debt on law school.

  By the time I deposited the check and got home, there was a message waiting for me on my answering machine. I already had another assignment, one which would prove to be infinitely more exhilarating and bewildering.

  This next assignment was in the Foundation Arm (i.e. non-profit ((i.e. worthless)) arm of a company that put on an annual music award show, the Hammys, that was the equivalent of a professional wrestling extravaganza; people came out and performed, posed, wore outrageous costumes, but in truth it was all inherently, as one future fellow employee would put it to me, “all flash and no dash.”

  Or as another would say, a bit more bluntly, “an excuse for the music industry to spread its legs while jacking itself off at the same time.”

  But I didn’t know this the day I first reported to work. I was pretty psyched about becoming part of the music industry; hell, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson wrote about it being “a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs.”

  Being that I didn’t consider myself a thief, a pimp, or a good man, I just figured it would be a damn cool place to hide while I knocked my latest novel into shape.

  My immediate supervisor turned out to be an administrative assistant. At first I thought the people at OrangeGrove had demoted me, but this assistant, a bubbly large boned woman with olive skin hugged me right off the bat and gushingly welcomed me as the Foundation’s new Consultant.

  I had no idea what qualified me as a Consultant, much less what on earth could possibly be expected of someone appointed such a title.

  “I’m Laura,” she said. “We’re glad to have you as a member in the Foundation.” />
  I’ve always been nervous about being a member of anything, but this woman’s demeanor seemed so honest and open that I found myself returning her hug. She led me past a row of cubicles and I knew: I’d have the last one on the left.

  To my surprise she led me to an office on the right. “Well, here you go,” she said. My new office boasted a desk long enough to be intimidating, several chairs, and a wall lined with filing cabinets. It looked as though in the world of temping, I’d just been promoted to someone who was expected to do something worthwhile.

  “All of these files need organizing,” Laura sang. “We’ve kind of gotten backed up in the past few months. So just… you know… have at it.”

  Sounded great, but I quickly found out no one who worked in The Foundation had a handle on exactly what “it” was. Not even those who possessed official titles such as Director of Event Planning and Manager of Fund Distribution.

  The person I reported who oversaw the department I was supposed to be consulting for was Norma, a pleasantly plump woman who was going prematurely gray and managed to always look a bit befuddled. She’d been a former high school music teacher, and rumor had it that she’d gained her position here as Administrator of Educational Programs after she’d met our Department Leader, Mr. Jene Waillard, at a party and charmed the socks off him by being able to recite the lyrics of the musical Les Miserables in their entirety, complete with dramatic pauses and choruses.