This Location of Unknown Possibilities

by Brett Josef Grubisic

  The resulting compromise paired a slightly marmish but well-cut tweed skirt with a costly and uncharacteristically bright patterned blouse—the sales associate’s two cents: “Jewel tones are this season’s Important Statement.” The look achieved balance, Marta had thought on the date of purchase, a modest though confident notice-me declaration. Later, she squirmed over literal clownishness, a statement the store clerk would have never advised.

  A few winters ago she’d overheard a student in a freshman composition class tell a friend, “Some personality and a little beauty would be nice” in response to a question she’d arrived too late to catch. The reasonableness of the comment had struck her, as had the friend’s abrasive retort: “Yeah, but nice tits rule the runway, man.” Placing the Film Consultant ensemble on the bed, Marta calculated—prayed—that her choice attained a reassuring degree of personality and beauty. As for modest breast size, nature’s allotment served adequately.

  The final step: details—no brooch, one cocktail ring, scent applied well before arrival. While glasses ought to be left at home, contact lenses inevitably led to watery eyes. She’d wear them and make the switch in a restroom at the studio. Apply a coat of nude lip gloss too. Yes, definitely.

  2.

  Paying my own way, Marta thought, this cannot be an auspicious sign. Even as internal bolstering, the emphatic cannot felt loud, empowering; Marta repeated the silent word resolutely. Jaw set and arms crossed, she conjured an appropriately stormy weather cinematic sequence of being seated immobile inside the train and watching the studio rep—young, panicked, job on the line—search for mysterious Dr. Spëk in vain, eventually having to return and report the vexing failure to appear, a wrench thrown into the works, if only momentarily. As vengeance fantasy it was mild-mannered and bargain basement cheap, Marta conceded as she embroidered the details, but pleasurable nonetheless.

  A synthetic female voice declaring the approaching eastward station with an automaton’s uninflected vowels interrupted Marta’s rising pique: “The next station is Metrotown.” She craned her neck again to study the cheerful route map above; only three stops remained.

  An electronic gong activated, the doors whisked shut, and the cars accelerated in computer-directed increments.

  Although the Skytrain looked nothing like the limousine buffed to an obsidian lustre she’d grown to anticipate, and a catered lunch at the warehouse production office dropped at the edge of suburban development did not match an exquisite meal at SpotPrawn @ The Four Seasons, the adventure of being airborne—gliding, nearly floating when factoring out tracks—embraced her, a simple and true satisfaction.

  Marta respected the hygienic elevated trains for the utopianism they represented, smooth curved metal, glass, and plastic—untouched by grime, graffiti, litter, and, seemingly, corrosive time—that proclaimed sure faith in mind-boggling technology to remedy all past ills and usher in a future in which strife, poverty, and that pesky gap between pristine vision and pock-marked reality faded into relics, odd and distasteful curiosities from a bygone age, like slavery, night soil buckets, and rickets. Such hopefulness: it existed at a level of magnitude she could never reach. For that faith even obstinate biological limitations presented no hurdle; ingenious implants, prosthetics, supplements, and replacement organs promised limitlessness, an immortality of a sort. A veritable fountain of hale, unblemished youth.

  Marta’s gaze wandered to fellow passengers. That engineer’s vision of a golden new age scattered, instantly undermined by the tangibly anemic flesh and myopic eyes of the skinny slouched teenager who’d boarded three stops before. One seat in front of the youth, an elderly balding man was rocked by a head spasm a bamboo cane and frailty belied. Deflated weariness prevailed on the many-hued faces. Sniffles, coughs, and sneezes of flus and colds—allergy-induced outbursts too, she’d hazard—rocketed audibly, staccato interruptions to the steady whirring hum of the forward-moving compartment. This constancy of imperfection—breathing in deeply she could detect faint traces of aerosolized nicotine and alcohol residue wafting from nearby pores, sour breath, and body odour of the armpit and mothball varieties—unmuzzled Marta’s skepticism.

  As Marta turned from the commuters she caught a spectral image in the glass, alerted immediately to practical outlet mall spectacles, national average height, and flat, non-cascading hair in the medium-brown of her mother’s entire family. Traditionally, outbreaks of a neurotic fixation on the negative amounted to a consequence of nervous stress. Like a bad mood or a cloud today’s manifestation would duly pass; on the return trip, interview complete and decision made, there’d be none of this saturnine, no joy in Mudville assessing of the disappointing world. Marta counted on it. She’d taken a lengthy personality test years ago and one of the findings she’d been happy to hold on to was an “even-keeled” rating; complex algorithms had proven her a steady ship on all currents, the image satisfying. As for the other, less trophy-worthy findings, they had been relegated to an indifferently visited self-improvement file located in a backwater brain cell cluster.

  Beyond the glass, the enormity of the panorama was dizzying. All the evidence of ceaseless human industry staggered the senses. Each hill presented nature paved over with structures, and every house came completely loaded with stuff sliding toward obsolescence and an eventual RIP in teeming landfills. So many families, Marta thought, an overwhelming archive of joy and pain.

  Marta retracted her attention, hugging the notes and books arranged in the valise close to her chest. She’d chosen a valise instead of the usual canvas book bag with hope that the mock-ostrich leather and vaguely European pedigree would broadcast an au courant world-class professionalism.

  Marta had no idea what to expect, so she’d prepared for a job interview atmosphere that would be anything but convivial. While Jakob Nugent’s assistant had sent options for meeting times and a choice of meals—via an impersonal email: another ambiguous sign to decode?—she hadn’t bothered with information about what Mr. Nugent’s agenda might be. Overcompensating, Marta had packed a copy of the Hester Stanhope study (with three laudatory reviews tucked inside) and two recent articles, though she supposed that reserving time to read the material hardly fit into the man’s plans. Perhaps an assistant had already prepared a one-page précis. It seemed a solid conjecture.

  Marta didn’t wish for university-style interview conditions—which forever brought to mind ice-blooded pike in sheep’s clothing—but believed that a combatant’s readiness could only help cement her position; she’d even printed a creamy vellum CV copy for Mr. Nugent’s records. The thirst for fortification was unaccountable: in no sense did she actually need the job. Cowed by the mere aura of Hollywood, then? She reminded herself who’d be the expert in the room.

  Marta did foresee caffeinated impatience and a chronic attention deficit—“Okay, okay, so this War and Peace, what’s the deal with it? Give me the gist in a couple of seconds, I don’t need a goddamned dissertation. Wait a sec, I’ve got to take this call.” The explosive mile-a-minute production executive with a chicken’s attention span and the out-of-touch prosaic egghead: another pair of Hollywood script-types that she’d soon witness interacting in real-time. She had little doubt about crossed wired. For these people, perhaps, she would serve as a handy talking encyclopedia, fielding questions about early Victorian bubonic plague treatments, whether Dr. Meryon would have spoken such and such a sentence, or if Lady Stanhope’s clothing ought to be cut this way. “Prof Spëk, pls examine these image files from the Art Dept for accuracy. Many thx, LW, Asst to Jakob Nugent”: would this be the kind of email she’d receive?

  A savant or a soothsayer without pretensions of divinity—that temporary occupation she could inhabit with ease: “Yes, according to medical experts, over 200 different species can serve as hosts. Plague carriers have included domestic cats and dogs, squirrels, chipmunks, marmots, deer mice, rabbits, hares, rock squirrels, camels, and sheep. The vector is usuall
y the rat flea, Xenopsylla cheopis. Thirty different flea species have been identified as being able to carry the plague bacillus. Other carriers of plague include ticks and human lice. Yes, absolutely, fever, delirium and rosy lesions would be accurate for Lady Stanhope’s 1813 plague bout. Not so much for the blue-black skin and hacking cough, which typically signals the terminal stages of infection, which needless to say—she might even throw in a clause or two of pedantry for the sake of cliché—Hester Stanhope did not reach. No, that phrase is hopelessly anachronistic. Yes, extant portraits of Hester suggest that a turban is fine. Natural silk or linen, nothing metallic—that would be anachronistic too. But, yes, turbans would have been all the rage for her in both 1800 and 1823. Fashion then was nowhere near as accelerated as today.”

  A marvel of knowledge, outgoing, useful as soap, typically full of good will but not entirely averse to the occasional sharp remark: that she could manage. Once conversing with actual people, she’d adjust the tone accordingly; overt sharpness would likely win no friends.

  Yes, she might relish the role; there was only a minor difference between it and the one she donned for the classroom. The indispensable brainiac, foundational, a fixture. Or was it, she asked herself as she observed yet another mound of hill barnacle-encrusted with homes, remnants of the smart girl who wrote essays and took home the assignments for popular students in exchange for second-rate pay and recognition? A little of both, she concluded with resignation.

  Marta realized she’d envisioned herself answering these questions from the quiet of her office computer. As the set was being built—or as banks of CGI technicians keyed in virtual sets?—and the script revised and scenes shot and re-shot and re-shot once again, she might be stuck in a trailer instead and poised for questions, a shade removed from the geriatric employee wearing a May I Help? badge in an airport. For the lags between queries, there’d be a few novels and maybe that laborious omnibus review article due in September.

  Then again, an entire trailer suggested money to burn, an improbability since the studio didn’t own a blockbuster about a sinking ship or a caped vigilante. But who could say? Although she’d dug up no useful evidence anywhere, posing questions was her prerogative. Jakob Nugent must possess everything she wanted clarified. Marta closed her eyes and returned to the scene. She might wander through the sets—to all eyes an embodiment of the absentminded professor—in search of a scone and a mug of tea. Or else: she could send a request for an afternoon snack and have it promptly delivered by an underling—who might be one of her former students for all she knew.

  3.

  The robot transit system voice announced Marta’s stop: “Studio Way.”

  The doors parted and Marta stepped off. Searching the concrete platform for the escort the studio had dispatched—young, lowly, and instructed to please, she assumed—yielded no results. Not a soul approached as the platform emptied. She’d pictured the airport scenario: “Dr. Spëk” written on a cardboard sign held aloft by the anonymous functionary. One email from Lora Wilkes had mentioned that the studio sprawled five minutes by foot from the station, but at the time Marta hadn’t interpreted the information as an invitation to march on over.

  Marta decided to wait five minutes. Raging for fame has its price, she thought.

  Beyond the grey platform the scene presented muted northern hemisphere urban rim—power lines, parked cars, low-profile businesses housed in dreary if spacious generic boxy structures, vehicle traffic, sooty concrete arterial roadways, and forlorn weeds, bushes, and trees flocked with grit. The sour tang of the air was distinctive: thousands of sticky cottonwood leaf buds peeling in slow, temperature-orchestrated synchronicity. Their pungency could be bottled, trademarked, and sold alongside maple syrup in tourist shops, Marta supposed: Fraser Delta Spring No. 5.

  The short-term options, Marta thought, are simple: walk to the studio or stand and wait for an inbound train and, later, a perplexed and likely curt email. Calling a taxi would be silly.

  She strode to the exit stairway. What kind of cut-rate studio is this, she wondered. Jakob Nugent will probably ask me to split the cost of our no-frills lunch. Or we’ll each plug coins into a vending machine and retrieve plastic-sealed sandwiches. She felt stalled. While the effort of the walk might erode her composure, Marta suspected that not arriving at all would be a lapse she’d bemoan louder than the executive and his assistant, her daydream of crucial necessity revealed as being only that.

  Grumbling as she trudged along the sodden makeshift path at the road’s edge—strewn, she counted, with a narrow range of discardables: cigarette packages, torn condom wrappers, fast food takeout bags, soda cans and beer bottles, Styrofoam containers, trampled clothing, plastic bits snapped off from cars, and panties (panties always, why?)—Marta envisioned herself as the kind of crazed marginal individual who squatted beneath septic overpasses or within the dirty blackberry brambles that thrive on the perimeter ground between commercial buildings.

  Hearing the volume of the fault-finding, she pressed her lips shut. Were these low utterances like a gateway drug—one unexceptional day you begin with a few choice expletives, and soon enough you’re pushing a stolen overflowing shopping cart and warning passersby of precarious mental balance by muttering nonsense several decibels louder than what’s acceptable in polite society? Marta switched focus to the approaching interview, sealing the portal to abjection.

  At the foreground of the blocky mass of white stucco and vinyl-clad buildings a single guard waited on duty, soaking up afternoon sunshine. She’d leaned a stool against the plywood booth that housed gate controls, a computer, and communication equipment. Stray locks tumbled from beneath her police-style cap.

  Lora had sent no pass code or specific instructions about a gated entrance. Her name, she supposed, must be on a list.

  The guard did not move as Marta approached.

  “Good afternoon,” Marta said.

  The guard nodded, but remained silent. She didn’t remove the mirrored aviator sunglasses when she faced Marta. And though the creased woman appeared to be a child’s throw from retirement age, Marta imagined she might be nicknamed “Sarge.”

  Marta patted the valise. “I have an appointment.”

  “Do you now?”

  “Yes. With Jakob Nugent.”

  “Lucky for you.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Whoareyou?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Your name, girly. What. Is. It?” The woman couldn’t be bothered to mask impatience.

  “Spëk. Dr. Marta Spëk.”

  She scanned a computer tablet. “Right, there you are. Be a doll, will you?” She handed Marta a clipboard and tapped at a line for Marta’s signature. In exchange for the clipboard, the woman gave Marta a photocopied site map; with an incongruous bubblegum pink nail she etched the path to Building 7.

  “Watch your step, honey. There’s always some jackass PA running with scissors or some damn thing. They get younger every year, I swear to you. Little cucarachas.” Insectile fingers scurried in the air. “There’s a lot of material there, but it’s not quite a dress. You know what I’m saying?”

  “Thank you for the assistance.” Marta thought the woman should work on her interpersonal skills; sitting through a course on hospitality similar to the one waiters must pass before serving the public could polish that gravel abrasiveness. The guard hadn’t been rude, not quite, but close. Crusty. Salty. Odd. “Half a bubble off,” her father’s judgement. In any case the experience had been distressing. That schoolyard bully routine was the domain of overcompensating guards in banks and at border crossings, not grandmothers.

  Marta’s footfall echoed. Not one costumed extra wandered by; nobody carted fanciful props from one soundstage to the next. Likewise, the dangerous scurrying PAs she’d been warned about made no appearances. The locale appeared deserted, though the mild green of the day suggested a spo
ntaneous group picnic rather than an angry work stoppage.

  Paused at the entrance Marta told herself that the sign taped to the window of the entrance of Building 7—Desert Queen Productions sat over an image of the Great Sphinx onto which Elizabeth Taylor’s face as extravagantly eyeshadow’d Cleopatra had been superimposed—was without significance. The graphic designer’s little jest bore no relation to the ideas stored in the minds of Jakob Nugent, the director, the studio, or the screenwriter, which if nothing else would not be campy and would have commercial viability or artistic integrity as an ultimate target. Hester Stanhope, Queen of the Desert? That would be too ridiculous. The sign signified nothing, likely makeshift and the project of an underling with an excess of free time.

  She climbed the stairs to the second floor. Cavernous and unimpressive, the space revealed only functionality and the kind of leased furniture otherwise found in used car dealership offices—dark woodgrain plastic surfaces, neutral metal cabinets sitting on tough indoor-outdoor carpeting, off-white electronic equipment. A residue of latex paint hung in the air.

  Unable to locate a washroom where she could change into contact lenses, Marta walked to a woman at the nearest desk; the blonde immediately held up an index finger. Marta waited as she completed the call.

  “Yes, what can I do for you?” She spoke rapidly, eyes attentive to far corners of the room. Marta, admiring the delicate coral shade of the woman’s lipstick, expected the receptionist to rap the surface of her wristwatch at any instant.

  “Hello, I have an appointment today with Jakob Nugent.”

  “Alrighty, my dear, that narrows things down to a small army.” She wore a grey T-shirt with scrolling white lettering: “We Must Avoid Deluded Motives.”

  “Pardon me?” Marta’s exchange with this woman was becoming as awkward as the tussle with the gatekeeper.