Mom didn’t say anything. Maybe she didn’t understand the value of college, not having gone there herself, or maybe she just didn’t like the idea of Ruthanne leaving home. I didn’t like it either, but I knew how the world worked, or at least I was starting to think I did. I was starting to think of myself as having the ability to make tough, no-nonsense decisions. So I bypassed Mom and called Dad myself.
It was the first time I ever called him (he called us, we didn’t call him) so he was surprised to hear from me. The first thing he did was tell me how this shitty HR lady screwed up his HSA cafeteria plan pre-tax deposits. When he was through I told him about Ruthanne.
“Hmm,” he said. “I wasn’t aware college was an option.”
“It won’t cost much,” I said. “Principal Winthrope said Ruthanne could go for free except for books and fees and whatnot.”
“Fees, huh? Sounds like tuition in disguise.”
“Maybe,” I said.
“I’ll have to think on it. I’ll have to speak to Geraldine.”
“Okay.”
We hung up, and I felt hopeful. Dad wanted at least to seem fatherly, I knew. His own dad had left him, his mother, brother, and three sisters without a word goodbye. Dad never missed an opportunity to do a rant about how if his brother Ricky hadn’t got the job at the meatpacking plant then the whole family would have starved to death. Dad said they ate parts of a cow I never heard of, parts which were illegal even in Cambodia, which was the country where his favorite uncle Dermot had lost his life on a secret war mission nobody was allowed to talk about (the subject of a separate rant). Dad said he looked forward to the day he would run into his father on accident—“by the side of the road maybe, me dressed for church and him slouching along drunk without a tooth in his head”—so he could tell him how he, Dad, was a real man who took care of his fatherly responsibilities and mostly held down a job.
Geraldine must have told Dad she didn’t mind Ruthanne living with them, because Dad started pestering Ruthanne as much as Principal Winthrope did, and by Christmas Ruthanne had decided to move to the city. Dad came down to get her on New Years. It was a tearful goodbye. Ruthanne told me to be nice to Mom and to stay out of trouble.
“It’s no business of mine who your friends are,” she said, and I must have rolled my eyes because she scowled and grabbed my chin, “but please don’t get into trouble. I mean serious trouble. Hear me?”
I told her I wouldn’t, though to me “serious trouble” meant the jailhouse whereas to her it might have meant something less onerous.
Ruthanne kept hugging me, and I hugged her back. I cried a little but hid it because I didn’t want to encourage her; she was crying like crazy. Mom was too. After Ruthanne left, Mom was too far gone to speak, let alone be consoled. She locked herself in her bedroom and I barely saw her for two days.
The apartment felt creepy, like we were mourning a death, so I avoided the place. After school I hung out with the boys and spent extra time in the grocery store parking lot even though working there had gotten harder with age. I wasn’t cute enough anymore to accost people. One time a mom with a baby pulled out pepper spray. The day I turned sixteen I had tried to see Darla Waddell about official part-time employment, but a checkout lady told me Darla quit a long time ago. The checkout lady told me the new guy was a jerk with a mustache and if I asked he might tell me I couldn’t even hang around the parking lot, let alone work there on the books.
That Saturday I spent all day at Ms. Mikiska’s office. I asked her if I could come in Sunday, too. She closed the office on Sundays to make the right impression on her clientele, but I knew she was there working in secret, drawing up wills and whatnot. I was sure I could help do a will if she gave me a chance. But when I asked about Sunday, Ms. Mikiska sighed. I felt embarrassed.
Ms. Mikiska said she had some bad news. I was sure she was going to fire me for asking about Sunday (what an idiot I was!) but instead she told me she was getting married. I was confused. Wasn’t getting married good news? She explained how she and her girlfriend had to take a trip to New York City to get married, since both of them were ladies, and they weren’t coming back. I asked if they were gonna live in New York City and she said they were moving to an island I never heard of. I guess her girlfriend had some money. She was pretty old.
“We’re darn excited,” Ms. Mikiska said, but she said it kind of sad. “I meant to tell you sooner, but I kept putting it off. It was like if I didn’t say anything it wouldn’t happen.”
“It’s cool. Islands seem pretty cool.”
“You bet they are. I love surfing—it’s great for your core—and the heat’s good for Barbara’s rheumatism. But I’ll miss this place.” She gestured vaguely at the office around us then dragged her hand along the shiny wooden surface of her big clean desk, sort of puckering her lips like she could taste the desk through her palm. She looked out the window at the antique store across the street. Tables and chairs were stacked outside it.
“Tell me,” Ms. Mikiska said, “what’s your dream job?”
I hadn’t ever been asked that before. There was a time I would have said terrorist, no question, but with age I had become aware that terrorism wasn’t considered an acceptable career in most circles. “I don’t know,” I said, “the grocery store, I guess?”
Ms. Mikiska seemed disappointed but quickly gathered herself. She was a positive person. She said, “Well, what you’ve got to do is prove yourself indispensible. Go out and grab it by the balls and twist.”
“Grab the job’s balls?”
“That’s right.”
I almost told her I had been trying for years to be indispensable, with no luck, but I didn’t want her to feel guilty for leaving.
A moment later she opened a desk drawer, withdrew a crisp fifty-dollar bill, and held it aloft between two fingers. “Severance pay,” she declared.
I didn’t know what severance was so I was confused until she held the fifty towards me. I took it before she could change her mind. “Thank you,” I said.
“No,” she said, “thank you.”
She smiled and told me I’d go far in life. Then she took out her yellow notepad, scribbled something, tore off the sheet, and handed it to me. “My new address,” she said. “Feel free to list me as a reference on your résumé. And I hope it goes without saying that I’d be willing to write a letter on your behalf, with proper notice.”
“Thank you,” I said, but I wondered what kind of letter she meant. People on death row got letters written to the governor about them, but that seemed pretty dire.
Before I left I asked if she knew anybody who was hiring.
“Besides the dump?” she asked, laughing.
I mustered a laugh.
“Actually,” she said, “I know a guy there. You’re sixteen now so you might be eligible for their internship program. I’ll put in a word.”
“Thank you,” I said, hiding my disgust.
The next day, Sunday, in the shadow of my dashed hope of spending the day with Ms. Mikiska, I was even more bored than usual. Ruthanne wasn’t around and Mom was still in her bedroom. She had dragged the TV in there so I couldn’t watch it unless I climbed into bed with her, and her bedroom smelled like dirty tissues. I tried riding around on my bike, but it didn’t bring the same pleasure it used to. I was sixteen. I couldn’t escape the feeling that I should have been driving instead of riding around on a lady’s bike. I almost called Pete Gomez, but I hadn’t ever spent a Saturday or Sunday with those boys and I got the sense, from the stories they told on Mondays, that the weekends were when they really got into trouble. Maybe serious trouble, like Ruthanne said.
Monday wasn’t much better. I didn’t have the gumption to go to the grocery store, since I barely made any tips anymore, and at home I felt restless. There was schoolwork, sure, but the books they made us read were pretty boring. The only good one I ever read besides The Highest Mountain was about a lady in Florida whose husband caught rabies so she shot him. I
would have read that one again, but we were done talking about it.
I decided I needed a part-time job. A real part-time job with fixed hours, on the books. I didn’t care if I had to miss school for it. I considered myself a bit of an idea man, but a man whose ideas belonged in the real world, not a schoolhouse. I was sure that wherever I landed I could work my way up in no time. Working would give me purpose, I thought, and also money for food. Grandpa hadn’t come around in a while with a MEAT and CHEESE delivery. I was a little worried about the old codger, but that could wait.
The next day during lunch I went to the library and found Demarcus sitting at a table with two girls. They had school books open in front of them. When I sat down he said hello, but the girls didn’t look up. I wondered if I had a reputation now. The idea kind of pleased me.
I asked Demarcus what he was up to, and he nodded at the book. “The teacher said if I work ahead I maybe could skip into calculus next year.”
“And that’s a good thing?”
“One less class to pay for at college.”
On the subject of college, I told Demarcus about Ruthanne.
Demarcus approved. “Anybody with a brain in their head does as much as they can at a community college before transferring to a four-year college,” he said. “It’s cheaper, and the diploma looks the same either way.”
The girls nodded. They seemed to think highly of Demarcus. I recognized one from my year, but she wasn’t in any of my classes, unsurprisingly. The other looked older. She was skinny and black and had nice braided hair with little beads at the end.
“You come here to study?” Demarcus asked.
“I came for advice,” I said. “I need a job.”
“Me too.” He laughed softly. The girl with braids laughed too. Then she shook her head and returned to her book. Probably she thought I was a dummy, but I didn’t care. I didn’t have time for all this studying like they did. I was an idea man, like I said, plus a man of action.
“I came to you because you got all the angles,” I said, “so do you got ideas for part-time jobs or don’t you?”
“You’d be better off waiting ’til the summer and doing an internship,” Demarcus said.
I remembered what Ms. Mikiska said about the internship at the dump. “What’s the difference between an internship and a regular job?” I asked.
“An internship is like a practice job, for a career.”
“What kind of career?”
“Any kind that’s good has an internship.”
“Huh.” I wasn’t entirely clear on the word career, like what made it different than a job. “What kind of career do you wanna do?”
“Corporate lawyer, because all you gotta do is make good grades. It’s supposed to be real boring, but I’m good at reading boring stuff without falling asleep. Plus I like to sit down. What about you?”
“You mean, like, what kind of career?” I had been thinking about that question since Ms. Mikiska asked about my dream job, but I hadn’t come up with anything. The problem was I couldn’t picture myself in the future, as a terrorist or otherwise. The future was like a big blank to me. I wanted to ask Demarcus if he ever felt that way about the future, if he ever worried about it, but I didn’t want to say that stuff in front of the girls so I said, “Who makes the most money?”
“Entrepreneurs and Wall Street bankers.”
“One of them.”
“For that kind of job you need an internship for sure.”
“Then I guess I’ll be an intern. How much money do they make?”
“Interns work for free.”
I was confused.
“The internship is to learn the ropes,” Demarcus explained, “then maybe they’ll hire you after college.”
“Who said anything about college?”
“Look, man, I’m just telling you how it is.”
“Are you gonna do an internship?”
“Not yet. Maybe in college. But I been thinking about how to do an internship and make some money too. You could do the internship and sell something while you’re there, like those guys who sell candy outside the baseball games. Before and after work you set up shop in the parking lot and sell, like, hot coffee or bagels. Rich people are always eating bagels.”
I admired the way Demarcus had worked it all out in his head, and maybe he was right about internships, I decided. I had money already, and I wasn’t doing anything with it. What I was after was more than money, maybe better than money, but I just couldn’t quite articulate what it was. I told Demarcus what Ms. Mikiska said about the internship at the dump.
Demarcus nodded. He seemed to like the idea of me working there. He said, “Sometimes it’s easier to affect change from the inside, playing by the other man’s rules.”
“Infiltration,” the girl with braids said, without looking up from her work.
Demarcus smiled. “That’s one way to put it.”
The word infiltration rattled around in my head. The idea of getting into the dump and changing it around from the inside appealed to me, for its deviousness.
Demarcus said he would help me with my résumé, and we got on a library computer to look online at the internship program. The Bi-Cities people wanted “self-starting high school graduates currently enrolled for credit at a college or university.” Demarcus asked if I was willing to lie on my résumé, and I said for sure.
Demarcus did the résumé so I graduated from high school already and had relevant experience as a “sales intern” with Ms. Mikiska. Under “skills” he listed recycling, MS Word and Excel, typing 100 words per minute, conversational Spanish, and driving. I told him I didn’t have a license, but he said I could cross that bridge when I came to it. Under education I wanted to put someplace prestigious like Notre Dame or Colby College, but Demarcus said I should put the community college to make it more believable. Plus, he said, the community college kept bad records so the Bi-Cities HR people might not bother calling to verify my enrollment.
In the cover letter Demarcus said we should emphasize how poor I was and how wretched my life had become, living fatherless in a dingy apartment and whatnot. Demarcus wrote a short paragraph introducing me, a long paragraph about why sanitation and recycling were “particular passions of mine, having grown up in the shadows of the majestic compound that is Bi-Cities Sanitation and Recycling,” then another short paragraph signing off with lots of flattery about how I, “as a Komer native and patriot,” understood the importance of the work they did.
We read over the letter and résumé a couple times then emailed them to the email address listed on the website.
“Now, we wait,” Demarcus said.
That night I called Ruthanne to tell her I had listed her phone number for a reference, and that she had to pretend to be a counselor at a leadership conference for gifted young people.
“You little liar,” she said, “what are you up to?”
I explained how I was applying for an internship at Bi-Cities.
“They got internships for high school sophomores?”
“For gifted ones.”
“Hmm,” she said. “Internships don’t pay money. You know that, right?”
“I’m investing in my future.”
Ruthanne seemed doubtful, and I felt doubtful too, honestly, but then I got an email asking me to come to Bi-Cities HQ for an interview. I told Demarcus, who told me I had to wear a suit. My funeral suit had gotten to where it bunched up in the armpits and crotch area, and I didn’t want to look like a monkey, so I went to the Salvation Army Family Store.
The Salvation Army Family Store was the biggest clothing store in town and had lots of suits, but mostly for fatties. I gathered the smallest suits I could find and took them to the dressing room. A couple jackets looked decent but the pants were a problem. The waists were too big so I had to cinch them with a belt, which made me look like a vagrant losing weight from his seedy lifestyle, or a grave-robbing hobo dressed up in a dead man’s suit. There was a cream-c
olored suit that fit pretty well, but Dad said light-colored suits were for preachers and con artists. Plus it had a big purple wine stain on one lapel, and I didn’t want to look like a wino. I expanded my search to jackets and found a black one that fit just right. It was made of stretchy material like the shorts gym coaches wear and had nice piping on the shoulders and back with points like a cowboy shirt. To match it I found a pair of dark jeans, hoping with a necktie to pull off a sort of western businessman look. The whole ensemble cost ten bucks, including a VHS copy of Blood Bank. That’s the one where Rick Zorn breaks into a bank just to show them how bad their security is so they’ll hire him as a security expert, only he’s secretly an undercover agent with Interpol and it’s a trick to catch the bankers doing cover-ups.
When I got to the guard booth at the dump, the security guard was the same fat jerk who had sassed me last time because I wasn’t on his stupid clipboard. I wished he would say something like “Back for more?” so I could say “Big time, motherfucker, so you best come strapped,” but I was on the clipboard so he treated me cordially. He gave careful instructions on which door to go in, and a badge on a string to wear around my neck. It was like I was visiting the White House.
I stuck my bike behind an ashtray garbage can and went through a set of double doors into a waiting room, where a receptionist lady took a look at my nametag and got on the phone to tell somebody I was there. It felt good to have somebody expecting me, like I was a dignitary of some sort, or at least a salesman from the city.
The receptionist told me to have a seat, and it was then that I noticed the other kids. There were six or seven, all of them in suits and dresses. I tried to sit apart from them so they wouldn’t see my face, in case they’d gone to Pansy Gilchrist and might recognize me for being a freshman when they were seniors.
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