Dane’s brain was trapped in the gravitational field of a workingstiff existence. Experience, like matter, imposes gravity, warps space, bends time, and determines the paths of objects. The longer and more intense an experience, the more it shapes our psyches.
The writing of books was once Dane’s destiny, until the working man routine, with the gravity of ten years, bent him. Each morning he woke up anxious and lost because his new life followed the curve of the prior one.
One morning, he stared at his novel to find his way into it, and said, “Admit it, you’ve changed.” He made himself a wager. He would write and look for a job, and devote himself to the one that came first. He had played this game ten years before, at his daughter’s sixth birthday party.
20. LAST BELL OR FINAL CALLING?
At around the time when Dane was about to explode from conflicting tendencies and a hemorrhaging bank account, the Bacchus family had an unexpected boon.
Becky’s unmarried aunt died, bequeathing to her a substantial sum. Dane always dreamed of freedom from financial pressure and the fantasy arrived, but happiness did not come along for the ride.
The inheritance was substantial enough to protect the Bacchus family from foreseeable homelessness but it would not allow Dane to retire. However, the modesty of the windfall did not bother Dane as much as its existence. Money worries had been with him his entire life. They were all he knew. Self-denial belonged to him; it was part of his identity.
“If we live off of this money what will be left for Iris?” He asked Becky. He had made sacrifices to spare his daughter the humiliating deprivations he suffered in his youth—going out to dinner with people and being unable to order, for instance—but his sacrifice was no longer required.
Yet despite Dane’s misgivings, financial security was like a vacation, it dilated his imagination. He awoke one morning, brimming with energy and enthusiasm, turned on his computer, and accessed his novel. The words made sense, the story flowed, and his characters had life; everything delighted him, and the project mattered.
The wager was over. His old creative self was victorious over the “salary man.” He could work in his proverbial cave and write tomes destined to become artifacts found in jars by illiterate goatherds in the next millennium.
That afternoon, after hours of writing, Dane received a call from a recruiter. It was Albert Griffin, the man who sent Dane on his first interview, who found him his job at Integrimedicom and another at Georgian Shield. Albert sounded jovial and familiar, like no time had elapsed since their prior contact. He asked Dane if he was still at Georgian Shield. Dane said he had not worked there for three years. “Oh,” the recruiter said blandly. He asked Dane if he had worked at two agencies where he knew of openings.
“I worked at one and interviewed at the other,” Dane replied flatly.
It was a recruiter-repellent response. Griffin’s dejection was palpable, his silence made it official: Dane’s advertising career was being lowered in the ground. At first, Dane was at peace with losing his advertising career forever. Why did he need it when he had a small nest egg and his old creative self?
When the split second passed, finality set in. Dane was crossing over from currently unemployed to totally retired, with no long term means of income. Becoming the one native-born, English-speaking cab driver in New York was his only logical career move.
Griffin, who always seemed to have a descrambler for Dane’s brain, broke the silence.
“I have a position open at a rising agency in Flemington, N.J. Interested?”
“They sell cars and furs in Flemington.”
“So buy a car and a fur at lunch. Your wife will love you for it. Don, they’re winning business right and left.”
“It’s too far.”
“There’s a train, Dean. The office is across from the station. New Yorkers work there. You’ll fit in.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Becky rebuked Dane when he described the opportunity.
“I know,” Dane admitted. “It’s the only call I’ve had in months.”
“Something better will come,” Becky said. “You have talent and experience.”
“What if talent and experience are irrelevant?”
Griffin phoned back the next day.
“I’m about to send out your resume. But listen, can you tell me about your science background? They asked specifically about that.”
“This is ridiculous. I’ve been writing medical copy for twelve years,” Dane replied. “How much more science background do I need?”
“Right, I know,” Griffin replied. “What about a science degree or college classes you took?”
Dane frantically flipped through the rolodex of his life and finally blurted, “I won four county science fairs in middle school. Does that count?—my name was in the paper!”
“I’ll see what I can do,” the recruiter said.
When Griffin did not phone back, Dane surmised that the opportunity fizzled. He struck it from his mind but it would not stay out, since other headhunters called about the same posting. Dane gave them all permission to represent him and none called back.
Dane might have interpreted this lack of interest in him as a cosmic rejection. Rather, he viewed the recruiters’ calls as empty distractions from his true calling and their failure to follow-up as a sign for him to pay his bet: between creative writing and advertising, creative writing won.
Meanwhile, his bank account plunged by four thousand dollars per month. He sat at his computer and lost himself in his work, but finances always found him. Financial doom loomed, crowded him and smothered inspiration. He wrote a sentence only to stop at the thought of poaching his family’s nest egg, of leading them on a slow descent into destitution. He glanced at the monitor. In 24 point type a message read, “Get a job.”
A month had passed since Griffin had called about the agency in Flemington, when the recruiter called again. Miraculously, the position was still open. Was Dane still interested? Was he ever! With his nose-diving bank account, this car dealership Mecca forty miles away sounded familiar and close.
“That’s great!” Griffin exclaimed with life-affirming enthusiasm when Dane agreed to the interview, as if the entire universe rejoiced in Dane’s good sense. “Can you be there at 11 AM on Friday?”
Dane was invigorated. That was two days away. If the interview went well, he might start the week after next. He started to count prospective paychecks and calculate when his bank account would stop spiraling and start to climb.
Becky resisted.
“It’s too far. Don’t go to the ends of the earth for a job. We don’t need it.”
Becky believed these words would soothe and sway him, releasing him from the cycle of necessity that complicated his life. But Dane’s old dreams were riddled by premonitions of old age, uselessness and poverty. Now that he had earned money, he could not waste this ability.
“I can’t use up your inheritance,” he said. “That money is for you and Iris. You may need it if something happens to me.”
“Something will happen to you if you drive all over for a job,” she argued. “That money is yours, too. You can use it as seed money for the career you always wanted. When you sell the rights you’ll pay it back.”
“What if nobody buys my book? Then we’re stuck.”
“And what if you believe in yourself like I believe in you? Don’t go to the ends of the earth for a job you don’t want or need.”
“I do want it and need it. When I make money I can relax and do other things. When I have no income, all I do is worry”
Becky looked so disappointed that Dane had to say more. She was trying to help but he felt he needed no one’s help.
“Look, honey, I’ll always love writing and I would love to be an author, but it may be too late for that dream. So if I can still make money and help us, how can I turn my back on that?”
Becky regarded her husband with sad acceptance. When Dane put his first advertising portfolio tog
ether years before, she reluctantly sipped a cup of soup in a towel for one of his concepts because he was so determined to get a job. She could not stop him now from trying again.
“Okay,” Becky relented. “You can write at work and think in the car. But it’s a long trip.
“I’ve done it many times,” he reassured her.
On the day of the interview she made him coffee.
“Be careful,” Becky said before he left for western New Jersey.
“How do I look?” he asked. He had worn his lucky, bright orange, silk tie and his green jacket. The tie knot was askew. She adjusted it.
“Very handsome,” she said.
Becky kissed Dane and watched him walk down the hallway and around the corner. A few minutes later she looked out the window and watched him put his portfolio on the backseat, get into the car and drive off.
Dane went over so much in his mind as he negotiated the turnpike, then switched to Route 78, an interstate he had that morning to himself. He felt invincible, resilient. There was still so much left in him.
His thoughts turned to the interview. It would be his masterpiece. His responses would be brief and his small-talk minimal. He would refrain from jokes, extraneous remarks and critical comments about former employers. And once the job was his, he would work late whenever called upon and without resentment, and would be cheerful and patient, regardless how obtuse people were. It was Dane’s serenity prayer.
The stand of leafy trees bordering Route 78 was more fence than forest edge, and the green signs were now miles apart. Dane had been on the road for over an hour. He sighed: what a long commute! If he got the job he would need to sleep in the office after a late evening. Dane did not like these subversive thoughts. What would he do if he was not hired? The idea was intolerable. He must succeed!
Dane experienced a surge of pressure through his body. His throat narrowed to a straw. He was choking. Dane fumbled with his collar, tore the connective thread, freeing a button which dropped to the car floor. “Damn!” Pressure intensified. Dane slipped his hand behind his tie and tugged to free his throat. He leaned forward and braced himself on the wheel while he steered. He had had jobs like this before and where had they led him? All his life he had put his dreams on hold. Why was he running? “You’re too young to retire,” he answered his own question. “You’ll outlive your savings and what will you do then?”
He dropped his left arm and steered with his right hand. Not having a job might be the best thing that ever happened to him. Maybe sitting at home at his desk was living his dream and he didn’t know it. “Give it a chance,” he thought. “Turn back.” His arm stopped aching. It was probably just nervousness and adrenaline, he thought.
Route 78 was notorious for poor visibility on clear days. Even with glare-repellent Ray Bans, Dane struggled to see the next green sign in the sunlight. He could not miss his exit since the next one was ten miles farther and would cost him twenty minutes to circle back. As Dane headed west, an eastbound eighteen-wheeler clipped a van in the passing lane. The van skidded into the median and the truck lumbered after it across the grass toward the westbound lanes. Dane saw the two metal behemoths in his periphery. He believed guardrails and a wide median would block oncoming traffic but the vehicles barreled toward him. Instinctively, he veered two lanes to the right and rolled to a stop on the shoulder. Brakes screamed and crashing metal thundered behind him. Dane saw the fiery wreck in his rearview, laid his head on the wheel and gasped for air.
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