Carrie Pilby Read online

  The café where I am to meet Brad Nickerson is two stops up. When I arrive, he’s already seated at a table. He’s got slicked-back blond hair and a nondescript face. He’s also younger than I expected, and I’m not so sure this isn’t secretly a blind date rather than a business meeting.

  He stands and smiles.

  “It’s good to meet you,” he says.

  “Likewise.”

  We both sit down. He lets one of his legs hang over the other—he has long legs—and he briefly asks me how my trip up there went. Then he turns his attention to a clipboard. “I’m just going to ask you a few questions about your qualifications.”

  “All right.”

  “Your father says you type,” he says.

  “I have.”

  “Which computers do you use?”

  “In school I used Macs, Dells, Gateways, HP’s, most of the off-brand PC’s, and all of the Mac and Windows operating systems. I wish they were more compatible. If Europe accepted the Euro, why can’t our computers be a little more compatible?”

  His eyes narrow. “How old did you say you were?” he asks.

  “I’m nineteen.”

  “You seem awfully serious for a nineteen-year-old.”

  I don’t know what to say to that. Now I feel bad, just like I felt when the guy yelled “Smile.” As if I was doing something wrong simply by existing.

  Brad doesn’t say anything either, only stares at me and waits. And waits. When they send people to do job interviews, they should at least make sure they’re half as competent as the people they’re interviewing.

  “You could tell me what the job’s about,” I say.

  “Oh!” he says. “Well, it would be, at first, sort of an administrative assistant to the boss, typing things when need be, helping with office work. But eventually it could lead to greater responsibilities.” He picks up his coffee cup. “How does that sound?”

  I don’t suppose he really wants a truthful answer. “Ducky,” I say.

  “Mmm-hmm.” He sips his coffee. “Mmm.” He thinks for a second. “Well, why don’t you tell me your strengths and weaknesses?”

  A relevant question, at last! I say, “I try to figure out what’s right and wrong, and then I stick by it. I don’t engage in activities that are dangerous to others or myself. I try not to make judgments about people.”

  “I wasn’t making a judgment about you,” he says, apropos of nothing.

  “I didn’t say you were.”

  We’re stuck in a stalemate again. He reverts to common ground.

  “How fast do you type?”

  “Sixty to sixty-five words a minute,” I say.

  He doesn’t add anything.

  I ask, “Would you like that in metric?”

  He shrugs. “Sure.”

  “Sixty to sixty-five words a minute.”

  I smile, but apparently, this doesn’t pass muster as a satisfactory attempt to prove I’m not so serious. He finishes his coffee. “Well,” he says, standing and smiling, “it really was nice to meet you. We’ll probably give you a call.”

  “Great,” I say, but I’m really complimenting his discretion in bringing the matter to a close.

  When I’m finally home, I’m incredibly relieved. Thank God I’m out of there.

  I close my bedroom door, drop my purse to the ground and strip off my moist clothes. My pants leave a red elastic mark all the way around my waist. I rub it to obliterate it. Then I drape my clothes over a chair and walk to my bed.

  Now I can engage in my favorite activity in the world.

  Sleeping.

  My bed is a vast ocean with three fat, starchy pillows. Slowly I slide under the covers, naked. I feel the cool sheets around me. The cotton caresses my back. I close my eyes and let each notch of my spine relax.

  My mind is blank now. Every part of my body is sinking and empty. I don’t have to think about anything, hear anything, say anything, feel anything, worry about anything. Everything is distilled until it is completely clear.

  The roof may rain down and shower me with concrete. The forked crack in my wall may creep all the way to the ceiling. Still, I can lie here forever if I choose. There is no one to stop me.

  In my bed, there are no psychologists, no job interviewers, no hypocrites. I do not have to make up lists of ways to socialize. I do not have to smile. I do not have to justify my beliefs. I don’t have to wear dress shoes. I don’t have to pledge allegiance to the flag. I don’t have to use a number two pencil. I don’t have to read the fine print. I don’t have to sell fifty boxes of mint cookies. I don’t have to be over five foot four to ride.

  It is true that lying in bed is not an intellectual activity. It is true that it is nonproductive.

  But when ninety-five percent of out-of-bed activities hold the possibility of pain, to be pain-free is simply the most delicious feeling in the world.

  I lie there for an hour, listening to the rain type a soggy message on my windows. When the storm has subsided a bit, I lift my head.

  A hint of a cherry scent curls under my nose. I don’t know where it’s coming from—maybe through the window. The scent reminds me of cherry soda, something I haven’t had in years. I think about its virulent fizz, the way it bubbles deep in one’s gut.

  I picture a giant glass, dark plumes of liquid bouncing off the sides. I recall a New Year’s party my father threw when I was young, how black cherry soda was what we kids were allowed to have while the adults downed highballs. There was a kid named Ted there, and he dropped M&M’s and corn chips and peanuts into his cherry soda to make us cringe. He got so much attention from the threat of drinking it that I don’t think he actually had to do the deed.

  I grab a notebook from on top of my stereo and start writing my “things I love” list for Dr. Petrov. Soon, I actually have managed to come up with a few.

  Cherry soda

  Street sounds

  My bed

  The best bed I ever had was one with a powder-blue canopy when I was eight. My room was great back then. It had a black shag rug, Parcheesi, a giant periodic table of the elements, a diagram of Hegel’s dialectic, a model solar system, a couple of abstract paintings, and a sextant.

  4. The green-blue hue of an indoor pool

  5. Starfish

  6. The Victorians

  7. Rainbow sprinkles

  8. Rain during the day (makes it easier to sleep)

  I think a little more. I’m out of ideas.

  If I could write a hate list, I could fill three notebooks.

  That would be fun. A list of things I hate.

  I could start with the couple across the street.

  The couple across the street are in their late twenties or early thirties. They’re tall and fairly professional-looking. I see them in their kitchen window more than I do outside. They always mess around in front of the oven, pinching and poking each other, and before you know it, there’s a little free-love show going on, and finally, they repair to a different room. You’d think they’d have enough respect for their neighbors to keep us out of their delirious debauchery. But that’s not the reason I hate them.

  The reason I hate them is that whenever they pass me on the street, they never say hi to me. They must know I’m their neighbor. I’ve lived here for almost a year.

  Then again, I never say hi to them.

  I try for a little while longer, but I can’t come up with nine and ten for my list. I put the notebook down and lie in bed on my side, my hands crossed over each other like the paws of a Great Dane.

  I think about Petrov’s five-point plan. Join an organization. Go on a date. Petrov must think that I’m incapable of these things. It’s not at all that I can’t do them. It’s that I choose not to.

  Sure, being alone can get boring, but why should I have to force myself to go out and meet all the people who have lowered their moral, ethical and intellectual standards in order to fit in with all of the other people with low moral, ethical and intellectual standards? Tha
t’s all I would find if I went out there.

  I could prove to Petrov that he’s wrong. I could show him that the problem is not with me, but with everyone else. I could do it just to prove how ridiculous it is.

  Going on a date, or joining a club, will push me right into the thick of the social situations that people get into every day. I’m sure it can’t be that hard. And even if Petrov believes there is the .0001 percent chance that I’ll meet one person who understands me, more likely, I will simply be able to say that I tried.

  It will be a pain, but it shouldn’t be that difficult. I will be a spy in the house of socializers. And then I will be able to prove once again to myself, as well as to Petrov, that even when I’m alone, it’s much better than going outside.

  That evening the phone rings. It could be bad news. It could be my father calling to say I didn’t get the job. Or worse, it could be my father calling to say I got the job. But it also could be the MacArthur Committee calling to tell me I’ve won the Genius Grant. I jump up and catch it on the third ring.

  It’s my father.

  “I spoke with Brad,” he says. “He seemed to think you weren’t that interested in the job.”

  “Oh, now I remember,” I say. “The vapid, immature guy.”

  “I got the feeling you weren’t very nice to him.”

  “I didn’t ask for the interview.”

  “You have to tell me how, at some point, you are going to support yourself.”

  “Right now I’m using a Sealy Posturepedic.”

  “Carrie.”

  “I saw Dr. Petrov this morning.”

  This seems to cheer him up. “Okay. And what did he say?”

  “He wants me to do some kind of socialization experiment. Go on a date. Join a club.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “I said I’ll try.”

  “That’s what I like to hear.”

  “You know, you owe me,” I say.

  “Why?”

  “You know why.”

  Silence.

  He knows I mean the Big Lie.

  “I know,” he says.

  “Good.”

  “Well, if there was a job you might be interested in, what would it be?”

  “Something where I can use my intelligence,” I say. “Something where the hours aren’t ridiculous. Something where I can sleep while others are awake and be awake while others are asleep. Something where people aren’t condescending….”

  “Yes….”

  “Something I don’t hate.”

  Chapter Two

  “You ever been here before?”

  “No.”

  The woman behind the desk peers at me through small round glasses. I don’t know what her problem is. Everyone in this office has, at some point, never been there before.

  She gives me three forms to fill out, including a W-4 and a confidentiality pledge, and this wastes twenty minutes. If only the rest of the job is like this.

  She hands me two hulking toothpaste-white stacks of paper. “The lawyers need you to compare them word for word,” she says. “A full read. It could take a few hours.”

  Dad has gotten me work legal proofreading, which he says pays well and can be sporadic. I can work night or day. I’m smarter than ninety-nine percent of lawyers, so it should be easy.

  I reach my cubicle, which has a drawerless desk. This is even lower in the office furniture hierarchy than a drafting table. Behind me, an old guy in squarish glasses is reading two documents, his eyes swinging from one to the other.

  He looks a little too old for me to consider him for a possible date. But who knows? He’s bald and unthreatening-looking. Maybe I can figure out how to flirt with him enough to lure him to dinner, and then I’ll be satisfying Petrov’s requirement. That would leave me with three requirements to go.

  I look over my desk. It’s rife with supplies. Someone has taken a long piece of yellow legal paper and colored in every other stripe with a red Flair pen, and then completely filled in the remaining stripes with Wite-Out. And that person has also drawn a box in the left-hand corner with blue ink. It’s some sort of flag. It must have taken a good half hour to do.

  A supervisor comes in to further explain my task. The first document I have to look at is an original. The second document is a version they got by scanning in the first one and printing it out. But sometimes, when they scan documents in, the new copies that they print out accidentally have extra commas or extra letters in them, due to dirt on the scanner, marks on the original document, or something else.

  So my job is to compare the original and the printout word for word, making sure they’re exactly the same. I am supposed to do this for 210 pages.

  It seems like there must be a faster way to do this sort of labor in this era of technological advances. No wonder lawyers charge $400 an hour. They’re paying proofreaders to sit and play Concentration.

  I lean back in the hard chair and close my eyes. Within a minute, I have my answer. But I can’t use my easier system until Oldie behind me goes to get coffee. Which, I soon find out, he does every ten minutes. And it takes him ten minutes to do it. My father thinks I don’t want to work, but the truth is, no one else is really working. It’s all a big sham. No one says anything about it because they’re doing it, too. If all of the BS-ing was automatically extracted from the American workday, the American workday would last three hours. There are still tons of secrets in the world to which I am only just becoming privy.

  While Oldie is gone, I take the top page of my original, put it in front of the top page of the new copy, and hold them both up to the light. They match exactly: not a line, word or dot out of place. So these pages are fine. I put them both down and move on to the next pair. I hold them up to the light, and there’s not a stray line, streak or speck. This probably takes two percent of the time it would take to read the whole thing.

  When I finish, I leave the document a third of the way open on my desk so it looks like I’m in the process.

  I use my extra time to think about a lot of things.

  I think about why, if the highest speed limit anywhere in the U.S. is seventy-five, they sell cars that can go up to one hundred fifty.

  I think about whether the liquid inside a coconut should be called “milk” or “juice.”

  I think about why there are Penn Stations in New York and Maryland but not in Pennsylvania.

  I think about Michel Foucault’s views of the panoptic modality of power, and whether they’re comprehensive enough and ever could be.

  Behind me, Oldie picks up the phone and taps at the buttons. He asks for someone named Edna. On the one percent chance this won’t be completely boring, I eavesdrop.

  “Oh, I know what I wanted to tell you,” he says. “I called Jackie this morning, but she wasn’t there, but Raymond was. So Raymond tells me he’s home because he has all this sick leave saved up, you know, because teachers are allowed to accumulate their sick days, and so this is the third Friday in a row he’s taken off from school, and he was getting ready to go over to the Poconos to ski. He was practically bragging about it. And I say to him, ‘Raymond, that’s lying. Sick days are if you’re sick.’ Yeah, he’s cheating the kids. I know. I know. So he backs off and says, ‘Well, I only do it once in a while.’ And I say, ‘Raymond, excuse me, but you just said you did it three Fridays in a row, so don’t back off now.’ Do you know why our daughter married someone like that? He’s amazing, bragging like that. Amazing. I know. I said to him, ‘Work ethics like yours are why America’s going to pot. Because everyone tries to get away with everything.’”

  Eventually, the guy hangs up.

  I have to turn around.

  “Excuse me,” I say. “I couldn’t help overhearing. You’re annoyed because your son-in-law was goofing off. But you were just having a personal conversation on the phone for twenty minutes when you were supposed to be doing your proofreading. Isn’t this a little hypocritical?”

  There is nothing
more fulfilling than watching people get caught in the thick, coarse gossamer of their own hypocrisy.

  Oldie is stunned. “We’re entitled to breaks,” he says, but his voice is quavering.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  Oldie sniffs, “I don’t see why it’s any of your business,” and returns to his assignment.

  There are no new assignments, so I rest my eyes and sit back in my chair. I hear a fax machine whirr behind me, and the choppy sounds of someone’s discordant clock radio. Soon a young guy with dark, tufty hair pokes his head into the room. He looks around but apparently doesn’t see whom he had hoped to. He’s ready to retreat, but then he notices me. “Oh,” he says. “Hi. You a student?”

  “No,” I say. “I graduated. I’m a temp.” I’m barely able to hide my elation at the diversion. Oldie gives us both a sneer.

  “You just in for tonight?”

  “Far as I know.”

  He extends his hand. “Douglas P. Winters. Front desk dude.” He sniffs and wipes his nose with his arm. There’s something appealing about ending your sentences with a snort. I also get the feeling he’s smart and slumming. I can spot an underemployed lazy intellectual anywhere.

  “Carrie Pilby,” I say.

  “You here till morning?”

  “I guess so.”

  “So you said you graduated. Where’d you go to school?”

  This is always a dilemma. Everyone who went to Harvard has it. The problem is, if you say Harvard, it either sounds like you’re bragging, or conversely, people think you’re making a joke. A lot of Harvard graduates say “Boston,” and then when the other person asks where specifically, they say, “Cambridge,” and finally, if pressed again, they admit where they went.

  I decide to get it over with. “Harvard.”

  “For real?”

  I nod.

  “Say something smart.”

  This is another disincentive. It’s like finding out someone’s part Puerto Rican and saying, “Say something in Spanish.” Just because I went to a top college doesn’t mean I have a complex mathematical axiom on the tip of my tongue. I mean, I do, but it’s not because of where I went to college.