things got going. Maybe today I could get away with just once. I still wasn’t hungry.
SO the first night was bad.
The air conditioner was loud and too cold. If you turned it to low it still came out high, so I got up and turned it off, opened the window. I lay back down and warmed up fast. Sweat crawled and then I realized it wasn’t just sweat and jumped up wiping and slapping. Turned on the light and watched them scatter. I left the light on and washed my face.
The closet door wouldn’t close.
My back, my stomach, my side. Sleep would come without warning, a dirty trick you kept falling for. I woke up hard like running into a wall. Someone driving a stereo past the building, driving it right through you. Couldn’t tell if I’d shouted or dreamt I had, then a silence so strange it hurt. Once I’d used wads of cotton, candle wax, bits of sponge to keep out the noise. Now I got up and turned the air conditioner back on. Shut the window. Washed my face again.
Coming back to bed, a small red stain in the middle of the mattress. Might happen from time to time, they said. Nothing they could do. Avoid stress, they said, and recommended a feminine hygiene product.
I flipped my pillow. My stomach clenched. The closet door wouldn’t close all the way but at least outside it wasn’t as dark anymore.
When it had been light for a while I got dressed and went downstairs. The maintenance man told me about a diner where you could eat a full breakfast for under three dollars. Coffee included, juice extra. It was the kind of place where people smoked while they ate. Over easy and white toast. I ate it all, saving the home fries for last, then soaked up the yellow puddle with a piece of toast somebody hadn’t finished. They’d left a paper, too, and I sat there in the booth drinking my coffee and looking over the help wanted pages. I had a rough idea of what kind of help I wanted to give: entry level. Will train. Wages commensurate—maybe the less you asked for, the less they’d need to know. Something you could just walk up to and disappear in.
Something on a bus line.
The waitress came and asked me how everything was. I said everything was fine, I just needed something to write with. To make circles.
Foundry, flagger, material handler. Wear a clean cap in a clean room, impregnate engine blocks. They wanted you to work with limestone. Wanted you to be a self-starter in a friendly, fast-paced environment.
“Take your average person,” someone said in the booth behind me.
“Vitamin B and as hot a bath as you can stand,” the waitress was saying.
She filled my cup. I kept losing my place. I tried to go in order, to read them one at a time, but then my eyes would wander. I’d see them all at once and have to start over.
“Ask your average person to take your average person.” They wanted you to join their team.
I made a circle. Laborers, immediate openings. Within walking distance. After that transportation was provided and you got paid every day. I left nothing and grabbed a toothpick on the way out. My shirt smelled like coffee and secondhand smoke.
On the way to the agency I passed a building that had once been a high-rise condo and was now something called the Workforce Development Center. The people camped out front did not look like they were being developed. Maybe they were on the waiting list, or maybe they weren’t on any list and were beyond waiting. They sat or lay across the whole sidewalk with their blankets and makeshift backpacks, their shopping carts and cardboard, their duct-taped shoes. A man with no arms or legs lay on a furniture dolly and played a portable keyboard with his tongue. Christmas songs. I didn’t look in anyone’s face I didn’t have to, but you could smell cheap wine and everybody’s ass, their terrible freedom. It was as warm as the day before but in the middle of them all a trash can smoldered.
And then someone finds the heart you tried to lose and shakes it bleeding in your face. Take your average person.
At the agency a sign in the window sent you around back. The guys hanging out there weren’t in much better shape than the ones on the sidewalk, but most were on their feet. Two of them threw a foam rubber football at each other. They stopped long enough to let me by.
Inside you couldn’t smoke but you could make all the noise you wanted. Imitation wood paneling and a dirty tile floor. Plastic chairs, all of them taken. A TV set on a stand playing a company video everybody ignored. A young woman was drywalled into a corner and everyone else was gathered at her window, getting paid, complaining, both. Or maybe they just talked that way. I tried to filter in. A big round-faced man stood behind the woman. She kept asking, “Who’s next?” and everyone thought they were.
Sheets of paper tacked to the fake wood displayed work requirements, the Minimum Wage Act, the Equal Opportunity Act. NO SMOKING. WIMPS NEED NOT APPLY.
“Arrive fifteen minutes early and be ready to start work,” the video said. “Dress professionally and use proper hygiene.”
“Who’s next?” the young woman said. Nobody moved and so I was. You spoke through a hole in the window. She passed me a pen and an application, a half-sheet of paper printed on one side. There wasn’t much to it but I had my hands full. Someone squeezed in next to me, a shoulder hard against mine. She was the only other woman there and I didn’t move.
She slid her pay stub under the window, kept a finger on it. “What’s this for?”
“Lunch,” the red-faced man said.
“Somebody gave me a baloney sandwich I ain’t ask for,” she said.
“Three dollars.”
“Wasn’t even no mustard on it.” She sounded and smelled drunk. My hand shook. You could barely make out my name and social security number. At the bottom of the application they asked you what kind of experience you had—you were supposed to check a box. I checked Other and put the pen down.
“Talk to me like I’m a human being,” the drunken woman said.
“This is how we talk to human beings,” the woman behind the window said. The red-faced man returned the pay stub.
The video moved on to safety in the workplace. A man lay under a forklift.
“I’m goin back to Buffalo,” the drunken woman said, like this was the only possible response. “Fuck some tired baloney.”
“We love you, too,” the woman behind the window said. “Who’s next?”
I told her I didn’t have a phone. She took the application and said it didn’t matter. She asked me what shift I wanted to work and I said it didn’t matter.
“Report back here at four-thirty for first shift,” she said, “one o’clock for the second, seven for the third. You get paid at the end of your shift.” I asked her what kind of work I’d be doing.
“You get paid every day,” the round-faced man said.
I asked if they could give me some idea.
“Racking parts,” someone behind me said.
“We haven’t even taken any orders yet,” the young woman said. They took them at five-thirty for first shift, two o’clock
