Lurch of a Lifetime

by Beth Lisick

I had to get out of San Jose. It was embarrassing to stay in the city where I grew up when San Francisco was only forty-five minutes away.

At the time, I was a baker at a Sicilian place run by a former bank robber.

And it was getting hard for me to drink four beers, smoke half a pack of cigarettes, go to bed at midnight, and wake up at 3:00 a.m. to work every day.

So I hatched a plan to get a regular office job in San Francisco and get on with my life. I mean, I was almost twenty-four.

When I first moved to the city, I lived in a tiny room underneath the staircase in my brother’s apartment.

I also slept over a lot at my boyfriend Morgan’s studio apartment, where most of my stuff was stored.

That’s were I was the night before my first job interview, at a temp agency in San Francisco.

I probably should have stayed at my brother’s, but Morgan and I were breaking up and therefore inseparable.

About 2:00 a.m., we were awakened by the sound of the building’s fire alarm, followed immediately by screaming sirens.

We hopped down from the sleeping loft, threw on some clothes, and fled into the street.

It was a scene out there. The bars were just closing down and the streets were packed with people watching the flames on our roof.

There was a tap on my shoulder. It was one of the bartenders from the Ajax, the bar across the street. He asked us if we wanted to go inside and watch the action from the bar.

We drank tequila after tequila and waited to see if our stuff would be spared.

This was the first time I ever drank myself through a life semi-drama and it felt great. Like I was doing important work.

Around 5:00 a.m., we were allowed back into I the apartment, very drunk. The whole place t smelled like smoke but at least our stuff was

OK.

It wasn’t until we crawled back up to the mattress that I remembered. My interview!

I jumped down and set the tiny travel alarm clock for seven and kept it downstairs so I would have to get up to turn it off.

All those years of teenage sports training and professional baking really paid off. After two hours of sleep, it was a snap for me to go on autopilot first thing in the morning.

I discovered I was even able to dress myself in a way that was not natural to me, digging into a box and pulling out an outfit that my mom had gotten me for Christmas.

To call it a jumpsuit doesn’t seem quite accurate.

It was a one-piece polyblend outfit in navy blue with small white flowers. It zipped up the back and had long, tapering sleeves and wide, floppy legs.

I thought of it as a “nice outfit” that would make me look employable.

I jammed my pickup truck through rush hour traffic with little time to spare, but was way too cheap to pay for the parking garage next to the place I was going.

My friend’s brother always said only tourists paid for parking in the city, and I would not be a tourist. I was going to live in this city and have a real job.

I found a meter about six blocks away, emptied whatever change I had in my ashtray into it, and sprinted down the street.

During this sprint, it became clear that I was hungover in a way that was new to me.

My head was pounding, my muscles were rubbery, my mouth was dry and cracked.

I felt like I was going to have a seizure up until the very moment I entered the building, when I had another new experience. Something called “flop sweat.”

However, I was quite impressed by my own résumé and was sure they would be too.

Did I temp at my friend’s stepdad’s orthodontist office during winter break of 1985?

Did I later move to a job as file manager at the plastic surgeon’s office down the street on a part-time basis after school in the spring of’86 at the rate of five dollars an hour?

Had I been responsible for every single hamburger bun and piece of apple pie at a very well-known and semi-historic diner? I had. Thank you for asking.

My résumé made it seem like I could have been a divorcée in my midforties.

The office lady seemed nice and for a moment I thought I would tell her about the fire. Get some sympathy points.

Nah, I decided. Not my style. Apparently my style was to show up smelling like booze in a Laura Ashley onesie.

First up was the typing test, in which I was panicked to discover I would be judged on speed and accuracy.

I pressed the space bar to begin, but my hands were trembling terribly. I could barely hit the keys.

As the time ticked down, the number on the “words per minute” display went into complete free fall, from 38 words per minute to 37, 36, 35, 34.

With each second I didn’t type, an electronic blip, like the one in Atari Pong, came out of the computer.

Soon I was down to twelve words per minute. Pong, pong, pong, pong.

Clearly, the best way to resolve this was to get up and leave the building. Without telling anyone.

I stood up, pointed my index finger toward the elevator button, and shuffled toward it.

The computer ponged away, tattling on me.

So focused was I on the elevator doors that I startled easily when the nice lady came up and touched the small of my back.

Was everything OK? Was I done with my test already?

Instead of telling her about the fire now, which would seem like a lie or else why wouldn’t I have mentioned it earlier, my mouth replied with something a little less true.

“I think I am having an allergic reaction to my medication.”

I was on no medication and therefore not quite prepared for the question that came next. “What kind of medication?”

At the time, my boyfriend’s mother was having a thyroid issue. Why not me too?

“Thyroid.”

She whisked me away to the break room and told me to lie down, putting a cool washcloth on my head.

“You look clammy.”

“I feel clammy.”

She turned off the lights and I heard whispering outside the door.

When the voices went away, I got up and headed to the elevator.

Busted again.

“You should really stay here and rest. Marcy’s on her way from upstairs. Her sister is on thyroid meds too.”

I was looking at my feet. “I just want to go. My brother works down the street. He’s coming to get me.”

Part of that was true. He did work down the street, but in this age before cell phones, I don’t know how they thought I had gotten hold of him to come pick me up so quickly.

I shuffled into the elevator and then back to my truck, on which there was a parking ticket. I was suddenly overcome by the powerful urge to take a shit.

I just didn’t have it in me to stop at a local business and deal with talking to someone, pretending to purchase something, or getting a special key.

I drove across town to my brother’s apartment, nearly hallucinating from this disturbing glandular funk of dehydration, humiliation, and gastric distress.

After fumbling with his keys at the front gate for what must have been a solid minute, it became clear I needed another plan.

The closest place was a church. Not just a church, but a Spanish mission. I remember my parents telling me that the doors to Catholic churches were always unlocked.

But when I found the door locked, it occurred to me that maybe they were being metaphorical in hopes I would return to going to mass at some point.

I turned to the curb. A tour bus was idling out front and the passengers had just begun disembarking.

Quickly, I slipped into line and filed into the dark basilica with them, breaking away from the pack when I was safe inside.

The back-zippered outfit was nearly impossible to undo.

But after some struggle it eventually dropped to the floor.

I plopped onto the toilet and let loose, feeling like myself for the first time that day.