BY THE TIME tenth grade came around, I didn’t have much use for school anymore. I was sixteen and feeling pretty old. Me and those boys usually knocked off school at lunch to go shooting or hang around a big empty strip mall where the Randy’s used to be. Randy’s was a defunct sporting goods store where there were still big dusty boxes in the back full of flat tennis balls and camp-stove fuel and these plastic toy bow-and-arrows we used for a game called manhunter. Manhunter was like hide-and-seek except everybody was hiding and seeking at the same time, and everybody had a plastic bow-and-arrow to shoot everybody else. If you got shot, you were out. It was scary because the Randy’s was dark and all the shelves were still there, like a maze, and also because the plastic bow-and-arrows hurt pretty bad even though they were toys. The boxes they came in said for ages twelve and up and never to shoot at other people with them. Ronnie made it even scarier by hiding in the shelves, curled into a ball, so when you passed by he could shoot you point-blank in the side of the head. One time he painted his face black to hide better, but the other guys made fun of him so he didn’t do it again. Another time I won by fashioning a makeshift atlatl from a yardstick. An atlatl is what Indians used before the bow-and-arrow. It’s like a stick that makes your arm longer so you can throw the arrow real far. An archeologist guy came to school and showed us how to do stuff the ancient Indian way, like grinding up little corncobs with a rock, which was pretty useless, but also the thing with the atlatl. I listened close and when it was my turn I threw the arrow a couple hundred yards at least. The archeologist guy said I was a natural, and did I have some Ocmoolga blood? I told him I did, but who knows. Maybe I could have been an Indian if it wasn’t for Trash Mountain. Anyway, I stood on top of a shelf with my atlatl and picked off the other boys one by one before they knew what hit them. Afterward Red Dog said atlatls weren’t legal, but Ronnie told him to stop being a pussy.
I loved playing manhunter, but the other guys mostly wanted to sit around drinking beer or Red Dog’s clear whiskey. I’d nurse one beer the whole time, and if they razzed me it was Ronnie who defended me. He said I was smart not to get “all drunk and stupid” like them. “We gotta be ready,” he said. He was always talking about being ready. The beer was okay, but I only pretended to sip the whiskey, and if they brought out a joint I didn’t smoke it, which suited them fine because weed was precious. It was Pete who usually got it, from his sister’s boyfriend, a guy called Milk Dog who sold it “Mexican style,” Pete said, “like that cartel shit.” Pete said Milk Dog once stabbed a guy who didn’t pay him. We asked who was the guy he stabbed, since we probably knew him, or of him, but Pete said the guy fled the country. “Milk Dog comes hard,” Pete said. “The guy probably be hiding out or some shit, like a monk.”
Hanging around those boys was a big change in my life, for better and for worse, but an even bigger change was coming.
Ruthanne had graduated high school in the spring and applied to college, but she didn’t apply in time to be admitted for the fall. I knew she did it late on purpose but she told Mom it was an accident and Mom believed her. Mom was kind of an idiot about college. One night Principal Winthrope called our apartment to speak directly to Ruthanne. Ruthanne paced around rolling her eyes while they talked.
Principal Winthope told Ruthanne that if she got good grades at a community college she could enroll at a four-year college the next semester.
“There ain’t no community college in Komer,” Ruthanne said. Whenever she talked about college, she used bad grammar on purpose. It was pretty stupid.
Principal Winthrope told Ruthanne there was a community college an hour away.
Ruthanne said she couldn’t get there because she couldn’t drive, on account of her spine, even though her spine hardly bothered her anymore. Her doctor said the muscles had built up around it so it might not bother her again until she was old and gray. I knew what he said because I was there. Ruthanne could have gone to the DMV and gotten a driver’s license, but she didn’t want to. She wanted to sit at home. That was the whole problem. I wanted to go into Principal Winthrope’s office and tell her what a lazy bum Ruthanne was being, but I wasn’t at school enough to do it. Plus I was in hot water with most of my teachers so I might have gotten a lecture for my trouble.
“And it’s not like I have a goddamned car anyway,” Ruthanne told Principal Winthrope. “Who’s gonna drive me? You?”
At that point Principal Winthrope said something to Ruthanne that caused Ruthanne to hang up. I figured Principal Winthrope had snapped at her—Ruthanne had it coming—but it turned out to be something else. It came out over dinner that night. We were splitting a pot of macaroni with frozen peas in it. Mom and I were quiet because Ruthanne was still steaming and there wasn’t any talking to her in that condition.
“That Principal Winthrope has such a nerve,” Ruthanne said.
“Oh Ruthie,” Mom said, “she just wants what’s best for you.”
“What’s worst is more like it. You’ll never believe what she said. Of all the nerve.”
Neither of us asked what Principal Winthrope said. We wanted Ruthanne to calm down.
Ruthanne slapped her macaroni with the back of her spoon—splat, splat, splat—until she said, “Principal Winthrope said there was a better community college in the city. She said she knows that’s where Dad lives, and maybe I could live there with him. Can you believe that shit?”
“She meant well,” Mom said. “She doesn’t know your daddy.”
“Or his stupid girlfriend,” Ruthanne said.
Dad had a new girlfriend. This, more than anything, made the situation repellent to Ruthanne. Before, Ruthanne had got on with Dad better than any of us. They were similarly inclined to complain and make fun of things. I didn’t know why Ruthanne hated the girlfriend so much. Her name was Geraldine, and we hadn’t ever met her because we never visited Dad in the city (he always came to us), but Ruthanne was sure she was a bimbo. That her name was Geraldine made me wonder, though. It sounded like an old librarian’s name.
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-colored 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.
I grabbed a copy of POLICE: The Law Enforcement Magazine and hunched over it, pretending to read about advancements in body armor technology but really thinking about how nice the other boys looked in their suits. Those suits were wool, probably, nothing like the polyester cheapo I was wearing, which I couldn’t take off because it was so hot that my armpits had already sweat through my shirt.
I waited, pretending to read, while each of the other kids got called on by the receptionist and led away. They’d be gone for ten minutes then come back looking dazed. I wondered if they had been interrogated. Probably Whitey Connors had instructed his HR person to make sure everybody’s story checked out. Maybe there was a heat lamp and two HR people, one good, one bad, and the bad one yelled about how you lied on your résumé and could go to jail for it while the good one offered you soda and whatnot. By the time all the other kids had gone, I was prepared for the worst.
A tall girl in a nice long dress came unsteadily from around the reception desk and left without a word. The receptionist shuffled some papers and said, “Benjamin Shippers?”
“That’s me,” I said.
The receptionist led me down a hallway to an office where a mustachioed man in a short-sleeved dress shirt was sitting behind a pristine desk. His necktie was pinned to the front of his shirt. The receptionist handed the man some papers and he put on reading glasses to examine them.
“Shippers,” he said. “Is that Dutch?”
“Partly,” I said, though I had no idea.
“Sit down for Pete’s sake.”
I sat down in a chair across the desk from the mustachioed man. Behind him was a window with crooked venetian blinds. The sun was peeking through, about to set.
“Local boy, huh?”
“That’s right, sir.”
He glanced at me over his reading glasses. “You look a bit like you’re from out west.”
I didn’t want this man to think I was a hayseed so I wracked my brain for a lie. “This jacket was my father’s,” I said, “and used to be part of a very fine suit. The pants were lost in a tragic house fire.”
The man wrote something on a notepad. He put down my résumé and started reading my cover letter, which emphasized poverty and fatherlessness. Demarcus told me that was my angle. I thought about the boys and girls who went before me, in their nice clothes, and decided to play up the difference between us.
“Excuse me, sir,” I said. “I want our relationship to get off on the right foot so I’m going to tell you the truth. This jacket wasn’t my father’s. My father never wore a jacket a day in his life. He does brake boxes at a factory in the city. I bought this jacket at the Salvation Army because I like it. I suppose I consider myself a westerner in spirit. The wide open spaces fire my imagination.” I couldn’t believe the bullshit that was coming out of my mouth. I was trying to tell the truth, but I couldn’t stop lying!
The man leaned back in his chair and examined me. “The clothes don’t make the man,” he said, “but careful grooming sometimes does.”
The word grooming made me think of dogs.
“Pared fingernails,” the man continued, “a cleanly shaved face. Take your haircut, for example.”
I prepared for the worst. Mom used to cut my hair with shaving clippers but she hadn’t cut it in a long time so I tried it myself the day before, but I screwed up and had to shave the whole thing down to a quarter inch. My ears stuck out like mug handles.
“Most of these boys have mops on their heads,” the man continued, “but your tidy haircut tells me you don’t have time to stand around styling yourself in front of a mirror.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said. “I cut it myself.”
“Why, you don’t even have time to go to the barbershop!”
“That’s right.”
“A self-starter,” the man said, rolling the words around in his mouth, “a self-starter by God.” He seemed to really like self-starters. He picked up my résumé again. “Hmm,” he said. “Why do you want to work at Bi-Cities Sanitation?”
Demarcus had prepared me for just that question. I said, “I want to be part of a thriving and well-run business such as Bi-Cities Sanitation.”
“But why do you, Benjamin Shippers, want to join the Bi-Cities team?”
“Well, I guess I want—I just want”—the word infiltration kept trying to come out of my mouth, but I held it back—“I want to make a difference.”
“Glad to hear it,” the man said flatly. He eyed my résumé. “What’s your major?”
Shit, I thought. I didn’t remember which major we put. “Um,” I said, searching for a lie, “sanitation science?”
“Says here it’s undeclared.”
“Well, I been thinking pretty hard about sanitation science.”
“Hmm. You ever had an internship before?”
“Yes, sir, with Toni Mikiska.”
“I didn’t know Toni hired interns. How is she, by the way?”
“Good. She moved to an island with her wife.”
The man eyed me. “If I called Toni right now, what would she say about you?”
“She’d say I worked hard but was kind of shy, maybe. She wanted me to talk to the old ladies, but I didn’t. Honestly old people kind of scare me, except my grandpa. He lives outside the city. He used to work in the kaolin mine. You know kaolin, china clay?”
The man nodded and I kept talking about Grandpa, then a bunch of other things. I couldn’t shut up!
“You don’t seem shy to me,” the man said.
“I guess I’m nervous,” I said.
“Because this résumé is embellished?”
I said nothing. I was caught. I had a vision of being thrown in some kind of basement detention facility until the cops came for me.
“Look,” the man said, “you’re a self-starter—that much is plain to see—but this internship is for high-achieving college students. Not that any high-achieving college students are applying,” the man added, muttering. “Tell you what, I’ll pass this along.”
“My résumé? But I thought you said—”
“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”
I nodded, confused. Was the man the horse or the gift?
“No promises,” he said, “but who knows, maybe it’ll stick somewhere.” The man stood up, so I did too, and we shook hands.
“Thank you, sir,” I said, but I didn’t have high hopes. I didn’t know what it took for a résumé to stick somewhere, but I was pretty sure mine didn’t have it.
When I left the man’s office it was after five o’clock, and the place was real quiet. I walked down the hallway to where the waiting room was, and the waiting room was empty. Even the receptionist was gone. So I turned around and kept walking down the hallway. I passed closed door after closed door, some with little windows so I could peek in and see darkened conference rooms and offices full of desks and computers and all kinds of big machines. I’d never been inside an office building before, and the unfamiliar surroundings were kind of scary to me, but I had to put my fear aside in order to infiltrate, I decided. I might not get another chance. For courage I thought about Blood Bank. At the end, Rick Zorn is running around a skyscraper with guys shooting at him until he finds the main bad guy banker standing in front of a plate-glass window, holding a grenade with the pin pulled. The banker guy laughs real crazy and says, “I guess you think you caught me, huh?” and Zorn says, “Red handed,” then shoots the guy’s hand off. The grenade flies bloody through the plate-glass window, shattering it, and explodes in the distance near a helicopter with some other bad bankers inside who catch fire and fall screaming to their deaths.
Nobody was going to shoot at me or pull out a grenade, of course, but still I stayed on my toes. The first open door I saw led to a sort of break room with a stinky microwave and a couple couches. I fought the urge to go in there and poke around for snacks, in case I got caught by a janitor or the guy who just interviewed me, which would have been a pretty good way to make sure my résumé didn’t stick.
The hallway ended in a metal door with a porthole window. I looked through the window and saw sinuous hills of garbage. Beyond the hills, bluish in the dwindling sunlight, was the hulking shape of Trash Mountain.
I didn’t see any garbage men or office people, so I tried the door.
The door was unlocked.