AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I parked beside the Bug. A young woman came out carrying a briefcase in one hand and the steno pad in the other. She was dressed in a skirt suit. It was Diane, lately of Temp-O.
“Hello stranger,” I said.
“Hello yourself. You must be the next one. I hope you have better luck.”
“Didn’t get it?”
“He said he’d call me. I know what that means. Is Pearson still there?”
“Yes.”
“That fuck.”
She got in the Bug and puttered away. I rang the bell. Elgin answered it. He was tall and thin with a lot of sweptback white hair like a concert pianist. He wore a white shirt and khaki pants with the crotch hanging down like he’d lost weight. He looked about forty-five. He asked me if I was William Davis. I said I was. He asked me if I had a steno pad. I said I had half a dozen in the backseat of my car.
“You better get one.”
I got one, thinking it would be Mrs. Frobisher all over again. He took me inside to the living room, which felt like it still held the ghost of winter when the house was empty and the lake turned to ice. He asked me if I had brought my resume. I took out my wallet and showed him my honorable discharge and told him that was my resume. I didn’t think he’d care about me pumping gas or working as a busboy in the Headless Woman after I graduated high school.
“Since I got out of the Army I’ve been working at an agency in Portland called Temp-O. Your last one worked there, too. You can call if you want. Ask for Mrs. Frobisher. She might even let me keep my job if she finds out I’m looking for another one.”
“Why is that?”
“Because I’m the best she has.”
“Do you really want this job? Because you seem, what’s the word, lackadaisical.”
“I wouldn’t mind a change.” That was true.
“What about the wages? Want to know about them? Or how long the job lasts?”
I shrugged.
“Rolling stone are you?”
“I don’t know.” That was also true.
“Tell me, Mr. Davis, can you spell phlegmatic?”
I spelled it.
He nodded. “Because the last one couldn’t, even though she must have read it in my advertisement. I doubt if she even knew what it meant. She looked flighty to me. Was she, when you worked together?”
“I wouldn’t want to say.”
He smiled. Thin lips. Lines going down the sides of his mouth like you’d see on a ventriloquist’s dummy. Hornrim specs. He didn’t look like a scientist to me. He looked like he was trying to look like a scientist.
“Where did you serve? Vietnam?”
“Mostly.”
“Did you kill anyone?”
“I don’t talk about that.”
“Get any medals?”
“I don’t talk about that, either.”
