Maverick Jetpants in the City of Quality by Bill Peters

Author:Bill Peters [Peters, Bill]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Humorous, Literary, Fiction, Coming of Age, General
ISBN: 9781936787029
Publisher: Black Balloon Publishing
Published: 2012-10-01T04:00:00+00:00

CUNNAHOS

The next morning, the Manpower Skills Assessment Center in Greece has gray fabric partitions to divide its six computers. The only other applicant at a computer is a large lady with a neck tattoo and a bullfrog chin.

A gray box appears at the center of the computer screen and tells me to enter the formula that adds numbers in Excel. A timer counts down in the bottom corner. On the typing test, the last sentence I type is: “Why, then, would one run in the rain, when one would get as equally wet as they would walking?”

Back in the waiting room, a rectangle with doors at both ends and a reception window, my recruiter brings out the results sheet.

“You crushed the Word functions portion, you crushed the Word typing portion.” He’s tall and Irish, like a college basketball player, leftover freckles in his face and these thick-framed rectangular glasses. “Your Excel?” He tilts his head at the results sheet. “Now, I can push the Word. I can go hard at that with clients. But clients are looking for Excel, at least for the positions that would be a match for your educational background. Now I’m not taking away from your C’s—you passed and nobody can take that—the A in Home Ec. But, I mean, do you know Access?”

Since he’s already shaking my hand, I tell him No.

“Buy a book. I mean, we’ll call if we get a bite. But buy a book.”

Mom has lent me the car, so I drive to Pittsford. I fill out an application at Fantastic Records. I write on the application that I would prefer not to work a register. For available hours, I write 3 p.m. to 7 p.m., Monday through Thursday. I write on my application at Richardson’s: “No waiter jobs, dishwasher: yes.”

Back home, I call Costello’s. I call Kaufmann’s. I end calls with “Hope to hear from you soon.”

I check NecronicA. Two new drawings. One is this sketch of a skater kid with fat laces on his shoes and a spark coming from the tip of his shoelace. Another is of a ghost hand, spraying fire from the mouth in its palm at a pink, meat-textured car with headlight eyes who is clearly a character I drew once at a sleepover—the Hamaro, the Camaro made of ham.

So, to keep up with Necro, to keep up with NecronicA, I stack the still-hot plates from the dishwasher. I start to get hungry, so I drink a glass of milk, bring the phone down the hall to my room, and nap off a hunger headache.

Much later, in my armpit, I hear a digitized bleating noise. Which, I remember, is actually the phone, ringing me awake. I can’t see anything in my room, because the blinds are closed and it’s now seventy-five percent dark outside, hours past business hours.

“Nathan, how are ya this is Danielle from Kelly Services,” Danielle says on the phone. I sit up and clench down a yawn. Her voice is squeaky but gentle. I’ve never seen her, not once.

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