The End of Music by Jamie Fitzpatrick

Author:Jamie Fitzpatrick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Breakwater Books Ltd
Published: 2017-11-06T16:00:00+00:00

10

Eric heard that Pan-Am was looking for new station agents, and applied for the training program in New York. An operation that size would surely prosper for years to come, he reasoned, and getting in now opened the possibility of working anywhere in the world. He was turned down, much to Joyce’s relief. Eric didn’t possess the patience for the half-witted passengers and countless bumbling oversights she dealt with daily.

The rejection troubled him, but no more than a day or so. More and better opportunities were sure to come his way. Eric didn’t so much search for jobs as search the world for wonder and possibility, spending long evenings in his easy chair, the floor around him strewn with his magazines and newspapers. He was dogged in his concentration, reading softly to himself, often repeating a line or paragraph several times over until it made itself clear. He might call Joyce over to show her the latest developments in skyscraper design, or read to her about how potatoes were being bred for greater yield. One night he asked her opinion on a series of magazine illustrations proposing “a revolution in the household kitchen.” But she didn’t get to say much. “You see what happens with better design,” he explained, tracing his finger over the strips of chrome trim on the stove and refrigerator. “Just by making it more pleasing to the eye, it becomes an easier place to work. And nuclear ovens, for quick cooking.”

“Nuclear ovens!” Joyce couldn’t imagine it, not after seeing the newsreels of bomb tests in the American desert.

Eric’s kitchen wasn’t much. A filing cabinet for a pantry, a hot plate and coffee pot on an old office desk. But the tiny electric refrigerator was the first Joyce had ever seen in action. The rest of the apartment she liked. On Page Street, well away from the tarmac, with a second easy chair for her and a nice big picture window looking to the woods. The worst of it was the Murphy bed, which partly blocked the bathroom door.

His next job idea was to work the network of superhighways that would soon crisscross America. Hard labour, but with his years of experience he’d rise to foreman or beyond before too long. After that he had a notion to return to California, where the next generation of airliners would be conceived and built. Opening a magazine page that folded out to double size, he showed Joyce the sketches for an airship that would hold hundreds of passengers and crew, with dining rooms, libraries, tennis courts, private quarters, and a ballroom with full orchestra.

“But can they actually make it?” asked Joyce, perched on the arm of his chair.

“Sooner than you think,” he said. “Maybe we’ll be the house band. What do you say?”

He stored his records in a case that looked like a toolbox, each disc nestled in a velvet-lined slot. The case had a lid and a handle on one side, so it could be latched and carried like luggage.

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