Hob Broun - Inner Tube

“Interviews, right,” one finally said, an androgynous redhead browsing through a tropical fish magazine. She pointed down a fern-choked hall. “The brown door with the porthole.”

I had expected a younger, less formal man. And I was puzzled by words chalked on the blackboard behind him.

Data Search

Continuity

Diagnosis

Amplitude (testing)

Total Coverage

“You’re late. I’m afraid you missed the slide presentation.”

In fact, I’d come early, but I wasn’t about to argue. Not for fifty grand. The man parted his gray hair down the middle and wore rimless glasses. Was he trying to look like Woodrow Wilson? He sighed.

“All right, you might as well tell me about yourself.”

I had a bio all ready, the novel and the ordinary mixed in exact proportions.

He looked hesitant. “And your video experience?”

Telegenic, not scholarly. I couldn’t decipher the aim of this question, but determination drowned out unease and I gave a deftly exaggerated account of my stint with CBS News.

My interrogator was visibly pleased. He reviewed his notes, underlining several items.

“And how much do you know about us?”

I enthused over the exciting and imaginative concept, the genuinely educational thrust behind…

Eyes of comparable grayness appeared to bubble outward toward the rimless lenses, and, inescapably, our cross-purposes came clear. He was recruiting manpower, I was spinning my wheels. He indicated rather huffily that he had never even heard of Open Market, and I said there would now be no need for the personal information I’d given. Our chairs scraped on the linoleum.

So that was it? No, we had begun a ritual, reiterative process and could only see it through, like some form of hormonal imprinting that cancels volition.

“No such prize, but we offer a very generous benefits package.” He paused fractionally between words, as if in fear of damaging his remarkably small teeth. “A long-term relationship.”

In cajolery and salesmanship we contested, seesawing in our chairs, only slightly less non sequiturious than before. The Wilson man described the new undertaking in terms of Utopian splendor.

“Your own satellites,” I said thoughtfully.

The Wilson man drew something in the air with his pencil.

“Yeah, I got in on the periphery of some of the microwave research they were doing at RPI a few years ago.”

“RPI?”

“Isn’t it remarkable that the same thing that roasts your holiday turkey can send a Liza Minnelli concert to Brazil?”

The Wilson man scribbled. “We always have ham.”

On and on we went, like men of stature talking over the noise of a bar car, constantly assessing, never really warming to each other. In the end, the deal closed, we couldn’t say goodbye fast enough. Aimless at ritual’s end. Spent.

“Take care now.”

“Thanks.”

“Thank you.”

I carried away a Ziploc info kit and instructions to phone headquarters in a month. I took away the very latest thing in normalcy, and all at no charge.

Violet took the news rather badly.

“But isn’t this what you meant? Something new?”

“What I meant was…What I meant was…”

Cursing me for a male moron, she hung up. I thought: This must be how your mom acts when you enlist in the Marines.

THE OVERSEERS ARE LONG on application, short on things to do. Telephone numbers and parking spaces are continually being reassigned. Arriving today, a directive on bulletin boards (no personal messages, solicitations to buy or sell, clippings, or cartoons), and report of heated committee wrangling over which hue of stationery will best set off the new logo. This sort of thing is placed under the heading of Systems Maintenance. Is this what we’re learning from the Japanese?

Sometimes it is useful, even imperative, to go below, to reach the shiny, packed, irrefutable innards of this place and rest.

The archives are housed in a core of hexagonal cells running three levels deep, this supremely efficient design tactic plagiarized from the bee. Loose-leaf catalog binders are chained like pens in a bank, and against white styrene walls the black cassettes achieve blunt grandeur, the cold authority of a vault. Form fascinates function.

I clang down one of the narrow iron stairways — curious anachronism — and find Ellen at the bottom.

“Hiding?”

“No. More like hibernating.”

Padded shoulders, full skirt, black stockings, noncommittal mouth. Why do I feel intimidated? Like I’ve been caught out? Ellen swings a big leather carry-bag at me. In a satiric sort of way, she’s been trying to take weight off in the employee gym. I’ve watched her run in the rubber suit and the ankle weights and it’s not flattering. This is the idea, she tells me.

Nothing to sit on but the floor, so we drop down, facing one another.

“Don’t look up my skirt,” Ellen barks. “You know there’s no future in it.”

She’s annoyed, but doesn’t change her posture any.

I’m stung. “Well, I see you’re not getting any thinner.”

“No, I know. And now I’m reading the worst magazines. ‘Bolstering Your Style Awareness.’ Recipes with seaweed, ads for panty-liners. What do you suppose is the matter with me?”

“Nothing.”

“Oh, use your imagination.”

“I don’t know. Random jumps? Venus envy?”

For a moment she looks timid, swallowed up in tiers of videotape, a refugee in a ship’s dark hold; then her leg shoots out to kick me hard.

“Really, you’re okay. Strength to spare.”

Ellen rolls her eyes, then looks away. “Have you ever wanted eminence? Ever cast yourself as a star?”

“Once. At sixteen, I was going to solve the Kennedy assassination. I made charts. I did a concordance of the Warren Report.”

“And?”

“I got to be seventeen.”

“I think it’s the biggest thing between us. That we share that ambition deficiency.” She stretches, waggles the sole of her shoe against mine. “Come on, why don’t you drive me home.”

If only this were the invitation it sounds like.

We’re zipping right along. No traffic at all. Ellen inspects my car like a detective.

“What’s this?” Fingering a brown potsherd glued to the dash.

“Found it out by the Salt River. It could be a relic with some spirit power or it could be nothing.”

“Spirit power? That costume doesn’t fit on you.”

“Why not?”

She tips back against the seat, rolls her head from side to side. “Too calculated.”

But I have a spot in mind where the power is hard to dismiss. Half a mile along the frontage road, then left. Castellated sandstone bluffs with a stream running slow underneath, colors enriched and outlines sharpened by the late sun. The air is light and perfumed with minerals. We drape over the warm hood, backs against the windshield.

“I’m learning to love the terrain,” Ellen says, teeth clamped on a barrette as she gathers her hair. “It frightened me at first. Merciless. Too raw. But I adjusted.”

“Where were you before?”

“Seattle. Lots of water, lots of green. Relaxing to the eye and ear.”

“Why leave?”

“I got toxoplasmosis. From our cat.”

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“It’s not. Parasitic microbes swimming around in your cells.” The way she folds her arms around herself it’s as though the story has to be squeezed out. “She really was a sweet little girl. I met her in a ticket line for La Bohéme. We had a house right by Lake Union with big bay windows and a plum tree in the yard. She played piano, I did some production for the PBS station. What a soft life. But I got a rash across my breasts, fevers of a hundred three, my throat swollen so I could barely swallow. Mono, they said at the hospital, and by the time someone really figured it out, I was in bad shape. The girl got scared and went back to Alaska. I got a permanent infestation of the kidneys. Little fuckers are in there now, latent, ready to activate anytime.”