“Vitamin B and as hot a bath as you can stand,” the waitress was saying.
She filled my cup. I kept losing my place. I tried to go in order, to read them one at a time, but then my eyes would wander. I’d see them all at once and have to start over.
“Ask your average person to take your average person.” They wanted you to join their team.
I made a circle. Laborers, immediate openings. Within walking distance. After that transportation was provided and you got paid every day. I left nothing and grabbed a toothpick on the way out. My shirt smelled like coffee and secondhand smoke.
On the way to the agency I passed a building that had once been a high-rise condo and was now something called the Workforce Development Center. The people camped out front did not look like they were being developed. Maybe they were on the waiting list, or maybe they weren’t on any list and were beyond waiting. They sat or lay across the whole sidewalk with their blankets and makeshift backpacks, their shopping carts and cardboard, their duct-taped shoes. A man with no arms or legs lay on a furniture dolly and played a portable keyboard with his tongue. Christmas songs. I didn’t look in anyone’s face I didn’t have to, but you could smell cheap wine and everybody’s ass, their terrible freedom. It was as warm as the day before but in the middle of them all a trash can smoldered.
And then someone finds the heart you tried to lose and shakes it bleeding in your face. Take your average person.
At the agency a sign in the window sent you around back. The guys hanging out there weren’t in much better shape than the ones on the sidewalk, but most were on their feet. Two of them threw a foam rubber football at each other. They stopped long enough to let me by.
Inside you couldn’t smoke but you could make all the noise you wanted. Imitation wood paneling and a dirty tile floor. Plastic chairs, all of them taken. A TV set on a stand playing a company video everybody ignored. A young woman was drywalled into a corner and everyone else was gathered at her window, getting paid, complaining, both. Or maybe they just talked that way. I tried to filter in. A big round-faced man stood behind the woman. She kept asking, “Who’s next?” and everyone thought they were.
Sheets of paper tacked to the fake wood displayed work requirements, the Minimum Wage Act, the Equal Opportunity Act. NO SMOKING. WIMPS NEED NOT APPLY.
“Arrive fifteen minutes early and be ready to start work,” the video said. “Dress professionally and use proper hygiene.”
“Who’s next?” the young woman said. Nobody moved and so I was. You spoke through a hole in the window. She passed me a pen and an application, a half-sheet of paper printed on one side. There wasn’t much to it but I had my hands full. Someone squeezed in next to me, a shoulder hard against mine. She was the only other woman there and I didn’t move.
She slid her pay stub under the window, kept a finger on it. “What’s this for?”
“Lunch,” the red-faced man said.
“Somebody gave me a baloney sandwich I ain’t ask for,” she said.
“Three dollars.”
“Wasn’t even no mustard on it.” She sounded and smelled drunk. My hand shook. You could barely make out my name and social security number. At the bottom of the application they asked you what kind of experience you had—you were supposed to check a box. I checked Other and put the pen down.
“Talk to me like I’m a human being,” the drunken woman said.
“This is how we talk to human beings,” the woman behind the window said. The red-faced man returned the pay stub.
The video moved on to safety in the workplace. A man lay under a forklift.
“I’m goin back to Buffalo,” the drunken woman said, like this was the only possible response. “Fuck some tired baloney.”
“We love you, too,” the woman behind the window said. “Who’s next?”
I told her I didn’t have a phone. She took the application and said it didn’t matter. She asked me what shift I wanted to work and I said it didn’t matter.
“Report back here at four-thirty for first shift,” she said, “one o’clock for the second, seven for the third. You get paid at the end of your shift.” I asked her what kind of work I’d be doing.
“You get paid every day,” the round-faced man said.
I asked if they could give me some idea.
“Racking parts,” someone behind me said.
“We haven’t even taken any orders yet,” the young woman said. They took them at five-thirty for first shift, two o’clock for second, eight for third.
“You have to show up an hour early,” the man said.
“Using I language,” the video said, “tell the offender how you feel.” The subject was sexual harassment. Then violence in the workplace, a black guy and a white guy squaring off in a warehouse. This got an audience, and some of them looked and sounded like men I’d known but hadn’t wanted to.
Out front a battered rusty van pulled up and people were spilling noisily out before it had fully stopped. If they’d been racking parts, they were bent and dusty from it. Some went into the agency, some went into the bar next door, picking up speed. A sign said they cashed checks in there.
There was another agency across the street. The lights were out and the door was locked. I saw a couple of chairs inside, then just myself. A sheet of paper in the glass told you when the door would open. In Magic Marker it asked that you not wait around outside. There’d been complaints.
Across the street a bottle broke and let out laughter. I blinked and ground sand against my eyeballs. Tasted my mouth. If I was going to come back an hour before any shift I’d need some real sleep. The Magic Marker said two kinds of ID.
On the way back I passed a Burger King. I stopped, kept going, stopped, turned and went inside. Everyone was having it their way. All you had to do was push the little pictures on the register, but the only buttons on the customers were the wrong ones. Someone wanted the seeds scraped off his bun.
“I didn’t order any hair with my burger,” a woman was saying at the counter. I got an application and left.
I thought about going to the library—I’d developed the habit of reading while I was away—but I remembered where it was and today it was still too far.
Back at the Avenue a heavyset man was complaining at the lobby desk. Someone was in his parking space.
“There are no assigned spaces,” Mrs. Ivy said in monotone. “First come first serve, this is a recording.” I turned my back and faced the elevators.
“Are you in my space?” the man said loudly.
“He doesn’t have a car.”
I rode up to my floor and went down the hall. My hand was still shaking when I slid the key into the lock. Maybe it was the coffee. If I couldn’t sleep there was always fast food, or the library—or tomorrow, just not a lot of it. I turned the key the wrong way and it broke off in the lock. Suddenly it had been a long day and that felt like the end of it.
I felt sweat beading on my scalp, leaned my forehead against the door. I could lie on the floor and close my eyes. It would turn into a sidewalk beneath me. A trash can appeared, smoke rose out of it. I took some deep breaths and when I felt steadier I went back down to the lobby. Mrs. Ivy waited without looking at me. A sign on the front of the desk said TEN DOLLARS FOR NEW KEYS. NO EXCEPTIONS. She looked up.
I told her I hadn’t gotten any phone books. She said she’d take care of it and let me use hers. I looked through it, found something, went back up to my door.
I knelt down. You could see it stuck there in the keyhole, protruding slightly but not enough for me to