Résumé With Monsters (25 page)

The letter was eight pages long and narrated the events in Sissy's life and the lives of her numerous siblings and relatives. The family seemed to be a contentious one, and they were presently fighting over the custody of a child with the unlikely name of Gator, the offspring of someone named Skeet who had disappeared and was rumored to be living in Alaska.

A week after receiving this second letter from Sissy, Philip found himself at a party thrown by his therapist.

"It is not kosher to fraternize with clients," Lily told him, "but I met AL through you, so it is fitting you should come. Besides, I'm retired. Who's
gonna
fuss?"

Midway through the party, AL Bingham climbed up on a chair and announced that he was going to marry Lily Metcalf.

Everyone applauded as the loving couple embraced and kissed.

As the party wore on, Philip found himself experiencing the usual sense of disorientation and loss. He didn't know anyone at the party except Lily and Bingham, and he was standing amid several college professors.

A fat man with a close-cropped gray beard studied his coffee cup. "This china is rather like the china they had when I visited Yale to deliver my paper on cognitive responses to sexual imagery in male adolescent peer groups."

A shrill young woman leaned forward, "I can't tell you the amount of coffee I drank while studying under York who has gone on to win a Nobel, you know, and who said I was probably the best student he ever had."

A very thin man nodded his head. "Feldstein always spoke highly of York. I had come down to UT to deliver a lecture which Dean
Markson
later said was the highlight of the semester, and Feldstein came up to congratulate me on the Morrison grant and..."

Philip drifted away from the group and was on his way out the door when Bingham caught him.

"Leaving so soon?" the old printer asked.

"I've got to get up early tomorrow," Philip said. "The temp agency called with a job."

"Ralph was asking about you yesterday," Al said. "Said he missed you."

"I bet."

"Yeah. Well, you know Ralph."

Philip and Bingham walked outside and stood on the lawn.

"I'm pretty excited about marrying Lily," Bingham said.

"I think it's great. Congratulations."

"Thanks. Hey—" Bingham grew suddenly awkward, fishing a cigarette pack from his pocket and tapping one out on his sleeve. "Since you brought us together, I was wondering if you would be best man."

"It would be an honor," Philip said. "When is the wedding?"

"Next week. Saturday."

"That soon?"

"Gotta move fast," Bingham chuckled, at ease again, clutching Philip's shoulder. Bingham winked lasciviously. "Wouldn't want her to get knocked up out of wedlock."

For the wedding, Philip wore a rented tux, brown and shiny. When he tried on a smile in the mirror, he thought he resembled some sort of aquatic mammal, an insincere seal corrupted by long association with a carnival, perhaps.

The wedding ceremony itself was brief. Both Lily and Bingham were as excited as children at a costume party.

Some
people, Philip thought,
never
lose their enthusiasm.

Driving home from the wedding, Philip squinted into the descending sun and reflected on how very flat and unappealing his own life had become. Life had occasionally seemed hopeless when vast, malignant creatures were manipulating humanity for their own inscrutable purposes, but the monsters now seemed trumped by the unbearable weight of daily existence. Reality's bored visage... this was more dreadful than the star-shaped face of
Cthulhu
himself. Philip resolved to stop taking his medication.

On Sunday, Philip read the help-wanted ads and circled several. He was sick of temp jobs, folding envelopes or wrestling with unfamiliar computer software.

Over the course of his life, he had learned to interpret the language of want ads. "Entry level" meant a dismal minimum wage job that never evolved into anything else since even the toughest and most desperate of employees only lasted a month before quitting. "Go-getters" were solicited for sales positions hawking products like life insurance and shared vacation time. "Must love people" was a clear warning that the customers were difficult, perhaps psychotic. "Industrious" people were requested to apply for work at sweatshops filled with dispirited, bitter employees. Ads offering work in the "entertainment" industry were invariably seeking clerks for video stores.

On Monday, Philip called a company that was seeking a full-time word processor, and he went to their downtown offices and filled out an application. He was called that same afternoon and scheduled for an interview on Wednesday.

The interview was conducted by a pale, multi- chinned man whose dark hair was firmly slicked down. He rattled Philip's résumé and leaned forward.

"Says here you've written and published a novel," the man said.

"Yes," Philip said. He had debated adding this information to his r6sum6, but the help-wanted ad had asked for someone with writing skills. The published novel, Philip reasoned, might be a credential for such a job.

"This position we are offering is not glamorous like writing novels," the man said. "I don't know that you would be happy typing up letters and reports after writing novels."

Philip assured the man that he would be happy with steady work.

"I'll be candid with you," the man said, displaying yellow teeth, "we have got seventy- two people applying for this job. I can't hire but one. Should I take someone who has been laying back making up stories, sleeping till noon, living off big checks from New York and maybe taking enough drugs and booze to kill a rhinoceros?" He raised a pink hand to stop Philip from interrupting. "I know, I know, you are
gonna
tell me you aren't anything like that, but I'm saying I got seventy-two people hungry for this job, and some of them have been steady, solid word processors for years now. They are sharp with a lot of software packages, and they wouldn't read a novel much less write one. They are reliable, matter-of-fact people. What am I
gonna
do?"

Philip realized the interview was at an end, thanked the man and left.

He kept his novel on his resume for three more interviews, then deleted it. The final decision to do so came when Philip was interviewed by a thin, nervous man who had, himself, written three novels, none of which had been published, because New York publishing was now ruled by faggots and militant feminist lesbians. The man maintained that anyone who could get a novel published was a pervert or a pussy-whipped lackey.

In his dentist's office that weekend, Philip read a magazine article, a survey of various jobs rated according to prestige. Being a writer was in the top five percent.

#

On Monday Philip's temp agency, On Time, sent him on a new job. He found himself entering data on a computer lodged in a small office that was being used as a temporary storage space for moldy boxes of old paperwork and large coils of electrical wire. Somewhere above him his beloved Amelia chatted with coworkers, stopped for a drink at the water fountain, spoke on the phone, conferred with her boss. Philip was at
Pelidyne
.

His first day at
Pelidyne
seemed excruciatingly long. He was convinced that Amelia would think he was spying on her if she saw him. An explanation was on his tongue all day long, ready to be blurted.

But he did not encounter her.

When he drove home from work, exhausted, a woman jumped up from the curb in front of his apartment and shouted his name.

She ran up to him. "I'm Sissy Deal," she said, snatching her sunglasses off and smiling. She winked. "Recognize me with clothes?"

3.

Actually, she did look slightly different with clothes. She was wearing a dress— which is not what Philip would have expected—and it was a sort of old- fashioned, matronly dress, dark blue with small white dots. The dress didn't seem to fit properly. Later, Philip came to realize that Sissy was one of those beautiful women who did not wear clothes well, thus giving men an aesthetic as well as a sexual motive for urging her out of them.

"I should have called or something," she said. "But I got in a fight with Dirk. I was
gonna
go down to St. Petersburg and stay with Leda, but I got to the bus station and asked How much for Austin and it was reasonable, so I said Sold!"

"Come on inside," Philip said. He picked up her suitcase and she followed him up the wooden stairs to his apartment.

In the room, there was only the chair and the bed, so he sat her in the chair and went and made tea.

"You look a hundred percent better without that mustache," Sissy said.

"Well, thanks. You were right about the mustache. It was a bad idea."

"Sometimes a beard is good if a man has a weak chin. But mustaches are sort of pointless and kind of, no offense, vain."

Philip nodded. "You're right. You're right."

Sissy got up and came into the kitchen to watch Philip pour the hot water into cups.

"I know I should have called or something," she said.

"No, that's fine," Philip said. "Really fine."

"I didn't think it through."

"I'm impulsive myself," Philip said, handing her a steaming cup.

"On the bus I sat next to this red-faced guy in a suit, and we started talking, I don't know, about the weather and stuff and how his wife hated him and wouldn't give him a blow job. I tried to change the subject, so I told him about your book and showed him it—I brought it along for you to autograph—and he said—can you believe it?—that he didn't go for books that had monsters or fantastic things in them. He liked books that were just like life. Why would anyone like books that were just like life? So he told me about this book he had read that he thought was great about this businessman on a bus who meets this redheaded woman and they do all kinds of sexual stuff, right on the bus, very explicit, cock- this, pussy-that, you know." Sissy paused, lowered her tea cup from her lips. “I bet there isn't any such book. What do you bet?"

"Maybe not," Philip said.

Sissy stayed at Philip's apartment that night. Philip offered her the bed, but she insisted on sleeping in the ancient sleeping bag he hauled out of the closet.

"I don't want to inconvenience you," she said.

"Not at all," Philip said. "I'm glad you came. I've had a rough day, actually. The temp agency I'm signed up with sent me to the place where my ex-girlfriend works."

"Gosh. Did you see her?"

"No. But I felt pretty weird."

"Sure."

Philip hadn't had a sympathetic ear in a long time. Well, there was Lily, of course, who helped him sort through things and who certainly had his best interests at heart—but that was still a client/counselor relationship. Lily was not apt to say something like, "Amelia doesn't understand you. She is a cold-hearted bitch, and you are better off without her."

Sissy and Philip went out and ate at a cafeteria-style restaurant, Dan's Texas Bar-B-
Que
, and Sissy had to explain to the cashier about change. The cashier was a dark, hairy man in an apron, and when he handed Sissy her change, a dime fell to the floor and Sissy had to retrieve it. She stood up and leaned across the counter, past the cash register, and caught the man's arm.

"It's not your fault," she said. "A lot of people do it that way. Just because no one told them otherwise. They slap the bills down, and then they pour the change on top, so that it naturally slides right off. They do it over and over again without a clue. They must think they have a lot of clumsy customers, is all. Look, open your hand. Okay. I put the change in first. Then the bills. Not very complicated."

The man blinked at her, holding the money.

She smiled, nodded.

"Change first," she said, presenting her palm.

The man poured the change into her hand and then the bills. He smiled.