Another Roadside Attraction (18 page)

THE JOB INTERVIEW I

The rain did not last through the night. Winter had made one final lunge and expired. Come morning, the sun was blaring and the air was very clear. As he shaved, Marx Marvelous could see from the bathroom window the sawtooth range of Cascade peaks as it jutted up and ran along behind the foothills on the eastern horizon. The Cascade Range looked as if it were a portrait gallery devoted exclusively to profiles of Dick Tracy. Here was Dick Tracy's chin pointed north and there was Dick Tracy's chin pointed south. There was Dick Tracy's jaw jutting down patronizingly at Junior and here was Dick Tracy's jaw jutting up obsequiously toward Diet Smith, and way over there was Dick Tracy's jaw jutting manfully straight ahead into the adoring gaze of Tess Trueheart. There was a battery of Dick Tracy noses sniffing the blue air for clues, and there was one very large Dick Tracy profile (Mt. Baker) that was covered all over with slobber and foam, as if Dick Tracy finally had gone insane from a lifetime of slaughtering deformed criminals (Pruneface, Rodent, Ugly Christine).

Breakfast was served on a round oak table in the downstairs kitchen. There was poached salmon in hollandaise sauce, followed by fresh strawberries in wild honey. Tulips and daffodils by the dozens were bunched on the table. Recorded Japanese flute music spiraled down from the upstairs phonograph. Amanda had prepared everything after completing her morning meditations. After her vagina-strengthening exercises on the banks of the slough.

Baby Thor and Mon Cul were at table. Marx Marvelous blinked at the luminescence of the child's gaze; his eyes were like bare wires. He was both amused and flabbergasted by the baboon's antics, such as the way it juggled strawberries before devouring them, the way it scratched its pelt with a fork.

Amanda chatted gaily with her son, tossing an occasional aside to her husband, to the baboon or to Marx Marvelous. She jabbered about seashell buddhas and sweet cream rainbows and about a proposed trip to the hills to hunt the morel (which Marvelous gathered was a species of mushroom). In contrast, John Paul said nothing. He sucked up his breakfast with manners that Marx found nearly as atrocious as the baboon's. Ziller ate everything with his fingers, including the berries in honey. To Marx, this seemed a disgusting display of contrived primitivism. He was about to say as much when Ziller suddenly asked, “Mr. Marvelous, do you think that anything exists between space and the wall?”

It was the kind of question that made Marx Marvelous cringe, that offended him deep down in his bowels. Nevertheless, he was prepared. “Albert Einstein once defined space as 'love.' If that is an accurate definition, then we may conclude that if something could fit between love and its object, then something could fit between space and the wall.”

“A pleasing answer, Mr. Marvelous. Amanda, you can continue the interview at your discretion.” With that, Ziller excused himself to a far corner of the kitchen where he commenced to unhook strings of sausages with the measured delight of a nymphomaniac plucking fruits from her dream vine.

II

First letting Thor and Mon Cul out in the back grove to play, Amanda took the prospective employee on a tour of the premises. In one sun-splashed end of what had formerly been Mom's dining room, there was a rock pile enclosed by wire mesh. Amanda studied Marx's face to see if he was repulsed by the occupants of the pen. “We take good care of these dears,” confided Amanda. “There are fewer than one hundred left alive and we're fortunate to have so many here in our charge.”

Marx Marvelous tried to tally the exact number of San Francisco garter snakes in the enclosure, but as they were forever slithering in and out among the rocks, over the rocks and over one another, it was impossible to take a precise census. He guessed there were twelve to fifteen. “They seem pretty frisky to be on the brink of extinction,” he said.

The flea circus was housed inside a hollow, lighted table, the top of which was magnifying glass. Marx Marvelous could not conceal fascination. The fleas were
en costume
, some dressed as ballerinas and some as Roman warriors; there was a clown or two and a Persian prince and a cowboy and one flea wore a scarlet chiffon sheath and a yellow wig and looked a little like Jean Harlow. Tiny props were stashed in a corner beneath a miniature canopy. “The fleas are my pride and joy—I trained them and sewed their costumes—but they are also our biggest headache,” said Amanda. “They require an attendant almost full time because most of the tourists insist on seeing them perform. I can't say as I blame the tourists, but it's a hardship to keep staging shows. As it is, we schedule a chariot race once an hour on busy days, but folks complain if they have to wait. I don't have time to demonstrate right now, but we put the fleas through their paces by blowing smoke at them. It isn't hard, really. With just a little practice you'll become a good flea trainer, wait and see.”

Marx Marvelous laughed out loud. “Me, a flea trainer. What would they say at the Institute?”

“The Institute?” asked Amanda.

“Er, well, yes, I was formerly employed by an institution. The, er, East River Institute to be exact.”

The name meant nothing to Amanda. “I hope it was fun for you,” she said. She led her guest over to a dramatically lighted alcove in which the amber encapsuled tsetse fly rested upon a satin pillow. It was here, with candlelight reflecting from the green igloo eye facets of the killer insect, that Amanda chose to conduct her portion of the job interview.

“Are you scared of snakes?” First question.

“No, hardly a bit. I used to capture live Maryland copperheads for my zoology class workshop in herpetology.”

“Can you make change?” Second question.

“I've had twenty-one hours of college mathematics. I think I could change a dollar. Or even a fiver.”

Third question. “Could you, do you suppose, endure selling frankfurters to passing motorists and catering to the whims of summer vacationers?”

“I've been informed by the Institute's resident psychologist that I have a masochistic streak a mile wide. I trust that is of sufficient width to qualify me as a servant of tourists.”

“Then I guess that's all I need to know.”

“You mean, Amanda, that you would hire me on the basis of your current knowledge of me?”

“Why not? You've met the qualifications. What's more, I like you. You have an honest face.” (And an intrusive bulge in your checkered trousers, she thought secretly.) “Besides, I consulted the
I Ching
about you early this morning. I threw the yarrow stalks and got the hexagram Ts'ui or Gathering Together. In the Ts'ui hexagram the Lake image is above the Earth image; the Lake threatens to overflow, signifying that danger is connected with gathering together. However, Ts'ui is, on the whole, a joyful judgment, as it is good fortune for strong people to gather together in devotion. I take that hexagram to mean that despite an element of peril, it will be rewarding for all of us if you gather with us here. Don't you interpret it that way?”

Marx Marvelous frowned like the gargoyle that hated Notre Dame. “I'm afraid I put damn little faith in Chinese superstitions,” he said. “I wouldn't hire a shit-picker on the basis of the
I Ching
or whatever that book of magic spells is called, and I wouldn't expect to be hired as manager of your business on that authority either.”

Amanda was taken aback. “Oh my,” she said. “I had no idea you felt like that. Since you are a friend of Nearly Normal Jimmy's, I assumed you were versed, or at least interested, in . . . that knowledge that lies outside the empirical playpen.”

“Like most of our young mystics, when Nearly Normal Jimmy starts talking philosophy he sounds like a cross between Norman Vincent Peale and a fortune cookie. And from what I've heard of your pronouncements, you don't come off much better. Empirical playpen, my ass.” Marx Marvelous checked his temper and tried to sugar his frown. “I don't mean to offend you, really I don't. But I'm a scientist—of sorts—and concerned—up to a point—with solving humanity's problems. So I get kinda hot when otherwise intelligent people start handing me answers to these problems that sound like naive mishmashes of yoga, Theosophy, vegetarianism, zen, primitive Christianity, flying saucerism and the Ouija board.”

“I haven't handed you anything, Marx Marvelous.” She said it pleasantly, even seductively. When she moved, her cupcake breasts bounced in her spangled sleeveless pullover, her mouth was as moist as an orchid. “Solving humanity's problems is not my line of work. However, if you find a conflict in science and mysticism, may I suggest that you do not deny the latter the objectivity you grant the former. Professor Carl Jung was one great scientist who found the
I Ching
to be a time-tested, hard-nosed, fully practical application of the laws of chance. Scientists, I suspect, operate on chance more often than they'd care to have us laymen discover. If you are as honest as I think you are, you will admit to me sooner or later that you play hunches, too.”

The prospective zoo manager and weenie salesman shrugged. This was precisely the kind of discussion that he had hoped to avoid or at least to delay. He did not know where to go from here. Except to bed. God, but Amanda was a yummy! Marx imagined that if he kept real still, he could hear sexuality working in her like bees in a hive. On the other hand, the bleating of his hemorrhoids probably would have obscured her sultry buzz.

“Look,” he said at last, “I appreciate very much you finding me so readily acceptable. If a three-thousand-year-old Chinese oracle has contributed to your opinion of me, I guess I should be grateful. I do want the job very much and if you are offering it, I accept.”

“Marx Marvelous,” she said with deliberation, “first tell me this. What kind of scientist are you that you want to sell hot dogs and help run a flea circus? Is there a new branch of science that requires internship in roadside zoos?”

“I'm not interested in just any roadside zoo. I want to work in
this
roadside zoo.”

“But why?”

“Oh hell,” Marvelous sighed. “I was afraid this interview was going too smoothly. Is my employment dependent upon my reply?”

“No, indeed,” Amanda assured him. “As far as I'm concerned, you are hired. You don't have to reply if you don't want to. I'm just curious, that's all. If you really are a professional scientist who had a good job with some institution, why did you come here, why have you sought us out? Yes, I'm curious.”

The young scientist in the checkered suit sighed again and let his stare drop from Amanda's eyes to the pleats in her short silk skirt. “Do you mind if I don't muck about in my early background? Oh, it's no big secret, it just isn't significant. I will tell you this, though: my department head at Johns Hopkins University wrote on my doctorate thesis—he rejected it and I never have gotten around to resubmitting it—'Brilliant but frivolous.' That seems to be the opinion of me in every scientific circle in which I've moved. Needless to say, I don't concur with that evaluation.”

“Needless to say,” repeated Amanda.

“Ahem. At any rate, my reputation for whimsy did not prevent me from getting a number of respectable jobs. A number of them.”

“Were you fired?”

“Not always. Only once, as a matter of fact. No, usually I quit because I didn't find the work satisfying.”

“You dreamed of doing your own research.”

“Yes. Yes, damn it. I dreamed of doing my own research.” Marvelous was annoyed that his plight seemed so familiar.

“But you didn't have the money.”

“No, I didn't have the money. What is this? Has my biography been on television?”

“Many times. So, what did you do?”

“Well, I received a strange break. That is, it seemed like a break at the time. An old acquaintance of mine, an airline pilot who flew out of Baltimore, got one of his stewardesses pregnant. He was a married man and she was too far along for an abortion. So, this pilot made me an offer. He offered to pay me fifteen thousand dollars to marry his girl friend. She wanted a husband, she wanted her baby to have a name. The flier introduced us and we went out on a date. She was a redhead. Named Nancy. A veritable gyroscope in bed. I decided to accept the offer. Hell, why not? With fifteen thou., plus what I had been able to save, I could move to the country, take two years off to research my own theories. Within two years, I probably could have pushed my work far enough along to receive a grant to finish it. Wow. All that and a glamorous wife and a new baby. I was really looking forward to settling down.” Marx Marvelous released yet another sigh and shifted his vision to the tsetse fly that lay in state like the fallen emperor of a planet unknown to the puny lens of man.

“I gather that your scheme met with some obstacle,” said Amanda, moving across the room to unlatch the front door of the roadhouse. The zoo was now open for business.

“Nancy and I were married and I quit my job. Rented a farmhouse on the Eastern Shore and began setting up a lab. But the pilot never paid off. Not a penny. He signed up for a transatlantic run and I never caught up with the son of a bitch. In three months I was back at work and most of my savings were down the tube. As for Nancy, we got along all right. She didn't talk much but she was quite affectionate. Nearly screwed my brains out is what I'm trying to say. Cheerful, too. But as soon as the baby was old enough to travel, she moved out. Let me without a word. The sad part of that was, I'd fallen in love with her, I really had. And that baby girl, why I was as proud of it as if it were my own. Why are you laughing?”

“It's what
you
would call a feminine reaction. You wouldn't appreciate it even if I explained it.”

“You're right. Anyway, if you think that part was funny, you'll go into hysterics when you hear what happened next. Nancy divorced me and the judge ruled that I pay alimony and child support. I'm obligated to pay it right now. Eighty bucks a week. Keeps me strapped. That's why I was reduced to subjecting my hemorrhoids to three thousand miles of Greyhound bounce instead of gliding west on a jet. What's more, that's why I changed my name when I dropped out of the Institute. I don't plan on paying any more.”