I.
Samantha waited in the utility closet, observing her reflection in a tarnished mirror. She was one of those blondes that no one takes seriously. Also, her breasts were merely medium-small: not small enough that people would leave her alone, not big enough to warrant any special attention. Overall, she was sort of a middling person. These are not my assessments, mind you, but rather her own. The labrador who’d led her in here had yet to return.
A poodle opened the door and entered. “Ms. de Silva?”
“Yes. Samantha de Silva.”
“Dr. Chidley is ready to see you about your application.”
Samantha followed the poodle (whose sheer fur left nothing to the imagination) through a series of offices. There were no hallways in the place, only doors leading from one room to the next.
“This is an odd restaurant,” she said to herself.
“Yes, it is,” agreed the poodle. Poodles have excellent hearing. “You’ll be working the afternoon shift; is that ok with you?”
“Yeah, that’ll be perfect. Um, can I ask you a ques—”
Samantha stared. The poodle was chasing its tail, yelping quietly.
“One second,” said the poodle. It turned in tight little circles, yelping louder and louder; this seemed to Samantha to be a fruitless endeavour, but what did Samantha know? The poodle finally dropped to the floor, panting. “This might take a while, Samantha. Why don’t you come back and meet Dr. Chidley at six tomorrow morning and we’ll talk about scheduling.”
“Um. What about my interview?”
“That was it.”
“I. . . thought it was supposed to be with, um. . . Dr. Chidley.
“I am Dr. Chidley.”
“Really?”
“I may as well be, if I’m not. Will you need assistance getting out?”
“Um. . .” she glanced through a door. It all looked the same.
“I guess, yeah.”
The poodle, still catching its breath, barked thrice. The double chocolate labrador from before appeared behind Samantha and sniffed at her skirt.
“Tomorrow, then,” said the poodle. “Toodle-oo.”
II.
Samantha arrived five minutes early, hungover on cheap red wine and photo albums and brisk, unsummoned tears, but as willfully perky as is possible for such an hour. “Good morning! I’m here for my interview,” she said at the desk. “I mean, I have an appointment, with Dr. Chidley. I had my interview yesterday.”
The grizzle-faced mastiff behind the desk looked unapproachably bored. “And who might you be?”
“I’m Samantha de Silva.”
“Dr. Chidley isn’t here.”
“Oh.” Samantha had spent a post-shower hour dealing with her massively messed-up face. On the way out, the previous day, the labrador had attempted to mount her, and she’d ended up with a couple of black eyes and a chewed-up earlobe. “I sort of went out of my way to get here this early. Do you expect her soon?”
“You can wait if you like.” The mastiff barked thrice. The labrador appeared, panting lasciviously, and ushered Samantha into the utility room of the day before. Samantha fell asleep on a pile of ethery rags, and the labrador lingered, malingering, lustily licking its own testicles while Samantha dreamt that she was back at her first waitressing job, except the apron was tied around her face and the cooks all spoke nothing but Basque.
III.
When Samantha was a girl, her parents had separated, although not by much. Her father had moved into the basement, which had its own adjoining bathroom and private entrance, but lacked a kitchen. Part of the deal that allowed him to continue to live there was that he could only see Samantha once a week. The rest of the deal was between the two of them; she’d never been privy to their negotiations. Her father would order a pizza on Sundays and they’d gorge themselves, then he’d drink Dark Eyes vodka until they fell asleep on the ratty, sulphurous couch. When Samantha went away to college, he bought himself a microwave and a little dorm fridge and kept the fridge filled with frozen burritos. The brand name was something like Ka-Boom! The basement began to smell like Samantha’s father’s ass.
IV.
“This is not a restaurant,” she heard a voice saying. “Samantha, dear, you’re not listening. Kindly open your eyes.”
She did. Someone had dressed her in an apron, stilettos, and a windbreaker that came down to the tops of her thighs. She was in a diner of some kind; she was overwhelmed by a desire for french toast made with challah bread. Similarly dressed waitresses stalked the aisles between the booths, carrying platters with perfectly clean, immutable plates, plates with nothing on them.
“What is this,” she said, “if not a restaurant?”
“This is the electric company,” said the voice.
V.
Do you know yet who is authoring this piece? You will come to know soon, and you will believe blindly (as did Kierkegaard) in your belief. So will the rest of you. Just don’t try comparing those beliefs with one another, or you’ll die of what some call “cognitive dissonance.”
VI.
“What will my duties consist of?” said Samantha, not a little dumbfounded.
“You will take orders from the patrons of this establishment. You will report the orders to the cooks, who will determine what will be done about them. A bell will ring, and you will take the platters out to the salivating customers.”
Samantha had so many questions budding up in her chest that she was suddenly unable to articulate any of them. What is the meaning of all this? was one. But that somehow seemed too cliched. So she merely observed the voice closely. It was a bit formal, but it was a pleasant, shapely voice, a voice Samantha could fall in love with. Samantha was a lesbian. Then she realized.
“I know why I’m here,” she said. “This is like a gay purgatory, right? Have I—”
“Died?” The voice giggled professionally. “Hardly, dear. What a wild guess.”
“Then how. . .”
“You were unemployed.”
VII.
Samantha’s mother had recently died in a bizarre sniper-related incident. The sniper-team had taken to hanging picnic baskets full of laptop computers from swingsets at local parks. The snipers would always be seated on nearby seesaws (they were Little League-aged kids, so they attracted little suspicion), and would fire at anyone who removed a laptop from the basket.
For some reason, they were never caught, and people continued to risk getting shot at, believing that if they were too afraid to approach the laptops, the seesaw snipers would “win.”
VIII.
As Samantha’s shift wore on, she got a little more used to the place, but still didn’t understand why the patrons were so happy with the empty plates, and why they tipped so poorly.
Things began to shift, as well; the labrador who’d taken such a shining to her before wouldn’t stoop to sniff her feet now. He also seemed to have three heads. The funny thing was that if you stopped to think about the significance of his having three heads, the extra heads disappeared in a sour puff of dust.
In addition to the head problem, there was the fact that the windbreaker was receding. Samantha didn’t have anything to measure it with, but she calculated that it was about a quarter inch an hour. Fortunately, the stilettos were receding as well, although at a much slower pace.
For some reason, the only thing in the jukebox was the entire oeuvre of Tori Amos.
IX.
Samantha’s father ended up with boils all over his body from all the time he spent on the couch. Also, he gained thirtyeight pounds from the frozen burritos. He was quite embarrassed about it, considering he had once been an extra on Baywatch, and had since he was a boy been (perhaps perversely) proud of his physique: his swarthy skin, his pugnacious pecs and indomitable abs. And now he was on Disability. The boils and extra pounds added fuel to the fire which had created them; he fell into a deep, dank dungeon of depression.
One stark, sluggish August eve, he’d been out of frozen burritos, and walked down to the bodega on the corner only to find it closed. Oh dammit, he said to the ozone. That’s right, it’s a Sunday. It was a long walk to the supermarket, the next closest place for frozen burritos. But he could take the bus, and so he did.
As always, he was wearing a black trenchcoat, a white beret, and a black & white scarf, so as to conceal his boils. They clung to the emulsion of sweat and oil on his skin, they puffed up and out and looked misshapen. He bought a fortnight’s supply of burritos, a couple of bananas, and a pack of Pall Malls; he lingered in the supermarket awhile, basking in the airconditioning. He shoved the bananas in his breastpocket and waited on the bench by the bus stop. The evening sun was brooding, reproachful, intense. Samantha’s father thought it would be a good idea to take the bags of frozen burritos and shove them under his shirt, so as to cool off his skin. It worked.
He put a frozen burrito under his beret.
The other people waiting for the bus seemed vaguely disturbed by his appearance, but he didn’t much care. He was wearing his shades, this was the next neighborhood over, and as long as they couldn’t see his boils.
He fell asleep and dreamed that God was talking to the Devil.
The bus came and tossed exhaust in his face. He stood, shook off sleep, approached the bus. A siren rang in the watershed of the sun. Everyone was standing back, watching him. He stepped towards the bus, flicking his lighter nervously. From behind him, there were beating feet and a growl:
“Hands up!”
He turned to see who was being addressed. He flicked his lighter nervously.
Twelve men with handguns faced him. Catching their breaths, guns cocked, intense.
As he raised his hands, the frozen burritos, which had been lodged under his arms, dropped out of his trenchcoat and exploded on the street.
Sixty bullets invaded his brain.
This was a few months back. Coincidentally, it was within a couple of hours of his ex-wife’s stranger, more fraught-with-significance death.
X.
Samantha got fired somehow, she was not exactly clear why. It had something to do with whether or not her shift was just now ending or just beginning; she hadn’t been entirely sure, and when she brought it up with the Voice, she was removed forcibly by a team of shepherd-dogs and put on a sleigh marked Siberia. The sleighdogs howl all night and won’t let her sleep. And so she plots her escape. It’s November, though, and she is going to have to act before they reach the Sierras, before the ice forms on her neck and she loses her Will. Before her gloves become mittens. Before the windbreaker disappears altogether.
Will she succeed? Hmm. . . outcome uncertain.
And as to why I would mock my own Creation? At least it’s a new question. Out with the old, in with the new, I always say.
It’s happened before.
summer, 2005
Ptld., Oregon
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