A Way With Words - Chapter 8
Ennis arrived at work fifteen minutes late after dropping off Ravi's documents at the law firm. The rest of the staff was standing around a little table in the reception area, so he couldn't slip unnoticed into his office. Lenny, the publisher, seemed to be giving some kind of demonstration but stopped in mid-sentence when Susan gasped.
"God, for a second I thought someone was here to repossess my car!"
"Hey Ennis, did you decide to be a guinea pig at the Blaine School of Hairdressing?
"Halloween's not till the end of the month, Ennis."
"Ha ha, black is so your color, Ennis. You should wear it more often!"
"I wear black every day," he muttered, "in case you hadn't noticed."
He'd expected teasing about his haircut but he hadn't thought it would change his image this much. He hadn't shaved since Friday, so maybe that was a factor. But why had he forgotten to do so this morning?
He went over and stood next to Lureen, who whispered, "We just got a fax machine!"
The first time he'd heard Lenny talking about buying this machine for the magazine, he'd been intrigued. A machine for getting facts sounded so cool. He imagined being able to type in the name of a thing you wanted to know about and it would spit out a sheet of information on it. So he'd been disappointed to find out it just meant you could transmit a facsimile of a document to another machine. Still, being able to send a photocopy across a phone line was pretty amazing. What would they think of next?
The thing on the table looked like a phone attached to a huge answering machine. Lenny held up the sheet of paper, on which was scrawled a phone number and the words, Hi Frank, testing our new fax machine! RSVP! "Now we wait for him to send one back so we know it worked." They all watched as Lenny demonstrated how to position the sheet of paper face down in a slot, punch in a phone number and push another button that drew the paper through. It came out again from the slot on the other end of the machine. Then the machine coughed out a little strip of paper with a code on it that indicated the transmission had been successful.
Sure enough, after a moment the machine began to hum. The thin paper inched its way out and they could read big black letters. THE EAGLE HAS LANDED!
"This should really cut down on the Fed Ex bills," Lenny exulted.
The art director was all smiles; now the designers would be able to use illustrators from outside the Boston area, since they would be able to send their initial sketches instantly and not lose a few days mailing them.
Everybody seemed to feel this new machine would make a difference to their jobs. Maybe he would find a use for it but Ennis knew it wouldn't make his work any more fulfilling.
Later that morning he went into the small room that doubled as a meeting space and storage room. Tina, the copy editor and one of the designers were at the table with manuscripts spread out in front of them. As he rummaged in the supply cabinet Ennis listened to them discussing the articles for the issue currently in production. They were composing titles and subheads for the shorter ones that belonged to different departments in the magazine. They seemed to be struggling with an article for the Gardening section that advised not pulling all the weeds from a vegetable patch, which he thought was pretty crazy. Everybody knew you should get rid of weeds and okay, maybe this crowd didn't want to spray them with chemicals like his family did for their crops... but just let them grow? Didn't sound logical to him. Plus the titles they were throwing out were pretty dull.
He found the forms he was searching for and closed the cabinet softly, then edged toward the door. He paused with his hand on the doorknob.
"Call it Weed It And Reap," he said suddenly.
Three pairs of eyes turned to stare at him. Mortified, he yanked open the door and hurried to his office, feeling like an idiot. When he saw Don reading the Phoenix personals, though, he felt better. At least he wasn't reduced to that. Ennis thought Don had ridiculously high standards when it came to dating, the kind only the color separation house guy could afford to maintain. Don wasn’t bad looking but he could be… peculiar.
"Given up on Lureen, then?"
"Mmm, just checking out the other fish in the sea," Don muttered.
"You never take out an ad yourself?"
"Been thinking about it. But I'd get swamped with responses from women my age."
"Yeah, so?"
"Well, I'd feel bad about rejecting them."
Ennis decided Don wasn’t joking.
"Well, why not write an ad for filler in the classifieds?"
Besides circulation, Don managed the classified ads in the back of the magazine. When there was an inch or two of space left over he inserted in-house ads.
"Are you nuts? Just because I work here doesn't mean I want to date any macrobiotic, crystal-wearing New Age chicks!"
"What you do is write a profile that's so over the top it's obviously a joke so only a woman with a sense of humor would answer. Like, um, SWM fruitarian reflexol- no wait... with foot fetish seeks... seeks, uh, anorexic vegan F for... for candlelit... uh, not dinner obviously, um... Scrabble sessions in... You still have that place in New Hampshire? Okay...in spartan lakeside cabin. Why aren't you writing this down?"
Don was leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed and making a weird keening sound that Ennis knew was laughter. "Ennis, I know you have some deliveries to make," he gasped at last, wiping his eyes. "Hey, before you go..." He leaned down and opened a desk drawer and pulled out a shaving kit - in case Lureen ever deigned to go out for a drink with him after work, Ennis supposed - and tossed it onto Ennis' desk. "So you don't scare the public."
In fact, he had to go to the printer, to pick up the flats and artwork from the issue just out, and the receptionist there probably dealt with scuzzier looking guys every day. He went into the bathroom and shaved anyway, then studied his reflection. He did look less... menacing. He held up a finger to his earlobe, blocking out the little hoop, then lowered it. Should it stay or should it go? He left it.
Finally ready, he first ducked into the storage-conference room and found the box of EastWest sweatshirts that Lenny had ordered and which nobody wore. He chose a green one and put it on under his leather jacket. The color softened the look a little.
On the way back from Taunton, when he was less than a mile from the office, he stopped to get a sandwich in Coolidge Corner. There was a Paperback Booksmith next to the deli and he decided to check out its Travel section. He browsed through a few travel guides to Sri Lanka and bought the one with the most pictures. The beaches there looked idyllic and the women in their saris brightened every picture. It must have been so hard to leave, he realized.
He meant to go back to East West and eat his lunch, but he ended up sitting in the van with the book. The island was located off the southern coast of India and was described as teardrop shaped. Before independence from Britain it was called Ceylon and long before that, Serendip, like serendipity. The guide glossed over the civil war. It seemed the northern end, where most Tamils lived, was not as popular with foreign tourists, even in peaceful times. It looked flatter and less green than the Sinhalese part.
Ennis closed the book, saw the empty sandwich wrapper on his lap. Pastrami on rye was his favorite but he hadn't even been aware of eating it. When he’d said he’d visit again soon, he’d meant in a week, but now he knew he wouldn’t wait that long.
Serendipity:The faculty of finding something wonderful when you are not looking for it.
Chapter 8b
"So what happened to your hair?"
"Don't sugar-coat it, Ennis, just give it to me straight."
"OK. You look weird. "
"I was being ironic."
"Oh. Sorry. Not much irony where I'm from. So why'd you dye it?"
We were lying in our beds long after the noises in the rest of the dorm had died down, unable to sleep - me because of my long nap during the day and Joe because back then he couldn't be quiet as long as anyone in the room was conscious.
"Seemed like a good idea at the time. Friend a mine back home bet me fifty bucks I wouldn't bleach my hair like Sting's. But he left for college early and didn't even see it so I never collected. I've gotta keep it like this until I go home for Thanksgiving.`'
I learned that Joe planned to major in political science, just like his older sister who had also gone to BU. She'd graduated in June and he'd spent the summer living in her apartment and scooping ice cream at Quincy Market. Miriam had moved to Washington for a job at the end of the summer, but also to follow her boyfriend. Some of the things in the dorm room were hers, including the record I'd nearly ruined, so Joe wasn't quite as privileged as I'd thought.
During July and August Joe and Miriam had been volunteers on the congressional campaign of a friend of their mother's, a Massachusetts state legislator originally from New Jersey. The Fourth District seat had been held for years by a liberal Jesuit priest but the Vatican had ordered Father Drinan to leave politics. The Democratic primary was in less than two weeks. If he won the primary it normally should guarantee him the seat. But Joe's theory was that because this friend clearly had a New Jersey accent, and that state was next to New York, home of the hated Yankees, there was a question mark. That seemed like crazy reasoning to me, but I'd only been in Boston one day and had a lot to learn.
That led to baseball talk, and I told Joe of my wish to go to a Red Sox game. He said he'd go with me. When I told him I'd played baseball in high school, he guessed which position. I stared up at the bottom of his mattress and felt that... thing. Like with Jack Tornado. But this friend was here and real.
The next morning I finally left the 17th floor, trailing Joe down to breakfast. There was way more choice than I was used to. I ended up taking my usual: eggs, sausage and coffee. Joe had that plus toast, cereal and juice. As we walked away with our trays, a girl at a table waved at us; she looked familiar so we brought our trays over to where she was sitting.
"Hi, remember me? Sandra? You can call me Sandy," she said to me.
Joe pulled out a chair opposite her, sat down and introduced himself. I sat next to him and stared at her in confusion. Her hair was red, not sandy. She was pretty in an ordinary way, with not many freckles for a redhead, but her hair, which was long, thick and wavy, made her striking. She was wearing a dark green top that set it off, and even with no cushion in her arms she looked pillowy. I guess she thought I was staring for another reason because she flipped the hair that was blocking the view over her shoulder and smiled as she took a bite of something bread-like that I'd never seen before. I stared at it, and I think she believed I was mesmerized by her lips as well.
"You missed the floor meeting after dinner," she said, in a way that I only later realized was flirtatious because I'd never been flirted with before.
"Oh. Sorry," I mumbled, and looked down at the scrambled eggs I was pushing around with my fork. They tasted nothing like the ones my mother and our hens made.
Joe came to my rescue and asked her what she was going to major in. When she said maybe French, he grinned.
"Ennis here can say his bed's on fire in French," he declared and thumped my back.
"What kind of bread is that?" I blurted out, anxious to change the subject.
"You've never seen a bagel?" Sandy's eyes widened in astonishment.
Of course now you can buy frozen bagels deep in the midwest but back then they were as exotic as kiwis where I was from, and just as unknown. I just shook my head. I'd never even heard the word.
"Is Wonder Bread all you eat in Kansas?" she asked teasingly. "We rode up in the elevator yesterday." This last was directed at Joe, who had raised his black eyebrows in surprise. I looked back and forth between them, thinking their hair made it seem like a faceoff between a lit fuse and molten lava. The way they glared at each other gave me a tiny, startling thrill.
"My mother bakes our bread," I said, breaking the tension. I decided not to mention it was because we lived twenty miles from the nearest store.
"She does? Wow!"
I mentally added a note to my topic list for when I next called my parents: home baking unknown here.
The morning was taken up with freshman orientation so Joe and I separated. I went off to the College of Communication, which was right across the street from Warren Towers, and Joe to the School of General Studies further up Comm Ave. We agreed to meet in front of the dorm at noon because Joe wanted to give me a tour of Boston. It turned out he'd spent a lot of time in the city even before that summer. While his sister had been at BU he'd come up to stay with her during school breaks - anything to get away from New Jersey, where he was bored to death.
"So let's walk to Kenmore Square and take the T from there. If you get on before the train goes underground you have to pay more."
We were back in our room, dropping off the papers and booklets we'd been given. Joe was pointing toward the Citgo Sign in the distance. Even though it was very beautiful, warm day without a cloud in the sky, I felt strangely reluctant to leave the room.
"Take what tea?"
"The subway. You’ll see a sign with a big T outside each station. It's color-coded and this is part of the Green Line. After Kenmore Square it splits into three branches so you have to make sure you're on the right train. We're on the C branch."
Kenmore Square was teeming with students. I was still adjusting to being in a big city, with its dirt and noise and smells. I liked the fact that there was so much to look at, so many vertical lines and bright colors and so much movement all around me.
We stopped in the bank that Joe used so I could open an account. I was going to have to choose a work-study job soon, too.
"How much is your work-study grant?" Joe asked while I was filling out the account application. I told him.
"Same as mine. I signed up to work at WBUR. The station manager is a friend of Miriam's and I asked him in July to put my name down cause everybody wants one of those jobs." He paused. "I told him to put your name down, too."
I looked at him in surprise. "But you didn't even know me yet!"
"I knew your name, and if you were on work-study it would be great if we could both work at the radio station since it's right across the street from the dorm. You spend some of the time putting back albums and I'm sure they won't care if you borrow one to tape. Well, I don't think they'll care, as long as you don't walk out the door with a big stack of them. And you don't tell them you're gonna tape it."
After we left the bank we bought slices of pizza in The Pizza Pad and ate them as we walked. Next to the pizzeria was a place called the Rathskeller. Joe saw me looking at the sign and explained that it was a music club and that unfortunately Massachusetts had raised the drinking age to 20 the year before so we had to get fake IDs if we wanted to get in.
"My sister was so lucky, cause it was still at 18 when she started here," he sighed.
I told him it could be worse; our county in Kansas was dry, which meant no one at all could buy alcohol, though that's changed since then. It hadn't stopped high school kids drinking but it made party planning more complicated. I didn't mention that the New Year's Eve party was the only one I'd ever been to.
I was ready to walk a lot after a day and a half of sitting and said so. We carried on to Massachusetts Avenue, then over to Boylston Street. I didn't absorb all of Joe's running commentary, just letting most of it wash over me. There was so much to take in and I knew I had at least four years to learn it all. Plenty of time.
"See that light on top of that bulding? It's green if it's gonna be clear and red if it's gonna rain. And if it's blinking red it means the Sox game is rained out... That's the first public library... That tall building that looks like a big mirror is the Hancock Tower. When it was first built the windows kept popping out cause it was twisting when it was windy... This is the Public Garden. Oh, those are the famous swan boats. Why, you wanna go for a ride on one? Oh yes, you do - I can tell! C’mon I’ll… nah, save it for your future girlfriend…This is the Common, that's the State House up there, on Beacon Hill... What do you mean, you've never walked up a hill? Never in your life? No way! Well then let's... no, we'll do that last… See that red line on the pavement? That's the Freedom Trail and it goes past all the big historical sites. You can do that on your own sometime. Today I'm gonna show you stuff that I like.
"Okay let's go down Tremont Street. This is Filene's but the only part I've ever been in is the basement. After a certain number of weeks the clothes that haven't sold upstairs are sent down to the basement with a lower price. After a few days the price is lowered again and it just keeps on going down like that. Miriam spent half her life down there.
"This is Government Center. Oh, that giant teapot's been up there since forever. It's called The Steaming Kettle Building... Come look at this. Before they made this big plaza there were old buildings here and this marks the spot where Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. You know, 'Come here Watson, I need you.'... That’s Quincy market, a tourist trap. I worked there at Steve’s ice cream… Now we’re heading for the North End. It's the oldest part of Boston. We have to go under here to get there. Oh, that's called the Central Artery above us, this big ass road. They keep talking bout redoing it so it's underground but I can't see that happening. It would cost a fortune!... So this is like, the Little Italy of Boston. See that restaurant, The European? Miriam was a waitress in there one summer and the problem is that too many European tourists see that name and they think they can relax and be themselves, right? Well, to them that means they don't have to leave tips. The staff got desperate and put a sign outside in Italian, French and German explaining that you have to tip the waiters and waitresses. What d'ya mean, what's tipping? Haven't you ever eaten in a restaurant?? Sorry, a diner is not the same thing. Well, you ready to sit down? Me too. But we won't go to a restaurant today. Let's get something in this café bakery. I'm gonna have a capuccino... It's coffee with foamy milk on top. Really strong coffee. I bet Kansans don't drink capuccino. Want a cannoli? Those things filled with cream there... Ha, good isn't it? You've got foam on your nose. And cream right… there. Got it.
"Bet you never heard of the Great Molasses Disaster. About sixty years ago a giant tank of molasses on this street exploded and this fifteen foot wave of the stuff destroyed some buildings and a load of people and horses drowned in it. It took them 18 months to clean it all up. Over there's the coast guard base and you can see the USS Constitution across the way.
"You ready to head back? Me too. We'll go to Park Street T stop but we'll go down this way and walk over the top of Beacon Hill. I can't believe you've never walked up a hill... Okay, this street is one of the steepest ones and it’ll take us back to the Common. Yeah, that really is the name of it. Nice, isn't it?"
I felt my calf muscles straining as we walked up brick sidewalk together and I smiled to myself. The next time I called her I would tell my mother that in Boston, I’d found a street called Joy.
Kenmore Square... Boston Public Library
The Hancock Tower... Swan boats in the Public Garden
Quincy Market... a pastry shop in the North End
Chapter 9 >>