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Linda Boroff  
Angie Gets a Job
Angie is not qualifying; she is crying. With one hand across her eyes, she gropes for thetissue box that her interviewer extends without looking up as he checks her typing test.From between her fingers, she watches him circle errors; the sharp red pencil reminds her of a bird’s beak: peck, stab, scratch. It leaves bloody little wounds all over her page. Thisabysmal performance confirms every pessimistic prediction of her destiny that Angie hasever heard in her seventeen years.“Miss uh, Morris.” The man, gray-haired, with swinging wattles and rheumy brown eyes, holds the flimsy paper at a slight distance, like a soiled diaper. “You typethirteen words a minute, once the errors are subtracted.” Angie ducks behind her tissue.“We cannot very well hire you as a typist, now can we?” He arches his brows as if expecting her to commiserate.“But I must have a job,” Angie wails. A child still, she believes in the magical power of her own needs to drive the decisions of others. “Or, or else I have to movehome.” This is a lie. In fact Angie needs a job precisely because she is not permitted tomove home. But she doesn’t dare confide in this grandfatherly personnel director. Thatwould open a window on her past far more prejudicial than her terrible typing.To Angie’s surprise, her inquisitor hesitates at her mention of moving home, andshe, with the canny intuition of the delinquent, senses a weak spot in his perimeter and pushes on through.
 
“I’d be so ashamed in front of my parents. I moved out to live on my own andnow I’m failing.” Her head droops, and her long, curling black hair sweeps forward toobscure her face, which rather disappoints her interviewer. He liked gazing at the prettything in her cheap gray cotton skirt — two runs in her hose — and worn red sweater.Charming. But hopelessly unqualified. She huddles penitently before him, peeking outfrom her tissue with reddened blue eyes. Angie’s distress seems sincere enough. Andanybody who needs work as badly as she does will surely strive to improve her typingskills.“Well,” he says with mock reluctance. “I’m going to go out on a limb.” Angie’sheart gives an extra, tripping little beat. “I’ll hire you conditionally. But…” he frowns,stern as Jove, and Angie’s eyes widen in flattering response, “you must raise your typingspeed to forty words per minute” (the eyes grow huge) “within three months. If you cando that, you’ll go on permanent status.” Caught in mid-sniff, Angie searches his face. Her grin blazes out like the sun from a ragged rain cloud.“Oh, Mr....” she glances at the black and gold nameplate, “Mr. Trueblood! I don’tknow how to thank you. Oh, I’ll work so hard.”“I’m sure you will, Angie.” For a moment they beam almost conspiratorially atone another, and into Mr. Trueblood’s mind suddenly flashes the word “snookered,”although that does not diminish the width of his smile.Angie dances out of the office past the scowling old receptionist, who hands her a packet of employment forms with the trepidation of a cold war operative passingclassified information to a suspected mole.
 
Since this is Friday afternoon, Angie now has a whole weekend to luxuriate inidleness and dissipation. She knows of a party Saturday night. And she has a date onSunday with a man she met at Larry Blake’s Rathskeller on Telegraph Avenue, where sheand her roommate Kati were drinking on fake IDs. The man, who confessed to beingforty-two, claimed to own a gull-wing Mercedes and a luxurious home in the OaklandHills from which his wife had recently exited. The anticipation of a restaurant meal andall the liquor she can hold makes Angie euphoric as she jolts along on the bus back toBerkeley.For weeks, fear and uncertainty had kept Angie awake at night. While her roommates slept, she would sneak into the bathroom and weep, rocking back and forth onthe seat, wiping her eyes with toilet paper. Only yesterday, Angie had dialed her mother collect from a pay phone and received a histrionic response. Mrs. Morris, an inventoryclerk in a Los Angeles department store, had her hands full just supporting Angie’syounger sister, Frances. Even now, Mr. Morris was refusing to pay child support for Francie, in defiance of a court order. The woman he lived with hung up on Mrs. Morriswhen she called. Angie had to get a job like everybody else, her mother shouted.And now, when hope had all but fled, Angie is saved. Her roommates, Kati andMaryellen, can reinstate the phone, cut off due to Angie’s arrearage. And they can finallygive the air to Butch, their pesky landlord.For the last two months Butch has accepted two-thirds of the rent, on theassurance that Angie was seeking work with the determination of an Everest summiteer.But since the girls owe him money, he has taken to dropping by and hanging around,asking suggestive questions and snooping through the rooms, “inspecting” for bogus
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