by Debbie Bumstead
The screen doors of the ground floor apartments all hung open, crookedly resting on the alley pavement; no step up or down, just the revealed blackness of the house innards connected directly with the oily gravel of outdoors. A fallen trash can rocked back and forth with the tail end of a dog sticking out the opening. And to complete the picture set before her, a man she had not noticed before leaned against one of the walls, smoked a cigar, and watched her. He wore a sleeveless tee-shirt that folded up around the fat of his chest and stomach; he was bald, unshaven, and no expression of charity crossed his face as he looked at her. She glanced at her watch and hurried down the alley.
She knew that up in the glass skyscraper executives were glancing at their watches and hurrying down hallways. Secretaries filed into their cubicles and unlocked their desk drawers. Up and down the building, coffee machines were turned on. She knew on the fifth floor the computer operators uncovered their machines and began the tip-tap that regulated the whole company, while the supervisor probably looked at her wall clock and then at Marina's name in the appointment book. But Marina was lost with the pigeons and sparrows in the alleys and back streets of the city.
She turned onto a street where the houses sat right on the curb; she had to walk in the gutter. Still hoping to get to the interview on time, her plan involved a brisk walk one block west and a half block north. She imagined the building on the spot marked X in her mind. It waited for her, its glass blinking in the sun, its many floors teeming with the clean efficient ranks of working men and women. Her plan was to join the ranks.
One block west she turned into the gray canyon of downtown. The waves of cars flowed from light to light; the smell of exhaust mixed with the odor of a bakery; people on foot struggled along the sidewalks and across the streets. The glass skyscraper was not on the spot marked X. She couldn't tell if it stood further west or hid behind the eastside buildings in some square of its own. Another alley led back that way, but at the end of it she emerged into a street so foreign to the map of her mind that she staggered a little and spoke aloud.
"You'll have to ask," she told herself. She climbed the cement stairs of a tiny porch and entered a vacuum repair shop. A man with a bulbous nose stood in front of the counter. He didn't look at Marina, though the bell over the door had rung; he chattered with someone in the back, another little man tinkering in the gloom. Marina awkwardly opened and closed the clasp of her purse. The counter was strewn with bits of wood and vacuum parts; the plastic bags holding belts and screws on a tagboard were dusty, as if no one ever came in to buy. The men weren't talking about vacuums either. They discussed economics and the next election. Marina left without asking for help.
In the skyscraper things ran by the clock; it was much too late for her interview, but if she could find the place she could explain about getting lost and they might set up another appointment. The hope that drew her along every time she followed a new idea for a job now pulled her back through the alley. She set off west.
The sun sent rays of heat that pulsated down the walls of buildings and flooded the streets. Marina's make-up began to run after she had gone west, north, and south. Her hair drooped and the pant suit scratched. At a corner gas station she slipped into the restroom. The door didn't shut properly; while she was washing her face, a young woman in Army surplus clothes pushed in. The girl stared at Marina, then dumped the trash can upside down and sat on it. "Got any money?" she asked. Marina shook her head. The name on the girl's Army shirt read: Thorndyke. Marina folded up the paper towel she'd used and placed it in her purse. She kicked through the trash to the door and turned to study the picture the young woman made sitting and staring into the mirror amid the litter of the public toilet. Like the screen doors letting in the spotted pavement, like the scattered dust of the vacuum repair shop, like the trash in the restroom, everything connected inside and out. Only the glass skyscraper held another world, Marina thought, the neat tick-tock world of success.
A couple of blocks and turns later she stumbled into an open mall and saw the building again rising against the sky. It looked like a hunk of gold flashing in the sun, and seemed to radiate even more heat down onto the earth. In the mall a security guard had to stand by the fountains to keep the children from playing in the water. Elderly people and vagrants languished on benches. Marina clipped by in her new shoes; she wanted to get to the skyscraper before it disappeared again. She passed stunted orange trees in cement planters and breathed in the heavy mixture of blossom and dirty air. An old woman preached about Jesus in the middle of the mall. She scooted from one corner to the next in a little self-made square. "Young woman, you're a sinner!" she cried as Marina walked by. "Come to Jesus!" Marina smiled and paused -- the woman's form shivered and jumped like a black spider against the sun-dazzled cement. Then Marina hurried on, with the woman calling behind, "Jesus wants you now!"
The glass skyscraper! Marina rushed down the mall and around the corner. She entered the glass doors with a tremendous feeling of success and stopped for a moment to enjoy the cool air. Men and women in suits ticked past her; customers sat in the lobby and drank iced coffee; she could feel work going on in the dim distances. And an elevator magically opened up beside her, and she breathlessly asked for the fifth floor.
She wandered down a silent hallway. No sounds of typing, none of people clicking busily to and fro, no voices, nothing -- she was on the wrong floor. In the middle of the hall she found a woman behind a counter.
"What floor is the computer-operators' area?" Marina asked.
"We don't have such an area."
"I had an interview with Mrs. Norton."
The woman shrugged.
"This is Rowe Law and Research, isn't it?" Marina spoke sarcastically, but the moment her words were out she realized her mistake.
"No," the woman replied, "this is City Bank and Trust."
The wrong building! Marina turned away and groped along the hall to the elevator. She staggered out the lobby, just barely noticing in the dim distances people going up to counters to cash checks or deposit money.
She plowed along the sidewalks, carelessly crossed streets, ignored the shouts of motorists. She had studied art for four years in college. After graduating she had looked for jobs in graphic arts departments, galleries, print shops, sign shops. Then she had tried schools and recreation centers. No one wanted her. Now she was following the want ads. She hated typing. She hated pant suits and hair spray. She hated glass skyscrapers. The sun crawled up toward noon and a hot wind began blasting down the corridors of pavement. Just as Marina approached a corner of an alley a swirl of litter rushed out into the air, immediately followed by a flock of sparrows. Marina stopped suddenly to watch. At that moment she gave it all up. She was being pushed by a wind into emptiness and it didn't seem to matter whether she was a sparrow or a piece of litter. She walked quietly to a corner park and sat in the shade.
She knew it was there, blinking in the sun, but she didn't look at it. Instead she studied the man lying on the bench next to hers. He wore old brown pants and a filthy dress jacket. He slept with his mouth open, one hand on his stomach and the other trailing in the grass. Then she looked at the trees that made such a dark and pleasant shade that rippled with the wind. Against the trunk of one tree a girl with long hair sat playing a guitar. The chords and the girl's voice drifted and grew in Marina's ears until it seemed as if she had meant to come here, to the park, all the time, and now that she'd made it she could enjoy the sights and the life that burst around her. But a movement dragged at her eyes and she turned to watch a group of neatly-dressed women gather up lunch trash from a picnic table and start across the street. The women sparkled in the sun like glass rods bending and clattering together; then they disappeared into the mechanical doors that whooshed closed behind them. Marina saw the words inscribed above the building entrance: Rowe Law and Research. She didn't care. She continued sitting in the shade, her pant suit limp with heat, her hair straggling, and she enjoyed the feeling of surrender. It made her feel as if she'd won something, though she didn't know what.