Chapter XII: Out of a Job

HE had intended to get up early Monday morning; but a troubled sleep, filled with a long, anxious, childish dream concerning an attempt to find the right train in a huge and bewildering railway station, held him fast in its grip. Apparently he was waiting for Monica’s knock to awaken him. But no knock came, and it was ten o’clock before he opened his eyes. A bad start! He would have to get an alarm clock.

He called on an advertising agency that day, and was not surprised to be told that they needed no one.

The rest of the day he spent in an aimless wandering about the streets.

The next day, again rising late from the enthrallment of an anxiety-dream, he called on another advertising agency, and again used his further time in meaningless perambulation. The fact was that the experience of being refused a job robbed him of his courage for the rest of the day. And in addition there was a half-conscious conviction of the hopelessness of his search, which made him want to stretch out the effort over a period of days or weeks, and postpone as long as possible the inevitable conclusion of failure....

What occupied his thoughts during these long days was a monotonous series of trifles which had assumed for him a heavy and grave importance. One, which took all week to decide about, concerned the buying of an alarm clock. He certainly needed one--there was no doubt of that. He was rising later and later from his poisonous fear-dreams.... But a clock cost money. He looked at clocks in the windows of drug stores as he passed, noted their prices, and figured out in his mind how many hours of his money the cheapest of them would set him back. For he had his money computed now in terms of hours. Every dollar, as he had calculated it, gave him and his child eight hours and some forty-eight minutes of food and shelter. A forty-five cent clock might seem cheap enough, but it robbed them of four hours’ security! And figured in that fashion, its cost was so stupendous that its purchase must be postponed and reconsidered pro and con at great length.

Again there was the matter of his meals. He had for this period set down the meager sum of fifty cents a day for food. That had seemed small enough, but when one ate only two meals a day at very cheap restaurants it was possible to cut down that figure. He could get a breakfast of doughnuts and coffee for ten cents, and a dinner of hash or spaghetti for thirty. The consideration of these items, and the sense of saving occupied much of his time and thought.... And yet, after a few days, when he came to balance his budget one evening, he found that he had spent more money than he should have done. Two dollars, or seventeen hours and a half, had vanished without trace....

And there were items he had not reckoned on--cigarettes he could do without (he smoked a kind that went out, and he saved the stubs of his last box and had a luxurious puff or two from one of those before going to bed), but laundry was a necessity; and so, after butchering his face with his last dull blade, was a new supply of blades for his safety razor; though the soap on the washstand was as good for shaving, he found, as what comes in a tube. And even the small item of carfare seriously disarranged his estimates; at a minimum of ten cents a day for three weeks, it shortened his time of security by nineteen hours. And he had quite forgotten about having to pay for laundry.

In truth, he knew these estimates were an absurd folly; yet he spent hours of time every evening going over his figures, working them out in decimals. There was this comfort in his preposterous mathematics, that it kept his mind precariously balanced on the edge of the abyss of fear along which he seemed to walk. It was as if he must keep his eyes fixed upon these figures, lest he should look down into that gulf and become dizzy....

He did not go to see his child; he could not face the people there--yet. He called up every evening, and Mrs. Case or Mrs. Czermak reported that the baby was--of course--all right. Once it was Monica who answered the telephone; in a queer, constrained voice she gave him the information he wanted, and then, still in a reserved tone, thanked him for the cuff-links. (He had forgotten them.) He explained that he was very busy, but hoped to have time soon for a visit....

Every day that week he went to an advertising agency. There were only two, besides the one from which he had been discharged, where he would have cared to work; one of them he had gone to last Saturday, and the other he held in reserve, going first to the smaller and negligible ones. On Saturday morning he would go to McCullough’s, the one he was holding in reserve.

That day he rose early, having bought an alarm clock at last--recklessly paying seventy-nine cents for it. He indulged in the luxury of having his shoes shined. He bought a newspaper, and read about the preparations for the General Strike in England, and the sports news, so as not to be too out of touch conversationally with the outside world. Thus prepared, he went to McCullough’s.

Mr. McCullough himself was not in, but somebody in charge told him flatly that there was no opening there just now for anybody....

That afternoon, when going into a cheap restaurant to brace himself with another meal of doughnuts and coffee, he noticed a sign in the window: “Dishwasher Wanted.” He went up to the man at the cashier’s desk and asked about the job.

The man looked at him doubtfully and said: “I don’t think it’s the kind of a job you want.”

“How much does it pay?” asked Norman.

“Go and see the boss. He’s in the back.”

“Whom shall I ask for?”

“Ask for the boss.”

Norman went back into the greasy, steaming kitchen.

“I want to see the boss,” he said to a fat man in an apron.

“I’m the boss. What do you want?”

“How about that dishwashing job?”

The man looked at him. “My God, what next?” he said disgustedly.

“Why, what’s the matter with me?” Norman asked.

“You’d last about an hour,” said the man.

“How much is the pay?” Norman demanded.

“Twelve dollars and meals. You have the day shift for two weeks and then the night shift--seven to seven.”

Twelve dollars--and meals. That was enough for the baby. And he could pawn his trunkful of clothes to pay for his room.

“I’ll take it,” he said.

“If you’re here at six-thirty to-morrow morning and nobody else has turned up, I’ll try you out,” said the man.

“All right,” said Norman. “I’ll be here.”

“The hell you will,” said the man doubtfully.

As Norman went by the cashier’s desk the man there asked: “Get it?”

“I think so,” said Norman.

“Working for a paper?” asked the man. “Going to write us up?” And he smiled knowingly.

Norman shook his head and went out. Why were they so suspicious of him? Just because of his clothes? Well, a week’s dishwashing would change that....

He would have no time to call up Mrs. Czermak to-night. He’d better call up now.

Monica answered the telephone.

“Oh!” she said. “Dr. Zerneke wants very particularly to see you to-night. She said to go to her home at ten o’clock. Yes, Junior’s all right. When are you coming to see him?”

“Soon, I hope,” said Norman vaguely.

What did Dr. Zerneke want to see him about? Had she found out about his losing his job?