When the owners go to Greece, Jan is left at her receptionist desk to answer the phone, sell parts for the editing machines, open the mail, watch the clock, breath in the smoke from the train that runs under the building, report to the owners who call her long distance from Greece, and listen to the ticking of the clock. They tell her it's beautiful in Solonika. When they return they will take Jan and the film editing machine repair apprentice out to the owner's favorite restaurant, drink Ouzo and give them each a gift from Greece. Both Jan and the apprentice would have preferred a cash bonus but the owners preferred to bait their employees with restaurants and visits to places like the designer floor of Bloomingdales. Jan once had the experience of trying on a fashionable and financially unattainable quality wool pants suit that magically highlighted all of her best features. “See what you could have if you work hard,” said the owner who hoped that her younger employees would someday become partner entrepreneurs.
Jan and the apprentice are both uninspired, a little bored and a little attracted to each other. The apprentice is married to Jan's close friend from college. They have become born again Christians and seem happy with that decision so Jan never reveals her attraction. The apprentice only slips once when Jan goes out to their house on the commuter bus in Ocean Grove, NJ with the apprentice after work to have dinner with both him and his wife. A friend of theirs drops by after dinner to chat a little and leave a pile of pamphlets in front of Jan. The apprentices wife, Jan's friend from college, looks a little embarrassed and follows the Jews for Jesus proselytizer to the front door for some discussion.
“I'm attracted to you,” says the apprentice to Jan.
“What about these pamphlets?”
“That's her thing. I'm half and half.”
“Half what and half what?”
“Half Christian and half Jewish.”
“You're not Jewish.”
“I could be. I was adopted.”
“I'm only Jewish by birth.”
“Do you want to be Christian?”
“No. I don't want to be anything.”
The apprentices wife / Jan's friend returns and explains that the pamphlets were left with good intentions.
Jan feels dull but is grateful to be alone during the week that the owners are in Greece and the apprentice doesn't come in. On a Tuesday evening she goes to the Museum of Modern Art to feel inspired by a video exhibit. In addition to enticing Jan with restaurants and high fashion, the owners had once showed her a video editing suite thinking that she may be interested in working with them to expand beyond film editing machines into video editing equipment. Every single exhibit at the museum is abstract art moving on a screen. A tall young man with curly hair and wire rimmed glasses takes notes in front of one of the screens that shows different kinds of dissolves to both animated and still pictures. Jan reads the plaque: Created on a Amiga Computer. She walks away wondering about new opportunities.
The next exhibit Jan sees is a large screen video of the 1960's oddball performer Tiny Tim singing “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” in a falsetto voice while playing the ukelele. Jan has to press a button to go back to the beginning. Two men she remembers from her childhood named Dan Rowan and Dick Martin from the comedy variety show Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In introduce him hesitantly as though they aren't sure how to present the singer to the popular 1960s counter culture with their mini skirts, bell bottoms, love flowers, floppy hats, long hair and hoop earrings. He has the long hair but he weres a suit . His face is too pale. Instead of standing straight and proud with a guitar, he crouches over his ukelele as though he is holding something more fragile and delicate than the wildly popular guitar. As Jan listens to his impossibly high warbling voice, she thinks about how he was viewed by the public at the same time as the The Rolling Stones. He referred to his first wife as Miss Vicki and eleven year old Jan got to stay up late to watch him marry her on late night TV. Jan missed him like she missed her life as a shy eleven year old who hated her curly hair when it was popular to have long straight hair.
The next day at work is the day before the owners are to return from Greece. The apprentice comes in that morning to inventory parts. Jan goes through the invoices and bookkeeping to make sure she hasn't made any mistakes because the owners are perfectionists. He works in the back room. She works in the front room at the receptionist desk. When a film editing company across town orders several parts to be picked up by courier, the apprentice wraps up the parts in a large box and puts them on the floor near Jan's receptionist desk. He lingers in front of Jan's desk and looks at her with large sad blue eyes as though waiting for her to say something about him or maybe about differing faiths. Jan can't stop thinking about the Tiny Tim video she saw at the Museum of Modern Art so can't think of anything to say to the apprentice. He responds to her silence by going back to the parts room.
Two young men from the courier service come to pick up the large box. One surveys the box while the other plays an imaginary string instrument on the hand truck. Jan had seen the hand truck musician before and wondered if he was in a band because he was frequently strumming an imaginary guitar or something and singing just out of ear shot. What she hadn't noticed before was his resemblance to Tiny Tim. He could have been Tiny Tim's and Miss Vickie's young attractive son. They had the same shoulder length dark wavy hair, large brown eyes and hook nose. However, the courier's hair was not greasy, his skin was not pale and he stood straight like someone who holds a guitar rather than cradles himself around a ukelele. After thinking about Tiny Tim since last evening with only a break for sleeping, Jan could not take her eyes off the courier who moved next to her desk to help his partner put the box on his hand truck.
She felt sad when they walked together into the hallway with the hand truck but then heard the Tiny Tim offspring look-alike say to his partner, “Wait here.”
He walked directly towards Jan's receptionist desk, bent down towards Jan, kissed her gently on the cheek then walked out to join his courier partner with the box on the hand truck.
The apprentice came out from the back room and said, “I saw that.”
No comments:
Post a Comment