Job Hunting, 1966

The California employment office offered small encouragement:

“Bachelor’s in English. Can you teach?”

“I’m not certified.” I planned to be a writer, didn’t need education courses.

“What experience do you have?”

“My summer jobs—waitressing.”

“We have several waitress openings…”

I wasn’t that desperate yet. At least they gave me a written exam for some state jobs.

I answered an ad, was told, “sure, come in tomorrow,” reported to Maryann, a lean woman of nonchalant movements. She instructed, then dropped three or four of us girls in suburban locations, assigned blocks and pickup spots. We sold encyclopedias door-to-door from nine to four, commission only.

“So you’re a poet,” Maryann said, driving to our territory of the day. “You should meet my husband. He’s a writer too.” A jazz number came on the radio and she snapped her fingers to it, seeming both abstracted and absorbed.

I endured slammed doors, no answers, my satchel of materials heavier by the hour. I met lonely housewives who were glad to let me use their bathrooms and have a drink, to have someone to talk to, but who were not buying. The end of the week one of those asked immediately, in an impatient manner, “what’ve you got?”

I barely launched my spiel when she waved her cigarette to stop me, said, “I’ll take a set.” We completed the paperwork. She wrote a check, smoked, poured coffee. I sat while she told me how unhappy she was without ever saying she was unhappy. When I got my commission, I quit.

Tanya and I met at the bus stop. I was off to job hunting. She was off to school, in her last semester at Sacramento State before student teaching. Petite with a sleekly finished look, she had no angles. Her hair was shoulder-length and black, her eyes a shiny blue, her apartment across the street from mine.

By the time Tanya’s bus came that morning, she’d decided. “Hey, come over for tacos tonight.”

Tacos? “And artichokes,” she added, as she climbed aboard. Artichokes?

That night, Tanya’s roomie tipped a taco to her mouth and a thin line of greasy juice ran down her arm to the elbow.

“So they don’t have Mexican food back East?”

I stared at the red sauce curving glossily down her arm. She seemed unaware of it. I was waiting for it to drip. She was going to Berkeley for the weekend.

“Maybe we can do something,” Tanya suggested, looking at me.

“That’d be nice for you,” the roomie said, pushing a strand of hair out of her eyes with greasy fingers, that movement finally releasing the gathered rivulet to dribble into her lap.

“If you have no Mexican food, then have you heard Mimi and Richard Fariña back East?”

In the “back East” I knew, there were no tacos, no artichokes and no Mimi and Richard Fariña, although I was about to be a fan of all three. Records were put on the turntable for my edification:

Sometimes we bind ourselves together
and seldom know the harm in binding
the only feeling which cries for freedom
and understanding and time for holding
a silver mirror with one reflection to call your own.

Still wanting him to understand, I sent those lyrics to the former boyfriend who’d been writing, “when are you coming home?”

“Richard Fariña just died,” Tanya said. “A few months ago. A motorcycle accident.”

Mimi & Richard Fariña

We saw Dr. Zhivago that weekend, which was how she became Tanya. It was not her name, but I thought she had a striking resemblance to Geraldine Chaplin. And we swooned over Omar Sharif. I was an opportune find for Tanya, who wanted to escape her roomie: “I don’t care that she sleeps around, but she brings them home, lets them stay for days and she’s such a slob.”

Tanya was an opportune find for me. I was sick of isolation, of the room above the liquor store with its flashing neon sign. We found an apartment on N Street, the upstairs of an old two-story house. Those were the days of month-to-month rent and furnished apartments. Moving was easy. We borrowed a car, piled clothes in the back seat, filled the trunk with records, books, my typewriter and done.

A letter arrived offering me a social worker position with Sacramento County, starting the next week. $515 a month, good money. They required a college education and high marks on the written test I’d taken. Verbal skills. My English degree was useful after all. These days you need an MSW for that job. To celebrate, we met a friend of Tanya’s who pierced our ears using the alcohol, needle and potato method. Pierced ears were radical.

The visit happened after all that, after I no longer worked for Maryann. The house was minimally furnished, as if they’d just moved in or were about to move out. We never sat down. Young children, a girl and a slightly younger boy, complained that they were hungry. Maryann’s husband was a quiet man in glasses who smoked as much as she did, as we all did.

He told us his story “Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?” was included in the 1967 Best American Short Stories. The children whined again that they were hungry. Maryann opened the fridge, addressed a lonely can of beer. “We’ve got to go to the store.”

Raymond Carver grinned, tapped the advance copy of a significant literary achievement, and lit another cigarette.