Any Coincidence Is | Page 7

you have failed to complete part one of the interview."
"I'm not completing any damn interview until--"
"What the hell's for dinner?" the boy asked.
"Let me see, let me see," said the Lab Coat Man, flipping through the pages on his clipboard.
"Excuse me. Point of order here..." began Prof. Sigger.
"That pizza today sucked."
"I certainly can't disagree with you there."
"I am negotiating for my release, so if we could stick to the topic -"
"Couldn't you have at least baked it instead of micro-waving it?"
"Out of my control, I'm afraid."
"Am I invisible? Am I not part of this conversation?"
"Patience, Mr. Sigger," replied the Lab Coat Man, flipping back to his top sheet.
"Professor Sigger!"
"Frigging crybaby," muttered the boy.
"I'll have you know--!" bellowed Sigger, his voice cracking in a most un-John Wayne like fashion.
"Now, now," began the Lab Coat Man.
"So what's it going to be? More bad pizza?"
"La dee da, la dee da! Never mind that I'm here! I think I'll just find a corner and sit here while you two carry on this most important of conversations."
"Oh, no, Prof. Sigger, we have our interview. Not a thing we can skip."
"There's nothing you can say to make me!" Sigger cried, sulking in the corner farthest from Kurt.
"In answer to your question, Taco Bell," he replied, looking up from a red 2B.
"I think I'm going to puke," Kurt moaned, looking even rattier than before and visibly greener as the pronouncement set in.
"I'm ready for that interview now," muttered Prof. Sigger, trotting to the steel bars and waiting like an obedient schoolboy. The Lab Coat Man nodded and marked an 'X' on a white page.

9. A weird day's night "There is no such thing as an omen. Destiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that." - Oscar Wilde
Julia dashed into the Osco employees' entrance and punched in one second before four o'clock. Accomplishing her day's goal of being on somebody's payroll, she decided to catch her breath by sneaking a smoke in the restroom. She caught Rhonda's eye at the check-out counter, who gave her a smile and a nod that meant: "Join you in a second."
Kurt, aka. Farthead, hadn't replaced the dead bulbs yet, so Julia sat on a toilet lid inside a claustrophobic's nightmare of a stall with only pale, yellow light keeping her from absolute darkness. And the brief flame of the lighter, which she snapped closed as she took a strong, slow drag. Another night-shift to deal with old grannies looking for denture cream, kids trying to lift cigarettes, drunks picking up plastic violets for the wife. If only she didn't need to eat, Julia concluded, maybe she wouldn't have to work in a world that seemed more than a little unreal.
But then, that was the family legacy, wasn't it? Seeing something that wasn't there, or worse: trying to see something that wasn't there and almost succeeding. Find a farm out in Arizona and retire once you've had enough of being called crazy. But then, Julia knew that there were two kinds of people: those who couldn't live without air conditioning and her uncle. Another run-down, fix-it-up farm in this family was out of the question. She took another deep drag and wondered why she kept smoking these things. They were like beer, Uncle Justin had told her: after the War, they never went back to making them right. If only someone would just make some real changes in the world - how long could it be before it was a better place to live? A better place than this? Wasn't that what everyone wanted? If so, why did everyone settle for what we had?
That's what her mother had done. Settled for Dad dying. Settled for the life of a reclusive widow, until she died too. Not much Julia could do but not make a conscious mess of her own life. Not that everything had gone perfectly. She had a job, she was going to school - although Uncle Justin kept reminding her it was "only" for accounting. No science, no liberal arts. But she read a lot on her own. Mysteries, new fiction, the classics that were recommended by that stud of a librarian. Not that she understood all of it, but there was usually something to enjoy, to learn from. Especially questions about the Big Picture - that always sparked her interest.
But Uncle Justin would just shake his head. It was a tech school, not a college or a university. Lord knows there are plenty of cheap schools in Wisconsin that offer some liberal arts courses, he would say. To say nothing of real science. He accused her of falling for the same trap his sister, Julia's mother, had fallen for: living in a Wisconso-centric universe. Once he brought this up, the conversation usually degenerated