The Part Time People by Tom Lichtenberg, Benhamish Allen Read Free Book Online

up in the window, please?”
     
    David took the sign and went up front. As he bent to tape it to the window he looked up and saw, across the street, an old man climbing into a taxi cab. He saw a woman waiting for her dog to finish pissing on a wall. He saw a city bus go by. He saw the traffic light turn from red to green. He saw nothing unusual at all. He couldn't get over it. This isn't what I thought would happen today, he thought. A fulltime job. A raise. And here I am putting up the same sign in the window that first got me here. He smiled and felt relieved.
     
    “How's it going, Dave?” Mike said from somewhere off behind.
     
    “Just great,” David said.
     
    “Good,” said Mike. “I hear you’re taking Gwen's old place. Too bad she's gone. She was really great. Well, after Martin, you probably know about all that. Can't really blame the girl. That kind of thing can really get to you.”
     
    “I guess so,” David said. And suddenly it occurred to him that now he was going to get a chance to really work with Mike, and not just stand at the register while Mike was helping customers. This is really good, he thought, and he felt that Mike could teach him how to get along more than anybody ever could. All I need is someone who can show me how, he thought, how to be normal. It's been a long time since I really had a friend, and he felt that Mike could be the best one he could have. Things are going to work out fine, he told himself. And he went to work. Later, as he priced stacks of legal pads, he felt like he had been full time his whole life, and those part time episodes had never really happened.
     
    The next day Joe picked up the stack of applications they had received. There were four of them. He took them back into the office and slowly looked them over. He decided that this time he was going to go about it differently. One was from a teenage girl who needed a summer job, but it was almost August already and she'd be going back to school before too long. Another was from a guy who made twenty bucks an hour at the bank and wanted ‘a change of pace’. He also wanted fifteen bucks an hour. The third was from a woman who plainly stated that she had an offer for another job but it didn't start until October and she needed something in the meantime. Joe could understand that, and he was also tempted to call her because she was so honest about her situation. But then he thought we really need someone who's going to stick around. He wanted his next part-timer to be the last.
     
    That left only one more application, It seemed straightforward enough. A man named Jim, He was in his early thirties, and had been in the army several years ago. Since then he'd worked as a veteran’s counselor, but now, he wrote, he was tired of the war, and he wanted a totally different atmosphere. He'd always wanted to work in a little shop like this, he wrote, because it seems so ordinary, normal, and sane. All he wanted, he wrote, was an honest job for honest pay. Joe thought he sounded promising. And, he was curious about the man. He wondered what it would be like to be a counselor. Surely that was more rewarding than a little retail job. He wanted to ask about it. He wanted to know this man. So he called him up and made an appointment to see him in the morning. Joe hoped it would be the last interview he ever had to do.
     

 
     
    CHAPTER SIX
     
     
     
    Joe told Mike about the man and the interview, and asked if he could help Joe with the interview, and Mike agreed. Mike wasn’t thrilled. He didn’t like those situations any more than Joe did, but since his brother had asked, he couldn’t refuse. Then, when he took a look at Jim's application, he felt that maybe it wasn't going to be so bad after all. The army usually weeds out the crazies. And when the man arrived, he was actually impressed with him. Jim was tall and rather handsome, though his face showed traces of old bruises he assumed he'd gotten in the war. They