Rivethead - Ben Hamper [93]
HUH? The room was totally dark. I flipped on a light switch and peered around. The room was entirely empty. No tables, no chairs, no files, no ashtrays—NO CONTRACT! I went back into the cafeteria and pulled one of the servers aside. “Could you tell me where all of the transfer people have gone? It seems they've stepped out somewhere.”
“What transfer people?” replied the moron in the hair net.
“The transfer people who've inhabited that back room all week! Where'd they go?”
“How should I know. I just work the grill. I don't know any transfer people.”
This had a bad aroma to it. One day ado, the next day adieu. It was spooky. Where in the hell did those cradle-lootin’ nomads disappear to? I wandered out of the cafeteria perplexed as to my next move. As I did, I half expected to turn around and catch a glimpse of Rod Serling ducking out of one of the phone booths, his hands knotted at groin level, his mocking sneer poking out of the plume of his eternal Winston. I could almost hear him:
“Witness if you will an enigma, a frustrated punster besieged by his lack of an appropriate punchline. We may call him the Rivethead, a self-designation currently on very tenuous footing, obscured amongst the nervous shuttle of those who would waver between embarkation and a fostered urge to remain. For here amidst the impossible din, amongst the sooty backdrop of this macabre garden, nothing is a sure bet. Nostalgia is as worthless as a slug nickel. A reconsideration only an old key prying hopelessly against an exchanged lock. However, a contract remains a contract, a coward still a coward. Now witness if you will a man's desperate attempt to undo that which is done, a man in need of what is known, a man's march through darkness into the Transfer Zone.”
I raced upstairs to the Rivet Line looking for Gino. I found him in his office going over a stack of paperwork. I didn't bother to knock.
“Tell me something, Gino,” I blurted. “Where in the fuck did those transfer people from Pontiac go? Their office has simply vanished.”
“Yesterday was their last day,” Gino answered. “They won't be back until next spring or summer. What happened, did you miss the boat or something?”
“No, the damn boat ran my ass right over! I signed their rotten transfer contract and—”
“You've changed your mind,” Gino finished for me.
I told Gino about how I had panicked. About how the union guy had claimed I'd be out of a job in two years if I didn't sign on. I told Gino that I'd been struck with this vision of myself cramming sugar paste into the butt end of cream sticks for three bucks an hour while the repo men tap-danced down the boulevard with my end tables and record collection in tow. I told him I was possibly the biggest fuckup either of us had ever met.
“Did they mention to you that, once you signed on, the contract was irreversible?”
“Yeah,” I moped, “they stuck that right in at the top.”
“I'm afraid you're locked in. Let me ask around and see what I can come up with.”
“I'd appreciate it.”
Gino wasn't able to find a single loophole. Nor was I. For weeks, I went around shaking down every union rep and boss-type I could find. Their only response was to ask me if I had inked the transfer sheet. Once I admitted that I had, they simply shook their heads and wished me luck. GM wasn't in the habit of lettin’ a sucker off the leash.
Pontiac was in the offing. I had a couple of years before I shipped out. Two years of Rivet Line mania. Two years of the spectacular and the absurd. I didn't intend to waste a minute of what was left on the meter. All aboard for clown