A Supposedly Staggering Infinite Work of Heartbreaking Illumination I'll Never Read

Easy as 1-2-3

For You, The Stars
Chapter Three: Big Sister’s Clothes
Installment 3

I was back at work on the second. Formally, I was the “studio assistant” for the architects, although no one, including me, could figure out what I was really doing there. Usually that job went to somebody planning to study architecture, like Dave’s friend who had set me up to take his place. For me it was an obvious dead end, but a job’s a job.

I liked most of the architects. They dressed better than lawyers and accountants. I think they were expected to show some flair for design and style. The men wore italian cut suits and interesting ties. The women dressed to kill.

They took Halloween very seriously there, all part of their “I’m not just a professional… I’m creative” self-image. They’d come to work in costume and have a parade down Market Street on the lunch hour. My boss had come in, for instance, the previous Halloween as some strange sort of gaucho. He had the whole leather south-american cowboy thing going on and he spoke only in an unrecognizable pidgen, even to his boss, all day.

One of the hot young women architects I had a slight crush on came in as some bald female Star Trek character, in a form fitting red uniform. She actually went down to meet a client to discuss their master plan in her full regalia.

When they saw that I hadn’t come in costume the architects figured one out for me. They bought some peach colored sheets (couldn’t find saffron), a skin-head wig, and a plastic toy tambourine and voila! I was a hare krishna. I ended up leading the parade dancing and twirling and rhythmically thumping my drum. It was the most uninhibited the architects had seen me and a few warmed to me then.

In general I would start out any new job or situation playing it cool, trying not to make waves or be noticed too much. Once I began to feel more comfortable, I might share a few sarcastic asides with my nearest neighbors. By the time I was completely settled in, though, I’d be a full-on snideness engine, and it wasn’t unusual for people to comment on the change.

“You seemed so nice— kind of boring, when you first showed up.” That kind of thing.

So, as I said, I was never going to be an architect. I wasn’t planning to be an architect. I didn’t know any of their jargon, like calling large sheets of tissue paper “flimsy.” I did find it interesting watching them plan building and clash with contractors. On some projects they started building a legal case for the inevitable law suits from day one. Schedules would get bollixed up and landscaping would be done one time and then other contractors would drive trucks over new-laid turf and tear it up. There were shouting matches on the phone.

I found that most of the architects weren’t too interested in computers. Many of them had chosen this career because of their enjoyment of drawing and other handicrafts. Computer-aided design was coming in and it was not looked upon favorably. One of them retreated into making styrofoam models of projects nearly full time. He’d always been good at that and he’d do it for all the projects and that way he could work with his hands and not a computer keyboard.

I had no art-school illusions to shatter, though, and took to the computer thing right away. I’d been exposed to minicomputers in high school and college, but this was my first crack at a personal computer. It was a Wyse machine running DOS three-point-something. The main program I worked with was Lotus 1-2-3. My boss would ask me to make up spreadsheets for him to track various patterns. I figured out how to make macros to fold and unfold the columns and rows different ways to print multiple reports of the same data.

The greatest thing about the PC was that it bought me time. These guys had no idea how I did what I did on it and they were terrible at estimating how long it should take. I didn’t disabuse them of their overestimates.

“Can you get this back to me by tomorrow afternoon?”

“Sure thing.”

Then I’d whip up the solution in 15 minutes and goof off for the next day and a half.

I figured out after a while that I could take long lunches, disappear for hours on end and generally they’d assume I was in some other part of the office (I also had filing and mail delivery and other office-slave duties to attend to).

My first day back at the office I called Cecilia at her sister’s house up in Marin. We talked for a few hours. We were still in that getting to know each other early phase of a new relationship.

Back home that evening I spent another few hours on the phone with her at night. Our house had just one phone. No one had cell phones then. I’d sit sprawled on the stairs and we’d talk so long, like teenagers, that I’d eventually be falling asleep while we were talking.

The next day Simone got back and called me at work. I asked her to come over that evening, told her I had something I wanted to talk about.