"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. Butthead, 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.