Dirty Work - A Memoir
- by Adam Akin, Friday, February 29th, 2008
I’m really not supposed to be telling you any of this, so please, please believe me.
I’m sitting on one side of a big conference table in a depressing little room. Halogen-white walls, cheap, sand paper carpeting the dirty grey of factory floors, and fluorescent lights. I hate those lights. My bare forearms look bleached out, hairless and pock marked, and my eyes are aching.
Michael is at the head of the table. He’s in charge, and he seems nice enough. He smiles and talks a lot of shop. FCC this, Federal statutes that, blah blah blah. He’s bald. Like, super bald. Like, that close a shave doesn’t even seem possible bald, and all the light in the room is reflecting off of his impossibly bald head and right into my eyes. I’m squinting so hard when I look at him that I probably look like I’m in some kind of pain.
Tanya is at the other end of the table nursing some sort of iced coffee drink and smiling this big, white, empty Zoloft/Percidan-cocktail smile. Her eyes look bright and vacant at the same time. And she doesn’t talk except to give some snappy, abridged version of whatever Michael’s just said. She’s pretty, I guess. But she’s wearing way too much makeup. Like, so much that you can smell the makeup. And her jewelry is an accident waiting to happen. Hoops, bangles, chains, pierced in, latched on, looped around. She should stay away from pool halls and paper shredders.