Is he joking? I stare at his face for a sign of anything at all. Have the multiple face piercings caused nerve damage that prevents him from smiling or frowning?
He doesn’t explain, so I straighten my neck and stare ahead at the numbers on the elevator’s panel. We’re moving down, down, down. We’re going to a floor that isn’t even on the panel.
I think about quitting, for the third time this morning.
There was a Help Wanted sign up at the cafe I visited yesterday. I could probably get a job there with my experience. Thanks to my new certificate in Business Management from my community college, I’m qualified to run the coffee shop. In theory.
What I’m not qualified for is working at a music label. I would never have applied here, not even as a long shot. You could have knocked me over with a feather when someone from Morris Music contacted me.
Now here I am. Riding with Casper the Unfriendly Goth down to the pits of…
The elevator doors open.
“Welcome to the archives,” he says, leading the way out.
I follow him, past tall, industrial-looking metal shelves. He pauses to press a green button on the wall. There’s a creaking sound, then a machine-like whirr, and suddenly the shelves themselves are moving, sliding along a metal track on the floor.
“That’s cool,” I say.
His eyebrow lifts for a second, betraying a look of surprise. “You’re not scared of big motors and intern-crushing shelves?”
“I grew up on a farm. Have you ever seen a thresher up close?”
His eyebrow lifts again and stays lifted. I’ve passed his test.
“I’m Nick,” he says, extending his hand.
“Jess.”
“I know.” He squeezes my hand with more power than I expected. “Jess, brace yourself for excitement, because I’m going to show you all the ins and outs of the archives floor. You think you’ve seen it all, but we’ve only just begun. Hey, why are you wrinkling your brow at me?”
“You guys have physical archives? Isn’t everything digital? Shouldn’t this all be on computer servers?”
“I’m glad you asked,” he says, his voice sounding robotic, like a recorded message. He begins a long speech about how they’re still moving content they’ve acquired over to digital storage.
Unlike the boxes and files around us, the digital files are kept off-site, on secure servers. After a few minutes of his speech, I realize he’s telling me about the grunt work of digitizing and file conversion because this is what I’m going to be doing.
This is what my internship is all about: grunt work.
I’ll be opening a box of files, and scanning, recording, or typing all the material into a data entry computer. For eight hours a day. Minus short breaks and forty-five minutes for lunch.
What’s in the boxes? My hope rises up. Maybe there’s cool stuff in the archives. Treasures.
Nick pulls a cardboard filing box from a shelf, sets it on a table next to a computer, and whips off the lid. A plume of dust flies into the air, making me sneeze. Nick pulls out more dusty stacks of papers and ancient-looking computer disks. He gives me a demonstration of how to get everything into the database.
When he’s done, he turns to me and says, “Ya gotta start somewhere.”
I nod, but can’t bring myself to agree with him.
This is not at all what I imagined when I accepted the job, but I’m here now, so I may as well give it a shot.
Nick takes a seat at the other table, where he’s already got a box he’s going through.
For the next hour, we work in silence.
I’ve got the database figured out, so for the second hour, I’m able to hold a conversation with Nick while we both work.
He won’t divulge much information about the company.
I ask, “How well do you know the vice president?”
“Maggie Clark?” He pauses to think. “There’s just one thing you need to know about her.”
“Are you going to tell me?”
Nick almost smiles, but doesn’t. “If she asks you to do something, say yes. Don’t even think about it. Here, let’s practice. I’m Maggie.”
I smile over at him as I put another computer disk in the external drive. Roleplaying? Sure, why not.
I say to Nick, “Hello, Maggie.”
He tilts his head back so he’s looking down his nose at me. He makes his voice high and thin like an old lady’s. “Jess, I’d like you to go on a little errand for me, and jump off a bridge. Will you do that for me?”
I laugh.
Nick keeps looking down his nose at me. In his high-pitched voice, he says, “Is that a no, or a yes? I need you to jump off a bridge. It’s of utmost importance.”