Supervolcano All Fall Down(17)

He wasn’t fussy. He was desperate. If he ran out of money before he landed something, he’d have to move back in with his mother. Boomerang kids were a phenomenon of his generation before the supervolcano blew. There were more of them now, with the economy still on its back with its feet in the air and X’s where its eyes ought to be. The idea humiliated him all the same. He wasn’t a little boy any more, dammit, no matter how much his mother wanted to keep him one.

He sent his c.v. to every Catholic school in Los Angeles and Orange Counties. If anybody needed a Latin teacher, a Catholic school was likeliest to. Most of them didn’t answer his queries. The ones that did either already had a Latin teacher they liked or didn’t want any.

And so his alarm went off before six one morning. He had to get out of bed to turn it off: a sensible precaution for anyone who slept as soundly as he did. He hopped in the shower, gulped bread and jam and coffee for breakfast, and drove downtown to the offices of the Department of Water and Power.

They had, or so their online ad said, an opening for a grant writer. The requirements were a bachelor’s degree and three years of writing experience. He’d published his first poem almost exactly three years earlier. Fortunately, they didn’t ask how much he’d made from his writing. Even if you put a cash value on the copies the journals paid in, his total earnings would barely touch three figures.

But they didn’t. He’d got through that round of vetting. And here he was, at the DWP, taking a test along with several dozen other worried-looking people. The men and women ranged from his age up to their early sixties. Maybe a civil-service job wasn’t exactly what they had in mind, either. It beat the hell out of no job at all, though.

They took the test in what looked like the lunchroom, though the food-serving part was closed off. Everyone had a stock of number-two pencils. It might have been the SAT all over again.

In came a plump woman in a burgundy polyester pantsuit his mother would have loved—he couldn’t think of anything worse to say about it. She carried a fat manila envelope. “I’m Stella Garcia,” she said. “I will be administering this assessment instrument. Before we begin, I want everyone to put their cell phone on the table in front of you, upside down and in the off position.”

There were more ways to cheat on exams now than there had been back in the day, even if you did call them assessment instruments. Had anyone brought more than one phone? Would it help? Bryce hadn’t. He wasn’t hardened enough to this game. Besides, he had only one.

Mrs. Garcia—her ring flashed under the fluorescents—passed out the exams facedown. “Do not turn them over and begin until I tell you to do so,” she said. “You will have two hours precisely to complete them.” She checked her own cell phone for the time, even though there was a clock on the wall behind her. “Begin!” It was eight on the dot, or near enough.

Bryce put his name, address, and e-mail on the front page of the booklet, then dug in. It was like the SAT English test: grammar, analogies, taking the meaning from passages. Only the passages were mind-numbing bureaucratese, not the fairly straightforward stuff on the SAT.

He didn’t care. He aced standardized tests. He always had. And he could read bureaucratese, even if he didn’t write it well. He filled in bubble after bubble.

One poor shlub strolled into the lunchroom at half past eight. Mrs. Garcia gave him a booklet and made him put his cell where she could see it. Bryce didn’t figure him for serious competition.

But what about the woman who handed in her test at five to nine? Was she brilliant or hopeless? She walked out of the room before Bryce could make up his mind.

He finished about nine twenty. He was the sixth, or maybe seventh, to turn in the exam. Another guy handed his in a moment later. They walked out together. “What did you think?” the other guy asked once the door closed behind them. He was forty-five or so, heavyset, and needed a shave. He hadn’t showered before he came in, either.

It had been easier than Bryce expected. He didn’t want to say that, so he shrugged and answered, “Who knows? How about you?”

“I did the best I could,” the older man said, which also might mean anything. He went on, “Hope I land the job. I’m gettin’ awful sick of pork and beans, know what I mean?”

“Oh, man, do I ever!” Bryce said. “Not much out there these days.”

“Not much? There’s fuckin’ nothin’,” the other guy said. “Good luck to you, Jack—but not too much, no offense.”

“Yeah, well, back atcha,” Bryce replied. They swapped wry grins.