Manikin Postures

by Roberto Ontiveros

Leo was washing his face before his interview, using the sink in the customer service bathroom. Making sure to scrub away the pink liquid pump soap that, once in contact with his cheeks and forehead, lost its lather and seemed to disappear into the sunburn of his skin. In the mirror above the faucet, Leo’s eyebrows shone wet, looking pointed with ferocity and distinct maturity. Leo was groomed and ready to bargain for employment. He had shaved in the morning, but wasn’t used to the effort and didn’t know how the lower half of his face would darken with quick stubble. Leo looked at his teeth, a basic coffee-drinker yellow. They were fine, but maybe he would refrain from smiling to present himself as  overly serious. 

       The interview was quick and free of frustration. The man behind the desk seemed open and impressed, complimenting Leo on his conversational ease and choice of tie. If Leo didn’t get this filing job, it would be because a better person had applied. A cape of calm settled over Leo when he mulled over the recent sacrifices made in order to become employable. He had been going to sleep before midnight, rising, no matter how he felt, at six-thirty. He spent whatever money he could on new clothes for all foreseeable interviews, humble slacks of a modest make that he had not worn since his pre-teen, church-going days, and shirts that called for starch and an ironing board. Leo no longer answered the phone when his pals called, leaving “let’s get some beers and watch a movie” messages.  He had, in effect, dropped everyone he once knew and killed time with. But most importantly, he started going to bars that served happy hour food. As a student, Leo had done this before but was always just scamming chicken wings and three-layer dip. Now he had the genuine desire to be seen as a member of the relaxing workforce, a regular dude off his desk job, having earned the right to unwind before the drive home.

        Since he started actively looking for work, Leo took to carrying an attaché case loaded with legal pads and style manuals, pens, and Post-it notes. Not that he really believed he was fooling anyone. Leo did not feel that he could just go from a canvas backpack to a leather case without feeling like he was posturing. If he sat alone, with the loose pages and the scattered pencils before him, anyone might assume he was writing in a journal, scratching off items on a “to-do” list, or studying for a night class. Even when he thought of happy hour as a way to snag free food, there was never a point when Leo felt he was taking advantage of any barroom largess. In those days, Leo drank with unabashed greed. Typically, in the two happy hours of discounted liquor time, he would down six unfrozen Margaritas or chase shot specials with pint specials. The check always came to more money than he had spent anywhere else all week. Leo never failed to round the bill up to the barmaid’s favor, tipping with winsome generosity and not feeling that he had earned any special attention for this act. Now that he had succeeded in drinking far less, he wanted to see if he could leave a normal-sized tip. Leo always hit the same bar, a place called Shelly’s which he frequented with the tenacity of a man determined to forge a routine that might one day become irksome to interrupt. He loved the semi-darkness of the place, the atmosphere of cigars and big pitchers of dark ale, and the laughter of business relations on an afternoon pause. Alone and heartened by the scotch and soda, excited by the promise of the afternoon sun outside the bar door, he thought it might be good to walk under the trees by the river. If Leo didn’t rise from this too-comfortable booth immediately, he might risk ordering another drink, and if that happened, he might be sitting in this bar all night. People he once knew could walk in, and he would find himself giving in to whatever the building crowd wanted, putting off his own fragile day-by-day stab at stability. This frightened Leo, who was trying hard to change something fleeting and inflexible about himself. A stubborn imp of a vice potentially supported by everything around him, a tic he feared would not iron itself out in the course of the years to come but, in time, might pearl into the core of his persona. It could happen if he didn’t watch out, so he made it his business to. Leo put his empty glass over a ten-dollar bill and walked out of Shelly’s.  

In the center of the city was a park with a river, which made necessary the public showers that bathers and bums used to wash off. Leo hated how the river and surrounding picnic area were in perpetual use. Behind the restroom and tube rental shack was a plane of concrete that looked to be the foundation of a storage shed never completed, large enough, about the size of his living room, for skateboarders to do tricks on. Leo had even seen joggers using it as an area to stretch legs and limber up before running down the dirt trails that curled into the city’s manicured aims at municipal recreation. It was still bright as hell outside, and with the scotch sweating out of his system, Leo felt thirsty and started to walk to the nearest water fountain. His thirst quenched, Leo surveyed the people in the river: children bobbing underwater and leaping up for air, full-grown men wading their legs in the surface, drinking cans of beer. The place looked content with itself, and Leo was starting to find pleasure in that. People were taking naps under the trees, smiling in their happy fatigue. Was it so outside of reality that he might do the same? Leo walked over to a bench, let himself rest under the arboreal shade, and went to sleep.  

        He awoke in terror. Didn’t know where he was, didn’t remember any dreams, and had to fight the feeling that he had lost himself. It was night, and Leo could hear no noise. He raised his torso, hit his head on the underside of the bench, and felt as if he might cry, that if he didn’t get careful, right away, he might start to sob and maybe never remember anything ever again, that was his fear, that was what was real to him right then. There were mosquito bites on his arms and even one on his left cheek. The dime-sized spot of itch and heat brought his cool fingers to his face. He exhaled as if to express some inner defeat, then, on instinct, started to brush his palms over the bug bites on his arms as if he were applying an invisible balm. He slid from under the bench, got to his feet and pulled his leather case off the ground. If the river was catching moonlight and shimmering in viper beauty, it was also just nothing. Leo was too mad at himself to enjoy the sudden balmy lassitude of the night. What he had to do now was splash water on his face and start his walk home. He could look for a hose or a sprinkler, but he would not use that damned river; he would not touch it. At the water fountain, drinking heavy gulps under the dark pavilion-like place, Leo thought of the square of cement on the other side of the building. He wasn’t used to napping, and by now the effects of the alcohol had totally left his system. It was time he went home.    

         As he rounded the corner of the public restrooms, Leo saw a man standing firm over the cement plane as if about to pounce into the air and taunt the absence of wind. Leo kept walking, but did not take his eyes off the man. It was too dark to make out any features. The man might have been tall, or else just gaunt and imposing for the shadows that lent his slight build a surprising prowess. He extended an arm out as if to receive a gift, then started to claw at the darkness before him and wave his palms in slow circles. Leo kept walking, and when he passed the man, he saw that he was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, untucked, creased. He smelled of hard labor, dirt and sweat, sawdust and carpenter’s glue, and he was blooming with the kind of movements that suggested an effort to unwind from the pangs of extreme work. He did not seem young, but in the dark there was no way to know that. His hair was thick and black enough to have been a dye-job. His face was still and without wrinkles, and he looked as if he held secrets, if not just the labor of keeping secrets.

The next day was the same. Looking for work, anyplace. I need a job, God, give me a job, blood always pumping, and Leo’s standards on the slow swing down. Leo had lived in this city for seven years. There was a university he was attending and a girlfriend he assumed he was going to marry, and in putting graduation and his engagement off, Leo had lost his degree and his fiancée’s patience. But throughout his procrastination, he had friends and constant jobs. The work and friends he chose were always seasonal. Leo knew he was getting older; he had passed that stage when you could think of employment in terms of summer work, Christmas vacation work, after-school or part-time work. This was his front: Leo acted, every time he looked for a job, as if the work he sought was forever temporary. Leo made that extra effort to tell his future employers that he needed to earn money for a class or a visit home. When Leo felt shame over the unnecessary weirdness of the lies, he said he was saving up for a trip, said he was going to do a study abroad program, and needed to build some safety cash. Never did he say he was looking for steady employment, the means to sustain a regular life. The last job Leo had, as a lifter for a local moving company, he had given up because it seemed too obvious that this would be a big part of his future. The hours were easy, malleable, the money was good, he could have any day he wanted off, but anyone hired was considered a potential manager.  Everybody was twenty or thirty years old. Leo was twenty-five. He had to quit or else decide to stay on. So, one morning he didn’t show up for work, then didn’t call in the next day, and after a week he knew he had been let go. It was easy, if a bit awkward, to pick up his final paycheck and go looking for new employment.  But here he was turning in applications at the public library, the butterfly museum, and a video rental store he had never bothered entering before. Places that appeared, when Leo walked past them, deserted or at least not doing too well, places that maybe fooled Leo into thinking they were cut off from time and money and, in the end, even the crust of a lifestyle. But he wasn’t worried. Leo always got the jobs and never thought of them as real jobs to get.

        When Leo was finished walking his applications around, he went back to Shelly’s and just missed happy hour. A barmaid in a tank top and exercise shorts was piling empty catering trays onto each other. Leo sat in a booth and pulled out his papers and notepads. He started checking off the places he had been to and the places he might visit in the morning. The bar smelled of meat sauce and clove cigarettes. There was a pinch of cigarette ash over a wet cardboard coaster. This was the worst time to be at Shelly’s. When the happy hour crowd had dissipated and the dating crowd had yet to arrive, when the newly hired girls had to clear up the food trays and wait for girls with night shift seniority to take over their registers and make better tips. Leo felt guilty for being in Shelley's at this limbo hour, but writing in the legal pad was already working for him. He was engaged and on a track that no one could push him off, never mind that there was nothing pressing to write, and he was running out of places where he might want to spend his days on the clock. But Leo knew that if he really wanted to act on his situation with appropriate pragmatism, he would have been listing out possible cities to move to where this job hunt might be easier on him. Or at the very least, naming new bars to hit up for frequency, places where the listing itself might be less painful. Leo waited for service, was ignored but not unseen. Finally, the waitress in the tank top made a face and switched shifts with a waitress in a leather skirt. Leo got his whiskey and mineral water.

        Walking home, he avoided the park. It was late now, and the place would be all about making out and smoking out. And if the slow-dance man was standing on the square of cement, Leo was not in the right spirits to see him. As he neared his apartment complex, he knew he would have to leave this city. Even if every single job he applied for was offered to him and he had his pick of the hours and salary, none of them promised to give him what he wanted, and that bugged him. Leo was not without direction. He knew what he wanted to do, had in fact done the work before, and was now unable.

       The apartment was too cold. Leo brought the air to 78 degrees and went to the fridge. He hadn’t eaten anything all day but his morning cup of yogurt. On the shelves there was nothing that could be used to create a taste of order and familiarity. There was beer, and there was cheese and there was mustard. Leo spooned an over-soft section of Camembert onto a hard tortilla and popped the cap off a bottle of Bass. Then, leaning against the kitchen counter, eating his dinner under the fluorescent kitchen light, he thought about that week he stopped showing up to the moving company. Leo had not spent those days watching TV, getting drunk, or catching up on all the reading he had abandoned when he quit school. Instead, Leo stood just as he was standing now, against the door window that led to his apartment patio. He had stepped outside, then come back in.  He had taken bathroom breaks and eaten whatever looked okay to eat. He had called his parents and listened to Billie Holiday on the radio, gone to bed, and back to the sliding door window. Now, he was thinking about the man in the park. Leo knew that he, like that man, had for that special week been occupied by a similar dance. He had even been committed to the steps, and now that he was again on the road to work and stability, Leo was no longer qualified for that kind of movement and occupation. The city had an eager economy. There were jobs and people that you could marry. And there were even those who for a short time, kept the quiet, unemployable peace. For a week, Leo had been one of them, and it stilled him into manikin postures to know he had been replaced.