Warning: Rated R (or perhaps F?) for spicy language.

 

With the help of our friends Lawrence and Candia, we decided to return to Manhattan.  But this time, we were going to housesit Lawrence’s mother’s apartment when she went to Florida for the winter and while we were there, we planned to sign up with temp agencies. The economy was now starting to pick up pretty much everywhere besides Redding, and New York temp agencies, we had heard, were in dire need of workers.

 

We booked the cheapest flight we could find, which landed in Newark in the middle of a sleet storm. This airline was so low on the totem pole that we didn’t disembark onto a jetway; instead, they rolled out one of those old metal stairways and pushed it up against the side of the plane. Howling winds were blowing the sleet sideways as we trudged from the plane to the air terminal. The contrast between this and Costa Rica, or the cushy cruise we had just been on, or even northern California which enjoys relatively mild, Mediterranean winters, was stark.

 

“I don’t think we’re in California any more,” Richard shouted, as I fought to keep from losing my hat while sleet pelted my face.

 

 

We laughed, but I was, actually, starting to wonder the same thing.

 

Lawrence had kindly come to the terminal to meet us, and we found him waiting for us just outside of our gate along with a large crowd of people who had come to meet their friends and loved ones as well. We elbowed our way to the baggage claim, where we picked up our bags and then headed for the taxi stand.

 

 

 

 

 

Lawrence sighed. “Welcome to New Jersey,” he said, as he herded us into the line. No one else seemed to be paying the slightest attention to these two at all.

 

We got to Candia and Lawrence’s railroad flat and had a beer to settle our nerves from the flight; Richard’s and my flight out of Chicago had been delayed by quite a bit, so we had eaten dinner there. Since it was late, we were going to spend the night with Candia and Lawrence and then move over to Lawrence’s mother’s apartment the next day.

 

I was feeling okay when I went to sleep—a little nervous about working some place as high-powered as New York, but okay. I thought. In the wee hours, though, the time when this always seems to happen, I woke up feeling queasy. Queasy turned quickly into extremely nauseated, and by the time I had raced the length of the railroad flat, from the living room where Richard and I were staying on the fold-out futon, through Candia and Lawrence’s hall-like bedroom, through the kitchen, and into the closet-sized bathroom, projectile vomiting had commenced. Never was I so glad that a bathroom was so small, since the sink was right in ralphing range from the commode. I must have gotten food poisoning somewhere along the way, the most likely candidate the potato salad I had at the airport. I spent the entire night throwing up violently until I felt so weak and dizzy I thought maybe I should go to the emergency room.

 

This suggestion filled both Candia and Lawrence with alarm: “Are you kidding?! An emergency room on the upper upper East side???” The other, major concern, of course, was the fact that Richard and I didn’t have health insurance, so I would probably wipe out everything we could make by working in New York for two months with just that one visit. Having endured quite a few serious food poisoning episodes when they were living in various countries in Africa, Lawrence and Candia convinced me to ride it out. They had on hand some electrolyte solution, so as soon as I could keep that down, I started sipping it. I rested the next day. The day after that, Richard and I started visiting temp agencies.

 

We chose three that seemed promising from ads in the paper and Yellow Pages, then made appointments to get signed up with them. They each had their own ambiance—one was sort of downscale, noisy, and busy, one was upscale, quiet, and genteel. The other one fell somewhere in between. The downscale one rigged their typing test so that you scored 10 to 20 points below your actual speed, which was sleazy as hell since your hourly rate for secretarial work depended on your typing speed; but they ended up coming up with the most jobs. I was mainly looking for secretarial work: typing, transcribing, taking phone calls (which I didn’t enjoy, having a bit of a phone phobia), composing letters, and filing. Back then, personal computers and word processing software were just coming into use; most companies were still using Selectric typewriters (which, I have to say, was one of my very favorite keyboards ever!!)

 

The genteel temp agency was quite pleasant and I liked my contact there. He got me a low-key job for one day right off the bat and then lined me up for a week-long position after I completed that successfully. Unfortunately, when I accepted this position, I had no idea what I was walking into. None whatsoever! None. And it turned out that this mattered. Quite a lot. A lot of my friends have already heard this story, but I’ll tell it again in my next post because it’s a good one. And might clue some other temp workers in who could use the info.