Amalie in Orbit Read online

  Praise for Kirchheimer’s first book,Goodbye, Evil Eye

  “Like honey and lemon, each page mingles sweet and sour.” —Booklist

  “She imbues even the most frustrating moments with tenderness . . .stories invested with the personal honesty and emotions only one’sfamily can inspire.” —Publishers Weekly

  “Superb collection . . . enthusiastically recommended.” —Midwest Book Review

  “It will delight readers everywhere. I enjoyed it enormously.” —Grace Paley

  “A world of superstition, generational and cultural conflict . . . pervaded by laughter, music, wonderful cooking . . . a hilarious and sweetly loving book.” —E.M. Broner

  “Gloria DeVidas Kirchheimer’s characters are invariably globetrotters at the crossroads between tradition and modernity. This volume will delight readers.” —Ilan Stavans

  AMALIE IN ORBIT

  Gloria DeVidas Kirchheimer

  Smashwords edition

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  PUBLISHED BY:

  The Wessex Collective on Smashwords

  Amalie in Orbit

  copyright 2008 by Gloria DeVidas Kirchheimer

  Cover design by Gabe Kirchheimer. Photos copyright Gabe Kirchheimer

  The Pedestrian Project copyright by Yvette Helin

  For Manny

  Smashwords Edition

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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  Table of contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  A note about the writer

  Chapter 1

  When Amalie Price came home from job hunting, she found her seventeen-year-old son Charlie sitting naked in the apartment kitchen and talking on the phone.

  He threw a dishtowel over his parts and waved. “…and if the weight of Mount Washington equals the mass times the velocity, there’s no reason why you couldn’t transport it to the moon.” He covered the mouthpiece. “How did it go?”

  “Sorry, Mission Control,” she said, placing herself directly in front of the fan. “I didn’t take off.” Never mind the smooth reentry. The job counselor who interviewed her didn’t appear to be any older than Charlie. He told her that some companies actually liked to hire older employees. And why not? Amalie thought. They make good office pets and don’t agitate for unionization. But since when is forty “old”?

  “…Yeah, my mom’s looking for a regular job…What do you mean, ‘What can she do?’”

  Good question, she thought. I can recite the “Song of Roland” in the original eleventh-century French as well as lots of medieval love poems, all of which come in handy for my porno translations which, thank God, Charlie doesn’t know about. So much for a master’s in French literature. Daddy was right. I should have learned speed typing. Months of job hunting and still no job.

  “Hey, look at that sky!” Charlie hung up and rushed to the window, dropping the dishtowel along the way.

  “Charlie, I know it’s summer, but please…”

  Charlie was out the door before she could tell him to take his helmet. He refused to wear it because he claimed it suffocated the hair follicles. But suppose he got hit by a taxi? Amalie never worried this much about him while Stewart was alive.

  Amalie was still seething over her visit to the employment agency. The smug interviewer had shaken his head as he looked at her résumé. “You’ve been out of the market so long, Amalie. This is 1987. There’s new technology. I see you didn’t complete our application. How am I supposed to file you?”

  “This reminds me of Kafka,” Amalie said.

  “Yes, I know the agency. They’re real sticklers.” He offered her a melting Tootsie Roll from a basket. “But you know, even a person like yourself has a lot to offer and might liaise well with the public.” Then he had the gall to offer her some advice: “Add a touch of color when you go out for an interview. All black is too depressing.”

  “So is death, you punk,” she said and walked out.

  The last message on the answering machine was from a woman with a German accent asking that she come in for an interview the following afternoon. Oh yes, that was last week’s ad in the New York Times for an “Energetic creative admin. asst., self-starter, foreign lang. a + Glamorous environment, prestigious microform pub.” Translation: abysmal pay, duties ill-defined.

  Beware of ads that use the words “glamorous” and “creative,” Amalie told herself. They lured applicants who were expected to have marketing, technical, editorial, research, financial and people skills, as well as youth, expert typing, and the ability to distinguish between regular and decaffeinated coffee.

  It was almost 6:00, too late to catch anyone at the “prestigious microform pub.” Amalie phoned anyway and left a message saying she’d come in for the interview the next day. What did she have to lose except time and self-respect?

  In the kitchen, the papaya that Charlie bought for his fruitarian dinner was emitting its enzyme-packed effluvia, stinking up the room. He refused to refrigerate it, waiting for it to ripen naturally. (He also would not keep house plants, forswearing anything bred in captivity, though he made an exception for an ivy that was supposed to be the offspring of a cutting from a plant owned by Albert Schweitzer.) The papaya was ripening like something from a horror movie. Amalie could swear that it swelled with its own juices when left alone at night on top of an enamel counter. Fissures appeared overnight, stains oozed on the wall behind it. Still, she preferred having it here in the kitchen than in Charlie’s room which Amalie regarded as the lost civilization of Atlantis. It was company of a sort, especially with Charlie out of the house. Something alive.

  A freighter floated by on the Hudson which was visible from the kitchen window as a two-inch gap between buildings on Riverside Drive, two blocks away. How Stewart had loved this view. On weekend mornings, he stationed himself by the window and at 10:27 came the call: “Quick, honey, there’s the Dayliner.” Sometimes barges came down from Albany or oil tankers that filled the space like a hallucination.

  Everything reminded Amalie of Stewart. Widowhood just seemed to get worse with time. Some of her friends considered her odd for having stayed married for so long to the same person. “You must really have worked at it,” her friend Julie said, as though marriage were penal servitude. They’d been having lunch at the Pancetta cafe, off 86th Street, an unbelievably noisy restaurant where patrons were compelled to shout at each other. Julie Dryer, a muscular forty-eight and on the cusp of menopause speared an arugula leaf and declared herself full. She prided herself on her delicate eating habits as though she were a heroine in a Victorian novel in which it was vulgar for a woman to display a healthy appetite. “Consider yourself lucky,” Julie said. “Now you can go out and have affairs after being mired in monogamy for eighteen years.”

  “Did I hear you right? Is this your idea of a silver lining?”

  “Never mind. Look, you had Stewart—I said, You had Stewart as your best buddy. That’s as it should be. Now it’s time to move
on. I’ll help you.”

  “I appreciate it,” Amalie said, loudly. But she could do with a little less nagging solicitude and Julie’s tireless efforts to fix her up with dates. “I know how busy you are.” Amalie put more warmth into her voice. It was amazing that Julie found the time to meet for a meal, what with her frenetic schedule as a development officer at Columbia University and her rigorous program of exercise classes which were like a religion with her. Stewart was amused by Julie but also found her expertise useful when applying for grants.

  “You have to get out more,” Julie said, waving away the special chocolate dessert. “One whiff of caffeine and I’m flashing like a police cruiser. Stewart would want you to go out.”

  “What?”

  “I said, he’d want you to go out. And don’t use Charlie or the tenant stuff as an excuse.”

  “How do you know what Stewart would want?” Amalie was annoyed.

  “I know. We did spend a lot of time together that last year, may he rest in peace.” Julie smiled.

  “What’s that mysterious smile?” Amalie asked.

  “I mean professionally, idiot. You do get to know a person. Quirks, weak spots…” She trailed off. “Well, he was no goody-good.”

  “What are you trying to say, Julie? Your circumlocutions are exasperating.”

  “Circumlocutions, is it? I love that.”

  “Is there something you’d like to tell me just to round out the picture of my husband whom I was married to for eighteen years?” Amalie hated where her thoughts were going. “Tell me, just for the record weren’t you out of town that weekend, when the accident happened?”

  “Yeah, I think so. But that’s not unusual for me. You know how I love to get away to the cabin.” Julie had a small ramshackle place on Lake Champlain on the Vermont side. Very convenient, Amalie thought, if I really wanted to believe that something was going on between them. Julie frowned. “Why are you asking me at this late date?”

  “No reason. Just trying to remember who was in town, who I called. No, it’s on me.” Amalie snatched the check, feeling guilty for suspecting her friend. “Let’s not come back here again, OK?” I can’t let myself be thinking like this, she told herself as they parted.

  When the phone rang around 6:00 in the office of Warwick & Berger MicroPubs Marshall Berger and his assistant Hannelore Links had just finished having sex on Marshall’s couch.

  “Well, we have another prospective employee,” Hannelore said with satisfaction after listening to the phone message. “But I still think we would have attracted a higher caliber if we had left in the part about meeting authors.”

  “No, no, and no.” Marshall said tiredly. “All our authors are dead.”

  “But we don’t want any more disasters showing up,” Hannelore said. “If I had my way we would hire only Asians.”

  Marshall knew that what she really meant was, If I had my way we’d hire only Europeans. But she wouldn’t have the nerve to say it. Maybe she was hoping they’d have a cozy dinner tonight. She was his factotum, amanuensis, slave, and right hand that often offended him. To make sure she didn’t take him for granted, he decided to go home to Englewood Cliffs though nobody lived in the house any more except for him.

  Hannelore smiled cheerfully. It was his prerogative. She had no rights, no rights. But let him just remember that without her, the business would collapse.

  “Clean that crap off my desk, will you,” he said in parting.

  From the roll of toilet paper on her desk, Hannelore broke off a piece and blew her nose. She cleaned Marshall’s coffee cup, straightened his papers, and then walked down the hall to Customer Service.

  She opened all the drawers in the first desk, rifling through their contents, looking for telltale notes indicating that its occupant might be job hunting. Aha—an error in an invoice. She marked it with a red pen. Then a large note: SEE ME FIRST THING IN THE A.M. URGENT. H. Next, the bookkeeper’s office and another note: DO NOT GIVE LISA CREDIT FOR SICK DAY LAST WEEK. SHE LOOKED PERFECTLY HEALTHY. Hannelore triple-locked her own drawers, checked the safe and watered the snake plant.

  She took a taxi to her apartment which was a replica of her office—same files in triplicate, same rolodex. Every memo, every brochure in the office, had its counterpart on East 73rd Street. One could never be too careful, Hannelore thought. You never know when sabotage can strike the company.

  #

  “You calling me a slut?” the receptionist was saying into her mouthpiece the next day when Amalie walked into the office of Warwick & Berger MicroPubs, a block from the Flatiron Building. The operator seemed to have a welt on her forehead. “My mother? You spit on my mother?—Wait a sec.” She plugged a cord into an orifice and announced Amalie’s arrival while the box buzzed. “Warwick & Berger MicroPubs, one moment…Let me tell you something. You’re an animal. Yeah…Revenge? You talk to me about revenge?” She covered the mouthpiece and yelled down the hall. “Hannelore, your two o’clock is here.”

  A woman in her mid-forties, a few years older than Amalie and elegantly dressed, strode purposefully down the corridor, her hand outstretched.

  “Miss—sorry, Ms. Price?” The two women shook hands. Then Hannelore Links escorted Amalie down the hall. Her hair was cut short like Joan of Arc’s except that it was almost white. It was hard for Amalie to tell if the color was the result of fright or a bottle. Were those spit curls pasted onto her cheekbones? Given her height the woman reminded Amalie of one those heroes in a silent Russian film who’s interrupted a career as a fur trapper to come and save the people. Ms. Links was wearing a lot of leather, whereas Amalie had made the mistake of wearing a low-cut blouse because of the hot weather.

  They went through a semi-open area where a gaggle of women were typing, enveloped in a cloud of cigarette smoke. There was a banner across a partition proclaiming that “Christ loves you” and a group of birthday cards, most showing large-bosomed women, affixed to a wall. “We get them from the Catholic agency,” Ms. Links said, waving away the smoke. Presumably the employees, not the cards. There were about 25 people on the staff. “We are very cozy,” Ms. Links said. The mail boy passed, looking like something out of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, a somnambulist’s walk, greenish skin, staring eyes. Amalie caught a glimpse of some cubicles, a poster denouncing euthanasia, another advertising the Frankfurt Book Fair.

  The door at the end of the corridor opened and a bearded man in a white suit extended his hand. “Marshall Berger. Just came from the American Library Association Convention at the Sheraton. You know librarians at a convention…” He chuckled. “Everyone lining up to show you their ephemera.”

  Amalie kept a straight face and tried not to worry about showing too much cleavage.

  “Well, the Dewey system also takes in erotica,” he said ushering her into his office. The Links woman followed them in. Amalie hoped this wasn’t going to be one of those “Tell us about yourself” interviews.

  Berger threw a bunch of brochures at her. “This is what we do. We’re saving history.” Spanish Civil War documents, studies of utopias, unknown Victorian novels, early photographic treatises, all on microfilm or microfiche. No need to pay royalties to anyone since the copyrights, if there ever were any, had run out, and the works were in the public domain.

  This was great stuff, Amalie thought. Behind that Sigmund Freud beard there was, perhaps, a mind.

  Berger swiveled around and gazed out at the airshaft. Ms. Links had not taken her eyes off him. Her lips were moving imperceptibly like those of a ventriloquist as he gave Amalie a brief history. He had first begun a small press, publishing some now famous names at the beginning of their careers. Amalie recognized a couple of winners of the National Book Award, a poet recently elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Pulitzer nominee. “I had them all,” he said. “Next door we had some old journalists who thought they were still working for the WPA. Upstairs, the Rivington Street Clarion, a real crusader. God, those were the days.” On the wall b
ehind the desk was a newspaper photo of a younger smooth-shaven Marshall Berger being led away in manacles from a demonstration on Wall Street protesting the Vietnam War. Another picture showed him standing on the back of a truck exhorting a crowd and waving a ukulele.

  This is my kind of place, Amalie was thinking. Stewart would have approved. He and I probably were at that same Wall Street demonstration.

  “Do you think you could make a contribution?” Berger suddenly challenged her.

  How much of a contribution can a low-level clerk make, she wanted to say. Put me into the editorial department where I belong. And get some decent air conditioning so I don’t drip sweat all over your microfilm.

  Before she could speak, Berger motioned to Hannelore and the two women left his office, adjourning to a conference room dominated by a massive samovar and a formal portrait of a square-jowled silver-haired man. “Mr. Warwick,” Hannelore said somberly. “He has been on life support for a long time. There is no hope for him.”

  There were also some prints—or maybe they were not prints. “Are these original Beckmanns?” Amalie asked.

  “Good for you,” Miss Links chortled. “Except for our chief editor nobody in this place ever heard of him. He was German you know, but Hitler didn’t like his work. Now, this position you are being considered for is extremely important.” As described by Hannelore, it seemed to involve everything from manually changing zip codes on 6,000 addresses to spying on the chief editor. Then there would be operations dealing with Mark and Sip—Oh, fellow workers?—No, something about databases, MARC and CIP, ISBN’s and OCLC. “They come from the Library of Congress,” Hannelore said reverently as though speaking of the ten commandments. “They are the highest authority.”