Mr Randowski

A year ago, almost to the day, I was hired at Haugen & Dahl. It's a sucky insurance company, and I quit a few months later. 

I've blown through some other jobs since then, and at present I'm halfheartedly looking for work again. Seattle is a big city but it's a small world, where occasionally there are big coincidences: a couple of weeks ago, I found a listing for a job at the same address. Same building, but a different company.

Two floors above Haugen & Dahl, there's the office of a vitamin wholesaler. The job sounds like ten dull jobs I've had before: file paperwork, send out bills and collections, do data entry, prep reports, solve random problems, answer the phone, etc.

So I sent my résumé and then forgot about it, until someone from the company called a few days ago, to arrange my interview with the boss — Mr Randowski.

Soon as she said the name, I was worried, intrigued, frightened, and apprehensive. There was a Randowski in my life long ago, here in Seattle, and it's not a common name. Chances are, this Randowski was related to my Randowski.

Yesterday I took the familiar and tedious two-bus commute from Burien to Millionaire's Island, and walked several blocks to the building where I used to work.

At the front desk I said, "I'm here about the job," and I sat and waited and noticed the name on the door: Kevin Randowski, which removed all doubt.

After ten minutes, Mr Randowski emerged from his office and beckoned me in. There was nothing familiar about his face, just another 50-something white guy in a suit, but it's been 40 years since I'd seen him.

He had my résumé, and asked all the expected questions, and me being one of the world's foremost authorities on me, I answered everything, but my mind was elsewhere.

When we got to the part where the interviewer says, "And do you have any questions for me?", yeah, I had a question. I'd had a question since two days earlier, soon as I'd heard the name Randowski.

"When I ask this," I said, "you'll rule me out for the job, but I'm gonna ask anyway." He made a wary face, and I continued. "Do you have a sister named April?"

He looked at me for a few seconds, then said, "Yes, I do," holding his head skeptically at an angle.

"Thought so. I dated April for five years, when you were about six to eleven years old."

He looked uncomfortable, and I couldn't and still don't blame him. I was supposed to talk about vitamins, not his sister. He probably thought, next I'd ask a bunch of prying questions about her, but nah. There's nothing much to ask. I've Googled her name a few times over the years, so I already knew April is married, has a different name, several kids and grandkids. 

"I'm sorry," he said, "but I really don't remember you."

"Well, we took you to see Flash Gordon at the Aurora Drive-In," I said. 

He looked at the wall behind me and mumbled, "I do remember seeing that movie from the back seat, with April and her boyfriend."

"Hello!" I said cheerily, tinkling my fingers at him. "We didn't want you there, but your dad found out we were going to the drive-in, and he insisted." Shrewdly, I didn't mention that his dad's strategy hadn't worked — little Kevin was asleep before Flash got to planet Mongo.

Big Kevin had nothing to say, so I rambled on. "And four years running," I said, "I went with your family to the Puyallup Fair. You puked on your sister in the whirligig ride — not April, your other sister, can't remember her name. April and I were in the opposite seats."

"Beth," he said. "I remember puking on Beth. Never heard the end of it."

Usually I have little to say, but when it's awkward, I say too much. "One year at the fair, we saw the Oak Ridge Boys in concert, and you sat on my lap." That was a stupid thing to remember out loud, but all of it's stupid. Certainly, it clinched the no-deal — nobody's going to hire a man whose lap they sat on when they were seven.

We talked for a few weird minutes, never again mentioning vitamins, and Kevin told me that their father had died several years ago, which I already knew. I'd read the obituary online, ten years back. Still, I offered condolences.

He told me about April, but not much, and nothing I didn't know. "She's married," he said, "with three children, all grown with children of their own."

Soon Mr Randowski nervously nudged me toward the exit, and on my way out I asked him to relay a message to his sister. "Tell April I sincerely hope she's happy with her life."

He said he'd tell her, and maybe he will, and then he whooshed me toward the elevators. 

Was my behavior creepy? Probably. But I'm old, almost certainly finished with romance, and not looking to break up April's happy home for a wrinkly affair.

But also, I'm finished with hesitation, with not saying something when there's something to be said. It's an astronomically long shot, but it's a small world, where occasionally there are big coincidences.

April was my first love, way back when the world was young, and you don't forget that. She was wrong for me, of course — too religious, too family-oriented, we had little in common, and she was intentionally shallow, smart but preferred playing dumb.

When she dumped me, oh man it hurt, but I'm glad she did. It began a chain of decisions that eventually led me to move away, where I met the love of my life, and found the only years of genuine happiness I've ever known. Getting hot-potatoed by April Randowski was for the best, absolutely.

But you know what else I remember? The sex with April was fantastic.

3/6/2024   

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