Mrs Silvia said, “Do you have a cup of coffee?”
I fixed her coffee; she sat there gazing inertly ahead, slumped a little in the chair. She was well dressed, and in good taste, in a very modern way, a Southern California style. She had a little white hat on, down deep in her Afro-natural black hair.
“Thank you.” She accepted the coffee from me and I noticed the beauty of her hands; she had long fingers and fastidiously manicured nails, lacquered but unpainted. This is a very classy girl, I said to myself. I judged her age as early twenties. When she spoke, her voice was cheerful and expressive, but her face remained impassive, without warmth. As if weighed down, I thought. As if she has had a good deal of trouble in her life.
“You want a job as what?” I said.
“I take shorthand and type and I have two years of college as a journalism major. I can copyedit your blurb copy for you; I worked on the school publications at Santa Ana College.” She had the most perfect, lovely teeth I had ever seen, and rather sensuous lips – in contrast to the severity of her glasses. It was as if the lower half of her face had rebelled against an asceticism imposed on her by childhood training; I got the impression of an ample physical nature, checked by deliberate moral restraint. This girl, I decided, calculates everything she does. Calculates its worthiness before she does it. This is a highly controlled person, not given to spontaneity.
And, I decided, very bright.
“What kind of guitar do you own?” I asked.
“A Gibson. But I don’t play professionally.”
“Do you write songs?”
“Only poetry.”
I quoted, “ „You have to put your slippers on / To walk toward the dawn.”“
She laughed, a rich, throaty laugh. “Oh, yes. „Ode to Empedocles.““
“What?” I said uncertainly.
“You must have read it in my high school yearbook.”
“How could I read it in your high school yearbook?”
Mrs Silvia said, “When did you read it?”
“I forget,” I said.
“A friend of mine wrote it under my picture. She meant I’m too idealistic, I guess. That I don’t have my feet on the ground, but go charging off in all directions. … I get into different causes. She was very critical of me.”
“You better go and see personnel,” I told her.
Some aspects of the dream had been correct. In other regards it was completely off. As precognition, which is what Phil would have called it, faulty reception or faulty transduction and interpretation by my dreaming mind had badly disfigured the information. I could hardly record someone who took dictation. We wouldn’t sell much of that. I could hardly act out the instructions of the dream, whether it came from Valis or not.
Still, it was amazing that this much was accurate. The dream had the name right, and she did look, in real life, as she had appeared in the snapshot and on the album cover. If nothing more, it proved the reality of dream precognition; nothing more, in all likelihood, in that it appeared to end here. If she got any kind of job with us it would be a miracle; as far as I knew we were overstaffed already.
Setting down her coffee cup, Mrs Silvia rose and gave me a brief, spirited smile. “Maybe I’ll be seeing you again.” She departed from my office, walking in slow, almost unsteady steps; I noticed how thin her legs seemed, but it was hard to judge with the bell-bottoms.
After I shut my office door I discovered that she had left her resume and her keys. Born in Orange County in the town of Yorba Linda, in 1951. … I couldn’t help glancing over the resume“ as I carried it out of my office and down the hall after her. Maiden name: Sadassa Aramchek.
I halted and stood holding the resume. Father: Serge Aramchek. Mother: Galina Aramchek. Was this why the AI monitor had steered me to her?
As she emerged from the ladies” room I approached her, stopped her.
“Did you ever live in Placentia?” I asked her.
“I grew up there,” Sadassa Silvia said.
“Did you know Ferris Fremont?”
“No,” she said. “He had already moved to Oceanside when I was born.”
“I live in Placentia,” I said. “One night a friend and I found the name „Aramchek“ cut into the sidewalk.”
“My little brother did that,” Sadassa Silvia said with a smile. “He had a stencil and he went around doing that.”
“It was down the block from the house where Ferris Fremont was born.”
“I know,” she said.
“Is there any connection between – “
“No,” she said very firmly. “It’s just a coincidence. I used to get asked that all the time when I used my real name.”
““Silvia“ isn’t your real name?”
“No; I’ve never been married. I had to start using another name because of Ferris Fremont. He made it impossible to live with the name „Aramchek.“ You can see that. I chose „Silvia,“ knowing that people would automatically turn it around and think I was named Silvia Sadassa.” She smiled, showing her perfect, lovely teeth.
I said, “I’m supposed to sign you up to a recording contract.”
“What doing? Playing my guitar?”
“Singing. You have a marvelous soprano voice; I’ve heard it.”
Matter-of-factly, Sadassa Silvia said, “I have a soprano voice; I sing in the church choir. I’m an Episcopalian. But it’s not a good voice; it’s not really trained. The best I can do is when I get a little drunk and sing bawdy hymns in the elevator of my apartment building.”
I said, “I can only tell you what I know.” Evidently much of what I knew didn’t add up. “Do you want me to go with you to personnel?” I asked. “And introduce you?”
“I talked to him.”
“Already?”
“He was coming out of his office. He says you’re not hiring. You’re overstaffed.”
“That’s true,” I said. We stood facing each other. “Why did you pick Progressive Records,” I asked, “to try for a job?”
“You’ve got good artists. Performers I like. I guess it was just a wish-fulfillment fantasy, like all my ideas. It seemed more exciting than working for a lawyer or an oil-company executive.”
I said, “What about your poems? Can I see some of them?”
“Sure,” she said, nodding.
“And you don’t sing when you play your guitar?”
“Just a little. I sort of hum.”
“Can I buy you lunch?”
“It’s three thirty.”
“Can I buy you a drink?”
“I have to drive back to Orange County. My eyesight goes out entirely when I drink. I was totally blind when I was sick; I used to bump into walls.”
“What were you sick with?”
“Cancer. Lymphoma.”
“And you’re okay now?”
Sadassa Silvia said, “I’m in remission. I had cobalt therapy and chemotherapy. I went into remission six months ago, before I finished my course of chemotherapy.”
That’s very good,” I said.
„They say if I live another year I probably could live five years or even ten; there’re people walking around who’ve been in remission that long.”
It explained why her legs were so spindly and why she gave the impression of fatigue and weakness and ill health. “I’m sorry,” I said.
“Oh, I learned a lot from it. I’d like to go into the priesthood. The Episcopal church may ordain women eventually. Right now it doesn’t look so good, but by the time I finish college and seminary I think they will.”
“I admire you,” I said.
“When I was very sick last year I was deaf and blind. I still take medication to prevent seizures … the cancer reached my spinal column and the fluid of my brain before I went into remission.” After a pause she added in a neutral, contemplative tone, The doctor says it’s unknown for anyone who had it get into their brain to -survive. He says if I live another year he’ll write me up.”
“You really are quite a person,” I said, impressed by her.
“Medically I am. Otherwise all I can do is type and take dictation.”
“Do you know why you went into remission?”
They never know that. It was prayer, I think. I used to tell people that God was healing me; that was when I couldn’t see and I couldn’t hear and I was having seizures – from the medication – and I was all bloated up and my hair had” – she hesitated – “fallen out. I wore a wig, I still have it. In case.”
“Please let me buy you something,” I said.
“Want to buy me a fountain pen? I can’t grip a regular ballpoint pen; it’s too small. I only have a little strength for gripping in my right hand; that whole side is still weak. But it’s getting stronger.”
“You can hold a fountain pen okay?”