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Show Acting Alone Page 46 not to mention the side benefits of increased job stability and the freedom to develop new skills, instead of being stuck like rats in a maze by the national security clearance system that robbed them of their right to grow. She would get strident, and her stridency would rub off on her friends. They'd come back beaming in a week, freshly unemployed but at peace. Polly always offered them a special mention in the General Intercession come Sunday Mass, so God would help persuade management to allow them and their children to stay in their houses long enough to find a new house, job, life. She could see their precisely surveyed backyards now. Many boasted salvaged examples of the ancient kiosk-shaped tubercular isolation huts that used to dot the front yard of this institution back in the 1880's when it had been a sanatorium - the first American sanatorium, or institution of any description, to be heated one hundred percent geothermally. The residents down below had developed among themselves a fad of adapting garden shacks or childrens' playpens or guard dog houses from these huts. It looked from a distance, as though each family had its own resident consumptive. It sometimes seemed that each home had its own wandering eccentric as well, all of whom spent their afternoons sulking and babbling up here, waiting to be gently but firmly ejected. Placing herself in the hands of Christ, Polycarpana entered the special collections room, and almost jumped back out before the train of her habit could follow her in. At first glance this candidate for the position of Intruder seemed especially wondrous. He rumbled strange words. "Nor Mailer, nor Meredith is in evidence here." |