Career Guidance….
Jocasta Wiggs sat in the corner of the coffeeshop and looked down into the half-full, lukewarm, coffee cup she was nursing. She sighed, deeply. This wasn't exactly how she'd envisaged her life was going to go after graduating from the Assassins' School. But a half-full cup of lukewarm coffee with all the froth having subsided into a sad white smear on the top, with all the chocolaty drops long ago licked off, seemed to amply sum it up right now.
And it had all been so certain on that long-ago early morning in June, when she'd collected her pink pass slip from the otherwise deadly fingers of Miss Sanderson-Reeves, the Domestic Science mistress known to the pupils as "Mrs Mericet". Fittingly, she had become a full licenced Assassin in the summerhouse at Ramkin Manor, Sir Samuel Vimes having been prevailed upon to provide a terrifyingly realistic scenario as part of their Final Examination. A frequent visitor to Ramkin Manor in the course of her training, Jocasta had successfully evaded Watch patrols, werewolves and other hazards, (such as the proximity of Fred Colon's feet), and earned her licence by successfully evading capture.
She'd suddenly ceased to be a schoolpupil. She was eighteen. A legally recognised adult. Her old teachers had shaken her by the hand, some had even hugged and kissed her, and as confirmation of her adult and Full Assassin status, some had even invited her to be on first name terms with them. Gods knew, that summer she'd even lost her virginity. Her adult life had stretched in front of her.
And today it still stretched. She now knew the full, hideous, meaning of the word "anticlimax". It was how you felt after spending seven formative years training for one single life-or-death event. Having passed through the terror and the exhilaration of the final Run, having then had a brief and passionate summer affair with a much older person (her body still sung with exultation), and having even been invited to assist at an Inhumation by an older and more experienced licenced Assassin, how on earth did you follow that?
Ankh-Morpork felt forlorn and empty, somehow. The people she'd started school with, nearly…eight years ago, now, just seemed to have melted away as if they'd never been. She hadn't realised what a support system they'd been, until they weren't there any more.
She shifted moodily in her seat. She was aware of the coffeshop patron observing her with veiled concern. She could see his point - a moody Assassin was bad for business. She reassured him with a smile. No, it was like.. a theatre set. Like that two-dimensional model of Ankh-Morpork that Dibbler had ordered built for some entertainment or other. He'd ended up setting fire to it, hadn't he? Silly man. He had the reverse of the Creosote touch, Dibbler: everything he touched ultimately became lead.
A theatre set where... all the actors and actresses are - were - your friends from school. But the play's finished and the set's still standing. There's a new cast auditioning for the roles, and the cast you were a part of are all over the Disc by now. Millie's at the Academy in Sto Lat, learning to be an Army officer. Diabola's back in Toledo. Even the insufferable Lucinda Rust, from what I hear, the one we thought was dead, she's fighting her way up through Klatch right now. She gets her Licence if she makes it home by a certain date and reports in to Miss Smith-Rhodes. And pig and pain though she was, if she walked in here now I'd kiss her and buy her a coffee, just because I've known her for seven years.
No, without the old crew, it felt cold and barren and empty, even though the city still teemed with life and some of the faces were familiar to her, the ones she most wanted to be among were gone.
As if responding to her mood, a group of older Assassins' School pupils walked in, a mixed set of boys and girls of sixteen and seventeen.
Nineteen year old Jocasta Wiggs sighed, finished her coffee, nodded at the laughing pupils, paid up, and walked out. Her own fault for picking the fashionable Tarbucks, where she - they'd - loved coming as students... never mind, there was always Café Necros(1), the smart coffee shop that had recently opened up with the express intention of catering to Assassins. That is, people with style who could be counted on to spend well and tip lavishly.
And Jocasta wasn't short of cash, not after taking her agreed cut of the contract fee for the Brindisi Job. Alice Band had been more than generous there, and her old teacher had paid her the compliment of saying she'd rather have had Jocasta alongside her than many others from her year. And now you know you could do it for real if you had to, yes?
Trying not to show uncertainty, Jocasta had murmured "Yes, Miss Band" for the last time, aware that her teacher had shown her one final lesson - that while Alice had dealt the inhumation blow, she, Jocasta, could at least assist and be present at an annulment without revulsion or fear or undue pity. Besides, the client had been an all-time bastard, and an outstanding candidate for what Alice and the new generation of female teachers described as "ethical assassination" - leave the world that little bit cleaner than when you found it. And then there had been all the other things she'd learnt from Alice over the summer... those long days on the archaeology dig, and the nights.... those nights...
Jocasta sighed at a pleasant memory, but stepped out into the street fully aware that this was Ankh-Morpork, where a moment's inattention could be fatal. She remembered the name a sympathetic Johanna Smith-Rhodes had given her. Cheap Street. she thought. From here(3), through Cheapside, and halfway down Welcome Soap. Cut down the lane to Phelan's Well, and you're there. Miss Smith-Rhodes says he's the best at his job.
Jocasta strode on, vaguely aware that somebody wearing Assassin black is at least spared some of the most obvious forms of harrasment on Ankh-Morpork's city streets.
"Excuse me. miss. Are you trying to find yourself?"
Jocasta couldn't honestly say "no" to that, but she was damned if she meant it the same way as the two Omnian missionaries who had stopped her in the street, their suits neat and tidy, their hair slicked down, their badges neatly engraved to show white names against black. She wished she didn't project this air of uncertainty all the time; she'd been told she went through life with a permanantly anxious expression on her face, as if she was expecting to be tapped over the shoulder at any second by somebody who was bound to advise her she was doing it wrong. She knew this made her a magnet for religious monomaniacs. And not for the first time, she wished she could scowl like Miss Smith-Rhodes. She wished she could produce the same sort of knicker-wetting disapproving glare that Miss Band could manifest from the front of the classroom. She bet neither of them were troubled with missionaries.
"Yes I do want guidance!" she shouted, aware it was possibly the most wrong thing to say, as various religious texts were opened and triumphantly displayed in front of her eyes, with fingertips freely used to emphasise the most relevant passages. Jocasta stomped on in a cloud of competing missionaries, all aware they had hooked a potential convert and unwilling to let go. "But I'm not sure I need your kind of guidance yet, thank you very much. That's why I'm not stopping .Look, you silly man, I don't want to be rude, but the kind of guidance I need is a bit more earthly than that... will you kindly get out of the way?"
And then she was there. She took a moment to take in the highly optimistic adverts in the window offering exciting-sounding work at improbably high hourly rates. (4)
She took a deep breath, knowing that Miss Band would have effortlessly dispersed hopeful missionaries in a tenth of the time. Miss Smith-Rhodes might have threatened to bring them closer to their God than they'd anticipated when they woke up this morning. Why me? she thought, sighing. Because you were blessed with a wide-open friendly face, idiot! she told herself.
She had seen the discreet shop front, headed by the board announcing "Liona Keeble – Job Broker" from the other side of Phelan's Well. The interior of the shop was what would otherwise have been a wide space, with its walls lined by races of advertised jobs and the central open space containing free-standing racks that announced more occupational vacancies available. A group, fairly typical Morporkian people, browsing the racks headed DOMESTIC SERVICE half turned to look at her as they came in, possibly in surprise that an Assassin was looking for a regular job. Jocasta smiled wanly at them, and they turned away.
She walked through the boards and the job adverts.
Trainee under-footmen and downstairs maids needed.. apply at Ramkin Manor (NB – atte rear door) and ask for Mr Willikins.
Overlocker operatives required. Good pay. Competitive shifts. Apply H. Catterail (mechanised sewing) Cockbill Street works. (7)
Jocasta approached the counter and smiled at the woman behind it. She flashed a trained receptionist's smile, all glitter but no warmth, back.
"I really wouldn't mind a chat with Mr Keeble, please. As soon as is convenient. Thank you so much!" It was probably the Assassin black that did it: the girl, perhaps a year or so younger than Jocasta, stood up hastily and went to a back office. She returned, and ushered Jocasta into the back of the job shop, where things were quieter.
"Tea or coffee while you're waiting?"
Jocasta accepted another coffee, and gathered her thoughts. (8) She idly watched out of the window and down Cheap Street, where the evangelists were harassing a couple of clowns and assuring them that it was ungodly in the sight of Om to seek to disguise thy true nature with layers of paint and heathen decoration. A throng of A nkh-Morporkians was forming in the background, sensing street theatre.
One of the clowns had just said "I dunno what you're on about there mate, this is my true face!"
"Brother, you are sunk in your unOmliness for so long that you assuredly mistake the false for the real!" The missionary flourished an impregnated wipe of a type used normally only by very dedicated Goths to remove a lot of slap all at once. The crowd went "oooOOOH!"
"Oh, dear!" thought Jocasta, as the fight started. You don't try to forcibly remove a clown's makeup in Ankh-Morpork. It's like asking an Assassin to disarm, or a Seamstress not to… seam… some things are mortal insults. Worst, any insult to the seamstresses is normally dealt with by the Agony Aunts. Any comparable insult to clowns summons the Jolly Good Pals, and this near to the Fools' Guild…
She sipped her coffee. She'd heard that on other worlds, the archetype of War was alleged to be female and could walk down a street leaving fights and strife behind her to mark her passage. (9) Sometimes, she could see a grain of truth in that concept.
Just as a couple of reluctant Watchmen moved in to arrest the fallen and the one or two staggering survivors, the young receptionist returned.
"Mr Keeble will see you now" she said.
Jocasta followed, allowing herself to be led to an office at the rear of the building. The girl knocked and announced(10)
"Miss Wiggs, Liona",
Then withdrew, closing the door behind her.
Jocasta was aware of one of the longest, thinnest, men she had ever seen, his bony, somewhat manic, face topped by a shock of neatly attended blonde hair.
"Ah, you've come about the PA job at the Thaumatalogical Park, have you, at twenty-five dollars a month? I'm sorry that one's gone" he said, as if reading off an invisible script, "must remember to take it out of the window, ha ha, but I can offer you hospitality work at the university, seventy-five pence a day, plus tips? No?"
"no".
"How about an exciting opportunity as a plateware hygienist and consultant in cutlery sterilisation? Also at the University, paying fifty pence a day, no unsocial hours allowance for working Somnambulistic Nibbles or Earliest Breakfast, but your night trolleybus fare is paid..no?"
"No, mr Keeble. By the way, haven't I seen you at the Blue Cat Club…"
Keeble twitched, maniacally.
"How do you get to go to…"
"Licenced assassin, Mr Keeble. Friend of Alice Band".
Keeble seemingly reconsidered the scene.
"And I really don't want a new job quite that quickly, Mr Keeble. I just need your professional advice on what else I can do. And I'm prepared to pay for your time!"
Keeble sighed heavily, and nodded.
"Well, you'd better come in, then".
(1) Formerly Caffé Nero, but this foundered on the legendary hard-headedness, practicality and lack of metaphorical imagination of the average Ankh-Morporkian. Any entrepreneur seeking to set up an upmarket coffee shop in the city would be swamped with observations, to wit:-
i) "Caffé Nero? What's that the foreign for, then? "Black Coffee?" But all coffee is black, till you put the milk in. And your point is, exactly? Boring name, innit? Hey, Gladys! you'll never believe this! Bloke's calling his caff "Black Coffee", but putting it in foreign as if it actually means something!"
ii) "A dollar for a cup of coffee just because it's got white froth on the top and little black bits? Harga's House of Ribs will sell you that for fivepence, you robbing bastard!"(2)
(2) Although the little black bits floating in the froth on top of the coffee in Harga's tended to be bits of his beard stubble...
(3) To anyone with the mappe The Streets of Ankh-Morpork handy, Jocasta is currently standing at the Rimwards end of Filigree Street roughly outside the Teachers' Guild building.
(4) All employment agencies on Earth have these in the window. They're called "bait". The moment you go in and ask about the PA work at a local radio station paying £9.90 per hour, you will inevitably be told "oh, sorry, that went this morning, must take it out of the window. We do have exciting opportunities in commercial catering as a cutlery and plateware hygienist (5), paying a really competitive 5p an hour above the minimum wage… or a really exciting career break in completed industrial goods protection systems assembly,(6) for ten pence above minimum wage…
(5) Dishwasher
(6) Packer
(7) This card had been ruined by somebody overwriting it with "tight fisted fascist bastard, needs a good kicking, don't work for him" . Mr Catterail and his Works appear in Feet of Clay as a location.
(8) "For this pupil, gathering her thoughts is an exercise akin to rounding up sheep without benefit of sheepdog. She must learn to focus more!" (Assassins School end-of-term report on the thirteen year old Jocasta Wiggs (Tump House), an observation submitted by Miss Joan Sanderson-Reeves (Domestic Sciences.)
(9) Refer to Good Omens where this is, in fact, the truth.
(10) In Mort, Liona Keeble has just opened the city's first employment agency and has had the problem of placing Death in a suitable new career.