Free This Location of Unknown Possibilities by Brett Josef Grubisic

did she actually need the job. Cowed by the mere aura of Hollywood, then? She reminded herself who’d be the expert in the room.
    Marta did foresee caffeinated impatience and a chronic attention deficit—“Okay, okay, so this War and Peace , what’s the deal with it? Give me the gist in a couple of seconds, I don’t need a goddamned dissertation. Wait a sec, I’ve got to take this call.” The explosive mile-a-minute production executive with a chicken’s attention span and the out-of-touch prosaic egghead: another pair of Hollywood script-types that she’d soon witness interacting in real-time. She had little doubt about crossed wired. For these people, perhaps, she would serve as a handy talking encyclopedia, fielding questions about early Victorian bubonic plague treatments, whether Dr. Meryon would have spoken such and such a sentence, or if Lady Stanhope’s clothing ought to be cut this way. “Prof Spëk, pls examine these image files from the Art Dept for accuracy. Many thx, LW, Asst to Jakob Nugent”: would this be the kind of email she’d receive?
    A savant or a soothsayer without pretensions of divinity—that temporary occupation she could inhabit with ease: “Yes, according to medical experts, over 200 different species can serve as hosts. Plague carriers have included domestic cats and dogs, squirrels, chipmunks, marmots, deer mice, rabbits, hares, rock squirrels, camels, and sheep. The vector is usually the rat flea, Xenopsylla cheopis . Thirty different flea species have been identified as being able to carry the plague bacillus. Other carriers of plague include ticks and human lice. Yes, absolutely, fever, delirium and rosy lesions would be accurate for Lady Stanhope’s 1813 plague bout. Not so much for the blue-black skin and hacking cough, which typically signals the terminal stages of infection, which needless to say —she might even throw in a clause or two of pedantry for the sake of cliché—Hester Stanhope did not reach. No, that phrase is hopelessly anachronistic. Yes, extant portraits of Hester suggest that a turban is fine. Natural silk or linen, nothing metallic—that would be anachronistic too. But, yes, turbans would have been all the rage for her in both 1800 and 1823 . Fashion then was nowhere near as accelerated as today.”
    A marvel of knowledge, outgoing, useful as soap, typically full of good will but not entirely averse to the occasional sharp remark: that she could manage. Once conversing with actual people, she’d adjust the tone accordingly; overt sharpness would likely win no friends.
    Yes, she might relish the role; there was only a minor difference between it and the one she donned for the classroom. The indispensable brainiac, foundational, a fixture. Or was it, she asked herself as she observed yet another mound of hill barnacle-encrusted with homes, remnants of the smart girl who wrote essays and took home the assignments for popular students in exchange for second-rate pay and recognition? A little of both, she concluded with resignation.
    Marta realized she’d envisioned herself answering these questions from the quiet of her office computer. As the set was being built—or as banks of CGI technicians keyed in virtual sets?—and the script revised and scenes shot and re-shot and re-shot once again, she might be stuck in a trailer instead and poised for questions, a shade removed from the geriatric employee wearing a May I Help? badge in an airport. For the lags between queries, there’d be a few novels and maybe that laborious omnibus review article due in September.
    Then again, an entire trailer suggested money to burn, an improbability since the studio didn’t own a blockbuster about a sinking ship or a caped vigilante. But who could say? Although she’d dug up no useful evidence anywhere, posing questions was her prerogative. Jakob Nugent must possess everything she