Garage, "Show Them a Good Time"

The narrator of "Show Them a Good Time" returns to her hometown after living in a nearby city and is hired to take part in a work simulation that seems to be a training program designed to prepare her for an actual job in the future. The garage is something of a surreal gas station; its contents consist of "three tin cans of indiscernible origin, one for each shelf; a feeling of forever melancholy; a postcard of a skyscraper; and a ghostly fridge floating in the middle of the floor" (10-11). There is also a plant that the narrator develops an attachment to and later destroys. The garage is visited by customers/voyeurs, to whom the narrator explains: "I'm sorry I can't help you in any way as this establishment is a participant in the practice scheme designed to improve my skills and...