Interviews suck. I hope I never have to participate in one again. But hopefully, this story doesn’t suck. A somewhat sci-fi introspective character study. Maybe. You decide.
Thanks for reading.
Artwork by Gilles Ketting
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/PoYoln
The Story
She crossed her legs, crossed them again, then exhaled a lungful of a pearlescent abstraction, which matched the walls well. She tasted the last of it, felt the residue on her teeth and on her tongue. That she kept, coating her mouth with it. The ceiling looked too much like the roof of a mouth, she considered while she tongued the roof of her mouth.
She didn’t have to check her nails, her skirt. All clean lines and sharp edges, a contrast to the dead worm of a phone cord whose corpse lay behind her, connecting to the artifact that god damn better well not smell of anything but her. She considered delaying the interview because of the sloppy arrangement, but decided against it. Perhaps it would add color, mystery, diversion.
The window to inferiority came alive in front of her, showing a room that was comically designed with twelve vertically speared orbs, one pair at the front, one at the back, as if at any time electricity would crackle between them trapping the frightened creature yet to be seen. She hmmed aloud at that idea.
The rear door slid up, not to the side, like it should have. Less distance to travel. This place was a fucking circus.
A man in a smart suit entered. Whether he matched the quality of his suit she had yet to determine. He squinted into the darkness, like they all did, adjusted his attire before he sat, like they all did, tried a few positions to rest his hands before settling on one, which she knew wouldn’t last, like they all did.
Glasses. Intriguing. Not really.
“I’m happy to be here,” he would say, unoriginally.
She would hear it, but he didn’t think she would because he’d blush at the blush-colored phone next to him, hesitate about a hundred times before picking it up.
“I’m happy to be here,” he would say again, confident she’d heard this time.
He’d shift in his seat, the dam inside him breaking, sweat cascading between skin and shirt, the fabric too cheap to do much of anything. Swamp ass, Jake, the custodian might say, who she really needed to fire because the floor was a smudged mess, she saw now with the lights on. How could she possibly concentrate with that sandpaper distraction?
She took another puff, didn’t hold anything back this time, her mouth clean, unlike this room, and assuredly the one opposite, or, at the very least, becoming unclean from the man squirming, and would tap, dear god tap, on the receiver just like how people used to hit electronic devices as if the remedy was violence.
His phone wasn’t blush colored, it was blood colored. She had seen blood that bright before. She bit her lip. Hard. Tasted that color, felt her adrenals fire.
“Graduated at Val-tech, near-top of my class . . .”
Honest. Good.
“And after about a two-year internship, I knew I was ready for the big league.”
Sports reference. Bad. She shoul’ve known from his shoulders, his understated handsomeness, quadricep definition fighting with pleats. He smoothed them. They didn’t smooth.
Dry hands, callused, cracked knuckles, which were being picked at, with at-least-well-manicured nails. He figeted with a cheap watch next, too big for his wrist. A father’s. A grandfather’s.
“Good luck charm,” he’d say. “Pop–my father gave it to me as a graduation present. Doesn’t work so well, but always told me it was correct twice a day.”
Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Juvenile. Immature. Unforgivable. She reached for the phone at her side. Stupid.
“Stupid joke,” he would say. His face would agree with him.
She rested her hand back on her thigh, resisted an itch. His eyes had adjusted to the terribly artificial light, and they were soft now, like a boy’s, no tracks of crows left behind. He puffed his upper lip with air, scratched the side of his nose, pushed up his glasses in the least elegant way possible, as he finally took his gaze away from where he thought she had been, to the side of superiority. Must be like looking into ink, or into tar, or into a starless sky. She really should visit the other side sometime.
“These cameras?” he would ask.
Oh, no, don’t you venture there, young man. But now she knew what a show it would be if those spheres did indeed harness blue bolts.
He considered standing, then didn’t. Now his feet played the game of finding the position of comfort, the position of least pain. His hands had given up. Inflamed now, in the trenches of dry skin.
His hair glistened. He tugged at his collar. He unbuttoned and rebuttoned his jacket. There it was. Finally. A rivulet trailed from his forehead, dead center, and he anticipated it, scrunching his nose as it nestled into his labial fold, beading up on his well-groomed mustache.
Do it. Go ahead. No one is watching. Everyone is watching. Yes, those are cameras, documenting your unease, your pathetic desire to find employment at a company who deems your worth or unworth by the superficial, because that’s really all there is.
He lifted his hand, extended his index finger, exposing the cheap watch long enough to summon shame, and he quickly doused that shame deep in his sleeve, which found its way back to his lap along with his index finger that didn’t scratch. It took him two minutes and thirty seconds longer than the last one.
Maybe he’d be it. Maybe he wouldn’t.
His feet were symmetrically placed on the floor now, his fingers curled to conceal their insecurities, which were weaknesses, but we all concealed those, no matter how Mommy and Daddy told us not to, because that never worked. Not ever.
She dampened her lips, licked her lip where the scab had formed, and picked up the phone. It smelled like her.
He picked his up. Really this time. And when he spoke, it sounded nothing she had imagined. Just like she’d hoped.
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