Chapter 2: The Interview

You go to the interview because you're not the kind of person who makes decisions based on mysterious phone calls, even when the mysterious phone call came from yourself. You wear the gray suit you bought for interviews and it still has the smell of the department store and the woman who sold it to you called it "confidence in wool blend" and you thought that was stupid but you bought it anyway because you need confidence and you don't have any of your own and maybe you can borrow some from a suit.

The office is on the seventh floor of a building downtown that's all glass and steel and the kind of modern that already looks dated. The receptionist has perfect teeth and asks if you want water and you say yes even though you're not thirsty because saying yes feels like the right answer in a place like this.

You wait.

You think about the phone call. The voice that was your voice. The warning that felt both absolutely true and completely insane. You think about the bookstore job and how you told them no thank you, very professional, very polite, very much like someone who was going places, and now you're in a waiting room with abstract art on the walls and a water you didn't want and you're wondering if going places is the same thing as having somewhere to go.

"They're ready for you," the receptionist says, and her smile is the kind that uses all the teeth but none of the eyes.

The interview is in a conference room that's too cold. Three people sit across from you and their names are Janet and Michael and someone whose name you miss because you're looking at Janet and thinking about how she holds her pen, how she grips it like she's trying to strangle it, and you think: this is the person. This is the someone the voice warned you about.

"Tell us why you want to work here," Michael says.

You give the answer you practiced. The one about passion for the industry and growth opportunities and being a team player. The words come out smooth and empty and you can hear how little you mean them and you wonder if they can hear it too.

Janet writes something down. You can't see what.

"Tell us about a time you failed," she says, and she's still strangling the pen, and you think about all the ways you've failed that you could tell her about and all the ways you've failed that you'll never tell anyone.

You give her the practiced answer about missing a deadline in college and learning the importance of time management. It's a lie. You didn't learn anything. You just started lying better.

"What do you want?" Janet asks suddenly, and it's not on the list of normal interview questions, you can tell by how Michael shifts in his seat, and you think about the voice on the phone saying that wanting things makes you weak and how Janet is looking at you like she already knows the answer you're going to give.

"I want to contribute," you say. "To be part of something bigger than myself."

"That's not what I asked."

The room is so cold you can see your breath, or you think you can, or you wish you could because then you'd have proof that you're still breathing, still here, still making choices even if they're the wrong ones.

"I want—" you start, and you don't know how to finish.

Janet smiles and it's not like the receptionist's smile. This one uses the eyes. This one knows.

"You'll fit in perfectly here," she says.

You get the job. They call you two hours later while you're standing outside the bookstore looking at the HELP WANTED sign still taped to the window. You answer the phone because you always answer the phone and the HR person says congratulations and welcome to the team and you need to come in Monday for orientation and you say yes, of course, thank you, and you hang up and you stand there on the sidewalk and you think about pulling open the bookstore door and saying you made a mistake, you want the job after all, but you don't.

You don't because you've already made your choice. Or the choice has made you. Or there was never really a choice at all, just the feeling of choosing, which is all anyone gets anyway.

You walk home to the house that isn't yours. The phone stays silent.