Then—I’d also seen this at WS&X many times—another attorney recasts the same question, and then another, all of them showing you their facility with language, with ideas, and with logic. At the end of it all, they are no longer talking to you but to each other through you; you are merely play dough in their hands.
“Philippa’s point,” Edward said, “is an important one, Janet. You’d be working with some really sensitive materials here, and while we do not require our employees to share our political views, we do require a level of integrity that upholds our clients’ faith in us. You’re fleeing WS&X because you can’t handle it. How do we know that you won’t flee from us?”
“I’m not fleeing,” I said. “This has nothing to do with running away.”
Thelma looked at her watch, and Basil took out his cellphone and checked messages.
“Philippa’s point,” Thelma said, “is about authenticity, Janet. We need to be able to trust those who work for us.”
“I’m sorry,” I said as I wondered what was going on. It now felt like the interview was no longer about me but about something broader in which I had been unwillingly conscripted. “But have I done anything to give you all the impression that you can’t trust me? Is there anything in my resume that suggests reason for suspicion or distrust?”
“Well, since you asked,” Prince said. “As lawyers, we read between the lines in cases like yours, and we ask around.”
So, the Hoviaks—their supposed enemies—had gotten to them, too.
“As lawyers,” I said in my own defense, “you know that all the evidence you’re using against me—because it sounds like that’s what you’re doing—should neither result in discrimination against me in the hiring process, nor should it prevent me from being treated like everyone else in this process. Could you tell me what information you have that you’re using against me?”
They ignored my question. Thelma stood up and poured herself a glass of water.
“Let’s talk about something else,” Basil said. “You’re a migrant. No, an immigrant, right?”
I wondered whether I should answer that question. I remembered what Anna, Mauru’s mom, had once said to Mauru, “Seek first to comprehend and only much later to condemn.”
“Cortland, New York,” I said. “I’m a proud American by birth. My parents are African immigrants.”
“Well,” Prince said, “in these times, being Californian born and raised matters more than anything else. We don’t discriminate in any way here, but we do note that people from out of state can find it more difficult to get jobs in these times. You’ve probably heard about the problems the Raddies have.”
I didn’t respond.
“Why aren’t you in Africa fighting the hatred?” Prince asked.
I felt tightness in my chest, pressure in my head, and a migraine coming on. Questions like Prince’s were precisely why I didn’t want to make my kids immigrants in a foreign land. This was why.
“Well,” I said, trying to restrain myself, “I’m not in Africa fighting the hatred for the same reason you’re not in Africa fighting the hatred: this is your country, and it’s your home. It’s also my country and my home.”
After the interview, I was so shaken that I thought that I’d stop for coffee and buttermilk biscuits at ConfiPrice.
Before running into the ConfiPrice, I wanted to withdraw some cash so that I could give Jon and Nate some spending money.
We didn’t need really need to give them spending money. Jon’s school and Nate’s day care had a system in which parents electronically transferred money to their child’s spending account (up to a maximum of two hundred dollars per semester) so that their kids could buy stuff from vending machines, like pens, pencils, colors, and even organic sandwiches and snacks.
But Jon and Nate wanted cash because they’d seen other kids come to school and day care with wads of money, and Nate, in particular, had said, “Even twenty dollars, Mom, so I don’t look poor.”
Still reeling from the interview at Plumtree Redcliff, I withdrew two hundred dollars from an ATM machine at my bank, picked up the receipt, and walked into the ConfiPrice. As I lifted the shopping basket, a chill of terror swept through me; I’d left all the money in the ATM machine and had only taken the receipt.
With the ConfiPrice basket in one hand, my handbag in the other, I raced back to the ATM. The money was gone; it wasn’t at the ATM machine. I checked my bag, my pockets, and everywhere else.
I walked into the bank (the ATMs were in a separate room), and I asked a teller if anyone had turned the money in.
No one had.
I asked if they’d seen anything.
They hadn’t.
Could they please check their video footage from the room that held the ATMs?
They could, but the money was likely gone by now, and tracking the person down might be impossible.
I froze.
I realized that in my haste to get the money, I had run to the bank with the ConfiPrice basket in my hand. It looked like I had stolen the basket.
ConfiPrice had a zero-tolerance policy for theft.
What should I do?
Should I walk back to the ConfiPrice and apologize?
Should I mail them the basket?
I resolved to walk back into the store—the image of my hands behind my back in handcuffs flashing before me—and I proceeded to buy buttermilk biscuits and coffee, holding the same basket.
I was still shaking at the counter as I paid for the buttermilk biscuits and coffee.
Was I really a treacherous, treasonous person?
Was I so craven that I’d unconsciously tried to steal a shopping basket?
What example would that set for my kids?
How would Mauru face his colleagues?
How would I face mine?
I called Dad and told him about the interview.
“I’m really sorry, Janet,” Dad said. “It pains me that this kind of nonsense is happening all over right now. Now you’re seeing that even very educated people do it. One thing is clear—the law might not be the right profession for you, after all.”
What hurt a lot was that within a few hours of the interview, I received a rejection note from Plumtree Redcliff.
With Linda Maywrot’s approval, I reproduce the rejection letter’s contents here, which I couldn’t help memorizing (like one remembers the lyrics of a terrible song, the substance of a horrible joke, or a vicious comment made years ago, which still resonates as if it had been said only a few seconds ago).
Dear Mrs. Virdis,
Thank you for your interest in Plumtree, Redcliff, Gwelo & Marandellas. We think very highly of you, and we were delighted to have the opportunity to discuss your experience and interest in joining one of California’s premier law firms.
Given the many excellent candidates we’ve met with impressive credentials, we are, unfortunately, unable to pursue your candidacy at this time, but we will keep your resume on file in case the right opportunity arises in the future. In the meantime, we are confident that your many impressive talents and achievements, which were on display during our conversation, will not go unnoticed.
We wish you every success in your search, and very much look forward to following your career.
Prince Marandellas, J.D.
Managing Partner.
President and Editor-in-Chief, Condorvine Law Journal (2025-26).
Condorvine College of Law (Summa cum laude, 2026).
Law clerk to the Honorable Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Barryman Waldis Cathay (2028-29).
I wondered whether the rejection note was the same one sent to attorney applicants; it certainly read like it. I tried to forget the rejection note, to think of the many other interviews that awaited me over the next one and a half days, which Dad had helped organize, and I told myself to be hopeful.
Pastor Jim once said that hope is not something we experience. It is a choice (in spite of our experience), and we do
ourselves a disservice by expecting hope to happen for us. We have to choose hope, especially when our experience would have us turn the lights out and believe it was all doom and gloom.
I had six more interviews lined up in and around San Diego.
I do not provide the law firms’ names because it really doesn’t matter who they are, now. Some things cease to matter when we realize that they never mattered in the first place.
Here are the responses I got from those law firms:
Law firm two: “Thank you for confirming your continuing interest and enthusiasm for the position during our call today, Janet. We’re meeting today to discuss candidates. Your interview was very impressive. Expect a call from us very soon.” (Never heard from them again.)
Law firm three: “WS&X is so lucky to have you, Mrs. Whitaker [sic]. Good luck in your search.”
Law firm four: “We desperately need someone with your experience. Give us a few days.” (Never heard from them again.)
Law firm five: “You knocked our socks off. Hard act to follow, Mrs. Virdis.” (Never heard from them again.)
Law firm six: “We will definitely be in touch, Ms. Virdis. Definitely.” (Never heard from them again.)
Law firm seven: “You were just great. Such a treat to get to know you. It’s not you, it’s us, though. Unfortunately, we’re going with another candidate.”
I couldn’t help wondering if it was me, if, unbeknownst to me, something repugnant about me had announced my arrival before I’d walked into each interview, and no matter my experience and the excellence of my work history, the horrendous odor that preceded me (of which I was unaware) always made me unwelcome, but people felt compelled to be polite.
I doubted my ability to perform my work, and I told myself that I was a woman who deserved such rejection because of my indiscretions with a married man.
I wondered, thus, if it all was an old-fashioned shunning, a forceful rebuke of my character in its totality orchestrated by the Hoviaks. I asked myself if I had a place in San Diego and in California.
Did I belong?
More generally, did I belong in my own country and in my own home?
The doubt metastasized, and I said something to myself so troubling that I had to arrest its progress before it went any further. I had never thought in that way before, but the nature of the repeated rejections from the employers, whom I’d thought might be interested in my candidacy, made me wonder if my defect ran deeper than some obnoxious odor of which I was unaware.
I asked myself whether the defect arose instead from some structural or anatomical deficiency that was visible to everyone but me.
I wonder, I found myself thinking, if I am the kind of person that only a parent or a child could love.
For the first time in my life, I felt like a nobody, someone of marginal importance, who had no power to persuade others that she’d be an excellent asset and a loyal and gifted professional.
Malcolm Waife, whom I’ve shared before, had failed to find a job in California, no matter what he did, came to mind.
His experience with constant rejection (and, now, mine) made me appreciate what I already had in my life, and it made me very grateful for the people who believed in me.
I found myself feeling a sense of gratitude for WS&X, for Larry, Amandine, Andy, Hannah, and all the other characters who populated the WS&X firmament—except the Hoviaks, of course.
I had dinner that Friday night with my husband and my kids, and I said (out of nowhere as we had dinner), “Thank you. Thank you all for loving me.”
The kids had no idea what I was talking about, but Jon ran to me and gave me a hug, and I felt guilty. Would my display of emotion harm my son’s emotional development?
I hugged them all, and Mauru held me after we’d put the kids to bed.
“You tried, Jan,” he said. “You showed up. There’s more guidance for the kids in how their parents fail than in how we succeed. You may have to leave the law entirely, Jan, and we’ll be with you all the way. Whatever you do—whatever we do—the kids are watching us, and you’ve made them and me really proud by trying to get out of WS&X. I love you for so many things, but today I love you most for that.”
13
Gatherers & Hunters
The following weekend, Mauru proposed that he and I spend some “quality time together.”
“Remember the commune I told you about, Jan?”
“You went there with your buddies.”
“I’d like to take you there. It’s wild, but it shows how communities are forming in response to these corrupt leaders we have. It’ll give you hope as you face what you’re facing at work.”
We washed the kids, dressed them, gave them breakfast, did laundry, played with the kids, and then we called my parents. Would they mind watching over the kids for a few hours? Please?
“Of course, we wouldn’t,” Dad said. “They’re our grandkids. We’ll call the service that sends us Samuel and Eileen, and they’ll have two people over in an hour.”
Mom asked Dad to pass the phone to her.
“Why don’t you bring my grandkids over for the weekend and come pick them up tomorrow afternoon or tomorrow evening, Janet? Dad says things are stressful for you at WS&X. Remember Luke 12:25-26: ‘And which of you with taking thought can add to his stature one cubit? If ye then be not able to do that thing which is least, why take ye thought for the rest?’”
I thanked Mom and Dad, and I told them that we’d bring the kids over.
“Mom,” Jon said after I’d talked to my parents, “are you OK?”
I told Jon I was OK.
Jon and Nate packed clothes for the weekend. Mauru packed clothes for the twins, who were reaching for a glass of water on the table; they were thirsty. I gave them some water and sat on the rug with them.
“Nathalie,” I said. “Where’s Nathaniel?”
She pointed at him. “Mommy,” she said. “TV. Put on.”
“No, baby,” I said. “Please ask for a book instead. Mommy can even read you some Ambrosia.”
“TV,” Nathalie said. “Mommy. TV.”
“No, darling,” I said. “Books. We love books in this house, even books that are one thousand pages long. Ask your dad, who likes reading tomes.”
We dropped the kids off at my parents’ place.
On the drive to the commune, we saw homeless people congregating in makeshift homes on the roadside, their skin robbed of its elasticity and youth by a punitive sun, which made them look sullen like they were in mourning.
“Do you think there’s a mom or a dad somewhere in America right now,” I asked Mauru, “who wonders where their child is and if their child has enough food, clothing, and health care?”
“I don’t know, babe,” Mauru said. “The Herald ran an article on the oilfields up in Monterey and here in San Diego. Turns out that they’re hiring a ton of people for service positions and things like that. They’ll take quite a few people off the streets because a lot of these people have a college education.”
“I hope our kids never end up on the streets,” I said.
“They won’t,” Mauru assured me. “They just won’t.”
Mauru turned the radio on, and Governor Trehoviak was talking about the lawsuit the State of California had filed against the State of Colorado in the Supreme Court of the United States.
Trehoviak talked of the Law of Lavish Things, about the law regarding water allotments, and about the law regarding theft of water. He spoke about the Water Court, which would be fully operational in a few months, and he was asked about the demonstrations to be held that very day in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego against the Law of Lavish Things and the founding of the Water Court. Those demonstrations were going to be led by Mothers for Mercy and the Church of the Moral Elixir.
“People have a right to express themselves in our system,” Trehoviak said. “They do not, however, have a right to act chaotically. They should respect private property and act in a manner that r
espects the Right Path. For everyone’s safety, we’ll be watching.”
We turned to a radio station playing music from the 2000s, the decade of Mauru’s birth, and mine. We sang along, trading stories about where we were when we first heard a particular song, whom we were dating or had a crush on, and what advice we’d give our younger selves.
“Well,” I said, “I’d tell my younger self to take more risks. I wanted to be good, to do the right thing, to be liked, and to be respectable. If I’m honest, I really wanted my mom to be proud of me. Dad always was, and I sensed that, but Mom was stingy with her praise—as she still is with everything else. Then, when I got to college, the only thing I wanted to do was rebel. I had my fun with a few guys, I even made out with two girls—”
“You made out with girls, Jan? That’s, like, so hot! Would you do it again for me? Like, I would thank you for the rest of my life if you brought two hot chicks to our place and just had fun with them while I watched. We can drop the kids off at your parents’ place or pay someone to watch over them for the day.”
“Um, no,” I said. “You’re not serious—”
“It’s a fantasy, babe. In my fantasy, I’d even let you choose both chicks. You choose whoever you want. I know you like being in control. You could literally do whatever you want. As a thank you, in the end, I’d join in, and we’d all have fun together. That’s, like, so hot, Jan. Man! That would be like Easter, Christmas, New Year’s Day, my birthday, and everything all rolled into one!”
The thought of me with other women had gotten Mauru happy, very happy.
“I can’t keep driving,” Mauru said. “Can we stop somewhere and take care of this?”
“What! Are we teenagers now?”
“I’m just so turned on right now, and I’m enjoying the thought of you with two chicks. Could you help me, please?”
We drove a distance and found a side road that led to the middle of someplace we’d never been before. With no one in sight, we stopped, and we had our fun. Our fun took us about a half-hour, and then we had more fun for about another half hour. We were both panting, thirsty. We drank the water we had in the car, and I felt a little hungry.
Fire Sweeping: The California Ballot Killings Book II Page 16
