All over the country, editorial offices were firing their staff. She imagined all of the reporters, proofreaders, copy editors lining up for interviews, out the door of the office, onto the street, there were swarms of them, and she wanted to brush them all away with a broom. Scattering them, like a thousand ants, out of her way.
Sometimes she sensed herself marching with all of the other unemployed people, all of them walking through the city with their résumés. It was a bond, though none of them knew it.
It was, sometimes, a loss to sleep alone, to miss the soft breath of another beside her, to try to stay awake to avoid being parted by sleep; it was, at other times, a calm relief. But there was nothing good about this state, this frail ghostliness, without an office, a duty, a check; without the prescribed arc of her day, without the certainty of her salary appearing every two weeks in her checking account. She had not realized how seeing that money deposited each month was as vital as breath. She was grateful for the unemployment checks, but the shortfall felt physical, as though she had lost an arm or leg.
Today she climbed out of the subway with purpose; three chances, three jobs. Three places to go.
She had a two p.m. appointment at Elite Furniture Newsletters. It involved writing short pieces about the lamp industry. The company was in a building on East Thirty-Eighth Street. The office was located on a floor with a math-tutoring center, an online vendor of organic paints, and a wholesale mattress supplier. Three of the businesses on the floor were named Elite. Ms. Gold stood in front of the door to the office, and then she knocked.
Mr. Rana looked up as she walked in. His fifth that day, out of fifteen. He had allotted twenty minutes for each. The résumés were barely distinguishable. He was tired of them all. Truly, what he was thinking was: he did not know what to order when he met June for lunch at 11:30. He told her the lunch meeting was to go over the year’s budget, but this was not true. He had worked here for one year. He was in Human Resources, was the first line of elimination for the applicants, but, honestly, he disliked talking to people. His skills were in organization, telling people what to do, guiding them through forms, running the background checks. But he didn’t like to talk to anyone, really, that was his secret—he was new to this country, and he tried to speak slowly, to help people with his accent, as people sometimes leaned forward, asking him to speak his sentences two, three more times until they understood. The register workers at Starbucks asking him to repeat his coffee order again and again. They were not intelligent people, he thought, not flexible; they could only hear one version of events in their ears. But when he talked to June, she always heard what he said.
She worked two floors below, in health-care benefits. She was very chatty, and she spoke quickly, lightly, freeing him mostly from the effort of speaking. He did not like to look directly into people’s eyes, he was a little shy that way, but she did so in a way that was measured and calm. She was from Ohio. Toledo, she said. She knew the minutiae of details about dental plans and mental health coverage in a way that was actually breathtaking, that made her seem she had access to every detail in the world. She was smarter than most of the idiots who worked here; when he asked her for information, he received it. The way she looked at him when he spoke, with green eyes a shade he had never before seen, and that took him in but didn’t invade, made him feel the moment he inhabited was sealed into itself, separate from a past and future.
But now he was distracted. He had wanted to talk to June alone for a few months, and here was the opportunity. He didn’t know what to order for lunch; he did not know what to say to June. What did she like to eat? He knew so little about her except the way her laugh made him feel.
The moment before the applicant walked in, he was thinking of June so intently, it almost felt as though the room in front of him didn’t exist. He resented his cousin for getting him the job here—he had a good title, associate director, Human Resources, but his supervisors were young, former fraternity boys who barked orders at him in a way that made his skin a little cold. The furniture that he stared at ten hours a day, the office chair and bookcases, were so drab and leaden it seemed they were going to sink into the ground.
But here stood Ms. Gold, walking into this room with an enormous smile. All the applicants showed brilliant white teeth, as though they were about to eat him. She held out her hand.
“Yes,” he said, shaking it. “Thank you for coming in.”
She sat down. He crisply removed her résumé from the pile.
“So,” he said, “tell me about your experience.”
She leaned forward and launched in. She had that smooth recital of her past jobs, which had been honed by repetition. “I was at Fairchild for seven years, reporting and editing, then I was at Travel Weekly, as a senior reporter, then that magazine shut down, do you remember that? No warning, just here and then gone—”
She was trying to be casual, almost chummy, the false intimacy of Americans, which he found sad.
“What are your strengths and weaknesses?” he asked.
“I’ve never missed a deadline,” she said, sitting up. “The idea doesn’t even cross my mind. I am a quick learner. I’m a team player. Weaknesses? Sometimes I work too hard.”
It was what everyone said—all of them, with serious expressions, claimed they worked too hard. Ha, when they saw how hard they would work in this position. How they all would gain weight hunched over their desks until nine at night. The job was a program to get fatter. He gently touched the fold above his waist, which had expanded since he had moved to the States. Would June hug, as he noticed her hugging some employees, or shake hands? He hoped she would touch his shoulders, not his waist. Though he also wanted her to touch his waist.
“I’m new to this but have so much enthusiasm,” she said.
He felt sorry for this applicant, suddenly, for himself, stuck listening to her. She was American; she did not have to worry about visas, and though he had his green card, and though his country was not on the banned countries list, his cousins here on student visas were emailing every day, deciding if they should fly home in the summer or not. What would come next? No one knew what the future held. Ms. Gold, born in New Jersey, was safe. Her ease was galling. The distance between him and the person sitting in front of him felt like a hundred miles, farther away even than his family, thousands of miles away.
“I can see opportunities for articles about furniture in not just residences but hotels, restaurants—”
A restaurant. He forgot his next question. He tried to be casual, leaned on his folded arms. “Tell me,” he said, carefully. “What would you order at a restaurant when you are discussing a budget with someone? What dish?”
She studied him. He realized that she thought this was a real interview question.
“What type of restaurant?”
“Italian.” June had mentioned spaghetti once; perhaps she liked Italian. “Maybe Casa Nonna. On Thirty-Eighth.”
She rubbed her arms. “A budget. Lots of details. You don’t want to be thinking about what you’re eating. Perhaps not pasta then. Hard to eat noodles and be neat.”
He nodded.
“Ravioli. Or a chicken cutlet,” she said.
He would ask for a corner table, perhaps one away from the others. He imagined himself and June in a quiet corner of the restaurant, looking at one another. The image was so perfect he felt his arms burn. The next question simply rushed out; he could not stop himself from asking it.
“And if I touch her hand when I spoon food onto her plate? What then?” he asked.
He felt shame in his throat and wanted to grab the words back. Why would he even say this? He was not concerned about this. Yet he looked to Ms. Gold for her response. Her eyelid pulsed, as though she disapproved of what he had said. She sat forward. “Don’t spoon food onto her plate,” she said. “She can do it herself.”
He had asked the wrong thing; this applicant thought he was infantilizing June,
but really all he wanted was to be close to her.
“Yes,” he said, as though this was obvious. “Thank you.”
He noticed her résumé sitting flat on the desk.
“Tell me what you can bring to our organization,” he asked.
She continued to describe her attributes, and he pretended to listen, but now he was embarrassed by the question he had asked. He wanted to be with June in that other room, not here; the other room, with its luster of assumed feeling. But what if June was not drawn to him? What if she only wanted an American, someone who had lived here for many years? How would she view him now? Where would he be then, but this shabby room?
He shook Ms. Gold’s hand and told her they would call her in a week if they needed more information.
When she walked out the door, he envied this: that she did not work here, that she was heading on to another life. He felt the closeness of the room, the stale air inside of it. His face grew hot as he remembered what he had asked her. How had that happened? What would she think of him for asking this? Embarrassed, he slipped her résumé under the stack and thought again about what he should order for lunch.
Ms. Gold walked onto the bright street. She thought she performed well during the interview. But then he had asked that strange question about the restaurant, and the hands. What was he trying to learn from that question?
What would happen if he touched her hand? It was not a question she prepared for, really. How could that relate to writing pieces about furniture? Did he actually want to ask her to lunch, and was this his awkward way of doing so? What did that say about this office? She thought of the last time she had touched hands with someone, deliberately, to feel their softness against hers, that brief promise, which made her hand feel fragile against another, unreal. It was several months ago, a fact that she did not want to admit. The clouds fled across the blue sky. Around her, people rushed by, clad in uniforms that proved they were useful. There was the businessman, there was the falafel vendor, there was the messenger, there was the security guard.
The second interview was at a small media company devoted to bimonthly magazines on yoga, herbal medicine, and trends in massage therapy. The air in the waiting room smelled aggressively of lavender. She wanted this, an associate editor position organizing content on new trends in yoga wear. For this job, she believed she should look younger. She went into the restroom and rubbed more foundation into her face. Did the restaurant question at the last interview mean that she looked younger than she was? Did the brushing the hand question mean that he wanted to brush hers? She touched the back of her own hand with her fingertips, trying to detect her future.
Mrs. Barron stood up quickly when Ms. Gold came in and grasped her outstretched hand as though reaching for an animal about to vanish into a hole; firmly, she shook it. “Good to meet you,” she said, sharply, and then sat down.
Mrs. Barron settled behind her desk like it was a barricade. Mrs. Barron was a tall woman with blonde hair who looked like she had been dropped into her suit from a great height; her jacket flowed around her like water. She watched Ms. Gold sit in the chair in front of her desk.
“I’ve reported on numerous topics, but I just started taking yoga myself,” said Ms. Gold, speaking quickly. “And I want to know everything about it.”
What Mrs. Barron noticed, immediately, with a swerve of pain, was Ms. Gold’s hair. It was the same haircut as her daughter’s. Short, parted on the side, dark red.
Mrs. Barron looked down at the résumé so as not to stare at the applicant. Her daughter, Beth, had left home thirteen months before and had not called her since. She was just eighteen years old. Her only child. Beth had called others—her father, who lived in Michigan, her cousins, who lived in Connecticut—to share with them the details of her new life. She had moved to a small town outside of New Orleans. Why Louisiana? What could she want there? Her mother wanted crisp, factual information. A job. Love. New scenery. Cajun food. Mrs. Barron bribed one of the cousins for the cell number. She called it, or sometimes texted.
How are you?
There was no response.
Why?
She wanted to reach forward and brush the applicant’s hair.
“Tell me about your experience,” said Mrs. Barron. “It looks excellent.”
She could see how the word “excellent” stuck in the applicant’s mind; she wished she hadn’t said it. Mrs. Barron didn’t know why she felt the need to flatter her—but she remembered what her daughter said to her before she left: Stop criticizing me. She thought she had said so little. The school will send you home if you wear a crop top. Don’t go to Jordan Spangler’s apartment, I heard she uses drugs. You failed the history test because you didn’t study. The girl looked so frail to her, so small—wasn’t it her job to protect her? But the girl always heard something sharp in her voice, something she wanted to escape.
“Thank you,” said the applicant. “I have read Yoga Focus with much interest over the years. It’s the only place I go for coverage of yoga. You learn about all the positions—pardon the pun—all the angles I want to know about.”
No, thought Mrs. Barron, no yoga jokes. “How do you see yourself in our organization?”
“I am excited about the opportunity to be associate editor,” said Ms. Gold. “I’ve been that before, as you can see, but am more than happy to do it again. I can write for print or digital, you can see my social media platform—”
Mrs. Barron last saw her daughter, just over a year ago, when Beth was about to start a job as a counselor at a YMCA summer camp. She had thought Beth was going to spend the night at a friend’s house. She remembered how her daughter quickly packed an overnight bag, grabbed some granola bars from the kitchen, and a loaf of sliced bread, which seemed odd, and put them in her backpack. Then she stopped at the door and looked at her mother.
Beth knelt and rummaged through her backpack.
“What are you looking for?” her mother asked.
“A hairbrush.”
Mrs. Barron then headed into the bathroom to get her a hairbrush. But when she came out, her daughter was gone.
She stood in the empty apartment, clutching the hairbrush, an alarm sprung in her chest, and she understood what she would feel in the next few days and weeks and months, the unbearable rush to claim nothing, the approaching tidal wave of pain, and she ran out the door into the hallway to give her daughter the hairbrush, as though this was the object that would solve the tension between them. But Beth, in some new resourcefulness, had willed herself to vanish.
Mrs. Barron carried the hairbrush with her everywhere since her daughter vanished. She sometimes reached into her purse and touched the handle, to make sure it was still there.
Now she looked at the applicant, who was sitting perfectly still, hands clasped, but gave the impression that she was in a slow and constant state of motion.
“May I ask you to do something?” Mrs. Barron asked.
The applicant leaned forward slightly.
“It may sound odd but—” Mrs. Barron laughed, and the applicant’s face became very still, alert. “It’s part of the interview. A test we do. I’ll explain later. You need to, well, pick up your purse.”
Ms. Gold’s cheek twitched. She picked up her purse.
“Now look through it.”
She unzipped her purse and began to dig through its contents.
“Now ask, I need a hairbrush.”
Ms. Gold glanced up. “I need a hairbrush,” she said.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Barron. She reached into her own purse and brought out the hairbrush. It was plastic, red with silver flecks like frozen snow. She handed it to the applicant. Mrs. Barron could not identify the expression on her face—then she could. Mrs. Gold was, she thought, grateful for the hairbrush.
“Now what?” asked Ms. Gold.
Mrs. Barron did not know what was next. She waited; she could barely breathe.
“Well. Thank you,
” said Ms. Gold, hesitantly.
Mrs. Barron closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, she saw Ms. Gold brushing her hair with the hairbrush. She brushed one side, and then another, carefully moving from front to back. Mrs. Barron thought that Ms. Gold was watching her for direction, it seemed, to do this task the correct way. She thought it was important not to tell the applicant anything. Then Ms. Gold handed the hairbrush back.
Mrs. Barron took it. “Thank you,” she said. She was grateful to Ms. Gold for brushing her hair. This frightened her, a gratitude for this action, toward this stranger who resembled her daughter. Mrs. Barron even thought she loved the applicant, which was embarrassing. She was afraid she would step out from behind her desk and embrace her. The impulse was so strong to release this love, thwarted in her, that she felt a little faint. But she could not bend this woman into being her daughter; this fact made her understand that she could not possibly hire Ms. Gold. The applicant had done just what she requested, but in doing this had revealed the broad, vast expanse of Mrs. Barron’s own sorrow.
“Your clips are excellent and you would be a great fit for our publication,” said Mrs. Barron. “We have your information and we’ll be in touch.”
She stood up and they shook hands.
“Thank you,” said the applicant, and paused. The applicant picked up her purse and turned toward the door. She touched her hair, gently, so Mrs. Barron had to look away.
Ms. Gold walked onto the bright street. The last thing the interviewer said made her understand. We’ll be in touch. That was a no. She knew it, somehow, knew it with the firm grasp of her handshake, a kind of regret in its exaggerated firmness. Overcompensating for doubt. Had she not brushed her hair the correct way? If a man had asked her to do this, she would have walked out, she realized—why would a man hand her a brush? What condescension would that action reveal? But the way the woman asked her, and the way Mrs. Barron handed the brush to her, made Ms. Gold feel, oddly, taken care of for a moment.
She didn’t know why that was important to her.
The New Order Page 5
