Tuesday, June 2, 2009

A Step In The Right Direction.

40 minutes max turned into 95 minutes total. She definitely had her doubts as she sat in the bright orange chair that had some kind of weird stain on it . She tried to go over in her head what she

Thanks chotda!

would say during the interview, but she couldn't concentrate because it sounded like people were yelling in 6 different languages. For such a small office, it could get really loud in here, little did she know, that no one was yelling and only one different language was being spoken.

Her uncertainties about the validity of the place were shelved when she entered the office of her potential new boss and took a seat across his massive mahogany desk. The space between them grew smaller as he explained to her about his business and how he left corporate America to work for the little guys, for the immigrants who sometimes found it hard to have their voice heard. The more he talked, the more she started picturing herself working there and she thought about how good she would feel at the end of each day because she knew that she wasn't working for the man, she was working for the people. When it was her turn, she wowed him with her best face showing him how determined she was, how goal oriented she was, how committed she was to social equality and justice for all, how this job would be an introduction to a very promising future in the legal field. By the one hour mark, she relaxed in her chair and easily swapped stories about college and family like she was talking to an old friend. Her potential new boss asked her if she had any other offers on the table, she said she did, because she thought a little fib wouldn't hurt. He told her not to accept anything from anyone else until he called her references and talked with his bookkeeper to see how much he could offer her. She hesitated in agreeing because she knew she had this in the bag and wanted to make him sweat a little, just because she knew she could. She told him she was really interested in the prospect of working for him and so she would wait for him to get back to her, but only for a week. He told her, it would be worth the wait, she suspected it was his way of telling her that she did not hold all the cards. She wondered if he was onto her and if she should have played it differently, but at this point it didn't matter, he was walking her to the door and pausing at the front desk to scribble his cell phone number on the back on his card. He told her to call him, if she needed anything from him. She flashed him her winning smile, a perfect blend of charm and mystery, but when she heard the clanging of the plastic venetian blinds against the door, as she walked out, she cringed at the tacky sound.

While she walked to the elevator, she wondered if her vanity would overshadow her need for a job. Did it really matter what part of town the firm was in if they did legitimate work? Would it bother her that none of the clientèle could speak English and she would have to dumb down both her speech and writing after she worked so hard to get an English degree? It was like as soon as she left the office all of her doubt immediately returned. She thought about what that meant as she stepped off the elevator and her Manolo Blahniks got tangled in the pile of garbage. She tried to gracefully shake the trash from her heel and when she was unsuccessful and because she refused to touch it with her hand, she walked a couple of paces and hoped the momentum of her steps would be enough to take it off; it didn't.

Her frustration was immediately soothed, when she saw him sitting on a planter waiting patiently for her. She apologized, but he stopped her and said it wasn't necessary. He complained just once about there not being any free weekly newspapers to read and the only thing he could find were papers in Vietnamese or Chinese. He wasn't much of a talker and she often wondered how she ended up with someone so shy and passive which was the exact opposite of herself, but when he grabbed her hand and gave her a reassuring look that spoke to her in a way that words could never express, she knew it was moments like those that she lived for because no one could relax her like he could.

Thanks urbanflyer!

She thought he sensed what she was feeling and knew she would use him as a sounding board to work out the mixed emotions she was having about the job, but all that would come in good time. For now she was content to let him lead her to the bus stop and wait for their ride home.

The silence between them spoke volumes, but their actions towards each other said more. They stepped onto a nearly empty bus and instead of sitting far away, she took a seat right next to him. He smiled at her, because when she wasn't looking, he stepped on the piece of trash and removed it from her heel.

0 comments:

Post a Comment