Webster’s definition of a displaced person is someone driven or
expelled from his or her homeland by war or tyranny. What they forgot to
include is someone driven or expelled from his or her employer. Webster
had been wise enough to update it on their website.
No rumors or telltale signs that something had been amuck with upper
management to topple over the pawns and crush their pint-size positions;
the department where I had worked for five years was downsized. My
position became eliminated. I’d been discharged, dismissed, deselected, a
term my co-workers joked about until it finally started happening to them
one by one.
Yes, I admitted it. I’m displaced. While sitting around at home in
sweats, staring out the window, I looked at my neighbors who get up and
go to work every day. I picked up a copy of Flannery O’Connor’s Three,
waiting for the phone to ring, and began reading.
It was better than reading “Tips and Advice” from Monster dot com or
using the search engine on Career Builder. I couldn’t look at another
online posting in need of a professional with the credentials that I’d
acquired from years of experience. If my resume didn’t match the
credentials they were looking for in an ideal candidate, I would often be
rejected as overqualified and not be considered.
Naturally out of all the stories in Three, “The Displaced Person,”
caught my interest. Mr. Guizac, a Polish immigrant who had worked on a
farm in the south was “the displaced person.” The proprietor of the farm,
Mrs. McIntyre wanted to fire him. Her sense of moral obligation was what
had stopped her from dismissing him. She followed the advice the old
priest had given her about being a good Christian, having an open heart
for those in time of need.
I’ve never read a more fitting description of a displaced person. “He’s
extra and he’s upset the balance around here,” Mrs. McIntyre had
explained her position the best she could to the priest.
I anticipated a flood of emails to come pouring in my mailbox, a deluge
of responses from human resources. Instead all I got was junk email and
unwanted Spam. I decided to do something about it. I changed my routine
and tried a different approach. So many companies had already received
my resume; I could create a super highway with my own paper trail. I’d
been spending too much time alone, hitting the refresh button in my inbox,
so I went to seek the advice from a fresh new face.
“Network; it’s the only way you’re going to get ahead in his world,”
Mrs. Candy had advised, a career coach from the career center at The
New School University, where I earned a bachelor’s degree and
graduated.
Her eyes scanned the resume I gave her to review behind pink
flamingo-colored rimmed glasses. “Employers are more likely to hire
people who have some sort of connection with their company even if it’s a
referral than those who come in off the streets,” she said.
“A friend of mine works at a bookstore,” I said. “When they were
looking to hire, he referred me. I didn’t get an interview because I have no
experience in retail.”
A clear glass jar of Hershey's Kisses sat in front of her desk. I
reached in and grabbed a handful. I hadn't eaten anything for lunch or for
breakfast. I removed the silver foil from the small pyramid of milk chocolate
and popped it in my mouth, waiting for her reaction.
Mrs. Candy pushed her swivel chair back, away from the large oak desk.
Hanging on the wall was a master’s degree from Yeshiva University and a
bachelor’s in science from Fordham. I wondered how this educated
woman, wearing a Tiffany-style brooch on the lapel of her summer linen,
could possibly give advice to someone like myself who could barely afford
the cost of dry cleaning.
Her mid-section heaved like a dumpling filled with rich gooey cheese
before she spoke. “Unemployment is a full-time job. Have you contacted
any publishing houses for an informational interview? If you’re trying to
make a career change and break into an editor’s position, you should
consider it. It’s a great way of getting your foot in the door.”
“I knew someone who had an informational interview at a downtown
firm on Wall Street. It didn’t help pay the bills,” I said. I’d come to seek
advice; but I quickly learned that Mrs. Candy wouldn’t provide any new
leads, names of professionals who could possibly open up some doors like
I’d hoped. “I’ve taken up enough of your time,” I said as I got up to leave.
“I should be going now.”
Mrs. Candy opened the top desk drawer. She reached in and pulled
out a copy of The Perfect Interview. She pursed her lips, thin as a drizzle
of frosting on Angel’s Food cake, and threw down the paperback on a pile
of papers that scattered. “If you’re not willing to listen to the advice I have
to offer, maybe you’ll be wise enough to read this.”
It hadn’t occurred to me until I rode the subway on my way home that
maybe I’d tapped into the last of Mrs. Candy’s patience for displaced
workers. Maybe I’d shrunk the resources out of the rest of the career
coaches’ reserves like Mr. Twigs from the New York State Department of
Labor whose only advice he could give was to stick it out and hang in
there; things have a way of working out for themselves.
Observing people is the normal pastime for any commuter who might not
have anything to look at or read. The Boogeyman beggar sang the blues;
the subway priest wore shoes with cardboard soles. He recited his organic
version of a story in the bible to anyone who was willing to listen.
Across the aisle, a woman caught me looking at the wandering eye of
a man with a wallet fastened to a gold chain around his neck. He listened
to Hip Hop on his i-Pod Nano.
I’ve never had the talent for retaining trivial information like some
people are able to do. What surprised me was the words that Mrs.
Shortley had said about Mrs. McIntyre to her husband in the short story I’d
just finished reading: “A Displaced Person.” In my mind they appeared
clear as the subway map across from me.
‘”She says it’s ten million more like them, Displaced Persons, she says
that their priest can get her all she wants.”’
How many others were out there looking for work like me? The
unemployment rate was 7.0 in January, up from 4.7 a year earlier. Still, I
couldn’t help but think that, in reality, I was just another number.
The red light from the answering machine was flashing when I got
home. I hit play and listened to the message. “This is Gabriel T. Firefly
from Fredonia Publishing. We have received a copy of your resume for
the assistant editor’s position. I would like for you to come into the office.
Please call me at your earliest convenience.”
I yelled “Hooray” in the confines of a small quiet eastside apartment,
which broke the morning silence like the flutter of a pigeon’s wing. I rang
back the number left on the answering machine and spoke to Mr. Firefly’s
secretary. A breathy woman’s voice answered at the other end of the
receiver.
I imagined Roger Rabbit’s girlfriend Jessica, a cartoon nonetheless a
very sexy one, sitting at a desk, behind a flat-screen monitor, tossing her
long red hair off her shoulder. “Good afternoon,” she said. “Gabriel T.
Firefly’s office, how may I help you?”
“Hello,” I said. “I am returning Mr. Firefly’s phone call. My name is
Allison Young.”
“Yes, Ms. Young,” she spoke like a sales rep for Victoria’s
Secret. “This is Mr. Firefly’s personal assistant, Felicity. Thank you
for getting back to us so soon. Are you available to come into the office on
Thursday at 10:00 a.m. for an interview?”
“Let me check my schedule,” I replied, embarrassed to find the dates
that were wide open on the desk calendar. “Thursday would be fine.”
“Excellent,” she said in a sultry voice. “We’re located at 663 Fifth
Avenue on the thirty-third floor. Look forward to meeting you.”
No sooner had I gotten off the phone with Gabriel T. Firefly’s personal
assistant that I began dialing Ernie’s number. My friend, who’d referred me
for a job at Strand’s bookstore, picked up the phone on the second ring. “I
got it,” I said. “I got an interview.”
“I knew you would,” he said. “It was only a matter of time before
things would start changing for you.”
“Let’s get together on Friday night,” I said. “Hopefully we’ll have
something to celebrate.”
When I lost my job I lost the privilege to pursue happiness as a free
citizen. One of my dreams was to see my friendship with Ernie develop into
something more meaningful. Unemployment could be an excuse. It
shouldn’t stop me from pursuing my goals; however, I couldn’t go anywhere
in life without money. The first things to go, besides health insurance and
a 401K, were the things that people with a steady income take most often
for granted: shopping, dining out, enjoying the movies, and going on
vacation. How easily those privileges can be taken away like they’d been
taken from me.
Maybe meeting Mrs. Candy hadn’t been a waste of time after all. I
pulled out the contents in my backpack and found the book she’d given
me, The Perfect Interview.
I read some of the questions most likely to come up during an
interview. Where do you see yourself in five years? In all fairness, I’d like
to see myself away from the clutches of the cubicle, on an island on a
beach, painting the Caribbean sunset on canvas, sipping on a Tropical
drink, the shade of the warm pink sun.
According to the book, the worst sins an interviewee could do was to
speak in generalities rather than specifics. Tell me about yourself, one of
my favorites. The traditional approach was to tell them about any recent
training programs or work history that might pertain to the job.
The hell with getting dressed up in conservative clothing that was
usually too tight at the waist. Flashing smiles and providing socially
acceptable small talk seemed not only forced, but also downright fake.
The hell with tradition. How about the truth? Not everybody could be a
business typhoon or a corporate mongrel even if they wanted to. Some of
us, like myself, had been going to work just to receive a paycheck to help
support other interests such as carpentry or painting that could blossom
into works of art some day. Why can’t a job just be a job? When did a job
have to become a career?
Tell me about yourself should be answered the way it should be
addressed, honestly like a human being who has dreams and aspirations
that doesn’t involve a mission statement instead of an automaton, a cross
between a factory worker and E.T.
I’d been painting ever since I could afford to buy my own watercolor
paint set as a kid at Ben Franklin’s Arts and Crafts.
Funny how I inherited my talents from the very same woman who
discouraged me from going to art school. “Knowing how to draw isn’t going
to help pay the rent,” Mom had told me. She stacked the dishes from the
kitchen sink to the dish rack. “You need skills like accounting or computer
training to survive in this world,” she said. “You’re no Van Gogh or
Georgia O’Keefe.”
“I know,” I responded, grabbing a dinner plate to hand dry. “I like to
paint.”
“I don’t want you to be dependent on a man,” she said. Her back
hunched over from years of housework. She stood in front of a sink full of
dirty dishes. Her face was flushed from the rising hot steam. “You have to
learn how to support yourself.”
I couldn’t say don’t worry about it and just leave it at that. All my
girlfriends in high school were getting the same speech from their parents.
It didn’t matter what I wanted to be when I grew up. The goal for any
modern woman was to be financially secure and above all things
independent, an assumption on my mother’s part.
When I grew up, I sold a few paintings to art galleries in Chelsea, but
not enough to earn a living. The thought of prostituting my talents to an
advertising agency meant that I was selling myself short. I couldn’t make
any compromises in my art for a paycheck. Was that too personal? I
hoped I didn’t divulge too much information about myself.
One that got a lot of applicants into trouble had been the question what is
your weakness? I’ve been known to be moody with the change in wind and
the slightest shift in temperature. How could employers expect candidates
to answer these questions with all sincerity? They didn’t. They were
meant to see how well you played the game.
I looked away from the book and saw the face of an angel staring at
me. Like a gothic statue seen in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, it sat on my
dresser next to my bed. The ceramic cherub resembled the angel that had
been stolen from her deceased husband’s tombstone, in “The Displaced
Person.” Mrs. McIntyre couldn’t find a replacement for it. Her husband who
was a judge had seen it at a shop window in the city and, like me, fell in
love and had to have it.
Was I being judged, set apart from the masses, no longer an active
participant, but forced to sit and watch the game of life from the sidelines,
for not having a job? Somewhere along the line, I must’ve done something
wrong to find myself here. I slipped through the cracks in the system and
was hanging dangerously close to being expelled from the working middle
class if something didn’t give soon. After all, I knew that eventually I would
get my turn. Patience wasn’t one of my strongest traits.
I opened the heavy glass door of Fredonia Publishing and went into
the waiting room that had contemporary style wood veneer furniture. I
introduced myself to the receptionist who said hello. A young woman had
faint yellow eyebrows that were thin as a plastic straw used to stir a
tangerine blue cocktail at happy hour.
I recognized her voice – the voice of a voluptuous young actress in
the movies that could persuade her leading man to run off and marry her --
when she spoke. “Nice to meet you, Ms. Young,” she said, rearranging the
yellow Post-Its on her desk. “I’m Felicity. Please have a seat. Mr. Firefly
will be with you shortly.”
On the sleeve of my recently dry-cleaned navy blue suit, I wiped the
sweat off the palm of my hands. My heart thumped against the cavity of
my chest, which echoed in the chamber of my ears. The winged-back
leather chair was comfortable enough. I remembered to keep my posture
aligned and my back straight.
“Would you like a cup of coffee or anything to drink?” Felicity asked.
“No thank you,” I replied and flashed a deliberate smile at her. “I’m
fine.”
“Mr. Firefly is on a conference call,” she said. “He’ll be done in a few
minutes.”
Money, Inc., Forbes Magazine, and today’s edition of the New York
Times were the choices of reading material on the coffee table. I felt too
giddy to read or concentrate on anything other than not blowing the
interview.
An oil painting of a peacock, the size of an oversized landscape, hung
on the wall across from where I sat. The curvature of the bird’s neck bent
backwards like a sunflower reaching for the heat of the day. His raised tail
was spread out to display all the small planets in his fanned blue green
feathers. I sat transfixed by the beauty I felt toward the splendor in the art
like the priest in “The Displaced Person.”
The odds of encountering a painting of a peacock, while waiting for
the executive who had a hand at my destiny, were too much of a
coincidence. As if the fate of how the interview might go could rely on my
recollection of what the priest had said to Mrs. McIntyre, I suddenly
remembered the word, “Transfiguration.”
Mrs. McIntyre had no idea what he had been talking about. She was
too worried about herself. She repeated what she had thought about the
displaced person to him. ‘”He didn’t have to come in the first place.”’
‘”He came to redeem us,”’ the priest had told her.
Lost in the privacy of my own thoughts, I jumped at the hand that
gestured for a handshake. “Ms. Young, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” a
middle-aged man said, wearing a white-starched Polo business shirt with
gold cufflinks. “I’m Gabriel Firefly.”
Mr. Firefly led the way down a carpeted corridor and into a corner
office with spectacular views of Central Park. Flanked by mature trees that
were symmetrical as the topiary at a private country club, the grass was
divided into the square shape of a golf course. “Please have a seat,” he
said. “Let me grab a pen and pad.”
The moment I’d been waiting for, where I could land the job I wanted,
was here.
“So, tell me about yourself.”
expelled from his or her homeland by war or tyranny. What they forgot to
include is someone driven or expelled from his or her employer. Webster
had been wise enough to update it on their website.
No rumors or telltale signs that something had been amuck with upper
management to topple over the pawns and crush their pint-size positions;
the department where I had worked for five years was downsized. My
position became eliminated. I’d been discharged, dismissed, deselected, a
term my co-workers joked about until it finally started happening to them
one by one.
Yes, I admitted it. I’m displaced. While sitting around at home in
sweats, staring out the window, I looked at my neighbors who get up and
go to work every day. I picked up a copy of Flannery O’Connor’s Three,
waiting for the phone to ring, and began reading.
It was better than reading “Tips and Advice” from Monster dot com or
using the search engine on Career Builder. I couldn’t look at another
online posting in need of a professional with the credentials that I’d
acquired from years of experience. If my resume didn’t match the
credentials they were looking for in an ideal candidate, I would often be
rejected as overqualified and not be considered.
Naturally out of all the stories in Three, “The Displaced Person,”
caught my interest. Mr. Guizac, a Polish immigrant who had worked on a
farm in the south was “the displaced person.” The proprietor of the farm,
Mrs. McIntyre wanted to fire him. Her sense of moral obligation was what
had stopped her from dismissing him. She followed the advice the old
priest had given her about being a good Christian, having an open heart
for those in time of need.
I’ve never read a more fitting description of a displaced person. “He’s
extra and he’s upset the balance around here,” Mrs. McIntyre had
explained her position the best she could to the priest.
I anticipated a flood of emails to come pouring in my mailbox, a deluge
of responses from human resources. Instead all I got was junk email and
unwanted Spam. I decided to do something about it. I changed my routine
and tried a different approach. So many companies had already received
my resume; I could create a super highway with my own paper trail. I’d
been spending too much time alone, hitting the refresh button in my inbox,
so I went to seek the advice from a fresh new face.
“Network; it’s the only way you’re going to get ahead in his world,”
Mrs. Candy had advised, a career coach from the career center at The
New School University, where I earned a bachelor’s degree and
graduated.
Her eyes scanned the resume I gave her to review behind pink
flamingo-colored rimmed glasses. “Employers are more likely to hire
people who have some sort of connection with their company even if it’s a
referral than those who come in off the streets,” she said.
“A friend of mine works at a bookstore,” I said. “When they were
looking to hire, he referred me. I didn’t get an interview because I have no
experience in retail.”
A clear glass jar of Hershey's Kisses sat in front of her desk. I
reached in and grabbed a handful. I hadn't eaten anything for lunch or for
breakfast. I removed the silver foil from the small pyramid of milk chocolate
and popped it in my mouth, waiting for her reaction.
Mrs. Candy pushed her swivel chair back, away from the large oak desk.
Hanging on the wall was a master’s degree from Yeshiva University and a
bachelor’s in science from Fordham. I wondered how this educated
woman, wearing a Tiffany-style brooch on the lapel of her summer linen,
could possibly give advice to someone like myself who could barely afford
the cost of dry cleaning.
Her mid-section heaved like a dumpling filled with rich gooey cheese
before she spoke. “Unemployment is a full-time job. Have you contacted
any publishing houses for an informational interview? If you’re trying to
make a career change and break into an editor’s position, you should
consider it. It’s a great way of getting your foot in the door.”
“I knew someone who had an informational interview at a downtown
firm on Wall Street. It didn’t help pay the bills,” I said. I’d come to seek
advice; but I quickly learned that Mrs. Candy wouldn’t provide any new
leads, names of professionals who could possibly open up some doors like
I’d hoped. “I’ve taken up enough of your time,” I said as I got up to leave.
“I should be going now.”
Mrs. Candy opened the top desk drawer. She reached in and pulled
out a copy of The Perfect Interview. She pursed her lips, thin as a drizzle
of frosting on Angel’s Food cake, and threw down the paperback on a pile
of papers that scattered. “If you’re not willing to listen to the advice I have
to offer, maybe you’ll be wise enough to read this.”
It hadn’t occurred to me until I rode the subway on my way home that
maybe I’d tapped into the last of Mrs. Candy’s patience for displaced
workers. Maybe I’d shrunk the resources out of the rest of the career
coaches’ reserves like Mr. Twigs from the New York State Department of
Labor whose only advice he could give was to stick it out and hang in
there; things have a way of working out for themselves.
Observing people is the normal pastime for any commuter who might not
have anything to look at or read. The Boogeyman beggar sang the blues;
the subway priest wore shoes with cardboard soles. He recited his organic
version of a story in the bible to anyone who was willing to listen.
Across the aisle, a woman caught me looking at the wandering eye of
a man with a wallet fastened to a gold chain around his neck. He listened
to Hip Hop on his i-Pod Nano.
I’ve never had the talent for retaining trivial information like some
people are able to do. What surprised me was the words that Mrs.
Shortley had said about Mrs. McIntyre to her husband in the short story I’d
just finished reading: “A Displaced Person.” In my mind they appeared
clear as the subway map across from me.
‘”She says it’s ten million more like them, Displaced Persons, she says
that their priest can get her all she wants.”’
How many others were out there looking for work like me? The
unemployment rate was 7.0 in January, up from 4.7 a year earlier. Still, I
couldn’t help but think that, in reality, I was just another number.
The red light from the answering machine was flashing when I got
home. I hit play and listened to the message. “This is Gabriel T. Firefly
from Fredonia Publishing. We have received a copy of your resume for
the assistant editor’s position. I would like for you to come into the office.
Please call me at your earliest convenience.”
I yelled “Hooray” in the confines of a small quiet eastside apartment,
which broke the morning silence like the flutter of a pigeon’s wing. I rang
back the number left on the answering machine and spoke to Mr. Firefly’s
secretary. A breathy woman’s voice answered at the other end of the
receiver.
I imagined Roger Rabbit’s girlfriend Jessica, a cartoon nonetheless a
very sexy one, sitting at a desk, behind a flat-screen monitor, tossing her
long red hair off her shoulder. “Good afternoon,” she said. “Gabriel T.
Firefly’s office, how may I help you?”
“Hello,” I said. “I am returning Mr. Firefly’s phone call. My name is
Allison Young.”
“Yes, Ms. Young,” she spoke like a sales rep for Victoria’s
Secret. “This is Mr. Firefly’s personal assistant, Felicity. Thank you
for getting back to us so soon. Are you available to come into the office on
Thursday at 10:00 a.m. for an interview?”
“Let me check my schedule,” I replied, embarrassed to find the dates
that were wide open on the desk calendar. “Thursday would be fine.”
“Excellent,” she said in a sultry voice. “We’re located at 663 Fifth
Avenue on the thirty-third floor. Look forward to meeting you.”
No sooner had I gotten off the phone with Gabriel T. Firefly’s personal
assistant that I began dialing Ernie’s number. My friend, who’d referred me
for a job at Strand’s bookstore, picked up the phone on the second ring. “I
got it,” I said. “I got an interview.”
“I knew you would,” he said. “It was only a matter of time before
things would start changing for you.”
“Let’s get together on Friday night,” I said. “Hopefully we’ll have
something to celebrate.”
When I lost my job I lost the privilege to pursue happiness as a free
citizen. One of my dreams was to see my friendship with Ernie develop into
something more meaningful. Unemployment could be an excuse. It
shouldn’t stop me from pursuing my goals; however, I couldn’t go anywhere
in life without money. The first things to go, besides health insurance and
a 401K, were the things that people with a steady income take most often
for granted: shopping, dining out, enjoying the movies, and going on
vacation. How easily those privileges can be taken away like they’d been
taken from me.
Maybe meeting Mrs. Candy hadn’t been a waste of time after all. I
pulled out the contents in my backpack and found the book she’d given
me, The Perfect Interview.
I read some of the questions most likely to come up during an
interview. Where do you see yourself in five years? In all fairness, I’d like
to see myself away from the clutches of the cubicle, on an island on a
beach, painting the Caribbean sunset on canvas, sipping on a Tropical
drink, the shade of the warm pink sun.
According to the book, the worst sins an interviewee could do was to
speak in generalities rather than specifics. Tell me about yourself, one of
my favorites. The traditional approach was to tell them about any recent
training programs or work history that might pertain to the job.
The hell with getting dressed up in conservative clothing that was
usually too tight at the waist. Flashing smiles and providing socially
acceptable small talk seemed not only forced, but also downright fake.
The hell with tradition. How about the truth? Not everybody could be a
business typhoon or a corporate mongrel even if they wanted to. Some of
us, like myself, had been going to work just to receive a paycheck to help
support other interests such as carpentry or painting that could blossom
into works of art some day. Why can’t a job just be a job? When did a job
have to become a career?
Tell me about yourself should be answered the way it should be
addressed, honestly like a human being who has dreams and aspirations
that doesn’t involve a mission statement instead of an automaton, a cross
between a factory worker and E.T.
I’d been painting ever since I could afford to buy my own watercolor
paint set as a kid at Ben Franklin’s Arts and Crafts.
Funny how I inherited my talents from the very same woman who
discouraged me from going to art school. “Knowing how to draw isn’t going
to help pay the rent,” Mom had told me. She stacked the dishes from the
kitchen sink to the dish rack. “You need skills like accounting or computer
training to survive in this world,” she said. “You’re no Van Gogh or
Georgia O’Keefe.”
“I know,” I responded, grabbing a dinner plate to hand dry. “I like to
paint.”
“I don’t want you to be dependent on a man,” she said. Her back
hunched over from years of housework. She stood in front of a sink full of
dirty dishes. Her face was flushed from the rising hot steam. “You have to
learn how to support yourself.”
I couldn’t say don’t worry about it and just leave it at that. All my
girlfriends in high school were getting the same speech from their parents.
It didn’t matter what I wanted to be when I grew up. The goal for any
modern woman was to be financially secure and above all things
independent, an assumption on my mother’s part.
When I grew up, I sold a few paintings to art galleries in Chelsea, but
not enough to earn a living. The thought of prostituting my talents to an
advertising agency meant that I was selling myself short. I couldn’t make
any compromises in my art for a paycheck. Was that too personal? I
hoped I didn’t divulge too much information about myself.
One that got a lot of applicants into trouble had been the question what is
your weakness? I’ve been known to be moody with the change in wind and
the slightest shift in temperature. How could employers expect candidates
to answer these questions with all sincerity? They didn’t. They were
meant to see how well you played the game.
I looked away from the book and saw the face of an angel staring at
me. Like a gothic statue seen in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, it sat on my
dresser next to my bed. The ceramic cherub resembled the angel that had
been stolen from her deceased husband’s tombstone, in “The Displaced
Person.” Mrs. McIntyre couldn’t find a replacement for it. Her husband who
was a judge had seen it at a shop window in the city and, like me, fell in
love and had to have it.
Was I being judged, set apart from the masses, no longer an active
participant, but forced to sit and watch the game of life from the sidelines,
for not having a job? Somewhere along the line, I must’ve done something
wrong to find myself here. I slipped through the cracks in the system and
was hanging dangerously close to being expelled from the working middle
class if something didn’t give soon. After all, I knew that eventually I would
get my turn. Patience wasn’t one of my strongest traits.
I opened the heavy glass door of Fredonia Publishing and went into
the waiting room that had contemporary style wood veneer furniture. I
introduced myself to the receptionist who said hello. A young woman had
faint yellow eyebrows that were thin as a plastic straw used to stir a
tangerine blue cocktail at happy hour.
I recognized her voice – the voice of a voluptuous young actress in
the movies that could persuade her leading man to run off and marry her --
when she spoke. “Nice to meet you, Ms. Young,” she said, rearranging the
yellow Post-Its on her desk. “I’m Felicity. Please have a seat. Mr. Firefly
will be with you shortly.”
On the sleeve of my recently dry-cleaned navy blue suit, I wiped the
sweat off the palm of my hands. My heart thumped against the cavity of
my chest, which echoed in the chamber of my ears. The winged-back
leather chair was comfortable enough. I remembered to keep my posture
aligned and my back straight.
“Would you like a cup of coffee or anything to drink?” Felicity asked.
“No thank you,” I replied and flashed a deliberate smile at her. “I’m
fine.”
“Mr. Firefly is on a conference call,” she said. “He’ll be done in a few
minutes.”
Money, Inc., Forbes Magazine, and today’s edition of the New York
Times were the choices of reading material on the coffee table. I felt too
giddy to read or concentrate on anything other than not blowing the
interview.
An oil painting of a peacock, the size of an oversized landscape, hung
on the wall across from where I sat. The curvature of the bird’s neck bent
backwards like a sunflower reaching for the heat of the day. His raised tail
was spread out to display all the small planets in his fanned blue green
feathers. I sat transfixed by the beauty I felt toward the splendor in the art
like the priest in “The Displaced Person.”
The odds of encountering a painting of a peacock, while waiting for
the executive who had a hand at my destiny, were too much of a
coincidence. As if the fate of how the interview might go could rely on my
recollection of what the priest had said to Mrs. McIntyre, I suddenly
remembered the word, “Transfiguration.”
Mrs. McIntyre had no idea what he had been talking about. She was
too worried about herself. She repeated what she had thought about the
displaced person to him. ‘”He didn’t have to come in the first place.”’
‘”He came to redeem us,”’ the priest had told her.
Lost in the privacy of my own thoughts, I jumped at the hand that
gestured for a handshake. “Ms. Young, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” a
middle-aged man said, wearing a white-starched Polo business shirt with
gold cufflinks. “I’m Gabriel Firefly.”
Mr. Firefly led the way down a carpeted corridor and into a corner
office with spectacular views of Central Park. Flanked by mature trees that
were symmetrical as the topiary at a private country club, the grass was
divided into the square shape of a golf course. “Please have a seat,” he
said. “Let me grab a pen and pad.”
The moment I’d been waiting for, where I could land the job I wanted,
was here.
“So, tell me about yourself.”
The Displaced Worker
by D.L. Luke
r.kv.r.y. quarterly literary journal
spring 2009 fiction
by D.L. Luke
r.kv.r.y. quarterly literary journal
spring 2009 fiction