The Cerebral Catalyst

Last year, I had a job. I was working. But this year I don't. This year I don't have a job. I mean, I'm looking but I'm not working.

"Maybe you can get a job at your Uncle Fred's office. They always need help down there," she said. My mother, she said that yesterday and today I'm here. Today I'm here, I'm waiting to be interviewed at my Uncle Fred's office in the reception area and I'm here, in good hands with All State.

I'm sitting in a chair across from the mahogany desk with the receptionist in a reception area. She's staring at me. The receptionist, with the hair pulled back and held in place with a pencil.

"He'll be with you in a few minutes, Anne," she says, her name, Lucy Beekal, etched in a rectangle at the corner of her desk. Lucy Beekal, the receptionist, here Monday through Friday. Lucy Beekal sipping coffee from a Dunkin Donuts mug from 1990. She's staring at my shoes.

They're new black pumps I bought yesterday from Payless and they're too shiny. I asked the saleswoman if they came in a fabric not as shiny and she said no, like she didn't want to go back and look. So I bought them, the shiny black pumps, for today, for the interview, and Lucy Beekal is staring at them, picking lint from her fingernails and staring. Where's Uncle Fred?

A young man, tall and dark, wearing a gray suit with strong lines, steps off the elevator and is approaching me. Not me, actually, but towards me, where I am, in the reception area. Do I smile? I smile. He does not. Maybe I smiled too much. What if he's the one I'm interviewing with? Could he not hire me because of that? Because I smiled too much? He didn't see me, maybe. I'll tell him I'm friendly, so he knows. So he knows I didn't mean anything. I didn't mean anything. Really, what's a smile anyways? I'm just here for a job at my Uncle Fred's office. My Uncle Fred, that's right. He works here too.

______________________________________
Caroline Imreibe lives in Chicago and works in advertising.

posted 11.19.07.

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