Bentley Little: The House

"Your interview's at ten," she said, and there was a no-nonsense undercurrent to the surface pleasantry of her voice that made him suck in a deep breath, throw off the blankets, and sit up.

Margot was already dressed, ready for work, and she stood next to the bed, looking down at him. "I'm sorry,"

she said, "but I'm leaving and I'm dropping off Tony, and I want to make sure you're up before I go. Otherwise, you'll never make it."

"I'm up," he said, standing. He tried to kiss her, but she wrinkled her nose and pulled away.

"Scope," she said.

"That's romantic."

"Tell me about it." She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. "Give me a call at the office after your interview. I want to know how it goes."

He picked up his pants from the floor next to the bed.

"I can take Tony, you know."

"It's out of your way. Besides, I have a little extra time." She started down the hall. "I'm serious about that Scope. Nothing'11 lose you a job faster than B.O. or bad breath."

He followed her out to the living room, where Tony was waiting by the front door, backpack in hand. All of the drapes were open, and outside four or five identically dressed adolescents were leaning against the low brick wall that separated their weed patch of a yard from the sidewalk. One kid with a shaved head ground out the butt of the cigarette he'd been smoking on top of the wall and flicked it into their yard.

Margot must have seen the look on Daniel's face because she frowned at him, pointing her finger. "Don't you say anything to those boys. We have to live here and Tony has to go to their school. Anything you do to them, they'll take out on him."

Tony said nothing, but the pleading in his son's eyes told him that he agreed with his mother one hundred percent, and Daniel nodded. "Fine," he said.

He watched them walk outside, waved good-bye, and shut and locked the door behind them before heading back to the bathroom to take a shower.

The hot water felt good on his skin, and he stayed in the shower longer than he needed to, enjoying the warm steam that fogged up the room and the comforting sensation of the pulsing water against his sleep-sore back.

It had been over a year since corporate downsizing had caused him to be laid off from his last job at Thompson Industries, and though the nightly news told him continuously that leading economic indicators were up and the stock market was at an all-time high, he had no immediate prospects of finding a job and saw no change on the horizon. He'd gone to every employment agency in the Philadelphia metropolitan area during the past thirteen months, but nothing had turned up in all that time and the market was oversaturated with similarly displaced middle-management workers all competing for the same positions.

More than once he'd wanted to move, but Margot was still employed, still bringing home a paycheck, and the truth was that the house was the only tangible asset they had. It was their anchor, bought and paid for, left to them fair and square by her parents, and if Pennsylvania wasn't his favorite state, that was just too damn bad because if worst came to worst, if Margot lost her job and their phone and gas and electricity were cut off, they could always huddle in the living room in their sleeping bags and eat crackers stolen from restaurant salad bars.

He smiled to himself as he shut off the shower, amused at his own train of thought. As Margot always said, he shouldn't be so melodramatic.

He'd always been melodramatic, though.

It kept life interesting.

Daniel dried, shaved, brushed his teeth, combed his hair, dressed. In his suit, he looked conservative, presentable, respectable. He straightened his tie, looked at himself in the mirror, practiced smiling. He didn't hold out a whole lot of hope for today. The fact that he was being interviewed instead of just rejected outright was of course a good sign, but he'd been to dozens of similar interviews since he'd been unemployed and none of them had amounted to anything.

Still, it had been quite a while since he'd had any interview at all, and at the very least, this would enable him to keep in practice.

He drove into downtown Philly and paid five bucks to park in an underground lot beneath the Bronson Building. Cutting Edge Software, the firm with the job opening, owned the top three floors, and he took an elevator up, quickly putting Chapstick on his too-dry lips before the metal doors slid open.

He was ushered immediately into the personnel office, where a young efficient-looking woman who could not have been more than a year out of college introduced herself as the personnel director. She bade him sit in one of the padded chairs opposite her desk, and the two of them talked for the next half hour or so. It was an interview, but it felt more like a conversation, and Daniel found that he liked this relaxed informal approach.

They hadn't discussed the job specifically, had instead talked mostly about him, his life, his interests, but he knew she'd probably gotten a good read on him from the discussion, and he was gratified when she stood and said, "I think you'd work well here. You're self motivated, intelligent, and I think you could do a good job. I'd like you to meet the president of our firm and talk to him for a few minutes."

He followed her out of the office, down a carpeted hallway to a bigger office. She rapped on the sill of the open doorway, then motioned for Daniel to walk in.

The president of the company was one of those men who tried too hard to be jovial and just-one-of-the-guys, and who referred to himself in company literature as "W. L. (Bud) Williams." Daniel hated men with nicknames.

And he hated men who used only their initials even more. Together they were a lethal combination.

"Never trust a man who doesn't use the name his parents gave him," his father had always said, and it was advice that Daniel had taken to heart.

Still, he needed the job and he couldn't afford to pick and choose, and he sat across the desk from W. L. (Bud)

Williams and smiled.

The president looked over the resume in his hand. "I

see here that you've worked as a tech writer before."

Daniel nodded. "Yes. For the City of Tyler."

"Did you like the job?"

"No," he answered truthfully, realizing his mistake even as he said it. He scrambled quickly for damage control. "I mean, I liked the work, but I didn't like . . . a few of the people I worked with."

"Is that why you quit?"

"Yes, sir."

"We like team players here at Cutting Edge."

"No problem there," Daniel lied. "I'm a team player.

That was just a fluke."

The president smiled. "Yes." He stood. "Well, thank you for coming."

Daniel stood as well, offering his hand. "Thank you for seeing me."

"We'll call you," W. L. (Bud) Williams said as he shook Daniel's hand.

But they wouldn't, Daniel knew. He'd put his foot in his mouth and flunked the test, and he left the building dejected and resentful, ticked off even more when he took the elevator down to the garage and realized that he'd wasted five dollars on parking.

In for a penny, in for a pound, he thought. He was in the city and had already wasted five bucks, what were a few dollars more? He drove to McDonald's and bought himself a value meal, consoling himself with junk food, taking the sting off his disappointment.

He was back home by noon, just in time to catch an old John Ford western on AMC. He sat in his recliner in front of the television, but he couldn't concentrate on the film and instead brooded about his dismal efforts to secure employment. On the screen, John Wayne rode through the desert sand in front of majestic red peaks that rose dramatically out of the earth behind him, and Daniel wondered what it would be like to live in Arizona.