Chapter Two - Conrad
She’s trying to play it cool. They always do. I love that she thinks this is a once in a lifetime opportunity but has no idea what the opportunity is. With every step she takes, she’s getting more excited, more nervous, and more curious. Nothing shows you what people are like quite like a pressure test. Here she is. In front of my desk. She’s folding her arms across her chest and trying to look like she doesn’t have time to mess around with me.
“Have a seat,” I say.
She looks around. The only other chair in here is over by the wall. Is she going to go get it? It took the custodians a while to empty this room out for the interviews. It’s already worth it.
“I’ll stand,” she says with a smirk. Maybe she thinks she knows what I’m up to. Maybe she’s right, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
“You probably know why you’re here,” I say.
“I’m here about the job.” She can’t figure out where to look. Her eyes dart from eye left eye to my right eye, down to my mouth, and then starts over.
“Which job is that?” I say, leaning back in my chair, stretching out my legs, and crossing my ankles.
“The, uh—”
“Hey, isn’t that the dress you were wearing when you won nationals?” I say. This is how you learn who people are. You shove them out of their comfort zone and pay attention to how they react before they can put on whatever mask feels appropriate. She’s better than most, I’ll give her that. Cooler. Her eyebrows shoot up for a second, but then she finds the mask. She’s calm. Tranquil. She’s seen it all.
As if.
“Yes,” she says. And there’s the tell. Her voice has changed. There is still uncertainty in it, no matter how serene and unruffled her face looks. “How did you know?”
“I see a lot,” I say. “I like games.”
“You don’t say,” she says, looking at the chair against the wall. “I never would have guessed.”
“I do. You want to know the secret to success?” I watch her look around the office. She wants to know how I got all of this. She just won’t admit it. “It’s that you treat it all like a game. Or like an experiment.”
“All of what?”
“Life. Everything. All of it. You play to win. You play to have fun. You learn the rules so you can break them when it suits you. You smile. That’s it.”
She smirks. She knows what she’s working with, but she doesn’t have any idea just how good she looks. I can tell she’s never been with a real man. Not like me. “You should write a self-help book,” she says. “A thousand ways to be annoying.”
I laugh. I’ve never been talked to like that in here. It’s intoxicating even though she’s horrified. She literally claps her hands over her mouth as if she can’t believe the words that just popped out of her. “Oh my God! I’m so sorry!” she says. “I’ll go. Give the job to someone who’s not insane.” She turns to walk away.
“I like insane,” I say, getting to my feet. I fetch the chair for her and carry it over to my desk. “Have a seat.”
She sits. Still blushing.
“So, you probably want to know how I found you,” I say.
“That would be nice. But I assumed that you had someone hack into the phone system and send a massive storm of texts to everyone who fit your profile. I can’t imagine you had time to sit around watching all my videos, just to see if I’d ever mention my address.”
“What makes you think I wouldn’t do the hack myself?” Not that I could. I’m good at what I do, but I doubt I could even learn basic HTML. She’s closer than she knows on the videos, though. “And what profile do you think you would fit?”
“Well,” she says, looking at the ceiling for a moment. I can see the wheels turning. She’s going into debate mode. This is why she’s here. “Given the appearance of the women in your lobby, not to mention Zippy or Lima or whatever her name is behind the desk, you like them young, physically attractive, and, if I’m any indication, ambitious. You also put stock in risk takers. Not everyone would respond to an advertisement as cryptic as your text message, but I’m guessing that you knew that, and I’m guessing that the majority of the people you sent it to did respond because you knew they would. You don’t ask questions you don’t know the answer to, at least not often, and you don’t invite people to visit you who will say no. Even with that lunatic cop on TV. And because you said you like games, you need other people to play with, and those need to be people who will accept your version of the rules since you will undoubtedly be in the position of power. On the surface, at least.”
She’s good. She knows it. And that’s good for both of us. This is going to be fun.
“You’re hired,” I say. I reach into my desk and pull out an ancient bottle of whiskey with two glasses. One inch for her, two for me.
“Really?” She laces her fingers together and her eyebrows shoot through the roof.
“Really. To us,” I say. We clink our glasses together.
I tell her that she’s going to start on Monday. I tell her when and where. She writes it all down. It never occurs to her to ask what the job actually is, which suits me fine.
The job was never the point.
The game. Always the game.
“This will be a good experiment,” I say. She frowns, wondering why that sounds familiar to her.