ThisTimeNextDoor (13 page)

“I have good news,” he said finally. “I think.”

“I’ll be grateful just to have an interview.” She took a deep breath. “And for your sake, I’ll try not to lie too much.”

“You won’t have to lie at all, except for the parts about me. You can embellish that all you like.”

She caught his arm in hers and guided him to the stairs. “Tell me about it while I turn on the heat. Is there a time scheduled for an interview or do they need me to send a résumé?”

“Do you have your heart set on an interview?”

“They need a résumé first. Sure, of course. I’ve got a few versions, but it would help if I knew what kind of position they were considering me for. Or,” she turned and smiled at him following her up the stairs, “rather,
you
were considering me for.”

“It’s not that formal. You won’t need a résumé.”

“Oh.” She fought disappointment. “Is it just an informational thing then?” He looked uncomfortable, so she said quickly, “I don’t mind. Really, I appreciate whatever you—”

“I thought you’d like to start Monday. Since you were going to do that temp job next week, I figured you could just try this instead, see if it works out.” He strode away from her down the hall to the thermostat in the living room, flicked it on. “Let’s see if that works. There might be other leaks in the ducts, but you should really let John deal with his mother and the pros for that one.”

“I start Monday?”

“Is that good?”

“Are you serious?”

His face lit up with a big grin. “Would you rather start tomorrow?”

“You’re shitting me. How could you possibly line it up that fast? I don’t even know what I’ll be doing.”

“They’ve got a few positions and think you’ll be perfect for one of them.”

“That’s crazy. They haven’t even met me.”

“Some random people were going to hire an unknown temp to do their web design and you didn’t question that,” he said. “Here you’ve got me vouching for you and your degree from Cornell. That was true, right?”

She nodded, her mind whirling with potential. She could catch up on her college loan payments. Have her hair done. Get an apartment. “This is great. I don’t know how you did it, but thank you.” On impulse, she flung her arms and hugged him, wiggling and laughing.

Rigid at first, arms lifted in the air like a scarecrow, he slowly relaxed enough to pat her shoulders. Then he gently pushed her away. “You’re welcome.”

“Wait until I tell Blair.”

“I heard,” Blair said, coming into the room. “That’s amazing. How long have you worked there, Mark?”

Rose saw a flicker of panic on his face. Unblinking, he stared at Blair. “Not very long, but they like my work.”

An accomplished falsehood artist herself, Rose smelled something fishy. But he was always so nervous around Blair it was hard to tell. Was that blush because Blair had addressed him or because he was hiding something?

“Stay for a drink,” Blair said, hooking her arm in Rose's. “How about a beer? John bought a case of Anchor Steam and we’ll never drink it. I’m pregnant and Rose likes the hard stuff.”

Rose watched him trip over his own feet as Blair tried to guide him into the kitchen. “No no, thank you no, that’s nice of you,” he said, reaching out to the wall for balance. “Unless I’m doing you a favor or something, like you’re afraid you might drink it yourself and it’s bad for the baby. And me drinking it would be a heroic act.”

Smiling, Blair looked up into his face, which was now flushed a rich rosy pink from the social exertion of his earlier speech. “It
would
be heroic,” she said. “Glass or just the bottle?”

“Just the glass.” He shook his head. “I mean bottle.” His wild glance hit Rose, who wasn’t finding his thing for Blair so cute anymore.

“Maybe it’ll relax you,” Rose said.

Humming to herself, Blair got the beer, opened it, and handed it Mark with a smile. “I’ve got chips and guacamole, homemade, too. Interested? You’d be doing us another favor. The guac doesn’t store well.”

He was still staring at Blair. His eyeballs were frozen open like a corpse. Rose’s fingers itched to reach up and close them for him like the sensitive homicide cop in a TV show. Instead, she guided the beer to his lips and said, “Sit down, eat, drink. Let Blair lavish her domestic happiness on you while I take a shower. Then you can tell me everything you know about this company. Though it probably isn’t much, since you never leave your house and you’ve only worked for them a little while, right?”

His gaze finally broke away from Blair. Gulping his beer, he looked off into the distance, then nodded and sat down at the kitchen table.

Something was going on inside that handsome skull of his other than puppy love, but she didn’t know what. Feeling a creeping itch on her own skull, she remembered the urgency of her shower and left them there, hoping he didn’t faint from the anxiety of being alone with Blair.

A job. Monday.

And she didn’t even have to sleep with anyone to get it.

* * *

The offices for WellyNelly were in an industrial area of Berkeley, down near the bay in the patchwork of business parks, auto repair shops, restaurants, car dealerships, apartment buildings and semi-gentrified single family homes.

Rose parked her car in the visitor spot of the company’s marked parking lot as she was told in an email. Not surprisingly, Mark had stayed home, telling her it was probably better she made her first impression on her own.

And what an impression it would be, Rose decided, marching from her car to the front door. Without spending a dime, she’d outdone herself. Just a little flashy but not tacky, feminine but not slutty, professional but not stuffy. Though Mark had told her to just wear jeans and a T-shirt, she was well aware of the biased source of the advice and decided on fitted charcoal trousers and a black sweater adorned with her usual scarf, handmade jewelry, and smoky eye makeup.

The woman at the front desk jumped up when she came in. “Rose?”

Surprised by the immediate welcome, Rose paused in the doorway before holding out her hand and marching forward. “Nice to meet you,” she said, smiling with a glance at the woman’s badge. “Bridget?”

The woman came out from around the desk. She was young, had short hair, wore no makeup, and made lots of eye contact. “Did you have any trouble parking?” Her handshake was firm but her skin was cold. Probably because the air temperature inside the building was low enough to kill tropical plants.

Rose pointed at her car right outside the front door. “Is that the right place?”

“Oh, absolutely. You can park wherever you want.”

“How does that work? It doesn’t look like there are a lot of spaces around here,” Rose said.

“But you don’t have to worry about that. Now that I know which car is yours, you can just park in the visitor spots.” She lowered her voice. “I’m the one who gets people ticketed. Or if they really piss me off,
towed
.”

“I’ll be sure to stay on your good side, then.”

She drew back, shook her head. “Not you, of course.” She gestured down a carpeted hallway. “Please forget I said anything. Sylly’s waiting for you.”

Luckily, Mark had already told her about the big boss’s nickname. She hadn’t expected to meet him so soon, however. “Does the CEO always greet the new people first?”

“God, no,” Bridget said. “Though he does like to meet them eventually.”

More confused than ever, Rose followed Bridget through the colorless work space, past cubicles, the bathroom, a full kitchen, and conference rooms, to an office just like the others on the right side of the building.

“You must be Rose,” the man inside said, coming over with his hand out. “Thanks for making sure she made it, Bridget.”

“No problem,” Bridget said, smiling at him as she closed the door.

Sylly was a good-looking man of medium height and indeterminate ethnicity. His name and warm complexion suggested he was Latino, but the shape of his brown eyes was Asian, possibly Indian. Or Chinese. African?

She gave up guessing. She imagined he’d put up with a lot of nosy questions during his lifetime and she wasn’t going to add to them, especially since she was looking for a job and didn’t want to annoy him. “Thank you so much for…” she stopped herself. Having her? It made her sound like a houseguest. They were acting so odd, though, not like an employee or job supplicant at all. “Thank you for offering me a job. I can’t wait to find out what it is.”

He flashed a set of perfect teeth, but she noticed his eyes were sharp, checking her out, sizing her up. “Have a seat. I’ve got your résumé here. Mark was right, you’re perfect for WellyNelly. I’m sure we’ll find a way to make each other happy.”

Her alarm bells, quiet buzzing at the front door, rose to a steady
wah wah wah
in her head. Whatever was going on here, job or no, she had to understand it all.
 

She sat down and looked at him.“Why?”

This time she noticed he tried to stifle his smile. “I beg your pardon?” He continued his journey to a mini-fridge behind him, bent down with his back to her, popped back up with a bottle in his hand. “Mineral water?”

“What did Mark say to you guys to make you so happy to see me? Because I’d hate to start on the wrong foot.” A suspicion struck her. “This isn’t all a joke, right?”

“No, I promise. No joke.” He handed her the bottle.

“It didn’t sound like Mark, but I don’t know him very well.”

His charming smile disappeared. “Really?”

Whoops. Mark had vouched for her; she shouldn’t undermine him. “Not as well as I’d like to.” Crap, that wasn’t much better. Now Sylly thought she was barking up Mark’s nerdy tree.

Eyes smiling, Sylly opened his mouth, closed it, then regarded her with his lips pinched together. After a moment, he said, “We like Mark a lot around here. If he says we should hire you, we get excited. We’re growing so fast we can’t find enough good people. You were pre-med, he said. Ivy League.”

“Yes, but that isn’t very unusual.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Sure it is,” he said. “Why didn’t you go to med school?”

That was the question she dreaded most. Admitting she’d simply changed her mind suggested she was fickle, indecisive, fun-loving, unreliable, lazy. It wouldn’t be so bad if she’d jumped into another field and applied herself. For instance, if
 
she’d gone to law school and clerked for the Supreme Court instead. Or if her undergrad years in bio-nanotechnology led to a stint on the International Space Station. That would be okay to talk about.

Too bad she’d promised not to make shit up.

Why hadn’t she gone to med school? She was still trying to figure that out herself. That first year after graduation was a recovery period. She’d been working so hard since she was ten she didn’t know who she was anymore. The fantasy of having no person or institution to please, only herself, had driven her to graduate with honors before her twentieth birthday.

And then… five years of aimless wandering. Retail. Selling used books on Amazon, garage sale finds on eBay, crafts on Etsy. Teaching SAT prep at the youth center. Learning German, Spanish, a little Thai.

Dating. A lot of dating. A lot of sex. John was only the last in a string of short-term flings she’d enjoyed since moving back home with her mother. That was a secondary advantage of having the occasional boyfriend: somewhere else to sleep.

Facing the sharp, successful man on the other side of that desk, answering for her unfulfilled life, was a nightmare that kept her up at night.

Why didn’t you go to med school?

She settled for the simple truth. “I didn’t want to be a doctor,” she replied.

Beaming, he punched the air with his fist. “Awesome. Me neither.” He held out his hand in a high-five. “I was pre-med at Stanford. I didn’t even graduate.”

Fear dissipating, she reached up and slapped his palm.

“Mark’s right. You’re perfect for WellyNelly. The place is full of excellent people who rejected the easy, well-traveled path. You’re going to love it here.” Without getting up, he rolled his Aeron chair around to her side, reaching out to rotate the monitor as he moved. “Let’s look at Welly in action. Then we’ll talk about where you can help us out.”

* * *

Forehead pressed to his bedroom window, Mark watched the house next door, wondering if Rose was back yet. The living room lights were on, but that could be Blair.

Sylly had sent him an email around two: “Your 5K is on its way. See you in the morning, sucker. XOXO.”

So they’d hired her. That was great. She’d help them relaunch their women’s health site, sadly neglected until now. Forums, drug and diagnoses encyclopedia, resource links, emotional support. Right now WellyNelly had a very male, utilitarian look, lots of navy and white, every page branded the same way.

Because that’s how he’d designed it when he was sixteen. The technology couldn’t handle much back then, not while maintaining its performance. Sick people didn’t have time to wait for the computer to load a photograph of flowers, animated babies, smiling healthy people. People wanted to find the best doctor, the best treatment, the best shoulder to cry on. As quickly as possible.

For themselves or somebody they loved. His dad never sat down and used WellyNelly himself, barely acknowledged it, but his mom had. Hours she’d spent, talking to other cancer patients and their families, survivors, and then, widows.

Mark remembered the day he created the Widow Forum. The last time he’d worn a suit, the day he buried his father.

Until recently, that was the last work he ever did on the WellyNelly software. At college he vowed to do something wildly different from what everyone expected from the wunderkind: teach. Not at the college level, which would have required grad school, but earlier than that, with younger kids who didn’t like math and science because they’d never had an enthusiastic introduction. Surely, he thought, if they could see how cool it all was, they’d be as excited as he’d always been.

Well, no. A better teacher could’ve done it, maybe, with some of the kids. Not him. Within five years he was as jaded as the alcoholic sixty-something precalculus teacher he’d had when he was in high school—but not as good.