Story 7 | As Though Rising Above, Chapter Six
An unfiltered glimpse into my "first-pancake" novel...
When I summarize my writing journey, I explain that I’ve written two full-length novels: the first is terrible, and the second holds promise and should be publishable. I’m being a little self-deprecating, a little shocking so the point comes across. If I’m being kinder, the first novel is a “first pancake,” that imperfect initial trial that informs and improves your second iteration.
I don’t mean to preemptively influence your experience in reading this chapter from that first novel, but there are major flaws and bright spots alike in “As Though Rising Above.”
Some context to set you up for jumping into chapter 6. Our protagonist Kay Adams has endured but not recovered from a traumatic accident that prompted her to bottom out on her life, leaving her (awful) job, (loser) boyfriend and (soulless) home, to resurface in Boston, living in a hotel where the Hotel Manager has fixed her up with an interview at The Laurels, a major literary magazine. This chapter takes you into the interview and introduces Harper, who is one of my favorite characters of all time!
As Though Rising Above
Chapter Six
I get out of the taxi pale and wide-eyed. I pause and look up at the tall, cool building before me. Usually, I don’t get nervous. I used to go into an interview setting undeniable and blow them away. The bullshit I fed them was really all true in one sense that I knew I could technically do whatever I said I had done, regardless of if I had actually done it.
My professor in college told me that you must communicate to people exactly what you can do and what you cannot do. That way you skip the part where they expect too much of you and you drown in the effort to keep up or die of thirst in the desert of boredom in filing and photocopying. I try to tell myself that my killer handshake, fast-moving falcon eyes, and precise articulation free of the blemish of human speech “uh,” could secure me any job I wanted, including my clerkship at Vidileth, Vidileth & Vidileth.
In reality, I think that my boss caught a glimpse of a well-defined calf carefully maneuvering a four-inch stiletto. I guess the higher the heel, the more capable you will be as a lawyer. Whatever works.
Today is different. I need this job to ascertain whether I really am sane or not. My eyes dart about more like a scared mouse about to be swallowed by a snake. And heels? I’ve managed a stubby one-inch heel, but then again, I’m not interviewing at a law firm. My footsteps no longer move forward but back and forth in the pattern of wearing down carpet and beating down my soul.
For some reason still unknown to me, I decided to listen to the Hotel Manager and actually show up to this interview. Now I know what nervous feels like. It’s not just butterflies in the stomach – that’s uneasy. No, nervous is that crick in your knee acting up so you can’t walk and your brain pulling away from your eyeballs, so everything gets so blurry that you stop trying to see and settle for the big picture. Nervous is your throat getting so dry that water won’t help, and no matter how many times you go to the bathroom, that tingle refuses to go away until it’s all over.
I’ve already gone to eight newsstands, and as luck would have it, the next issue of The Laurels is coming out tomorrow morning, so they’ve pulled all this month’s copies in anticipation for the delivery at noon. I’m behind by three hours. Wracking my brain, I can honestly not remember a time where I even picked up the magazine. I haven’t had time to read anything but law briefs in years. This does not bode well for the rest of the day, which I’ve already decided will be a complete loss.
Maybe I’m low on nicotine. I fumble through my purse, which, of course, I almost drop in the effort to brush by the random receipts, 18 tubes of lip gloss and a crumpled résumé. I turn away from the building to hopefully clear my mind, sling my oversized bag over my shoulder and light up. For me, the sparks of a lighter speak volumes. They symbolize ignition, which is what nicotine does to me.
I draw in and feel the smoke fill my lungs. It’s not as pleasant as it was before I saw some awful commercial on TV about the rat poison that they put in cigarettes, but I know it will bring me to a more plane level. In my effort to center myself, I close my eyes and breathe deeply, but then feel the cigarette wrenched out of my hands. Opening my eyes, I see a foot jamming my cigarette into the sidewalk with a vengeance. I’m all at once baffled and pissed off. A thick-shouldered man with slick, dark hair and an earring looks at me with disgust and starts to stalk away.
“Who do you think you are?” I demand. He sharply whirls on his heel as if he’s been waiting for the opportunity to confront this issue for a long time.
“You shouldn’t smoke!” he shouts. Well, I’ve obviously heard this suggestion from my friends in the past, but he adds a whole new tone to the phrase, making it sound like I’m committing a crime against God and the earth should crack open and swallow me up right here, right now.
“I think that’s my decision, thank you.”
“Cleary. It’s nothing against you. I just don’t support unconscious suicide.”
“What if it’s not unconscious,” I snap back, my words surprising me, but I think I sound convincing.
“Then you just need help,” he snaps. Also true. “And I still need to breathe.”
He walks away on his last word, and I realize I’m trembling with embarrassment and anger and fear. As he disappears into the crowd, I wonder if this guy challenges every smoker he walks by? I couldn’t see anyone else smoking around me, but I sure wish I had someone to back me up or at least someone to point to as a distraction. I look down at my watch and see I have literally one minute to get to the 49th floor for my interview. I’m flustered and unsure and why did I agree to do this? I have no will.
~~~
“You must be Kay Adams. It is a pleasure to meet you. My name is Grant. I will be conducting your interview this morning. Would you like to follow me to our conference room?”
Since he turns before I can respond to his question and based on the robotic, set-to-a-metronome nature of his introduction, it is clear I am not the first candidate to interview here in recent days. My interviewer, to me, is an anorexic frog. His head is round and bald and too heavy for the rest of his scarecrow body, so it bounces like the bobber attached to a fishing lure.
Between last night’s safety of not having an interview and this morning’s anxiety of trying to pull together an outfit from a lawyer’s corporate wardrobe that conveyed some level of creativity, I haven’t had time to learn anything about this publication. Certainly, I’ve heard of the prestige of The Laurels, but that goes without saying, leaving me with no context as to why I should work at this place.
I follow him from the lobby into a complex web of hallways with offices that opens to clusters of glass meeting rooms. The back room is the largest, and a woman dressed in a sharp white suit stands before an immense group of people, all packed into this room. I’m surprised it’s not started fogging up. The Frog and I can hear that she is excitedly talking fast, but we cannot hear the substance of her speech. Her arms whirl about her head, and the people in the room appear to hang on every word. Suddenly, she freezes her arms and looks right at me. Frightened, I take the couple of steps to round the corner and can hear her raving continue.
“Here we are. Please sit anywhere you like, and we’ll begin promptly.” The Frog could not sound more bored. “Let’s start off with some easy questions. Why did you decide to apply to The Laurels?”
“Um, I need a job and there was an opening here. I can write, too.”
Ok, that could not have been worse. What happened to my rhythmic delivery bound with my law-school Latin vocabulary? The Frog is so appalled by my first-grade answer he forgets to ask another question for a second and stares at me, confused as to my purpose for being here.
“Do you have any specific writing experience?”
“Yes.”
“Would you care to elaborate or perhaps you’ve brought me your portfolio which would speak for you?” He hates me. I’ve done it. The rest of this interview will only continue for his amusement in torturing the one candidate who is so obviously ill-suited and uneducated that it will not matter what he asks. Deep breath.
“I have a good deal of writing experience. I graduated from law school where I wrote a number of thesis papers that were hundreds of pages. Then, I worked at a law firm in New York where I was responsible for the creation and editing of draft after draft of briefs for my team’s cases, before I was given my own case, three years before most lawyers even get to assist with a case.” So there, Mr. Frog.
“What connections do you see between law and journalism?”
That question is supposed to be neutral, but his tone connotes that I am foolish to consider that any form of writing could be compared to journalism for its elite style and ethics.
“Both require creativity…”
At this point, I’m wondering how bad it would be if I just got up and left. Anything I learned in journalism in college is gone. He waits for me to finish my sentence but nothing comes, so he continues, hassled.
“Very well.” Translation: ok, now you’re asking for it. “Why did you terminate your employment with your former law firm?”
Crap. I’m not prepared for that one. It was inevitable, but I hoped all last night that they would forget to ask that one. Throat tightening. Eyes burning. Committing interview suicide as I speak. I’ve never been much of a crier until recently and one would think that after almost four months of just sitting about and crying and thinking, one would think I had had enough. This time I don’t cry so much as allow tears and tears and tears to stream from my eyes. It’s kind of creepy for the guy whose name I’ve forgotten, I’m sure, because this woman is just leaking tears but making the concentrated effort to speak normally. Men normally freak when women cry in the social sense, but in the business world, we’re on a whole other plane.
I’m sitting here at a crazily hard-to-get interview at a magazine that anyone in their right mind would die to work for, and I’m crying. Smiling, making weak conversation, and crying. I wonder if they have a category for that: composure. I can see it now. This guy’s boss would ask: “How was today’s applicant?” And he would get flustered and explain how he couldn’t really listen as her incessant crying distracted him to a point that he couldn’t hear what she was saying.
Meanwhile, somewhere in the back of my mind, I’m fully conscious of what is happening: I’ve blown it.
The conference door blows open. I am relieved this must be over. Someone who works here must have just sensed that this was going horribly wrong, that I need to be rescued, and that this interview needs to be over. Just when I though I had a way out, an escape, an easy escape, the very opposite to all that walked in.
She is the most fantastical creature I have ever seen. She is wearing a fur trimmed ankle-length coat with the tiniest, most intricate amber jewels, rhinestones and gold studs punctuating woven leather over a plain white suit sculpted to her tall, lean body. Her height does not deter her from her three-inch loafers of black patent leather and coffee crocodile, making her touch the sky and making every step the graceful uprooting of a tree. There is something about her that is lighter than magic and therefore more real.
She throws off the coat onto a chair and wrenches the elastic holding back a knotted ponytail, causing rich chocolate hair streaked with unforced sun to spill out over a subtly square face holding eyes that dance with life. She is smiling, and I can barely hold her stare.
“Kay Adams, my name is Harper and I am the founder and editor-in-chief of The Laurels. Welcome.”
Her voice is loud, fast and plays with my ears. Every thought is declared, not spoken. She reaches out her hand, and I take it. I think we can both hear the man talking about something trivial, but I’m looking into Harper’s eyes and see that she is sharp and smart and thrillingly happy to be alive. What she sees in me, I know not, but I am sure that in her introduction she at once knows we were meant to meet. We shake hands for seemingly five hours, and I think of all my superficial friendships of the past where we talked of weather, boys and shopping, but not of unattainable dreams, love and the life which flows through us. I know I will be fulfilled in her, redeemed for living a half-life, that an eternal friendship is due me. She raises her eyebrows, and we drop our hands. She flings herself full force into a chair across from me, and my knees bend but it seems the chair rises to meet me.
I can hear that the Frog has been speaking, but do not hear what he is saying, though I’m sure it sums up the worst interview he has ever given. He finishes and Harper begins, words flying a mile a minute.
“Oh goodness gracious, Grant, you didn’t even tell her what we’re looking for today. Kay, listen up. We’re on the hunt for an additional features writer. You’re probably used to writing such boring drivel for that stuffy old law firm you worked for and dying to get into the more inspired venues we have for you here. Turning you loose on a project or two will do wonders for the constipated writing they promote in law school. You won’t be working on your own pieces the whole time since we always need help with our regulars who start up being a seemingly easy project but of course, one week before the draft is due, everything falls apart and it becomes a huge ordeal. You’ll be working on that a bit, which may not be fun, but I can promise it’s always lively and you’ll make tons of friends. I assign those duties to everyone in the office except my editors. For your first two months here, you only have to do one principal story, but after a while you’ll write two a month, and we pick the best one or use both if it’s fabulous material and we can’t do without it – well, and if the printer is in a good mood.
“And your proposed beat? I’m looking for another writer to help us cover, no, confront the social, cultural changes that are happening, that already happened. Our society is creating a new context, and this process needs recording, explanation, interpretation. 9-11 is precisely 164 days behind us. But that event has only begun to take effect. There is a new sense of pain in America. The Laurels, its writers and I yield a power to help soothe that pain, because together we can create an outlet for it, give it a voice, truly listen to these people because they are, in effect, us.”
I can’t explain it, but it is as though she already knows what I have been through. She not only knows, but understands, cares, and has forgiven me. It is in this moment that my sense of easy kinship with her begins.
“Anyhow, you’ll see I tend to ramble. I am easily moved. Let me be straightforward. I want you to start Monday, you could be just the thing.”
Today is Thursday. My stomach dropped with the first half of that sentence, then plummeted with the second half. For a moment, I was safe. I’m thankful that she at least continues talking, not gauging my reaction.
“I’ve run a background check on you, as I do for all my employees, and it proved to be quite interesting.” She lowers her head and leans in. “Google, of course, my dear, no worries. Surely you’re aware of this, but your second major as an undergrad is why you are here. People underestimate the power of a major. If you dedicated so much time to the study of the subject and if you are half competent, which you are, you must have learned something or maybe even became well-versed in the functions of the media and their sometimes-unfiltered influence on society.
“You failed to include on your résumé that you wrote for the school paper. I had your old editor send me everything, turns out he’s kept every issue he oversaw, the kook. I read everything and question your decision to go to law school. Yes, it’s too late for my input there, so let’s just hope you had concocted a good reason at the time. Your college articles were hardly exquisite, which is the standard I demand here at The Laurels, but…”
She stops here and thinks about what to say next or maybe is merely examining my reaction which I can no longer control. The Frog sits mutely next to her, aware of his irrelevance.
I was out of my league before she walked in and now, although there’s no going back, I know I cannot possibly perform in this position. The stress is comparable to scaling a rock wall, feeling good about it until the rocks crumble at my feet, and I become stuck. There’s no way down so I continue, my feet slip again, and I’m hanging by fingers, the rest of my body hung out over the precipice, anticipating the fall. If my feet failed me, how can I trust my fingers? If I ran now, would they let me be? I let them in too soon.
“Get up. I loathe sitting in chairs. Could you imagine having been strapped into a highchair? I would have gone mad.”
She leads me out the door and to the center of the office, my original interviewer long forgotten.
“This is The Laurels,” she says proudly, her hand leading my eye around the cavernous room that would become my next home.
Thank you so much for reading! Your feedback is welcome: rate the story with one click in this poll, or get a discussion going in the comments.
Next Week’s Plot Twist…
We’re going back to stories based on songs. This time, Ingrid Michaelson’s “Sort Of” sets the scene for a ballerina’s entanglements with her partner. Is she delulu or being manipulated?
Last week’s story:
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