53. Lucky Me
Summer
I’d done so many hard things in my life, but somehow, stepping out of Roman’s car at the airport on Monday morning, after a drive that was at once too long and over much too soon, felt like the worst. We’d barely spoken this morning, and even Delilah, after commenting that “It’s, like, a dead zone in this car,” had shut up.
Roman didn’t sit behind the wheel and wait after pulling into the curb. It would’ve felt better if he had. Instead, he popped the trunk, pulled both suitcases from it, set them on the sidewalk in front of the tiny airport building, and said, “Have a safe trip.” His face all the way closed down.
When the plane had landed here, I’d felt … hopeful. Excited.
Seen. And what may have been more important—allowed to see.
Now, the ashes of those feelings stirred and settled again, and I said, “Good luck with your meetings. All of them. Thank you for bringing us up here, too. Your family is special. I’m glad I had a chance to meet them.”
He said, “You were doing me a favor. Nothing to thank me for,” and turned away. I wanted to say, “Wait.” I wanted to say, “I’ll keep making those car payments,” just to keep him here another moment, but if I didn’t want to hurt him more, I couldn’t drag this out.
He opened the car door, and I started walking. Then I heard him say, “Summer,” and turned around again. My heart pounding. Ridiculously hopeful.
He said, “If you need more help on that job search, you have Esther’s contact info.”
“Yes,” I said. “Thank you. Oh?—”
“Yes?” he said.
“Energy Solutions,” I said, “for the overall company. Or Active Energy, maybe. For the solar company—I’d call it Thrifty Solar. It sounds cheap, but I don’t think Kiwis will take it that way. Thrift is a major virtue here, I’ve noticed.”
“Thanks,” he said.
“You’re welcome.” I wanted to say something else, but I couldn’t think of anything that would help, so I headed into the building before I could cry.
Delilah said, when we were sitting on the tiny plane to Auckland, waiting for departure, “So that’s, like, it?”
I stopped staring out the window at nothing. “You mean, Roman and me?”
“No, I mean those other three guys you’ve been hung up on. Of course I mean Roman and you.”
“Well, yeah,” I said. “It was always it. This weekend was doing him a favor. Like he said.”
“Uh-huh,” she said. “So what are you going to do now?”
“I’m going to get a job.”
That was why, that same afternoon, I sat at the drop-down table in the tiny caravan with my phone in my hand and a notebook before me, took a breath, dialed the first number on the list Esther had provided, and said, careful to speak slowly, calmly, “Hi, Thomas. This is Summer Adair. Esther Carnell gave me your number. I believe she talked to you about my application for your Senior Programmer position.”
“Yeh,” the young voice at the other end of the line said. “Told her I’d consider you, anyway. I’ll take a look at your C.V. and talk to you if you’d like to come in, but I can’t promise anything. We’re interviewing a few people.”
I called the three other names on my list, too, and eventually reached all of them. One said he’d filled the position, but in a way that told me, “I looked you up.” The others were about as warm and welcoming as Thomas.
Nobody said it would be easy, I reminded myself. But however hard I’d thought it would be, the three interviews I did get were worse. The last one especially, which was in the Perc Café, a cozy spot near the Octagon with wood tables and lots of plants. I sat across from a man named Arthur, who was tall and lanky and had dark hair that flopped across his forehead and a prominent Adam’s apple that bobbed up and down when he swallowed. Which was all the time.
“If Roman d’Angelo recommends you,” he asked, “why isn’t he hiring you?”
I stirred my cappuccino in its china cup, tucked my crossed ankles more neatly under my chair—I’d worn my best cheap-at-the-Op-Shop jeans, a silver-blue top with an interesting button pattern, and a cropped black jacket for this, constituting about half of the work wardrobe I’d accumulated thus far and giving off absolutely no “kitten” vibes—and said, “He doesn’t have an opening for my type of position—he’s in alternative energy, as you know, not tech—but he’s familiar with my experience. Which I’d love to tell you about. At my last position, which I held for over five years, I started out by constructing the logic for a streamlined ad-serving platform that scaled to four million users. We improved page speed by fifteen percent on that one. Later on, I led the migration from AWS to GTP in order to?—”
“I read your C.V.,” Arthur said. “Seems you can code.”
“I can,” I said. “But I can do more than that. I also managed multiple complex projects and earned a promotion to Senior Developer after only?—”
“I can read that, too,” he said, and set the C.V. aside. “How do you know D’Angelo?”
Here we were. The tricky bit. I said, “What the C.V. doesn’t show is why I came to New Zealand. Which was for a working holiday. During some of that time, I worked for Roman. Outside of my field, but he was impressed with my work. And now that I’ve seen the country and chosen to settle in Dunedin, I’m eager to get back into what I love best. Which has always been software, so—here I am. With Roman’s recommendation on my work ethic and efficiency, since that’s what he knows.”
“Mm,” Arthur said. “Left the field and the UK because of your personal issues?” He swallowed some coffee with another gulp. I had to stop staring at his Adam’s apple.
“Yes,” I said. “I got a divorce. Which frequently leads to life change, I understand.”
“Seems you got more than that,” he said. “Sorry, but it’s all online. Want to explain the bankruptcy? The trial, all that?”
I’d practiced this, too. I did my best. Conceal a flaw, and the world will imagine the worst. That one was by Martial. When I’d finished, Thomas said, “But you’re not planning on staying in New Zealand, surely. Back to the States, or back to the UK?”
“No plans to leave,” I said, trying to make my tone bright. “I can stay for three years on my working holiday visa, and that’s my current plan. I have more than two years left on that. Software engineers are on the skill shortage list, so the demand is there, and I do love the job. That’s not cool to say, but I love the puzzle of it. The elegance of it. The beauty of it.” He stared at me as if I’d just confessed to hating rugby, so I hurried on. “It’s a core value for me to do work I’m passionate about, and after this break, I’m champing at the bit to get back to it. If all goes well here, if I see the future for me that I’m expecting to, I’ll consider applying for permanent residency.” Which was laying it on a little thick, possibly, but it was true, and “I’m only here for a little while, because I get bored easily!” doesn’t tend to be a job-winning approach.
“How much of that,” Arthur said, “revolves around D’Angelo?”
“None of it.” My own tone got chillier, but really? Really? “I’m not in a relationship with Roman d’Angelo, not that it’s relevant. I did some work for him. He knows Dunedin. He offered to help. End of story.”
Arthur shoved my C.V. back into a manila folder, unwound his long legs, stood up, and said, “It’s a good C.V. Cheers for coming by, and for your interest. We’ll let you know.”
Strike three, and you’re out.
I took another sip of coffee, but my fingers trembled on the handle, and a few drops splashed into the saucer. I put my napkin over the spill, set the cup down and moved it around to form three interlocking rings as if the pattern were interesting, and thought, You knew it wouldn’t be easy. It’s never easy. This has to be the only field in the world where being pretty means you don’t get the job. Which is, of course, why you like it. So you get another waitress job and keep applying for something better. Or decide whether you can ask Esther for more help. I knew even as I thought it that I wouldn’t ask Esther, though. You got jobs based on who you knew, but—no. I just couldn’t.
Delilah had a job already, bruised tailbone and all, and I didn’t. That was completely backwards, which meant I was doing this wrong. Had I lost my confidence? Lost my poise? What was wrong with how I was coming across?
The more we value things outside our control, the less control we have. Epictetus. The Stoic philosophers were excellent sources for, well, stoicism. What could I do? I could ask Gray, back at the house, when I cooked dinner tonight. He was a builder, which wasn’t exactly a code-intensive profession, but he was well-known, right? He’d hear things. He’d …
Somebody at the next table said, “Pardon.” It took a minute to realize that it was directed at me. I turned my head to find a fortyish woman dressed in dark jeans, T-shirt, and jacket. Pretty much like me, in fact. She was a little round, and her curly hair was pretty great, bouncing in ringlets to her shoulders. The kind of woman you can’t help liking on sight.
“Hi,” she said. “Interview, eh.”
“Yes.”
She made a face. “Not too likely, I’d say.”
I had to laugh. “Not likely at all. Oh, well. I’ll just—” I stopped, though, because I didn’t much want to say the whole “waitress” thing. “Keep trying,” I finished.
“Hmm. Mind if I join you?”
“Uh—sure. Be my guest.”
She slid in across from me, bringing her date scone and latte with her. “Penny,” she said, sticking out a hand.
“Summer,” I said, shaking it.
She blinked round, owlish eyes behind her glasses. “That a name?”
“Yes. Summer Adair.”
“Can I see the C.V.?” she asked. “Got another copy? Or one on your phone?”
“Sure.” Why not? Maybe she knew somebody. Stranger things had happened. I opened my own file folder and handed the thing over.
She scanned it quickly. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Anybody should be snapping you up. Not always easy to find this kind of experience here. Why aren’t they?”
“Well, I … it’s …” I stopped.
“Can’t help you if you don’t tell me,” she said. “Why? Is it how you look? It can be a misogynistic industry, tech. The name probably doesn’t help, either. You may want to consider Cleo. Diana. Mallory. Like that.”
“I’m wearing pants, though,” I said, not addressing the name. I wasn’t changing my name.
She blinked. “I hope so.”
“Oh!” I tried not to turn red. “Trousers. I’m wearing trousers.”
“All the same,” she said. “That it, then? That you look like a TV presenter? How many interviews has it been?”
“Three,” I said. “But they were … I got some help setting them up, which should have given me an in. A well-connected friend. And, yes, this guy did imply that there was something more to that. To the friendship, which may be hurting me as much as it’s helping me. Which there wasn’t,” I added firmly. I mean, I’d slept with Roman, sure, but Esther had given me the list before that, so …
“So this isn’t your actual experience,” she said. “On the C.V. Because otherwise …”
“No!” I took a breath. “Of course it was. Of course it is. Those are my jobs, and my skills, and my degree. It’s … I was in the papers. In the news. Married to a star athlete. Eventually to a felon, because he went to prison. I got off, but we both ended up bankrupt. It’s kind of … a lot.”
“But not your lot,” she said.
“No.” I was still shaky, but I could hold my cup, at least, so I did. See? I’d felt awful, and now I didn’t feel quite so awful.
As for the woman, she was on her phone, and from the way she was glancing at my C.V., she was looking me up. “Ah,” she said. “I didn’t hear about that, but then, I’m not keen on sport.” She pulled out a business card and slapped it down. “Penny Foreman, B2B Recruitment.” A hand with unpainted nails waggled my C.V. in the air. “Got a couple of spots you may fit. There’ll be a ninety-day trial period—there nearly always is, and in your case, doubly so, unfair as that may seem—but if you suit?” She gave a nod. “You’ll be in.”
“Oh,” I said. “Wow. A lucky meeting for me, then.”
She grinned. “Not so lucky. You’d be surprised how many interviews happen in cafés. Meetings as well. I do some of my best poaching here, because most men can’t talk to people for shit. Never ask the right questions. Never listen to the answers to the questions they do ask. Their loss, and my commission. Lucky me.”