What A Girl Wants (11 page)

“Okay. I see where you're going with this.”

“I know you don't have a lot of time, but let's just work on the opening. First impressions are everything, and I can't let you go before you're ready. At least give me that.”

“Fine.” Hayley stood up. “Here goes: Hello. My name is Hayley Jane Smi—”

“No, no, no. I want you to lean forward slightly, bending almost imperceptibly from the upper body. You need to smile, but it must be a confident smile, not giddy, not too many teeth. And don't bobble when you walk. You do that. It makes you seem nervous.”

“I am nervous.”

“Well, if you seem as nervous as you feel, they will assume you are underprepared. Let's do it again.” Audra crossed her arms over her chest. “You enter, close the door behind you firmly, turn, walk purposely forward, bend slightly, smile confidently, shake hands with a firm grip by pumping two and only two quick times but not so roughly that it draws attention, and then introduce yourself. And don't slur or say your first and second name too quickly.”

“Hayley Jane?”

“Right. Don't do it like that. It makes you sound like something from
Petticoat Junction
.”

“Audra, have you ever watched
Petticoat Junction
?”

“No, but it sounds just dreadful, doesn't it?”

Hayley sighed. “You have no idea how ludicrous this all sounds, do you?”

Audra smiled her cat-in-the-cream smile. “I'm here, aren't I?” Framed by her waterfront view, she lifted her Donna Karan-clad arms and gestured to her million-dollar office.

She had a point.

S
o Hayley left Audra's office with the clothes she'd arrived in, plus a pair of brand-new black Calvin Klein alligator stilettos that she'd paid for herself.

She wouldn't be able to eat out for a month or two, but they looked really great and did actually make her feel substantially kick-ass. Just the right attitude to have before being forced to beg for a job.

Unfortunately, Hayley hadn't considered the fact that Audra never drove herself to work. She used a car service. Which meant that Audra never had to worry about trying to drive a stick shift on the hills of San Francisco in a 1989 Honda Civic with dysfunctional air-conditioning while wearing four-inch stiletto heels.

The experience was flustering, to say the least, and to avoid thinking about the cramps in her calves and the sweat circles that had, indeed, formed after all under the arms of the shirt Audra deemed barely passable to begin with, Hayley concentrated on practicing her introduction in the rearview mirror. She tried out several variants.

Plain: “Hello, I'm Hayley Jane Smith.”
Petticoat Junction
-style: “Howdy, Ahm Hayley Jane.” Audra-style: “Hallo, dahling. My name is Hayley. Jane. Smith!” Enthusiastic: “Hi! I'm Hayley Jane.” Jaded and depressed: “ 'Lo, I'm Hayley.” Of course, that was how she normally sounded, which made her laugh. One more street variation: “Yo! I'm Hayley Jane . . .”
Shit!
Nearly missed the turn off Lombard.

By the time she arrived at the Tech Job Fair site at the Ex-ploratorium in the Marina, she was a nervous, cramping, limping, sweating, multiple-personality wreck.

Luckily she knew the layout because she'd been to the Ex-ploratorium before. It was essentially a giant hands-on science museum often used in the tech industry as a job fair or party venue.

This was really a great idea, particularly for the tech industry. Invariably the museum was more interesting than the attendees, so when you got tired of listening to someone talk about the value (or the lack thereof, as was increasingly becoming the case) of their company's stock options, or how cool it was to be able to work at a company that didn't care if you dressed like a slob, you could always try out one of the interactive exhibits.

In fact, if it happened to be a product-launch party, after two or three rum-and-Cokes, swinging in a chair attached to a giant pen was just about the most amusing thing ever.

Two huge groups of people were lined up behind the two doors, and Hayley stepped up to the back of the line on the left, just as the Tech Fair reps in their yellow polo shirts were unlocking everything.

Unfortunately the lock on the right door was jammed, and as the door on her side opened, Hayley got squashed in the middle between the people in front of her and the anxious people from the other side who came up behind her.

It was a sea of humanity in the worst possible sense.

Hayley didn't know what was scarier: the fact that all of these people really thought they wanted one of these jobs, or the physical sensation of being trapped in the middle of hundreds of laid-off dot-com dweebs frothing at the mouth as they jockeyed for position near the best job booths set up between the exhibit for cow's-eye dissection and the Make a Rainbow project.

Hard to say. The teeming mass lurched forward, and someone stuffed a plastic goody bag into Hayley's hand, and then for a moment Hayley found herself heading straight for the Amazing Sound and Light Tree, which apparently flashed different-colored lights depending on the volume of sound. At that moment, it was going berserk with the combined decibel level of hundreds of people enamored by the sounds of their own voices.

Unable to do anything to change course, Hayley was starting to come to terms with how being rendered deaf and blind might affect her job prospects, when suddenly she was jostled off to the left and swept farther into the depths of the building.

Hayley couldn't actually see which company booth she was lined up for, but she could see that it would take a while before she ever reached the front. There was nothing to do but pass the time in line by checking out the contents of her goody bag.

Whatever disparaging remarks there were to be made about her peer group, you had to admit that techie freebies could be pretty good. And Hayley certainly wasn't above admitting that free stuff was cool.

Enthusiastically she opened the bag to find a limp neon-orange dog Frisbee and three ballpoint pens lying in the bottom of the sack.

All four items were embossed with the names of defunct startups.

And then once again she was thrust forward, nearly winding herself against a glass counter, her résumé portfolio squashed in front of her.

Hayley regained her balance and found herself pressed up against a poster sporting a ten-stage drawing of the intricate features of a cow's eye.

Even better, this remarkable example of bovine anatomy was actually being displayed in the refrigerated glass section under her right elbow.

A stack of brochures on the counter said,
Go to www.explorato-
rium.edu
to find out how you can make cow's-eye dissection more exciting!

More exciting? Could it
be
more exciting? Would you
want
it to be more exciting?

Hayley swallowed and wiped her sweaty forehead with one of the brochures. She'd give a lot for a bottled water right now.

When a faint chemical smell reminiscent of formaldehyde wafted upward, Hayley's stomach lurched. The only saving grace was that the crowd finally shifted, and she landed in front of a recruiter at her first job booth.

He was a doughy fellow wearing bad pants and a bright green trade-show polo from 1998. Hayley remembered that that particular trade show didn't exist anymore.

Well, here goes nothing. Lean. Smile. Extend arm
. “Hi. I'm—”

“I'm sorry, I can't hear you!”

“Hi. I'm—”

“What? Can't hear you!”

“Hayley! Jane! Smith!” she yelled. She leaned and was slowly raising her arm up just like Audra showed her, when he reached out
and grabbed her hand in two sweaty palms and pumped so hard Hayley made a mental promise not to skip yoga again this week, or if she did, to call a chiropractor.

“Nice to meet you, Jane!”

“No, it's . . . Whatever.”

He really wasn't too concerned with her first name, as it turned out, because Hayley wasn't the only one who'd practiced before the job fair. This fellow apparently practiced delivering some sort of epic saga, and he was determined to recite it in its entirety.

He droned on ad nauseam, managing to use an ungodly number of techie buzzwords and catchphrases in complete sentences. Continuum, bandwidth, ping, mindshare, B2B. . . they were all there. From a vocabulary point of view, Diane would have been quite impressed.

Since she couldn't actually move anyway, Hayley fixed an interested expression on her face, and killed time by counting the number of words he used and cataloging them by their parts of speech. Finally he took a breath and asked, “So what kind of engineer are you?”

Hayley smiled gamely. “Actually, I'm not an engineer. I'm content. Editorial.”

His lip actually curled before he said, “Oh. Sorry. No one's hiring editorial anymore. We're looking for engineers.”

“Who does your content, then?” Hayley asked.

“Nobody. Nobody does content anymore. All the companies I know just pipe the stories in from this central repository owned by one of the media conglomerates.”

She must have looked pretty shocked, because he obviously felt the need to rub it in, just to make sure she understood him.

Very slowly, as if he realized she'd forgotten one half of her
brain at home, he clearly and distinctly repeated, “No one does original content anymore. It's too expensive.” And with that he turned and began his performance all over again with the unfortunate person on Hayley's left.

The thing was, Hayley couldn't move.

This sucks. This sucks really badly.

She had to just stand there, seething from a rejection she really didn't care about as the sweat circles expanded in radius and the shooting pain in her feet crept up her legs.

And the guy the recruiter was now talking to, who was apparently lucky enough to be an engineer, kept pressing against her with the side of his body to give himself more space.

Hayley could feel herself being pressed closer and closer back toward the cow's-eye exhibit. She inhaled a shaky breath, praying she wouldn't embarrass herself by hyperventilating.

And that was when the phone rang.

The high-pitched trill sounded like an angel singing. It really did. The sacred notes of her cell phone ringing reminded Hayley of cool running water and the prix fixe menu at Gary Danko. Pure heaven.

Hayley hit the talk button and prayed for deliverance. “ 'Lo?”

“It's Audra. How is it going?”

For some strange reason, Hayley wasn't surprised it was Audra. At this point all she felt was relief. She plugged her free ear with her finger and said, “You're going to have to talk louder. Sorry.”

“How are you doing?”

“It's . . . fine.”

“Good. Just checking in.”

“Audra, could I call you back in, like, one minute? I just need
one minute here.” Hayley pressed the off button, flipped the lid down, and just stared at the phone.

She could smell it.

Hayley could smell deliverance coming out of the seemingly innocuous form of a small black Motorola. And she was thankful deliverance didn't smell anything like sweaty engineers and cow parts.

All she had to do was reach out and take it.

Audra had the power to hand deliverance to her on a silver platter. Hayley could either stick to her guns and get a job on her own terms with the requisite suffering it was obviously going to entail, or just let Audra do what Audra was best at, with a minimum of trauma for everyone involved.

I need a sign. That's what I need right now. Some sign to tell me what to do.

Hayley wiped her sweaty forehead with the back of her hand and looked up reflexively for a tissue or napkin or something. Her eye caught on . . . a sign.

Literally, a sign. It was hanging from the rafters at the far end of the room.
Data Entry Jockeys/Telemarketing Here!

She had her answer. As cold sweat suddenly poured down her back into her waistband, Hayley flipped back the lid on her cell phone and pushed the memory selector for Audra's phone number.

“Audra, it's me. I lied. It's not fine. I don't want to be anybody's jockey.”

“Excuse me?”

“This is a nightmare. I swear to God, I just want to crawl under a rock.” Hayley stood up on her toes. “Luckily I can see some sort of prehistoric Stone Age exhibit across the room. Oh, and then there's another one, something about a tactile approach to the Jurassic Age.”

In her best take-charge voice, Audra said, “Don't worry. Just get out of there. You have an interview with Mouth-to-Mouth Recitation. It's in SOMA near your old job. Details later.”

Hayley closed her eyes. “You already set up the interview for me? When did you do this?”

“The minute you left my office. I figured I could cancel it if you didn't need it, but I figured you'd probably—”

“Need it,” Hayley echoed. Some beefy guy jostled Hayley for the umpteenth time. She opened her eyes too late, as a hand slithered into her plastic freebie bag and swiped her dog Frisbee.

It was the last straw. You didn't steal someone else's swag. You just didn't. No matter how pathetic it was.

“I'll take it. I don't want to be anybody's jockey,” Hayley repeated, her voice cracking. “It's just an interview, anyway.”

“Well, it's all set up.” Audra sounded just delighted. “You're good to go.”

“Thanks, Aud . . . Ow!” Hayley gritted her teeth as an eager job searcher lifted his combat boot off her foot. “I promise I won't embarrass you.”

Hayley dropped the phone into her goody bag without stopping to disconnect the call and scooched around to face the exit.

She took a deep breath, set her jaw, and used the stilettos for what they were best suited for until she'd made it out of the building.