The ad read: “An international non-profit organization, The Displaced Children Association (DCA), is looking for an experienced writer/editor to manage its weekly newsletter. Applicants please submit your résumé by e-mail attachment to dca@hotmail.com.”
I submitted my résumé as instructed. Two days later the receptionists at DCA called to inform me that I had been scheduled for an interview the following week. The job, I realized, wouldn’t pay much, but still, it would be more remunerative, and certainly less stressful, not to say dangerous, than my current part-time as a public school substitute teacher. On more than a few occasions I had been threatened with bodily harm--by beating, slashing, burning, and shooting—-for having the gall to ask some middle-school rowdy to refrain from interrupting the class. Complaining to the principal was of little avail, as the powers-that-be in this politically correct school district always sided with the rowdies. I had thus learned to tolerate the abuse as an unavoidable occupational hazard, but my store of tolerance was fast running out.
A job at an institution like the DCA would afford me the experience and contacts to move up to a rewarding, life-long career in a Federal Agency or, maybe, the United Nations, in the footsteps of my parents, both now dead of cholera contracted while serving in Africa five years ago.
In preparation for the interview, I spent hours on the Internet, late into the night, reading up on the prestigious DCA, and checking out the bio of its Director, a no-nonsense, never married, career woman and former missionary of unimpeachable credentials. Considering my experience as chief editor of my college newspaper, my two-year stint in the Peace Corps and working knowledge of three foreign languages, I felt eminently qualified for the job. The night before the interview I spent a good hour before the mirror practicing poses of self-assurance I recalled from an article on body language. Not only was I ready for the interview, but was eagerly looking forward to it.
Dressed to kill my best suit (my only one, really), I arrived at the DCA headquarters just as the previous interviewee, a somewhat unkempt bearded fellow, was leaving. By the dejected look on his face, it was obvious that his interview had not gone off very well. “One less competitor,” I grinned smugly.
The receptionist, a prim, well-dressed young woman, not much older than I, ushered me into the Director’s spartanly appointed office: an oak desk and chair set, all four chairs unpadded, the Director’s included, a steel file cabinet, bookshelves stacked with journals, newsletters, directories and manuals, and a free-standing rack stand on which hung the Director’s hemp shoulder bag.
She was standing behind her desk, hands on hips, studying a document I assumed to be my résumé. Sternly eyeing me for a moment through wire-rimmed spectacles, she gestured me to take a seat on the chair in front of the desk, waited until I was settled, then sat down.
The Director’s physiognomy and demeanor were consistent with her professional profile on the Internet: tall, angular, thin lipped, unsmiling, no makeup, gray hair its natural color, modestly dressed in a gray slacks-shirt combination; and yet, in some peculiar way, not entirely un-sexy. (Were her pheromones sending me signals?)
“Mr. Saunders,” she said at length. “I see here that your formal education and work experience might qualify you, in part, at least, for the position we are offering. To get a better fix on your qualifications, I’d like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind.”
“Please do,” I said confidently.
I had come prepared to wow the woman, and wow the woman I did. Assuming my studied posture of self-assurance: body relaxed, fingers steepled, legs slightly spread, I answered her questions calmly yet without hesitation, subtly weaving in my experience and career goals with the mission statement of her organization, commending her for accomplishments without sounding obsequious, and even hinting, by glancing subtly into her eyes, that she was a most attractive woman.
Fifteen minutes into the interview she was nodding approvingly, her eyes softening, and the corners of her thin lips curling slightly in what, for her, must have been a smile.
Then it happened. The interview over and capped with a reassuring handshake, I inexplicably tripped on my own feet and pitched against the rack holding her shoulder bag, spilling its contents onto the floor: a notebook, a set of car keys, a hairbrush and an oblong object the size of a cucumber tapered at one end.
On hitting the floor, the oblong object began to hum and make slow spinning motions, as might a dormant animal suddenly coming alive. Though I had never seen a vibrator in real life, I knew what one looked like from pictures in sex-aid ads, and this one, clearly, was one of your more expensive, state-of-the-art models.
“Clumsy me,” I apologized, reaching down to pick up the things on the floor, careful not to give special heed to the vibrator, pretending I didn’t know what it was, but, as I reached down, so did the Director, and our heads bumped.
“Ooops, clumsy me,” I said again, this time with a slight chuckle, hoping to defuse the situation with a touch of humor.
But the Director didn’t see any humor in it. None at all. The slight smile on her lips had changed into a hard slit and the grey eyes behind the spectacles into steel tacks. Putting the things on the floor back in the handbag and my résumé away in the file cabinet, she said dismissively: “That is all for now, Mr. Saunders,” and, half-turning her back to me, called the receptionist on the intercom to bring in the next applicant.
Next day I received a pro-forma e-mail from the CDA informing me that I didn’t get the job.
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