Chapter 3 Just One Interview

Angela I am still staring at her when a nurse comes in to check the monitor. She glances at me, then at the woman in the bed, and I realize I have probably been sitting here for several minutes looking at a stranger like I am trying to memorize her face. “Is everything all right?” she asks. “I think so.” I look back at the bed. “She just looks... familiar.” That is the safest word I can find. Familiarity does not explain the shape of her mouth, the slight arch in her brows, or the fact that if somebody showed me a photograph of her from the right angle, I might ask when I had taken it. The nurse adjusts the line near her hand. “If you didn't mention not knowing her, I’d think you're sisters.” When she leaves, I lean closer again. “Okay, this is weird.” The woman says nothing, which is fair. She has already had a worse day than I have. I sit back and force myself to stop staring. People look alike. The world has billions of faces, so eventually two of them are bound to overlap more than they should. That explanation would be much easier to believe if hers were not currently lying three feet away from me. My eyes fall on the handbag tucked beneath the visitor’s chair. The hospital has her name now, but nobody has found a relative yet. Her phone is locked, and the nurse who took her details earlier asked whether I had seen anything in the bag that might help them contact someone. I pull it onto my lap. “Before you wake up and accuse me of stealing,” I tell her quietly, “I am looking for your family.” I open the wallet first. The identification card confirms what I heard earlier: Elise Marlowe, twenty-three years old. Same age as me. Of course she is. Why should today settle for one strange coincidence when it can have two? There is a bank card, a medical insurance card, several receipts, and enough cash folded into one compartment to make me shut the wallet again before my life starts giving me more bad ideas. There is no emergency contact. I move to the papers I collected from the road. Most are neatly arranged inside a slim document folder, though one corner is bent from the accident. The first page is a résumé. I scan it, then go back to the top and read it properly. Bachelor’s degree. Postgraduate certification. Internships with companies whose names I recognize from business news. Advanced data analysis. Strategic planning. Supply-chain optimization. I glance at Elise. “You could have left me one easy qualification.” My own education ended before it was supposed to. After Dad died, money became complicated, then Verena became more complicated, and eventually finishing school moved from something I was definitely going to do to something I kept promising myself I would return to. The next paper is an interview confirmation for Price Global Logistics & Infrastructure, for the position of Strategic Projects Associate in the Office of the CEO. The interview is today, and when I check the time on my phone, I realize it starts in two hours and eleven minutes. I look at the paper, then at Elise, and immediately reject the thought forming in my head. Absolutely not. I slide the document into the folder and close it because that would be insane. I am homeless, not criminally ambitious. I set the folder on the chair beside me and manage not to touch it for almost thirty seconds before looking at it again. “No,” I say aloud this time, apparently because my own brain has stopped respecting private decisions. Elise remains unconscious, which means at least one of us is behaving sensibly. I stand and walk toward the window. Outside, people move through the hospital courtyard with places to go. A man is helping an elderly woman into a taxi. Two nurses are sharing something from a paper bag. Everybody seems attached to a life that is waiting for them when they leave here. I have my phone, the clothes I am wearing, and a small amount of money in my account. My father’s house is no longer mine if Verena has anything to say about it. I have no job, and I do not have a friend close enough to call and announce that I need a bed tonight without also explaining the disaster that produced the request. Behind me, the interview folder sits quietly on the chair. This is a terrible idea, which is why I go back and pick it up. “I am only looking,” I tell unconscious Elise That is obviously how terrible ideas begin, but I open the résumé anyway. The position is not completely foreign to me. Dad’s company was much smaller than Price Global, but logistics is logistics. I grew up hearing about delayed deliveries over breakfast and warehouse problems during dinner. Drivers called Dad at ridiculous hours. Suppliers changed prices. Clients wanted impossible deadlines. He used to spread route sheets across the dining table and ask me where I thought the problem was. Sometimes I was wrong, and sometimes he changed something because of what I noticed. I never thought of it as training. It was just time with Dad.

I read Elise’s résumé again and understand perhaps half of the language in the way she probably does. The rest looks like someone took ordinary business problems and dressed them in expensive vocabulary. That does not make me qualified. Unfortunately, it makes the idea feel slightly less impossible. I unlock my phone. Price Global’s website loads first. The company is enormous, with international freight, warehousing, infrastructure, supply-chain technology and industrial development. I skim the page about the Strategic Projects division, then search the job title separately. By the third article, I have twelve browser tabs open and regret all of them. Some of it is new. Some of it sounds suspiciously like things Dad used to do while complaining that a supplier had lost his mind. I search likely interview questions next and immediately regret it when every website seems to have a different opinion about what I am supposed to say. One website suggests Tell us about yourself, which is dangerous for obvious reasons, followed by Why do you want to work at Price Global? Apparently “because I need somewhere to sleep” is honest but not especially competitive. I keep scrolling. The more technical questions are easier to prepare for because at least they have answers I can learn.  Then I go back through Elise’s résumé, searching every qualification and responsibility I do not understand. Some of it sticks. Some of it enters my brain, looks around and apparently decides there is no available space. I check the time. One hour and forty-three minutes left.  Shit. I start again from the top of Elise’s résumé. “Elise Marlowe,” I murmur, forcing myself to read the name before anything else this time. If I am really going to do this, knowing what stakeholder mapping means will not help much if I forget who I am supposed to be. “Okay, Elise,” I say, looking over at the bed. “This is not me stealing your job.” Even unconscious, she somehow looks unconvinced. “I am attending an interview you physically cannot attend. There is a difference.” If I fail, which is extremely likely, nothing changes. If she wakes up, I can explain. If by some miracle I do not fail, I refuse to think that far. I check the time again and close the last interview-preparation page on my phone. Research is not going to save me if I arrive looking like I've spent the day crying and with a dress torn and stained from the accident. I need clothes. Fast. I gather Elise's CV, tell her I'll be back, and hurry for the door. As I pull the door open in a hurry, already calculating how much time I have left to find a dress, I walk straight into a man coming down the corridor. The collision sends me back a step. His coffee doesn't survive it. The cup jerks between us, spilling across the front of his dark suit and the white shirt underneath. “Oh, shit. I'm so sorry.” I look up, ready to apologize properly, and my brain takes an extremely unhelpful detour. Damn, he’s hot. Very tall, broad through the shoulders, with dark hair, a hard, handsome face and the kind of mouth I would probably have stared at under less disastrous circumstances. Even angry, he's ridiculously attractive. My eyes drop briefly over him. Okay. Maybe very attractive. Then he speaks. “Are you blind, or do you normally walk through doors without looking where you're going?” Well. There we go; the face doesn't match the attitude. “I said I'm sorry.” His gaze drops to the coffee soaking into his jacket. “An apology doesn't replace a suit that costs more than you can possibly make in months.” My embarrassment starts turning into something considerably less apologetic. His gaze moves over my wrinkled clothes and cheap bag before returning to my face. The disdain that settles over his face makes me lower the tissues I was already pulling from my bag. “People like you don't belong on the private floors. You should make inquiries before wandering wherever you please.” Oh. So he's not only an asshole. He's a rich one. “I came out so fast that I mistakenly ruined your suit. Which I already apologized for.” I put the tissues back into my bag. “But if looking expensive is the only thing keeping you from being mistaken for trash, then maybe you should learn not to talk too much. You look better with a closed mouth” His face goes completely still, and I take the rare silence as my chance to leave before common sense catches up with everything I've just said. “Get your suit cleaned. You'll survive.” I step around him and continue toward the elevator, ignoring the sharp “Come back here.” that follows me down the corridor.  Whatever else he has to say, I've already apologized once, and I'm definitely not staying around long enough to be insulted twice. I have less than two hours to turn myself into Elise Marlowe. The gorgeous asshole with the coffee problem is officially none of mine. The elevator doors open just as I reach them, and an elderly couple steps out. The woman looks around uncertainly before stopping a passing nurse. “Excuse me, is this the private floor?” “Fifth floor,” the nurse tells her. “This is the trauma and surgical floor.” My foot stops halfway into the elevator. I glance back down the corridor. He is still standing outside Elise’s room, his coffee-stained jacket forgotten for the moment as his eyes move from the nurse to the floor number beside the elevator. When he looks at me again, the tight set of his mouth tells me he has reached the same conclusion I have: he is the one who got off on the wrong floor. Twenty minutes later, I am standing in front of a clearance rack trying to decide how much professionalism I can afford with the money left in my account. I buy black trousers, a simple cream blouse and the cheapest flats that do not look like they will fall apart before sunset. The shop assistant lets me change in the fitting room and points me toward the mirror. It is not impressive, but it is clean, and for today, clean will have to carry the rest. I fix my hair, wash my face properly in the restroom, and study Elise’s résumé all the way across town. By the time I reach the glass tower bearing PRICE GLOBAL across its entrance, my head feels packed with somebody else’s life. I stop on the pavement and check the name at the top of the résumé one last time. “Elise Marlowe,” I whisper, repeating the name under my breath as I walk toward the doors.  If I am going to survive the next hour, I have one job: remember who I am supposed to be. Then I step inside.