The Interview
747 Words
He walked into the conference room eleven minutes later in a fresh shirt.
White again. Because of course it was white again. Like a challenge.
He sat down across from me at a table that could seat twelve and opened a folder and looked at whatever was inside it and did not look at me for a full thirty seconds which I understood immediately was intentional. A power move. The specific kind that said — I control the pace of everything in this room including when I choose to acknowledge you.
I had grown up on the South Side. I had been in rooms where men tried to control the pace of things my whole life. I knew how to wait.
I waited.
He looked up.
“Zara Mensah,” he said. Like he was confirming it rather than introducing it.
“Dominic Blackwell,” I said back.
His eyes moved to my face with a sharpness that felt like something physical. “Most people call me Mr. Blackwell in this room.”
“Most people didn’t pour coffee on you twenty minutes ago,” I said. “I figure we’re past titles.”
The room was very quiet.
Victor Hale — Head of Operations, sitting to Dominic’s left — made a sound that was not quite a cough and was not quite a laugh and was definitely something in between.
Dominic Blackwell looked at me for a long moment.
“Your résumé says you graduated top of your class,” he said.
“It does.”
“Communications. State school.”
“Is that a question or a comment,” I said.
“Observation.”
“Then yes,” I said. “Communications. State school. Top of my class. I also worked two jobs while doing it which the résumé doesn’t say but which I’m telling you because it’s relevant to whether I can handle pressure and I suspect that’s what you actually want to know.”
Victor Hale was definitely not coughing.
Dominic Blackwell set the folder down.
Leaned back in his chair.
And looked at me with an expression I could not fully read — not impressed, not irritated, not performing either. Something in between that had no clean name but felt, from where I was sitting, like attention. Real attention. The kind this man probably rationed carefully.
“Tell me why you want this job,” he said.
“I need it,” I said. “I’m not going to dress that up. I need it financially and I want it professionally and those two things existing together doesn’t make either of them less true.”
“Most candidates tell me they’re passionate about media and communications.”
“Most candidates are lying,” I said. “I actually am passionate about it but I’m also twenty-three years old with forty — “ I stopped. Recalibrated. “With a tight budget and a mother who needs help with rent. Passion doesn’t pay the electricity bill. This job does. Both things are true and I’d rather you know both things than one.”
The silence that followed was the specific kind that meant something was being decided.
Dominic Blackwell picked the folder back up.
“The position involves managing external communications for three of our subsidiary brands simultaneously,” he said. “Deadlines that don’t move. Clients who will call you at eleven at night and expect answers. A pace that has made four of your predecessors quit inside of six months.” He looked at me over the top of the folder. “Still interested.”
“More interested,” I said.
Something moved in his jaw.
“You start Monday,” he said.
He stood up.
Picked up the folder.
Walked toward the door.
And then he stopped with his hand on the frame and turned back around and looked at me across the length of the conference table with those dark eyes that held contact a beat longer than necessary.
“Ms. Mensah,” he said.
“Mr. Blackwell,” I said back. Deliberate.
The corner of his mouth. One degree. There and gone.
“Don’t wear red on Monday,” he said.
He walked out.
I sat at the conference table alone and looked at the door he had just walked through and felt my heart doing something completely unauthorized.
Don’t wear red on Monday.
Which meant he noticed the red.
Which meant I was absolutely wearing red on Monday.
- Writer
