The Dress. The Coffee. The Man.
I was not supposed to wear the red dress.
Simone told me to wear the navy blue one — the conservative one, the one that said I am a serious professional person who takes things seriously and not the one that said I know exactly what this does and I wore it anyway. The navy blue dress was the correct dress for a job interview at one of the most powerful media companies in Chicago. The navy blue dress was what a sensible person wore when they needed a job badly enough that they had checked their bank balance four times before leaving the apartment just to confirm that yes, forty-seven dollars was really all that was standing between her and a very dark and very cold apartment on the South Side.
I wore the red dress.
In my defense the navy blue one had a safety pin holding the left strap together and I was not going to walk into Blackwell Industries held together by a safety pin. I had some standards. Not many, given the forty-seven dollars, but some.
I left my apartment at seven forty-five for a nine o’clock interview because the 29 bus was not to be trusted and I needed a coffee before I sat across from anyone important and pretended to be calm. I got the coffee from the cart on Michigan Avenue — large, dark roast, no sugar because I needed the bitterness to keep me sharp — and I walked the last four blocks to the Blackwell building with my résumé in one hand and my coffee in the other and my head up and my face arranged into the specific expression I had been practicing in the bathroom mirror since six that morning.
Competent. Confident. Completely unbothered.
I was none of those things but I had been performing them since I was sixteen and by now the performance was indistinguishable from the real thing.
The Blackwell Industries building was forty-two floors of black glass and steel that sat on Michigan Avenue like it had decided the street belonged to it and was waiting for someone to argue. The lobby had marble floors and ceilings so high you had to tilt your head back to find them and a front desk staffed by a woman so polished she looked like she had been installed rather than hired.
I walked through the revolving door.
I checked in at the desk.
I rode the elevator to the thirty-first floor.
And then the elevator doors opened and I stepped out looking at my phone because Simone had texted something that required an immediate response and I walked directly into a wall.
Except the wall was warm.
And the wall made a sound.
And then the coffee — my large dark roast no sugar coffee that I needed to keep me sharp — left my hand entirely and went somewhere that was not the floor.
I looked up.
The man I had walked into was not a wall. He was close — six three, dark suit, shoulders that had clearly never received the memo that they were supposed to stop at some point. He was looking down at his shirt. His very white shirt. His very white shirt that was now a very dark brown shirt from the collar to the second button.
I looked at the shirt.
I looked at his face.
He looked at me.
Dark eyes. Sharp jaw. The specific expression of a man who had not been surprised by anything in a very long time and was currently recalibrating.
“I am so sorry,” I said immediately. “I wasn’t looking where I was going and I —”
“No,” he said.
I stopped.
“I mean —” I started again.
“You’re not sorry,” he said. His voice was low and even and had the specific quality of someone who spoke at a volume that required the room to come to them. “You’re embarrassed. Those aren’t the same thing.”
I stared at him.
Of all the things I had prepared for this morning — the interview questions, the salary negotiation, the firm handshake — I had not prepared for a man in a ruined shirt to look me in the eye after I destroyed his morning and tell me the precise emotional state I was actually in.
“I’m both,” I said.
Something shifted in his face. Not a smile — the infrastructure of one. The place where a smile would be if this man had decided to have one.
“Fair enough,” he said.
He looked at his shirt one more time. Looked back at me. And then he walked past me toward the elevator I had just come out of without another word.
I stood in the thirty-first floor corridor of Blackwell Industries in my red dress with an empty coffee cup in my hand and watched the elevator doors close behind him.
Then a woman appeared at my elbow — assistant, early thirties, the expression of someone who had just witnessed something she was going to be thinking about for the rest of the day.
“Ms. Mensah?” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
“Mr. Blackwell will see you in ten minutes,” she said. “He just needs to — change.”
I looked at her.
“Mr. Blackwell,” I said slowly.
“Yes,” she said. “Dominic Blackwell. CEO.” She looked at my empty cup. “Can I get you another coffee while you wait?”
I looked at the elevator.
At the closed doors.
At the floor where my career had just ended before it began.
“No,” I said. “I think I’ve done enough with coffee today.”
