CHAPTER 3 Zara Has a Lead
660 Words
The job application pile on the kitchen table had developed its own ecosystem by the time Zara burst through the front door on a Tuesday afternoon with the energy of someone who had been holding something in for the entire bus ride home.
"I have news," Zara announced, dropping her bag on the floor and pointing at Ava with the authority of a person who had decided the news was important enough to forgo a greeting. "Good news." Potentially life-changing news. Sit down."
"I am already sitting down," Ava said. She was at the kitchen table with her laptop open and a cup of tea that had gone cold an hour ago and a cover letter that was not improving no matter how many times she rewrote the opening paragraph.
"Then sit down more intentionally." Zara pulled out the chair across from her and sat with the focused energy of someone about to deliver a presentation. "So you know my client, the one with the branding project? Marcus? Works downtown?"
"The one who always pays late?"
"The very one. He was telling me today about a position that just opened up at his company's parent corporation. Executive assistant to the head of the whole operation. Good salary, real career track, the kind of job that actually goes somewhere." Zara paused for effect. "At Varek Industries."
The kitchen was quiet for a moment.
"Zara," Ava said.
"Before you say anything."
"You know who works at Varek Industries."
"Riven Varek is not the whole company, Ava. He is not even an important part of the company. He is the younger brother. The current head of the operation is the eldest, Valdris Varek, and by all accounts he is so serious and work-focused that he barely registers other human beings exist." Zara leaned forward. "This is a real job. The kind you went to university for. The kind that pays enough that you could stop working nights at Vega and actually sleep like a normal person."
Ava looked at the stack of applications on the corner of the table. Forty-seven of them over the past three months. Eleven rejections, the rest silence. She was a good candidate on paper. She knew that. The market was simply saturated with good candidates on paper, and she was running out of ways to make herself sound different from all of them.
"The Varek name carries certain associations," she said carefully.
"Every powerful family in Ashenvale carries certain associations," Zara said. "That does not mean you do not pay your rent. Which, for the record, is due in eleven days, and we are currently forty short."
Ava closed her laptop. She looked at her cold tea. She thought about the third paragraph of the cover letter that would not cooperate, the eleven rejections, the thirty-six silences and the particular exhaustion of trying very hard at something that kept not working.
"Send me the listing," she said.
Zara's face did the thing it did when she was very pleased with herself but was trying to be restrained about it. "Already sent. It is in your inbox. I may have also told Marcus to put in a good word with the HR department."
"Zara."
"You are welcome," Zara said serenely, and went to put the kettle on.
Ava opened her inbox. The listing was there, clean and formal, with the Varek Industries logo at the top in navy and gold. She read through it twice. The salary was exactly what she needed it to be. The responsibilities were things she could do. The location was twenty minutes from the flat by train.
She thought about Riven Varek and his slow smile and the way he had said all right with that unreadable expression.
Then she thought about forty-seven applications and eleven rejections and forty short on rent.
She opened a new document and started writing a cover letter that was not going to need seventeen drafts to get right.
- Writer
