THE INTERVIEW

16: The Unforgivable II

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Q80. "Tell me your wife's name."

"Linda." The answer came quickly, automatically. "Her name is Linda."

"Linda what?"

"Linda—" The pause was brief, barely noticeable. "Linda Kinney. Linda Marie Kinney."

"Good. And how long have you been married?"

"Thirty-one years. Since we were twenty-three."

"What was her maiden name?"

"Her—" Dale frowned. The answer was there, he knew it was there. They'd joked about it once—about how glad she was to get rid of it, something forgettable, something she'd never liked. "Her maiden name was—"

It wasn't there.

He could see Linda at the altar. The white dress—or had she worn white? He'd said white earlier, hadn't he? But the image was soft now, unreliable. And her name before it was his name—

"It was—" He closed his eyes, reaching. "It started with—" But he couldn't find the letter. Couldn't find anything. Just blank space where the memory should be.

"It's okay." Ms. Vance's voice was gentle. "It's not important."

"It is important." Dale opened his eyes. "She was Linda—she was Linda something before she was Linda Kinney. I knew that name for years. I signed it on cards, I wrote it on wedding invitations, I—"

"But you don't remember it now."

"No." The word came out small, defeated. "No, I don't remember it now."

Ms. Vance made a note. The scratch of pen on paper seemed very loud in the silence.

---

Q81. "Tell me the color of her eyes."

Dale opened his mouth to answer. Brown, he thought. Or—

"They're—"

He tried to see them. Linda's eyes, looking at him across the breakfast table, looking at him in bed at night, looking at him in the doorway that morning saying you've got this. He'd looked into those eyes for thirty-one years. He knew those eyes.

"They're—blue." He said it with conviction. "Blue."

"You're sure?"

"I'm—" He wasn't sure. As soon as he'd said blue, doubt crept in. Were they blue? Or were they brown? Or were they—he'd thought brown a moment ago. What color had he thought before that?

"They might be—" He stopped. "I think they're—"

"You don't know."

"I know." His voice was fierce now, defensive. "I've looked at her every day for thirty-one years. I know what color her eyes are. They're—"

He couldn't say it. Couldn't commit to an answer because both answers—every answer—felt wrong. Blue. Brown. Green. He'd said the colors in his head and none of them stuck. None of them felt like the truth.

"They're hers," he said finally, and his voice was broken. "They're Linda's eyes. And I don't—I can't—"

"It's okay, Dale."

"It's not okay." He was shaking now, his whole body trembling. "What color are my wife's eyes? Why can't I answer that? What's happening to me?"

Ms. Vance set down her pen. She folded her hands on the table and looked at him with that patient, colorless gaze.

"You're letting go," she said quietly. "That's what's happening. You're letting go of things you don't need anymore."

"I need—" He choked on the words. "I need to know what color my wife's eyes are. I need to know my own name without having to think about it. I need—"

"What do you need, Dale?"

He stared at her. At her calm face, her composed posture, her eyes that might have been any color at all.

"I need this to stop," he whispered. "I need to go home. I need—"

"The interview is almost over." Her voice was soothing, hypnotic. "Just a few more questions. And then you can go home. Then you'll have your answer."

The door was behind him. He could feel it there, that patient presence. The exit. The way out.

He didn't turn around.

"A few more questions," he repeated.

"Yes. Just a few more."

Dale nodded. His hands were still shaking. His head was pounding. His wife's eyes were—were—

He couldn't remember.

But he was so close now. So close to the end.

"Okay," he said. "A few more questions."

---

Q82. "What are you willing to give up for this job?"

The question should have been simple. A standard interview question, the kind he'd answered a hundred times. I'm willing to work hard, to go the extra mile, to be flexible with my schedule.

But that wasn't what she was asking. He knew that wasn't what she was asking.

"I've already given up so much," he said slowly. "For work. For every job I've ever had. Time with my family. My health. My—" He stopped. "I don't know what else I have to give."

"There's always something else."

"Like what?"

Ms. Vance leaned forward slightly. It was the first time she'd moved toward him since the interview began, the first break in her composed stillness. Her eyes held his, and in them he saw—

He saw himself.

Not a reflection. Not a trick of the light. He saw himself in her eyes, tiny and trapped, a small figure drowning in that not-quite-colored depth.

"What would you give up to feel useful again?" Her voice was soft, almost hypnotic. "To wake up in the morning with somewhere to go? To look Linda in the eye and tell her you got the job?"

"Anything." The word came out before he could stop it. "I'd give up anything."

"Would you give up the memories that haunt you? The failures that keep you awake at 3 AM?"

"Yes." The answer was immediate. The 3 AM catalog of mistakes, the endless replay of everything he'd done wrong—who wouldn't give that up?

"Would you give up the guilt? The weight of all the ways you've failed the people you love?"

"Yes." The guilt was crushing. Had been crushing him for years. To be free of it—

"Would you give up the parts of yourself that don't serve you anymore? The old shames, the outdated fears, the person you used to be that has no place in who you need to become?"

"I—" He hesitated. This was different. This wasn't giving up bad memories. This was giving up himself. "I don't understand."

"You said you were hollowed out. That you've given everything. But there's still something left, Dale. There's still the core of you—the thing that holds all the pain, all the doubt, all the years of feeling like you're not enough." She paused. "Would you give that up? If it meant you could finally be useful? Finally be at peace?"

Dale stared at her. At her calm face, her patient eyes. At the face that seemed, for just a moment, to flicker—to shift into something else, something that looked almost like his own reflection.

"I don't know," he said. "I don't know if I can give that up. I don't know if there'd be anything left."

"There would be something left." She sat back, composed once more. "There would be an employee. Reliable. Competent. Grateful for the opportunity. Free from all the weight you've been carrying."

"But would it still be me?"

The question hung in the air. Ms. Vance didn't answer immediately. The clock showed 3:47. The water stain spread across the ceiling, darker now, the brown deepening toward black at the center. The room waited.

"Does it matter?" she asked finally. "If you're useful? If you're employed? If you can go home and tell Linda you got the job?" She tilted her head slightly. "Does it matter if it's you, as long as it's someone who can do the things you can't?"

Dale thought about it. He thought about Linda's face, the careful hope she tried to hide every time he went to an interview. He thought about the mortgage, the credit cards, the math that didn't work. He thought about the 3 AM panic, the catalog of failures, the crushing weight of being a man who couldn't provide.

What would it be like to be free of all that? To be someone who could do the job without the baggage? To be useful, finally, after eleven months of being useless?

"Maybe," he said slowly. "Maybe it doesn't matter."

Ms. Vance smiled. And for just a moment—so brief he might have imagined it—her smile looked like his smile. Her face looked like his face. As if she was wearing him, or becoming him, or showing him what he would become.

"Good," she said. "Then let's continue."

---

The room had changed.

Dale couldn't say how, exactly. The walls were the same beige. The ceiling was the same yellowed acoustic tile, though the water stain had spread to cover nearly half of it now. The table, the chairs, the legal pad—all the same.

But something was different. The air felt thicker. The light felt dimmer. The silence felt deeper, as if the room had drawn a breath and was holding it, waiting.

Ms. Vance picked up her pen.

"We're entering the final phase of the interview," she said. "These last questions are—different from what's come before. More direct. More personal. I need you to answer as honestly as you've been answering all along. Can you do that?"

"I've been honest," Dale said. His voice sounded strange to him—thin, reedy, not quite his own. "I've told you everything."

"You've told me a great deal. But there's more. There's always more." She turned to a fresh page on the legal pad. "Are you ready?"

The door was behind him. He knew it was there. He could feel it, distant now, like something from a dream he was forgetting.

"I'm ready," he said.

Ms. Vance nodded. And when she spoke, her voice was different—softer, more intimate, as if she was speaking directly into his mind rather than across the table.

"Then let's finish this."