THE INTERVIEW

17: The Face

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Q83. "What do you have left to give?"

The question was the same as before, but different now. Before, Dale had struggled to answer. Now the answer came easily, rising from somewhere calm and empty.

"Whatever you need," he said. "Whatever the job requires. I don't have—" He paused, searching for the right words. "I don't have anything holding me back anymore. No weight. No—" The words that would have described what was missing wouldn't come, because the things themselves were gone. "I'm ready to work."

"That's good, Dale." Ms. Vance made a note. Her handwriting was small and precise, and Dale realized he couldn't read it—not because of the angle, but because the letters seemed to shift when he looked at them, rearranging themselves into patterns he couldn't parse. "That's very good."

"Is it?" He heard himself ask the question, but he wasn't sure why he was asking. "Is it good?"

"It's exactly what we're looking for." She looked up from her notes, and her eyes caught his, and something in them—

He looked away. He didn't want to see what was in her eyes. He didn't want to see himself in there, small and drowning.

---

Q84. "Is there anything you'd like to keep? From before?"

Dale considered the question. Keep. From before. The words had meaning, he knew they did, but the meaning was slippery, hard to hold.

"I don't—" He frowned. "I don't understand the question."

"From your old life. The one before this interview. Is there anything you'd like to hold onto? Any memories, any feelings, any attachments?"

He thought about it. There had been—there must have been—things that mattered. People. Faces. But when he reached for them, he found only impressions. A woman who hummed off-key in a kitchen. A younger woman who had stopped reaching for him. A man with hands that—that had some quality he couldn't quite remember.

"I don't think so," he said slowly. "I think—I think I've already let go of everything I needed to let go of."

"Even the good things?"

"Were there good things?" The question came out genuine, curious. He knew there must have been. A life didn't last fifty-four years without some good things. But when he tried to find them, he found only the shape of good things—the knowledge that they had existed, without the content of what they had been.

"There were," Ms. Vance said quietly. "But they're not yours anymore."

"No." Dale nodded. It made sense, in a way he couldn't quite articulate. "No, they're not mine anymore."

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Q85. "Do you understand what you're agreeing to?"

The question should have alarmed him. Should have triggered some defensive instinct, some self-protective reflex. But Dale was past alarm. Past defense. He was floating now, untethered from the person he'd been when he walked through the door.

"I'm agreeing to—" He paused. What was he agreeing to? A job. An interview. A chance to be useful again. "I'm agreeing to work hard. To show up. To do whatever Linden Creek needs me to do."

"And to let go of what you don't need anymore."

"Yes." The word came out easy, natural. "To let go of what I don't need."

"The memories that hurt. The failures that haunt you. The version of yourself that has been suffering for so long."

"Yes."

"You understand that once you let go, you can't get it back."

Dale thought about his father's voice, already gone. His mother's voice, gone. His daughter's birthday, the color of his wife's eyes, the weight of his own name on his tongue. All of it slipping away, piece by piece, question by question.

"I understand," he said.

"And you agree?"

The door was behind him. He knew it was there. He could feel it at his back, patient and present. The way out. The way back to the waiting room, the parking lot, the car, the highway, the life he'd been living before he walked into this room.

But that life was unbearable. That life was 3 AM panic and 247 applications and a wife who said you've got this in a voice that no longer believed it. That life was failure and shame and the slow erosion of everything he'd ever thought he was.

This—whatever this was—at least it would be different.

"I agree," Dale said.

Ms. Vance nodded. She made a note on her legal pad—the first note she'd made in a long time.

"One more question," she said. "And then we're done."

---

Q86. "Are you ready to let go?"

Dale looked at her. At her face, which was and wasn't her face. At her eyes, which held something that might have been compassion or might have been hunger or might have been nothing at all.

Something flickered across her features. A shift, a ripple, like a reflection in disturbed water. For just a moment—less than a moment, a fraction of a heartbeat—he saw someone else looking back at him.

He saw himself.

His own eyes, tired and bloodshot. His own mouth, set in a line of exhausted resignation. His own face, worn down by fifty-four years of labor and eleven months of failure, staring back at him from across the table.

Then she was herself again. Ms. Vance. The interviewer. The stranger who had been asking him questions for—how long? Hours. Days. A lifetime.

"Yes," he said. "I'm ready."

And something in him—some final resistance, some last stubborn thread of the person he'd been—went quiet. Went still. Let go.

The clock on the wall showed 3:47.

The water stain spread across the ceiling, dark and vast, covering everything.

The door behind him waited, patient and unused.

And Dale Kinney sat in his chair and felt himself become lighter, emptier, freer. Ready to be filled with something new.

"Good," Ms. Vance said. "Then let's finish."

---

She stood. The movement was smooth, unhurried, that same liquid grace she'd had throughout the interview. She moved to the filing cabinet against the wall—a filing cabinet Dale was certain hadn't been there before, though he couldn't remember the wall being empty either—and opened a drawer.

"The paperwork is straightforward," she said, pulling out a folder. "Standard offer letter, benefits enrollment, a few other forms. It shouldn't take long."

She returned to the table and set the folder in front of him. It was thin—just a few pages, the kind of documents he'd signed a hundred times before. The kind of documents that made things official, that transformed intention into commitment, that sealed whatever bargain had been struck.

"Take your time," she said. "Read everything carefully. And when you're ready, sign where indicated."

Dale opened the folder. Inside were several pages of dense text—paragraphs and clauses and legal language that swam before his eyes. He tried to focus on the words, to understand what he was agreeing to, but they wouldn't stay still. They shifted and rearranged themselves, forming patterns he couldn't parse, meanings he couldn't grasp.

It didn't matter. The content didn't matter. He was being offered a job. That was all he needed to know.

He picked up the pen Ms. Vance had left beside the folder—silver, heavy, catching the flat fluorescent light.

"Sign where indicated," Ms. Vance said again. "And then we're done."

Dale turned to the first signature line. The pen felt strange in his hand—heavier than a pen should be, or lighter, he couldn't quite tell. He pressed the tip to the paper.

And paused.

His name. He needed to sign his name. But what was—

The moment stretched. The room held its breath.

Dale Kinney.

The name surfaced from somewhere deep, the last thing left, rising through the emptiness like a bubble through dark water.

He wrote it. His hand moved, forming the letters, and he watched as if from a distance. The signature looked like his signature—he recognized the loops, the slant—but it felt like someone else's name. Someone he used to be.

He signed the second page. The third. Each signature came easier than the last, the name becoming less meaningful with each repetition. By the final page, it was just shapes on paper. Just ink arranged in a pattern that meant something to someone, somewhere.

"Wonderful." Ms. Vance collected the folder, closed it, tucked it under her arm. "Welcome to Linden Creek, Dale. We're very pleased to have you."

"Thank you," he said. The words came automatically, without feeling behind them. "I'm pleased to be here."

"You'll start Monday. Report to this address at 8 AM." She handed him a card—plain white, with an address printed in simple black text. He looked at it without really seeing it. "Do you have any questions about what to expect?"

"No." He put the card in his pocket, next to the phone he'd forgotten he had. "I'll be there."

"I know you will." Ms. Vance extended her hand. Her skin was cool when he shook it, cooler than it should have been. "It's been a pleasure, Dale. I think you're going to do very well here."

"Thank you," he said, for the third time. It was the only response he seemed to have left.

Ms. Vance released his hand and moved toward the door behind her—the door she'd gone through earlier, the door to somewhere else.

"The exit is behind you," she said, pausing at the threshold. "Do you remember the way out?"

Dale turned and looked at the door. The door he'd come through, hours ago—or days ago, or minutes ago, he couldn't be sure. It was still there. Brown wood, brass handle, ordinary in every way.

"Yes," he said. "I remember."

"Good." Ms. Vance smiled one last time. And then she was gone, through the door, and Dale was alone in the room.

He sat for a moment, trying to remember what he was supposed to do next. There was something—some sequence of actions that would take him from here to there, from this room to outside, from the interview to whatever came after.

Stand up. That was first. He needed to stand up.

He stood. His body ached—back, knees, neck—in ways he hadn't noticed while sitting. How long had he been in that chair? He didn't know. It didn't matter.

Walk to the door. That was next.

He walked. The carpet was gray beneath his feet, institutional and forgettable. The walls were beige. The clock on the wall showed—

5:15 PM.

He stopped. Looked at the clock. 5:15. The hands were moving now, the second hand ticking forward in its steady rhythm. Time had started again.

5:15 PM. He'd arrived at nine. Eight hours. He'd been in this room for eight hours.

It didn't feel like eight hours. It didn't feel like anything. It felt like he'd walked in a moment ago and also like he'd always been here.

Dale turned away from the clock. He put his hand on the doorknob—brass, cool to the touch—and opened the door.

The hallway stretched before him, fluorescent-lit and empty. Doors on either side, all of them closed. The same hallway he'd walked through that morning, following Ms. Vance, not counting his steps.

He didn't count now either. He just walked. One foot in front of the other, moving toward the exit, toward the waiting room, toward outside.

Toward home.