Exclusive Interview by Ava Lore Page A

parents on Supernanny? They can't hear you, you know. They're in the TV."
    I opened my mouth to reply, but honestly, I couldn't think of the answers to any of those questions, and Rose's face told me she knew it.
    “See? You need something to take your mind off things. Therefore you are getting a job today.”
    Defeated, I let her have her way with me. Rose sat me down in front of her computer, pulled up Craigslist, and found every listing in the downtown LA area for a bartender. Then, because those listings were slim, she looked for 'housekeeper' and 'maid'.
    "What?" I said in protest. "What makes you think I'd be a housekeeper?"
    "Because A, judging by how fanatically you clean my apartment, you'd be good at it, B, the pay is better than fast food, which I don't think you'd get into anyway, and C, it doesn't pay as much as tending bar, but it's an honest living."
    Says the woman with a law degree, I thought, but I sucked on those sour grapes in silence.
    With a click of her mouse, Rose sent no fewer than ten job openings to her printer, seven of which were for a maid or housekeeper. Then she shoved me into the shower and supervised me while I got dressed to make sure I was actually going to drag my carcass out of the apartment. As I pulled on clothing appropriate to a bartending gig—which were totally inappropriate elsewhere—she typed numbers, information on companies, and addresses into my phone. When I was dressed to my satisfaction, she pressed a fifty dollar bill into my hand, gave me a bus schedule and a file full of the printouts and shoved me out the door.
    I stumbled into the light of the rising LA sun. It was going to be another beautiful day in southern California, and I was pretty sure it was going to just go downhill from here.
    “Have fun!” Rose called from the door of her apartment. Then she went back inside and slammed the door.
    “Thanks,” I said.
    She meant well. To Rose, the right job could cure, in one fell swoop, my broken heart, my wrecked life, and my degenerate homelessness, though she only knew about the last bit. I hadn't shared the other parts with her. I'd burdened her enough already.
    With a sigh, I shoved the file folder into my messenger bag, checked the bus schedule, and started down the street, determined to, if not find a job, then to at least try.
    After all, who knew? Maybe the right job would cure all my problems.
    I walked into the rising sun.
    ––––––––
    W hen I opened the door to the lobby of office suite 305—my final application of the day— fifteen well-coiffed heads whirled around. Fifteen pairs of shrewd eyes narrowed as they scoped me out. Fifteen noses lifted higher in the air when they processed what they saw. Then a tiny bit of tension melted away from fifteen pairs of smartly dressed shoulders as, almost in unison, the other applicants turned back around, dismissing me from the competition for the job.
    It was a bit unnerving, to tell the truth, but I really should have twigged to the fact that somewhere, somehow, some wires had been crossed. After all, every single applicant was dressed in some variation of a business suit. Pressed, prim, and utterly proper in dark fabrics, white shirts and polished shoes. Each one had a shiny leather briefcases with gleaming brass buckles, and some of the briefcases even had those little spinny numbers on the locks.
    Me? I wore a sparkly black- and silver-striped tube top, skinny jeans from the sale rack at H&M, a ratty pair of Chuck's that I'd had since my senior year in high school, and an old white polyester tuxedo jacket passed down to me by my grandfather from his '71 wedding. The buttons had long since fallen off the sleeves, so I wore them rolled up to my elbows. It was my bartending uniform. You had to look somewhat hip to land the good gigs at places where rich yuppies liked to go, so it's safe to say I was severely underdressed compared to everyone else.
    So yeah, that should have tipped me off.