Sushi for One? by Camy Tang

dead broke. She had enough to survive on for years since she lived at home, but no loan officer would touch her now. Goodbye, condo.
    Her cell rang. “Hello?”
    “Alexis Sakai?”
    “Yes.” She straightened.
    “This is Wendy Tran from SPZ Human Resources. We received your résumé, and we’d like to bring you in for an interview. Are you free tomorrow?”

    Aaack! She was late!
    Lex leaped into her klunk-mobile and peeled out of the driveway. She navigated Highway 85 like a pro, zipping in and out as she drove north to Sunnyvale. Other drivers bore down on their horns with relish.
    She got onto De Anza Boulevard. SPZ’s massive square office building lay just ahead. She darted into the right lane — Squeeeeeal! Bam!
    The jolting impact to her right front slammed her car to a halt.
    Ripping pain across her chest. Then eerie silence.
    Bright sunlight. No sounds.
    She gasped in a heaving breath. Then another. Her ears started working again, and she heard the honking from the cars stuck behind her.
    Her chest hurt. Was she having a heart attack? No, the seatbelt had cut through the thin fabric of her interview blouse. A red swatch burned across her breastbone.
    This wasn’t happening. This wasn’t happening. This wasn’t happening.
    The other driver, an older man who looked frighteningly like Everett, had a mouth worse than a sailor. Lex remembered her dad’s admonitions to always keep her trap shut, especially if it just might be entirely, horrifically, and irrefutably her fault. She traded insurance information.
    The car didn’t look that bad. Her bumper was only hanging off a little — nothing duct tape wouldn’t fix, right? And while the frame had dented inward and scraped against her right front tire, couldn’t a mechanic just pound it back into shape?
    Lucky for her, the accident happened only a few feet from the entrance to a strip mall parking lot. She had more than enough strength to push her tiny car the few feet into a stall.
    Except her interview started thirty minutes ago and she smelled like rubber tires.
    Lex jogged — well, teetered as fast as she could in pumps — to the SPZ building a block down. She burst through the glass doors into cool air conditioning and collapsed at the receptionist’s desk. “Lex Sakai, and I’m late for my interview.”
    Instead of a receptionist, a security guard sat at the desk and gave her a bored look. He punched in a few keys, a mini-printer buzzed out with her information on a card, and he handed her the ID tag. “Go down the hall, turn left, and wait in Conference Room C12.”
    Lex clipped down the hallway, peeking briefly into a few open doors. A couple large empty offices, a couple conference rooms. She curbed left around the corner.
    “Hey!”
    Something warm — no, make that something hot splashed on her blouse. Lex bent over too late — some of it trickled down her shirt into her underwear.
    Coffee. Extra-strong, from the smell. All over her white blouse and staining a narrow vertical strip down her pencil skirt.
    A heavily made-up woman glared at her. “Serves you right for not watching where you’re going.”
    The nerve! “You could use a few less calories anyway, toots.”
    The woman opened her fuchsia lips in a soundless gasp. Then with a high-pitched grunt, she huffed off. Lex felt hot enough to steam the coffee out of her clothes as she watched the woman waddle into an office and slam the door.
    Lex hadn’t passed any restrooms, so she moved on until she saw a break—room — probably where the coffee came from. She nabbed some paper towels and hustled back to conference room C12.
    She dabbed at the stain while she waited. Ten minutes. Twenty minutes.
    What gives?
    She made her way back to the receptionist’s desk. A different security guard sat behind the counter.
    “I came in twenty minutes ago and the other guy told me to go to conference room C12, but no one’s come to meet me yet.”
    “Name?”
    Lex stabbed a finger at her name