I picked up my pace, ducked into a diner, and went straight to the restroom.
No sweat stains, thank God. Everything else was another matter: my bangs were plastered to my forehead, the mascara my mother had told me looked like something a mail-order bride would wear had run, and the powder I’d delicately applied to what the Woolworth’s saleswoman called my “problem areas” was thick as Bisquick. I splashed my face with water and was about to towel it off when someone knocked on the door.
“Just a minute.”
The knocking continued.
“Occupied!”
The person on the other side jiggled the knob.
Cracking the door open, I stuck my dripping face out. “Be right out,” I told the man with a newspaper tucked under his arm, and slammed the door. Hiking up my skirt, I wedged a folded-up paper towel between my underwear and girdle and checked my watch: twenty-five minutes until my interview.
Sidney, my ex-boyfriend, if you could call him that, had first told me about the job opening one night over pizza and beers at the Bayou. He was one of those D.C. guys who pride themselves on being in the know, and he knew I’d been trying to land a government gig since graduating two years earlier. But entry-level positions had become scarce and you usually had to know someone who knew someone to get an in. Sidney was my in. He had a job at the State Department and heard about the open typist position from a friend of a friend. I knew it’d be a long shot, as my typing and shorthand skills were just okay and my only other work experience had been answering phones for an almost-retired litigator who wore ill-fitting suits. But Sidney said I was a shoo-in because he’d put in a word with someone he knew at the Agency. I suspected he didn’t really know anyone at the Agency with whom to put in a word, but I thanked him anyway. When Sidney leaned in for a kiss, I extended my hand and thanked him again.
I left the bathroom, relieved to see that the man with the newspaper was gone. I ordered a large Coca-Cola, and the little Greek man behind the counter gave it to me with a wink. “Rough start?” he asked. Nodding, I guzzled down the soda. “Thanks,” I said, sliding a nickel across the counter. He pushed it back with one finger. “My treat,” he said, and winked again.
* * *
—
I arrived fifteen minutes early at the black iron gates leading into the complex of large gray and red brick buildings on Navy Hill. Five minutes would’ve been respectable, but fifteen minutes early meant I had to walk around the block three times before entering. By then, I was a sweaty mess all over again. As I pushed the heavy door, I expected to be greeted with a blast of delicious air conditioning, but was hit only with more hot air.
After waiting in the inspection line, it was my turn to have my ID checked against the list of preapproved visitors. But as I went to get it, a white-haired man in round wire-rimmed glasses pushed past me, knocking into me and causing me to drop my handbag. My meager one-page résumé fell to the floor. The man who’d breezed past security turned and came back. He picked it up, handing me my now smudged and slightly embellished yet still meager list of accomplishments and qualifications with a “Here you go, miss.” Then he was off before I could respond.
* * *
—
In the elevator, I licked my fingertip and scratched at the smudge on my résumé. It only made it worse, and I cursed myself for not bringing an extra copy. I’d written it with the help of a book I checked out from the library titled How to Land the Job Fair and Square! I formatted the résumé per the book’s instructions, even paying extra for the heavier off-white paper stock. The smudged résumé was what the book would call “amateur hour.”
To make matters worse, in the process of picking it up, I’d caused the paper towel I’d inserted in the bathroom to ride up, and I could feel it pressing against the small of my back. I told myself not to think of it, which made me think of it even more.
“Where you headed?” the woman next to me asked, her finger hovering over the buttons.
“Oh,” I said. “Three. No, four.”
“Interview?”
I held up the smudged résumé.
“Typist?”
“How’d you know?”
“I’m pretty good at making quick assessments.” The woman extended her hand. She had wide-set eyes and full lips with waxy red lipstick that resembled two Swedish Fish. “Lonnie Reynolds,” she said. “Been at the Agency since before it was the Agency.” She seemed simultaneously proud and tired of that fact. When she shook my hand, I noticed a band of white skin on her ring finger. She noticed me notice the missing ring and held my gaze for an uncomfortable moment. The elevator dinged at the third floor.
“Any advice?” I asked as she stepped out.
“Type fast. Don’t ask questions. And don’t take any shit.” As two men got into the elevator, I heard her call out from behind them, “And that was Dulles who ran into you, by the way.”
Before I could ask who that was, the doors closed.
* * *
—
On the fourth floor, the receptionist greeted me by pointing to the row of plastic chairs lining the wall where two women were already seated. I took a seat and felt the paper towel shift. I cursed myself for not coming up earlier when I’d had the chance.
To my right was an older woman wearing a heavy green cardigan that looked about two decades old and a long brown corduroy skirt. She was dressed more like a schoolmarm than a shorthand typist, or what I’d envisioned a shorthand typist to look like, and I scolded myself for being so judgmental. She held her résumé on her lap, pinched between her index fingers and thumbs. Was she as nervous as I was? Was she coming back to work after her kids had left the nest? Had she started a new career, taking business classes at night, wanting to do something new? She looked at me and whispered “Good luck.” I smiled and told myself to knock it off.
I checked the time on the wall clock as an excuse to check out the petite brunette seated to my left. She seemed just out of secretarial school—twenty, maybe, but she didn’t look a day over sixteen. Prettier than me, she wore a coat of glossy pink nail polish the color of ballet slippers. She had one of those hairstyles that looked as if it had taken a lot of time and bobby pins to achieve. And she wore an outfit that looked new: a long-sleeved dress with a white collar and hound’s-tooth heels. It was the kind of dress I would’ve seen in a department store window and wished I could buy instead of having to go home and draw it on a piece of paper so my mother could make me a knockoff. My own blasted wool skirt was a copy of a lovely gray one I’d seen on a mannequin in a Garfinckel’s widow display a year earlier.