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One of the few places where you must not have friends, could never have friends, was the HR department. Two thousand years in the future would do little to change that rule. So when Shiori sat down in the waiting area to skim the magazines, she did her best to keep her face neutral and her ears fixed on the conversation happening just underneath the steady sounds of the news broadcast.
"I understand your situation... stress. Anyone may have done the same."
The voice stopped. Shiori tipped her head back and squinted against the light. Her fingertips slid along the slick pages of the article as if seeking braille.
The voice returned, "I assure you, we have a high tolerance for failure." The last word clipped short. Preface to what might have been a longer statement except that the caller--for it had to be a telephone conversation, Shiori determined--had interrupted.
She would have liked to have heard more. The perceived disagreement had uncoiled the nervous tension gripping her shoulders. Everything has a cost. What piece of herself would she leave behind this time?
Her fingers slid low catching the hem of her shirt, twisting her thumb so the fabric wrapped snug around her skin like a sleeping bag.
"Shiori?" The voice from the phone conversation emerged.
Shiori would have said the woman looked familiar, but after a while most women did. Dark hair, light hair. Tall or short. Full lips or long noses. Soft skin or tense. Her hand broke free as Shiori stood, extending her arm in greeting. Greeting did not equal trust. Many things did not come packaged with the associated goodness of youthful expectations. Sex did not equal love. Success did not equal joy. Children did not equal family.
"Yes," Shiori belatedly answered as the handshake lasted a moment too long. The woman's eyes noticeably lingered. Just because youthful expectations were untrue, it did not mean that expectations were nonexistent.
In past years, Shiori had been an actress. She dug deeply to draw on that former strength. The application didn't ask for an actress, but to get the job, which fell far outside her qualifications, Shiori was going to need award winning skills to portray herself as something she was not.
"We've met before?" The woman asked. Shiori's mouth smiled, whimsical and sweet. A bashful tilt to her head so that long left brown hair could swing over her lowered eyes. Inside, Shiori's thoughts raced. Could she remember? Would it help her to remember? Red hair, broad shoulders, narrow hips, long toes. Gentle lips. Bruises. She'd known too many women.
"Not likely." Shiori let the smile reach her eyes. The lowered lids nearly closed off all sight even as she turned her harmless expression toward the older woman. "I just have one of those faces. I'm often mistaken for other people."
"That's possible. Most things are possible. Even meeting someone a second time." The woman's words floated around the room gently enough. Shiori tried not to think on them too much. Instead, she caught a glimpse of her own reflection against a glass cabinet.
"I see that you have several long term employees here." Shiori refrained from pressing her prints against the glass, but found her hand reaching out into an imaginary touch of the decorative clocks and paperweights, examples of anniversary awards from the company.
"Yes, we put out the display so that people have something to strive for, although," the woman added with a daring drop to her tone, as if challenging Shiori to surrender some mutual confidence, "I think it's there to show off more than encourage."
Shiori's cheerfully neutral smile never faltered. She would not be so obviously tricked or trapped. "Most things are a mixture of both. Isn't that life?"
"Just," the woman nodded.
...
The interview continued with professional indifference in the woman's office. Her name was Kanoe, not one that Shiori recognized. She did experience a giddy relief as a name like Kanoe was not likely to be forgotten among the crowds of one-night Beths or Jennifers, the Caitlins and Christines. A picture frame sat on a table by the door. The small boy holding a soccer ball stared into the back of Shiori's head as she sat turned away.
Forget the picture, Shiori repeated to herself. Phantom spasms crossed her gut and Shiori shifted in her seat. Six years gone. They said she wouldn't remember. That the hours of pain would be forgotten. Another youthful expectation proved so terribly untrue. Shiori remembered every minute. Afterward, she'd been left so very much alone.
Sometimes she wondered if she'd ever been that girl. The one who had been left alone in the drab hospital room while decisions were made by the other person who's name appeared on the birth certificate. The girl hallowed out by a spoon. Her insides spilled out like pumpkin guts leaving her with an empty jack-o-lantern smile. No one to relight the candle of life that had been inside her just before.
"Of course, we'll want to call your references and previous employers," Kanoe was saying. "With your permission of course."
"That should be fine," Shiori pushed one hand along the length of her skirt, hoping the effort to remove the perspiration would go unnoticed. "I'm very impressed with everything I've read about your business philosophy here. I can see the appeal and why you've done so well."
Kanoe delayed lifting her head. Her fingers traced the text of Shiori's resume on the desk between them.
"I worked for a lawyer before I came here," Kanoe said. Her voice had changed. Shiori remembered how it felt to drop off script, when the other actors began to shift back into themselves. She half expected the director to walk into the room and discuss what had gone well. Where she had failed to deliver.
"Not far from this theater," the woman continued.
"Oh, do you know it?" The delicate skin of Shiori's lips had long gone dry. She yearned to pull them back between her teeth and releave the soreness. Her control slipped and her tongue slipped out to wet them. She never should have put the Road Rage in as employment.
"I never went, but our firm represented one of their actors in a child custody case. Father verses dead-beat mother. I know who you are." Kanoe's words were unforgivingly blunt, but her face seemed curious. Shiori wondered what skin she needed to slip into to recover. Read the signs. This woman was confident. Cunning. Like Juri... only more, a flash of clear-sighted honesty, kind coldness. A personality not unlike... him.
"People change," Shiori ventured in response.
"Is there something in your life you would change?"
The interview was over, but Shiori felt compelled to answer. To explain. She casually waved a hand as if sweeping the question and her answer under a rug. "History is so far behind us. What could we make different? I'm not her anymore. I read her like a book." Shiori expected herself to slip. To whine. But her voice held confidence, as if she actually believed what she was saying. "How could I feel those things again? How could I look at those situations any differently? They happened, but they are not me."
"What happened to the father?"
"He settled down. Became a proper father, found a boyfriend who could fill the role of proper wife. They do family vacations and everything you'd expect. It's a good place for her." Shiori's fingers pulled at the ends of her hair. The hand dropped into her lap as if suddenly rediscovered by gravity.
"I can see him doing that." Kanoe's words seemed to leave the room, but her attentiveness remained completely on the young woman needing a job. "So why did you end up homeless?"
"What's home?" Shiori barked a laugh using her reply as a challenge. This time her voice did become shrill, as if she noticed the thread Kanoe continued to pull and how it had quietly, absolutely unraveled her.
The interview had far gone from professional. Kanoe leaned forward, settling her chin into her hand. Her expression almost affectionate, if Shiori could trust it. "What do you want?"
"What do I want?" Shiori raised her eyebrow. The job was lost. She had nothing left to lose, everything stripped away as if court orders encompassed the whole of her life. "I want someone. Someone who parties the way that I party." She thought she heard music and half turned in her chair. The picture of the boy still there like a guard holding her hostage. Ready with a weapon if she tried to escape.
Shiori admitted, "I'm tired of finding someone who just invites me to theirs. It's hard enough knowing who you are, without someone trying to make you into something you're not."
"We love the things we love for what they are," Kanoe quoted. Then she smiled, tightly without teeth. "Robert Frost."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Shiori grumbled, sinking into the chair. Her clothes wrinkled, her face hot. Not once did she suspect she would have been pried into so completely.
The other woman didn't answer, simply made a noise in her throat as if humming the sustaining first note to a song. Shiori scowled and stared and tore her fingernails into the fabric of the seat near her knees.
"Well, then." Kanoe stood and moved so that her long dark hair gracefully pulled away and back from her pale neck. Her lips did open then as if to speak but hesitated first on a white, lingering smile. "When can you start?"