Rebecca replayed the responses out loud once again. The same responses she had repeated in the shower, at the gas station, and originally in the elevator on her way out of Bellwyn’s building two weeks ago. I built the liquidity model myself. I found the error in the senior analyst’s projections almost immediately.
The tone had been correct, flat enough not to seem like bragging but still exuding confidence. She’d been replaying it every day since, trying to find a flaw or miscalculation that would account for the lack of response.
She said the last line again now, to the frozen mailbox lock, half from habit, half because the lock was the only thing in Sellersburg currently willing to listen to her.
The lock didn’t care. Snow had frozen the thing until it was welded in place. She slammed her shoulder into the bank of boxes and jiggled the key trying to find the right angle. When it finally gave, the door swung open and dumped the day’s mail onto her boots.
She crouched to gather the scattered envelopes. There was a grocery store flyer, two more past-due notices, and a pre-approved credit card offer promising her benefits she’d never see, and underneath it all, an envelope that didn’t belong.
She ripped it open and pulled out an invitation on black card stock. Her name was in silver script so fine it looked etched rather than printed, and when the light caught it, the letters seemed to hold the shine a second longer than they should have.
Dear Ms. Stadler,
You are cordially invited to the home of Dr. Elsie Stone to participate in a unique career opportunity.
Arrangements for your travel and expenses have been provided. Enclosed, you will find your itinerary. We look forward to meeting you.
Sincerely,
The Oracle Group
She checked the envelope again, looking for a return address. There wasn’t one. She ran her finger over the lettering, wondering at the printing costs for something like this.
“Costa Rica.” She read the enclosed itinerary a second time, sure she’d misread it. “They want me to fly to Central America for a job interview.”
More likely it was a timeshare seminar or one of those multi-level marketing things her aunt kept getting suckered into. She almost laughed, except it would take more energy than she had at the moment, and she wasn’t about to waste effort on a scam from a company called, she checked—The Oracle Group. Sounded like a fantasy novel. She shoved it in her coat pocket anyway. A woman with $270 in checking didn’t throw anything useful away.
Her cheeks stung as she walked through the Indiana cold, snow crunching underfoot. She climbed the stairs and unlocked the paint-chipped door to her small apartment. The tiny living room was barely warmer than outside.
She tossed the mail and invitation on the cluttered kitchen counter without a second thought. Moving down the hall to the bathroom, she turned on the shower and let the hot water steam up the apartment. Since water was included in her rent but electricity wasn’t, she had found this to be a convenient source of heat. It made the air sticky and the walls clammy, but it was cheaper than the space heater.
A quick swipe of her sleeve cleared a patch on the mirror. She gently touched the bags under her eyes. Her broad shoulders were weighed down by arms too large for most of her shirts. She brushed her bangs aside, grimaced, and let them fall back into place. Without them, her forehead looked like a billboard.
Her mother had once called her “sturdy.” Rebecca knew it had been meant as a compliment, but she’d always heard it as about as feminine as a filing cabinet.
She laid her interview clothes across the bed and inspected them for any signs that would imply desperation. If Bellwyn called with good news, she wanted to be ready to respond immediately. The navy suit had survived her internship and two years in the closet and the cuffs showed it. She found a loose thread along the shoulder seam and snipped it off with scissors pulled from a drawer in the kitchen. Tugging on the seam to make sure it still held, she reassured herself that it would work well if she was ever called about a start date.
She’d earned the callback. Two rounds of interviews. The first with an HR coordinator who was triaging candidates, the second with an actual partner who’d pushed a spreadsheet across the table and asked her to find what was wrong with it. Though it was partly luck, she found it in under two minutes. A compounding error that had been overstating client returns for two quarters. He sat back in his chair and said, huh, which, from a man who bills four hundred an hour, felt like applause.
That was two weeks ago. Two weeks of constantly checking her phone, waiting for an email, and searching their webpage to see if the position had been filled. She kept telling herself that no news was a positive sign. It meant she was still being considered.
She wanted to believe that more than anything. Because the alternative meant she didn’t meet their standards, and that was impossible not to take personally. Her résumé clearly showed that she had passed her Series 7 and Securities Industry Essentials exams, which meant she had cleared the first hurdle to becoming a fiduciary or broker.
She picked up the diploma reading Master of Finance that was propped carefully against the wall because she couldn’t justify the cost of a proper frame yet.
She laughed at the thought. “Yeah, I’m a broker all right. Broker than everyone else.”
Ducks quacked from the kitchen counter. A ringtone she’d installed as a joke during a happier month and never bothered to change. She skidded on the wet linoleum, caught the counter’s edge and dug frantically through her bag. She had the phone to her ear before she’d checked the screen.
“Hello, this is Rebecca.”
“Hey Becks! Glad you finally picked up. We need to talk.”
She closed her eyes. Not Bellwyn. Worse. She cursed herself for getting sloppy.
“We don’t have anything to talk about, Brian.”
“C’mon, Becks, I made a mistake. I had too much to drink and, well—stuff happened.”
“Stuff happened? You stuffed that little Waffle House witch. That’s what happened.”
“She paid for my meal! I was broke! It didn’t mean anything.”
“You could’ve washed some dishes like a normal person.” She reached for the crumpled bills on the counter and started sorting them by date, needing to busy her hands. “It meant something to me. It meant you didn’t give a damn about us.”
“I’m sorry. I really am.”
“I know.” And she did, that was the maddening part. She knew he was sincere, but it was only for the moment. It wouldn’t last.
“It doesn’t change anything.”
“Give me one more chance—”
“No. Don’t call again.”
She hung up before he could respond and stood there a moment with her thumb over the screen. Almost immediately the ducks quacked and the name Bri-Bri lit up the caller ID. She grimaced at the cloying nickname and rejected the call. She turned the ringer off, set it face down, and returned to sorting the bills. The phone vibrated, but at least the damn ducks were quiet.
After this, it remained silent for almost a full minute before vibrating again.
“Oh, for…!” She snatched it up.
“It’s over, you jackass! Get that through your thick skull!”
A stunned silence answered her.
“Um. I’m sorry. I was attempting to reach Ms. Rebecca Stadler? This is Michael Henson, from Bellwyn Financial.”
The words you jackass seemed to hang in the air as her hand came up over her mouth half a second too late to prevent the damage.
“Oh my God, Mr. Henson! I am so sorry. I thought you were someone else.”
“Evidently.” Followed by the long pause of someone deciding whether to be charitable. “Regardless, I’m calling regarding the financial advisor position.”
She sat straighter and adjusted her shirt collar as if sitting across the desk from him once again. “Yes! Yes, I’m extremely excited about the opportunity to join the team. I’d love to share my ideas and start helping wherever you need me.”
“Yes, well. Your résumé is quite impressive, and the work you did during your internship was commendable.”
She knew that tone. It was the “thank you, but” tone. She waited for the inevitable next words.
“However,” he continued, “we regret that we’re looking for someone with more experience. We’ll keep your résumé on file, and we appreciate…”
The rest dissolved into the muted noise of a phone no longer being held to the ear. We’ll keep your résumé on file. She’d heard that sentence enough times now to know that the file was round and taken out daily by the janitorial staff.
“Right,” she said, when he’d finished, in a voice she managed to keep level. “Of course. Thank you for letting me know.”
She ended the call and sat down hard in the kitchen chair. Four months and the only viable lead had just vanished.
“How the hell do you get more experience if no one will hire you?” she muttered.
Her grip tightened around the phone until the screen protector cracked, thin white lines spidering across the glass. The only sound in the apartment was the hum of the refrigerator and the clock above the sink. Somewhere outside a car door slammed and someone laughed, oblivious to her misery.
She resumed sorting bills, but didn’t really see them as she sat there, trying to figure out what to do next. The clock ticked like a metronome as she made and discarded plans.
A knock at the door, three small raps, then retreating footsteps, startled her enough that she nearly dropped the envelopes. By the time she reached the hallway, the landlord had already vanished into 4A.
“Coward,” she said, to no one, and pulled the taped notice off the door.
NOTICE OF EVICTION
The words refused to make sense. She read it in the doorway, then again at the kitchen counter. Like moving ten feet might change the number at the bottom. It didn’t. Ten days. She had ten days to find a new apartment with no job and a credit score that looked more like a batting average.
An unwelcome tingling in her shoulders and stomach began to build. She had felt it before and knew better than to trust herself once it started. You are not going to lose your temper. Don’t do it, she told herself as she held on to the edge of the counter like it might anchor her.
It didn’t. The notice crumpled in her fist. She forced it open again, smoothing the creases with shaking fingers, scanning for some mistake, some number she could argue with. There wasn’t one. Only the threat of law enforcement.
On the counter to her left was a little ceramic gnome holding a sign that said “I gnome you’re special.” His smug little grin was the last straw.
She didn’t remember deciding to throw the figurine, only her arm moving with unnatural speed. The small ceramic thing didn’t just break against the wall, it detonated, punching a hole clean through the drywall where it hit.
It wasn’t enough. The loss of the figurine only made things worse, causing the pressure coiling inside of her to snap. A raw, primal sound ripped free from her throat as her world ignited.
It burned through her fast, leaving her hollowed out. She stood there, chest heaving and arms trembling. The silence that followed felt too loud. Slowly, her eyes tracked across the wreckage.
The apartment was in ruins. The coffee table was splintered, and remnants of books and dishes lay scattered across the floor. The dishwasher door was kicked in like a broken jaw. Strangely, amid the wreckage, only her Elvis collector plate sat untouched beneath a flickering light.
She shook her head. At least I didn’t lose my temper… I’m an idiot.
When her legs finally gave out, Rebecca slumped against the front door, limbs sprawled, face buried in her scraped hands. Blood from a cut above her eyebrow trickled onto her collar.
The shower was running, but she couldn’t remember why. The muffled sound of water hitting tile was the only thing disturbing the silence.
She winced as her raw, split knuckles scraped against her shirt sleeve to wipe her nose, her burning face turning away to avoid the sight of the shattered lamp and upended bookshelf. For the first time since moving in, the kitchen counter was finally clear. A short, broken laugh escaped her.
Her gaze followed a tear as it fell to the carpet, landing on a square of paper. There, nestled between her feet, was the black and silver invitation card.
She hiccupped and reached down to pluck it from the debris spread across the floor. The thick paper was unscathed, crisp and pristine. The silver lettering curled across its surface in a precise, almost archaic script.
A unique career opportunity.
Whatever Bellwyn thought of her, whatever the landlord thought of her, this black card thought she was worth first-class airfare and a personal itinerary before they’d even met her. It might be a scam, but it was the only offer currently on the table that treated her like she was worth something.
“Fine,” she said to the empty apartment. “Let’s see if I’m worth flying to Costa Rica. Besides, if they’re just pitching snake oil, at least it will be warm.”
She folded the invitation along its crease and set it on the counter where she would see it first thing, because tomorrow, before she packed up her stuff, she was going to find out who “The Oracle Group” was. She wasn’t about to fly to another continent on blind faith alone. Okay, faith, sure. Blind, no.
She hung her suit up in the closet, ready to be packed. Whatever waited in Costa Rica, it couldn’t reject her any harder than Indiana had this week.
Since the shower was still running, she headed down the hall, peeling off her ruined shirt along the way. She stood under the water long after the cut above her eyebrow had stopped stinging, scrubbing the dust and blood off her skin. She was asleep before her hair fully dried.
The dream came the way it had been coming for weeks now. Not gently, the way dreams were supposed to arrive, but more like a vivid memory she was forced to relive.
Windswept cliffs, the grass flattened under a sky the color of a fresh bruise. Her armor was familiar in a way that made no sense, and she held a spear cold and solid in her grip. Horses thundered somewhere behind her, and the women riding them called her sister over the wind, their weapons raised toward the storm that was racing toward them.
This was right and true, charging towards the edge of the cliff prepared for battle, and her only fear was that Rebecca Stadler, financial analyst, evicted tenant, and rejected candidate, was the dream she would be forced to return to.
She woke with a gasp right as her horse leapt from the top of the cliff, heart slamming, sheets damp beneath her. For a moment she lay still, letting her pulse climb back down, one hand pressed to her sternum.
She sat up and reached for the glass of water on the nightstand. The dream was fading, but left behind the ache of wanting something she couldn’t name. This was the third time in as many weeks that she’d woken from that cliff with tears drying on her face.
She reached for her phone and checked the time. Sleep, when it finally returned, came without storms. Just black and quiet, and the last thought she had before it took her: Whatever the job is in Costa Rica, I am going to make sure I’m worth every dollar they spent to get me there.