Everybody Lies

For Manictastic’s Short Story Contest 2007

Vivvi’s father had bought her an interview outfit, a navy dress with white piping that reminded her of a dress she’d worn to church with him when she was eleven-years old. She interviewed at advertising agencies inside Chicago’s skyscrapers. Her mother had the idea she’d like advertising, and she had written mock-commercials for a bank, a junior college, yogurt, and a resort hotel.

At first she thought she was making progress. A creative director at a long-standing agency invited her to return and meet “the team.” She shook hands with a group of three men and two women, and listened to them gossip and criticize movies. She smiled, twirled her ankle, and agreed with whatever they said. For her third interview (how many did you have to have to get hired?), the director, whose team called him “The Wizard,” invited her into his corner office, which was on the forty-eighth floor. “I think you’ll do well here, Vivvi. You can make a lot of money and still chase your dreams. The work isn’t hard. Just agree most of the time, but not always. Tell people their idea is ‘Genius!’ And you really admire their ‘cutting edge’ ”

He’d call Vivvi with a job offer two weeks from Thursday, and if for some reason, he didn’t, she should call him.

Two weeks later when he didn’t telephone on Thursday or Friday, she forced herself to phone his extension on Monday, but noticed her fingers shaking. He wasn’t in. A woman suggested she wait until he called her and laughed at the cliché.

Three weeks later, when she still hadn’t heard from him, she phoned his extension again. This time a different woman answered the line. “My name is Kristen.” She’d taken over while the Wizard was “on sabbatical.” Something about sciatica and missing important meetings.

Kristen said the Wizard had mentioned Vivvi, however. Would she like to interview with the head of human resources?

“Of course. Thank you.”

The agency’s human resources director, Milo, was a short, muscular man, who rolled his shirt sleeves up high to show off a tattoo of Asian letters. Or what Vivvi presumed were Asian letters. He shaved his head, wore a gold hoop earring, and a choker necklace of various blue-colored beads. Flipping through her samples, without looking at them, Milo requested that she just calm down, please. “Take some deep breaths. I’ve never run into an applicant as nervous as you. Please. Try to keep your ankles still.”

“Your samples aren’t bad.” Milo hadn’t glanced at them. Vivvi had watched closely. He hadn’t once directed his eyes anywhere near the pages of advertising dialogues. “I’d like to see you come up with something wacky,” he said, leaning forward and loosely clasping his hands. “Something totally wild. You know? What if I set you up with one of our newer hires? Someone fresh from the academic world, just your style.”

He stood up and led her through gray velvety hallways. 

The new hire was Etienne. He was working at a computer in a little cubicle. He looked big and hulking in his tiny chair. Milo asked Etienne to chat with Vivvi. “Tell her about your job and the transition you’ve undergone, switching from editorial director of the Chicago Press to our little agency.” Turning to Vivvi, he continued, “Etienne’s a new father; he quit the academic press to support his wife and infant son. Milo closed the door halfway and Etienne took a step or two after him, into the hallway. “How long should I spend with her?”

Milo waved his hand. Vivvi was sitting in a chair in the corner, angled so she could see and hear them clearly.

“Do you want me to send her back to you?”

Milo shook his head. “Talk to her a few minutes and then return to whatever you were doing.”

If Vivvi were another person perhaps she could have played along with Etienne’s new identity. But this was Gene, the manager of the Sweater Fashion Store on Maple Street, who had hired her the summer she returned to her parents’ house from college. He had received her tallies of sweaters, which she counted all day, every day, inside a hot, windowless attic warehouse by herself—Monday through Friday, nine to five, hundreds and hundreds of cowl-necks, turtle- and V- and crewnecks, Henleys and cardigans, cables and flat-knit. Dozens of colors, two- and four-ply yarn in merino, alpaca, and cashmere.

“Well, hello, Gene. Congratulations on your son. What’d you name him?”

Gene turned, his ordinarily squinty eyes bugging out, his face mottled in fury. “Don’t blow this for me, Vivvi. I started two days after Pascal was born. Three weeks ago.”

“Pascal? Pascal Grant. And since when did you become Etienne? Won’t there be paycheck problems? What about the IRS?”

“I have a friend in payroll who can take care of it.”

“But with your colleagues? Do you fake a French accent?”

“Of  course.”

“Let me hear.”

“No way. Let me see your samples.”

“You know, Gene, I’d rather not. Besides, I’m sure you have a lot of work.”

He stood up, glowering at her. “You’re not going to ruin this for me, are you? Because I’ll kill you. You go running through the halls yelling that you counted sweaters for me last summer and I’ll hurt you, Vivvi. I’ll drag you by your hair until you tell everyone what a compulsive liar you are.”

“Forget you saw me. Tell Milo I was such a sorry excuse you couldn't believe it. Bon après-midi, Etienne.”

She tore out of Gene’s office, barely hearing the banal insults he hissed after her. She hurried down one gray upholstered corridor after another, unable to find a bathroom.

She dashed up and down tiered, interior stairs, across and up again. She kept facing glass walls. Peering down a hallway at what looked like elevators, bright light on marble floors, she panicked. How horrible if she got trapped in an elevator, either alone or with a bunch of suits. 

If tip-toeing around with a fake French accent and a made-up history was the way to get a copywriting job, Vivvi could never pull it off. She stunk at accents. And the longer she had to pretend anything, the more obviously she chafed and burned. As it was, under duress, she tended to laugh too loud, and some said, inappropriately.

Rounding a corner, she burst into a small, industrial-style corner corridor that led to a blank metal door. She opened the door and found a dim storage area full of old computers, cable and metal shelving. At the back she found a big, back painted-metal door. Opening it, before she even started down the open-grate stairs, the heavy door swung shut. It locked automatically; she checked. So. Nothing to do but start down the forty-eight stories of open-grid metals stairs.

Her interviewing shoes produced big fat blisters, filled with clear fluid. So Vivvi took off the shoes and ran down flight after flight. The advertising agency ended at the thirty-third floor. Stenciled on the doors were the names of other businesses, insurance companies, and small trade magazine publishers. But these doors, like the previous ones, were all locked, carrying the warning: Fire Door. No Entrance.
Vivvi ran down ten more flights, pulling on any door with a handle. She was locked in.  When she finally reached the fifth floor, a wall-size metal grate blocked her way halfway down the stairs. Along a wide bar, reinforcing the grate, she read: No Exit. Fire Alarm Will Sound.

So should she run back up to the top, trying to find an unlocked fire door? She wouldn’t find one, though. From this side, the door locked automatically. No going back. She pushed hard on bar bracing the fire alarm grating. It didn’t give. She pushed again, harder, and a terrifying alarm screamed, up and down, as if from every landing.

She took the final five flights in fearful, near delirium. She bounded down them, her pantyhose worn from her blistered feet, her black “spec” folder and shiny purse in one hand, her high-heel pumps in the other. At the bottom, she found herself in a murky  basement slick with oily puddles. With her first step—which way?—she realized the inside alarms had given way to an even louder outside siren. A fire truck was blaring painfully loud. Then two men shouted over it. She saw them racing toward her, two firemen in full regalia, carrying small hatchets. She shied back against the last door she’d passed through, pressing her sweating back against its unforgiving industrial surface.

One fireman turned away, shaking his head, receding backwards. The other grabbed her upper arm and yanked it hard. “What’re you doing here, missy? Why’d you set off the alarm?”

Vivvi shook her head, gasping. “No.  No, I didn’t. I work next door.” She tossed her head the opposite direction from which the firemen had arrived. “A tunnel connects these basements. My brother works in this building. I need to make sure he’s okay.”

“Miss. You crashed through a fire barrier and set off a false alarm.”

“You mean everyone’s all right?”

“There’s no tunnel. What’d you do, run down the stairs?”

The second fireman was gone. The other one had let go of her. “Don’t try this again. What if there was a real fire and here we were fooling around with you?”

”You mean it was really a false alarm? Everyone’s all right?” Vivvi discovered she could lie with the best of them. Like everyone else, she lied without thinking. She lied and would keep lying until she got out and ran away.

 

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Comments

[Dan Leo]

Hey, I just discovered this one, Kathleen: brilliant! Vivvi's escapade sounds just like something I would do. I would gladly follow this character through a long picaresque novel.

[Kathleen]

Dan, thank you.