“Can I walk you to the train?” I asked.
“No.” She came over to me and put her hands on my shoulders. “But I would like it if you kissed me good night.”
Every nerve in my body sparkled like I was a damn high schooler as my fingers moved around her waist and we kissed.
MIRANDA
Miranda, thank you for taking the time for this.” I’d gotten an interview for the job. It was over some corporate videoconferencing software that I had to download for the interview. I’d dressed up, and pulled my most identifying feature, my bright red hair, back in a tight ponytail. I had stopped short of dyeing it—that seemed too obvious a ploy.
“Of course, I am so fascinated by what you are up to,” I told them honestly.
“I’m Dr. Everett Sealy, this is my colleague Tom. I work in the lab, he’s an HR manager.”
Remember how all of the rats in my lab were named Tom? Tom did not remind me of them. He was handsome, in his mid-thirties, with wavy dark hair. Dr. Sealy, on the other hand, was shaved to his scalp everywhere his slightly elongated head wasn’t naturally bald.
“We were excited to see your application,” Tom continued. “Your research looks right up our alley. Can you tell me a little about why you’re interested in working at Altus?”
In my résumé, it just looked like my PhD had been taking a while, not like I’d taken a year off. That wasn’t technically a lie. I had gotten through my PhD program relatively quickly, so it wasn’t unusual that I would still be working on my thesis. I’d just left out the part about how I had quit temporarily to become the CEO of a start-up with famous people for a year. That was the kind of thing that would look really good on a résumé for pretty much any job except this one.
“Well,” I started, sounding a little shaky, “if you’ll excuse the impertinence, I can tell by who you’re hiring what you’re working on. It is also what I’m working on, except it seems that you’ve gotten further down the path. I can only make guesses what the steps you’ve taken are, but they’ve left me both intensely curious and also less interested in my own work.”
My cortisol response was kicking in hard—elevated heart rate, sweaty pits, sudden urge to pee, all of it. I know the secret to lying is telling the truth, and it was definitely helping, but it was still terrifying. These people were not to be messed with.
“Simply, it seems to me that you’re where the cutting edge is.”
Dr. Sealy picked up here: “You are, however, in the middle of your thesis project, correct?”
“Yes, I’d be putting that on hold. I’ve already discussed it with my advisor.” This was a lie.
“And how does he feel about that?” Tom asked.
I decided not to correct him. “Dr. Lundgren sees the excitement of the opportunity and understands. I know I’m taking a risk, but even if I’m not able to return to defend my thesis, it seems certain that this will be the better path for me.”
“You know we tried to recruit Constance,” Dr. Sealy said, using Professor Lundgren’s first name. “She’s a magnificent scientist, but she . . .” He paused.
Tom continued, more smoothly, “She turned us down.”
She hadn’t just turned them down. She told me that she’d told them to go fuck themselves. He seemed to be waiting for me to say something. I should have known better than to bring up Dr. Lundgren. I took control back with an argument I’d prepared. “I don’t know the details of what you’re up to, but you do. So the question I have is what you would suggest I do knowing what you know. Would you tell a young scientist to finish her PhD, or would you tell her to go work at Altus?”
“I’d tell her to go work at Altus,” Dr. Sealy replied.
The business guy spoke up again then: “Just to be absolutely clear, the work we are doing is very secret and very sensitive. Do you have any potential ulterior motives for working here?”
Was he outright asking me if I was signing up specifically for espionage? I was a terrible liar! What the hell was I doing?! I heard my own voice talking, and it sounded relaxed: “I just can’t not be there, I’m up all night thinking about it.” I had found a truth I could tell.
The rest of the interview was standard. We talked about how we solved interpersonal problems at the lab, about my experience being managed and working with undergrads, and about my research at Berkeley. They seemed impressed by me, and to be honest I was impressed by them. They were experts, they were well paid, and they seemed like good, effective communicators. Tom seemed like a bit of a tech bro, but Dr. Sealy was exactly the kind of guy I’d get along with in a work setting. He was considerate, thoughtful, and none of his jokes were at the expense of other people. They weren’t scary at all.
You always want to go into an interview with one or two questions for the people who are interviewing you. It’s a signal that you want to make sure they’re worth your time and talent, and it puts the power a little bit in your hands. Not too much, just enough for them to know that you’re not desperate.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but what percentage chance would you guess your business has of not being around five or ten years from now?” I asked near the end of our allotted time.
They both laughed. “Zero,” the business guy said.
I waited for a reply from Dr. Sealy. “Not zero,” he said. “All probabilities are nonzero. But very,
