The Interview

……“I regret to inform you that we will not be moving forward with your application and we will be pursuing other candidates who are more qualified." Molly King -Manufactures Hanover New York, New York September 6, 1983.

Another rejection. I have now been rejected from every job I have applied for since graduation. The woman with the strawberry blonde hair, and gold rimmed glasses, enjoying her Glenlivet and soda at the bar I have worked at in Upper Saddle River since 1980, was correct. Reading my palm, she bluntly said I would go on a journey and return home to loss and failure. She said- "whatever I get, it will take". I asked why. She replied simply, “because it has to”.

    Only four months ago I realized that the "journey" was to the out of state school I had attended against my better judgment. Nothing was the same since I returned home in the Spring of 75'. My circle of friends closed, and no company would touch my resume. “We do not recruit from your school.” “Why did you go to that program?" "Your education is obsolete ". I heard everything.

I put the letters with the others in the binder on the coffee table. I lit up a Marlboro. and picked up my book from the Ramsey Public Library on curses. I bookmarked one scary quote from chapter four, a quote from The Bible.

-Because you did not serve the Lord your God with joyfulness and gladness of heart, because of the abundance of all things, therefore you shall serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you, in hunger and thirst, in nakedness, and lacking everything. And he will put a yoke of iron on your neck until he has destroyed you. - Deuteronomy 28:47- 48

    I was lost in my thoughts staring at the blank plaster white wall and hardly noticed the cable went out, and the TV screen went to some odd generic weather forecast in dull greys on a black background as if it was an advertisement for bad graphic design. Every day forecasted, was rain and exactly sixty degrees. This new cable has changed my life. I now have company when I cannot sleep.

I put out my Marlboro cigarette and shut the one remaining working lamp on the chipped end table beside me and went to sleep right there on the couch. Lately my bedroom scared me. I could not explain to my few friends why, but I knew I was being watched by something. I slowly was realizing that there was in fact, a curse. I also knew that I was becoming a beacon of negativity. Since I moved to this new apartment in Mahwah, the negative events intensified. I often dream of the one I missed out on in Ramsey.

The next morning, I saw a job advertisement in finance while reading the classifieds in The Record drinking my coffee, balcony door open to savor the crisp late summer morning. There was no rain, only clouds. What was I seeing last night? I did not recognize the address as a business area of Mahwah. True to the other advertisements, no company name, just a description and a basic title. Call 201-555-6428. Not even a name.

“Hello, I am calling about the job advertised in The Record, my name…”

“When can you be here?”

    I was taken aback. When can you be here? It sounded more like I was coming to turn his electricity back on let alone a perspective job applicant. No screening? No name?

After a brief introduction I agreed to his request at 3:00 p.m. to meet. He did not say much about the opportunity, but I wished I had asked more questions as I drove up Central Street towards Hayden. My Rand McNally map was showing up on the third left was Hayden Street and I know there are no offices or banks in that neighborhood. Immediately upon making the turn up the slow rising hill of Hayden Street, I had wished I never came. Something is not right. No, it is wrong. It is simply wrong.

I was always frightened of early to mid -19th century Italianate style dwellings and thought those are what typical haunted houses should in every instance look like. The plain box style, with arches and vertical appendages made the houses look alive. Not lively, alive. The appendages looked like the devil’s fingers scraping the blue September sky. Now add the old sheers and rotting paint and you get the idea what was lining the streets. I slammed on the breaks. No way. The third red house on the right had an archway extended toward the street with a double black door. No landscaping and a kiddie pool with green rotting water near the curb with half a bike lying by its side. Why would half a bike be laid out by a rotting kiddie pool? If it was suffering from a broken rim, wouldn’t they take the whole bike in the garage? The angle of the house on the hill had made the approaching cloud cover and sky look ominous and unworldly, with a sun that illuminated the property with a reddish orange tint. This was the door to Hell.

All the houses on the left had large open bay windows, overgrown hedges that covered most of the house, but in no place did I see a human being. Every house on the left void of any window covering, all driveways lined with old cars, yet not a soul of life. That was what I realized about my own building and neighborhood. Why had I never seen a human enter or leave their units, yet the lot is full? It was at the top of the hill I saw a greenhouse with one single blue light emanating from an upstairs window over the foyer arches. Through the living-room area window I could make out what looked like a large shelf or cabinet that blocked half the window.

I looked at my scrap paper on the passenger seat. #26 Hayden Street. It should be up on the right. I went around a bend and there up ahead I saw #24 and then #26. My job interview would come to be in a pale green rotting one story ranch with overgrown brush covering every window save one large sheer covered living room. No lighting. Whatever was in my apartment, had a second home here it appeared, and I happened to have found it by “chance". It was more likely my beacon was growing. I was becoming a Receptor.

It could not be the sight of the interview. Weeds sprouted from broken bricks in a curving path leading up to the entrance. Run. Run Now. What the Hell is that? A face appeared where one should not be. It was not human or animal. I just wanted a job not to come down here and see messed up faces. Some- thing was peering out of the large brown shrub overgrowing the front stoop. It took every courage I had to stare back and realize it was not a face, but a bizarre illusion created by a section of dead leaves. I was going insane. I am not even here but at home on my couch dreaming. My old friend Diane Gould from Fair Lawn once told me late at night during troubled times she would see faces from nothing looking back at her while trying to fall asleep. She claimed it intensified shortly after her father passed away in 1970, when she awoke one night and saw three distinct floating heads at the foot of her bed. “Demons” she would say. She claimed they were gone as she became more lucid. She left New Jersey last year to pursue a film career in Los Angeles. I never heard from her again.

I rang a doorbell and waited a few minutes. The screen door was broken and the door wide open. I could see no human. There was no noise or TV on. “Be right there” boomed a voice from the back. Soon a short plump balding man with black eyes opened the door and cordially welcomed me in.

“Hi and your name again?” he asked.

“I am Michael Dawson. We spoke about the job.”

“Oh yes please have a seat on the sofa, would you like a Coke?” the man said.

No way there is “Coke” in this house. However, I was comforted immediately.

I sat on the couch and instantly saw myself directly gazing at a portrait of what appeared to be this same short man with his what could only have been his wife, yet it looked more like a twin sister with the same black eyes, rounded features and thin hair. The comfort of a “Coke” in this environment dissipated.

Shortly he returned with a Coke and a newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, and handed me my Coke. Seeing the Wall Street Journal brought me back to an earthlier comfort that this would be a normal job interview and I would soon be in my 75' Honda Civic driving back home listening to my favorite Eagles tape, “Desperado”.

I cracked open the Coke and took a cool refreshing sip with the crisp cool caramel caffeine cooling the brain as I feel instant alertness and relief, I put it down on the- BANG...What the Hell!.. as the Coke crashed down to the shag brown stained carpet in a crash of spilled soda foaming up like a growing mushroom of fizz, lint, dust and whatever else was in that damn rug. There was no coffee tabletop. It was just the crown skeletal beams and shelf. But why would he give it to me and not tell me?

It was like last winter when I saw that odd Doctor in Wyckoff for my shingles and upon greeting me, he gave out his hand but then grimaced in pain holding it sneering a me and scolded me for shaking his injured scarred hand he just had surgery on. I remember profusely apologizing to him and his medical assistant that ran in to peer at me

“You shouldn’t have shook his hand!" She said.

“But he extended it over his desk!" Somethings that happen to me cannot be rationalized or justified as “normal” They just happen. They happen fast and without any warning.

     “I am so sorry Mr. -I never got your name, so sorry I didn’t know the top was missing!”

     “No, no problem," he said as he got up to get towels. Leave Michael. Leave now. Say you just remembered you left the coffee pot plugged in like your mother used to do to your dad halfway to the destination.

     “Why don’t we finish this meeting in the basement.”

    My worst fear materialized. “To the basement we will go.” I remember that idiotic fraternity I pledged in my freshman year of college. When the brothers had an “event” scheduled they would hustle us down to the cellar stomping brooms or baseball bats “To the basement you will go ...to the basement you will go…bump bump bump...bump bump BUMP…" not too much fun for this pledge numbered 781. I still feel the frigid cold and ice water dumps, coupled with cigar smoke and ice chips floating on cold rotten cement at my feet until early morning hours. Hell Week. Hell Week was not too much worse than the normal weeks. We did push- ups in that December snow. Only a fool would think “cigar night” was a celebration. We started with twenty-one fools and only seven of us made it after we returned from our dismissal for the last three days of Hell Week to New York City to complete a list of twenty tasks.

I did not know why I agreed to go to the basement. It was like something else controlled the limbs while my brain contested. I don’t know why I was born with this natural tendency to have to please everybody at my own expense or harm. I used to think it was being selfless. I learned recently that I needed to look after myself because no one else cares. But this time I was already at the first cellar step when I came to my senses and said I had to go but struggled to get a coherent sentence out afterwards. I then realized he never gave me his name when I asked.

    “It will just be a few minutes. I want to show you my office and discuss my ideas for the stock portfolios." he said.

Hearing the word “stock” was like a financial “Coke”. It brought back comfort and earthly topics. I kept going and descended the stairs curving down to what was a plain unfurnished stale-smelling room with a deep burgundy faded carpet and brick and mortar cement walls.

    “I basically would like you to find what you would think of as undervalued companies. Companies that have value not yet baked into the equity price. As you know, financial data and news and information cannot be used for our advantage if it's already reflected in the stock quote. There are currently companies that have an unpleasant smell...”

There was an odor of sweet but rotten meat coming from a side room lined in brick with no furniture. He did not say "smell". I just tuned out at that point. What the Hell is that. Get out of here Now. I stared at the room off to the side.

   "Yes, that will be Luther’s room. He is coming up tonight from Brooklyn. He will be your mentor and instructor for the first eight weeks getting you ready," he said.

There was another solid white door in the brick wall over to the left. I was afraid to ask.

“What is that door for over there," I asked.

 "That", pointing to the white door, "will be where you sleep.”

    Within five minutes I was already at the intersection at the corner of Hayden and Central, vowing never to return to that corner of the Earth. I smoked three cigarettes by the time I reached my apartment building. I played that last line over and over again. “Where you sleep”. However, only four days later I returned to drive around Hayden Street just to see if that neighborhood really existed as I saw it. This time was at night. It was even more haunting as red, blue, and green lights strangely illuminated porches and upper bay windows in the alcoves. I still saw no moving human or car driving. Every driveway was filled with at least one or two cars. All sheens and curtains were drawn open allowing eyes to peer into rooms and see no life. It then dawned on me. This was most likely “worship” or “class” time down in the cellars.

    The rest of the week I didn’t leave my apartment except for work. The curse was now coming with me, and I at least wanted to be on home field. I returned to the desolate isolated apartment building, and reflected in my parking space, the reason someone or something would need me to be poor without success. I will be forced to leave Bergen County, something I resisted for while. I began speaking out loud looking up at my unit window on the fourth floor. I expected any minute to see a mysterious shadow or ominous woman in grey or black with a drawn face, looking down on me, as if she is to say,

    “Because it has to” …

    I felt a cold chill, and at that moment, I realized I had forgot to buy smokes and had no more cigarettes for the evening. I had very little gas. I ripped out my wallet and opened it. Nothing but a quarter wedged in a flap. I lowered my head dejected.

    I looked up at my window and bellowed out. “Why? Why do you need to keep me in poverty? There are millions of bad people out there, some who use their money and success to do harm onto others. Yet, I cannot get a simple career job, love, or money to buy anything over rent? I have had eight years of rejections! Why do you do this to me!”

A voice from the back seat answered,

-“Because I have to…”