“So that’s it? That’s all you’re going to do, just sit there and thumb your fucking nose me.” Candice spat at him. “You know what, you’re fucking pathetic.”
They had met in one of those all night diners that somehow managed to survive and do business while avoiding the notice of a regular customer base. These places had just the sort of anonymity that David needed to conduct meetings like the one currently in progress. Plus the coffee and cake slices were always worthwhile.
Candice was upset, and rightly so seeing as David had just spent the last twenty minutes insulting everything that sat across from him as she recounted the horrible ordeal she had gone through. It was when people were angry that their walls came down and he could really judge their character. Anyone could maintain composure in an ordinary environment for any job interview, but this wasn’t any job that any sane person would willingly take.
“Either lower your voice, or leave right now.” He spoke dangerously and low. Although her outburst hadn’t gotten any attention from the few patrons in the diner, it had annoyed him that she had spoken to him in such a vulgar manner. There was no need for such profanity.
The rage in Candice’s eyes did not diminish, but she made no move to leave, instead opting lock a steely gaze upon David as he slowly used his fork to delicately cut another slice from the bright cheesecake sitting on his plate and eat it, savouring it with a joy reserved by children eating their favourite treats.
“You really should have something.” He offered magnanimously after washing the cake down with a short sip of coffee.
“I’m fine.” The curt response was fired back at him like a bullet.
David sighed. He done this a number of times in his career knowing that each apprentice that he took on could be dead within weeks. Dead or worse.
He had watched this beautiful woman for a long time. Sizing her up, judging her, evaluating her chances. Before she had even tried to contact someone like him, he had been watching her. You could tell certain things about people when they went through really bad situations.
If “a bad situation” was what you could call what this poor woman had gone through.
She wasn’t just a survivor of a “bad situation.”
She now burned with a fire.
“You know, life is short. Really short. You never know how short life is, or how much regret you have until it is too late. You really should enjoy some of this food, please order something.” It wasn’t an order, it was as always part of the test.
“I said I’m fine.” She returned through clenched teeth. “Can we get on with the god damn interview?”
David sighed wearily. Profanity was always unnecessary and tried his patience.
Unless of course you had a zombie charging at you screaming like a wild animal and all you had to stop him with was your tasty brain as a temporary snack box just waiting to be opened.
Profanity was perfectly acceptable in those circumstances.
“I’m afraid the interview is over.” He said helplessly, shrugging.
“And I failed.” She returned unsurprisingly.
“Do you know why?”
“Because I didn’t order any fucking pie?” She whipped back at him flippantly.
David had to laugh. “Actually, yes. That is why you failed this interview.”
She shook her head in amazement.
“You’re fucking insane, you know that? After what I went through, after all I did, you throw me out because I didn’t order any fucking food!” Her voice had risen at the end of the sentence, she was understandably upset.
David had had enough.
“Firstly, I am not going to tell you to lower your voice again. You raise it one more time and I will walk away. We will be done. Secondly, stop with the profanity, if anything in this world is a certainty, it is that profanity upsets my digestion. If you start interfering with my digestion, I’ll have to do something about it. Unfortunately for you, I do not take antacids so the next time you open your mouth and upsets my stomach I will be forced to break your jaw.” David smiled threateningly, he had made no move whatsoever but his voice had delivered all necessary threat to shock Candice to the core.
They stared at each other for a few minutes before David picked up his fork and gently spooned another piece of cake into his mouth, his eyes never leaving Candice’s throughout the motions.
“So explain why me not ordering food cost me the job?” Candice finally asked with a quavering voice once she finally mustered up her courage. The seconds ticked by and David didn’t reply, instead chewing slowly. “Please.” She finally added as an afterthought.
David smiled and all the warmth returned into his face so quickly that Candice couldn’t believe it had ever been anything other than caring and kind.
“You learn quick, kid. That is a point for you in my books. Most people cannot swallow their own pride, let alone their own anger. It becomes so big that it overwhelms all judgement.” David said evenly.
Candice wasn’t so much a quick learner as she was attentive. Before the interview, she had asked for advice from the people that had set it all up. They had all told her to respect him and watch her mouth. He was perhaps one of the most dangerous men on the planet and it wasn’t a smart move to piss him off.
“So it was about anger.” She asked. “That is, my anger.”
“It would seem so.” He replied, nodding his head.
“So how does me having an issue with anger have anything to do with me ordering food?” She pressed. “If you don’t mind me asking.” Candice couldn’t help the sarcasm entering her voice at the end of the statement.
David didn’t mind sarcasm. It was understandable that she was annoyed because she was angry. And humans were known for their anger. Another point for her.
“Before you went through your,” David paused; searching for the right word, “ordeal, you had no anger issues. You were an ordinary woman working an ordinary job leading an ordinary life with your ordinary boyfriend who was about to propose an ordinary marriage followed by an ordinary life together.”
She opened her mouth to interject, but David cut her off with a stopping motion of his hand.
“Then you get caught up in a very unordinary event in which all expectations of ever having an ordinary existence are blown away. Your boyfriend is turned into a zombie along with a whole bunch of others and you have to hack him and your future ordinary life to bits before burning it all away into ashes.” David stated with an almost monotone delivery.
Candice wanted to argue. She wanted to say that Bradley was definitely not ordinary and that he had brought her a happiness that she didn’t even know existed. She wanted to scream at him that her life hadn’t been ordinary, it had been perfect and happy and all that she had ever wanted.
“It was a fairy-tale.” David said, as if reading her mind and looking deep within her eyes.
“Yes.” It was barely audible, even below a whisper. She had lost it all. Her perfect life and happiness were gone.
Never to return.
All gone.
Replaced by a gaping hole in her heart and in her soul where her old life had been nested comfortably.
The Judas tear was loose before she could stop it. Rolling down her hot face and betraying her internal pain by its existence. It took a monumental effort of will to stop more from following.
“This job is not about making someone pay for your loss.” David told her gently, watching her struggle. “What happened has happened and cannot be undone.”
He reached over the table offering a napkin for her tear which she gingerly took. Her hands weren’t shaking too badly.
“You are angry and want revenge to fill the hole in yourself. This job will not do that and once you realise it, you will let this job kill you.”
She shook her head as if to protest but David cut her off before she could put voice to it.
“Stop, I have seen it happen before. Too many times in fact. It is always the same hole, the same pain. I know, I have that very same hole.” David put a hand to his chest. “In here. I once sat where you are now sitting and had this very same conversation with someone who I thought was also an unbearable asshole exactly like you believe me to be.”
The small burst of laughter erupted out of her before she could contain it. It was David’s obviously unfamiliar use of profanity rather than the words they conveyed that had caused it. The laugher didn’t stop the aching in her heart that she had been denying, but it did dull it a little.
“Does it ever go away?” She asked quietly, still in obvious pain.
Honesty had always been David’s greatest strength and weakness, he could lie to her, tell her it would all go away in time. But it would be a lie that would eventually turn on him. The difficulty of the current truth was infinitely easier to bear in the long run provided you had the strength to deal with it.
You could never start these things off with lies.
“No, it never goes away.“ He waited for a few moments to let that truth sink in. “But it does get easier over time. And there are ways to find happiness again, even if it is, for the most part, fleeting.”
David took another slice of cheesecake and slowly ate it, closing his eyes as he savoured the taste and texture of sweetness rolling around his tongue.
Candice watched him eat. For the very first time, she really watched his slow deliberate movements as he cut into the slice, as he admired the look of it before popping it into his mouth. She watched him chew and sip his coffee that suddenly looked really good.
As she watch him eat slowly and with obvious relish, she suddenly found her own mouth watering in an almost symbiotic way.
“Is it too late for me to order something?” She asked. David searched her face and found nothing but weary honesty of hunger. She had been fuelled by anger and with most of it gone, it needed to be replaced by something more substantial.
“It is never too late to order anything inside a twenty-four hour diner.” He said with a smile as he cocked his head to one side.
She smiled a smile that was strained but genuine. Candice ordered her food and realised that though the interview was over and she had failed it, all she wanted right now was to share some coffee, some cake and some humanity with the strange man sitting opposite her.
“So how many people fail this interview?” She asked as her food came and she began to eat.
David waited for a few seconds, watching her eat. She had done well. Better than anyone else had in a long time.
“Everyone fails the first interview.”
They had met in one of those all night diners that somehow managed to survive and do business while avoiding the notice of a regular customer base. These places had just the sort of anonymity that David needed to conduct meetings like the one currently in progress. Plus the coffee and cake slices were always worthwhile.
Candice was upset, and rightly so seeing as David had just spent the last twenty minutes insulting everything that sat across from him as she recounted the horrible ordeal she had gone through. It was when people were angry that their walls came down and he could really judge their character. Anyone could maintain composure in an ordinary environment for any job interview, but this wasn’t any job that any sane person would willingly take.
“Either lower your voice, or leave right now.” He spoke dangerously and low. Although her outburst hadn’t gotten any attention from the few patrons in the diner, it had annoyed him that she had spoken to him in such a vulgar manner. There was no need for such profanity.
The rage in Candice’s eyes did not diminish, but she made no move to leave, instead opting lock a steely gaze upon David as he slowly used his fork to delicately cut another slice from the bright cheesecake sitting on his plate and eat it, savouring it with a joy reserved by children eating their favourite treats.
“You really should have something.” He offered magnanimously after washing the cake down with a short sip of coffee.
“I’m fine.” The curt response was fired back at him like a bullet.
David sighed. He done this a number of times in his career knowing that each apprentice that he took on could be dead within weeks. Dead or worse.
He had watched this beautiful woman for a long time. Sizing her up, judging her, evaluating her chances. Before she had even tried to contact someone like him, he had been watching her. You could tell certain things about people when they went through really bad situations.
If “a bad situation” was what you could call what this poor woman had gone through.
She wasn’t just a survivor of a “bad situation.”
She now burned with a fire.
“You know, life is short. Really short. You never know how short life is, or how much regret you have until it is too late. You really should enjoy some of this food, please order something.” It wasn’t an order, it was as always part of the test.
“I said I’m fine.” She returned through clenched teeth. “Can we get on with the god damn interview?”
David sighed wearily. Profanity was always unnecessary and tried his patience.
Unless of course you had a zombie charging at you screaming like a wild animal and all you had to stop him with was your tasty brain as a temporary snack box just waiting to be opened.
Profanity was perfectly acceptable in those circumstances.
“I’m afraid the interview is over.” He said helplessly, shrugging.
“And I failed.” She returned unsurprisingly.
“Do you know why?”
“Because I didn’t order any fucking pie?” She whipped back at him flippantly.
David had to laugh. “Actually, yes. That is why you failed this interview.”
She shook her head in amazement.
“You’re fucking insane, you know that? After what I went through, after all I did, you throw me out because I didn’t order any fucking food!” Her voice had risen at the end of the sentence, she was understandably upset.
David had had enough.
“Firstly, I am not going to tell you to lower your voice again. You raise it one more time and I will walk away. We will be done. Secondly, stop with the profanity, if anything in this world is a certainty, it is that profanity upsets my digestion. If you start interfering with my digestion, I’ll have to do something about it. Unfortunately for you, I do not take antacids so the next time you open your mouth and upsets my stomach I will be forced to break your jaw.” David smiled threateningly, he had made no move whatsoever but his voice had delivered all necessary threat to shock Candice to the core.
They stared at each other for a few minutes before David picked up his fork and gently spooned another piece of cake into his mouth, his eyes never leaving Candice’s throughout the motions.
“So explain why me not ordering food cost me the job?” Candice finally asked with a quavering voice once she finally mustered up her courage. The seconds ticked by and David didn’t reply, instead chewing slowly. “Please.” She finally added as an afterthought.
David smiled and all the warmth returned into his face so quickly that Candice couldn’t believe it had ever been anything other than caring and kind.
“You learn quick, kid. That is a point for you in my books. Most people cannot swallow their own pride, let alone their own anger. It becomes so big that it overwhelms all judgement.” David said evenly.
Candice wasn’t so much a quick learner as she was attentive. Before the interview, she had asked for advice from the people that had set it all up. They had all told her to respect him and watch her mouth. He was perhaps one of the most dangerous men on the planet and it wasn’t a smart move to piss him off.
“So it was about anger.” She asked. “That is, my anger.”
“It would seem so.” He replied, nodding his head.
“So how does me having an issue with anger have anything to do with me ordering food?” She pressed. “If you don’t mind me asking.” Candice couldn’t help the sarcasm entering her voice at the end of the statement.
David didn’t mind sarcasm. It was understandable that she was annoyed because she was angry. And humans were known for their anger. Another point for her.
“Before you went through your,” David paused; searching for the right word, “ordeal, you had no anger issues. You were an ordinary woman working an ordinary job leading an ordinary life with your ordinary boyfriend who was about to propose an ordinary marriage followed by an ordinary life together.”
She opened her mouth to interject, but David cut her off with a stopping motion of his hand.
“Then you get caught up in a very unordinary event in which all expectations of ever having an ordinary existence are blown away. Your boyfriend is turned into a zombie along with a whole bunch of others and you have to hack him and your future ordinary life to bits before burning it all away into ashes.” David stated with an almost monotone delivery.
Candice wanted to argue. She wanted to say that Bradley was definitely not ordinary and that he had brought her a happiness that she didn’t even know existed. She wanted to scream at him that her life hadn’t been ordinary, it had been perfect and happy and all that she had ever wanted.
“It was a fairy-tale.” David said, as if reading her mind and looking deep within her eyes.
“Yes.” It was barely audible, even below a whisper. She had lost it all. Her perfect life and happiness were gone.
Never to return.
All gone.
Replaced by a gaping hole in her heart and in her soul where her old life had been nested comfortably.
The Judas tear was loose before she could stop it. Rolling down her hot face and betraying her internal pain by its existence. It took a monumental effort of will to stop more from following.
“This job is not about making someone pay for your loss.” David told her gently, watching her struggle. “What happened has happened and cannot be undone.”
He reached over the table offering a napkin for her tear which she gingerly took. Her hands weren’t shaking too badly.
“You are angry and want revenge to fill the hole in yourself. This job will not do that and once you realise it, you will let this job kill you.”
She shook her head as if to protest but David cut her off before she could put voice to it.
“Stop, I have seen it happen before. Too many times in fact. It is always the same hole, the same pain. I know, I have that very same hole.” David put a hand to his chest. “In here. I once sat where you are now sitting and had this very same conversation with someone who I thought was also an unbearable asshole exactly like you believe me to be.”
The small burst of laughter erupted out of her before she could contain it. It was David’s obviously unfamiliar use of profanity rather than the words they conveyed that had caused it. The laugher didn’t stop the aching in her heart that she had been denying, but it did dull it a little.
“Does it ever go away?” She asked quietly, still in obvious pain.
Honesty had always been David’s greatest strength and weakness, he could lie to her, tell her it would all go away in time. But it would be a lie that would eventually turn on him. The difficulty of the current truth was infinitely easier to bear in the long run provided you had the strength to deal with it.
You could never start these things off with lies.
“No, it never goes away.“ He waited for a few moments to let that truth sink in. “But it does get easier over time. And there are ways to find happiness again, even if it is, for the most part, fleeting.”
David took another slice of cheesecake and slowly ate it, closing his eyes as he savoured the taste and texture of sweetness rolling around his tongue.
Candice watched him eat. For the very first time, she really watched his slow deliberate movements as he cut into the slice, as he admired the look of it before popping it into his mouth. She watched him chew and sip his coffee that suddenly looked really good.
As she watch him eat slowly and with obvious relish, she suddenly found her own mouth watering in an almost symbiotic way.
“Is it too late for me to order something?” She asked. David searched her face and found nothing but weary honesty of hunger. She had been fuelled by anger and with most of it gone, it needed to be replaced by something more substantial.
“It is never too late to order anything inside a twenty-four hour diner.” He said with a smile as he cocked his head to one side.
She smiled a smile that was strained but genuine. Candice ordered her food and realised that though the interview was over and she had failed it, all she wanted right now was to share some coffee, some cake and some humanity with the strange man sitting opposite her.
“So how many people fail this interview?” She asked as her food came and she began to eat.
David waited for a few seconds, watching her eat. She had done well. Better than anyone else had in a long time.
“Everyone fails the first interview.”
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