Читать книгу War/Peace - Matthew Vandenberg - Страница 10

I do a double take with my gaze, capturing the entrance to the Bunnings car park twice, then thrice.

'The station? Is it back this way?'

'Yeah,' Nina replies.

'Well that's the way I'm going. Anyway, good luck. I think you went really well. Might see you at the Chatswood store.'

'Yeah, bye.'

I check my watch. It's 4 past 3. At 5 past 2 I was standing inside a hallway, twiddling my opposable thumbs. The atmosphere was weak and I was weaving a web between the people around me with my annoying gaze, letting it roam freely like a stupid spider might. ~ It's that time when you're waiting your turn to be called into an interview room: people graze the hall floor like sheep, and the stage is yours if you choose to accept the invitation. It's hard to know, of course, whether the people are employees already, perhaps managers, planted among prospective employees to spy on them, to study them, and to judge them. One – perhaps Nina – studies instead the notices on the notice board, another, Clark, checks his watch. Soon you and the others are invited into a small dining room, but you're sure – practically positive – it's a coop: it's a pen and you and the other prospective employees have been rounded up and directed into it so that others can spy on you. You're performance will be rated on a scale of 10 to 50: your social skills, your sense of humor – while Everybody Hates Chris plays on the television, a perfect backing track - , your demeanor, the way you direct your gaze, your posture, your enthusiasm, and your manners. You don't mind. Never before have you not given a damn but now you confidently take a seat beside some employee and apologize for your intrusion. Yeah – this is your room now, the desk your stage, the laughter track playing on the sit com your cheering audience. If you can kiss a fuckin' high school teacher when you're only in the ninth grade, like you did just yesterday, then you've got heads up on anyone, anyone anywhere any time. The world is your oyster.

Needless to say, the interview which followed was practically a theater production. I probably wasn't the star performer but this didn't concern me one little bit. When a starlet, with ginger hair like a sun-kissed rainbow, and a stare which holds your gaze in the same manner the best superglue Bunnings sells holds together two sheets of wood as though they were wings of angels, walks into the room you don't think of her as a competitor. I didn't. She was the star performer and I was an audience member. I sat back, relaxed, smiled, and turned the whites of my eyes on her as though they were spotlights, and my heart, an excited guard, did not stop moving.

I'm not an idiot. I was confident, cool, calm and collected throughout the entire interview, I was sure I'd be called back for the two on one interview which would follow for successful applicants and, furthermore, I was sure I'll be working at the new Bunnings in Chatswood when it opens. I also thought I might have a chance to talk to this starlet a little later on, but I wasn't going to go out of my way. Instead, I decided to talk to another girl, one who sat just opposite me during the group interview. And now I've left her side. A momentary glance down a street to my left reveals to me, almost hidden behind a car, the diva who drew my attention – a perfect work of art in its own right no doubt, especially when drawn by her – in the interview room, so Joss Stone: a perfect figure, intoxicating personality, cheerful gaze, and fine, flawless skin. So that's settled then, I won't be talking to her, not just yet. I'll see her again someday I'm sure. But now I decide to play the game in just the way John Nash might: there exists a fine girl and two fair, to seek the fine is to invite rejection, but to seek a fair is to play fair, and fairly soon you'll find yourself in a fairly good position.

Somehow I know that a third girl is making her way to the railway station just like me. A quick mental statistical calculation tells me that since the majority of people at the interview were female, since the purpose of the interview is to source people for job positions at a Bunnings in the suburb of Chatswood and not Artarmon where we now dwell, and since there are not too many shops in this suburb, there is every chance that one of the girls who attended the interview will be on her way to Artarmon station right now as I think and walk.

I break into a slow jog which I keep up until I arrive at a crossing: in front of me stretches from left to right one leg of a freeway overpass and across the pass, sure enough she stands, idle like a dandelion, stiff, shy, and still with a real illusory sexy gait. Sure she's plain, but she's the type of girl you can roll a conversation off. You can utter several words, and she'll spill a sentence, utter ten, and she'll spill several. Through years – I mean, hours – of practice I've learnt that some girls are eager to talk to guys, just as many guys are eager to talk to girls. It's easy enough to assume that a chick will tag you as a stalker, pervert, or creep if you walk to close to her and attempt to start a conversation. Many will. But many won't. And believe it or not, if you play your cards right, you can target with your speech just the right type of girl, at just the right time, in just the right suburb, when you have just the right amount of words in your naked, available vocabulary to string together a perfect conversation starter. Just as you memorize notes in preparation for an exam, so too can you memorize pick up lines, but it's best to memorize templates. In this case I decide that I can re-use a template I only just utilized: you were so great in there. You're fishing for a compliment of course. When you say someone was great then they'll tell you that you were too, unless she's a complete bitch, which can be fun, so play that conversation for all it's worth young man. Anyway, I clear the road, and the footpath across a bridge, I arrive at a second pedestrian crossing and she's standing right beside me:

'Excuse me, were you in the interview just then?' - An English accent rings from my tongue: I must be summoning the power of Jude Law or Russell Brand as I speak, speaking syllables as though they are notes played to the backing track of pompous conversations held between English comedians and professional pick-up artists. And sure enough their lines, whatever they might be, are present in my implicit awareness.

'Yeah.'

'You were great. Good job.'

She wasn't too bad. I'm not lying. For one thing she looks like a beautiful princess, shy albeit, and a little withdrawn but beautiful nonetheless: the type of girl you could hold in a kiss for the entire fourth of July – ha ha – or new years, as fireworks fall like rain around you both, twinkling like fireflies, these tiny Tempah crystals licking your lips, illuminating the perfect contours of her red, pink lips, her shiny white teeth, and her loose tongue. And she was well spoken and I truly believe she deserves a part in the soap opera of Bunnings Chatswood 101, starring Jude Law as me, Joss Stone as diva chick, and Jessica Mauboy as chick who I'm currently talking to.

'Oh thanks. Wow. You were real good. They always say you should volunteer first to speak and all. I know I should have. You were so confident.'

'Thanks. You think so?'

So there it was, confirmation that the kiss just yesterday was life changing, confirmation that I was now a new man, confirmation that a relationship with a beautiful female teacher is something every young shy guy needs.

'Yeah. Wish I could have been like that. I'm really not sure about this one. I've applied for so many different positions, K Mart, Coles, Officeworks, I really hope I get one.'

'Have you worked before?'

'Nah. Straight out of school. I'm 18.'

'I'm 14,' I say, shrugging. 'I feel so young now.'

'14! Awww. Wish I applied for a job here when I was that age. It's so much easier to find work when you're young.'

Think treelined streets, think plain smooth footpaths, think a clear crisp voice, skin with a perfect shine, hair that falls like arms limp, a beaut gait, posture, and stroll: she's so fine and I'm thinking I'll surely see her again after today. Each word I throw out is another card and I'm starting to understand the rules of poker.

******

References

1 Poker Face – Lady GaGa