“I’ll be here,” he confirms again, looking at me with a hard expression before looking out the window and tapping the tips of his fingers on the dash.
Walking up the steps to the front door, I can feel his eyes on me. He likes looking at me the most. Out of all of them, he’s the one I mostly catch looking at my tits, checking out my ass. Either he is not shy about it, or he doesn’t know he’s doing it. But it feels good. I was always a little bit shy about being thick, but when he looks at me… when they all look at me… I feel absolutely magnificent. I want to roll my body around in space, show them everything.
The entry area is brick, and the light fixture on chains is even more impressive close up. I feel like I am entering a museum or federal building or something. Something official.
When I thumb the doorbell, I can hear it ringing deep inside the building. It’s one of those bell chimes that goes on forever and ever, with vibrations that I can feel deep between my hips.
Eventually the door opens and a pretty girl, about eighteen, smiles at me as she steps into the light. She’s wearing khaki trousers and a blue polo shirt that almost looks like a uniform. Almost like the Best Buy uniform, as a matter of fact.
“You must be Olivia,” the woman smiles. “Please come in.”
I remember to stand up straight and smile back, pushing aside thoughts of what my hair looks like, what my breath smells like, and whether I have spontaneously developed body odor. Those thoughts are not useful to me now. I need to be optimistic! Focused!
“It’s nice to meet you,” I reply politely.
“Mrs. Harper is waiting for you in the study,” she says as she leads me deeper into the house. “Mr. Harper will be along just after.”
Just after? I repeat to myself silently. Just after my physical exam or something? Weird.
We walk down a long hallway toward the back of the house, where it is suddenly bright. Passing a beautiful French-style kitchen, I notice another woman standing at the stove, also in a blue polo shirt. She seems to be as young as the woman who answered the door. She doesn’t turn around but continues chopping celery into long pieces.
The woman leads me down another sharp hallway to the left and through double doors into a long, well-lit room that is paneled on three walls with intricate wood pieces that look like decorative puzzles. The fourth wall is all glass, and looks out over an extensive rose garden. If this room was selected to both impress and intimidate me, it is definitely doing the job.
A woman stands up at the far end of the room and begins walking toward us with her hand extended.
“Olivia!” she exclaims as though she is surprised to see me.
“Hello Mrs. Harper,” I smile, extending my hand.
She shakes my hand, firm and confident, but not aggressive. She looks like the kind woman who would try to mash the bones together, but she doesn’t do that. Her palm is dry and I realize mine isn’t. Yikes.
She gestures to the sofa and I sit down, remembering to keep my knees together like a lady. Shoulders back. Remember to smile. Listen to the questions all the way through before answering.
She has a laptop and reads off the usual kinds of questions, one by one. I can tell she already has my resume in front of her, because she asks me about my high school, and where I grew up.
“Siblings?”
“Just me,” I answer brightly.
Immediately I wonder if I should have lied. Would siblings have been better?
“Experience?” she asks.
“Well, none… directly. Not exactly.”
She looks up from her laptop and stares right at me, with absolutely no expression on her face. It’s a little weird, honestly.
“I mean, I’m familiar with children? I know they exist, ha-ha,” I chuckle awkwardly.
“Yes, I see,” she answers and looks down again.
My eyes search the room like I am looking for a life preserver or something. There are rows and rows of bookshelves with the kind of respectable books you see in houses like this. Not like a bunch of Harlequin romances or anything, like what I would have on my shelves. Law books or some such. Leather-bound, I realize.
“Are you a lawyer?” I ask, trying to make the conversation a little bit more pleasant.
“Why would you say that?” she snaps.
Startled, I gesture meekly at the bookshelves. “Oh. Just all of that? A lot of books? I just thought…”
She narrows her eyes at me. “Those are medical journals.”
“Oh, you’re a doctor!” I blurt out.
There are times I wish I could shut up, and this is one of them.
She takes a deep breath, raising her eyebrows really high while she stares at her computer screen, as though she and the computer screen are sharing a secret look about how stupid I am.