I shifted my attention out the window just as her fingers slipped through her hair, dragging it over her ear a seventeenth time. The terminal faded from view as the plane taxied down the runway. Denver faded as we took off. I studied the sky, the clouds, the mountains until hearing the loudspeaker's chime. I had my laptop out of the seat-back pocket and open on my tray table before the flight attendant spoke.
And I found myself staring at Zelda's résumé once again. Motherf*ck.
"Let me see if I can get this too," she said, both hands held up in front of her as if she was about to conjure magic. And she could. I hated to admit it but I knew she could. "You prefer things to be"—she held her thumbs and forefingers an inch apart—"just so. You need someone who can organize your things and prepare it all such that you're able to go ahead and do everything because you don't trust anyone to do anything correctly. I am wonderful when it comes to handling egomaniac micromanagers. I have lots of experience in that arena and I don't notice the toxic air quality of being treated like I'm incompetent anymore. I adapt to shit situations shockingly well."
"Excuse me" was all I could manage. And then, "I am not an egomaniac micromanager."
She dropped her hands to her lap and gave me a patient smile. It was the kind of smile reserved for small, feeble, clueless things. "It's okay, honey. I understand. We don't have to use those words."
"The words are fine," I snapped. "They are fine and they don't describe my management style." I pointed to my screen. "Since you've pushed the issue, Miss Besh, I'd love to hear how your recent experience"—I blinked at the screen, forcing myself to reread the bullet several times for fear the whiskey was playing games on me—"managing a spirituality shop, whatever that is, would meaningfully contribute to my accounting practice."
"Let's start with the spirituality shop piece of this puzzle. It's Denver, my friend. People love their crystals and smudge sticks and tarot readings. Just because you're not pulling cards every day doesn't mean it's not a worthwhile business."
She tucked her hair over her ear again—eighteen—and this was the first time I noticed the tattoo on her inner forearm. The phases of the moon, of course.
"The worthiness of the business isn't my concern at the moment," I replied.
"But it is," she countered. "You said, 'a spirituality shop, whatever that is.' The implication was clear—my job was at a non-mainstream business and thus my experience is equally non-mainstream. You're discounting the possibility that I'm capable of managing a retail store and a staff of part-time clerks as well as tarot readers—who, by the way, are paid as independent contractors. You're skipping over the part where I handled scheduling and ordering and made sense of daily receipts such that the lights stayed on the entire time I worked there. I kept all of the cats alive too."
I wanted nothing more than to glance at my watch. I wanted to know which segment of this billable hour I was losing to a lecture on the goods and services of some new-age witchcraft emporium.
"While that is fascinating, none of it points to experience with SAP or Oracle," I said, taking another scan of her résumé. "I'm not seeing anything in here that gets at Sarbanes-Oxley or even an entry-level understanding of GAAP."
Nineteen.
"I know you believe those things are essential but I stand behind what I said about you doing all the work," she answered. "And I say that with love so don't get all offended on me now, uh"—she paused, frowned—"I don't know your name. You're elbow-deep in my life history and I don't know your name."
