Baby For The Bear

Right now I hope to see myself continuing to eat and stay alive, no thanks to you. “I had really wanted to get myself established in a good career with good advancement potential for the long term.” I thought that’s where I was until you came along, sir.

“But from your major I assume you at least had your eye on the business world or the marketing profession,” Ken said. “Where would you like to see yourself down the line, say in five years?”

I’d like to see myself working steadily someplace, in some job, where I could use the things I learned in school and get myself promoted, maybe to someplace like the side of that desk where you’re sitting right now, you corporate-raiding, carpet-bagging son of a bear. But you’ve kind of put up a roadblock to that one, haven’t you? More tactfully, she responded, “I’m still interested in business. I’d still like a corporate position. Not administrative—managerial or executive. I’ve got background and skills. I’d like to put them to the best use.”

Ken took that in very thoughtfully, tucking in a back pocket of his mind the idea that if they were sitting in the cafe in the lobby, or any of several bars that he knew, he would be looking forward to trying out Samantha’s skills in areas that were not taught in Economics classes. “But for the time being,” he continued, “you’re interested in the role from my ad in The Central Square. What is it that attracted you to being a surrogate?”

This was exactly the kind of interview question that Samantha had always hated. Why in the hell did he think she was interested in being a surrogate? Why was anyone ever interested in any kind of job, whether a traditional one or even something like this? She wanted to earn herself a bloody living, what else! This was in fact the thing she most hated about job interviews in general: this need to put on a damned horse-and-pony show for people, to make a great show of what it was about the job that you supposedly thought was the most fascinating and wonderful thing in the world and why you were the one perfect person on the face of the Earth to do it. Face it, what motivates anyone to go out for any job is the desire for a paycheck and benefits and the ability to live a decent frickin’ life! But no, part of the song-and-dance of any job interview was always meant to show the interviewer how one’s own motives stood out from those of everyone else who came through the door, even though every applicant’s motives were identical to those of every other. This was something that someone like this Kenneth Brecker would never understand. Damn him.

Nevertheless, Samantha pieced together an answer. “I can do this. I’m young, I’m very healthy, I eat well…,” and she mentally inserted, for the time being, anyway, “and I take great care of myself. I have a gym membership and I swim every other day.” Again she mentally inserted, And I’ll keep swimming every other day as long as I have my gym membership, and if I lose it I’ll use my alumni privileges at school, so there. “I’m ready to learn how to be a good expectant mother. I’ll learn everything about carrying a baby—human or your kind. I’ll take the vitamins, get the right amount of rest, see the doctor like clockwork, go to Lamaze. I don’t smoke. I don’t use drugs. I won’t drink. I’ll do everything possible to see to it that your cub comes into the world safe and healthy. I’ll be a good pregnant mother and see to it that you get to be a good father.”

It was the way she said it all that impressed Ken. She didn’t actually say anything that he hadn’t heard from a dozen women today already. With some variations, he could practically recite the whole routine by heart. And he expected it would be this way. But there was something about the way she gave the same answer that he had heard so many times. There was a particular fire in her convictions, a particular force in the way she held her eyes on him as she spoke them. In truth, Ken knew that Samantha, like all the others, wanted and needed the money, that she probably needed it very badly.

And in Samantha’s case, he had a personal knowledge of the reason why she needed it.

The look in her eyes told him what she wasn’t saying. He could see the accusation and the recrimination there. Her eyes answered him as her lips did not. I want this because of what you did to me. I’ll have your cub—but in return I expect you to pick me up after pulling the rug out from under me. You broke my life. Now I expect you to help me fix it.

At this moment there was, so to speak, an invisible bear standing in the room with them and neither of them was mentioning it. They could ignore it, but they could not deny it. And Ken actually doubted whether he wanted to deny it. The question was how to bring it up.

It had to be delicately if it were to be done at all, so that was the way Ken proceeded. “Ms. Vance…there’s something I’d like to ask, and I’m not sure how I should go about it, or if I should even mention it.”

Samantha’s entire body tensed at that, and she only hoped her face and her body language were not showing it. She suddenly had a cold, prickly perspiration down her back. He wasn’t actually going to put that out here—was he? Not that…

Ken continued, “I’m going to preface this by saying you are perfectly free not to answer this question. You can ask to move on to something else if you want. And if you do answer, I want you to feel free to be as honest as you like. I promise I will not hold your honesty against you. It’s all right to speak your mind. I’m a businessman, and in business sometimes you have to learn to have a thick skin about some things. So you can answer honestly.”

Now this made Samantha feel very much like a bear loping unsuspectingly through the forest, about to plant her foot in a cruel, nasty steel trap that would slam shut with its metal teeth and dig them into her flesh and muscles and make her roar in agony. In learning about how to interview for a job, she had made a special note of the way interviews were sometimes booby-trapped. They would give a personal questionnaire and encourage the applicant to answer all questions honestly. Or they would ask a question and say it was all right to be honest and candid. Or they wouldn’t even do that much. The most commonly “loaded” booby-trap question was, “Tell me what you consider your strengths and weaknesses.” Samantha was especially wary of that one because it was something that they asked to make people sabotage themselves. “Weaknesses” indeed. What they were looking for, she knew, was ammunition. They might say they wouldn’t hold it against the applicant, but what they wanted was something to hold against them. They wanted a reason to deny a person a chance at a livelihood, a reason not to give them what they needed. And they had cunning methods of getting it right from the applicant themselves.