Baby For The Bear

She bent her knees up and wrapped her arms around them, sitting in what amounted to an upright fetal position—how ironic—there on her bed, and weighed her options. Was she prepared for the employment checks not keeping up with the dwindling of her bank account? Was she prepared for the months it might take to find a new job that might not be as good as the one from which she’d been downsized, or for the prospect of drifting through temporary positions? Was she prepared to be in arrears with the bills, with the rent? Was she prepared to ask Mom and Dad if she could come home? If she was not ready to be the surrogate mother of this rich bear man, what was she ready to do?

What’s it gonna be, Sammie?

Frowning harder, she unclenched her knees and lifted the MacBook back into her lap.

I can’t believe I’m doing this, she thought as her fingers hit the keyboard.

She was actually about to write a cover letter to introduce herself as a candidate for a job getting pregnant. Pregnant, for God’s sake! Was she out of her flipping mind? Yes—she was crazy with worry and anxiety and, she had to admit, fear. Crazy that for all her education and skills and experience, she was about to face one of the worst nightmares that can possibly take over a person’s life. Crazy that she had better do something sooner than later, or it would all snowball on her. She was facing the insanity of a modern world that made everything about money. Not what you had to offer as a person, but what kind of tool you made for someone else and what you had in your purse and your bank.

What kind of cover letter could she write for a thing like this? In the standard form, one introduced oneself, mentioned the job in question, matched one’s skills and experience with the requirements of the position, encouraged the reader to look at one’s resume, and finished with the all-important Call to Action, the request for an interview.

There were subtleties and nuances, of course. There was the matter of addressing the thing to someone. People always liked these things to have a personal touch, which sometimes meant doing some digging around, sometimes making phone calls, to find the party in question. “To Whom It May Concern…” was not considered good enough. Finding the name of the right party was thought to show that one cared. The idea amused Samantha: a Human Resources Director or Personnel Manager in charge of finding the right candidate to get pregnant for the big boss. She switched from her word processor back to the webpage to find a name. The boss bear himself would certainly not put his own name on the thing; he would have someone else to be the gatekeeper, standing at the entrance to the cave, so to speak.

Samantha realized that for any other job she should learn more about the company and what it did. Well, this time was not applying to a company so much as she was applying to an individual. She was not going to be an employee of a business or a corporation; it was actually more of a freelance, “contractor” type of position. With a company, one could do some research and prepare oneself better, come up with some questions to ask in the interview. Oh, yes, they loved that idea, “interviewing the interviewer,” asking things to show that one had bothered to find out things about the company and taken an interest in something besides the damn paycheck. The company, more than likely, saw the ideal employee as a tool who should have no mind or will or life of his own outside of the job, but the applicant was expected to be interested in and enthusiastic about the company. To be considered at all for a job, one had to look as if one would live it and breathe it and care about it beyond the salary and the benefits, to make the job one’s life and one’s reason for living. Even temporary jobs had become that way. We’re paying you to live for us.

In this “position” Samantha would not be living for the company. She would be giving her living body to a new life created for the employer. And she would not know anything about who the employer was or what he did or what he stood for until she showed up for the interview. This should rightfully have made her hesitate and think twice about the whole thing. To her surprise, once she found the contact name in the ad, she switched back to the word processor and started typing again.

So, what were her qualifications for this job? She was young, female, healthy, intelligent, educated, very pretty, and had a working uterus. There were the usual buzz words and selling points: she was a go-getter, a self-starter, attentive to detail, and so on and so on. How should she adapt the standard employment pitch to a position like this? I’m ready, willing, and able to “go get” myself knocked up with a metamorph cub. I will be attentive to all the details of the in vitro procedure and carrying the baby. I will be prompt in getting to the delivery room at the hospital and put in overtime in labor. I will deliver a healthy shape-shifter baby on deadline.

Samantha could not help but think that there must be something out there—something—that was saner, more reasonable, than what she could hardly believe she was now attempting to do. There had to be something.

And there very likely was, if she could find it. But whatever it may be, it would not pay three-quarters of a hundred thousand dollars.

Huffing incredulously at herself, she kept typing.

She said she was a highly motivated and goal-oriented individual. (Seventy-five thousand dollars made for a most desirable goal and excellent motivation, though she did not put it that way.) She described herself as an honest, caring, hard-working person who came from a good family and had good friends. She mentioned that she was healthy, that she did not smoke, that she had a good diet and never used illicit drugs, that she liked to swim for exercise when she went to the gym. She told her potential Papa Bear that she would take as good care of his unborn cub as she took care of herself. Perhaps all that, plus her photos, would at least be enough to get her through the door for an interview.

That, and her description of her education and work background, would have to be enough. She would attach her formal resume with the letter and the photos, and all of that would have to get her the nod. Now, about those pictures…