Pink Slipper Read online

  "I apologize for the furniture," Joe said, giving the chair a little dust with his arm. "We’re on a tight budget now, throwing everything into research and product development. But that’s temporary. Don’t you worry. We may be a start-up, but we’ve got firm backing. We’re just on the brink of taking the market by storm."

  Joe launched into a corporate sales pitch. Start up. Capitalization. Twenty employees. All but one were engineers. I assumed the admin didn’t have an engineering degree. Five master’s degrees. Ten PhDs. Blah, blah, blah.

  A bunch of über-nerds. This alone was enough to scare me off. I tuned out, plotting my escape. Why, oh why, were they interested in me? Hawk had engineers running finance, sales and marketing, and engineering. Very scary because everyone knows that true engineers should never manage anything with a pulse, a dollar sign, or an ad campaign. True engineers work best as individual contributors and product designers. And engineers with PhDs should never be allowed off the university or top-secret government research facilities, let alone be loosed on society at large!

  Herbert went over product specs. Bandwidths. Failure rates. Speed. Yawn.

  Eugene supposedly talked about the market, but he really just rehashed the product specs saying how the market should love them. "Any questions?"

  "What salary are we looking at for this position?" I had to know this. If it was lower than Howard’s then it was adios for me.

  "DOE," Joe said without hesitation. "I thought our ad mentioned that. Anything else?"

  I did some mental grumbling. Depends on experience. That probably meant peanuts, at least judging by how they were throwing all their money into product development and couldn’t even afford a decent guest chair. "How many women work for Hawk?"

  The three of them shared a look. It took three PhDs to figure this out? Then Joe counted on his fingers and got to exactly one. He smiled, looking like they’d passed a test, nodded, and said, "We’ve got Betsy out front."

  This male bias was probably to be expected from a company whose initials were H-E. This job was way beneath me. These guys were looking to fill an EOE requirement or something. Which probably meant they’re thinking of branching out to get government contracts. No way was I being suckered into getting another no-fun secret clearance. And I would not be the token woman.

  Joe looked at Herbert and Eugene. "I guess we should ask you a few questions. Eugene, why don’t you go first?"

  "I don’t know where to start, Joe." He cast a quick glance at the copy of my résumé he held. "I think we’re all agreed on your obvious strengths. Could you tell us your weaknesses?"

  Too easy. "Chocolate and a tendency to attract the wrong sort of man."

  Eugene blushed. "Oh, I, uh, sort of meant, job-related weaknesses."

  I shrugged. "None. I’m superbly competent."

  And so it went. They asked a dumb question, I retorted with a modified version of the ten worst interview question responses.

  "How about a technical question, Herb?" Joe prompted.

  Poor Herb, I think he was distracted by my legs. "Oh, ah, sure." Pause. "How about reciting the resistor code?"

  What? He was kidding, right? I didn’t even need my research for this. The resistor code, the dirty little mnemonic that helped techs remember the sequence order of each band of color on a resistor? Patronizing. Not a real technical question, a tech question, a loser question. A great question for me! Black, brown, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, gray, white. Only we all memorized it as, "Bad boys rape our young girls but violet gives willingly."

  Seizing my opportunity, I huffed. "Sorry, gentleman, but that really is a sexist, offensive question."

  Mission accomplished. Interview foiled.

  They stumbled all over themselves with apologies.

  I smiled, stood and shook each of their hands warmly, thanking them for their time. They’d handed me exactly what I’d wanted. I could afford to be gracious.

  On the way back to Dad’s I had a brilliant idea. When I got home, I was changing all my online résumés. Throwing my interview had been easy. But why go through the interview process at all? Why not just create a bogus, bad résumé and post it? That way, I avoided this stupid interviewing altogether while still appearing to be "actively looking" for a job and making a "reasonable" effort. Could anyone blame me if I sucked at writing résumés? After all, I’m an engineer. Urban myth allows that we can’t write and have minimal social skills, a natural result of too much studying and egghead thinking.

  I "fixed" my résumé right away by adding phony stuff about helping bag ladies and orphaned baby orcas as well as padding my work experience to the point of blatant exaggeration. Any HR person or hiring manager would surely be suspicious and screen me out. Running against type, I’d always been good at creative writing. Look at all those dry lab reports I’d done in college. It takes skill, and I mean it, to fake experiment results when you have absolutely no idea what you were doing or why your experiment failed.

  I was so pleased with my new résumé, I took a break and ate just one or two chocolate kisses. And then, maybe, one or two more . . . or so.

  Then I checked my messages.

  "Leesa, help! We have an electrical emergency! Our power’s out!"

  Oh, shoot! I thought as I grabbed my car keys and headed out. What now? And why didn’t those two call Puget Sound Energy instead of me?

  * * *

  Candy greeted me at the front door, her hair swept up in a tight French knot, looking shiny and still wet. Hank hovered behind her. I carried my emergency repair kit, a few things I’d borrowed from Dad—wire stripper, duct and electrical tape, pliers, and a screwdriver.

  I got the story in stereo as Candy grabbed my arm and pulled me in. Something about blow dryers going kaput and lights out. They pointed to the dark chandelier. Dead. They gave me an accusing look, like what kind of engineer are you?

  "Wait a minute here," I said, "I’m not Puget Sound Energy. Why didn’t you call the power company?"

  They looked astounded at that.

  "We’re the only ones out," Hank said.

  "Wait a minute. Is all your power out?"

  "No."

  That’s when I noticed a light on in the kitchen.

  Just what I thought. I sighed and went to the breaker box where I found the circuit breaker to the entryway and bathroom tripped. So I flipped it and suddenly I was the hero of the day. I called them over and showed them what to do the next time this happened and then I asked for the story.

  "Well," Candy said, "I was blow drying my hair with my new super blower with the built-in ionizer and poof! Out went the lights."

  Hank nodded for emphasis.

  "Have you used this blow dryer before?" I asked, playing Miss Engineer Detective.

  "No. We just got it yesterday," Hank said. "After you left we went to Sally’s. You know, to pick up stuff for your foil. And that’s where we saw this baby. We’ve wanted one with an ionizer. Much gentler on the hair and body."

  "Bring it to me," I said. Sure enough, it was a beauty, a high wattage dryer about twice the size of Candy’s old one. "Was the new chandelier on at the time the power went out?"

  Hank nodded.

  They both smiled.

  "Okay, here’s the deal." I thought about explaining Ohm’s Law, but decided layman’s terms would work better. "If you use the new blow dryer and have the chandelier on at the same time, you’ll overload your circuit again. Both of them are on the same breaker and draw more current than your old light and dryer. You can only use one at a time."

  I made them try running the blow dryer with the chandelier off, just to make sure. Everything worked fine.

  "Excellent." Mystery solved and I didn’t even need my electrical tape.

  Since I was there, and they had the supplies, Candy foiled my hair while we chatted. It must’ve been the beauty parlor atmosphere that caused me to tell them about calling Ryne.

  "You go, girl!" Candy said. "He was by himself?"


  I nodded.

  "And he told you to be patient?" Hank asked.

  I shrugged. "Yes, in a veiled way."

  They agreed the signs a relationship could bloom looked good.

  "Just don’t be too patient," Candy said. "Despite what he said, he’ll think you aren’t interested. You have to give some chase."

  No, I didn’t. I’d already vowed to be as patient as it took. I changed the subject and told them about my job interview. We had a good laugh about those nerdy engineering PhDs.

  "You did the right thing storming out of there," Candy said. "Maybe you could teach me that little poem. I could probably use it someday. I date a lot of techs."

  When Candy was finished foiling, I had gorgeous blonde hair again.

  "How much do I owe you for the foil supplies?"

  "Oh, that’s on us," Candy said. When she saw that I was going to protest, she added, "For your help. Besides, I was just practicing. I hadn’t actually done a foil in a while."

  Chapter 12

  Job-free days: 45

  July Unemployment Log

  Interviews: No more scheduled.

  Number of rejections (Responses): Tons. The new résumé is working overtime!

  Goals: Become the avoid-an-interview guru. Maybe write a book—The Ten Worst Résumés: How to Write Them. How to Use Them to Your Advantage. Ryne isn’t the only one with career counseling skills.

  * * *

  I never knew there was so much stuff to do for free in the city. But Roger did and wanted JCG to try them out so he could recommend them in his book.

  Lunch concerts at the park. Winery tours. Tuesday jazz nights at IKEA. Art walks. Free movie tickets to prereleased movies as part of a test audience. Admission to locally taped talk shows. Public library events that included nationally known speakers and authors giving readings. Did you know that as part of their charter museums have to offer free admission to the public one day a month?

  All this for free? Why work ever again? Except for those other things that required cash, like food and mortgage payments.

  Roger wrote up a list of proposed events and took a vote at the JCG Tuesday meeting, which was held at a local pizza joint that had an all-you-can-eat special for five bucks. As this counted as my meals for the day, it was a bargain. Dad hadn’t left the kitchen exactly fully stocked. I was about out of all the staples, and until he came back, I wasn’t going grocery shopping. Not on my own nickel.

  "So what will the last event for August be?" Roger looked around at the thirty or so people in attendance.

  "I vote for the Museum of Flight." I looked eagerly at my fellow JCGers. "Oh, come on, people! Planes. Astronauts. Science!" I gave them my excited look. Why weren’t they biting?

  "I vote for the winery tour," Bud said. "Free alcohol."

  Roger nodded. "All in favor?"

  Lots of ayes.

  "Against?"

  Silence. How could I vote against free drinks? Which did sound good. But so did airplanes.

  Roger grinned. "The ayes have it. Free booze wins out over airplanes and science. Sorry, Lees."

  I bet. I mumbled under my breath, "You’ll probably schedule the Museum of Flight for September when I’ll be hard at work for Howard at SAPS."

  "I’ll make a schedule for August and September and e-mail it out ASAP," Roger said. "Let’s get on with the eating. Anyone want to make a motion to close?"

  "I will," Bud said.

  "Second," from Hank.

  "Meeting adjourned." Roger slammed his notebook closed. "Let’s hit the buffet."

  I thought I’d just get in line and gossip with the girls when a man genetically designed to make a woman’s pulse soar came up to me. "Leesa Winsome, isn’t it? Sean Raker." He had a voice like honey, smooth and golden, full of mirth.

  Black jeans hugged muscular thighs and a black T-shirt hung on broad shoulders. Did I mention that he was over six feet tall? By that I mean, well over six feet. Six four if he was an inch. Believe me, I’ve made a science out of estimating a man’s height.

  His gaze roved over my breasts showcased in one of Julie’s skintight tanks. He had a knack of making a girl feel flattered, even while leering. And boy! Did I feel flattered, all the way to my toenails. So this was the infamous Sean. Now I knew what Jean meant. He exuded "I’m a lady’s man" pheromones and looked like a real girl toy.

  "Are you related to the Winsomes who own Winsome Aerospace Retrofitters by any chance?" The way he said it indicated he knew I was.

  Hypnotic spell broken. He was schmoozing me up for a job with all that flattering leering. What did I expect? That he wanted to jump my engineer girl bones immediately upon seeing me when Candy and Hank were prime targets just feet away? This was JCG. Networking wasn’t against the law here. In fact, it was probably expected.

  I nodded. "My dad owns it."

  He grinned and held out his card. "I’m an industrial designer. Unemployed and surviving by picking up a little contracting work—"

  "And you were wondering if I could help you out, give you a referral?" I took his card, resisting the urge to shred it. He looks me up and down, gives me the "wow, you’re a babe" look just to con me into helping him? I felt like a woman scorned.

  Then it was as if Ryne’s recorded voice just popped into my head again, "You owe no one anything, but if you commit to helping another, Providence moves to help you through unforeseen events and offers material assistance."

  Greatness, Leesa, greatness, I reminded myself. Shooting for greatness didn’t prevent me from playing devil’s advocate with myself—was recommending someone to WAR really helping them out? But if that was what Sean wanted, well that’s all that mattered, right? I didn’t have to decide if they’d be happy if they got what they wanted. Not my problem.

  I sighed. "Sure." I explained about Dad and Julie and their positions with the company. "Dad will be back Friday and Julie sometime later. Do you have a résumé I could pass on?"

  "No, but I’ve got a hell of a portfolio. I’ll bring it next time and give you a look." He frowned. "Why don’t you work for Winsome?"

  "Me? Work with Dad?" Did I make a gagging sound, a guttural growl? I hope not, but when asked that question a gag was almost involuntary. I grimaced. "How to say this delicately? We have clashing personalities. It’s generally best for us to maintain our distance." I shuddered. "You know, patricide isn’t my thing. That’s what I think when I’m in normal mode. When I’m around Dad too long, especially when I have to work with him, it starts to look real appealing."

  "Sounds like me and my old man." Sean laughed and nodded toward the buffet. "I’m starving. Want to get in line?"

  Now that was a no-brainer. We got our pizza and had just sat down when Candy sauntered over, three grapes and a fluff of lettuce, no dressing on her plate. "Leesa! Sean!"

  Too much exclamation in her voice and her eyes glued not on me but Sean. Hank followed on her heels. There was nothing to do but invite them to join us.

  As Candy slid into her seat she all but thrust her perfect half melon breasts into Sean’s face. He made some comment about being surrounded by three hot babes. Barn, not to be left out, joined us from his assault on the buffet line.

  "Ladies, I didn’t see you. When did you sneak in?" he asked.

  Candy sighed. "Why don’t you join us, Barn?"

  His tail hit chair before she had the sentence half out. There we sat, one big happy group, making small talk. Three babes vying for Sean’s attention, and Barn trying for any attention at all.

  "You’re an engineer?" Barn said to me, adjusting his chair to effectively block me off from Sean, Candy, and Hank.

  Trapped! I spent the next half hour listening to Barn’s life story, his troubles with weight and women, how he couldn’t get a job, but it wasn’t his fault, no one was hiring. He was a tech boy, a computer programmer, which probably explained the weight problem. Reaching for the munchies as you sit with your butt in a chair and type doesn’t exactly get the aerobi
c heart rate up.

  All this while Candy and Hank laughed, giggled, and flirted with Sean, and Roger cast surreptitious looks Candy’s way. We were the babe table, except for Barn. I already had Willie chasing after me. I didn’t need, or want, Barn. And yet . . .

  Sitting there being forced to listen to him, I found myself looking past the physical and his hesitant, questioning style of speech. He was smart, self-deprecating, and totally not arrogant. I was actually moved by his sob stories. He was a little pudgy, but it sounded like he had a genetic tendency and by his family standards, he was the skinny boy. He was trying hard to overcome. He had a pleasant face, and if he’d been a girl, people might say the old, "She’d be so pretty if she lost a few."

  I’d never thought about it before, but women could be as superficial as men were. Yes, even me.

  For all his downsides, Barn was also a genuinely nice guy, a sensitive guy, a try-real-hard-to-please guy. Sensitive men were in right now. He could probably make some woman, most likely a bossy, take-charge woman, very happy. If she was willing to see past his build and his current unemployed status and give him a try.

  I wished I could help Barn out without crushing him. Which is when I remembered something I’d read in Ryne’s book. "See the potential in others and Providence and others will see the potential in you."

  Potential, that’s it! Barn had potential and I could see it.

  Now if only I knew a slightly pudgy, bossy, take-charge kind of woman to fix him up with, someone I could call a favor in on. Cara! She owed me big for laying me off. This was her chance to redeem herself, show a little true friendship, and do me a favor while I was doing her one. My anger at her was receding and I was getting tired of dodging her phone calls. It was time to call a truce.

  Cara and Barn. It could work. All Barn needed was a little not so extreme makeover and then look out Cara!

  I slid a glance over at Candy and Hank, the makeover queens. And then back at Barn. He could use a stylish haircut and stand to drop more than a few pounds. Using the advice and recipes in Julie’s low carb diet books, he’d be able to drop seven to ten pounds in a week or two. And he’d have a healthier heart. Some new clothes . . .