The candidate had been waiting for a good twenty minutes. Long enough to see how much patience she had for her age. Time for the next step.
She passed Harrison Schmidt on her way to the stairs. She almost always took the stairs. Every little bit helped. Tommy and Harrison said she looked better with another ten pounds than without it. Seeing herself only through hypercritical eyes, she thought they were trying to be nice. If the subject came up, Granpa just coughed.
“Hey! Harrison!” She turned and jogged to catch him. He could be a big help.
“Can I borrow you a minute?” she asked.
He quirked an eyebrow at her, waiting for an explanation.
“I’ve got a potential recruit. I need to run her through evaluation. Be at the alley off Pappas Street, the one nearest Horner on the far west side. Two hours. Be sure not to see us.”
“That’s more than a minute. Wednesday. Why do I always get this kind of crap on Wednesday?” He sighed, “Okay. Skulking, or oblivious?”
“Drunk and oblivious,” she decided. “Taking a piss would be ideal. That’ll look pathetic enough.”
“Oh, thanks so much. I have to get all grimy for this, don’t I?” He sighed. “You owe me, dear.”
“Yeah, I do. Thanks a bunch. I know this is a sucky assignment,” Cally said.
The interrogation room looked smaller from the inside than it did on camera. The walls were a rather unsettling puke green. Beyond the two chairs, the room was bare. Its ugliness was deliberate, designed to unsettle anyone interrogated here. There were other rooms for other kinds of discussions. She pulled the empty chair around backwards, straddling it, to look the girl over.
“Denise Reardon. So, you think you want to be an assassin. That’s one strike against you, Denise. Why should I let you have one of the slots to the school?” Wisps of her damp, blonde hair had fallen forward. The pro absently tucked them back behind her ear.
“Because I’d be good at it.” The skinny, brunette kid looked at her through owlish glasses. Eyesight was fixable.
“At killing people? Why would anybody want to do that?” Cally set a knee bouncing, tapping her heel. It wasn’t a real mission, but she was fidgety to get going.
“You do.” The kid squinted, scrunching her glasses back up her nose.
“That’s not an answer. Answer the question.”
“Because our whole family, just about, lives on an island hiding from people who want to kill us. Because I know our family. We’re not monsters. We argue, we squabble, we gossip behind each other’s backs, we have a fair dose of hypocrites and liars, a couple of drunks, and a few serious assholes — but we’re not monsters. So the people who are trying to kill us must be the monsters.” The words sounded like a preprepared little speech.
“And what if they’re not?”
“What?” Her forehead wrinkled a little, like a worried puppy’s.
“What if the people we’re fighting against, that you’re sent out to kill, aren’t monsters.”
“I… um… I — I don’t know.”
“That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said. One in your favor.”
“Look, the Posties wanted to eat us. I’m not dumb. I know a lot of you were alive back then. You’re juvs. You’re sick of fighting, right? So anybody who the whole family, basically, is working so hard to fight must not be planning to hug us and give us a cookie.”
“So what if you get deep enough to get more information and decide we’re wrong?” Cally crossed her arms on the chair back, propping her chin on them.
“Nothing’s perfect. I don’t think my whole family is stupid, and I don’t think they’re evil. I’ll throw in my lot with y’all. I’m not stupid. There will be a lot I don’t need to know. Keeping that in mind, if I saw anything too bad, I’d talk about it to my boss.”
“What if you were in the field when that happened?”
“Then I’d have to do my job and wait until I got back to talk about it, wouldn’t I? Nothing’s perfect. I’ll throw in my lot with you.”
“What do you think this job is like, anyway? What do you think your average day would be?”
“I don’t know.”
“Speculate,” the assassin ordered.
“Average day? Probably buffing my skills or doing mission prep. Maybe traveling to or from a mission. Maybe under cover in some mission or other. Maybe watching people or scoping out situations before going in. It’s like dance, isn’t it? A lot of hard work preparing, for just a couple of recitals a year.”
“Like dance. I wouldn’t have put it like that, but we’ll let it go. Especially since I dance, too. But you knew that. I think you were in my beginning jazz class one year on the island, weren’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am.” The young girl hesitated. “Ma’am, excuse me, but you’re pretty good, right? So why did you leave work to be with your kids? I mean, why would they let you? Wouldn’t the Bane Sidhe want you to keep working?”
“Tsk. You’re not really supposed to know much about who you’re interviewing with.” Cally turned the chair and sat, crossed her legs, lit a cigarette. “Look, just between us girls, if you take this job you’re going to spend a lot of time in a shrink’s office. You’ll need it. But being a chick, you’re going to spend more time in there than one of the guys would. It may not be fair; it may or may not be necessary. This job isn’t about fair. The bosses just about pushed me into taking a long sabbatical.” She shrugged. “In my case, yeah, I needed it. I’d been active a long time. You can’t do this job forever, presuming you live that long, and not have it get to you. It will dehumanize you. It will fuck you up.” The assassin grimaced as the girl’s eyes widened at the profanity. What the hell am I doing letting a little girl — no, I was just thirteen myself. She’ll get several chances to opt out. An honest little voice insisted at the back of her mind, Yeah, but there will be subtle pressures on her to measure up. Pressures on her teachers not to lose candidates. Inevitably. What the hell am I doing?
Cally leaned forward, propping her hands on her knees. “You shouldn’t take this job. It will fuck up your relationships. You will find yourself fucking about a bazillion strangers off the job because after you’ve fucked a bunch on the job, who the hell would you be saving yourself for? You will see things you absolutely do not want in your head, and the pictures won’t go away. You will do things that literally make you puke. The price is too high. Go home. Get a legit ID, move to Indianapolis, get a husband, a white picket fence, a dog, two or three kids. Don’t look back. It’s a happier life. That’s God’s own truth. Go the hell home,” she said.
The girl’s jaw tightened. “Are you declining my job application, ma’am?”
Suddenly feeling every one of her fifty-eight years, Cally pressed her palms into her eyes and sat back up, sighing. She absently flicked the growing ash tail off the end of her cigarette. “No, I’m not doing that. Not yet, anyway. Okay. You want it, then it’s time for your next test.”
The tall blonde walked out of the room and returned in under a minute with two armfuls of clothes. One set she threw to the kid. “Get changed,” she said. “Your sneakers are fine. They’ll be covered by the boots, anyway.”
Both sets of clothing were average to the point of boring. A set of long johns implied they’d be going outside. The jeans to go over them were faded and somehow a bit grayed out, as if they’d been washed too often in unsorted loads with all the other clothes. The sweaters were some kind of blend, hers a faded navy blue, the other a rusty brown, with the random little fluff balls sweaters get when they’ve been around a couple of years. The older woman didn’t look up, just started changing her clothes as if she was alone.