A Hole in the Universe - Mary McGarry Morris [3]
“Aw, c’mon, Gordo! You’re going to do fine!” Dennis assured him as he got out of the car. He handed him the file. “I probably shouldn’t get your hopes up, but I think this is a done deal. At least that’s the way Kinnon made it sound.” He waved, watching a moment, then pulled up alongside as Gordon trudged toward the gleaming glass-and-granite building. “Jesus! You’ve got to look more confident than that! C’mon, Gordo! Head up! Shoulders back! Go get’em!”
In the lobby, Gordon slipped Delores’s letter from the file into his pocket. All along the way, in the elevator to the third floor, then down the long bright corridor to the personnel office, he could feel people staring at him. Conscious of the sticky-sounding tread with every footstep, he walked quickly, met no one’s gaze. He shouldn’t have let himself be pushed into this. He wasn’t ready. He woke up every morning disoriented to be home in his own room, as frightened as he was grateful to be free. He should have had Dennis come with him. Not into the interview, of course. Just to be close by. But, no. He couldn’t always be a burden. As it was, Dennis had canceled three patients to bring him here. So far, every decision had been made for him: his new clothes, the house fixed up and ready, cupboards filled, even orange Popsicles in the freezer because Lisa, Dennis’s wife, remembered his saying once how much he missed them. Personnel. His hand closed over the knob.
“Right in there.” The receptionist’s eyes swept over him. She pointed to the open door. “They’re waiting,” she said as he hesitated, caught between flight and paralysis. Her chair squeaked as she turned. Not every day she got to see a murderer.
“Mr. Loomis.” A delicate woman in a hot-pink suit rose from her desk. After a lifetime of gray, colors came as a shock. As did beauty. Softness. His face reddened with the limp graze of her slender palm. He lowered his eyes to keep from staring at her face.
She said her name. Jamison. Then something about Brown. Who was Brown? He tried to follow her rushed explanation, then saw the bullnecked man in the corner. Mr. Brown would be just sitting in on the interview, a kind of monitoring process, that was all. She seemed extremely anxious that he understand this.
Gordon nodded. “I see. Yes, of course.” He wondered how old she was. Or how young. He had no idea, no frame of reference for women. He tried to smile at Mr. Brown, whose emotionless stare never wavered.
“Let’s see now.” She opened a green folder, ran a glittering pink fingernail down the top sheet. “Your GED. A BS in business administration from Sussex State College.” She glanced up. “Did you actually attend the classes?”
“Some.”
“What did they do, bring you? I mean, you couldn’t just leave the . . . the place, right?”
“The ones I went to, they had them right there. In the beginning. Those were the first classes. The first year. The courses, I mean. The ones everyone takes. Introductory, that is.” His tongue swelled in his dry mouth. He kept swallowing. “Well, not everyone takes them. I mean, for the, you know, the ones that are . . .” He rolled his hand to churn up the phrase from the perfectly still, dead air. “Taking the courses.”
She nodded, took up her pen.
He was making this easy for her. “Not just potentially dangerous, but inarticulate,” she was probably writing.
“The rest were by mail.”
“You’ve had some counseling experience, Mr. Loomis?”
“Counseling experience,” he repeated to calm himself. His breathing was the only sound in the room.
“Did you work with any of the other . . .” She paused. “Men who were there with you?”
“No, ma’am. They had professionals for that kind of thing.”
“What about peer-group activity? They must have had that kind of interaction. Most places . . . facilities like that do.”
“They did. But I didn’t. I didn’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because.” He squirmed, wringing his hands. Because he hated talking about himself: the misery