The Savage Girl - Alex Shakar [4]
“Keep it light.” Javier nods.
Chas nods back. “Like I always say.”
A thunderclap draws their eyes up Middle City’s southern slope to the volcano’s peak, where storm clouds mix with the crater ash above the jagged metal and glass of the marketing offices. The rooftop crenellations of the Black Tower rise the highest, from this angle anyway, grazing the dark bruises of the sky. Chas regards the clouds with satisfaction. Perhaps, she thinks, he has summoned them. He turns up the collar of his trenchcoat—an especially tall collar. No doubt within months half the city will be wearing this collar. It will make the wearers appear to themselves more dramatic, more intriguing, for they will have become the kind of people who wear trenchcoats with tall collars. Ursula will not get one herself. But only out of obstinacy. She will want one.
Chas breaks their reverie with a snap and a tight twirl of his index finger. “OK, Ursula, what do you got?”
She takes her sketchbook out of her bag, then hesitates.
“I’m not sure if these are the kinds of things you want.”
He replies with an impatient, outstretched hand. She relinquishes the book, wondering if this, her first week as a trendspotter, will also be her last. It would be a giant disappointment but not a big surprise. She lied her way into the job, lied like never before, with all the death-defying virtuosity of a bullfighter, inventing all sorts of experience in advertising and market research, peppering her speech with jargon she’d gleaned from a stack of out-of-date library books. For the first few minutes of her pitch, Chas sat watching her with suspicion; clearly he wasn’t expecting to be hit up for a job. He had gone out with her sister Ivy over the months leading up to Ivy’s breakdown and had probably agreed to this meeting only out of curiosity, not anticipating that it would turn into a request for employment. But she had him cornered and pressed the advantage; she’d stayed up the whole night before, preparing this routine, and she was determined to see it through to the bitter end. A little cynically, she had assumed from the beginning that any job having to do with marketing would require, more than anything else, an ability to bullshit without shame or respite, and she wanted to show her stamina in this regard. My market-research experience, she said, is fairly extensive, as you’ll see from my résumé, taking into account my job at Tolson, which wasn’t just telemarketing, though that was a substantial part of it. . . . When Chas saw that she wasn’t about to stop anytime soon, his expression changed. It was the look a cat might wear upon seeing the mouse it was getting ready to eat suddenly break into a tap-dance routine. He leaned back in his chair and didn’t interrupt, silently daring her to keep talking. The more she talked, the more naive and ridiculous she sounded, but she kept at it, straight-facedly enthusing about fashions she’d never seen in countries she’d never been to, bragging about the keen powers of observation she’d honed in learning how to paint. She boasted about what she called her interpersonal skills—If you’ll notice on my résumé, my experience at Tolson really was great training in terms of giving me the ability to communicate with consumers of diverse ages and educational and financial backgrounds. . . .
To her lasting shame she even declared herself a “people person,” at which point Chas held up his hands to silence her. A full, nerve-wracking minute passed, with him just watching her, his eyes narrowed once more, cold, appraising—who knew what he was thinking? Was this the way he’d treated her sister? No wonder Ivy had gone nuts. He was probably some kind of Fascist in bed, the kind who liked to sit in a chair, loosen his tie, and bark out orders to a twenty-year-old aspiring fashion model: Take off your clothes, Take off my shoes, and so forth. He certainly hadn’t cared enough about Ivy to visit her in the hospital.