Feng’s Way
by Pamela Christie
Once upon a time, in late twentieth-century Manhattan, a business school graduate sat in an office, waiting for a job interview. She was able to enjoy the refreshing scents of springtime while she waited, for she’d opened a window, which usually wasn’t possible in a skyscraper. It was a nice modern touch – windows that could be manually opened and shut, (Whatever would they think of next?) but the young woman had already found this company to be less than impressive in other ways. The premises were badly laid out and the employees were unprofessional. She had been left to herself in the corner office for nearly an hour, and no one had bothered to check on her.
Eventually, though, the door was opened, and a tousled secretarial head appeared in the gap.
“You still here?” asked the head. The candidate refrained from affirming the obvious. “The boss totally spaced your interview, and now he’s gone to lunch. I’d come back some other time if I wuz you.”
“How soon do you expect him?”
“No idea.”
“I’ll wait.”
The head withdrew, the door closed, and the candidate resigned herself to the inevitable. She was elegance itself, with a touch of enlightened serenity, in a white suit of raw silk. Her dark hair had been sleeked into a becoming chignon. And her gaze was thoughtful as it pondered her uninspired surroundings. Hmm, she thought. Too much yin.
The young woman removed an amethyst crystal from her briefcase and placed it on the desk’s SW corner, to ensure the luck of harmonious relationships with the office personnel. Then she extracted metal wind chimes and hung them in the SE corner. These would dispel the poisonous breath created by the angular spines of the shelved books, and harness positive energy for an optimal work environment. She repositioned the desk, too, so that it sat diagonally across from the door, freeing the chi to circulate more auspiciously. The increased energy flow was immediately perceptible. The candidate sat down, not on the hard little visitor’s chair this time, but in the expansive executive throne on the other side of the desk and counted slowly to eight. In addition to being the generally acknowledged luckiest number, eight was also auspicious for her, personally.
The door opened again, but this time the secretary knocked as she opened it and came all the way inside before addressing the candidate.
“I beg your pardon, Ms. Feng, and thank you so much for waiting. Mr. Spaulding asked me to let you know that he’s on his way and will be here as soon as he can. May I get you anything in the meantime? Water? Coffee?”
“Green tea, if you have it.”
“I’ll check.”
“Oh, never mind,” said the candidate, rising to her feet. “I haven’t got time to wait after all. And it’s pronounced `Fong,’ not `Feng.’”
“No! Oh, please don’t go!” cried the secretary, “Mr. Spaulding really wants to meet with you! He just phoned, and he was most insistent that I ask you to wait for him!”
“Oh, all right then,” said Ms. Feng, wearily.
“Thank you! He won’t be long. Would you care for a magazine?”
“I would not. I shall sit here admiring the view for ten more minutes. Then I shall go.”
Moments later, a clerk entered. He was chatting to someone on his headset andwheeling a dolly, which he proceeded to load with file boxes. His personal vibration was at odds with the fresh, new energy that Ms. Feng had just finished generating for the room.
“Dude!” said the clerk. “It’s Eric. You gotta see this! I’m in Spaulding’soffice, picking up the Barracuda files, and there’s a fuckin’ goddess in here! Come check it out! I dunno, man! Just make some excuse and get over here!”
The clerk had spent years listening to loud noise that passed for music, with the volume turned up full blast and pumped directly into his head. Consequently, he was now a poor judge of decibel ranges. Besides, the woman seemed unaware of his presence, which must mean that she either couldn’t hear what he was saying or wasn’t listening, so he launched into a litany of her physical charms without a second thought.
But then he realized that she was looking at him. Straight at him. Her hostility was palpable, too. So much so that even this thick-skulled file clerk felt the vibe. Ms. Feng was a master of the poisonous glance. It almost felt like he really was being poisoned, and he shrank from her gaze. Literally. His clothes were suddenly too big for him. And the smaller he got, the faster he shrank. When his headset fell off, Eric realized that his shape was altering, too. A moment later, he found himself perched on a file tab, rubbing his hands together. The former file clerk was now a fruit fly.
Hey, thought the fly, flexing its wings, do these puppies actually work? It would never know, for at the apex of its leap into space, the insect found itself stuck to the bulbous end of a fleshy tongue. A moment before it disappeared into the maw of no return, the fly caught a glimpse of the author of its demise: a warty, three-legged toad, which was squatting (though the fly couldn’t see this detail) on a heap of coins.
The toad swallowed the fly, squeezing its eyes shut and drawing them inwards till they were nearly flush with its head. Then it passed a four-fingered paw across its face, to remove any bits of former file clerk which might have squirted out during the capture and ingestion. After making sure it was clean and presentable, the toad transformed once again into Ms. Feng.
Yum! she thought, picking her teeth with a pin from her chignon. Fruit flies are so delicious! (This one had the full-bodied flavor of summer peaches, with bright raspberry notes.) Unfortunately, Ms. Feng’s inside didn’t like Eric any better than her outside had, and she was briefly but violently sick out the window. She found a tissue in her handbag and wiped her mouth with it. Three minutes remained of her self-allotted ten, and fair was fair, so she resumed her seat.
Mr. Spaulding made his belated appearance on minute eight, with Ms. Feng’s CV in his hand. He was apologetic; obsequious even, because the odd change in attitude he’d suddenly experienced over lunch had become a certainty when he entered his office: Life would not be worth living if he failed to engage this paragon.
“Well, Ms. Feng,” he said, nervously seating himself on the hard little visitor’s chair. “I have looked over your impressive resume, so there’s really no need for an actual interview. You’re the most qualified candidate we’ve had for this position so far. The most qualified we’ve ever had for anything, in fact!”
Ms. Feng graciously inclined her head.
“Please come and work for us,” said Mr. Spaulding. “Please?”
“Oh, very well,” she replied. And if you’re going to let me do things my way, and I think you’d better, it will save a lot of time. Because I’ll be making a lot of changes around here.”
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July 30th, 2024 at 6:15 am
Feng’s Way should win the prize! It is surprising, suspenseful throughout, and entirely charming. Elements of magical realism flow smoothly — for example, Ms. Feng’s shape-shifting from job candidate to voracious frog. Mr. Spaulding’s response to her application was fantastic! All in all, Pamela Christie elevates the grittty realism of a job interview to a magical world: bravo!