The Interview
The bus came to a dead stop three blocks from the address, a puff of black smoke the final insult. I wanted to scream. Of all the days for the universe to conspire against me, it had to be today. My mother’s hospital bill sat crumpled in my pocket like a guilty secret, and this interview was my only hope.
The driver threw his hands up as if the engine had personally betrayed him. Passengers groaned. A woman with a bag of plantains muttered a prayer that was mostly profanity. I looked at my phone. 1:51. The interview was at two. The map said eight minutes if I walked like
a person who belonged on these streets. I did not walk like that. I ran.
My cheap heels slapped against the pristine sidewalks of El Poblado, a neighborhood that felt like a different country from my own. The mansions here had gates taller than my entire house, security cameras watching every move, gardens that must have cost more than my family’s monthly rent. Bougainvillea spilled over walls the color of cream. Somewhere a sprinkler ticked, wasting water with confidence. I felt like an intruder just breathing the air.
I had ironed my borrowed blouse three times that morning in a kitchen that smelled like boiled rice and the cough syrup my mother pretended she didn’t need. The blouse was white. By the second block it was sticking to my back. A blister opened on my left heel and I kept running
anyway, because stopping would mean doing the math I already knew: no job, no surgery, no soft landing.
The address led me to a monolith of glass and white stone, cold and perfect. It rose three stories, all sharp angles and floor-to-ceiling windows, reflecting the gray Medellín sky. There were no flowers on the steps, no toys, no sign that anyone actually lived there. Just silence and perfection, and a gate that looked like it had opinions about people like me.
I stood there, my heart hammering so loud I could hear it in my ears. This was it. This was my chance to save my mother, to pull us out of the hole we had been drowning in since my father left. I smoothed the blouse, tucked a curl behind my ear, and pressed the intercom before I could lose my nerve.
A woman’s voice crackled through. “Name?”
“Sofia. Sofia Ramirez. I have an interview at 2 p.m.”
A pause. Long enough for me to wonder if my name had already been crossed off.
The gate buzzed open. I walked up the long driveway, each step heavier than the last. My heel clicked wrong because of the blister. I tried to make the other foot match it and only succeeded in looking like I was negotiating with the stone. The front door was already open, and a woman with a face like chiseled ice stood waiting. She looked me up and down with obvious disdain, her eyes lingering on my scuffed shoes, then on the damp collar of the blouse.
“Follow me,” she said, turning without another word.
I followed her through a house that was all sharp angles and silence. The floors were white marble, so polished I could see my reflection and wish I couldn’t. The walls were bare except for a few abstract paintings that probably cost more than my entire education. Not a single photograph. Not a jacket thrown over a chair. It was like walking through a museum where the art was the absence of a life.
She led me to a cavernous office at the end of a long hallway. The room was dominated by a massive desk, black wood polished to a mirror shine. Behind it sat a man. Daniel Herrera.
He didn’t look up. His attention was fixed on his
laptop, his fingers flying across the keyboard. He was younger than I expected, maybe thirty, with dark hair that fell slightly over his forehead and a jaw that looked carved from stone. He wore a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, revealing forearms that suggested he spent time in a gym and nowhere that required him to be kind. He was beautiful in the way a statue is beautiful—cold, untouchable, perfect.
I stood there, waiting. The ice woman disappeared, leaving me alone with him and the sound of keys. The clock on the wall ticked. One minute. Then two. Then five. He still didn’t look up.
I shifted my weight, and the blister screamed. Was this a test? Was he trying to make me uncomfortable? Or did he simply not care that I was standing there, my future hanging in the
balance, sweat drying on my neck?
I thought about clearing my throat. I thought about the bill in my pocket, the number that did not care about my dignity. I thought about my mother saying, that morning, If they don’t want you, mija, they were never going to deserve you. She had said it from the couch, pale, brave, wrong about the math and right about everything else.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, he looked up. His eyes were the color of a winter sky—beautiful, and utterly without warmth. They swept over me in a quick, clinical assessment. Shoes. Blouse. Face. The blister I was trying to hide by standing still.
“You are ten minutes late,” he said. His voice was low, flat, without inflection. “I don’t hire late
people.”
The sentence landed like a door closing. I felt the heat crawl up my throat, the old instinct to apologize until I disappeared. Behind him, the city sat quietly in the glass, rich and indifferent. In my pocket, the bill crinkled when I curled my hand into a fist.
I had run three blocks. I was not leaving in the first thirty seconds.
The marble held my reflection like evidence. Cheap shoes. Mended pride. A woman who had practiced this speech on a bus that died before the punch line. If he wanted punctual, he could buy a city that ran on time. If he wanted a translator, he was looking at one, blister and all. I lifted my chin the way my mother did when a landlord raised his voice, and I let the silence
work for me instead of against me.
───
