Barry Wire

Barry Wire’s not the worst. See him there? No, further down, keep going. The guy tapping his right foot? Exactly, that’s him, the young man at the end of the row, the one sitting in a chair and throwing nervous glances at other young people also sitting on chairs and throwing nervous glances. They are all wearing suits and Barry has even bought one for the occasion. He is tall and thin and looks like a matchstick dressed in a suit for a practical joke. The jacket hangs off his frame and the hair on both sides of his head has been shorn too tight for the interview, the farmer getting the sheep through the summer in one go. A water cooler in the corner bubbles as candidates fill glasses to wet lips, get some feeling back in cotton mouths. There is a girl perched on her chair across from Barry and this delicate whippet is straddling the edge of the plastic, her hands pressing down, further down, down, careful now not to fall, not to embarrass yourself in the presence of all these others. She continues to look Barry’s way, eyes like crow’s marbles, flitting back and forth, appealing. He has noticed, pretends he hasn’t, sure her gaze is drawn by his absurdity, the premature lines etched into his forehead, the countenance of a sketch artist’s rough doodle not quite finished, that suit. She reminds him of a small bird which danced on his windowsill one morning. He brings the occasion to mind, sees the sky smitten grey, catching sight of the blur of blue fluttering on the windowsill outside, the feet shuffling on frost-laden stone, beak chirping, Barry now propped up on elbows, mesmerised.

The girl sitting across from him is a similar shade. The ivory blue colour of her face matches her dress. She swallows a squawk and pushes down harder as a woman clops into the room, polished boots gleaming, commanding attention. A name is called and the fragile bird hauls her body upwards and flaps from sight. There are now four others in the room with him, all male, hair combed and ears clean. They shift position every ten seconds or so, a result of the fabric smothering skin with its irritable fibres and the anxiety of what is to come, behind double doors, closed, out of sight of brethren.

Barry’s gaze skips from suit so suit as he attempts to construct back stories. Unable to concentrate, he fails, stares off into the corridor past the water dispenser. This is his third interview since finals in June. It is now August and he is twenty-two years of age, will graduate in December. He produces a balled tissue from his pocket, dabs at temples, checks watch and calculates she has only been gone two minutes. He crosses his legs and the left foot takes over, bounces off the carpet, the springs in the ankle at breaking point, his perception of time long since jarred.

Fifteen minutes of tapping pass before the echo of heels on stretched carpet returns. He looks up and the woman is examining a clipboard, repeating his name and scanning the faces above neckties for a reaction, a positive response of any sort. Barry’s shoulders deflate and the jacket, more fancy dress than formal, loses all shape and droops forward. He nods, stands and slinks after the woman, his shoes mimicking her clops as he moves. She turns one corner and then stops, waits for him to appear. Her hair is pulled back tight and she is wearing glasses. Barry would not be able to pick her out of a line up in ten minutes’ time.

“Please, after you.”

He stares straight ahead and does not reply. The woman regards him as if she has seen a boy pretending to be a man for the first time. She holds the door open, clipboard and pen wedged in her free hand, and he crosses the threshold.

Barry Wire enters the room and two men mutter formalities from behind a desk. He blinks, time shifts, and is now facing a panel consisting of two teachers and the school principal. He is sixteen and has been summoned before a disciplinary committee due to his presence in class when a teacher’s wallet went missing, strayed from coat pocket, not of its own accord. He had only left the classroom for a minute and in that time the offence had taken place. The culprits are well known to us and have been identified, Barry, but what we presently lack is proof. They tell him that he must tell them who did it, otherwise, mark their words, he will receive fitting punishment for his lies. Theft is serious, as they are sure he knows, and they proceed to repeat this point several times in the same manner a dentist drills into rotten teeth. Barry complies not, replies not and incriminates himself by the words he refuses to bring into being, is suspended for two weeks and has to pay back every last cent of the money which he is now suspected of having taken himself. The teachers tell his parents all the details, stressing that worst of all was the fact he refused to report what he had seen, to point out the guilty parties, seek and be granted absolution, even though they had afforded him ample opportunity to do so. He must stand in class and issue a public apology to teacher. The money his parents give him to replace the bills slipped from the wallet is removed from his hands by other students. He informs his parents that he has lost it and asks them for additional means to reimburse the victim. They are furious. His father brings the money to school himself, his youngest son will be getting a job this summer to pay him back.

Barry bolts for the chair anchored in the centre of the room. The two men seated facing him share a glance as the lady who fetched him pounds her way across the floor to join them. They continue to stare and he wipes a sleeve across his forehead, his thoughts consumed by the question of whether it would be more impolite to continue sweating or take off his jacket, settling on the former. The man on the left takes a long swig of water and he hears the gurgle of the water dispenser, sees the stranded bird fluttering across from him in the waiting area and on his windowsill.

“And what do you believe makes you a suitable candidate for Jackson & Jackson? What makes you qualified for this role?”

Barry fidgets, first drums fingers on thighs and then straightens the tie he spent twenty-minutes on this morning, never quite reaching desired and expected standards. He has a problem on his hands: he has forgotten what the company does and what the post he has applied for entails. He pauses, sees his father’s face pulsing over his, crimson streaks, the turquoise vein throbbing, and clears his throat.

“I would be a perfect fit for this company.”

Six ears strain to hear the remainder of the sentence, the summing up of the self through pertinent examples, their heads perceptibly drawn towards the stick thin navy magnet with white tips marooned in the middle of the room. Barry does not continue, does not even attempt to. Looks are exchanged. The pistons in his right leg slip into overdrive, the ball threatening to abscond from the socket at any point. He rakes a hand across his face, fingernails scraping forehead, places the clammy aftermath in his pocket. It is the man in the middle’s turn to speak.

“It says here you have worked at Mulridge’s supermarket for the last six years. Perhaps you could tell us a bit about your experience there and how it might relate to the position you applied for.”

Barry works in the bakery and has done since so since the summer after his first dabble in larceny. He knows they do not want to hear about how the bread is not made fresh onsite, how they receive it frozen, premade, and dump it in the oven. But this thought has saturated his mind and will not thaw. He feels the cold cycles to work on weekend mornings, the sun yet to show, before the world has woken up, feeding baguettes into the furnace, forgetting to wear gloves, burn marks on fingers, metallic trays clattering on the ground.

“I’ve been in the bakery section the whole time.”

Barry spent yesterday evening and this morning rehearsing premade answers in the mirror. He even read the company’s prospectus and annual report. Unfortunately, all intelligible answers and information remain frozen, congealed together, a solid clump wedged in the corner of his brain and refusing to defrost as required. As he tries to recall what he has learnt to mind, he is aware of the sound of three nibs scratching on paper. The woman takes a sip of water, a forewarning, and shapes to address him. He leans forward, as his career guidance teacher in school had told the class to always do in interviews, to show that you were really listening, really cared. His damp trousers cause him to slide forward. Barry’s right hand grips a steel leg and he narrowly averts catastrophe. He is sure they have seen and that the nibs have noted it down.

“Could you tell us about any experience you had in university which you think may be of relevance? Any teamwork experience, for example. It says here you graduated with a 2.1 in Philosophy and Spanish.”

His face flushes red, a bucket of water has been poured over his head and is streaming onto his shoulders. The lady has stated the fact, an open invitation to speak, develop, cobble a narrative about skills and competences together. He does not take the initiative, wipes his face and awaits the subsequent question. She skims through his application, comes up with nothing, rephrases.

“In your cover letter you say that university prepared you for a career at Jackson & Jackson. How did you come to this conclusion?”

Barry Wire should have been awarded top marks in college, could have clinched a paid-up scholarship to undertake a master’s degree in philosophy had he followed his dissertation supervisor’s advice and applied. In his third and final year he was lumped into a group with two of the laziest students and shackled with the work. The assigned task consisted of analysing surrealist aspects of the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca. Opinions presented in the final thesis were all his own, a few paragraphs received from colleagues and then discarded. Feedback from the professor underlined the excellent substantive content, lamented the rushed nature of the submission, including the problem of the last line finishing in the middle of a sentence, no adequate conclusion(s) drawn. Barry never told anyone this, how he had been too engaged in his philosophical readings and musings to reach an acceptable conclusion(s), singular or plural, on matters so far removed from the realm of his own lived and breathed existence. And then there were the hours in the supermarket, the need to pay his parents back for the damage he had caused. He kneads a palm into his thigh muscle and scratches behind an ear.

“We faced a lot of complex, real life issues, which would be of enormous benefit for the demands posed by this particular role.”

Barry has unearthed a stock answer, retrieved from the melting sludge in his mind, but has failed to remember the rest. The interview lasts another five minutes. While being informed that they will be in touch by telephone before long, he realises he forgot to shake hands at the beginning of the interview. He stands, smooths out his suit jacket, approaches the desk and sticks out a hand. The panellists eye him for several seconds before the man on the left reciprocates, clasps the outstretched hand, as does the man in the middle. The lady ignores his overtures and leads him from the room to the lift, located around the corner from the waiting area. She does not try to make small talk as they listen to the hum of the air conditioner and the dings of the elevators stopping to eject workers and reject would be workers alike onto all ten floors of the building. She does not say goodbye as he steps aboard into the empty space. Barry presses the button for the ground floor and watches her hips sway as she moves out of view, sniffing out the next suit.

He alights in the lobby, polished shoes clacking marble. A security guard behind reception whispers into a walkie-talkie and stares. Barry motions to tip an invisible cap as he passes the desk, chocked full of monitors. The man folds his arms, says nothing. He is whisked into the revolving doors and instead of planting a well healed foot on a concrete footpath in the middle of the city, he is spat out onto a parched field, aged eleven. Drought has splintered the soil, little cracks splitting off main arteries like violent tributaries. The grass is rust coloured in parts and he conjures the image of an archaeological site in Egypt which he has seen in a book. Barry considers running home and returning to this scorched patch of land with a spade and trowel, digging up ancient treasure. He stops chipping at flayed clay with his shoe and looks up. There are an odd number of kids and the teams have already been picked. A teenager holding the ball is telling him to get off the pitch or be the referee. He decides on the former, glances back every few seconds until the players drift out of sight, goes home and forgets about digging for ancient artefacts.