Showers in Season Read Free Page B

you.”
    “You know, they’ll probably suspend me for cutting school. You realize that, don’t you? That you might be responsible for getting me suspended?”
    “I’m not responsible, Mark, you are. And I’m willing to let you suffer whatever consequences you’ve brought on yourself. I don’t like it, and it makes me so mad that I can hear my heart beating in my ears…” She swallowed and tried to calm her voice. “But that’s the way it goes, and I want this to besuch an unpleasant memory for you that you never want to repeat it.”
    “I’m already there.”
    “Oh, no,” she said. “Not by a long shot. You have a long way to go, kiddo.”

C HAPTER Three
    Brenda Dodd went from sanitizing her bathroom to interviewing for the job she had been praying she could get, but she worried that she smelled of Lysol as she stepped into the busy room. It was a telemarketing firm, and she looked around and saw dozens of people sitting in cubicles with headsets on, talking to people who didn’t want to be bothered.
    She swallowed back her trepidation and, clutching her purse, looked for someone who seemed to be in charge. She saw a real office, with four walls and a ceiling, at the back corner of the room, so she cut across the floor. Everyone was talking at once. How could they hear themselves think?
    She reached the door. Peering in, she saw a disheveled man sitting at a desk behind a mound of paperwork. She knocked.
    “Yeah,” the man said without looking up.
    She stepped into the doorway. “Uh…I’m Brenda Dodd. I spoke to you on the phone?” When he still didn’t look up, she added, “I’m here for the job interview?”
    He finally looked up at her and gestured toward a chair. “Have a seat.”
    He turned back to the computer he’d been typing on, and got a scowl on his face. “Give me a break!” he bit out, then shot to his feet and headed to the door. Without saying a word about where he was going, he burst out into the workroom. She watched through the door as he raced to one of the cubicles and bent over to chew someone out. She couldn’t hear what he was saying, but it was clear from the look on his face that he was livid.
    The young woman he had verbally assaulted winced and began to clear her desk. He kept railing behind her, and finally, she abandoned the rest of her personal items and took off for the door.
    Brenda’s heart sank.
    He came back in and took his seat, still angry. His face was red, and she wondered if he had high blood pressure and ulcers. “So…what did you say your name was?” he demanded.
    “Brenda Dodd,” she said, trying to smile.
    “And why, exactly, do you think I’d want to hire you?”
    She didn’t know if that was a deliberate insult, or one of those psychological employers questions designed to see what she was made of. She sat straighter, and clutched her purse more tightly. “Because I’m good with people, and I’m diligent and hard-working. I need a job I can do at night when my husband isn’t working, because one of my children had a heart transplant not too long ago, and I need to be there for him during the day.”
    “Uh-huh,” he said, looking down at something that she assumed was the application she had sent in earlier. It was clear he had little interest in her problems. “Any experience?”
    She had decided on the way here that she wouldn’t let her stay-at-home-mom status get in the way of this. “Yes, lots. I’ve been an educator, a health care provider, a bookkeeper, an administrator, an interior designer, a chef, and an executive assistant.”
    He frowned and looked up at her. “You must not stay at anything very long.”
    Her smile broadened. “Actually, I’ve been doing all of them at the same time for thirteen years.”
    She could see the struggle on his face to picture a job that encompassed all of those things. “Well, then you may be overqualified to work here,” he said. “The last thing I need is some over-educated