Super: Origins Read Free Page A

the water, then of the river beyond and the tall buildings across it, probably Crystal City, she thought. Not exactly a downtown vista, but very nice compared to what Lex had expected after the neighborhood she’d traveled through to get here.
    Everything smelled faintly of cinnamon and coffee, Lex noted as they moved through the kitchen door. Looking over Clara’s shoulder, Lex saw large stainless steel appliances and an island in the middle with stools pulled up around it. She stepped up to the big sink, took some soap from a nearby pump bottle, and drew some water to wash her cut, working the wound a little to push the grit out. While she dried the abrasion, Lex watched Clara poke through a white metal cabinet attached to the wall, eventually handing over a gauze pad, some bandages, and some disinfectant packets. “Is this what you need?” Clara asked.
    Lex nodded, reached for the articles, and quickly patched her hand up. “Thanks for your help, Ms. Pingham,” she replied, throwing the trash into a large wastebasket near the door. She wished there was something she could do about her shoes and skirt, but sighed as she realized that there was no help for them now. “I think I’m ready.”
    “Good. Mr. Sauer doesn’t like to be kept waiting. Please come this way.”
    Clara led Lex out of the kitchen and then back towards the open room she’d spotted earlier. Before entering the room, however, they turned and went up a set of stairs to the left. At the top Lex saw a corridor with doors on either side and noted that the window at the end of the hall showed a blank wall at the bottom and part of a cloudless, intensely sunny sky at the top. Mentally thanking whoever invented air conditioning, Lex turned left to follow Clara and trailed her through the last door on the right.
    “Mr. Sauer,” Clara said as she went into the room, “I apologize for the delay. There was an incident at the front door, and Ms. McKilliam was slightly injured. We had to stop by the first aid kit on the way up.”
    The man Lex spotted turning towards them was much older than Clara or herself and had the look of someone used to getting what he wanted and for whom cost was never an issue. He sat in a sleek, motorized wheelchair and wore a suit that probably cost more than Lex had ever earned in a year. She smelled good cologne and could tell that the cut of his grey-silver hair had probably been done by someone whose phone number she couldn’t even afford. Lex swallowed, her ripped skirt and paint-spattered shoes looming so large in her imagination it seemed they had their own neon signs. Even if it hadn’t been ripped, her suit, a simple design in black linen with a fitted, short-sleeved jacket and a knee-length skirt suddenly seemed pathetically cheap in comparison. She forced a smile on her face as she thought, Oh well, I’ve probably lost the chance at this job! The idea made her feel a bit less anxious, however, and she sensed her shoulders dropping a fraction as she stood taller and moved forward to meet her interviewer.
    Clara introduced them as they crossed to the side of the conference table where he sat and Lex leaned forward to shake hands with the man. Momentarily surprised by the strength of his grip, she increased her own fractionally and then they both pulled away. As Lex stepped back, she took a better look at the room she’d walked into and found it the nicest she’d seen in the building so far, furnished with a large, polished, black conference table surrounded with comfortable-looking leather chairs.
    “Clara, what was the incident you just referred to?” Sauer asked. “I didn’t think the neighborhood was that bad.”
    Clara’s lips thinned a little before she answered. “Casey seemed to be in some sort of argument with one of the workmen on the roof, and during their…discussion, a five-gallon bucket of paint was pushed off the roof, nearly onto Ms. McKilliam.”
    Mr. Sauer looked at Lex with a raised eyebrow.