Read A Thousand Pardons for Free Online

minute and a half for the one elevator, it seemed mostly full of accountants and tax preparers; she was headed, though, for Harvey Aaron Public Relations. They had advertised, in the Times , for an entry-level position as junior vice president, which was confusing, though less so after she walked in and saw that the office consisted of two rooms of identical size, one of which belonged to HarveyAaron and the other to everyone else—three desks, two of which were occupied by bored-looking young Latina women reading magazines. The third desk, presumably that of the junior vice president, had a pair of running shoes on it.
    When Harvey stood up to greet her as she entered, he was still holding a plastic fork and a container of some sort of pasta salad. “Come in, sit down, excuse me,” he said, looking around for something suitable on which to wipe his fingers, eventually just giving up and waving her into the room’s only other chair. He was older than Helen, maybe sixty or a dissipated fifty-five, and she was comforted by that, since her other stops that day had contributed to the sense that no one worked aboveground in Manhattan who was over the age of forty. He wore a beige suit and a blue tie, a rather stylish one (though it had a new oil stain on it), which suggested the attentions of a Mrs. Aaron. He seemed a little nervous just to see her walk in, as if she weren’t the kind of person who normally came around during the day, and maybe for that reason she felt like she could relax a little in front of him.
    “Sorry to interrupt your lunch,” she said.
    “Well, you weren’t. I mean you sort of were, but as Mona out there will tell you, I don’t really have a set lunchtime, I’m just kind of picking at food all day. Helps me think. Mona?” he said suddenly, much louder. “Any napkins out there, by any chance?” Mona didn’t appear, not then or for the remainder of the interview. “So where do we begin? I never know where to begin these things. I know I have your résumé on the computer somewhere.” He tapped a few keys and sat back hopefully. “No,” he said. He typed something else and hit Return with a flourish. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered, and then flinched guiltily. Helen unsnapped her bag and slid him another copy of her CV.
    He looked it over. “Computer skills are obviously a big requirement around here,” he said. “Just kidding. Anyway, I don’t see any sort of public relations background here, and for this job, even though it could technically be an entry-level thing, I am kind of hoping for someone with some experience in the field. Of course I may not get that. You have no experience at all in the field?”
    “Not in public relations per se,” Helen said gamely.
    “Not per se? What do you mean? You have experience that’s whatever is the opposite of per se? Per don’t say?”
    Helen laughed. There was something very unassuming about him, both cheerful and apologetic, even as he was in the process of brushing her off just like everyone else had. “Well, I guess what I mean,” she said, “is that I’m actually not entirely sure what it is you do.”
    He raised his eyebrows. “ ‘You’ meaning me, or ‘you’ meaning what the hell does ‘public relations’ mean in general?”
    “Both,” she said, surprising herself with her bravery. If this had happened at Condé Nast, she would have smoothed out her skirt and left by now.
    He pursed his lips. “Rensselaer Valley,” he said, surprisingly. “Nice town. I have a house in New Paltz myself. May I—I hope you won’t think I’m presumptuous if I ask you something?”
    “Not at all.”
    “There is a certain thinness to this résumé,” he said, quite kindly, “a certain, um, provincial quality, that suggests to me that you have a life—a married life, a family life—in which circumstances have maybe changed recently?”
    Helen colored, and nodded. She had meant for the CV to cover that up, not reveal it.
    “And