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hotshot, and you have to interview like a hotshot, someone Trion’s going to fall all over themselves to steal away from us. How do you like working at Wyatt?”
    I looked at her, feeling stupid. “Well, I’m trying to leave there, aren’t I?”
    She rolled her eyes, inhaled sharply. “No. You keep it positive.” She turned her head to one side and then did an amazing imitation of my voice: “I love it! It’s totally inspiring! My co-workers are great! ” The mimicry was so good, it weirded me out; it was like hearing your voice on an answering machine tape.
    “So why am I interviewing at Trion?”
    “ Opportunities, Adam. There’s nothing wrong with your job at Wyatt. You’re not disgruntled. You’re just taking the logical next step in your career, and there are more opportunities at Trion to do even bigger, better things . What’s your greatest weakness, Adam?”
    I thought for a second. “Nothing, really,” I said. “Never admit to a weakness.”
    She scowled. “Oh, for Christ’s sake. They’ll think you’re either delusional or stupid.”
    “It’s a trick question.”
    “Of course it’s a trick question. Job interviews are minefields , my friend. You have to ‘admit’ to weaknesses, but you must never tell them anything derogatory. So you confess to being too faithful a husband, too loving a father. ” She did the Adam-voice again: “Sometimes I get so comfortable with one software application that I don’t explore others. Or: sometimes when little things bother me, I don’t always speak up, because I figure most things tend to blow over. You don’t complain enough! Or how about this: I tend to get really absorbed in a project, so I sometimes put in long hours, too long, because I love doing them, doing them right. Maybe I work on things more than is necessary. Get it? They’ll be salivating, Adam.”
    I smiled, nodded. Man, oh man, what had I gotten myself into?
    “What’s the biggest mistake you ever made on the job?”
    “Obviously I have to admit something,” I said nervously.
    “You’re a fast study,” she said dryly.
    “Maybe I took on too much once, and I—”
    “—And you fucked it up? So you don’t know the depths of your own incompetence? I don’t think so. You say, ‘Oh, nothing really big. Once I was working on a big report for my boss and I forgot to back up, and my computer crashed, I lost everything. I had to stay up till three in the morning, completely re-create the work I’d lost. Boy, did I learn my lesson—always back up.’ Get it? The biggest mistake you ever made was not your fault, plus you made everything right.”
    “I get it.” My shirt collar felt too tight, and I wanted to get out of there.
    “You’re a natural, Adam,” she said. “You’re going to do just fine.”

8

    The night before my first interview at Trion I went over to see my dad. I did this at least once a week, sometimes more, depending on if he called and asked me to come over. He called a lot, partly because he was lonely (Mom had died six years earlier) and partly because he was paranoid from the steroids he took and convinced his caregivers were trying to kill him. So his calls were never friendly, never chatty; they were complaints, rants, accusations. Some of his painkillers were missing, he’d say, and he was convinced Caryn the nurse was pilfering them. The oxygen supplied by the oxygen company was of shitty quality. Rhonda the nurse kept tripping over his air hose and yanking the little tubes, the cannulas, out of his nose, nearly ripping his ears off.
    To say that it was hard to retain people to take care of him was a comic understatement. Rarely did they last more than a few weeks. Francis X. Cassidy was a bad-tempered man, had been as long as I could remember, and had only grown angrier as he grew older and sicker. He’d always smoked a couple of packs a day and had a loud hacking cough, was always getting bronchitis. So it came as no surprise when he was