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sure,” he said.

    She didn’t believe him. “Yeah?”

    Reaching to his inner jacket pocket, bringing out the white legal–size envelope, Judson pressed on, afraid to move forward but even more afraid to stop. “I’m supposed to give him my resume,” he said.

    “Oh, you are, are you?” Cold eyes were not on his side.

    “I’m hoping to get a job here,” Judson said. “With the Commissioners’ Courses. I took the course, you know.”

    “No, I didn’t know.”

    Judson frowned over his shoulder at the door, with all those company names on the other side. “Is he really all of those?”

    Now a wintry smile did appear. “Why? You sent in for them, too?”

    “Well … yes.”

    “To Super Star,” she said. “Did you send in lyrics to have music written, or music to have lyrics written?”

    “Lyrics. I sent in lyrics.”

    “Most of them do. And the fuck book before that, I suppose.”

    “Yes, ma’am,” Judson said, and felt his cheeks grow hot. No woman had ever said ‘fuck book’ to him before. Or ‘fuck’ anything, come to that.

    The wintry smile again. “Lied about your age for that one, didn’t you?”

    He had to smile back. “Yes, ma’am.”

    She put a hand out. “Let me see this resume.”

    “Yes, ma’am.”

    He handed the paper to her, and she walked around the desk with it, saying, “Sit on some cartons, the chairs are all full.”

    They were. He sat on a stack of liquor store cartons and she sat at the desk to open his envelope and read his job resume. The room became very silent. He could hear himself breathe.

    She looked up. “How old are you?”

    “Twenty–four.”

    She nodded. “You lie pretty good,” she said. “Maintain eye contact, all that.”

    “Ma’am?”

    “I wouldn’t give you the time of day,” she informed him, “if it wasn’t for this resume.” And she waved the three sheets of computer printout he’d done at home in his bedroom.

    “Thank you, ma’am.”

    “Very impressive.”

    “Thank you, ma’am.”

    “A beautiful tissue of lies.”

    “Tha — Ma’am?”

    She smiled more fondly at his resume than she had so far smiled at Judson. Running a finger down the list, she said, “What have we here? Bankruptcies, deaths, mergers. Every bit of this job history is compelling and makes you the very highest level of job applicant, and yet not one of these claims could be verified.” She transferred her smile to Judson, adding some ice to it. “You must have worked long and hard on this.”

    The mixed signals Judson was getting from this woman were driving him crazy. She was accusing him of being a liar, but she didn’t seem to be angry about it. Was his being a good liar supposed to be something positive? An asset for the job? Not knowing whether he’d do better to acknowledge his duplicity or deny it, he just sat there and stared at her, knowing full well he was the bird and she the snake.

    She dropped the resume on her messy desk with a flip of disdainful fingers. “We aren’t hiring.”

    “Oh.”

    “As a matter of fact —” she said, and the phone rang. It took her until the second ring before she could find the phone in the jumble on her desk, and then said into it, “Maylohda, Commercial Attaché. Oh, hello, John.” She smiled much more warmly into the phone, liking this person John. Judson seethed with envy and listened closely. “Sure, I’ll tell him. Ten tonight at the O.J. He’s due to come over here soon, help me move some of this shit out. Talk to you later.” She hung up and frowned at Judson. “Where was I?”

    “ ‘As a matter of fact —’ ”

    “Oh, right. Thank you. As a matter of fact, I’m just now in the process of shutting down all those lines. The Maylohda number’s working so well, who needs the hassle of all the rest of it?”

    Judson said, “Ma’am, what is Maylohda? Is it a country?”

    “Of course it is. Do you know there are almost two hundred different separate nations in