The Interview

Zachary

Zachary Lan closed the magazine and tossed it with a spin across his wide desk, the pages fluttered with soft slapping sounds as it skidded to the edge and toppled off. Good riddance, he thought as the door to his office opened and Greg Landon, his Lawyer of 12 years walked in. 

The sheepish grin on his face told Zachary all he needed to know. "Are they ready for me?" "Understandably anxious, but ready." "And how about you?" Capable hands spread wide. "Zach, you have planned this since day one, I'm ready when you are. Just say the word." Rising from his chair Zachary tugged only once at the hem of his dark grey suit, a sign that he was deep in thought, enough to miss Greg's eyes as they flitted to the crumpled magazine on the floor. "Another piece worthy of the porcelain throne award?" With barely a grunt Zachary refused to bite, knowing the moment he opened his mouth, he'd lose focus on the task at hand.

Together they walked out of the office, the air charged with things unsaid. Zachary took advantage of the silence and inhaled a deep cleansing breath as they made their way down the hall to the executive conference room of Higher Calling Technology Solutions. 

Stopping just outside the glossy wooden doors Zachary resisted the urge to run his hand through the thatch of his black hair. Instead, he suppressed the trembling smile tugging at his lips in anticipation of the unknown. More than 10 years in the making was finally here. "It's time." "Then, it's time." Greg echoed with a nod and his own wide smile. The doors swung wide and every head around the table swiveled to stare piercingly at the 35 year old CEO entering the room. "Ladies and gentlemen, I appreciate you being here today, we go to press in 2 hours and there is a lot I would like to talk to you about."

Elise 

“Ms. Vinter, I just wanted to remind you that you have a 3 o’clock today.” Elise sighed as the voice of Latitude Systems' receptionist Marsha King, broke through her concentration. “Thank you Marsha.” Keeping her voice from taking on a frustrated tone took more effort than she had liked to admit.

The latest proposal and the expansion of their Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning division had been consuming a vast majority of Elise's time, she honestly didn’t even remember scheduling another potential employee. 

It certainly wasn’t Marsha’s fault this was the 7^th engineer, this week alone, that had passed through Elise’s office. 

After all, the official interview board had been conducted already. This was an additional requirement levied by Elise, that perspective employees, particularly the engineers, be vetted by her personally. It was a brutal requirement to say the least, the last thing she needed in her tight, ever present schedule. But still, necessary. Elise was looking for something that until she saw it for herself, she couldn’t quite place.

The cursory glance in the mirror behind the closet door was less about vanity and more about ensuring her gig-line was orderly. Buttons, belt, batter hole she heard her father chant in her head, and then blushed, retried Marines, while uncouth, did made great fathers. Able to instill a resiliency that had seen her through the trials of running a business, tempered by her mother’s touch. As a pediatric nurse Elise’s mother had tried to pass on to her daughter the ability to wear one’s heart on their sleeve without letting the world trample it in the process, a skill Elise quickly seemed to be losing.  

Zachary

Trying to suppress the bounce in his step Zachary Lan took the stairs two at a time, the elevator had been too slow for him. Of course this was a ludicrous idea, he had no idea if she felt the same. However, he couldn’t help but feel the connection that had existed between them, was still present even now after all these years, and he trusted that feeling. At the fifth floor he caught his breath and stepped into the reception area of Latitude Systems. The elevator gave a soft ding, and a droll-faced lawyer stepped out. "Really?" "I didn't want to make you uncomfortable in an enclosed space" Zachary laughed, motioning for Greg to lead the way to the reception desk across the room. Zachary trailed behind, feeling the zing of excitement. This was what drove him as an entrepreneur, and he'd learned to trust the subtle ticks in his character that guided his decision making process and the timing of it. This one had success written all over it  

At their approach Marsha, the woman Zachary had spoken with over the phone earlier, looked up. Her face transitioned from polite, to pale, and then red blushed up from neckline to hairline. "Good afternoon, Marsha is it? We're here to see Ms. Vinter, I'm her 3 o'clock, Martin Lan." He tried not to pause, it seemed so dramatic, but he was waiting for some sort of confirmation of understanding on her face. "Zachary Martin Lan." he prompted, Marsha’s mouth snapped shut and the blush deepened. "Yes- Yes sir, CEO of Higher Calling Solutions," Greg grunted some unpolished noise beside him and Zachary kicked a foot out discreetly in his direction. "I- I will let Ms. Lan- " Marsha choked, "I’m sorry I will let Ms. Vinter know you are here." On impulse Zachary leaned over and stopped her. "Please, you know she won't see me if she knows I'm the one coming, I promise this will be alright, but if by some unlikely backlash you lose your job for this, I will personally cover your annual salary for the year." This time he did pause for effect. "Gross annual." Greg was deathly quiet beside him, and laughing internally Zachary wished he could have seen the older man’s expression for himself, but he was busy holding Marsha's eyes, which had widened to white all around. "Ms. Vinter will see you now Mr. Lan." "Bravo '' he whispered with a smile and led the way to the glass doors that led to Elise Vinter's office.  

Elise 

Elise had given up reading the resume’s prior to these meetings, mainly because she heard her own read each time she tried to pass judgement on another’s. Sure, it started out great, CEO of a fortune 500 company, sold her first venture at the age of 26... but shortly after, it began to falter with words like insecure, unreasonable, distant…

One day she had simply woken up divorced from her then personal trainer, without so much as a dog to her name in a sterile, high-end apartment all to herself. And of course, with ten extra pounds. Always with the extra pounds! She thought with exasperation to the ceiling she was currently staring at.

Darting up from her chair, Elise restlessly moved to wall of windows that overlooked the San Francisco cityscape. Though, it did little to calm her today as it so often did other times. In the window she could see her reflection, half-obscured and blending with the buildings beyond. She quickly turned away at the uneasy feeling the image presented, that the city, and her company, had had somehow begun to erase her over the past decade.

When Elise had arrived on the scene, she’d taken the world of technology by storm, carving a niche by introducing a new method for large packet data transfers that transformed how businesses with limited bandwidth could manage the transfers with little to no data loss. A few years later, she’d taken it one step further and found a solution to large data transfers in rural regions with very little connectivity. It had revolutionized distance learning, among other things.

Drifting aimlessly back to her desk in the effort to kill time, Elise found another face gazing up at her from the past. “I don’t need you telling me I’m not happy as well Zachary.” She whispered tiredly to the disarming smile in the silver frame, and out of habit she gently laid it face down. It really was time to put it away, it had been 10 years since they’d been anything but rivals, and 18 years since they’d shared any semblance of a relationship together. But in her heart Elise still nursed the regret that, had she not stopped writing to him, and returning his calls after their high school years, she would be in a better place now. Elise had outward success to some, but she knew it lacked the true sense of what success was, because as she’d mentioned, she wasn’t happy.

Elise found herself at the window again, the sunlight warming her through the glass. This time though, she'd stopped short of her reflection.   

Zachary

"I'll just wait over here, in the event of large furniture being thrown, or shots fired." Greg murmured, taking up residence in a plush chair in a small waiting area outside the office. With electric energy Zachary tried to turn down the wattage on his grin, "wuss," he murmured and tapped lightly at the frosted glass of the door. The muted response from within sent his heart into overdrive and he put a hand against the door-jam to steady himself.

Elise was at the wall of windows overlooking the San Francisco skyline as he let himself into her light-filled office. The view was breathtaking in itself, but Elise Vinter commanded the whole of his attention as she turned at his entrance. 

Some described her soulful eyes as icy, but Zachary knew better, Elise wore her heart on her sleeve, making her responses more emotional than some would like from a CEO. The press tore her apart for it, the public misunderstood her for it, but she had a resilience that had withstood it all through the last decade. 

Zachary witnessed the jolt of shock pass through her body as she recognized him. "Elise-" He'd meant to say more, but his mind had stopped at her name, partly because it had gone blank, partly because her name had come out of his mouth as only a sigh. Her dark brown hair was pinned up, but the result was soft, not severe. The fluid fabric of her blouse, which tied at the neck with a limp bow, was cream, the cuffed sleeves billowing slightly with her movement. A pair of navy blue wide-legged trousers completed the look which sparked off the crystal blue of her eyes.

Her chipped words barely phased him as he drank her in. "I'll clearly need to have a word with Marsha, but beyond that, I have a 3 o'clock, so please see yourself out." Elise moved purposefully to the large recycled wood desk. "I am your 3 o'clock." He managed to choke out, "I'm here to interview for the AI/ML position you advertised." His breath was finally coming more easily and Zachary felt himself slipping back into the calm that he relied upon as a CEO, this was as much his future as his business had been. Elise paused with a look of incredulous disbelief, and he could hardly blame her. Then much to his flip flopping heart, she shot him a fleeting smile. “Nice try, but no. Please leave.”   

"On what grounds? The interview hasn’t even started." Elise pointed with exaggerated frustration to the skyscraper outside her window, the parent building which housed his corporate office. "Conflict of interest!" "Ah-" he managed to spit out before a ringtone sliced through the thick air of the office. Leave it to Elise to have a ringtone of birds chirping merrily. As she answered the phone her eyes darted up to his, Zachary didn't try to hide the lopsided grin that resulted. She hung up without having said a word, eyes still locked on him. He hoped the awe wasn't too obvious on his face as she stood with authority, anger radiating in waves as she placed her palms on the desk that separated them and whispered, "I don't know what you are up to, but we are done here."

Years of press had taught him that his face was as genuine as hers when it came to showing emotion. "We both know I need a better response than that in order to dismiss an interviewee." "Overqualified" She shot back slowly, enunciating each syllable without missing a beat, and he let out a full belly laugh. "I'm unemployed and you are going to send me away because I'm overqualified?" 

Elise held up a hand, the single thin silver bracelet caught the sunlight shining in. "Mind if I put you in my shoes for just a moment?" Zachary sobered, seeing the true strain on her face, she was lovely, but he could finally see the tired lines of her eyes. His thoughts snapped back to the magazine article he'd read just that morning, it had been ruthless against her. "The CEO of a rival company shows up in my office hours after abruptly selling his company, asking for a job. Do you have any idea how suspicious that comes across?"

"Correction," Zachary made his way to stand directly in front of her desk. "The CEO of a complementary company, who had written into his business model from day one, that a sale could be abrupt, and at no time later than 20 years past initial start-up... Has showed up looking for the opportunity to work alongside someone he has admired and respected since that day at summer camp when he stumbled upon a 7 year-old ‘you’ trying to hide your homesickness at a picnic table."

She stood rigid behind her desk, regal but alone, heartfelt and misunderstood, spirited but exhausted. The presence of her in front of him, nearly within reach, drew the love he’d held in his chest for her out like a wellspring. "20 years Elise, to have a career, to succeed or fail, to selfishly expend on ourselves and our 'babies."' He motioned around him, at all she'd built from nothing. "But after that," his voice increased in earnest. "After those years, a time for us. To break out of these boxes that define our four walls and keep us from enjoying things that others get to." “What is it that you want Zachary, please just spit it out.” Her voice wavered slightly and he longed to reach out and encourage her.

“I want our time, you and I, us. I want to love Elise, I want down-time, pet’s, children, time off, I don’t know pick one, pick them all! Everything you feel you have missed out on in giving everything you are to this company." He pressed his own hand to her desk, mindful of the few picture frames that were present, resisting the urge to right the one laying down. "After the first 6 years of silence between us, I launched Higher Calling Technology solutions-” “To rival my company, which had launched only months before yours!” She cried emphatically, cutting him off. “No,” he returned gently. “To be near you, to be near and to still know you without invading your space. Elise, someone with your passion can’t be held down. There was no room for me in your world 10 years ago, maybe not even the full 18 years, not like what we’d had throughout our long distance relationship in high school. But that didn’t mean I was going to give up on you.” 

Elise

The buzzing in her ears worried Elise and she put out a hand to steady herself against her desk. Was it true? Was she so wildly self-absorbed and selfish that she hadn’t noticed the staggering depths Zachary had gone through for her over the years? “I’ve wasted so much time” she whispered, heartbroken, more so to herself than anyone else. But in the silence of her office Zachary had heard. “Wasted no, Elise I used the time as well. Neither one of us would have been ready, I fully believe that.” “Perhaps, but you seemed to apply your time more constructively than I did.” Her legs were jelly, so she plopped down in her chair. Blinking she looked up into Zachary’s face. Without the filter of bitterness or regret she realized just how handsome she found him to be. His rich brown eyes smiled all around, as if he found joy in everything he saw. The dark wilds of his hair not showing a single speck of his hard-earned years. “Please, have a seat” she motioned to the empty chair nearest her desk. A warmth was blossoming in her chest as she glimpsed an inkling of what he’d set into motion that day he’d come to her at the picnic table. 

Taking a moment to organize her thoughts, Elise drew a deep breath. “Well Mr. Lan,” she heard the tremble of deep emotion in her voice, but didn’t try to hide it as she turned the photo of her parents around to face him. It was from their trip to Rome a few years back, the colors of the sunset crossing over them as they smiled for the camera in front of the Colosseum. “I guess all that remains is-” She turned around the second frame of her with her parents at the Grand Tetons next, the last true vacation she’d taken, over 7 years ago now. Her fingers trembled as they righted the last frame, the one she’d placed face down on the desk. Elise touched the glass tenderly for just a moment. Turning it around with the others she smiled at his quiet, sharp intake of breath, their eyes meeting. “When can you start?”