Page 120 of Catch a Kiwi
He opened the car door, and I started walking. Then I heard him say, “Summer,” and turned around again. My heart pounding. Ridiculously hopeful.
He said, “If you need more help on that job search, you have Esther’s contact info.”
“Yes,” I said. “Thank you. Oh?—”
“Yes?” he said.
“Energy Solutions,” I said, “for the overall company. Or Active Energy, maybe. For the solar company—I’d call it Thrifty Solar. It sounds cheap, but I don’t think Kiwis will take it that way. Thrift is a major virtue here, I’ve noticed.”
“Thanks,” he said.
“You’re welcome.” I wanted to say something else, but I couldn’t think of anything that would help, so I headed into the building before I could cry.
Delilah said, when we were sitting on the tiny plane to Auckland, waiting for departure, “So that’s, like, it?”
I stopped staring out the window at nothing. “You mean, Roman and me?”
“No, I mean those other three guys you’ve been hung up on. Of course I mean Roman and you.”
“Well, yeah,” I said. “It was always it. This weekend was doing him a favor. Like he said.”
“Uh-huh,” she said. “So what are you going to do now?”
“I’m going to get a job.”
That was why, that same afternoon, I sat at the drop-down table in the tiny caravan with my phone in my hand and a notebook before me, took a breath, dialed the first number on the list Esther had provided, and said, careful to speakslowly, calmly, “Hi, Thomas. This is Summer Adair. Esther Carnell gave me your number. I believe she talked to you about my application for your Senior Programmer position.”
“Yeh,” the young voice at the other end of the line said. “Told her I’d consider you, anyway. I’ll take a look at your C.V. and talk to you if you’d like to come in, but I can’t promise anything. We’re interviewing a few people.”
I called the three other names on my list, too, and eventually reached all of them. One said he’d filled the position, but in a way that told me, “I looked you up.” The others were about as warm and welcoming as Thomas.
Nobody said it would be easy,I reminded myself. But however hard I’d thought it would be, the three interviews I did get were worse. The last one especially, which was in the Perc Café, a cozy spot near the Octagon with wood tables and lots of plants. I sat across from a man named Arthur, who was tall and lanky and had dark hair that flopped across his forehead and a prominent Adam’s apple that bobbed up and down when he swallowed. Which was all the time.
“If Roman d’Angelo recommends you,” he asked, “why isn’t he hiring you?”
I stirred my cappuccino in its china cup, tucked my crossed ankles more neatly under my chair—I’d worn my best cheap-at-the-Op-Shop jeans, a silver-blue top with an interesting button pattern, and a cropped black jacket for this, constituting about half of the work wardrobe I’d accumulated thus far and giving off absolutely no “kitten” vibes—and said, “He doesn’t have an opening for my type of position—he’s in alternative energy, as you know, not tech—but he’s familiar with my experience. Which I’d love to tell you about. At my last position, which I held for over five years, I started out by constructing the logic for a streamlined ad-serving platform that scaled to four million users. We improved page speed by fifteen percent on that one.Later on, I led the migration from AWS to GTP in order to?—”
“I read your C.V.,” Arthur said. “Seems you can code.”
“I can,” I said. “But I can do more than that. I also managed multiple complex projects and earned a promotion to Senior Developer after only?—”
“I can read that, too,” he said, and set the C.V. aside. “How do you know D’Angelo?”
Here we were. The tricky bit. I said, “What the C.V. doesn’t show is why I came to New Zealand. Which was for a working holiday. During some of that time, I worked for Roman. Outside of my field, but he was impressed with my work. And now that I’ve seen the country and chosen to settle in Dunedin, I’m eager to get back into what I love best. Which has always been software, so—here I am. With Roman’s recommendation on my work ethic and efficiency, since that’s what he knows.”
“Mm,” Arthur said. “Left the field and the UK because of your personal issues?” He swallowed some coffee with another gulp. I had to stop staring at his Adam’s apple.
“Yes,” I said. “I got a divorce. Which frequently leads to life change, I understand.”
“Seems you got more than that,” he said. “Sorry, but it’s all online. Want to explain the bankruptcy? The trial, all that?”
I’d practiced this, too. I did my best.Conceal a flaw, and the world will imagine the worst.That one was by Martial. When I’d finished, Thomas said, “But you’re not planning on staying in New Zealand, surely. Back to the States, or back to the UK?”
“No plans to leave,” I said, trying to make my tone bright. “I can stay for three years on my working holiday visa, and that’s my current plan. I have more than two years left on that. Software engineers are on the skill shortage list, so the demand is there, and I do love the job. That’s not cool to say, but I love the puzzle of it. The elegance of it. Thebeautyof it.”He stared at me as if I’d just confessed to hating rugby, so I hurried on. “It’s a core value for me to do work I’m passionate about, and after this break, I’m champing at the bit to get back to it. If all goes well here, if I see the future for me that I’m expecting to, I’ll consider applying for permanent residency.” Which was laying it on a little thick, possibly, but it was true, and “I’m only here for a little while, because I get bored easily!” doesn’t tend to be a job-winning approach.
“How much of that,” Arthur said, “revolves around D’Angelo?”
“None of it.” My own tone got chillier, but really? Really? “I’m not in a relationship with Roman d’Angelo, not that it’s relevant. I did some work for him. He knows Dunedin. He offered to help. End of story.”
