The fluorescent lights in the hallway buzzed with the kind of frequency that made waiting feel like a form of low-grade torture. Adam sat on a metal folding chair outside the manager's office, his hands folded in his lap in a posture he hoped conveyed professionalism rather than the anxiety that made his stomach feel hollow and unstable. People walked past him with the ease of those who belonged, their movements fluid and unquestioning, their faces registering nothing when they glanced his way.
He was thirty-two years old and waiting for his first job interview.
The door to the office opened and two women emerged, both attractive in the way that suggested careful maintenance rather than accident of birth. They laughed about something as they passed, their perfume lingering in the air like evidence of a world he had not yet been admitted into. The manager appeared in the doorway, a heavyset man with tired eyes and the complexion of someone who spent most of their life indoors. He waved a finger at Adam without speaking, a gesture that was somehow both welcoming and dismissive.
Adam stood quickly, perhaps too quickly, and walked into the office with his CV held in front of him like an offering.
"Good afternoon, sir. Thank you for seeing me." He extended the document across the desk with both hands.
The manager, whose nameplate read Vincent Calabrese, took the CV and gave it the kind of glance people reserve for junk mail before setting it aside.
"I could care less about what's on here, although there's jack shit, I just need someone who can work their way around the bar." Vincent said, lighting a cigarette without asking if Adam minded. "Are you capable?"
Adam opens his mouth, "I may not have much experience, but I'm willing to learn. I'm dedicated to acquiring new skills, and I believe capability is as much about attitude as prior knowledge—"
Vincent raises a hand to cut him off "That's enough. it's a yes or no question."
"Yes," Adam said.
"You smoke?" Vincent gestured with the cigarette, ash drifting toward the desk.
"No. I don't like the smell of cigarettes." He gets out a soft awkward chuckle.
Vincent nodded as if this confirmed something he had already suspected. "The last bartender we had moved to another branch we opened at another state, he was a good kid and an excellent worker. So, I expect you fill his shoes or maybe be even better." He stood and walked to the window, looking out at the street below where afternoon light made everything look washed out and temporary. " I want you to come in tomorrow so we can assess you and see how you work with the other employees. If they can work with you and you can work with them, you're in. But if you don't I wish you luck in advance on your job hunt."
Adam felt something loosen in his chest, a knot he had been carrying for so long he had forgotten it was there. "Thank you, sir. I really appreciate this opportunity. I'll do my best, I promise."
''Just a moment kid, I have a question.'' Vincent turned from the window and pulled open a desk drawer. He removed a gun and placed it on the desk between them with the casual precision of someone setting down a coffee cup. The atmosphere in the room changed instantly, the air becoming thicker, harder to breathe.
" I checked around for you, and there's nothing much out there. Other growing in a farm in the countryside." Vincent asked, his voice taking on a different quality, something sharper beneath the casual tone. "But I refuse to believe that you've never done anything for the past thirty-two years to the point that there's no record. Who the fuck are you kid and what the fuck do you want from this bar?"
Adam's mouth went dry and he nervously clenches his fists nervously. "N- nothing sir, I'm just looking for job and want live a city life, like everyone else around here. I swear I have no bad intentions."
Vincent studied him for a long moment, and he could see that Adam is shaking, and he couldn't sense anything from him. Then he waved his hand dismissively. "Get the fuck out of my office, bum."
Adam stood, relief and confusion competing for space in his mind as he moved toward the door. As he reached for the handle, it opened from the other side and a woman stepped in, nearly colliding with him in the doorway.
"Oh, I'm so sorry," she said, her smile immediate and genuine.
"No, no, my fault," Adam said, stepping aside.
She wore a designer coat and carried herself with the kind of ease that suggested she was accustomed to being looked at. Adam assumed she was one of the girls who worked at the club, perhaps coming in for her shift or to discuss her schedule.
The moment she spoke, Vincent's entire demeanor shifted. His spine straightened, his expression transformed into something resembling deference.
"Get out," Vincent said to Adam, his voice suddenly urgent. "Make sure the door is closed behind you."
Charmy opened her arms as Adam slipped through the door, her voice carrying through the closing gap. "Vincent! It's been too long!"
The city felt different when you had somewhere to belong to, even if that belonging was provisional and required the approval of strangers. Adam walked through the evening streets with a lightness he had not experienced in years, maybe ever. His feet seemed to barely touch the pavement. He found himself smiling at nothing, at everything, at the simple fact of existing in a world that had finally made space for him.
He ducked into a bar he had passed a hundred times but never entered, a place called McCarthy's with dim lighting and the smell of beer soaked into wood. He ordered a whiskey and raised the glass in a silent toast to himself, to the future, to the possibility that things could actually change.
"Got a new job today," he said to the bartender, an older man with salt-and-pepper hair who nodded without particular interest.
"Congratulations."
"It's my first ever job too," Adam continued, unable to contain it. "Ever."
This got the bartender's attention. "Ever?"
"Ever."
The man poured him another whiskey without being asked. "Then this one's on me."
Adam stayed for three drinks, then four. He talked to anyone who would listen, telling the story of his interview, embellishing slightly, making Vincent's approval seem more enthusiastic than it had been. At some point he found himself singing, badly, a song he barely knew the words to, something about working for a living. People laughed with him rather than at him, or at least he chose to believe that was the distinction.
When he finally left the bar the world tilted slightly, pleasantly, and he made his way home through streets that seemed gentler than usual, less hostile to his presence.
His apartment building announced itself through its shabbiness, a structure that seemed to be held together through stubbornness rather than structural integrity. He climbed the stairs to the third floor, his good mood carrying him upward, and unlocked the door to his single room.
The joy stopped at the threshold.
Inside was a space so small that kitchen and bedroom and living area existed as one continuous zone of limitation. A hotplate sat on a counter barely large enough to hold it. His bed occupied most of the available floor space. There was no room for a dining table, only a single chair positioned near the window.
Adam kicked off his shoes, letting them fall where they landed, and allowed himself one huge, deflating sigh. Then he launched himself onto the bed and released a primal scream of relief, of exhaustion, of every emotion he had been holding inside for the last several hours.
The response was immediate. Someone pounded on the thin wall that separated his apartment from the next.
"SHUT UP!" The voice was male, angry, accustomed to being obeyed.
Adam lay still, staring at the ceiling, his moment of celebration reduced to this: silence in a too-small room, alone except for the anger of strangers.