Sabrina is trying to ignore the fact that Mr Bruce Curry has a partially open fly. Even in the pale office light at Barker Cassius Accounting, its bared teeth draw the eye; its silver tab points stiffly skyward.
The zip can hardly be blamed, she thinks. His grey suit strains in pleats across his thighs; his paunch presses at his salmon-pink shirt. Her gaze pans the room but finds nothing to distract – a glass vase of round pebbles and bamboo. Or Ms Teri Edwards, HR manager – pert, long-legged, watchful. Sabrina’s palms helplessly irrigate themselves with a film of sweat. She clenches her toes against the soles of her shoes, wills herself to concentrate.
Anyone could be forgiven for thinking Sabrina wants to be an accountant. She sits, beige knees pressed together, talking to a top-four firm. She’s distilled herself into sub- headings, a one-page business case: HSBC Young Scholar; conscientious; thoroughly enjoy challenges; excited by this opportunity. She has tamed the red swatch of fringe that usually curtains her eyes. Her dark suit hides the slow tide of her clammy hands.
But she is aching with existential dissonance. It feels so flagrant; she will surely be exposed.
“What I have consistently found,” Mr Curry is intoning, inclining his pink face, “is that the best accountants in our firm have grit. By which I mean persistence. Or I guess,” with the ghost of a grin, “strong internal controls?”
Ms Edwards stares diplomatically at her shoe. Sabrina returns his watery smile, feels complicit. Already her gaze has found the zip again. Damn it, she thinks, eye contact.
“Anyway, enough about us,” Mr Curry says. “Let’s find out more about you, hmmm?” He raises his pen abstractedly, like a dart. “Very impressive CV. GPA 7.57... top ten percent of your year. Obviously, you’re motivated, which is something we look for in prospective employees. Why did you choose a career in accounting?”
A pause. The air-conditioning hums; some distant fan marks endless, measured circles. Sabrina maintains her stretched, nervous smile. Inside, her lungs are shrivelling – her turn.
Every performance feels like being ten again, like auditions for the school production of Bugsy Malone.
She had shuffled onto the cold wood stage, heartbeat drum-deep, facing a curtain of light. Motes of dust swirled, in blinding sediment. In the silence, her breathing was as loud as a diver’s. In the velvet-seated abyss beyond, her mother, nodding exaggeratedly, expecting triumph.
But stranded onstage, Sabrina’s lines – so passionate in the apricot safety of her bedroom – trickled out dully, a dribble of syllables. After several sentences she was utterly speechless: a goldfish in a bright-lit tank, gasping noiselessly.
“...Yep, thanks,” the director shouted, after an eloquent pause.
Sabrina scuttled for safety backstage. Tripped over a microphone stand, sat down abruptly and held her stubbed toe. The dark hid her wet cheeks, her eyes brimming with disappointment.
Every time it ends this way. So, Sabrina prefers invisibility, skulking in red-curtained wings, effacing her lean body in pale sweaters and jeans. At parties she presses her shoulder blades to the wallpaper, perfectly camouflaged, observing the traffic. Her inner voice is flinty, acerbic, clear-eyed. The boys she kisses in dim corners swear, in dazed shock, that she is wild as a tomcat. But whenever the room’s attention swings in her direction, the language lobes of her brain curl into a prickly, defensive ball.
Their tepid blue eyes are on her, like terrible searchlights. Mr Curry frowns over his glasses, clears his throat; they are waiting. She wants to kick off her shoes and run. Instead she stutters out her answer, swift as defensive fire.
“Well, my first accounting paper changed my world view. Transparency is so crucial to a functioning marketplace.” Her words are frauds, floating out too light – dandelion spores without seeds. “Initially, I found the material difficult, although of course I thrive on challenges.” All of Ms Edwards nods approval – her bobbing chestnut curls, a swinging red- shod foot. “And I love the work. Accounting is” – tactfully, as though complimenting a disastrous outfit – “such a conceptual way to see the world.”
She sinks back, shaky, relieved.
Mr Curry seems satisfied. A careful smile crowds his plump cheeks outwards. He browses her CV, approving her fictional reference to physical activity (“social tennis”). He misses the only clue to who Sabrina really is, why she is here, auditioning for a part she doesn’t really want.
At 15, Sabrina fell in love, although not quite in the way she had expected. The tryst started badly. Jason, the most beautiful boy in her class, had brought along two girl friends (the space between adjective and noun had never been of such profound importance).
Caroline and Jessica had clear skin, docile hair, and hard blue eyes ringed with dark pencil. Their arrival coincided with the sudden fracture of communications between Sabrina’s brain and mouth. They examined her cursorily, as a horse breeder might inspect a riding school nag; their halogen gazes landed on her face. Sabrina felt a tingling paralysis begin to overtake her arms.
“Hey,” she said brightly, hands jammed into her pockets. “Great to see you here.” The girls’ foreheads wrinkled in unison. Why did I say that?
“You too,” Caroline replied, unconvincingly. Jessica’s eyes glazed with disinterest, slid away.
They sat in the food court, under the plastic fringe of an artificial fern, and the girls sipped Coke Zero and giggled at each of Jason’s expletive-peppered utterances. Sabrina feigned an absorbing interest in her limp chips, nursing a dark thought: Jason’s OK on his own, but he’s a real dick the rest of the time.
Then Jessica pulled a sleek Canon SLR from her schoolbag and passed it around for admiration. “Got it for my birthday” (punctuating with a smack of gum).
“Awesome,” Jason approved, hefting it in one hand.
“Soooo cool!” squeaked Caroline, passing it to Sabrina for obedient admiration.
She extracted the camera reverently from its case, cradling its black curves, sensing its momentousness. She pressed her eye to the viewfinder.
Suddenly the world was safely contained, dark and distant as a painting. She turned it towards the others. It was glorious; their attention flooded her lens, yet she felt no urge to flinch. It felt like sitting in the back row of a theatre.
“Take our photo,” Jessica commanded. “Come on, you guys.” And the three of them squeezed together, bared their teeth.
Sabrina detected the subtle shift; she was holding a mirror, aimed at them like a gun. In their faces was a silent supplication to judge them kindly, to forgive their blemishes and braces and find them beautiful.
The crisp reunion of the shutter sealed it: she was in love.
She grew fascinated with the power her camera gave her. The longer she waited before firing, the more awkward her subject became. She loved watching tension creep into the shoulders, the posture twitching with impatience. The exception was her mother, whose eyes could stay crinkled with determined felicity for a seemingly indefinite period. The walls of Sabrina’s bedroom were papered with smiles she rarely saw outside it.
Within two years, she couldn’t stop. She loved the university darkroom – its monochrome, red-tinged light, its thick-walled silence. She loved coaxing portraits from a shimmering bath of developer, pegging them to the drying wire like motionless prayer flags. A tiny pug snarling by a letterbox. Her father at breakfast, fuzz-haired and vulnerable. A vast tree blotting out a storm-heavy sky.
Anyone she permitted entry would immediately suggest, shocked, that she try ‘going pro’. But photography – an appellation that captured every hobbyist with an SLR – was not the same as photographer, a term gilded with the legitimacy of work: invoices, tax status, business cards. Just saying it aloud felt precipitous, unsafe.
So the darkroom seemed a dead end, not a secret passageway. And in gently promoting accounting, her mother had the purest of intentions – showing her a way out, a tiled, air- conditioned plod to profit and prestige. Sabrina, perversely, was even good at it; reducing the world to balance sheets, quantifying margins and returns. But when she looked up at her portraits through that other, bloodless lens, she wasn’t sure why anyone would pay for them.
Photography will wait, she tells herself, chanting it like a mantra she is trying to believe. Just a few years, then I’ll set up my studio. It will be like cryogenic stasis – the green shoots of her dreams will defrost again, unfurl, taste a more financially viable climate.
And so today she finds herself at Barker Cassius, facing the ribald grin of Mr Bruce Curry’s zip.
His tongue moistens his lower lip, discreet as a butler. He sees Photography under Extracurricular interests; he skims past. Then he nods curtly at Ms Edwards, who re-crosses her stockinged thighs and takes over.
“Sabrina, your covering letter says you’re resourceful, and creative.” She peers at Sabrina briefly, as if gauging whether the right candidate is before her. “Tell us about a work-related scenario involving your resourceful, creative nature?”
Resourceful, Sabrina thinks. Did I say that? What does that mean? Her arms jangle portentously. If I were mined, what worth – what dark glittering minerals – would I yield?
“Ah,” she says, stalling, looking at the roof’s white void. A security camera regards her mournfully with its single eye.
An interminable silence ensues. Ms Edwards, uncomfortable, peels her plastic clipboard with a well-manicured nail. “Shall I repeat the question?”
She clasps the fabric sides of her chair in desperation. “I...to date my work has been rather... low level,” she stammers. “Retail, customer service...so when I say resourceful, I...I really refer to my potential. Resourcefulness. And I do, I do believe...” - her eyes return to the roof, which at least seems better than Mr Curry’s trousers - “...I am capable of being resourceful. Based on my...”
Her mouth is furred with panic; their eyes are welling with pity.
“...my study,” Sabrina tapers off sadly. Her hands clasp meekly in her lap, vulnerable as a turtle without its shell.
Mr Curry leans back in his chair. It creaks in alarm, and an entirely new fold of chin emerges.
“And, creativity?” he prompts, with the delicacy of someone raising a friend’s unpaid debt. “How will that aid you as an accountant?”
Her heart is bashing against her ribcage, her breath heavy as a clogged drain. She is blowing it. She is going to starve and live in a caravan.
“Remember what they want is not you.” Heather, in her red-cushioned lounge, arched her eyebrows earnestly. “Work out what they want to hear, then say it. You must never tell the truth.” The eyebrows levitated perilously higher.
“And don’t mention you’re an aspiring photographer,” she added, as an afterthought. Sabrina frowned, guardedly. Heather’s eyes widened in disbelief.
“You weren’t seriously – NO,” she snorted. “Sab, that will not help your cause.”
“Well, they want ‘individuals’,” Sabrina objected, waving the gleaming brochure. “With ‘diverse interests and experiences’.”
Heather frowned. “Crap.” She pointed at a man wearing a precisely pressed shirt, a receding hairline and the rueful smile of the camera-shy. “Look at him. Does he look like an individual? Does he go home and write poetry, or perhaps letters to political prisoners? No.” She tapped him with a ferociously chewed nail. “He bills twelve hours in six-minute increments, he eats a microwave meal in front of a Simpsons rerun, he has a wank and he goes to bed. He got a job the same way you will – by pretending to be a boring accountant.” She flopped back onto the couch; her wristful of bracelets jingled, bell-like, as if signifying her sage advice was at an end.
Sabrina looked at the man, blandly devoid of desire, and wondered if he realised he was no longer pretending.
Creative? she thinks, with sudden clarity. Of course I am. What’s that got to do with being an accountant? She locks eyes with Mr Curry: “Is creativity a trait that Barker Cassius seeks in its staff, and if so, why?”
He blinks. Ms Edwards gapes, but he is too quick. “Why don’t you field this one, Teri, as the HR expert?”
Sabrina suppresses a groan of relief, unclamps her hands as the spotlight shifts.
A thought intrudes, suddenly, that if she succeeds, this performance will not end when she walks out; it will go on. Every day there will be pinstriped client meetings, solemn reviews of her performance, morning teas groaning with cake. Every day there will be partners like Mr Curry to ingratiate herself with.
She dries her palms surreptitiously against her skirt, reminds herself, with the grim imperative of a parent: You need this.
By the end, Mr Curry is smiling genially.
“Well, we’re impressed, I must say. But one thing we’re concerned about is tenure. Frankly, some graduates see our firm as – not so much a ladder,” (one hand gesturing reverently to the upper echelons of accounting ascendancy), “but a stepping stone.” He nods, pleased with the metaphor.
You are the most boring man I’ve ever met, she thinks, feeling troubled.
“Where do you see yourself in five years, Sabrina?”
Both lean imperceptibly forward, spectators at an ice rink sensing an imminent fall. But she vaults cleanly over the spectre of her dull grey life, gives a winning smile.
“Well, it’s a prestigious firm; if offered a position I can’t imagine I would look elsewhere.”
Her stomach flip-flops at the blatancy of this lie. If they look closely, she feels, they will discern, deep in her pupils, the reflection of her first photography studio, its sea-green walls and blonde wood floor. But both are already nodding vigorously, looking down at their clipboards. Amazing, she thinks, how credible our own world view sounds.
The lift is full of suits, clustered plumply like pigeons, stooped over their phones. Sabrina takes the stairs. She feels unaccountably glum; her childish glee at escaping discovery feels tarred by something more leaden. Where will she be in five years?
Outside everything is wonderful. The wind is wild, whipping her fringe back into an excited, stringy mass. She sits on the building’s steps, notes a cuff-linked businesswoman sidestepping a charity collector, longs for her camera. A cosmetics catalogue whirls brightly past, crying SALE SALE SALE. She watches for a while, breathing deep. Clouds streak across the harbour. Ruffled seagulls squat by the waterfront, preening fruitlessly between briny blasts.
She’s still holding Mr Curry’s business card. It quivers, on the edge of flight. She thinks about the phone ringing shrilly in a few days’ time, sketches a grateful acceptance speech.
Her lips are pressed tightly together. For some reason, her eyes cloud with tears. It takes a while until she remembers to exhale.