Intrusion: A Novel by Mary McCluskey Read Free Book Online Page A

jobs, listed agencies, made notes of phone numbers. The few phone calls she made were difficult. She tried to sidestep questions about why she was moving from a job she had done well for five years, that was well paid, to positions that were sometimes described as “entry level.”
    A recruiter was astonished when Kat, calling about a job for an admin assistant in a school, mentioned her previous salary. Kat decided to downplay the salary, downplay her responsibilities. She did not want a job that involved public relations, or customer service, or any kind of position that meant she had to smile at strangers.
    “They want someone perky,” the recruiter said. “With good communication skills.”
    “I am not perky ,” Kat murmured. “I was never that.”
    Eventually, she stopped making the calls, and instead sat at the dining table reading the online ads, imagining the calls, the interviews, the responses. Occasionally, moments from the past few months would flash into her mind: the funeral, choosing the flowers, the awkward visits of Chris’s friends. These memories dropped softly, completely intact, into her mind. Sometimes, they were in strong, primary colors, occasionally in a kind of sepia, like old movies.
    One morning, she was transported right back to the room where they chose the coffin. The funeral director took them down in an elevator, an elevator with brass rails and frosted dark glass. It seemed to sink far down, underground, under the earth. When the doors opened, Kat and Scott stepped out into an enormous room. It was ballroom size and it was full of coffins: polished wood coffins of oak and mahogany, metal ones of silver and gold and brass, and tiny ones of white wood, some with satin or silk or ribbon, or elaborate decoration. The light was strange, silvery, ethereal. Scott took her hand and they walked fast through the aisles that separated the different types, the expensive ones first, the cheaper ones at the end of the ballroom. They whispered to each other, saying what about this one, this will be fine, or this, looking at the prices so quickly, barely able to look inside these caskets, one of which would cradle their son for eternity. They chose a light oak one, then walked, with knees that trembled, back to the elevator, and Kat pressed the elevator button so fast that the director had to squeeze in as the doors were closing. Scott recited the number of the casket they had chosen, and the price. He quoted it to the funeral director without moving his eyes from the elevator doors. It was surreal. They were actors in a movie. They were not real. Nothing was real.
    Immobilized at the dining table, the laptop open in front of her, Kat waited until these strange dreamlike sequences ended, then began again to scan the job listings.
    When Maggie called from England, Kat heard herself telling smooth lies and was surprised at how easily her sister believed her: Yes, she had interviews; there was some work out there. She wanted to be sure, though, wanted to find something that was just right. Maggie agreed.
    “Take your time, darling. Might take a little while. How’s Scott holding up?”
    “Oh, he’s doing better. He’s busy. Very busy.”
    In fact, Scott was so busy that he was often distracted and vague or irritable with the brittle edge of exhaustion.
    “New client, new challenges,” he explained to Kat, apologizing for a sudden snap of temper. “And Jesus, Sarah Harrison has a whole bunch of subsidiaries. Wish I’d known that going in. I’ve had to farm out some of the routine stuff on my old clients to other partners.”
    A series of client meetings meant that a couple of suits had to be taken to the cleaners and a new suit purchased. When Kat told him how smart he looked, he told her he felt like a salesman. That when he’d finally been able to revisit the Compton project, young Chiller had told him he should be pimping on the Westside. He was late getting home so frequently that Kat often