She shoos me inside where a woman in a sharp black two-piece business suit is speaking to the dozens of men and women my age already standing behind tables stacked with papers and glossy photo spreads. She stops and glares at me as I make my way to the only empty table, closest to her.
I whisper, “Sorry,” but she ignores me. The Armani-clad dude next to me who has enough gel in his hair to grease a wheel rolls his eyes.
“As I was saying,” the woman in charge continues, pausing to glare at me again, “I am Lydia Forbes, head of personnel. As far as you’re concerned, that makes me lady fate herself. For one of you, this internship will change the course of your entire life.” Thanks for the reminder. “The rest of you will continue searching for the elusive pearl to launch your career.” I think I might hyperventilate, but the rest of the candidates in their expensive clothes nod along as cool as robots.
Lydia continues as she paces the room. “In front of you, you’ll find descriptions and photographs of ten objects that represent the types of fine and decorative arts typically auctioned off here at Carringer’s. You have exactly thirty minutes to identify and appraise each piece, and then you will be interviewed.”
My pulse races like I’m still jogging, but there is excitement mixed in with my extreme anxiety. I get to look at beautiful art. And even though I’m nervous, I also know that all those years I spent studying my brains out in order to get my arts degree (while still holding down a full time job) are finally going to pay off.
Lydia stops in front of me, drums her French-tipped nails along the edge of my table. “Each of you has an excellent resume, but only one can be the best.” She gives me a little sneer as she walks away, and I feel like my heart might pound out of my chest, but I know I can do this. Mom would tell me take three deep breaths and then go. I hear her voice in my head: “Everything slows down; you can focus.”
Lydia’s sharp heels sound like cat claws on the floor. “Your time starts now.”
This is your dream, Grace. I take three deep breaths and dive in.
“Last summer I went to Italy for six weeks, but now Rome feels so provincial, you know?” a snooty-looking brunette with perfectly straight, shiny hair sitting next to me says.
I’ve been in the salon—too luxurious to be called a waiting room—outside Lydia’s office for nearly an hour. Art adorns the walls, each piece worth at least a hundred years of my salary. Worry knots in my stomach as I hear more and more of the other candidates talk about their family compounds on Cape Cod, and all their mutual friends from boarding school and Ivy League colleges.
It’s like a window onto a completely different world. They even use the word summer as a verb, as in “Where did you summer?” which is how this conversation next to me got started. The only places I’ve ever “summered” were on the patio with my mom, lemon juice in our hair for highlights, with the occasional trip to the community pool.
“Oh, Chelsea,” girl number two says. “Just because the guy you laid in Florence never called you back doesn’t mean Italy has been ruined.”
“Please, Angelica, you’re only going abroad because your daddy said you couldn’t laze around his Hamptons house again this year.”
“He forced me to apply for this internship too,” Angelica pouts. “Some old buddy of his knew someone here, blah, blah.” Blah blah is how this girl refers to connections I would kill to have. She has no idea how lucky she is. “Daddy thinks my Yale degree makes me a genius, but I know I failed that assessment just now.” She pats her blonde hair-sprayed bun. “I didn’t even know what that rod thingy was! It looked like a broken curling tong to me.”
I try not to think about how unfair it is. The art world is like this everywhere, all about who you know and which circles you run in and how rich your family is. I don’t have a celebrity neighbor or a trust fund so girls like this will never take me seriously, but hopefully that won’t matter in my final interview. I know I aced those test materials. That “rod thingy” was a 17th century German scepter, not a salon accessory, I have to force myself from saying out loud.
Lydia’s assistant with the clipboard appears as the Armani asshole from earlier exits her office. “Grace Bennett?”
I stand up and enter the room. My hands are sweaty, my throat tight. I sit down in one of the chairs across from Lydia’s glass-topped desk. Unlike the rest of the building, this room is all high-tech and glossy-looking, with only a pair of antique Chinese cloisonné vases as decor.
“Ms. Bennett,” Lydia says, leaning back in her white leather chair. Her perfectly coiffed hair doesn’t move as she looks me up and down. “It says here on your resume that you studied at… Montclair Community College.” She drawls the last two words with clear amusement. “I was unaware that one could receive a fine arts degree from a community college.”
“Not all of them offer the program,” I say, my heart sinking at this immediate obstacle. “I was lucky to find Montclair Community College after I had to drop out of Tufts.”
“You got into Tufts?” She looks surprised.
“I attended for a year on a full scholarship before…a family emergency called me back home.”
Lydia waits for an explanation, but I don’t tell her anything more. Mom getting sick, her death, it still hurts too much to talk about, and soon enough Lydia slides her reading glasses to the tip of her pointed nose and looks at the next paper in her folder. “You did very well on the assessment.”