A shudder runs down my spine.
“You look like you have seen a ghost,” she says and snaps me back into present reality. I did indeed see a ghost, a ghost of the past.
I say nothing.
“Will the background evaluation or polygraph be a problem?” she asks me.
My eyes snap to her.
“No,” I say automatically, but I know I don’t fool her; she is, after all, a behavioral expert.
She draws an eyebrow.
“It will be fine,” I say.
“If you perform like this, it won’t,” she says, and I smirk. I like her directness.
“I perform, because you don’t need to know my full story. An agent can,” I say to wiggle myself out of the situation.
My words hit her exactly where I intended them to, and she is now occupied with her own desire to know everything, only to be denied that knowledge. While I do respect boundaries, it brings me immense fun to push her beyond them and ruffle her feathers a bit.
“Do you intend on watching me fill it out now, or can I do so at home?”
“You will have to take it to your appointment on Friday. I am certain you are capable enough to fill it out by yourself,” she answers without looking at me while organizing a bunch of papers on her desk.
“Where and when do I have to be?”
“You should have an email in your inbox,” she says efficiently, and leans with a pile of papers and folders over to me. “Read through this, and give me a wrap-up on your conclusions next week. Also, the contract. Your details are missing.”
“I don’t need the money,” I say. “I’m not doing this for the money.” I don’t even know why I tell her. I could’ve just signed and ignored it. But I had to open my mouth and say those fundamentally stupid words.
Her eyes flash at me—of course.
“Tell me how you afford to live in a penthouse on Walker Street, not needing money as a student.”
I consider her for a moment.
“I inherited a shit ton of money when my father died,” I say, in a rather harsh tone, not because of the question, but because I am angry with myself. “Those twenty-six dollars per hour? My money makes that in interest alone every minute.”
She looks at me the way everyone does when they find out the person in front of them is loaded. And she doesn’t even come from nothing; her parents are both neurosurgeons, she comes from a lot of money, but it feels like she has a disregard for it.
“What did your father do?” she asks in a distant tone.
“Business, of all kinds,” I say briefly, and before I can stop myself, I ask, “What has money done to you?”
Her eyes become slits, like every time when I see something I shouldn’t.
“Money brings evil,” she says.
“Does it?” I ask her as I get up with my stack of papers she gave me. “I mean, you are the behavioral expert, but your personal experience seems to cloud your judgment. Money is neutral. Money just is. The problem is human nature. The human desire to do evil. So don’t hate the money, hate the human nature and all the things done by men that led us here.”
Her gaze is unreadable, with slightly parted lips and wider eyes. She is not used to being challenged or talked back to.
“See you tomorrow,” I say and leave.
I grin to myself as I walk away from the office. She is so unbelievably raw, it brings me immense joy to watch her react in real time, unmasked to everything I say or do.
The moment I am around the corner, I store the papers in my backpack and get outside. I have a big, big problem to solve. That form she gave me, it needs to be gone. While my papers are legit, some things won’t add up in a proper background evaluation and will be flagged.
