Beyond the Point(53)
A man standing at the ballroom entrance offered a neon green tote to the woman standing in front of him. The banner above the door read, Service Academy Career Conference, and his name tag said, Hello. My name is BRAD! in dark marker.
“There’s a lot of great stuff in there,” he said, tipping a shock of white hair toward the ballroom of potential employers. He extended the bag a few inches closer.
Dani took the bag reluctantly. The truth was, she didn’t want any “swag.” The thought of being at a career fair had humiliated her enough before BRAD! had entered the picture. Since graduating in June, she’d collected three flimsy bags from three separate career fairs, sixteen brand-emblazoned pens, several empty promises, and not a single paycheck. Every swag bag was a rude reminder that she was broke, living with her parents, and on the verge of coaching middle school basketball, just to get health insurance. Couldn’t BRAD! see that?
People back in Ohio kept saying inane things to try to draw a silver lining around her disappointment. “Everything happens for a reason,” they promised her.
“When God closes a door, he opens a window!”
But that line of thinking wasn’t logical, let alone biblical. Who was to say the room only had one door? And how did you know it was even a room? What if the room you were supposedly stuck in was really just a prison of your own making? Dani wasn’t about to sit around waiting for some theoretical window to open in her life. She was going to pick up a hammer and make her own way out.
“What company?” BRAD! asked.
“E & G,” answered Dani. “I’m supposed to meet Jim Webb.”
He laughed. “No, I mean at West Point. What company were you in at West Point?”
“Oh, right,” Dani said, trying to hide her surprise. Over the summer, she’d grown her hair into a short and twisted Afro, a modern version of what her mother’s had been like in the 1970s. No one in the civilian world would ever have guessed that six months ago she’d been on track to be an officer in the U.S. Army. The way Dani dressed, with her new leather jacket and big hoop earrings, made most people assume she was an artist or a poet, and she didn’t mind the mistake. She was impressed that Brad could cut through her appearance that quickly and see the truth. People saw what they wanted to see. She’d half-expected him to ask if she’d wandered into the service academy career fair by mistake.
“H-4,” Dani answered.
“I was class of ’66.” He looked away for a moment, then looked back. “I should probably keep my mouth shut. But I’ll say this. Perseverance. This whole transition thing can be a long road. Just keep on moving. Persevere.”
A sudden rush of emotion swelled in Dani’s throat. The constant pain in her pelvis, unaffected by the Advil she popped every few hours, didn’t help. Hot tears filled her eyes and she fought valiantly to keep them from falling on her cheeks. Her lack of emotional vulnerability had made her successful at West Point and it was going to help her to succeed in the business world, too. But somehow, this man, with a class ring that matched her own, had spoken to a part of her heart that needed to be touched.
Persevere. She knew he was right, but she didn’t want this to be a long road. She wanted a job. She wanted to feel that, like her friends’ lives, her life was actually going somewhere.
“Thank you,” she said, clearing her throat. “I appreciate that.”
After shaking his hand, Dani limped past the entrance and into the hotel ballroom. But before she was out of his line of sight, two other veterans approached Brad and received swag bags. One had a prosthetic right arm, while the other looked completely normal—uninjured, unmarred by the journey he had taken to get here. Compared to the amputee, who’d clearly given a limb for his country, Dani’s “disability” was a joke. The naked eye couldn’t see why the Army had given her a medical release, setting her free from the five-year service commitment cadets had to complete after West Point. The men at this career fair couldn’t understand how weird it felt to be here, in this ballroom, instead of preparing for war. Then again, Dani didn’t know why the man standing next to the amputee had gotten out of the Army either.
Some wounds are invisible. It doesn’t mean they’re not real.
The room was larger than she’d expected, with several dozen rows of six-foot tables. Music thumped from speakers in the front. A host of young veterans in brand-new suits wandered through the room like lost, overdressed children. An NBC news crew held court in the center of the room, where a blond reporter interviewed men about their service. She kept asking banal questions that showed just how little she understood about the military: What kind of job are you looking for today? Oh, and what exactly is civil engineering?
When Dani had learned she wasn’t going to receive a commission from the Army, Colonel Bennett had made several phone calls on her behalf, trying to help her scrounge together gainful employment. Surprisingly, his Rolodex didn’t only include other Army colonels. He’d called several business owners in New York, three congressmen, and even one Supreme Court justice. All of those leads had turned into dead ends. Jim Webb was her last shot.
Dani rarely felt this nervous. If Avery were here, she’d march up to every table with a smile and her natural sex appeal and have three job offers before noon, Dani knew. But thanks to an undisciplined summer, Dani had gained more than a few pounds, thickening her middle, where her six-pack abs used to be. Even if the Nordstrom employee had been right—even if her black pants and brown leather jacket produced a natural slimming effect—sex appeal wasn’t her strongest weapon anymore. And if her relationship with Locke was any indication, it probably never had been.