No One Knows Us Here(16)

I wouldn’t waste it, this chance. I’d practiced my interview skills with Margorie, formulated answers for all the predictable ones: describe a work-related problem and how you solved it, name your greatest strength, talk about where you want to be five years from now.

The glass door separating the lobby from the rest of the building swung open, and a young guy about my age approached me, his hand extended.

“Rosemary, I presume?” he asked, with the supercilious air of an aging Hollywood starlet. He wore tortoiseshell glasses, skinny jeans, a New Order T-shirt, and a gigantic gray cashmere scarf that was wrapped around his neck a few times, one end tossed over his shoulder. The New Order T-shirt seemed like a good sign. My mother’s favorite band.

I shook his hand, too stunned to do anything but nod.

“I’m Alejandro, and I’ll be assisting you this morning—excuse me, this afternoon. I’m so sorry to keep you waiting. Did you already check in? No—okay, just hand them your ID and—great. Thanks, Heidi, John. Okay, here’s your guest pass. You can just wear it around your neck, like this; it has a retractable cord. You’ve got it. We swipe in and out of every door we pass through, like this, see?”

We each tapped our passes against the electronic pad next to the door. A green light flashed on the pad, and we exited the lobby. “Welcome to Lookinglass,” Alejandro announced.

We stepped into a large open room furnished with midcentury modern furniture, ping-pong tables, another junkyard sculpture, and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. “So this is just the general hangout area, a place to sit with your laptop and get stuff done if you want a change of pace, you know.”

He took me to the other parts of the building, all three floors. We ended our tour in the break room, a light-filled space with high ceilings and exposed ductwork. “We have two flavors of kombucha on tap. Coffee—cold brew, regular drip, any type of espresso drink you might want. Do you want a latte? A cappuccino? I worked at Stumptown one summer. My barista skills are legit.”

“Water’s fine,” I said. “Listen—I was supposed to meet Leo at one?”

Alejandro sat across from me. He gave me an impersonal smile. “It will be just a minute.”

We were sitting there, me nursing water from a pint glass, Alejandro sipping an espresso out of a white Italian demitasse cup, when Leo burst through the door, his arms raised up in the “triumph” power pose. “Rosemary!” he bellowed. This was Leo Glass in his element. Cocky, sure of himself, parading around in his signature navy-blue hoodie. He owned twenty-six hoodies, each identical to the last. They were made to his specifications by a manufacturing company in Los Angeles. I had read that on his Wikipedia page.

Leo led me to his office. It wasn’t like any office I’d ever seen. It was huge, bigger than the entire lobby downstairs. The ceiling went up two stories. Two levels of windows faced east onto the river, looking out at the bridges, at Mount Hood forming its neat white triangle in the distance. An entire office wall was made out of what appeared to be the side of a granite cliff, complete with a trickling waterfall. It looked like something you’d see in the middle of Yosemite. Or Disneyland.

“My climbing wall.” Leo pointed up to ropes suspended from the ceiling, then at the pile of harnesses and rubber-soled climbing shoes in a basket at the foot of the rocks. “Do you climb?”

“No.”

“I’ll have to teach you sometime.”

I followed him to a sitting area arranged in front of the windows—a grouping of modern-looking couches and chairs with ottomans surrounding a coffee table. On the coffee table sat an imposing, almost futuristic floral arrangement, a stark combination of white orchids and four-foot branches of curly willow.

“Can I get you something to drink?” Leo picked a crystal lowball glass up from a teak drink cart, which was stocked with crystal decanters of brown liquor, glasses, and an ice bucket, like we were on the set of Mad Men.

“I’m on my lunch break.”

Leo gave me an intense, insistent look. “Please,” he said. “Have a seat.” I hesitated for a moment, then sat down.

Leo sat across from me and placed his elbows on his knees, resting his chin on his hands. “Let me ask you something. What makes a relationship work?” He leaned in, narrowing his eyes, like he really wanted to hear my response, like he was a talk-show host and I was his guest, the expert.

I wanted to give him the right answer. I wanted the job, whatever the job was. I felt like I needed to produce a response that would impress him, but my mind only spat out replies in magazine listicle format. Compatibility. Trust. Mutual respect. “That’s the million-dollar question, right?” I said at last.

Leo raised his eyebrows, as if to say yes. “Everyone is looking for the right person. It’s a basic human need, right? That connection. I built a business out of it, that need. No computer algorithm is going to find the perfect person, that perfect match. It’s a fallacy.”

“Your whole company is based on a lie?”

“It’s the opposite of a lie. Lookinglass doesn’t use an algorithm. It’s not about ticking off boxes, matching up interests, blah blah blah.”

“Lookinglass uses facial-recognition technology to allow users to observe each other in real time from the comfort of their own bedrooms.” I was parroting the copy from the Lookinglass website. I had the whole thing memorized. “Rear Window for the lovelorn.” My own little flourish.