Little Girl, Big City Pt.1

Yesterday I moved to Bethesda to start my new job. Details below.

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She arrived at the station, Peter Pan blouse tucked neatly into her A-line skirt, a tweed fedora perched lightly atop her French-twist chignon. She was a fresh-faced college girl looking for work in the nation's capital, the typewritten manuscripts of her two novels in a crisp manila envelope clutched under her arm. Smoke drifted from the locomotives and the cigars of the jaded newsies hawking their wares on the platform. Ahead of her lay intrigue, danger and suspense. Behind her was the settled safety of dormitory life.

Her kitten heels clacking on the shattered concrete sidewalks, through the steam of manholes and the haze of the brutal DC summer, she wound her way to the offices of a national non-profit law firm.

On the ninth floor of the slick city skyscraper, slanted shadows from the Venetian blinds rippled across the carpet from her feet to the receptionist's desk.

"How can I help you?" the receptionist asked without breaking the tempo of her clacking Royal No. 10.

"I'm here looking for work," the college girl replied, her eyes shyly bent on the floor.

"What are your skills?"

"Well, I have this degree..."

The receptionist raised an eyebrow.

"We'll take her," a voice came from the shadows of the back office. A man emerged, a respected lawyer at the firm. "Get her started writing press releases. Be here at nine o'clock sharp tomorrow."

The abashed college girl mumbled her thanks and emerged from the office with a new spring in her step.

Read Part 2 here.