Bear

The interview room had that police-stale smell, bad coffee and old adrenaline. Jenna sat across from me, palm-flat on the metal table like she'd done something wrong. Her fedora lay next to it, crown down, like a dead thing.

"I need you to understand," she said, "the bear wasn't the problem."

I looked at her résumé again. "You were a bear trainer for eighteen years."

"My father's business. We had this old brown bear, Borscht. Sweet as anything once he knew you." She accepted the glass of water I'd offered. Her palms were scarred—white lines mapping something violent and trained. "Then the recession hit. Dad died. I had to sell the bears."

"You listed 'zombie experience' under special skills."

Jenna's mouth twisted, bitter. "Not zombies. The people who came to the sale. They bought Borscht for some rich kid's birthday party. Five hundred guests watched a bear dance for cake while his handler drank himself into a stupor by the pool."

"I'm not sure I understand the relevance to this administrative assistant position."

"The bear broke his chain three months later." Jenna picked up her hat, turning it in hands that still remembered the weight of something wild. "Killed the handler. Kid watched the whole thing from his bedroom window."

"That's tragic, but—"

"You know what the newspaper wrote? 'Bear mauls trainer at suburban estate.' Like Borscht was just… nature gone wrong. Not an animal that spent twenty years dancing for humans who couldn't bear to look at what they'd done to him." She set the hat on her head, tilting the brim. "I'm not here to be your assistant. I'm here because you posted that job opening eight times. Eight months. That's not a hiring freeze—that's a cry for help."

The fluorescent light buzzed. I looked down at my palm, where I'd written 'salary negotiation' in blue ink. The word 'bear' was scrawled next to it, my shorthand for 'minimum acceptable range.'

"You have a weird way of interviewing," I said.

"And you have a weird way of drowning." Jenna pointed at my water glass, which I'd been holding for ten minutes without drinking. "My father used to say that's what happens when you spend too long around animals that can't speak. You forget how to ask for what you need."

I set the glass down. Water rippled against the sides, catching the light.

"Alright," I said. "Tell me more about the bears."

Jenna smiled. It was the first genuine thing I'd seen since she walked in. "Finally," she said. "Something worth saying."

Outside my door, the office hummed with the quiet persistence of the living dead. But for the first time in months, I didn't feel like one of them.