My Soul to Keep

Paul told me he got my position approved and that he'll be ready to send it to HR Monday to have it posted. He said I, Tara, and he will have to get together then. I don't know why, what the meeting will be about. I suppose there's some strange etiquette involved in posting a job you already have filled. You have to interview, but how does an interviewer ethically waste his and an applicant's time going through the motions. I feel uneasy about it, though not so much so as to give up the ruse. I will still feel somewhat dishonest about it, but will anything dishonest have been done? I've worked hard the past four years, trying to find my place in the work-world, taken many a part-time or temporary job, scrimped to a virtually ascetic degree, and now I'm having a job handed to me. I should accept that this is what I deserve, but I've worked so hard for so long for so little that I'd just about taken this life for granted. After all, I've deserved it before now. I suppose this is what I've been working toward all along. All these damned interviews, and I get the job by doing it. That's how I always get the job. The last time an interview actually landed me the job was my first one, as a prospective stockboy. I've had my last interview, unless I have to do one for appearance's sake for this, my last ever, job. It's too late to rescind my Kilmartin application. I'll be getting a call from Lois next week, likely. I'll be glad to tell her I'm not interested. I've imagined her asking, "May I ask why you're no longer interested?" and me answering, "You're as free to ask as I am to not answer." Believe me, that's the best I can say. She doesn't really want the truth--that I don't intend to slough off flakes of my soul into a jar on her desk for her to stir into her coffee until I'm just a Stepford shell of a human being. Hell, even if I told her that, though she might be offended she wouldn't take it to heart as a symptom so much of her behavior as my attitude. Her kind of neurosis didn't get where it is today without buliding up a mighty callous of denial. It wouldn't be worth my effort to add another layer.